The Sound of Young America

The Sound of Young America is by far my favorite podcast right now. On this "Public Radio Show About Things That Are Awesome", host Jesse Thorn mixes comedy, music, television and everything fun/interesting into addictive 30 minute segments.

Perfectly self-proclaimed as "Conan O'Brien on the radio" or "Fresh-Air but more fun", I think any Stingy Scholar reader would enjoy this show. Here are some episodes I've particularly enjoyed.

"Faking It" - A discussion with Yuval Taylor on authenticity in music. Lots of talk on Leadbelly and early blues.

"Simon Lovell" - A former conman-turn author reveals the secrets of the hustle and short-con.

"Dan Harmon" - Co-creator of Channel 101 and the new VH1 show Acceptable.tv talks about television as an art-form and the origin of the cult, un-aired pilot "Heat Vision & Jack" (check it out).



"The Human Giant" - Hilarious comic-group discuss the origins of some of their best sketches such as the Illusionators and shittiest boombox

Fred's Finds: Don't Miss These Great Sites

eMule Poetry Archives - Many don't think of eMule as an academic resource but there are tons of copyright free poems here.

ReadPrint - A nice collection of books, by name and/or by author. Skim the list to see what you might be interested in.

Librivox - The open audiobook site where users submit their home recordings.

World Lecture Hall - This is "old reliable"--been around a while but still useful. It is a directory of online syllabi and courses indicating if they include audio and video.

Digital Book Index - One of the largest resources for finding an ebook.

Self Made Scholar

The Self Made Scholar is a fantastic new website on our favorite topic - learning for free on the web. Jamie has compiled the most comprehensive and usable list I've seen of free online classes. Over the next few months, the site will continue to gather key resources and post extended articles teaching people how to learn independently.

I spoke with Jamie over the weekend and she's also agreed to do a post here on The Stingy Scholar from time to time to discuss some issues related to free learning and point out some good materials he's posting on Self Made Scholar.

Public Radio Podcasts

PublicRadioFan has a pretty extensive list of public radio shows available as podcasts. The shows are organized by category so it's easy to find stuff you know (i.e. Car Talk) or new shows on music, foreign languages, literature, sports or dozens of other topics. There's so much informative and entertaining material on public radio - thanks for this index.

Kelly Writers House at UPenn

Here's a suggestion from my mother, from an article in the local South Jersey newspaper. Founded by a group of UPenn students and faculty, the Kelly Writers House serves as a writer's colony/refuge/workshop with over 150 events per semester. So why do we Stingy Scholars care? 'Cause they post all those great events online! Between webcasts with the likes of Richard Ford, Russell Banks, David Sedaris and a boatload of mp3s, these guys are doing a great job of sharing all they're doing. (Picture stolen from the Courier Post. Please don't sue a good Jersey boy).

Pod CityGuides

An anonymous comment on the old post Free iPod Tour Guides links to a great site - Pod CityGuides. Tons of totally free mp3 guides for cities all around the world, even including recent weather and news. Sign-up is free - check it out if you're travelling soon, and some of the other great ones we've come across. Know more? Let us know!

The NYPL Rocks

We've talked before about making the most of your library card, but I wanted to touch upon my recent experiences with the New York Public Library. My wife and I had been looking for some books on investing but couldn't get them shipped to Spain cheaply. Fortunately, we still had our NYPL cards.

We've been downloading a ton of materials from the site, and I've been really impressed by the depth of their collection and the friendly user interface. The print materials are easy to access and download quickly as pdfs (I usually print them out configuring my printer to do four pages per sheet). Although the audio files Overdrive DRM is annoying, you can get the mp3s onto your iPod by first burning them to a CD through Window Media Player. You can then import the audio to iTunes.

Signing up for a membership is easy and free if you are in New York as a resident or student. You are only required to enter a name and a New York address where the card will be shipped. Afterwards you will use the card number and a pin number to access the materials. Paid memberships are also available for out-of-state or foreign users.

Free iPod Tourguides Map

A few months back, I gathered together a number of free iPod tourguides. Here's a map of the locations via Wayfaring (unfortunately, I couldn't include several guides that are no longer available). Be sure to also check out the Wayfaring map of University Podcasts and OCWs.

iPod Personal Trainer

If the iPod is already your workout buddy, why not make it your personal trainer? iPod gym teaches exercises for free weights, machines, core strength, and the swiss ball. The video tutorials are free to download and can be loaded onto your iPod like any other video file.

Update -
No video on your iPod? Try the free audio files at mp3 gym (use this link if the email imput doesn't work).

