Artists Under the Influence

in Art, Life | April 21st, 2010

It’s no secret. Many writ­ers have writ­ten their mas­ter­pieces under the influ­ence of var­i­ous liq­uids and chem­i­cals, rang­ing from fair­ly innocu­ous to not. This month, Lapham’s Quar­ter­ly has pulled togeth­er a list that cor­re­lates great works with con­tribut­ing sub­stances. Here’s a quick sam­ple:

• Hon­oré de Balzac, La comédie humaine, Cof­fee
• W.H. Auden, Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939, Ben­zedrine
• Tru­man Capote, In Cold Blood, Dou­ble Mar­ti­nis
• Ken Kesey, One Who Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest, Pey­ote & LSD

via @kirstinbutler

An Epic Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railroad

in Google, History | April 21st, 2010

Google and the Russ­ian Rail­ways recent­ly joined forces to cre­ate a vir­tu­al tour of the his­toric Trans-Siber­ian rail­road. It’s the longest rail­way in the world, mov­ing from Moscow to Vladi­vos­tok, cut­ting across two con­ti­nents, 12 regions and 87 cities. Now, you can take the six-day jour­ney from the com­fort of your own home. Through a spe­cial page on Google Maps, you can watch video of the trip unfold, as if you were a pas­sen­ger, and also enjoy clas­sic Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture, music and pho­tos along the way. As you roll out of Moscow, start lis­ten­ing to a free audio ver­sion of  Tol­stoy’s War & Peace (in Russ­ian, of course) and ease into the 150 hour trip. How’s that for an epic vir­tu­al jour­ney?

via @6oz

The Best of YouTube (According to Open Culture)

in YouTube | April 16th, 2010

Maybe you have noticed. (Or maybe you haven’t.) Almost every YouTube video fea­tured on Open Cul­ture can be accessed through our YouTube Chan­nel. You’ll find about 225 videos over­all, and they run the gamut. Intel­li­gent lec­tures, artis­tic videos, com­ic bits, sci­en­tif­ic explo­rations, his­tor­i­cal footage – they’re all here. And, if you sub­scribe to our YouTube chan­nel, you’ll get noti­fied when we add new videos down the road. Now, let me give you fif­teen of my per­son­al favorites, and if you have your own YouTube faves, please send them our way. We’d love to share the great ones with our read­ers.

• Richard Dawkins on the Awe of Life & Sci­ence
• Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca Ani­mat­ed in 3D
• The Only Exist­ing Video of Anne Frank
• Robert Sapol­sky on the Unique­ness of Humans
• Stand by Me Trav­els Around the World
• Randy Pausch’s Last Lec­ture: Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams
• Mal­colm X at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty
• Steve Jobs Speaks to Stan­ford Grad­u­ates
• Women in Art
• Mark Twain Filmed by Thomas Edi­son in 1909
• The Bayeux Tapes­try Ani­mat­ed
• My Stroke of Insight
• Hub­ble Deep Field: The Most Impor­tant Image Ever Tak­en
• The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match
• Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

Tour New York City in 3D with Google Earth

in Google | April 15th, 2010

The lat­est inno­va­tion by Google Earth. Get more details at The Google Lat Long Blog.

Marshall McLuhan: The World is a Global Village

in Media | April 14th, 2010

The emer­gence of “new media” and “social media” — it has all looked fair­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary, the begin­ning of some­thing entire­ly new. But, when you step back and con­sid­er it, these inno­va­tions mark per­haps just an accel­er­a­tion of a trend that began long ago — one that Mar­shall McLuhan, the famed com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist, first out­lined in the 1960s. The vin­tage clip above gives you a feel for this, and McLuhan him­self appears at around the 2:45 minute mark. As you watch this video, you start to real­ize how pre­scient McLuhan was, and how social media is almost the log­i­cal ful­fill­ment of the trend he saw emerg­ing.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson

in Film, Literature | April 13th, 2010

Back in 1998, Hunter S. Thomp­son’s most famous piece of Gonzo jour­nal­ism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was brought to the sil­ver screen, with John­ny Depp play­ing a lead role. From this point for­ward, Depp and Thomp­son became fast friends. (Indeed, Depp would end up pay­ing for Thomp­son’s elab­o­rate funer­al, which involved shoot­ing the writer’s ash­es out of a can­non to the tune of Nor­man Green­baum’s Spir­it in the Sky and Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tam­bourine Man.) Above we fea­ture John­ny read­ing out loud some let­ters he received from Hunter. The let­ters are very Thomp­son-esque, which means, among things, they’re NOT SAFE for work! Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Learn 45+ Languages Online for Free: Spanish, Chinese, English & More

in | April 13th, 2010

How to learn lan­guages for free? This col­lec­tion fea­tures lessons in 48 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Eng­lish, Man­darin, Ital­ian, Russ­ian and more. Down­load audio lessons to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er and you’re good to go.

Amhar­ic

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Amhar­ic — Audio — Text­book
  • Lessons with dia­logues, drills, exer­cis­es, and nar­ra­tives will teach you the basics of this lan­guage spo­ken in Ethiopia. Includes sam­ples of speech, expla­na­tions of basic lan­guage struc­tures, and a vari­ety of prac­ti­cal exer­cis­es. Fea­tures two text­books (PDF) and eleven audio lessons (MP3).

Ancient Greek

• Ancient Greek Intro­duc­tion — Web Site
  • The UT-Austin Lin­guis­tics Research Cen­ter pro­vides an overview of Ancient Greek and 10 lessons based on famous Greek texts. It is all text-based.
• Learn Ancient Greek — Web Site
  • Leonard Muell­ner (Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Clas­si­cal Stud­ies at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty) has post­ed 64 videos on YouTube, which, “present all the con­tent cov­ered in two semes­ters of a col­lege-lev­el Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek course.”

Ara­bic

• Ara­bic Lessons on Spo­ti­fy — Spo­ti­fy
  • Over 12 hours of Ara­bic lessons for begin­ners.
• Ara­bic for Begin­ners 1 — YouTube Free
  • A series of video lessons from Dalar­na Uni­ver­si­ty in Swe­den.
• Ara­bic in Jor­dan — Web Site
  • These lessons from the Peace Corps will help you learn nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion in Jor­dan, rather than focus­ing on for­mal­i­ties.
• Ara­bic­Pod — iTunes Free
  • Includes mp3s and PDF tran­scripts.
• DuoLin­go Ara­bic — Web Site
  • Learn Ara­bic in just 5 min­utes a day. For free.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Writ­ten Ara­bic — Web site
  • Spo­ken exer­cis­es in Ara­bic and the print­ed tran­scrip­tions. Four text­books (PDF) and 31 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Lev­an­tine Ara­bic — Web site
  • Intro­duc­tion to pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Text­book (PDF) and 19 audio lessons (MP3). Scroll down to the sec­ond set of lessons on this page.

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Sau­di Ara­bic - Web site
  • Cov­ers the urban Hijazi dialect. Text­book (PDF) and 51 audio lessons (MP3). Scroll down to the third/bottom set of lessons on this page.

Book­mark our free Ara­bic lessons sec­tion.

Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

• Intro­duc­to­ry Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage Course — YouTube
  • By the end of this course you should have a basic bank of ASL words that you are able to use to form sim­ple sen­tences. Begin to iden­ti­fy ASL sen­tence struc­ture, which is dif­fer­ent than Eng­lish sen­tence struc­ture. Under­stand what region­al dif­fer­ences of signs are.

Bam­bara

• Bam­bara in Mali — Web Site
  • Lessons from the Peace Corps.

Bul­gar­i­an

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Bul­gar­i­an — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 75 audio lessons (MP3).

Cam­bo­di­an

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Cam­bo­di­an — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 45 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Con­tem­po­rary Cam­bo­di­an — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and 60 audio lessons (MP3).

Cata­lan

• One Minute Cata­lan — YouTube
  • A good way to get going with a lan­guage still spo­ken by some 12 mil­lion peo­ple, many liv­ing in North­east Spain.

Chi­nese

• Real Chi­nese - Web Site
  • Pre­sent­ed by the BBC. A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese in 10 short parts with video clips from the Real Chi­nese TV series.
• Begin­ner’s Chi­nese — iTunes Free
  • Intro­duc­to­ry audio lessons pro­vid­ed by the Open Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Chi­nese for Begin­ners — Free Online Video/MOOC
  • This is an ABC Chi­nese course for begin­ners, includ­ing intro­duc­tion of pho­net­ics and dai­ly expres­sions. From Peking Uni­ver­si­ty.
• More Chi­nese for Begin­ners — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Also from Peking Uni­ver­si­ty, this is an advanced course for Chi­nese for begin­ners. Learn­ers will expand vocab­u­lar­ies about per­son­al infor­ma­tion, dai­ly life, food and drink, health, and more.
• Chi­nese: Start Talk­ing with 1.3 Bil­lion Peo­ple — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Intro­duc­to­ry Chi­nese lan­guage course from Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty empha­sizes basic lan­guage skills for every­day life in Man­darin speak­ing coun­tries. The course uti­lizes pinyin, the stan­dard sys­tem of Roman­ized spelling for translit­er­at­ing Chi­nese, so learn­ers will find it easy to under­stand and study the lan­guage.
• Chi­nese Course — Seton Hall
  • Begin­ning Chi­nese — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Begin­ning Chi­nese Read­er — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Inter­me­di­ate Chi­nese — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Inter­me­di­ate Chi­nese Read­er — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Advanced Chi­nese — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Advanced Chi­nese Read­er — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall

• DuoLin­go Chi­nese — Web site
  • Bite-sized Chi­nese lessons. Fun, effec­tive, and 100% free.
• Fall in Love With Man­darin — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn every­day Chi­nese Man­darin and dis­cov­er Tai­wanese cul­ture in the process. From Nation­al Chiao Tung Uni­ver­si­ty.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Can­tonese — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 30 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Stan­dard Chi­nese: A Mod­u­lar Approach — Web site
  • Designed to give a prac­ti­cal com­mand of spo­ken stan­dard Chi­nese with nine sit­u­a­tion­al mod­ules. Each mod­ule con­sists of tapes (MP3), a stu­dent text­book (PDF), and a work­book. In addi­tion to the core mod­ules, there is a resource mod­ule and eight option­al mod­ules.
• Learn Chi­nese in Your Car — Spo­ti­fy
  • Gram­mar and vocab­u­lary to begin­ners, offer­ing guid­ance in pro­nun­ci­a­tion and lan­guage fun­da­men­tals.
• Man­darin in Chi­na — Web Site
  • Lessons cour­tesy of the US Peace Corps
• Slow Chi­nese — iTunes Free
  • A cul­tur­al pod­cast for Chi­nese learn­ers. Fea­tures nar­ra­tives by native Chi­nese peo­ple read in Man­darin at a slow speed (2~3 char­ac­ters per sec­ond). Top­ics vary from lan­guage, knowl­edge, tra­di­tion and cul­ture to opin­ions on social phe­nom­e­na.

Czech

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Czech Fast — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and twelve audio lessons (PDF).

Dan­ish

• Duolin­go Dan­ish (for Eng­lish Speak­ers) — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• One Minute Dan­ish — YouTube
  • We get a lot of requests (believe it or not) for Dan­ish. So here’s anoth­er use­ful primer cre­at­ed by the One Minute series.

Dutch

• Duolin­go Dutch (for Eng­lish Speak­ers) — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• Intro­duc­tion to Dutch — Web Site
  • Learn to speak, write and under­stand basic Dutch, with this free, three-week, intro­duc­to­ry for­eign lan­guage course. By Uni­ver­si­ty of Gronin­gen.
• Learn Dutch — iTunes Free
  • Cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant lessons that are easy to lis­ten to.

