This is a podcast compilation that we almost wish we had put together. The “Public Radio Podcast Catalogue” amazingly gives you access to over 900 public radio programs podcasted from around the globe, all of which are broken down into neat categories – Business, Culture, Literature, Music, News, Politics, etc. Quite conveniently, the organizers of this collection have provided a link to each individual podcast feed. So you only need to find the podcast you like – whether its Fresh Air, Car Talk, BBC News, or whatever podcast exists in the public radio universe – then paste the feed link into a podcasting program such as iTunes or Juice, and you’ll be on your way to downloading, syncing and absorbing endless amounts of enlightening radio content.
See Open Culture’s podcast collections: Arts & Culture;
Speaking recently on Stanford’s campus, Reza Aslan, an Iranian-American scholar who has written for The New York Times, The Nation, and Slate, sketched out an interesting framework for making sense of recent trends within the Middle East, and more particularly within Islam itself (iTunes — feed N/A). His argument is essentially this: Islam is undergoing a reformation that’s not terribly unlike the one Christianity underwent in the 16th century. Within Islam, we see individuals arrogating power from the clerical establishment, interpreting Islam for themselves, and attempting to return it to a more pure and original form. And what’s driving all of this are three social and technological innovations. First, the translation of the Koran into many new languages, which has made it accessible to widespread populations, including non-Arabic-speaking people, for the first time. Second, the participation in reformist movements by Muslims from the West, who bring their own individualistic perspectives to the religion. Third and most importantly, the invention of the Internet, which, much like the printing press during the 16th century, has empowered new arbiters of Islamic law. Through the internet, new thinkers can get their ideas out there in unprecedented ways, mobilize support behind a new body of religious ideas, and compete effectively with the old religious order.
It is within this general context of reformation that Aslan places Usama bin Laden. Although the Islamic reformation has been shaped by many moderate and progressive figures, there are, as with all reformations, more radical figures who challenge the traditional religious institutions and will resort to a pathological kind of violence if necessary. In this instance, Aslan sees similarities between bin Laden and more radical figures of the Protestant Reformation. Give the talk a listen. And let yourself get past the first 10 minutes because it starts a little slowly.
We love finding these vintage media gems. Last week, we served up Orson Welles’ famous radio broadcast from 1938. This week, we’ve got another one — Malcolm X speaking at Oxford University in 1964.In this classic speech, you get a good feel for Malcolm X’s presence and message, not to mention the social issues that were alive during the day. You’ll hear X’s trademark claim that liberty can be attained by “whatever means necessary,” including force, if the government won’t guarantee it, and that “intelligently directed extremism” will achieve liberty far more effectively than pacifist strategies. (He’s clearly alluding to Martin Luther King.) You can listen to the speech in its entirety here (Real Audio), something that is well worth doing. But we’d also encourage you to watch (see below) the dramatic closing minutes and pay some attention to the nice rhetorical slide, to how we get from Hamlet’s doubts (“To be or not to be”) to taking up arms:
“I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare. I only read about him passingly, but I remember one thing he wrote that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet, I think, it was, who said, ‘To be or not to be.’ He was in doubt about something—whether it was nobler in the mind of man to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—moderation—or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. And I go for that. If you take up arms, you’ll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who’s in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time. And in my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built, and the only way it’s going to be built—is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.”
We have a short interview airing today on Future Tense, an American Public Media program hosted by Jon Gordon. This program offers a daily journal of the digital age, and today we’re talking about the past, present and future of audio books, particularly the podcasted kind. The conversation weaves together a few things that we’ve discussed here this week — H.G. Wells, Cory Doctorow, Creative Commons, the skewed pricing of audio books sold to consumers, etc. If you don’t catch it on the radio, you can listen in here: MP3 — iTunes — Blog.
On a related note, we also talked with Future Tense not too long ago about what universities are doing on the podcast front. If you want to give it a listen, you can access it here: Mp3 — Blog.
