This past week, TIME Mag­a­zine named “you” — the one of many mil­lions of web users — the per­son of the year. TIME’s cur­rent cov­er sto­ry
explains why the sto­ry of 2006 was­n’t one shaped by a “great man,” as
it usu­al­ly is, but by a com­mu­ni­ty of web users “on a scale nev­er seen
before.” It’s a sto­ry, TIME says, “about the cos­mic com­pendi­um of
knowl­edge Wikipedia and the mil­lion-chan­nel peo­ple’s net­work YouTube
and the online metrop­o­lis MySpace. It’s about the many wrest­ing pow­er
from the few and help­ing one anoth­er for noth­ing and how that will not
only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

If these grand dec­la­ra­tions hap­pen to move you, or if you’re look­ing
for some more elab­o­ra­tion on how TIME gave you this hon­or, you can
always lis­ten to TIME’s lat­est piece on iTunes which fea­tures a round­table dis­cus­sion of their annu­al edi­tion.

Here’s a quick lit­tle tip for you. Salon.com has a nice col­lec­tion of audio con­ver­sa­tions with fig­ures from the high­er ech­e­lons of the pop cul­ture world. David Lynch, Pedro Almod­ó­var, Amy Sedaris, the list goes on. You can access these talks from the Salon.com site, and, along the way, be forced to look at umpteen ads before you get what you want. Or you can take a very quick short cut, go straight to iTunes by click­ing here, and get the talks with no pain, no wait, no ads. It’s your choice, of course.

It may sound a bit strange, but you can now lis­ten to the front page of The New York Times. Amer­i­ca’s finest dai­ly paper now offers a series of 22 pod­casts on iTunes, which come in dai­ly and week­ly fla­vors. Most are direct spin-offs of pop­u­lar sections/features of the paper. Here’s a sam­ple of what you can load on to you iPod:

• The New York Times Book Review,
• Sci­ence Times,
• David Pogue on Tech Gad­gets,
• The Ethi­cist,
• Most E‑Mailed Arti­cles
• Times Talks (lots of good inter­views)

You get the point.

If you like this kind of thing, you might want to check out our large col­lec­tion of news pod­casts — over 80 pod­casts from major news orga­ni­za­tions.

Or check out our com­plete pod­cast col­lec­tion, Smart iTunes Resources: The Free Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.