Free iPod Tour Guides

I've compiled a list of guided museum and walking tours. All of these were professionally recorded and available for free. I plan to keep this list updated – if you know more sites, please send me the links. By the way, the pictures in this post are mine again:


Walking & Museum Tours

Amsterdam, Holland
Indonesia exhibition at De Nieuwe Kerk Museum (Antenna Audio)

Brussels, Belgium
Podguide Tour (Podguides.net) - Map

Chicago, USA
Millennium Park (Antenna Audio)

Dublin, Ireland
Series of Walking Tours (Visit Dublin)

The Dune Forests, Belgium
Podguide Tour (Podguides.net) - Map

Edinburgh, Scotland
Series of Walking Tours (Visit Scotland)

Ghent, Belgium
Historical Monuments of Ghent (Podguides.net) - Map

Glasgow, Scotland
Rough Guide (iToors) - Includes a great indie music walking tour

Kent, England
Sibton Park (Podguides.net) - Map

Las Vegas, USA
City Profile (Budget Travel)

London, England
Rough Guide (iToors)
Garden Trails (Antenna Audio)
House Trails (Antenna Audio)
Neighborhoods (City Profile (Budget Travel)

New York, USA
Metropolitan Museum of Art / Museum of Modern Art (Slate)
Metropolitan Museum of Art (FIT's Smart History)
Museum of Modern Art (MOMA.org)
Museum of Modern Art (Art Mobs)
Rockefeller Center (Sounds for Sights)

New Zealand
Dozens of Guides for Entire Country (Day Out) - This actually costs a $9 yearly fee, but probably worth it for the quantity of material in here. Most audiotours cost at least $10 per tour.

Opal Coast, France
Podguide (Podguides) - Map

Paris, France
Rough Guide (iToors)
The Louvre (Le Monde) - In french

Prague, Czech Republic
Rough Guide (iToors)

Rome, Italy
The Coliseum, the Pantheon, Circus Maximus (Italy Guides)


Quebec City, Canada
City Profile (Budget Travel)

San Francisco, USA
North Beach, DeYoung Museum, Inner Sunset's 9th Ave (SF Gate)
SFMOMA (SFMOMA)

Santa Monica, USA
Rough Guides (iToors)

Washington DC, USA
DC Memorials (Slate)

More:
An index of museum tourguides is available at Soundwalk has some very interesting tours for new york neighborhoods and other locations, such as India. They are $15, the going rate for audiotours, but focus on unique topics like Bronx Graffiti and DUMBO.


Podcasts & Soundseeing
Two high quality podcasts that focus on many different cities are iPod Traveller and Rick Steve's radio show. Learn Out Loud has a category has a category for travel podcasts and there are a number of good ones.

Soundseeing tours are audio tour that uses the ambient noise and the descriptions by the tour guide to give the listener an accurate depiction of the surroundings. There are many soundseeing podcasts of varying quality. Audiocollective and Soundseeing Tours are two aggregators that identify the best.

iPod Notes
Several sites have used the iPod notes function to create city guidebooks. The WCities guides are very thorough. My City Mate lets you customize the notes - it's also a social networking site that encourages you to add your reviews and create city "tribes" for more tips. IprepPress also created several city guides based upon information from WikiTravel. All of these are free.


Books
Michael Palin's excellent travel books can be read for free on his webpage.

Radio Lovers

Here's a great site for finding some old radio recordings. From such classics as Amos & Andy to Buck Rogers, Radio Lovers archives the original art of audio narration currently being rekindled in today's podcast. Radio Lovers believes that all of these broadcasts are in the public domain, which means that you should be free to listen, use, mix, and mash to your heart's desire.

War of the Worlds

Here is the audio to the original Tom-Cruise-free War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Also check out this Wikipedia article on the chaos after the infamous first broadcast. The article lists a number of good links including this free Darkhorse e-comic adapatation (my update).

I know that I have been a little hard on Tom Cruise this week, but I recently saw Elizabethtown and I am holding him personally responsible. Maybe he liked Garden State, but thought it needed a 25 minute phone conversation in the middle. Or maybe he thought Zach Braff was too much of an alpha-male and wanted to soften the main character.

UbuWeb: A Fantastic Avant-Garde Collection

If you are looking for avant-garde historical and contemporary artistic pieces, check out UbuWeb. Their vast content includes pdfs, mp3s, and video files from authors such as Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Jean Genet, Phillip Glass, Luis Buñuel, Charles Bukowski, Salvador Dalí, etc.

"UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. All materials on UbuWeb are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights belong to the author(s). UbuWeb is completely free."

Find out more here.

Learn Out Loud

Learn Out Loud is one of the first sites I discovered with a catalog of free educational audio and video materials. Their library and their directory of podcasts have recently gotten much broader - certainly worth checking out. For those of you even marginally interested in issues of copyright problems and protections in digital media, this is also a good place for you to pick up a copy of Free Culture from Lawrence Lessig (pictured).