Over the past week, we’ve been sound­ing out our read­ers on what books have made a dif­fer­ence in their lives. We have about 35 replies so far (and prob­a­bly 75–100 list­ed books), and we’ll keep col­lect­ing replies until tomor­row (Sat­ur­day). Feel free to make your book choic­es known. The basic guide­lines for par­tic­i­pat­ing can be found here. We’ll post a hope­ful­ly use­ful sum­ma­ry of your book picks next week. And, as men­tioned, we’ll give a $50 gift cer­tifi­cate from Amazon.com to one ran­dom­ly select­ed con­trib­u­tor. Thanks for tak­ing part and have a good week­end.

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Down­load 75+ free cours­es as pod­casts from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, or check out our Uni­ver­si­ty Video Col­lec­tion.

A quick heads up: Steven Levitt and Stephen Dub­n­er, authors of the major best­seller Freako­nom­ics, have moved the relat­ed Freako­nom­ics blogs to the New York Times. You can now catch it here, and you’ll need to cre­ate a free user account with the Times if you (inex­plic­a­bly) don’t already have one. It looks like the Freako­nom­ics guys are off to a good provoca­tive start. Today’s post asks If You Were a Ter­ror­ist, How Would You Attack?

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We’re now in prime vaca­tion sea­son, and so we fig­ured that we’d high­light sev­er­al ways in which Open Cul­ture can enrich your sum­mer trav­els — all for free.

• First and fore­most, if you’re trav­el­ing to anoth­er coun­try, and if you want to speak the moth­er tongue, then spend some time with our col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts. The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly cov­ers over 25 lan­guages, so there is a very good chance that we can meet your trav­el needs.

• Next, if you plan to do a good long road trip, you should sort through our col­lec­tion of audio­book pod­casts. Our list, which gives you access to 90 mas­ter­pieces in lit­er­a­ture and clas­sics, can help the long trav­el hours effort­less­ly slide by.

• A vaca­tion is always a good time to learn some­thing new and worth­while. Here are five cours­es from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, avail­able as free pod­casts, that were cre­at­ed with the life­long learn­er in mind. So they were essen­tial­ly cus­tom-made for you. (You can also find here a long list of free cours­es from oth­er major uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing MIT, Berke­ley, Har­vard, Oxford, and Johns Hop­kins.)

• Look­ing for some free Mozart, Beethoven, or Miles Davis to enrich your expe­ri­ence? Find free pod­casts in our Music sec­tion. See our com­plete col­lec­tion of pod­casts here.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed - Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture — **@******re.com”>Rec­om­mend a New Pod­cast

As we cov­er the world of enlight­ened pod­casts, we inevitably uncov­er ones that become our per­son­al favorites, and this was the case with Radio Open Source (iTunes Feed Web Site). Host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon, the show had a great knack for mak­ing heady issues engag­ing and acces­si­ble to a wider audi­ence, and that was main­ly because the show took its lead from the Radio Open Source blog and its active online com­mu­ni­ty. Rather unique­ly, Lydon and his crew let the online com­mu­ni­ty help pro­duce the show, which meant let­ting the audi­ence sug­gest top­ics and guests for future pro­grams. It was a nov­el con­cept that yield­ed some very good results.

Any­way, as you can tell, we’re talk­ing about things in the past tense, and that’s because the show announced last week that they’ve run out of fund­ing and gone on a sum­mer hia­tus. They’re sort­ing things out and hop­ing to return this fall with new mon­ey and per­haps a new broadcasting/podcasting approach. We hope to see them back in action soon. In mean­time, we’d encour­age you look back through their media archive — iTunes Feed Web Site — to get a feel for what the fall may bring.

It’s a wrap for the week:

• Steven Col­bert Gives iPhone Zero Stars
• Phi­los­o­phy Bites
• Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats
• The Online Span­ish Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram
• 20 Pod­casts That Will Teach You Span­ish, French, Ital­ian and Ger­man (A Reprise)
• What Feed Read­ers Don’t See on Open Cul­ture

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Our col­lec­tion of pod­casts will help you start speak­ing Man­darin or Can­tonese. To learn more lan­guages, see our com­plete col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts.

• French for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Fun, effec­tive lessons for begin­ners. Pro­vid­ed by the French Ecole.
• Le Jour­nal en français facile iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Night­ly news from RFI pre­sent­ed in slow­ly spo­ken French to assist you with your com­pre­hen­sion.
• Learn French by Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A well-reviewed series of lessons for begin­ners and those who want to brush up on their French.
• Learn French with Dai­ly Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
  • These lessons are brought to you by French teach­ers from Paris. They are best suit­ed for those who already have some begin­ning French under their belts.
• Ma France iTunes Feed Web Site
  • The BBC offers 24 video pod­casts that will teach you French.
• Mali French Feed Web Site
  • The Peace Corps teach­es you some of the French spo­ken in Mali.
• The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A very pop­u­lar col­lec­tion that teach­es stu­dents the French lan­guage and dif­fer­ent facets of French cul­ture.
• The Ver­b­cast — French Verbs by Relax­ation iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A four-week series of lessons that will allow you to refine your knowl­edge of French verbs.