Some­what unex­pect­ed­ly, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of audio pod­casts has been a boon for book lovers and writ­ers. Look­ing around the dig­i­tal land­scape, you’ll dis­cov­er a num­ber of pod­casts that enhance the expe­ri­ence of read­ing good old fash­ioned books. Let’s quick­ly have a look at the lay of the land.

The New York Times now notably puts out a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that com­ple­ments its beloved Sun­day Book Review sec­tion. Host­ed by Sam Tanen­haus, the Book Review edi­tor, this pod­cast runs about 20 min­utes, and it gives Sam a chance to have sub­stan­tive chats with authors, edi­tors and crit­ics who fig­ure into
the week­ly print edi­tion. Along some­what sim­i­lar lines, NPR Books (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) brings togeth­er the net­work’s many book reviews and author inter­views in a nice audio col­lec­tion. C‑Span’s After Words (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) serves up inter­views with impor­tant authors of recent­ly pub­lished hard­back non-fic­tion, and Slate spon­sors an Audio Book Club (iTunes —  Feed — Web Site), although it unfor­tu­nate­ly updates the pod­cast rather irreg­u­lar­ly. Mean­while, over in the UK, The Guardian (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) pro­duces a quite robust pod­cast that fea­tures reg­u­lar talks with well-known authors, many of them British. The Times, anoth­er Eng­lish paper, does the same (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), but its col­lec­tion is not­i­ca­bly slim­mer, though good.

Quite smart­ly, pub­lish­ers and book­stores have also start­ed churn­ing out pod­casts for the literati, using the dig­i­tal medi­um as a mar­ket­ing tool for their paper goods. Simon & Schus­ter pro­duces Simon Says (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a week­ly pod­cast that fea­tures new books and audio books com­ing out of the New York pub­lish­ing house. Ran­dom House (iTunes — Web Site) sim­i­lar­ly lets lis­ten­ers check out excerpts from new releas­es. And then on the book­store front, Barnes & Noble presents Meet the Writ­ers  (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a pod­cast that fea­tures authors dis­cussing their favorite books, influ­ences, and the rea­sons they write. And sim­i­lar­ly Ama­zon Book Clips (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) lets you keep tabs on both best­selling and up-and-com­ing authors. You can find oth­er Ama­zon pod­casts here.

Last­ly, the book lover always has access these days to a grow­ing list of free audio books. We’ve sift­ed through many of them and includ­ed the clas­sics in our Audio Book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. You can also find a broad­er, more exten­sive col­lec­tion over at Lib­rivox.

Each Octo­ber, Pop!Tech brings togeth­er 550+ lead­ers in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, busi­ness, social
entre­pre­neur­ship, the arts, cul­ture and media to “explore the social impact of inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, break­through sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies and orig­i­nal approach­es to tack­ling human­i­ty’s tough­est chal­lenges.”  And quite nice­ly some of the major talks are cap­tured and made avail­able to you via video pod­casts (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Among the down­load­able record­ings, you’ll find talks by Thomas Fried­man (New York Times writer and author of The World is Flat), Car­olyn Por­co (who leads the Imag­ing Sci­ence Team on the Cassi­ni mis­sion to Sat­urn), Richard Dawkins (where does­n’t this guy speak these days?), Chris Ander­son (author of The Long Tail and ubiq­ui­tous speak­er), and Mar­tin Mar­ty (a lead­ing com­men­ta­tor on reli­gion and cul­ture).

Just to give you a lit­tle more con­text, the lat­est con­fer­ence was orga­nized around the fol­low­ing agen­da:

What is a “dan­ger­ous” idea? It’s one that upends con­ven­tions, chal­lenges assump­tions and breaks taboos, reorder­ing our sense of the world and our place with­in it. It’s an idea, as Vic­tor Hugo said, whose time has come.… Here’s just some of what we’ll be dis­cussing:

• The nature of risk in the con­nect­ed age
• Bright green pos­si­bil­i­ties
• Globalization’s great sur­pris­es
• The role of faith and fun­da­men­tal­ism
• Pan­demics and their pre­ven­tion
• New approach­es to edu­ca­tion
• The cre­ative imper­a­tive
• New fron­tiers of explo­ration
• What tech­nol­o­gy wants from us
• Our con­struct­ed selves
• Con­flict, res­o­lu­tion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of peace

Final­ly, it’s worth men­tion­ing that TED Talks, a rather sim­i­lar con­fer­ence that brings togeth­er the cognoscen­ti, has just re-launched its web site and also released videos from its April con­fer­ence. Though they’re not yet acces­si­ble on iTunes, you can grab these talks from the web site and feed. Tune in and give a lis­ten to Bill Clin­ton, E.O. Wil­son, Thomas Dol­by, Jeff Bezos and more.

