All About What's In Our Ears

We've put links on the sidebar for some of our favorite blogs, podcasts, and websites.  You'll notice there is one for "What's In Our Ears While Travelling" which seems pretty self-explanatory, but which we think is a pretty cool thing about the Internet.

We do a lot of talking with each other and listening to music when we drive, but for long stretches, we tend to choose audio books or podcasts, since we  feel we stay more alert and focused while listening to something that is not as soothing as music or as droning as a spouse.

We do have an Audible.com subscription, but we also use all the free audio we can find.  We've listed a few on the side, and thought maybe you'd like to know a bit more about them.  Downloading them is easy.  Most have a link to the current episode and it will just play on your computer.  If you want to listen to older episodes, or download to an MP3 player or burn to a CD, you will need to use a podcatcher.  We use iTunes.  It's free, works for both Apple and PC, and will work with non-Apple MP3 players.  It also seems to have good support and rarely has down-times.  It also has a huge library of podcasts, most of which are free, and can be searched by category, subject, title, and author.
You'll notice links on the sidebar for radio shows such as "Car Talk", NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", and "Vinyl Cafe", which is Canada's answer to "A Prairie Home Companion"--sort of.  All of these we have set to download automatically, but we listen in real time if it's convenient.  There are literally hundreds of radio programs available, and we enjoy quite a few.  The ones on the sidebar tend to be ones that provide new content weekly.

Our local public library system offers books on Overdrive (WMA) which we also use.  These audio files are checked out for a specific period and we find that the open-ended use of podcasts needs less attention on our part. Most of the time we have to request a title and have no control over when we can check it out, which makes it harder to use for a specific trip.  However, we do use it when it is convenient.  Overdrive is also available as a subscription and with that,  books are instantly available, without the wait for availability.

Podiobooks has some classic or well-known books and short stories, as well as some written specifically for them.  We've found some great things here.
The misson at Librivox.com is to offer audio readings of all of the books in the (US) public domain.  They've been around for awhile and you can find many classics, often with more than one version, so if you don't like one reader, you can try another.  You can even sign up to read for them.  One downside is that sometimes a particular book has been read by a series of people and it might be a bit difficult to switch from voice to voice, but we really haven't run into anything we couldn't live with.  Librivox has a lot of non-fiction as well as fiction, and since they are targeting the US copyrights, many foreign titles appear here.

Uvula has two podcasts, one for children and one for adults, though very often the same title is on both, and their "adult" matter is not XXX, it's simply not going to be as appealing to children.  We particularly enjoy their older serialized books, such as the "Doc Savage" and "John Sunlight" sagas.  They also offer several Jeeves and Wooster tales by P.G. Wodehouse.  They post new episodes weekly, but their past books are downloadable in full.

The Classic Tales by B.J. Harrison offers one short story or serialized segment weekly.  He has a wonderful voice, does accents and multiple people very well and tends to do short stories, but occassionally he'll choose a longer piece and issue one part each week until he's finished.  The most recent longer one he did was The Scarlet Pimpernel.  
CraftLit with Heather Ordover offers a wonderful in-depth study of each book.  Dealing mainly with classics, Heather uses Librivox recordings for the reading, but gives details on the backstory of both books and authors, as well as insights into the customs and cultures of the time and place.  Her listeners read and posted The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne to Librivox.  Each of her podcasts begins with some crafting or other information, but she usually states when the book begins and you can fast-forward.  There is also an iPhone/iTouch app for this, which makes it easy to download entire previous books.  Currently she is doing A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain.

Julie at Forgotten Classics chooses books that she feels have been not given their due.  She does the reading herself, and posts an episode weekly.  Currently she is doing Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands.  There is some personal chat at the beginning of each podcast, which always includes a podcast highlight or review.  She also offers a lagniappe occassionally, usually consisting of a chapter or two from a book that is in the public domain.
Old Time Radio offers a variety of radio shows (scroll down and click on the golden radio).  We currently are working our way through the entire Dragnet series, but there are many other series available.  Again, we get a new episode weekly, but since we are working through them, we are actually listening to ones posted a couple of years ago. 
Podcast Alley or iTunes both offer the ability to search for podcasts by subject, title, or author.  Play around on them for awhile and see what appeals to you.