Eng­lish

• Basic Eng­lish 1: Ele­men­tary — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn basic Eng­lish for every­day sit­u­a­tions and improve your lis­ten­ing skills with this online Eng­lish lan­guage course. From King’s Col­lege Lon­don.
• Basic Eng­lish 2: Pre-Inter­me­di­ate — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Devel­op your basic Eng­lish skills for use in every­day sit­u­a­tions and build more con­fi­dence in your read­ing and lis­ten­ing skills. From King’s Col­lege Lon­don.
• The Eng­lish We Speak - iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Each week, the BBC looks at phras­es used in the Eng­lish lan­guage.
• Amer­i­can Eng­lish Speech - Web
  •  The OLI Amer­i­can Eng­lish Dialect course from Carnegie Mel­lon sup­plies the nec­es­sary rein­force­ment of dialec­ti­cal struc­ture, audio, pro­duc­tion tech­nique and pho­net­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion for each sound.
• 6 Minute Eng­lish — iTunes Free — Down­loads — Web Site
  • Learn and prac­tice use­ful Eng­lish with the BBC.
• Bet­ter @ Eng­lish — iTunes Free — Feed
  • Focus­es on con­ver­sa­tion­al Eng­lish, with an empha­sis on idioms and slang.
• Busi­ness Eng­lish: Finance and Eco­nom­ics — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From Ari­zona State, this course helps stu­dents learn Eng­lish using com­mon busi­ness sit­u­a­tions in finance and eco­nom­ics.
• Busi­ness Eng­lish — iTunes Free
  • Learn the Eng­lish you will need to func­tion effec­tive­ly in an Amer­i­can busi­ness envi­ron­ment.
• Con­nect with Eng­lish - YouTube — Relat­ed Course Infor­ma­tion
  • Fea­tur­ing the sto­ry of Rebec­ca, an aspir­ing singer on a jour­ney across Amer­i­ca, Con­nect With Eng­lish offers 50 fif­­teen-minute video pro­grams that will teach Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage to high school stu­dents, col­lege stu­dents and adult learn­ers. Pro­duced by WGBH Boston.
• Effort­less Eng­lish — iTunes Free — Feed
  • An Eng­lish pod­cast that gets sol­id reviews.
• Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage — iTunes Free — Feed
  • A very well liked col­lec­tion of ESL lessons. Over 100 episodes in the col­lec­tion.
• Eng­lish for Aca­d­e­m­ic Study — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Pre­pare to study at uni­ver­si­ty, explore the qual­i­ties of a suc­cess­ful stu­dent, and learn key vocab­u­lary in an aca­d­e­m­ic con­text. From Coven­try Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Eng­lish for Busi­ness and Entre­pre­neur­ship — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is designed for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers who are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about busi­ness Eng­lish and the glob­al busi­ness econ­o­my.
• Eng­lish for Busi­ness Net­work­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton. Intro­duce your­self in Eng­lish, keep a con­ver­sa­tion going, and leave the con­ver­sa­tion. Write pro­fes­sion­al emails to make new con­tacts and fol­low up with peo­ple in your net­work.
• Eng­lish for Career Devel­op­ment — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is designed for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers who are inter­est­ed in advanc­ing their careers in the glob­al mar­ket­place. In this course, you will learn about the job search, appli­ca­tion, and inter­view process in the Unit­ed States, while com­par­ing and con­trast­ing the same process in your home coun­try.
• Eng­lish for Health­care — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Devel­op your lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills for a career in health­care and learn new health­care vocab­u­lary in Eng­lish. From King’s Col­lege Lon­don.
• Eng­lish for Jour­nal­ism — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is designed for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers who are inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing the skills need­ed for a career in mod­ern jour­nal­ism. In this course, you will explore print and dig­i­tal media through authen­tic read­ings and video lec­tures, while expand­ing your vocab­u­lary and increas­ing your abil­i­ty to read, research, and devel­op local and glob­al news sto­ries.
• Eng­lish for Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, Engi­neer­ing, and Math­e­mat­ics — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is designed for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers who are inter­est­ed in improv­ing their Eng­lish skills in the sci­ences.
• Eng­lish Pro­nun­ci­a­tion in a Glob­al World — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • In this course, you will improve your Eng­lish pro­nun­ci­a­tion skills and learn about speak­ing Eng­lish in today’s glob­alised world. From Vri­je Uni­ver­siteit Ams­ter­dam
• Gram­mar Girl — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Gram­mar Girl pro­vides short, friend­ly tips to improve your writ­ing. Whether Eng­lish is your first lan­guage or your sec­ond lan­guage, these gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion, style, and busi­ness tips will make you a bet­ter and more suc­cess­ful writer.
• Speak Eng­lish Pro­fes­sion­al­ly: In Per­son, Online & On the Phone — MOOC/Online Course
  • A five-week course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia that will improve your skills in Eng­lish.
• Tricky Amer­i­can Eng­lish Pro­nun­ci­a­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From UC Irvine: In this course, you’ll prac­tice the sounds of Amer­i­can Eng­lish that might some­times be con­fus­ing. You’ll prac­tice both con­so­nant and vow­el sounds.
• Tu Ingles! - iTunes Free — Feed — Web Site
  • “Tu Ingles” is designed to help Span­ish-speak­ers improve their ear for Eng­lish. The week­ly pro­gram fea­tures drills of verb con­ju­ga­tion, inter­views, advice about idioms, and excerpts of speech­es and oth­er record­ed spo­ken mate­r­i­al from famous Eng­lish speak­ers.
• USA Learns — Web Site
  • A free web­site that helps adults learn Eng­lish online by pro­vid­ing engag­ing videos and edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties. Built by the Sacra­men­to Coun­ty Office of Edu­ca­tion, with fund­ing by the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.
• Write Pro­fes­sion­al Emails in Eng­lish — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • This Geor­gia Tech course will help you write effec­tive busi­ness emails in Eng­lish.

• Book­mark our free Eng­lish lessons sec­tion.

Farsi/Persian

• Learn Per­sian with Chai and Con­ver­sa­tion — iTunes — Web Site
  • Offers 50 lessons via pod­cast, each run­ning about 15–20 min­utes, which will help stu­dents learn con­ver­sa­tion­al Per­sian for free. Each les­son builds on pre­vi­ous lessons, so to get the most out of the course, start from the begin­ning. The site also offers afford­able pre­mi­um learn­ing mate­ri­als.
• Easy Per­sian — Web Site
  • Easy Per­sian offers online lessons in lis­ten­ing, speak­ing, read­ing, and writ­ing Per­sian or Far­si as spo­ken in Iran. In addi­tion to Per­sian lan­guage lessons, the site intro­duces con­tem­po­rary Iran­ian poets with Eng­lish trans­la­tions of their poems. You’ll also find free Farsi/Persian soft­ware, Per­sian names with Eng­lish trans­la­tions, Far­si writ­ing drills and much more.
• Learn Per­sian Far­si Eas­i­ly, Effec­tive­ly and Flu­ent­ly — Spo­ti­fy
  • A 3‑hour series of lessons that’s freely avail­able on Spo­ti­fy.
• Per­sian of Iran Today — Web Site
  • This two vol­ume text­book inter­weaves gram­mar- and vocab­u­lary-build­ing exer­cis­es with nar­ra­tive ele­ments in order to engage and devel­op stu­dents’ abil­i­ties in Per­sian. The web site includes the text­book itself and relat­ed audio/visual files. Per­sian of Iran Today is pub­lished by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Cen­ter for Mid­dle East­ern Stud­ies Pub­li­ca­tions pro­gram. Hard copies of the text­book can be pur­chased online (vol­ume 1 and vol­ume 2).

Finnish

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Con­ver­sa­tion­al Finnish — Web site
  • Tran­scripts of the Finnish dia­logues with idiomat­ic Eng­lish trans­la­tions plus notes on struc­tur­al pat­tern and expla­na­tions of essen­tial points of gram­mar. A vari­ety of exer­cis­es with instruc­tions in Eng­lish.

• Spe­cial Finnish - Web Site
  • For lis­ten­ers with some com­mand of Finnish YLE Radio Fin­land offers dai­ly broad­casts in “Spe­cial Finnish”. The five minute broad­casts cov­er items of cur­rent inter­est. To ease under­stand­ing, we sim­pli­fy the lan­guage and slow down the deliv­ery. Some gram­mat­i­cal forms are not used at all. The lev­el of Finnish used is planned to match the expect­ed abil­i­ty to under­stand Finnish shown by per­sons in Lev­el Two Lan­guage Com­mand (ofFinnish) as defined by the Coun­cil of Europe.”

French

• French in Action — Free Web Site
  • Pro­duced by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, these video lessons uses the sto­ry­line of an Amer­i­can stu­dent and a young Frenchwoman’s adven­tures in Paris to teach the lan­guage.
    
• Ma France — Web Site
  • The BBC offers 24 video lessons that will teach you French.
• Duolin­go French — Web Site
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments. Check out Duolin­go’s iPhone and iPad apps.
• Easy French Poet­ry - iTunes Free
  • A French as a sec­ond lan­guage pro­gram, using poet­ry as a top­ic for dis­cus­sion using every­day con­ver­sa­tion­al French.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Course - Web Site — Spo­ti­fy
  • The course is designed to enable you to reach con­ver­sa­tion­al pro­fi­cien­cy. You learn how to con­trol the French sound sys­tem by lis­ten­ing to the tapes and repeat­ing each phrase. The dia­logues present nat­ur­al spo­ken French in a vari­ety of con­texts, such as, greet­ing peo­ple, reg­is­ter­ing at a hotel, get­ting a train tick­et, and shop­ping.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Course: Phonol­o­gy – Web Site
  • The Intro­duc­tion to French Phonol­o­gy course pro­vides addi­tion­al drills for those who wish to sound like a native speak­er of the lan­guage. The course may be used ben­e­fi­cial­ly at any stage of learn­ing the lan­guage.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute French Fast – Web site
  • Designed to famil­iar­ize you with sit­u­a­tions encoun­tered abroad, and to pro­vide you with the lan­guage skills you need to cope effec­tive­ly with those sit­u­a­tions.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute French: Head­start for Bel­gium – Web site
  • Text­book and cul­ture notes (PDF) and six­teen audio lessons (PDF).
• Foun­da­tions of French for Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — King’s Col­lege Lon­don
• Fran­co­lab — Web Site
  • French Cana­di­an site pro­vides resources for lan­guage learn­ers and teach­ers. Includes videos, quizzes, inter­ac­tive mod­ules, audio-visu­al pre­sen­ta­tions, and a wide selec­tion of Cana­di­an pro­grams cov­er­ing a vari­ety of social and cul­tur­al top­ics.
• French Begin­ner’s Ser­i­al and Oral Course 2016 — YouTube
  • Learn basic French with the Manesca French Course. 91 videos on YouTube.
• Le Jour­nal en français facile — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Night­ly news from RFI pre­sent­ed in slow­ly spo­ken French to assist you with your com­pre­hen­sion.
• Learn French — iTunes Free — Feed — Web Site
  • A well-reviewed series of lessons for begin­ners and those who want to brush up on their French.
• Learn French in Your Car — Spo­ti­fy
  • Gram­mar and vocab­u­lary to begin­ners, offer­ing guid­ance in pro­nun­ci­a­tion and lan­guage fun­da­men­tals.
• Learn French with Cof­fee Break French — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • The pro­duc­ers of the very pop­u­lar Cof­fee Break Span­ish now offer a pro­gram that will teach you French.
• Learn French with Dai­ly Lessons — iTunes Free
  • 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.
• Learn French with Spo­ti­fy — Spo­ti­fy
  • A col­lec­tion of audio cours­es on Spo­ti­fy, that will take you from begin­ner lessons to advanced conversations–featuring essen­tial trav­el phras­es and vocab­u­lary.
• News in Slow French — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Pro­gram dis­cuss­es the Week­ly News, French gram­mar, and French expres­sions in sim­pli­fied French at a slow pace.
• Speak and Read French — Spo­ti­fy
  • Three albums of a French lan­guage course, Speak and Read French, cre­at­ed by Armand Bégué, a pro­fes­sor at Brook­lyn Col­lege and his wife, Louise Bégué, in 1959. For basic and inter­me­di­ate lev­els.
• Talk French — Web Site
  • A live­ly intro­duc­tion to French pre­sent­ed by the BBC.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas: Fran­cais inter­ac­t­if – Web Site
  • UT pro­vides a series of inter­ac­tive vocab­u­lary lessons. Media can be down­loaded from the site.

