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.

The Smith­son­ian

has come out with a nice pho­to essay look­ing back on the leg­endary escape artist Har­ry Hou­di­ni. It begins:

Har­ry Hou­di­ni freed him­self from chains after jump­ing off a pier into Boston’s Charles Riv­er, wig­gled out of a strait jack­et while hang­ing upside down in Times Square and appeared alive and well after being sub­merged in his Water Tor­ture Cell. The great escape artist defied belief and enter­tained hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple through­out the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry until he died on Hal­loween in 1926, at age 52. His death cer­tifi­cate blames a rup­tured appen­dix, but rumors cir­cu­lat­ed that he may have been mur­dered.
Adver­tise­ment

A new biog­ra­phy, The Secret Life of Hou­di­ni by William Kalush and Lar­ry Slo­man, has caused many peo­ple, includ­ing the magi­cian’s great-nephew, to recon­sid­er these rumors. Hou­di­ni, they believe, may have been poi­soned by Spir­i­tu­al­ists, a group who claimed to speak to the dead through séances. Hou­di­ni went to great lengths to debunk their prac­tices, often expos­ing their tricks on the stage. In late March, foren­sic pathol­o­gists announced that they will exhume Hou­dini’s body to deter­mine once and for all what hap­pened to the escape artist.

In this pho­to essay, explore the extra­or­di­nary life of Har­ry Hou­di­ni: BEGIN SLIDESHOW>