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TUAW Resolutions: Expand Your Mind

by Erica Sadun Dec 27th 2006 at 8:00PM

Where do literature, opera, history and art intersect with portable electronic devices? The answer is the iPod. There are those who laugh at the idea of experiencing culture through the lens of consumer electronics. And there are those who will load up their iPods with lectures, great audio books, museum tours and more to take advantage of the huge wealth of cultural entertainment available to iPod owners. Popularity does not negate possibility. Here are several ways you can use your iPod to enrich your mind.

Listen to the classics. The iTunes store offers many classic works of spoken fiction and nonfiction, including Plato and Descartes, Bronte and Hawthorne, Shakespeare and Twain. Librivox is another great source for classics. They provide free public-domain audiobooks read by volunteers. Highlights include Beowulf and Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Experience Museums. Many museums now offer podcasts that you can load onto your iPod to provide a richer experience when visiting museums or when you want to enjoy exhibits that you're physically too far away to go in person. Highlights include the NY and SF museums of modern art, and the Chateau de Versailles.

View art. The iPod's screen may be tiny, but you can load up your iPhoto collection with masterpieces to enjoy whenever you're on the go. Add an A/V cable and a TV and you create a portable gallery of your favorite art.

Enjoy the opera. Searching for opera-themed podcasts in iTunes produced dozens and dozens of relevant hits. From the San Francisco Opera to the Royal Opera House, if opera is your passion, there are more podcasts to listen to than you probably have free time. You'll find season previews, and individual performances. You can also purchase opera music (as well as symphonies and other culturally enriching music) directly from the iTunes store.

Listen to History. FreeAudio.org offers free spoken texts focused on freedom and the law. You can listen to the Gettysburg Address, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and other historic speeches. American Rhetoric provides free access to many of the greatest examples of American political speech in MP3 format, including MLK's "I Have a Dream", Eisenhower's farewell address, FDR's first fireside chat, JFK's address on the Cuban missile crisis, Elie Wiesel's "The Perils of Indifference", and more. Tinfoil.com is another resource, preserving early recorded sound files (including those recorded on wax cylinders) and providing many free MP3 files. The Library of Congress offers an amazing seven hour MP3 collection of first-person narratives recorded by former slaves in nine Southern states.

Attend class. Apple's iTunes U allows you to listen to real University lectures for free, no matter where you are. Sign up for lectures from major universities like Stanford, Duke and UC Berkeley and more. Listen when you can, and learn on the go.



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Where do literature, opera, history and art intersect with portable electronic devices? The answer is the iPod. There are those who laugh...
 

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Dave Wheeler

Really got a great information in your website. Here is website which allow you to hear for yourself the fantastic quality of our Audio books.Simply Download any or all of the Titles below and listen completely free.
http://www.listen-here.com/free.html

February 27 2007 at 3:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jay

Thanks for this post, Erica. I have been listenning to Berkely podcasts available on iTunes for a while. Fortunately, I can listen to them at work. I also put them on my Nano and listen to them while taking walks. I find a great way to continue my education while I put in a 40+ hr week.

December 28 2006 at 1:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Brian Howell

If anybody is interested in old radio shows, you can find a wide variety of genres.
Check them out: http://www.radiolovers.com/pages/allshows.html.

December 28 2006 at 12:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sarah

Good to hear you're not working them on X-mas :D

December 28 2006 at 8:23 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nick

These look good.

The BBC's In Our Time is another interesting one - every week the host invites three experts to discuss a topic in the studio. It may be anything from Alexander Pope to The Speed of Light to Evolutionary Biology:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330895

Unfortunately the BBC pulls the episodes pretty quickly, but they do offer all the old ones at their own site in streaming format (though I think you'd probably need RealPlayer for that - I wish content-providing companies wouldn't use these proprietary formats):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/

December 28 2006 at 4:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
his noodly appendage

I had no idea about Apple hosting lectures from universities in the iTunes store, and it seems like there are so many good ones to listen to! Thanks so much for bringing this stuff to my attention.

December 28 2006 at 2:20 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
H Springer

Erica,

a bit off topic, plus I can't find another way of getting in touch with you...

I would like to ask you some questions regarding the Apple Visualizer, since you seem to be the power blogger & most knowledgeable person on this site.
Could you please email me?
thanks,
HS h_springer2001@yahoo.ca

December 28 2006 at 1:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jason

Amazingly informative post. Thank you, thank you, thank you. TUAW seems to be hitting hard these last few days of the New Year. Please, more posts like this.

December 27 2006 at 11:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Roland Thomas

I've been reading TUAW almost since I "switched" and bought my MacBook while vacationing in Greece this past summer. I've enjoyed some really good posts but I want to make my first comment on TUAW to say that this is one of the best and most informative posts I've read. Thanks, Erica and keep up the good work.

Roland Thomas

(p.s.: I didn't buy the MacBook in Greece; I was sitting in my hotel room banging away on our travel blog in increasing frustration on my Dell laptop while my girlfriend merrily was uploading pics into iPhoto. Yes, we're both geeky enough to bring our laptops with us on vacation. Anyway, I walked over to see how she did it. It was so simple. It just worked. No drivers, no arcane messages, nothing like Windows which forces itself on to you all the time. I was hooked. I went to Amazon and right then and there on the spot bought my very first Mac. I still fight with Windows at work because I'm paid to do it, but at home I prefer the Mac because It. Just. Works.)

December 27 2006 at 11:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeffbbs

thanks for all the links!

December 27 2006 at 10:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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