Frisian

• Intro­duc­tion to Frisian — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Did you know that, besides Dutch, a sec­ond offi­cial lan­guage is spo­ken in the Nether­lands? It’s a lan­guage even more close­ly relat­ed to Eng­lish than Dutch. This lan­guage is called Frisian. From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gronin­gen.

Ger­man

• Deutsch — warum nicht? - Web Site
  • An exten­sive col­lec­tion of intro­duc­to­ry Ger­man lessons put togeth­er by Deutsche Welle.
• Deutschtrain­er — Web site
  • Use the Deutschtrain­er to effec­tive­ly learn basic vocab­u­lary need­ed for every­day life and to improve your pro­nun­ci­a­tion. The 100 lessons are bilin­gual (Eng­lish-Ger­­man) and address var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions — from greet­ing peo­ple and going to the doc­tor, to shop­ping and find­ing accom­mo­da­tions. From the Ger­man broad­cast­er Deutsche Welle.
• Deutsch im Blick — Web site
  • A free online text­book for learn­ing Ger­man from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas. It’s the web-based first-year Ger­man pro­gram devel­oped and in use at the uni­ver­si­ty.
• Mis­sion Berlin — iTunes Free — Web
  •  Learn Ger­man through a mys­tery adven­ture. Cre­at­ed by Deutsche Welle.
• Radio D - Series 1 iTunes — Series 2 iTunes — Series 1 RSS — Series 2 RSS
  • Ger­man for begin­ners: Paula and Philipp are Radio D reporters who have sev­er­al mys­te­ri­ous cas­es to inves­ti­gate. Join them as their research takes them across Ger­many — and learn Ger­man along the way! Cre­at­ed by Deutsche Welle.
• Slow­ly Spo­ken News — iTunes Free
  • Deutsche Welle pro­vides a night­ly news broad­cast in Ger­man that’s spo­ken slow­ly so that you can work on your com­pre­hen­sion.
• Talk Ger­man - Web Site
  • A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Ger­man by the BBC. Pre­sent­ed in ten short parts.
• Deutsch Inter­ak­tiv — Web
  • 30-part self-study course in Ger­man. Fea­tures authen­tic videos, slideshows and audio texts that con­vey a vibrant pic­ture of life in Ger­many, Aus­tria and Switzer­land. Cre­at­ed by Deutsche Welle.
• Duolin­go Ger­man — Web Site 
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments. Check out Duolin­go’s iPhone and iPad apps.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ger­man Pro­grammed Intro­duc­tion — Web site
  • The text (PDF) and tapes (MP3) present, in a pro­grammed learn­ing style, the struc­tur­al fea­tures and vocab­u­lary con­tained in the first six units of the FSI Ger­man Basic Course. Serves to accel­er­ate the progress of stu­dents who sub­se­quent­ly move to the Basic Course.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ger­man Basic Course — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 24 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ger­man Fast - Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and ten audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ger­man Head­start - Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and four­teen audio lessons (MP3).
• Ger­man­Pod 101 — iTunes Free — RSS
  • Offers mate­ri­als for begin­ners, inter­me­di­ate and advanced.

• Book­mark our free Ger­man lessons sec­tion.

Greek

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Greek Basic — Web site
  • Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Kath­omilu­meni vari­ety that is the “stan­dard” speech of edu­cat­ed Greeks. Three text­books (PDF) and 75 audio lessons (MP3).
• Learn­ing Greek — Web Site
  • From the Hel­lenic Amer­i­can Union, these lessons will teach stu­dents Mod­ern Greek. For those who already have some foun­da­tion in the lan­guage.

Hebrew

• Hebrew­Pod 101 — iTunes
  • A way to learn some quick Hebrew on the fly.
• Bib­li­cal Hebrew Gram­mar I  (YouTube) and Gram­mar II (YouTube)
  • These are cours­es taught at The Mas­ter’s Sem­i­nary in Sun Val­ley, Cal­i­for­nia.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Hebrew Basic — Web site — Spo­ti­fy
  • One text­book (PDF) and 40 audio lessons (MP3). The Hebrew Basic Course is designed to teach spo­ken and writ­ten mod­ern Hebrew that is the ordi­nary, infor­mal speech of edu­cat­ed native Israelis. It is not intend­ed as a text for the study of the Old Tes­ta­ment or oth­er Hebrew lit­er­a­ture.
• Learn Hebrew (Bib­li­cal) — YouTube
  • Clas­si­cal Hebrew taught using the ser­i­al and oral method. Fea­tures 56 videos. This intro­duc­to­ry video presents the out­line for the course.

Hin­di

• DuoLin­go Hin­di — Web site
  • Learn Hin­di in just 5 min­utes a day. For free.
• Hindi­Pod 101 — iTunes — YouTube
  • Learn Hin­di with fun, inter­est­ing and cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant lessons that are easy to lis­ten to.
• Hin­di: An Active Intro­duc­tion — Text­book
  • A short text­book by DN Shar­ma & James Stone on behalf of For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute (FSI).

Hun­gar­i­an

• DuoLin­go Hun­gar­i­an — Web site
  • Learn Hun­gar­i­an in just 5 min­utes a day. For free.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Hun­gar­i­an — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 24 audio lessons (MP3). Also includes a grad­ed read­er.
• Let’s Learn Hun­gar­i­an — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Learn with Steve or Gyor­gyi, a native speak­er.

Ice­landic

• Ice­landic Online - Web Site
  • Cre­at­ed by Uni­ver­si­ty of Ice­land. The lessons use var­i­ous media — text, flash­cards, videos and so on. Lets you track your progress. Avail­able up to expert lev­el. (Requires reg­is­tra­tion.)
• Vil­tu læra íslen­sku? - Web site
  •  21 TV episodes of Ice­landic lessons. Each episode deals with dai­ly life and com­mon sit­u­a­tions in Ice­land. Accom­pa­ny­ing every episode is a thor­ough sum­ma­ry, explain­ing the sub­ject of the episode. The episodes have Ice­landic sub­ti­tles, mak­ing the dia­log eas­i­er to fol­low.
• A Begin­ners’ MP3 course in Mod­ern Ice­landic — Web Site
  • This is an exper­i­men­tal eight-hour begin­ners’ Ice­landic course, based on Alar­ic’s expe­ri­ences liv­ing in Ice­land in 2010,

Indone­sian

• Learn­ing Indone­sian - iTunes Free
  • A com­plete online Indone­sian course geared towards devel­op­ing con­ver­sa­tion­al flu­en­cy in the Indone­sian Lan­guage.
• Indone­sian News — iTunes Free
  • This is the lat­est news in Indone­sian from NHK World Radio Japan. For more advanced learn­ers.
• SBS Radio Indone­sian Lan­guage Pro­gram — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • For more advanced learn­ers, SBS Radio Indone­sian Lan­guage Pro­gram offers exten­sive cov­er­age of inter­na­tion­al, nation­al and local news and cur­rent affairs, includ­ing inter­views with Indone­sian com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and oth­er cul­tur­al pro­grams.

Irish

• Duolin­go Irish (for Eng­lish Speak­ers) — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• Irish 101: An Intro­duc­tion to Irish Lan­guage and Cul­ture — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From Dublin City Uni­ver­si­ty, this course offers an intro­duc­tion to Ireland’s cul­ture by learn­ing the basics of the Irish lan­guage. This is the begin­ning of a larg­er course sequence.
• Irish 102: An Intro­duc­tion to Irish Lan­guage and Cul­ture — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Find out how to speak, write and under­stand basic words, phras­es and dia­logues in Irish.

Ital­ian

• Talk Ital­ian — Web Site
  • A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Ital­ian pre­sent­ed by the BBC.
• BBC Ital­ianis­si­mo — Web Site — YouTube
  • Ital­ianis­si­mo was a TV series to learn Ital­ian first broad­cast in 1992 and repeat­ed reg­u­lar­ly over the next 10 years. You can watch the videos online.
• Ital­ian Lan­guage and Cul­ture: Begin­ner — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • In this lan­guage course from Welles­ley Col­lege, you will learn the four basic skills (speak­ing, lis­ten­ing, read­ing and writ­ing) in the con­text of major themes in Ital­ian cul­ture. By the end of the course you will be able to describe peo­ple, events and sit­u­a­tions, both in the present and the past, and you will have acquired the nec­es­sary vocab­u­lary to com­mu­ni­cate about every­day sit­u­a­tions.
• Ital­ian Lan­guage and Cul­ture: Inter­me­di­ate — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • In this lan­guage course from Welles­ley Col­lege, you will enhance your Ital­ian lan­guage skills, enrich your vocab­u­lary and expand your con­ver­sa­tion­al skills. You will learn how to have exchanges on a vari­ety of top­ics, and con­tin­ue your immer­sion in the Ital­ian cul­ture through unique videos and inter­views. You will also become more con­fi­dent as you con­tin­ue prac­tic­ing your read­ing and writ­ing skills.
• Ital­ian Lan­guage and Cul­ture: Advanced — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn how to per­fect your skills in Ital­ian (speak­ing, lis­ten­ing, read­ing and writ­ing), and by the end of this course you will be able to express opin­ions and hypothe­ses, and sus­tain an argu­ment using a vari­ety of reg­is­ters. You will also expand your vocab­u­lary to include top­ics beyond every­day con­ver­sa­tion. This course is from Welles­ley Col­lege.
• Duolin­go Ital­ian — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ital­ian Head Start — Web site
  • Text­book, glos­sary, cul­ture notes (PDF) and 21 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ital­ian Fast Course — Web site
  • Includes a text­book (PDF) and 30 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ital­ian Pro­grammed Course — Web site
  • Text­book and instructor’s man­u­al (PDF) and 24 audio lessons (MP3).
• Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full — Web site
  • MIT instruc­tor Dr. Pao­la Rebus­co uses cook­ing to help her stu­dents learn to speak Ital­ian.

Book­mark our free Ital­ian lessons sec­tion.

Japan­ese

• DuoLin­go Japan­ese — Web site
  • Learn Japan­ese in just 5 min­utes a day. For free.
• Easy Japan­ese — Web site
  • A free course from the Japan­ese nation­al broad­cast­er, NHK. This audio and text-based course of 48 lessons is designed for begin­ners.
• Easy Japan­ese for Work — Web site
  • Accel­er­ate your Japan­ese lan­guage skills! Learn prac­ti­cal, effec­tive work­place expres­sions, under­stand busi­ness cul­ture and improve your kan­ji. From NHK.
• Easy Trav­el Japan­ese — Web site
  • When trav­el­ing in Japan for the first time, what phras­es do you need? Each 3‑minute episode pro­vides sim­ple expres­sions you can put to use as soon as you land. The pro­gram also offers tips for get­ting around the coun­try.
• Easy Japan­ese: Gram­mar Lessons — Web site
  • Learn gram­mar from NHK.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Japan­ese — Web site
  • Stu­dent guide, text­book, glos­sary, flash­cards (PDF) and nine audio lessons (MP3).
• JapanesePod101.com — iTunes Free — Feed
  • Over 100 qual­i­ty lessons aimed at the begin­ner. Users give it high marks.
• Let’s Speak Japan­ese Basic — YouTube
  • 26 video lessons pro­duced by the Japan Foun­da­tion.
• Let’s Learn Japan­ese Basic II — YouTube
  • 25 video lessons pro­duced by the Japan Foun­da­tion.
• Maru­go­to Japan­ese Online Course — Web Site 
  • The Maru­go­to Japan­ese Online Course is a course for learn­ing Japan­ese lan­guage skills com­pre­hen­sive­ly. It’s oper­at­ed by the Japan Foun­da­tion.
• Week­ly News in Sim­ple Japan­ese — Web site
  • From the Japan­ese broad­cast­er NHK.

