Recently I was on the market for an MP3 player. After opening a thread about the Ipod Touch and reading this one, I bought a Sanza player.
Every day I have to take the subway or train from Belgrano (where I live) to downtown Buenos Aires (where I work). I spend more or less one hour traveling.
I plan to spend it listening to podcasts or audiobooks.
Some background: I love history, literature in general (sci-fi and fantasy in particular), poetry and I am an entertainment lawyer who needs to keep in touch with media, copyright and technology issues.
But this thread is not just about me. So, just tell me what you enjoyed listening.
You might like the “Escape Artist” short fiction podcasts -
Escape Pod - Science fiction
Podcastle - Fantasy fiction
Pseudopod - Horror fiction
The stories are of varying quality. Some are fantastic, some not. The narrations are usually quite good.
As for technology, the “This Week in Tech” (TWiT) has some podcasts that are pretty good. They even have a “This Week in Law”, about the interaction of matters legal and technological. I don’t listen to this one myself, so I can’t say how good it is, but it sounds like it might be right up your alley. It appears that new episodes aren’t released very frequently though.
The eponymous This Week in Tech podcast itself is usually good. They get off-topic from time to time, but there are nuggets of good tech info in it. If you’re at all interested in the security side of computer tech, I highly recommend TWiT’s “Security Now” podcast.
This sort of thing seems to come up every few months. Here are a few older threads that have some great ideas in them:
Recommed some audio books for me.
Listened to Any Good Books Lately
What are your favorite podcasts? (and the companion What are your least favorite podcasts?)
Source of free lectures or books on tape (mp3)
Pod(cast) people, what do you listen to?
The Internet Archive is a good source of free downloads of public domain audio files, including Old Time Radio programs (if you like sci-fi, try “X Minus One”).
I recently listened to and enjoyed a series of lectures by Michael Drout on Tolkien and other modern fantasy literature; he also has a good series on science fiction. And since you mentioned history, I’ve also enjoyed (and learned from) lecture series by Robert Dallek on the U.S. Presidency in the 20th century, and Frances Titchener’s (occasionally very funny) history of ancient Rome.