I’m looking for sources of free college lectures or books on tape (primarily nonfiction). I do a good amount of driving long distances, which makes this sort of thing invaluable to me.
I recently listened to the God Delusion over the course of many drives and it really transformed what would have been a waste of many empty hours into time well spent.
I’m primarily interested in nonfiction – science and history foremost, but other subjects are also welcome.
The format would have to be mp3 or some other type of audio file…any suggestions?
Do they have to be actual lectures and books, or will podcasts be fine? Astronomy Cast is a good one. If you liked The God Delusion, you’ll probably like The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Both are published weekly and about an hour long.
Residents of my hometown can download audiobooks for free from the library. They “expire” after a certain amount of time. My husband listens to his mp3 player all day long at work, and that’s where he gets his books. Some of the longer ones are 30+ hours, so it works well for him. And if he runs out of material, he just uses my card.
A number of groups like the Council on Foreign Relations have podcasts of their lectures available via iTunes. Check the “Government and Organizations” sections of the iTunes store for a listing, and do a search as well, because iTunes generally only displays the highest rated podcasts in a category, and not every podcast. So searching on “lectures” would probably turn up a bunch more.
Borrow books on CD from your local library and convert them to MP3s. Legally, you must delete these recordings from your computer and MP3 player before you return the book, but no librarian will question you on it.
Not a book, but since your main interests are history and science I would strongly recommend the BBC radio show In Our Time, which is available as a podcast. It deals with the history of ideas, very frequently the history of science, and sometimes with contemporary science topics too. The format is a discussion between the presenter, Melvyn Bragg, and three experts on the topic. They get real experts, and although it is aimed at the general public, the discussion is usually excellent, accurate, and up-to-date with the field, and hardly ever seems to get “dumbed down” or sensationalized. I teach history of science and often recommend shows from the series to my students.
Personally I find that the occasional shows on current science tend to be less satisfying than the more historical ones, but YMMV. Certainly they are very different from most broadcast science journalism. For regular style science reporting, the BBC also has shows like Material World and Science in Action available as podcasts (BBC science podcast page), and other shows available as streaming audio (BBC Radio 4 science page). (BBC History podcasts are here.)
Current In Our Time shows are podcast as mp3s (a show lasts about 40 minutes), and there is a large online archive of past shows available as streaming audio. Unfortunately these archived shows are in RealAudio format rather than mp3, but you can get software that will download streaming audio and convert it to mp3. I use ReplayAV - I do not know if it is the best, or the cheapest, but it works.
They somehow have a built-in timer and they erase themselves from your hard drive after the borrowing period is over.
Of course, if you download them to an MP3 player, you can technically keep them forever. Overdrive (the company that supplies the MP3s) is aware of this loophole and apparently is OK with it.
Try The Podcast Network: I’m working my way through The History of Rome, The Biography Show and Napoleon 101. More different presentation styles you couldn’t imagine, but I look forward to the next ep of each with equal anticipation.
Well, partly so. They use DRM, which is Digital Rights Management. After the “checkout period,” the license expires, so it can’t be played on that PC any more. The Overdrive software prompts you, asking if you’d like to remove the books after this period expires. Most folks just hit “yes” to most prompts on a PC. Hitting “yes” deletes the file.
You’re right on the transfer to MP3 player (though the files are generally .WMA files), “removing the clock”. I wasn’t aware that it was a “loophole,” but I’m glad it works. I like to have an active book, plus a couple of spares on my MP3 player at all times, and even with 10hrs/week of commuting, plus some other listening times, It often takes me more than the 7 day checkout period to finish something up.
One should note that for the Overdrive service, you must have a .WMA w/ DRM capable device. A list can be found here. It does have some issues with Apple products, but works on their .MP3 titles (few & far between from what I’ve seen).
Some time back, there was a thread like this, in which someone linked to this set of Astronomy lectures (actual college lectures that the professor, Richard Pogge, has made available online).
As mentioned above, MIT and other schools have made some of their courses available as a series of lectures that you can listen to via download/iTunes. Here’s one list I found.
The Teaching Company and The Modern Scholar offer series of lectures on a wide variety of subjects. They’re not cheap, let alone free, but your local library may have some that you can borrow for free. (Some of the Modern Scholar titles are also available from audible.com, as are many, many other audiobooks.)
I’ve found other interesting lectures online by Googling something like “lectures download”; you may want to include a specific topic, like “science” or “history,” in your search terms.
I’m not sure this will do for you, but LibriVox has lots of good stuff on it, all downloadable and in the public domain. We’ve listened to some stuff, and it has been pretty good, especially considering that there are volunteer readers. There is fascinating stuff there - we listened to someone reading Jack London’s reporting on the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake.
Hitting “yes” deletes the file.
I like to have an active book, plus a couple of spares on my MP3 player at all times, and even with 10hrs/week of commuting, plus some other listening times, It often takes me more than the 7 day checkout period to finish something up.