Book­mark our free Japan­ese lessons sec­tion.

Kore­an

• First Step Kore­an — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From Yon­sei Uni­ver­si­ty, this is an ele­men­tary-lev­el Kore­an lan­guage course, con­sist­ing of 5 lessons with 4 units, and cov­ers 4 skills: read­ing, writ­ing, lis­ten­ing and speak­ing. The main top­ics include basic expres­sions used in every­day life, such as greet­ings, intro­duc­ing your­self, talk­ing about your fam­i­ly and a dai­ly life and so on. Each les­son cov­ers dia­logues, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, vocab­u­lary, gram­mar, quizzes and role-plays.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an — YouTube
  • Orig­i­nal­ly aired on Ari­rang, Korea’s Eng­lish-lan­guage tele­vi­sion net­work, these lessons soon made their way to Youtube, where you can watch hun­dreds of episodes that start teach­ing the Kore­an lan­guage from the very basics onward.
• Intro­duc­tion to Kore­an — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Get an intro­duc­tion to the lan­guage and cul­ture of Korea, with this online Kore­an course from Hanyang Uni­ver­si­ty in Seoul.
• Intro­duc­tion to Kore­an: 2 — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Devel­op your under­stand­ing of the Kore­an lan­guage and explore Kore­an cul­ture.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Kore­an — Web Site
  • Includes the orig­i­nal and updat­ed cours­es, each with text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Kore­an Head­start — Web site
  • Text­book, cul­tur­al notes, and eight units of audio lessons (MP3).
• KoreanClass101 — iTunes Free
  • Fea­tures dai­ly audio lessons, video lessons, word of the day, etc.
• Kore­an Learn­ing for Cor­rec­tion Pro­nun­ci­a­tion - Web Site
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 1 - YouTube
  • 130 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 2 — YouTube
  • 130 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 3 — YouTube
  • 130 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 4 — YouTube
  • 100 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 5 — YouTube
  • 26 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Path­way to Kore­an: Begin­ning Spo­ken Kore­an from Zero — Web Site
  • Cre­at­ed by the Nation­al East Asian Lan­guages Resource Cen­ter at The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. When you get to the web­site, look for the “Units” in the top nav­i­ga­tion bar.
• Talk to Me in Kore­an — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Kore­an learn­ing made sim­ple and easy. Quite pos­si­bly the most thor­ough, fre­quent, slick, and enter­tain­ing lan­guage-instruc­tion pod­cast of any kind.

Lao

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Lao — Web site
  • Basic text­book, read­ing text­book (PDF), and two parts of audio lessons (MP3).

Latin

• Night­ly News in Latin — Web Site
  • “Nun­tii Lati­ni — News in Latin — is a week­ly review of world news in Clas­si­cal Latin, the only inter­na­tion­al broad­cast of its kind in the world, pro­duced by YLE, the Finnish Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny.
• The Lon­don Latin Course — YouTube
  • Learn Latin from the ground up. This is a ser­i­al course, struc­tured to bring you to a high lev­el of Latin flu­en­cy. The pace is slow and unhur­ried. This course is suit­able for all abil­i­ty lev­els. Restored Clas­si­cal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Find relat­ed course mate­ri­als here. You can also find lessons on advanced vocab­u­lary here.
• Latin Intro­duc­tion — Web
  • The UT-Austin Lin­guis­tics Research Cen­ter pro­vides an overview of Latin and 10 lessons based on famous Roman texts.

Lithuan­ian

• Lithuan­ian Out Loud — iTunes Free — Feed — Web Site
  • Offers begin­ners, inter­me­di­ate and advanced lessons.

Lux­em­bour­gish

• One Minute Lux­em­bour­gish — YouTube
  • Anoth­er niche lan­guage cov­ered by the Radio Lin­gua Net­work.

Maori

• Toku Reo - Web Site
  • Learn Maori, the lan­guage of New Zealand’s indige­nous peo­ple. Although these lessons accom­pa­ny a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme that is cur­rent­ly run­ning, the essen­tial bits of the episodes are avail­able to be watched right here on this site. The course starts at square 1. Site includes video lessons. Anoth­er use­ful site for learn­ing the gram­mar can be found here.

Nor­we­gian

• Intro­duc­tion to Nor­we­gian — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo. Start learn­ing Nor­we­gian today. Learn to speak, write and under­stand basic Nor­we­gian with this free four-week course.
• Intro­duc­tion to Nor­we­gian 2 — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn to write, speak, and under­stand inter­me­di­ate Nor­we­gian with this fun and engag­ing four-week course.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Nor­we­gian Head­start — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and eight audio lessons (MP3).
• One Minute Nor­we­gian — YouTube
  • Learn Nor­we­gian in min­utes with the Radio Lin­gua Net­work.
• Easy-to-Read News­pa­per - Text
  • This is not audio, but it’s use­ful nonethe­less. A news­pa­per that helps you learn Nor­we­gian by using large fonts and basic lan­guage.

Pol­ish

• One Minute Pol­ish — YouTube
  • Anoth­er help­ful audio series pro­vid­ed by the Radio Lin­gua Net­work.

Por­tuguese

• Lín­gua da gente — iTunes Free — Web site 
  • Por­tuguese learn­ing pod­cast for Eng­lish speak­ers. Fea­tures a lot of dis­cus­sion, con­ver­sa­tion, cul­tur­al tid­bits, and slang. From the Cen­ter for Open Edu­ca­tion­al Resources and Lan­guage Learn­ing (COERLL) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas.
• Brazil­ian Pod­Class — iTunes Free
  • Free pod­cast is released once a week, for all lev­els, with a focus on con­ver­sa­tion, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, vocab­u­lary, gram­mar and pop­u­lar expres­sions.
• Brazil­ian Por­tuguese 101 — iTunes Video Free
  • 45 lessons by Seman­ti­ca.
• Duolin­go Por­tuguese — Web Site
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Por­tuguese Pro­gram­mat­ic Course — Web site
  • Two vol­umes includ­ing text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute From Span­ish to Por­tuguese — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and three audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Brazil­ian Por­tuguese Fast — Web site
  • Two vol­umes includ­ing text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).
• Ta Fal­a­do: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese Pro­nun­ci­a­tion for Span­ish Speak­ers — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Cre­at­ed by the Texas Lan­guage Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter in the Depart­ment of Span­ish and Por­tuguese at UT-Austin.
• Talk Por­tuguese — Web Site
  • From the BBC, a video intro­duc­tion to the lan­guage in 11 short parts with audio clips for key phras­es.

Roman­ian

• One Minute Roman­ian - iTunes Free
  • Quick lessons by the cre­ators of the One Minute lan­guage series.

Russ­ian

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Russ­ian Fast — Web Site
  • Text­book (PDF) and eight audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Russ­ian: An Active Intro­duc­tion - Web site
  • 11 lessons and a text­book.
• Learn Russ­ian — Web Site
  • A free course by RT.com that cov­ers all aspects of Russ­ian includ­ing alpha­bet, pho­net­ics, vocab­u­lary and gram­mar. It also has mul­ti­ple gram­mar tables and tests. RT.com is a Russ­ian 24/7 Eng­lish-lan­guage news chan­nel.
• Learn Russ­ian Flu­ent­ly, Eas­i­ly and Effec­tive­ly - Spo­ti­fy
  • A 4‑hour series of lessons that are freely avail­able on Spo­ti­fy
• Russ­ian Gram­mar — YouTube
  • 50 free, short videos on top­ics in basic Russ­ian gram­mar. Fund­ed by a grant from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, the videos were cre­at­ed by Cur­tis Ford, a senior instruc­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Russ­ian Lit­er­a­ture — Web Site
  • Also pre­sent­ed by UCLA, the lessons help users improve their com­pre­hen­sion and vocab­u­lary by lis­ten­ing to excerpts from Tol­stoy, Gogol, Chekhov and oth­er Russ­ian lit­er­ary greats.
• One Minute Russ­ian — YouTube
  • Learn the absolute basics of Russ­ian with a 10-les­­son course of “espres­­so-break” episodes. In this course you’ll learn to greet peo­ple, say that you’re learn­ing the lan­guage, intro­duce your­self and ask peo­ple how they’re feel­ing, and lots more.
• RussianPod101 — iTunes Free
  • Helps you learn Russ­ian and Russ­ian cul­ture at your con­ve­nience.

Book­mark our free Russ­ian lessons sec­tion.

Ser­bo-Croa­t­ian

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ser­bo-Croa­t­ian Basic — Web site
  • Includes two text­books (PDF) and twelve audio lessons (MP3).

Sign Lan­guage

• Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage — Web Site
  • Lessons that will get you start­ed with the sign lan­guage preva­lent in North Amer­i­ca.

Span­ish

• Basic Span­ish 1: Get­ting Start­ed — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn Span­ish and explore Span­ish cul­ture in this intro­duc­to­ry lan­guage course, designed for Eng­lish speak­ers. Cre­at­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty Poly­tech­ni­ca Valen­cia.
• Basic Span­ish 2: One Step Fur­ther — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Begin­ners course for learn­ers of Span­ish that focus­es not only on lan­guage, but also on cul­tur­al aspects, specif­i­cal­ly designed for Eng­lish speak­ers. Cre­at­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty Poly­tech­ni­ca Valen­cia.
• Basic Span­ish 3: Get­ting There — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Begin­ners course for learn­ers of Span­ish that focus­es not only on lan­guage but also on cul­tur­al aspects, specif­i­cal­ly designed for Eng­lish speak­ers.
• Begin­ners’ Span­ish: Get­ting Around — Web Site
  • Pre­sent­ed by the Open Uni­ver­si­ty, this free course con­cen­trates on Span­ish as a tool for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but it also pro­vides some insights into His­pan­ic soci­eties and cul­tures through authen­tic print­ed and audio mate­ri­als. This Open­Learn course focus­es on pub­lic spaces and how to get by in a His­pan­ic city.
• Des­ti­nos: An Intro­duc­tion to Span­ish — Web Site
  • This telen­ov­ela, or Span­ish soap opera, immers­es stu­dents in every­day sit­u­a­tions and teach­es speak­ing, lis­ten­ing, and com­pre­hen­sion skills in Span­ish.
• Cof­fee Break Span­ish — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Learn Span­ish in a low-key, effec­tive way.
• Cof­fee Break Span­ish: To Go — YouTube
  • Build your Span­ish com­pre­hen­sion by lis­ten­ing to real native speak­ers.
• Duolin­go Span­ish — Web Site
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments. Check out Duolin­go’s iPhone and iPad apps.
• Show Time Span­ish - iTunes Free
  • Pro­duced by the same folks who cre­at­ed Cof­fee Break Span­ish, this pod­cast is for inter­me­di­ate and advanced learn­ers.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Course — Web site
  • This course in the Latin Amer­i­can dialect pre­pares stu­dents to func­tion effec­tive­ly in con­ver­sa­tions. Pro­nun­ci­a­tion, inflec­tion, and into­na­tion are heav­i­ly stressed.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Span­ish Pro­gram­mat­ic — Web site
  • Two vol­umes includ­ing text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Span­ish Head­start for Puer­to Rico — Web site
  • Stu­dent text, glos­sary (PDF), and four mod­ules of audio lessons (MP3) with self-eval­u­a­­tion quizzes.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Span­ish Head­start for Spain — Web site
  • Text­book and cul­tur­al notes (PDF) and four mod­ules of audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Span­ish Head­start for Latin Amer­i­ca — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and fif­teen audio lessons (MP3).
• Learn Span­ish: Basic Span­ish Vocab­u­lary — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • This spe­cial­iza­tion is designed for the begin­ner who may have no expe­ri­ence with learn­ing a sec­ond lan­guage but who wants to be able to read, write and speak Span­ish for per­son­al, trav­el or busi­ness use, or who just wants to learn a sec­ond lan­guage and build cul­tur­al aware­ness. From UC-Davis.
• Learn Span­ish in Your Car — Spo­ti­fy
  • Gram­mar and vocab­u­lary to begin­ners, offer­ing guid­ance in pro­nun­ci­a­tion and lan­guage fun­da­men­tals.
• Learn Span­ish on Spo­ti­fy — Spo­ti­fy
  • A col­lec­tion of audio cours­es on Spo­ti­fy, that will take you from begin­ner lessons to advanced conversations–featuring essen­tial trav­el phras­es and vocab­u­lary.
• Med­ical Span­ish for Health­care Providers - Web Site
  • This site is pre­sent­ed as a free med­ical Span­ish immer­sion, with vocab­u­lary includ­ing greet­ings, his­to­ry, exam­i­na­tion, and every­day speech, all with trans­la­tion and audio. It is designed to be help­ful for a vari­ety of med­ical per­son­nel. Cre­at­ed by a gen­er­al sur­geon turned Span­ish teacher.
• Notes in Span­ish — iTunes Free — Feed — Web Site
  • Pro­duced by Ben Cur­tis and Mari­na Diez, a hus­band-and-wife team out of Madrid, Spain. Ben is British and Mari­na is Span­ish and they too have built quite a large fol­low­ing for their con­ver­sa­tion­al Span­ish lessons, (for begin­ners, inter­me­di­ates and advanced stu­dents), which promise to teach lis­ten­ers “real Span­ish” the way it is actu­al­ly spo­ken every day in Spain.
• One Minute Span­ish — YouTube
  • Cov­ers the absolute basics of Span­ish, focus­ing on the pro­nun­ci­a­tion used in most parts of Spain.