Today, by popular demand, we’re running an updated version of one of our more popular posts to date. Enjoy…
At hastened speeds during the past year, we have seen book lovers recording homegrown audiobooks and posting them on sites like Librivox (see our collection of free audiobooks here). For obvious copyright reasons, these audio texts largely come from the public domain, and, yes, they’re sometimes of uneven quality. Some good, some okay. Among the recent releases, you’d expect to find great classical works — the major plays by Shakespeare, the essential treatises by Plato and other philosophers, etc. — and you do get some of those. However, far more often you get texts by more modern writers who wrote within the thriller, sci fi and adventure genres. Here, I’m talking about Washington Irving, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H.G. Wells. (Find these podcasts here.)
It seems rather fitting that Wells, the father of science fiction, would be among the first to have his writings digitally recorded and distributed. Nowadays, you can download, sync and listen to his major works – The New Accelerator (mp3), The Invisible Man (iTunes — feed), The Time Machine (iTunes — feed), and The War of the Worlds (iTunes). But what’s better than all of this, at least in our minds, is this vintage gem …
Here you can download the version of The War of the Worlds that Orson Welles famously adapted and aired on national radio in October 1938. Presented so that it sounded like an actual news broadcast, the Orson Welles version was mistaken for truth by many listeners who caught the program midstream (more info here), and, soon enough, they found themselves fleeing an unfolding Martian invasion, running down into their basements with guns cocked and ready to fire. You can catch the mp3 version of the famous Welles recording here (and also alternatively here). Have fun with this broadcast. It’s a classic.
Let us quickly excerpt from the latest blog entry by Chris Anderson, the author of the best-selling
business book (and now over-used expression), The Long Tail. This is Chris speaking:
“I know I shouldn’t say this, but I’m frankly delighted to see that my book has been pirated and is available on Bittorrent. (Presumably this is the audio book version, even though it claims to be an “ebook”, which I wasn’t aware existed).
My publishers want to make money, and I like them so I usually do what it
takes to keep them happy, but in truth I just want to be read/listened
to by the largest number of people. Leave it to me to figure out how to
convert that reputational currency into cash –just get me in front of the biggest audience and I’ll do the rest…
As Tim O’Reilly puts it, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy”.
Of the nearly 200,000 books published last year, only about 2,000 (1%)
made any money for anyone. The rest of them were published for other
reasons, which range from marketing consulting services to simple
expression. Outside of a relative handful of celebrity authors and
self-help peddlers, almost nobody writes books for a living.
As for my own book, I imagine that approximately zero (give or take a few dozen) people who would have otherwise bought the proper audio book version will put up with the incredibly slow download required to pirate it (currently five days, according to my Bittorrent client)…
But all that said, I have mixed feeling about purposely distributing a free
audiobook in its current incarnation (the pirated version on Bittorent
isn’t going to matter one way or another). On one hand, I think that
zero-marginal costs ought to result in zero price. On the other, this
is not an inferior version serving as marketing for a superior
experience–for people who like audiobooks, it is the experience. As such it really does appear to be a replacement for the CD/Audible.com version. Hyperion put a lot of money into producing that audiobook and they deserve a return. I’m confident that a free ebook would sell more of the print versions, but I’m less sure that people would buy a digital audiobook if there was a free version circulating widely online.
Any forward-thinking book industry folks out there who want to explore the economics of this a bit further with me?”
In reading his post, several questions came to mind. Who knew that writing books had become such a depressing proposition, an exercise in creating loss leaders? And how hard did some VP at Hyperion (the publisher of Anderson’s audio book) swallow when seeing Chris publicize, even take some delight in discovering, a pirated version of their audio book product?