But it was at the patent office that young Albert fleshed out his the­o­ries on rel­a­tiv­i­ty, and he’d even­tu­al­ly win a Nobel Prize. Lat­er, when he trav­eled to the Unit­ed States, he was wel­comed as a rock star. All of this is recount­ed in Wal­ter Isaac­son’s new biog­ra­phy, Ein­stein: His Life and Uni­verse, which John Updike reviewed in a recent New York­er. The for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor at Time mag­a­zine and head of CNN, Isaac­son writes biogra­phies that are rich but approach­able. To get a feel for his style, you can lis­ten to him talk about Ein­stein dur­ing an appear­ance on Fresh Air (iTunes — Feed). And, just as an inter­est­ing aside, you can down­load Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: The Spe­cial and Gen­er­al The­o­ry as a free audio book from Lib­rivox (full zip file — indi­vid­ual mp3 files).

Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture

Dig into Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly put you in touch with great clas­si­cal music pod­casts (here and here). Now it’s time to
focus on jazz. Today, we’re high­light­ing 16 pod­casts that will keep you cur­rent on today’s jazz scene. You’ll know what’s hap­pen­ing in Chica­go, Detroit, New York and beyond. You’ll also find some pod­casts that explore some jazz greats — name­ly, John Coltrane and Son­ny Rollins. This list will grow as we encounter more qual­i­ty mate­r­i­al. If you see that we’re miss­ing a good one, drop us a line. In the future, you’ll be able to find these pod­casts in our larg­er col­lec­tion of Arts & Cul­ture Pod­casts. For all of our pod­casts, click here.

• Bend­ing Cor­ners  Feed  Web Site
  • Bend­ing­Corners explores the groove with­in: acid jazz, afro-beat, bop, cool jazz, cos­mic jazz, dub, down­tem­po, elec­tro-jazz, fusion, future jazz, groove jazz, jaz­za­tron­ic, jazz dance, jazz-funk, jazz-rock, kozmi­groov, modal, phu­sion, pro­gres­sive, mod­ern, nu-jazz, soul-jazz, spir­i­tu­al, and world. (If you don’t know how to work with feeds, see our Pod­cast Primer.)
• Brook­lyn Jazz Under­ground  iTunes  Web Site  Blog
  • A pod­cast look­ing at the Brook­lyn jazz scene. Part music, part inter­view.
• Chris­t­ian McBride Pod­casts  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • Talks with and pefor­mances by bassist Chris­t­ian McBride. Includes some video clips.
• Detroit Jazz Stage  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • A month­ly pod­cast fea­tur­ing the best in the Detroit jazz scene.
• In the Groove, Jazz and Beyond  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • From Jazz mas­ters of past and present to emerg­ing new artists per­form­ing hard-bop jazz and fusion. Fea­tur­ing Inde­pen­dent Jazz artists from around the world. A pop­u­lar pod­cast.
• Jazz Cor­ner Innerviews   Feed  Web Site
  • Jazzcorner.com innerviews are vignettes with insight­ful com­men­tary, inter­est­ing sound bites and lots of great music with great jazz mas­ters and up and com­ing musi­cians. Each pod­cast ranges in time from 4 min­utes to more than an hour.
• Jazz in Chica­go  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • Inter­views and infor­ma­tion about the jazz scene in Chica­go.
• Jazz Pod­cast from Mag­natune  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • 60 min­utes of straight, high qual­i­ty jazz.
• NPR Piano Jazz Shorts  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • For more than twen­ty-five years, pianist Mar­i­an McPart­land has wel­comed
    a stel­lar line-up of jazz artists for con­ver­sa­tion and impro­vi­sa­tion on
    her Peabody Award-win­ning pro­gram. Piano Jazz show­cas­es both acclaimed artists and up-and-com­ing per­form­ers.
• Pat Methe­ny — The Song X Podu­men­tary  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • Gui­tarist Pat Methe­ny explores his influ­ences, record­ings, music and more on this inti­mate pod­cast series.
• Port­land Jazz Jams Pod­show  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • Live jazz jams, inter­views with great play­ers, and instruc­tion­al mate­ri­als, all com­ing out of the Port­land jazz scene.
• Son­ny Rollins Pod­cast  iTunes  Web Site
  • A 12-part video pod­cast series to be released in month­ly install­ments. It intro­duces Son­ny Rollins, a major Amer­i­can jazz fig­ure, to new
    lis­ten­ers.
• Swing is in the Air  iTunes  Web Site
  • Although swing is some­thing of a focus here, this pod­cast com­ing out of Cana­da also looks at oth­er jazz forms.
• The Jazz Suite  Feed  Web Site
  • This is a pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to Jazz played by inde­pen­dent and indie artists that the major music labels have missed.
• The Night Pas­sage Jazz Pod­cast  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • An Eng­lish-lan­guage pod­cast com­ing out of Rome, Italy.
• The Tra­neu­men­tary  iTunes  Feed  Web Site
  • A series of pod­casts fea­tur­ing the work of the jazz great, John Coltrane.

The iPod is not just for groov­ing to music any­more. Muse­ums are using pod­casts to help vis­i­tors bet­ter explore their
art col­lec­tions (See our relat­ed arti­cle). Uni­ver­si­ties are doing the same for their cam­pus­es (see UC Berke­ley’s tour on iTunes). Doc­tors are now using iPods to improve their stetho­scope skills. And, trav­el­ers can now use them to tour through the great cities and coun­tries of the world.

