Hearing Voices: podcasts from NPR

National Public Radio in the US has a new weekly one hour podcast available from the Hearing Voices website.

In their own words:

Hearing Voices from NPR® is new weekly hour series of The Best of Public Radio: a sixty-minute stream of “driveway moments” all connected by a weekly theme. We listen to broadcasts and podcasts; we dig through audio archives; and we scour the web to find the best stories, sound-portraits, slam poets, docs, radio dramas, features, and found-sound.

Each week a new Guest Host steers the show home.

The best bit? All the podcasts are free!

Open Culture podcast directory

Most podcast directories have some good stuff in them, but you’ve got to either know what you’re looking for, or you have to sift through a lot of irrelevant and sometimes inappropriate content to find the gems.

If you want to find quality podcasts all the time, then try Open Culture (http://www.oculture.com). In their own words they:

“… explore cultural and educational media (podcasts, videos, online courses, etc.) that help make learning dynamic and fun… We sift through all the media, highlight the good and jettison the bad, and centralize it in one place. Trust us, you’ll find engaging content here that will keep you learning and sharp. And you will find it much more efficiently than if you spend your time searching with Google, Yahoo or iTunes.”

They link to podcasts from sites such as National Geographic, Harvard University, NPR, New Scientist, etc.

[This article was first published in the March 2007 CyberText Newsletter; link last checked January 2009]