Book­mark our free Span­ish lessons sec­tion.

Swahili

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Swahili — Web site
  • Includes “Swahili: An Active Intro­duc­tion” and basic course with text­book (PDF) 150 audio lessons (MP3).

Swedish

• Duolin­go Swedish (for Eng­lish Speak­ers) — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Swedish Basic — Web site
  • Includes text­book (PDF) and six­teen audio lessons (MP3).

Thai

• Let’s Learn Thai Lan­guage — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ti Malaya
• Let’s Learn Thai Lan­guage: Basic Con­ver­sa­tion Skills — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ti Malaya
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Thai — Web site
  • Text­books (PDF) and 50 audio lessons (MP3).

Turk­ish

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Turk­ish — Web site
  • Text­books (PDF) and 50 audio lessons (MP3).
• Hands On Turk­ish — Web site
  • Fea­tures a short course for absolute begin­ners, and a full course for peo­ple learn­ing the lan­guage for busi­ness pur­pos­es. The project was fund­ed by the EU.

Twi 

• Intro­duc­tion to the Twi Lan­guage - Web Site
  • 17 audio lessons by the Peace Corps will get you start­ed speak­ing Twi, one of the most wide­ly spo­ken of the 70 lan­guages in Ghana.

Viet­namese

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Viet­namese — Web site
  • Includ­ed famil­iar­iza­tion course and basic course with two vol­umes of text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).

Welsh

• Say Some­thing in Welsh — Web Site
  • 25 half-hour lessons avail­able for free.

Gen­er­al How-To

• GLOSS — Defense Lan­guage Insti­tute — Web Site
  • These lessons (6,000 in total) are devel­oped for inde­pen­dent learn­ers to pro­vide them with the learning/teaching tools for improv­ing their for­eign lan­guage skills.  Read­ing and lis­ten­ing lessons are based on authen­tic mate­ri­als (arti­cles, TV reports, radio broad­casts, etc.) and con­sist of 4 to 6 activ­i­ties. GLOSS offers cer­tifi­cates pro­vid­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion of work accom­plished.
• The WWW Vir­tu­al Library: Inter­na­tion­al Affairs Resources Web Site
  • This web­site direc­to­ry, which is part of the WWW Vir­tu­al Library Sys­tem, fea­tures over 2000 care­ful­ly select­ed, anno­tat­ed links in 37 inter­na­tion­al affairs cat­e­gories. The site offers a great way to under­stand our chang­ing world, but it also includes its own sec­tion of lan­guage learn­ing resources, and it includes sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to Span­ish, French and Ger­man.

Our col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage lessons has been fea­tured in the New York Times, The New York Times again, and yet once again in The New York Times.

Samuel Beckett Speaks

in Film, Literature | April 13th, 2010

Samuel Beck­ett gave us Wait­ing for Godot, one of the great plays of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Today, he would have turned 104 years old. He died back in 1989, and just two years before that, the pub­lic­i­ty-shy play­wright was cap­tured in some rare footage that appeared in an Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary called “Wait­ing for Beck­ett.” The images and voic­es can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to make out, but it’s worth giv­ing this clip a lit­tle bit of time to unfold. Mean­while, you can find more film clips involv­ing Beck­ett (as writer and direc­tor) on UBUWeb, the avant-garde media site we fea­tured here last month.

Thanks Mike for send­ing this one our way.

1,000 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free

in | April 13th, 2010

Down­load hun­dreds of free audio books, most­ly clas­sics, to your MP3 play­er or com­put­er. Below, you’ll find great works of fic­tion, poet­ry and non-fic­tion, by such authors as Twain, Tol­stoy, Hem­ing­way, Orwell, Von­negut, Niet­zsche, Austen, Shake­speare, Asi­mov, HG Wells & more. 

Fic­tion & Lit­er­a­ture

• Aesop — Aesop’s Fables — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Ander­son, Sher­wood — Wines­burg, Ohio — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Aristo­phanes — Lysis­tra­ta — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
• Aristo­phanes — Lysis­tra­ta (per­formed by Lucy Law­less) — Free Stream
• Asi­mov, Isaac — “Night­fall” — Free Stream 
• Asi­mov, Isaac - Radio Dra­mas of The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy & 7 Clas­sic Sto­ries — Free Stream
• Asi­mov, Isaac — “The Last Ques­tion” (read­ings by Leonard Nimoy) — Free YouTube Audio
• Asi­mov, Isaac — Short Sto­ry Col­lec­tion — Free Down­load (Zip File) — Free Stream
• Atwood, Mar­garet — “Stone Mat­tress” — Free Stream
• Austen, Jane — Emma — Free iTunes — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.

• Austen, Jane — Lady Susan — Free iTunes — Free MP3 — Free Zip File
• Austen, Jane - Love and Friend­ship — Free Zip File — Free MP3 Stream
• Austen, Jane — Mans­field Park — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Stream
• Austen, Jane - Northang­er Abbey — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Austen, Jane - Per­sua­sion — Free iTunes — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Austen, Jane — Pride and Prej­u­dice (read by Kate Beck­in­sale) — Free iTunes 
• Austen, Jane — Pride and Prej­u­dice — Free iTunes — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
  
  
  
• Austen, Jane — Pride and Prej­u­dice (alter­na­tive ver­sion) — Spo­ti­fy
• Austen, Jane — Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty — Free MP3 Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Auster, Paul — Free Stream — “Aug­gie Wren’s Christ­mas Sto­ry”
• Auster, Paul — Free MP3 — The Red Note­book (read by the author)
• Babel, Isaac — Free MP3 — “The Sto­ry of the Dove­cote” (read by Nathan Eng­lan­der) — Free MP3
• Babel, Isaac — “You Must Know Every­thing” — Free MP3
• Bald­win, James — “A Let­ter to My New Nephew” (read by Chris Rock) — YouTube
• Bald­win, James — Fifty Famous Sto­ries Retold — Free MP3 Stream/Download

• Bal­lard, JG — “A Place and A Time to Die” (Dra­ma­tized ver­sion) — Free YouTube
• Bal­lard, JG — “Track 12” and “Venus Smiles” — Free Stream
• Bal­lard, JG — Cocaine Nights — Free Stream
• Bal­lard, JG - “My Dream of Fly­ing to Wake Island” (read by William Boyd) — Free MP3
• Bal­lard, JG — The Drowned World — Free Stream
• Bal­lard, JG — “The Sto­ries of JG Bal­lard” (dra­ma­tized for radio) — Free Stream
• Balzac, Hon­oré de — La Comédie Humaine (French) — Free Down­loads
• Balzac, Hon­oré de — Le Père Gori­ot — Free Stream/Download
• Balzac, Hon­oré de — The Peas­ant Sto­ry of Napoleon — Free MP3
• Bar­rie, JM — Peter Pan — Free MP3
• Bar­ro­dale, Amie - “William Wei” (read by James Fran­co) — Free MP3
• Barthelme, Don­ald — “Chablis” (read by Etgar Keret) — Free Stream
• Barthelme, Don­ald - “Con­cern­ing the Body­guard” (read by Salman Rushdie) — Free MP3
• Barthelme, Don­ald - “Game” and “School” (read by T.C. Boyle) — Free MP3
• Barthelme, Don­ald - “I Bought a Lit­tle City” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Barthelme, Don­ald - “The Roy­al Treat­ment” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Baum, Frank L. — The Wiz­ard of Oz (read by Tituss Burgess) — Free iTunes
• Baum, Frank L. — The Wiz­ard of Oz (Vol 1) — Free MP3
• Baum, Frank L. — The Mar­velous Land of Oz (Vol 2) — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Baum, Frank L. — Ozma of Oz (Vol 3) — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Baum, Frank L. — Dorothy and the Wiz­ard of Oz (Vol 4) — Free MP3s
• Baum, Frank L. — The Road to Oz (Vol 5) — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Baum, Frank L. — The Emer­ald City of Oz (Vol 6) — Free MP3s
• Baum, Frank L. — The Patch­work Girl of Oz (Vol 7) — Free iTunes - Free MP3s
• Baum, Frank L. — Tik Tok of Oz (Vol 8) — Free MP3
• Baum, L. Frank — The Scare­crow of Oz  (Vol 9) — Free iTunes - Free MP3
• Baum, L. Frank — Rinkitink in Oz (Vol 10) — Free MP3
• Baum, L. Frank — The Lost Princess of Oz (Vol 11) — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Baum, Frank L. — The Tin Wood­man of Oz (Vol 12) — Free MP3
• Baum, Frank L. — The Mag­ic of Oz (Vol 13) — Free MP3
• Baum, Frank L. — Glin­da of Oz (Vol 14) — Free MP3
• Beck­ett, Samuel - The Com­plete Short Prose, 1929–1989 — Free Audio Stream
• Beck­ett, Samuel — Wait­ing for Godot (The­atri­cal per­for­mance with Bert Lahr) — Spo­ti­fy — Archive.org

• Borges, Jorge Luis — ‘On Exac­ti­tude in Sci­ence’ — Free MP3/Stream
• Borges, Jorge Luis —  Ibn Hakkan Al-Bokhari, Dead in his Labyrinth (Read by Orhan Pamuk) — Free Stream
• Borges, Jorge Luis — Shake­speare’s Mem­o­ry — Free Stream
• Borges, Jorge Luis  — “The Book of Sand” — Free Stream
• Borges, Jorge Luis — The Gospel Accord­ing to Mark (read by Paul Ther­oux) — Free Stream
• Boyle, T. Cor­aghes­san — “The Shape of a Teardrop‪”‬ (read by Boyle) — Free Stream
• Brad­bury, Ray — Futuria Fan­ta­sia (a sci fi short sto­ry col­lect­ed edit­ed by Ray Brad­bury) — Free Stream
• Brad­bury, Ray — All Sum­mer in a Day — Free Stream/MP3
• Brad­bury, Ray — The Gold­en Apples of the Sun — Free Stream/MP3
• Brad­bury, Ray — The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man Read by Leonard Nimoy — YouTube