Along these lines, a ven­ture called Sound­walk pro­vides engag­ing, some­what off­beat audio tours of New York and Paris. In New York, they offer indi­vid­ual tours of Lit­tle Italy, the Low­er East Side, Times Square and the Meat Pack­ing Dis­trict. They also get into Brook­lyn and the Bronx. Mean­while, in Paris, they take you through the Marais, St. Ger­main, Pigalle, Belleville, and the Palais Roy­al. Each tour is nar­rat­ed by fit­ting fig­ures. The writer Paul Auster leads you through Ground Zero in New York. Vin­ny Vel­la, who has played roles in The Sopra­nos and Mar­tin Scorce­se’s Casi­no, takes you through Chi­na­town. To get a feel for whether it’s the right kind of expe­ri­ence for you, Sound­walk lets you lis­ten to a sam­ple of each tour. Unlike most things that we fea­ture on Open Cul­ture, these audio files are not free. They’ll run you $12 a piece. But in the scheme of a big trip, it may be worth the cost.

Now if you’re look­ing for free trav­el pod­casts, then you’ll want to give some time to Trav­el with Rick Steves (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Some recent episodes look at Sici­ly, Spain, Cuba and Mex­i­co. You can also find a sep­a­rate col­lec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to trav­el­ing in Paris and its envi­rons (iTunes). Lis­ten­ers give these pod­casts high marks.

See all of Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer

We live in a moment when every­thing — includ­ing some­times think­ing itself — gets done fast and on the cheap. The Long Now
Foun­da­tion hopes to change all of that, to encour­age “slower/better” think­ing that fos­ters more respon­si­bil­i­ty. To ful­fill this mis­sion, the foun­da­tion runs a month­ly speak­ing series host­ed by Stew­art Brand, cre­ator of the icon­ic The Whole Earth Cat­a­log and author of How Build­ings Learn and The Clock of the Long Now. You can access the series via pod­cast (get feed here) and lis­ten in on some excel­lent talks — talks with Jim­my Wales (Wikipedia founder), Chris Ander­son (author of The Long Tail), Sam Har­ris (Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation), Bri­an Eno (musi­cian), and Jared Dia­mond (Guns, Germs and Steel). And while you’re at it, you may want to spend some time with the accom­pa­ny­ing blog.

If you’re used to access­ing pod­casts through iTunes, you can read our pod­cast primer and we’ll explain how to access the feed not­ed above with the Apple soft­ware.

For more think­ing pod­casts, check out our Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Since we’re already talk­ing today about Orson Welles (see imme­di­ate­ly below), it seems worth doing a reprise of anoth­er arti­cle that looks at Welles’ famous radio broad­cast. It’s per­haps our most pop­u­lar entry to date. Enjoy.

Over the past year, we’ve seen tech-savvy book lovers start record­ing and issu­ing their own home­grown audio books and aggre­gat­ing them on sites like Lib­rivox. The audio texts most­ly come from the pub­lic domain for obvi­ous copy­right rea­sons (though you can find some excep­tions), and, yes, they’re some­times of uneven qual­i­ty. Among the first releas­es, you’d expect to find a lot of the great clas­si­cal works – the major plays of Shake­speare, the foun­da­tion­al philo­soph­i­cal works by Pla­to, etc. – and you do get some of those. But what you find more often are texts by more mod­ern writ­ers work­ing in the thriller, adven­ture, and sci fi gen­res: Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing, Robert Louis Steven­son, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H.G. Wells. (Find these pod­casts here.) It seems entire­ly fit­ting (and, when you think about it, unsur­pris­ing) that Wells, the father of sci­ence fic­tion, would be among the first to find his writ­ings dig­i­tal­ly record­ed and dis­trib­uted. Nowa­days, you can down­load, sync and lis­ten to his major works – The New Accel­er­a­tor (mp3), The Invis­i­ble Man (iTunes — feed), The Time Machine (iTunes — feed), and The War of the Worlds  (iTunes).

But what’s even bet­ter and cool­er than all of this, at least in our minds, is that you can now also down­load the ver­sion of The War of the Worlds that Orson Welles famous­ly adapt­ed and aired on nation­al radio in Octo­ber 1938. Pre­sent­ed so that it sound­ed like an actu­al news broad­cast, the Orson Welles ver­sion was mis­tak­en for truth by many lis­ten­ers who caught the pro­gram mid­stream (more info here), and, soon enough, they found them­selves cow­er­ing in base­ments or flee­ing in cars with guns cocked and loaded, all in a des­per­ate attempt to avoid an unfold­ing Mar­t­ian inva­sion. You can catch the mp3 ver­sion of the famous Welles’ record­ing here. Or here is an alter­na­tive in case the orig­i­nal file gets over­ly traf­ficked. Enjoy.

See our com­plete Audio Book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and oth­er pod­cast col­lec­tions.