And I don't mean music. Between the radio, the library, and the CD's, tapes, and even some old records we still own, DH and I have access to plenty of music. I never felt the need to figure out things like Napster or i-Tunes. But we're getting ready to offer downloadable audiobooks at work, and for the past week I've been immersed in learning about how it all works. I'm not an audiobook fan myself, but I do like listening to interviews, news features, old-time radio shows, and such. And there's not much of that on our local radio stations.

I started wondering if there was a way to access some of that "spoken word" stuff through my computer, and whether I could do it for free. The answer is yes--even though I have a dialup connection and no MP3 player!

I thought I'd post what all I've found this weekend. Maybe it will be useful to someone else, or maybe some nice person who's more knowledgeable about this will leave a comment with more tips.


1) I found a nice website for English-language shortwave radio schedules at http://www.primetimeshortwave.com. I've been listening to over-the-air shortwave broadcasts off and on since I was a kid, but I haven't been up on the times and frequencies for different countries in a long, long time. I really didn't want to spend the money on one of the guides that comes out every year--and now I won't have to.

2) I had discovered RealPlayer and streaming audio some time back, but didn't pursue it much. An over-the-air radio show I liked started charging to listen over the internet, and I didn't want to pay. There were some BBC shows I would have liked, but a few years back you could only listen online when the shows were actually on the air over in England. I wasn't about to get up at 4 a.m. to sit by the computer and listen.

But things have changed. Now there are a ton of BBC shows you can listen to any time you want. There are a lot of American NPR shows available, too. Here are some links:

BBC 4 "Listen again" latest edition of each program - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

NPR archives - http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/rundown_archive_hub.php

It's working fine with my dial-up connection.


3) Podcasting. The single most important thing I learned this weekend is that you don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts! A podcast seems to just be a show in MP3 format that you can download like any other file, and probably listen to with software you already have. My computer came with Music Match Jukebox, which automatically opens up when I try to open a podcast file I've saved. Today I listened to a 60-year-old Burns and Allen program, for free. Which is great, because a lot of places charge to listen to this stuff. (Just try googling "old time radio" and mp3, and you'll see what I mean.) It does take at least as long as the show length to download, but it can happen in the background while I do something else or even leave the computer.

As far as finding the podcasts to download, the easiest thing I've found so far is a program called Replay Radio. They have a free version of their software that works for podcasts only, and it includes a guide to 1700+ different podcasts. You can check their categories or search by keyword to find things of interest. You don't really need the software to get the podcasts or listen to them, but it is really useful just for the guide. Here's a link:

http://www.applian.com/replay-radio/demo.php

The BBC and NRP also have some shows in podcast format, too.

Someday I'd love to buy fancier software, an MP3 player, upgrade to broadband and maybe even get XM radio. But I'm really thrilled that there's still so much I can get right now without spending any money at all.