• Brad­bury, Ray — The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles (Radio dra­ma with Derek Jaco­bi & Hay­ley Atwell) — Spo­ti­fy
• Brad­bury, Ray — Radio Dra­mas of Brad­bury Sto­ries — Free Stream
• Brad­bury, Ray —  “The Last Night of the World” — Sound­cloud
• Brod­key, Harold — “Dumb­ness is Every­thing” (read by Michael Cun­ning­ham) — Free Stream
• Brod­key, Harold — “Spring Fugue” (read by Jef­frey Eugenides) — Free MP3
• Brod­key, Harold — “The State of Grace” (read by Richard Ford ) — Free Stream
• Bronte, Anne - Agnes Grey — Free iTunes
• Bronte, Char­lotte — Jane Eyre — Free MP3 - Anoth­er Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Bronte, Char­lotte — The Pro­fes­sor — Free MP3
• Bronte, Emi­ly - Wuther­ing Heights — Free MP3 — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Brown, Mar­garet Wise — Good Night Moon (Read by Susan Saran­don) — YouTube
• Bur­nett, Frances Hodg­son — The Secret Gar­den (Read by Karen Gillan) — Free iTunes
• Bur­roughs, William S. — Call Me Bur­roughs (his first spo­ken word album) — Spo­ti­fy
• Bur­roughs, William S. — “Ghosts of Chance” — YouTube
• Bur­roughs, William S. - Junky — MP3s
• Bur­roughs, William S. - Let Me Hang You (posthu­mous album fea­tur­ing read­ings of Naked Lunch to music) — Spo­ti­fy
• Bur­roughs, William S. — The Best of William Bur­roughs, Spare Ass Annie and Oth­er Tales, Dead City Radio, Break Through in Grey Room, and Call Me Bur­roughs — Spo­ti­fy
• Bur­roughs, William S. - “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer” — YouTube
• Bur­roughs, William S. — The Road to the West­ern Lands — Spo­ti­fy
• Calvi­no, Ita­lo — Invis­i­ble Cities (excerpts read by Calvi­no) — Free Stream
• Calvi­no, Ita­lo — “Love Far from Home” (read by Salman Rushdie) — Free Stream
• Calvi­no, Ita­lo — The Night Dri­ver (read by Jeanette Win­ter­son) — Free Stream
• Calvi­no, Ita­lo — “The Daugh­ters of the Moon” (read by Robert Coover) — Free Stream
• Car­roll, Lewis — Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land — Free MP3s
• Car­roll, Lewis — Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (read by Cory Doc­torow) — Mul­ti­ple for­mats
• Car­roll, Lewis — Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (read by Sir John Giel­gud) — Stream/Spotify
• Car­roll, Lewis — Sylvie and Bruno — Free MP3
• Car­roll, Lewis — Sylvie and Bruno Con­clud­ed — Free MP3
• Car­roll, Lewis — Through the Look­ing Glass — Free iTunes — Free MP3

• Car­roll, Lewis — Through the Look­ing Glass (Read by Joan Green­wood, Stan­ley Hol­loway) — Spo­ti­fy
• Carv­er, Ray­mond — “Cathe­dral” (read by James Naughton) — YouTube
• Carv­er, Ray­mond — “Chef’s House” (read by David Means) — Free MP3
• Carv­er, Ray­mond - “Fat” (read by Anne Enright) — Free MP3
• Carv­er, Ray­mond — “The Stu­dents’ Wife (read by Richard Ford) — Free MP3
• Carv­er, Ray­mond — “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (Read by Carv­er) — Free MP3
• Cer­vantes Saave­dra, Miguel de — Don Quixote — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here
• Chabon, Michael — “S. Angel” — Free Stream
• Chaucer, Geof­frey — Can­ter­bury Tales — Free iTunes — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Cheev­er, John — “The Death of Justi­na” (read by John Cheev­er) — Free Stream/Download
• Cheev­er, John ” The Enor­mous Radio” (read by Nathan Eng­lan­der) — Free Stream
• Cheev­er, John - “The Reunion” (read by Richard Ford) — Free MP3
• Cheev­er, John — “The Swim­mer” (read by Anne Enright) — Free MP3
• Cheev­er, John — “The Swim­mer” (read by Cheev­er him­self) — Free Stream
• Cheev­er, John — “The Five-Forty-Eight” (read by Mary Gait­skill) — Free Stream
• Chekhov, Anton — Col­lect­ed Sto­ries — Free MP3 Stream/Download
• Chekhov, Anton — “The Beau­ties” (read by Philip Pull­man) — Free MP3
• Chester­ton, G.K. - The Man Who Was Thurs­day — Free iTunes — Free Stream
• Chekhov, Anton — Col­lect­ed Sto­ries — Free mul­ti­ple for­mats
• Chekhov, Anton — “The First Class Pas­sen­ger,” “Harm­ful­ness of Tobac­co” and “A Trans­gres­sion” (Read by Michale Red­grave) — Spo­ti­fy
• Chabon, Michael — “S Angel” (read by author) — Free Stream/Download
• Chopin, Kate — The Awak­en­ing — Free iTunes
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Chopin, Kate — Select­ed Sto­ries — Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, Hans — Tales of Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, includ­ing The Emper­or’s New Clothes, read by Sir Michael Red­grave — Free Spo­ti­fy
• Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, Hans — Ander­sen’s Fairy Tales — Free MP3
• Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, Hans — The Emper­or’s New Clothes — Free MP3
• Clarke, Arthur C. - “A Walk in the Dark” (A dra­ma­tized ver­sion of the text) — Free MP3 Stream
• Clarke, Arthur C. — “Break­ing Strain” — YouTube
• Clarke, Arthur C. - Child­hood’s End (Excerpts read by the author) — YouTube
• Clarke, Arthur C. — “Ham­mer of God” — Free MP3
• Clarke, Arthur C. — “The Nine Bil­lion Names of God” and “The Star” — Free Stream/Download
• Clarke, Arthur C. — “The Star” (Radio Dra­ma) — Free Stream
• Conan Doyle, Arthur — Beyond the City — Free MP3
• Conan Doyle, Arthur - The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes Radio Dra­ma, Star­ring John Giel­gud, Orson Welles & Ralph Richard­son — Free Stream
• Conan Doyle, Arthur - The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes (64 Hours of Read­ings) — Spo­ti­fy
• Conan Doyle, Arthur - The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes — Free iTunes — Free MP3 — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Conan Doyle, Arthur — The Mem­oirs of Sher­lock Holmes — Free iTunes — Free MP3s
• Conan Doyle, Arthur —  The Mys­tery of Cloomber — Free MP3
• Conan Doyle, Arthur — The Return of Sher­lock Holmes — Free MP3s
• Conan Doyle, Arthur - The Speck­led Band — Free iTunes — Free Stream
• Con­rad, Joseph — Heart of Dark­ness — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Con­rad, Joseph — Heart of Dark­ness (Nar­rat­ed by Hay­ward Morse) — Spo­ti­fy
• Con­rad, Joseph — Heart of Dark­ness (Orson Welles’ radio dra­ma from 1938) — YouTube
• Con­rad, Joseph — Lord Jim — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Con­rad, Joseph - The Secret Agent — Free iTunes — Free MP3 — Free MP3 Zip File
• Con­rad, Joseph - The Secret Shar­er — Free MP3
• Con­rad, Joseph - The Secret Shar­er — YouTube
• Coop­er, James Fen­i­more — Jack Tier, or the Flori­da Reef — Free MP3
• Coop­er, James Fen­i­more — The Last of the Mohi­cans — Free MP3-  Free MP3 Zip File
• Crane, Stephen - The Open Boat — Free MP3
• Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage — Free iTunes — Free MP3 — Alter­nate MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dante Alighieri — The Divine Com­e­dy (Eng­lish) — Free iTunes — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dante Alighieri — The Divine Com­e­dy (Ital­ian) — Free Stream from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
• Dante Alighieri — Div­ina Com­me­dia  (Full read­ing in Ital­ian) — Free Stream/MP3
• Dante Alighieri — The Infer­no, Can­tos I‑VIII (Read by John Cia­r­di) — Spo­ti­fy
• Dan­ti­cat, Edwidge - Water Child (read by Junot Diaz) — Free MP3 — Free iTunes
• Dan­ti­cat, Edwidge - “Sev­en” (read by Junot Diaz) — Free Stream
• Defoe, Daniel - Robin­son Cru­soe — Free iTunes — Free MP3 — Free MP3 Zip file
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Defoe, Daniel - Robin­son Cru­soe (alter­nate ver­sion read by Nigel Gra­ham) — Spo­ti­fy
• DeLillo’s, Don — “Baad­er-Mein­hof” (read by Chang-rae Lee) — MP3
• DeLil­lo, Don —  “The Itch” — Free Stream
• Diaz, Junot — “Alma” (read by Vic­tor Rasuk) — YouTube
• Diaz, Junot — “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Hal­fie)” — Free MP3
• Diaz, Junot — “The Cheaters Guide to Love” — YouTube
• Diaz, Junot — “The Ghosts of Glo­ria Lara” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Dick, Philip K. — “Beyond Lies the Wub” — Free MP3
• Dick, Philip K. — “Mr. Space­ship” — Free iTunes — Free Stream & Down­load
• Dick, Philip K. — “Sec­ond Vari­ety” — Free MP3 Zip File — Free iTunes
• Dick, Philip K. — “The Crys­tal Crypt” & “Beyond the Door” — Free iTunes — Free Stream
• Dick, Philip K. — “The Defend­ers” — Free MP3
• Dick, Philip K. — “The Eyes Have It” — Free MP3
• Dick, Philip K. — “The Gun” — YouTube
• Dick, Philip K. — “The Hang­ing Stranger” — Free YouTube
• Dick, Philip K. — “The Skull” — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Dick, Philip K - “The Vari­able Man” — Free Stream — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
• Dick, Philip K — “Tony and the Bee­tles” — MP3 Part 1 — MP3 Part II
• Dick, Philip K — Radio Plays — Stream
• Dick­ens, Charles — 24 Hours of Dick­ens Sto­ries Fea­tur­ing Clas­sic Record­ings by Lau­rence Olivi­er, Orson Welles & More — Free YouTube
• Dick­ens, Charles — A Christ­mas Car­ol — Free MP3s — Free MP3 Zip File
• Dick­ens, Charles — A Christ­mas Car­ol (Read by Neil Gaiman) — Free Stream
• Dick­ens, Charles — A Tale of Two Cities — Free iTunes — Free MP3s — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dick­ens, Charles — Bleak House — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dick­ens, Charles — Christ­mas Sto­ries — Free MP3s
• Dick­ens, Charles - David Cop­per­field — Free MP3s — Free MP3s
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dick­ens, Charles — Great Expec­ta­tions — Free MP3s - Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dick­ens, Charles — Hard Times — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dick­ens, Charles — Oliv­er Twist — Free MP3s
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dick­ens, Charles — “The Christ­mas Tree” (Read by Simon Cal­low) — Free Stream — Free MP3
• Dodge, Mary Mapes - Hans Brinker — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
• Dos­toyevsky, Fyo­dor - Crime and Pun­ish­ment — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dos­toyevsky, Fyo­dor - Notes from the Under­ground — Free MP3
• Dos­toyevsky, Fyo­dor — The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov — Free Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dos­toyevsky, Fyo­dor — The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man — Free Stream/Download
• Dos­toyevsky, Fyo­dor — The Gam­bler — Free MP3 Zip File — Free Stream
• Dos­toyevsky, Fyo­dor — The Grand Inquisi­tor (dra­mat­ic read­ing) — Free Stream — Free MP3 Zip
• Dos­toyevsky, Fyo­dor - The Idiot — Free MP3 Zip File — Free Stream
• Dos­toyevsky, Fyo­dor — The Pos­sessed — Free MP3
• Doyle, Rod­dy — “Bull­fight­ing” (Read by Dave Eggers) — Free MP3
• Dr Who Audio Dra­mas — Spo­ti­fy
• Dreis­er, Theodore — Sis­ter Car­rie — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dumas, Alexan­dre - The Comte de Monte Cristo — Free MP3s - Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Dumas, Alexan­dre — The Three Mus­ke­teers — Free Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Eliot, George - Silas Marn­er — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Eliot, George — Mid­dle­march — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Eliot, T.S. — The Cock­tail Par­ty (Per­formed by Alec Guin­ness & Cath­leen Nes­bitt) — Free Spo­ti­fy
• Erdrich, Louise — “The Stone” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Faulkn­er, William —  “Shin­gles for the Lord” — Free Stream
• Faulkn­er, William — Faulkn­er Reads Faulkn­er — Free Stream
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott — Ber­nice Bobs Her Hair — Free iTunes -  Free MP3s/Stream
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott — Flap­pers and Philoso­phers — Free iTunes — Free MP3s
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott — Tales of the Jazz Age — Free MP3s
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott — The Beau­ti­ful and Damned — Free iTunes — Free MP3s/Stream
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott — The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton — Free MP3s
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott — The Great Gats­by — Free Stream
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott - This Side of Par­adise — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Flaubert, Gus­tave — Madame Bovary — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Flaubert, Gus­tave — Three Short Works
  • Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File — Free Stream
• Ford, Richard — “Dis­placed” (Read by Richard Ford)
  • Free Stream
• Forster, E.M. — A Room with a View — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Forster, E. M. — Howards End — Free iTunes — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Forster, E.M. - “The Machine Stops” — Free iTunes
• Gaiman, Neil - Cora­line (Read in its entire­ty by Neil Gaiman and friends) — Video
• Gaiman, Neil — “How to Talk to Oth­er Girls at Par­ties” — Free MP3
• Gaiman, Neil - “Orange” (read live) — Free Video
• Gaiman, Neil - “Oth­er Peo­ple” (read by Neil Gaiman) — Free Video
• Gaiman, Neil - The Grave­yard Book (read by Neil Gaiman) — Free Video
• Gaiman, Neil - “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury” (read by Neil Gaiman) — Free Stream