Anderson’s commentary underscores an important problem in the audio book market. Whereas Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow have demonstrated that traditional book sales can be stimulated by making available free digital copies of the work (read: e‑books), there’s no parallel in the audio book market. Digital copies of audio books, pirated versions or otherwise, pretty much only lead to cannibalization of the original audio books. Piracy presents a problem for the industry. And it’s all exacerbated by the fact that audio book prices are almost illogically high. Consider this: Although the main virtue of the internet is that it lowers the cost of delivering information-based goods, and allows for prices to come down in kind, the audio book version of the Long Tail runs $31.95 on iTunes and $27.99 on Audible, which compares very poorly to the $16.47 that you pay for the paper copy on Amazon. This skewed pricing structure not only stifles demand, but also creates an incentive for knock-offs, leaving the audio book world in a bind. At this point, the audio book industry should have every incentive to do something creative with the digital tools available to it, much as the music industry has done over the past several years. We’ll keep an eye on whether any forward-thinking publishers take up Anderson’s invitation to sort this one out.
Here’s a good catch by one of our readers: The folks at Radio Lingua
International, who produce the very popular podcast, “Coffee Break Spanish,” haven’t wasted their momentum. They have recently released two new podcasts that will help you learn Italian (iTunesFeedWeb Site) and German (iTunesFeedWeb Site). Each podcast teaches you smalls bits of the language over the course of 20 weeks, giving you the vocabulary you’ll need to travel around Italy and Germany and get the most out of it.
Meanwhile, it’s worth mentioning that our collection of ESL podcasts is getting a bit richer. Here are the titles that you’ll now find:
A couple weeks ago, we told you about
45 recently published books, most of them of very high
quality, that you can download for free under a Creative Commons license. Given the exuberant response to that post, it seemed worth mentioning that Cory Doctorow — the sci-fi author, BoingBoing blogger, and advocate of opening up copyright restrictions — is now releasing a new collection of short stories called Overclocked. As usual, you can buy the book, download the short stories for free, or do both. It’s your call. He figures he’ll win either way. And, by the way, you can freely download the rest of Doctorow’s books here.
Now, finally, it’s worth pointing out that the BoingBoing (iTunes — feed) crowd has a podcast worth checking out. The latest episode — the first 10 minutes, in fact — gives you some of Doctorow’s thoughts on what the future of e‑books looks like, the pros and cons, etc. Certainly worth a listen. Enjoy.
Here’s a quick warning for our readers who enjoy listening to podcasts on iPods.
From CNET:
“Apple has warned Windows users running its iTunes software that they should wait for its next update before upgrading their PCs to Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company cited a variety of compatibility issues that may cause friction between the media player software, its accompanying iPod player, and Vista. Among these problems is an inability to play music or video purchased from the iTunes Store, problems synchronizing address book contact and calendar functions, and slowed runtime. Additionally, there is a chance that plugging an iPod into a computer running Vista may corrupt the device.”
Despite being 4 years into the Iraq war, most Americans still couldn’t tell you very much about the
historical background of the country in which we’ve invested so much. Iraq will be with us for a good long time, so it wouldn’t hurt to spend 30 minutes getting familiar with the broad brush strokes history of the fractured nation, especially since the past holds clues as to why this campaign never went as smoothly as some first anticipated.
In this audio segment from The Leonard Lopate Show (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), Barry Lando, a former investigative reporter for 60 Minutes and the author of a new book on Iraq, gives a half-hour overview of Iraq’s history — of how the British fashioned an independent nation in 1932 out of the fragments of the Ottoman Empire, and how, from there, the destiny of this artificial melding of three ethnic groups has been constantly intertwined with the foreign policy ambitions of England, Russia, and eventually the United States, which, of course, leads us to today.
P.S. You may want to check out Lando’s blog, and, on the lighter side, and especially if you’re bummed by the whole Iraq affair, you may want to take a look at Lando’s recent appearance on The Colbert Report:
A quick fyi: As of this week, Fresh Air, the popular program hosted by Terry Gross, is now available as a free podcast on iTunes or via feed. Along with Fresh Air, NPR has just issued many other new podcast offerings, including Xeni Tech, a daily program featuring BoingBoing blogger Xeni Jardin, who explores the intersection between technology and contemporary culture (iTunes — Feed). For the complete listing of NPR podcasts, see this web page or visit NPR’s main page on iTunes.
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Despite being 4 years into the Iraq war, most Americans still couldn’t tell you very much about the