• Gaiman, Neil — “The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Moun­tains” — Free MP3
• Gait­skill, Mary — “The Oth­er Place” (read by Jen­nifer Egan) — Free MP3
• Geng, Veron­i­ca — “Love Trou­ble Is My Busi­ness” (read by Jonathan Franzen) — Free MP3
• Gogol, Niko­lai - Dead Souls — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Gogol, Niko­lai — “The Nose” — Free MP3
• Gogol, Niko­lai - The Over­coat and Oth­er Short Sto­ries — Free MP3 Zip File
• Gordimer, Nadine — “A Style of Her Own” and “The Bride­groom” (read by the author, 1961) — Free Stream/Download
• Gordimer, Nadine — “City Lovers” (read by Tes­sa Hadley) — Free MP3
• Gordimer, Nadine — “Loot” (read by author) — YouTube
• Gordimer, Nadine — “The Pet” (read by Joseph O’Neill) — Free Stream
• Gra­hame, Ken­neth — The Reluc­tant Drag­on (read by Boris Karloff) — YouTube
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel — House of the Sev­en Gables — Free MP3s
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel — Rap­pac­cini’s Daugh­ter — Free Stream
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel — The Scar­let Let­ter — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel — The Scar­let Let­ter — Spo­ti­fy
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel - “Wake­field” (Read by Paul Auster) — YouTube
• Hay­den, Julie - “Day-Old Baby Rats” (read by Lor­rie Moore) Free MP3
• Hem­ing­way, Ernest — A Farewell to Arms (1948 radio dra­ma) — YouTube

• Hem­ing­way, Ernest — Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads Ernest Hem­ing­way — Free Stream
• Hem­ing­way, Ernest - Homage to Switzer­land (read by Julian Barnes) — Free MP3
• Hem­ing­way, Ernest — “In Har­ry’s Bar in Venice” (a short sto­ry read by Hem­ing­way: .au for­mat, .gsm for­mat, .ra for­mat)
• Hem­ing­way, Ernest — “The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro” (read by Charleston Hes­ton) — Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4
• Hesse, Her­mann — Sid­dhartha — Free MP3 — Spo­ti­fy
• Hitch­cock, Alfred — Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Ghost Sto­ries for Young Peo­ple — Spo­ti­fy
• Homer, The Ili­ad (Based on Samuel But­ler Trans­la­tion) — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Homer, The Odyssey (Based on Samuel But­ler Trans­la­tion) — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Hugh­es, Langston — “Sim­ple on Indi­an Blood”(read by Ossie Davis) — Free Stream
• Hugh­es, Langston - “A Toast to Harlem” (read by Ossie Davis) — Free Stream
• Hugh­es, Langston — “Last Whip­ping” (read by Ossie Davis) — Free Stream
• Hugh­es, Langston — “Feet Live Their Own Life” (read by Ossie Davis) — Free Stream
• Hugo, Vic­tor — Les Mis­érables Vol. 1 — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Hugo, Vic­tor - Les Mis­érables — Radio dra­ma nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles — Mul­ti­ple for­mats
• Hugo, Vic­tor — The Hunch­back of Notre Dame — Free MP3 — Free iTunes
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Hugo, Vic­tor — The Hunch­back of Notre Dame (Abridged ver­sion read by Christo­pher Lee) — Spo­ti­fy
• Hux­ley, Aldous — Brave New World (Dra­ma­tized ver­sion read by Hux­ley) — Free Stream
• Hux­ley, Aldous — Crome Yel­low — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
• Irv­ing, Wash­ing­ton — Rip Van Win­kle — Free MP3
• Irv­ing, Wash­ing­ton - The Leg­end of Sleepy Hol­low — Free iTunes — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• James, Hen­ry — Daisy Miller — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
• James, Hen­ry — “Gre­ville Fane” (read by Cyn­thia Ozick) — Free Stream/Download
• James, Hen­ry - The Turn of the Screw — Free iTunes — Free MP3
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• John­son, Denis — “Emer­gency” (read by Tobias Wolff) MP3
• Joyce, James — A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File — Free Stream
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Joyce, James — Cham­ber Music — Free iTunes — Free Stream
• Joyce, James - Dublin­ers — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File — Free Stream — Free on Spo­ti­fy
• Joyce, James — “Eve­line” (read by Sebas­t­ian Bar­ry) — Free MP3
• Joyce, James — Finnegans Wake — Free Stream
• Joyce, James —  “The Dead” — Free MP3 Zip File
• Joyce, James — “The Dead” (Read by Cyn­thia Nixon & Colum McCann) — Free Stream
• Joyce, James — “The Dead” (Read by Bart Wolffe) — Spo­ti­fy
• Joyce, James - Ulysses — Free Stream Var­i­ous For­mats
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• July, Miran­da - “Ron Spivey” (read by David Sedaris) — Free MP3
• Kaf­ka, Franz — “A Lit­tle Fable” (Read by David Fos­ter Wal­lace) — Free Stream
• Kaf­ka, Franz — “A Hunger Artist” (read by Hanif Kureishi) — Free MP3
• Kaf­ka, Franz — “Before the Law” — Free MP3
• Kaf­ka, Franz — “In the Penal Colony — Free MP3
• Kaf­ka, Franz — The Meta­mor­pho­sis — Free iTunes — Free MP3 — Free Stream — Spo­ti­fy
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Karloff, Boris — Tales of the Fright­ened — YouTube
• Ker­ouac, Bur­roughs, Gins­berg, etc — 18 Hours of Beat Read­ings — Spo­ti­fy
• Kin­caid, Jamaica — “Fig­ures in the Dis­tance” (read by Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie) — Free MP3
• Kin­caid, Jamaica — “Girl” and “Wing­less” (read by Edwidge Dan­ti­cat) — Free Stream
• King, Stephen — “After­life” — YouTube
• Kipling, Rud­yard — Kim — Free iTunes
• Kipling, Rud­yard — Just So Sto­ries for Lit­tle Chil­dren — Free iTunes — Free MP3/Stream
• Kipling, Rud­yard — Rik­­ki-Tik­­ki-Tavi — Free MP3
• Kipling, Rud­yard — “The Ele­phan­t’s Child” — Free MP3
• Kipling, Rud­yard — The Jun­gle Sto­ry — Free MP3 Zip File
• L’Heureux, John — “Three Short Moments in a Long Life” — Free MP3 Stream
• Lahiri, Jhumpa — “Cast­ing Shad­ows‪”‬ (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Lawrence, D.H. — Ever­last­ing Flow­ers — Free MP3 Zip File
• Lawrence, D.H. - A Woman and Her Dead Hus­band — Free MP3
• Le Guin, Ursu­la — “The End” (Dra­ma­tized ver­sion) — Free MP3 Stream
• Ler­oux, Gas­ton — The Phan­tom of the Opera (abridged) — Spo­ti­fy
• Lethem, Jonathan — “The After­life‪”‬ (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Lewis, C.S. - The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia — Free MP3s
  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • Prince Caspi­an: The Return to Nar­nia
  • The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er
  • The Sil­ver Chair
  • The Horse and His Boy
  • The Magi­cian’s Nephew
  • The Last Bat­tle
• Lewis, C.S. — Spir­its in Bondage — Free iTunes — Free MP3s
• Lewis, C.S. — The Screw­tape Let­ters (nar­rat­ed by John Cleese) — YouTube
• Lewis, Sin­clair — Bab­bit — Free MP3s
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Lewis, Sin­clair — It Can’t Hap­pen Here (read­ing of an adapt­ed play) — YouTube
• Lewis, Sin­clair — Main Street — Free MP3s
• Lon­don, Jack — Call of the Wild — Free MP3s
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Lon­don, Jack — The Hea­then — Free MP3
• Lon­don, Jack -To Build a Fire — Free MP3
• Lon­don, Jack - White Fang — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
• Longfel­low, Hen­ry Wadsworth — Select­ed Works — Free MP3
• Love­craft, H.P. — The Call of of Cthul­hu (Read by Gar­rick Hagan) — Free YouTube — Free Stream Part 1 — Free Stream Part 2
• Love­craft, H.P - The Call of of Cthul­hu & Oth­er Sto­ries — Spo­ti­fy
• Love­craft, H.P. — The Out­sider and The Hound (read by Rod­dy McDowall) — Free
• Love­craft, H.P. — The Col­lect­ed Pub­lic Domain Works of H. P. Love­craft — Free Mp3 Zip File — Free Stream
• Lucretius — On the Nature of Things — Free MP3 Zip File — Free iTunes
• Lu Xun - A Mad­man’s Diary and Oth­er Sto­ries — Free MP3 Zip File
• Mann, Thomas — Death in Venice — Free MP3s/Download
• McCabe, Eugene - Annahul­lian (read by Colm Tóibín) — Free MP3
• McCann, Colum — “Transat­lantic” (read by author) — Free MP3
• McE­wan, Ian — “My Pur­ple Scent­ed Nov­el” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Melville, Her­man — Moby-Dick — Free Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Melville, Her­man — Moby-Dick read by Celebri­ties (Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, John Waters, Stephen Fry, Til­da Swin­ton & More) — Free Stream/Download
• Melville, Her­man — Moby-Dick read by Oth­er Celebri­ties — Sound­Cloud
• Melville, Her­man — Typee — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
• Miller, Arthur — Read­ings from The Cru­cible and Death of a Sales­man — Spo­ti­fy
• Miller Jr, Wal­ter M. — A Can­ti­cle for Lei­bowitz (Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion) — Free Stream
• Miller, William — Rent Par­ty Jazz (read by Vio­la Davis) — YouTube
• Milne, A.A. — Win­nie the Pooh (read Dis­ney Book Group) — Free iTunes
• Mil­ton, John - Par­adise Lost — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Mil­ton, John — Par­adise Regained — Free MP3 Zip File
• Mont­gomery, Lucy Maud — Anne of Green Gables — Free MP3s
• Moore, Lor­rie — “Paper Loss­es” (read by Gary Shteyn­gart) — Free Stream
• Munro, Alice — “Axis” — Free Stream
• Muraka­mi, Haru­ki — “Barn Burn­ing” — Free Stream
• Muraka­mi, Haru­ki — “On See­ing the 100% Per­fect Girl One Beau­ti­ful April Morn­ing” — Free Stream
• Muraka­mi, Haru­ki — “U.F.O. in Kushi­ro” — Free Stream
• Nabokov, Vladimir - My Russ­ian Edu­ca­tion (Read by Orhan Pamuk) — Free MP3
• Nabokov, Vladimir — “Pnin” — Free Stream
• Nabokov, Vladimir — Signs and Sym­bols — Free Stream
• Nabokov, Vladimir — Vladimir Nabokov Reads from Loli­ta & Select­ed Poems — Spo­ti­fy
• Nin, Anais — “Under a Glass Bell” (Read by the author) — YouTube
• Northup, Solomon — Twelve Years a Slave — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• NPR — Star Wars Tril­o­gy Radio Dra­ma — YouTube
• O’Connor, Flan­nery — “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” (Read by author in 1959) — Stream/Download
• O’Connor, Flan­nery — “Every­thing That Ris­es Must Con­verge” (Read by Estelle Par­sons) — YouTube
• O’Connor, Flan­nery — “Rev­e­la­tion” (Read by Studs Terkel) — Stream
• O’Con­nor, Frank — “The Man of the World” (read by Julian Barnes) MP3
• O Hen­ry, The Gift of the Magi — Free iTunes — Free MP3
• Oates, Joyce Car­ol — “Late Love” — Free Stream
• Oates, Joyce Car­ol - “Mas­tiff” (read by Louise Erdrich) — Free Stream
• Oates, Joyce Car­ol -“Sin­ners in the Hands of an Angry God‪”‬ (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Orwell, George — 1984 (Radio Dra­ma from 1949 start­ing David Niv­en) — Free Stream
• Orwell, George — 1984 (Com­plete read­ing by Paci­fi­ca Radio) — Sound­cloud
• Orwell, George — Ani­mal Farm — Spo­ti­fy ver­sion
• Orwell, George - Homage to Cat­alo­nia — Chap­ter 1 here — Remain­ing Chap­ters here
• Oz, Amos — “The King of Nor­way” (read by Jonathan Safran Foer) — Free Stream
• Ozick, Cyn­thia — “The Shawl” (read by Joyce Car­ol Oates) — Free Stream
• Paley, Grace — “Love” (read by George Saun­ders) — Free Stream
• Plath, Sylvia — Three Women (a radio play) — Free Stream
• Poe, Edgar Allan — 5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone — Spo­ti­fy
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Essen­tial Edgar Allan Poe — Spo­ti­fy
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Com­plete Works Vol. 1 — Free iTunes — Free Stream/Download
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Com­plete Works Vol. 2  — Free iTunes — Free Stream/Download
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Com­plete Works Vol. 3  — Free iTunes — Free Stream/Download
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Com­plete Works Vol. 4  — Free iTunes — Free Stream/Download
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Com­plete Works Vol. 5  — Free iTunes — Free Stream/Download
• Poe, Edgar Allan — “The Masque of the Red Death” and Annabel Lee (read by William S. Bur­roughs) — Free YouTube Audio
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Cask of Amon­til­la­do — YouTube 
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Mask of the Red Death (read by William S. Bur­roughs) — Spo­ti­fy
• Poe, Edgar Allan - The Pit and the Pen­du­lum — Free MP3
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Raven — Free MP3
•  Poe, Edgar Allan — The Raven (read by Stan Lee) — YouTube
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Raven (read by James Earl Jones) — YouTube
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Raven (read by Neil Gaiman) — YouTube
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Raven (read by John Astin) — YouTube
• Poe, Edgar Allan - The Raven (as read by Anne Wald­man) — Sound­Cloud
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Raven (read by Christo­pher Lee) — YouTube
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Raven (read by Vin­cent Price) — YouTube
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Raven (read by Christo­pher Walken) — YouTube
  • Alter­nate ver­sion read by actor John de Lan­cie (video)
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Tell Tale Heart — Free MP3
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Tell Tale Heart (read by Christo­pher Lee) — Free YouTube Audio
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Tell Tale Heart (read by Iggy Pop) — Free YouTube Audio
• Poe, Edgar Allan — The Tell Tale Heart, Silence, Annabel Lee (read by James Mason) — Free Stream
• Porter, Eleanor — Pollyan­na — Free MP3 Zip File
• Price, Vin­cent — The Price of Fear (Clas­sic radio show fea­tur­ing Vin­cent Price) — Free YouTube
• Pritch­ett, V.S. — The Res­cue (Read by Jonathan Lethem) — Free Stream
• Prokofiev, Sergei — Peter and the Wolf (Nar­rat­ed by David Bowie) — Spo­ti­fy
• Proust, Mar­cel — À La Recherche Du Temps Per­du (Œuvre Inté­grale) (in French) — Free Stream
• Pushkin, Alexan­der — Eugene One­gin — Free MP3 Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
• Rat­cliffe, Stephen — Con­tin­u­um — Free MP3 Stream
• Rand, Ayn — Anthem — Spo­ti­fy
• Rushdie, Salman — “The Lit­tle King‪”‬ (read by the author) — Free Stream

• Rushdie, Salman — “The Old Man in the Piaz­za‪”‬ (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Ruskin, John - The Gold­en Riv­er — Free MP3
• Safran Foer, Jonathan — “Love is Blind and Deaf” — Video Ani­ma­tion
• Sara­m­a­go, José - “The Cen­taur” (Read by Nadine Gordimer) — Free MP3
• Sartre, Jean-Paul (Per­formed by Lucy Law­less and Jaime Mur­ray) — Free Stream
• Saun­ders, George — “Elliott Spencer” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Saun­ders, George — “Ghoul” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Saun­ders, George — “Love Let­ter” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Saun­ders, George — “Thurs­day” (read by the author) — Free Stream
• Sedaris, David — “The Mouse and the Snake” from Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk: A Mod­est Bes­tiary - Free MP3 — Web site
• Sedaris, David — “Six to Eight Black Men” from the album ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ — YouTube Audio
• Sedaris, David - “Solu­tion to Saturday’s Puzzle”from When You Are Engulfed in Flames - Free MP3
• Sendak, Mau­rice — Where the Wild Things Are (read by Christo­pher Walken) — YouTube
• Seuss, Dr. — Green Eggs and Ham (read by Neil Gaiman) — YouTube
• Seuss, Dr. — How The Grinch Stole Christ­mas (read by Boris Karloff) — Spo­ti­fy
• Seuss, Dr. — How The Grinch Stole Christ­mas (read by Kei­th Mor­ri­son) — YouTube
• Sewell, Anna — Black Beau­ty — Free MP3s
• Schwartz, Del­more — “In Dreams Begin Respon­si­bil­i­ties” (Read by Lou Reed) — Free Stream
• Shake­speare, William - A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More — Free on Spo­ti­fy
• Shake­speare, William — 10 Plays Per­formed by Orson Welles on the Radio — Free Stream
• Shake­speare, William — All’s Well Ends Well — Free Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
• Shake­speare, William - A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Shake­speare, William — Antony and Cleopa­tra — Free iTunes — Free Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
• Shake­speare, William — As You Like It — Free iTunes — Free Stream — Free Mp3 Zip File
• Shake­speare, William — Com­e­dy of Errors — Free iTunes — Free Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
• Shake­speare, William — Cori­olanus — Free iTunes — Free Stream — Free MP3 Zip File
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• Shake­speare, William - Ham­let — Free MP3
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• Shake­speare, William — Ham­let (French trans­la­tion by Mar­cel Pag­nol) — Spo­ti­fy — YouTube
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• Shake­speare, William — Julius Cae­sar — Free MP3
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• Shake­speare, William — King Lear — Free iTunes — Free MP3 Zip File
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• Shake­speare, William — Mac­beth (with Alec Guin­ness) — Free Spo­ti­fy
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• Shake­speare, William - The Mer­chant of Venice — Free MP3
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• Shake­speare, William — The Son­nets — Free MP3
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• Shake­speare, William — The Tragedy of Mac­Beth — Free iTunes
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• Shaw, George Bernard — Pyg­malion — Free MP3
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• Shep­ard, Sam — “Indi­anapo­lis (High­way 74)” read by Dave Eggers — Free Stream
• Sil­ver­stein, Shel — The Giv­ing Tree (Ani­mat­ed film nar­rat­ed by the author) — YouTube
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• Steven­son, Robert Louis — The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde — Free MP3
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• Stone, Tanya Lee — The House That Jane Built: A Sto­ry About Jane Addams (Read by Kier­nan Ship­ka aka Sal­ly Drap­er from Mad Men ) — YouTube
• Stowe, Har­ri­et Beech­er — Uncle Tom’s Cab­in — Free iTunes — Free MP3
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• Tol­stoy, Leo - Five Short Sto­ries — Spo­ti­fy
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• Tol­stoy, Leo — Select­ed Short Sto­ries — Free Mul­ti­ple for­mats
• Wells, Tow­er — “Leop­ard” (Read by David Sedaris) — Free MP3 Stream
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• Twain, Mark - The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn — Mul­ti­ple ver­sions here
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• Unknown — Epic of Gil­gamesh — Free iTunes
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• Updike, John - “Play­ing with Dyna­mite” (read by Roger Angell) — Free MP3
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• Verne, Jules — 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea — Free MP3/Stream
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• Von­negut, Kurt - Slaugh­ter­house 5, Cat’s Cra­dle, Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, Wel­come to the Mon­key House (Abridged read­ings by Von­negut) — Spo­ti­fy
• Von­negut, Kurt — “The Drone” — Free Stream
• Von­negut, Kurt — The Sol­dier’s Sto­ry (as a radio opera) — Free Stream
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• Wells, HG — The War of the Worlds — Free MP3/Stream
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• Wells, HG — The War of the Worlds (Famous 1938 radio adap­ta­tion by Orson Welles) — Stream
• Wells, HG — The War of the Worlds (Read by Maxwell Caulfield) — Spo­ti­fy
• Wel­ty, Eudo­ra — “The Wide Net” (read by the author) — YouTube — Cor­nell Web Site
• Wel­ty, Eudo­ra - “Where Is the Voice Com­ing From?” (read by Joyce Car­ol Oates) — MP3
• Wel­ty, Eudo­ra — “Why I Live at the P.O.” (read by the author) — YouTube
• Whar­ton, Edith — The Age of Inno­cence — Free MP3/Stream
• Whar­ton, Edith — The Ful­ness of Life — Free MP3
• Wilde, Oscar — The Hap­py Prince — Free MP3
  • Ver­sion read by Stephen Fry — YouTube
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• Wilde, Oscar — The Impor­tance of Being Earnest (Per­formed by John Giel­gud) — Free
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• Wilde, Oscar — The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray — Free MP3s
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• Wolff, Tobias — “Bul­let in the Brain” (read by T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle) (MP3)
• Wolff, Tobias — “The Night in Ques­tion” (read by Akhil Shar­ma) (MP3)
• Woolf, Vir­ginia — “A Haunt­ed House” — Free MP3
• Woolf, Vir­ginia, — Jacob’s Room — MP3 Zip File — Free Stream
• Woolf, Vir­ginia — The Voy­age Out — Free Stream
• Woolf, Vir­ginia — The Short Sto­ries — Spo­ti­fy
• Wyss, Johann David - The Swiss Fam­i­ly Robin­son — Free MP3 Zip File

Allen Ginsberg on a Tugboat Ride (1969)

in Literature | April 12th, 2010

via The New York­er