June 25, 2025

Watch Rick Steves’ 2009 Documentary on Iran

Rick Steves is known for his travel writing and TV shows like Rick Steves’ Europe. In 2008, Steves ventured out of his typical European travel itinerary and arranged to travel to Iran to film a documentary there in order to learn more about a culture he knew little about. This 55-minute documentary is available for free on YouTube:

Rick Steves’ Iran

Learn about the nation of Iran as travel writer and TV personality Rick Steves travels across the country to take in this vast culture. In 2008, Steves received permission to film a travel documentary in Iran as he sought to learn about a culture he knew relatively little. In this 55-minute documentary, you’ll get a brief history lesson about how Iran became a theocracy and why its government sees the United States and Israel as enemies. Beyond that, Steves mostly focuses on the contemporary culture of Iran, talking to many people in various cities along the way. Steves captures the rich Persian cultural history alongside the bustling modern cities showcasing daily living. He asks many questions and receives a lot of straightforward answers from Iranians. While he admits he was nervous from the outset of the trip, he came away with a deeper understanding of Iran and its people, and viewers of this documentary will as well.

And if you want to learn more about Rick Steves’ trip to Iran, then check out this well-presented talk from the Commonwealth Club of California available on C-SPAN:

Rick Steves: A Perspective on Iran

Travel writer and TV show host Rick Steves takes you behind the scenes of his documentary Rick Steves’ Iran (2009). In an effort to learn more about the Iranian people, Steves set out with a camera crew to explore Iran and share his observations. Steves acknowledges that Iran is not a free society and is a theocracy, but tries to steer clear of the political debates surrounding Iran. He instead focuses on the people he met there and the things they shared with him. He notes the irony that the people most anti-American there are the Iranians who hold up conservative family values, while the same might be true of conservative Americans who oppose Iran. The video contains a slide show of many of the things Steves witnessed. He attempts to humanize the Iranian people through travel and provides many similarities of their behavior to Americans. At the close of the talk, he answers questions mostly about how to travel to Iran.

And if you want to learn more about the history of Iran, check out this free public radio documentary:

My Name is Iran Audio Documentary from American RadioWorks

1979 marks the year that Iran became the world’s premiere theocracy. 27 later, this government, steeped in Islamic law, has shown no sign of loosening its grip on Iranian civil rights.

In My Name is Iran, released by American RadioWorks on streaming audio, we hear from modern Iranian voices as they speak on their current experience under this controversial government, how it has developed from what was once a paragon of Middle East democracy, and what a few courageous people are doing to counter the status quo.

This is a great primer in Iranian history and a wonderful way to learn more about what has recently become one of the world’s top geo-political hotspots. It is available for free on streaming audio from American RadioWorks.

June 21, 2025

Get 3 Months Free of Audible with their 2025 Prime Day Deal

According to recent calculations, Audible.com now features over 1 million audiobooks! They truly blow the competition out of the water with their vast selection of audiobooks. And just in time for Prime Day 2025, they’re offering a pretty great deal to Prime Members. From now until July 31st, 2025, Prime Members can get 3 months of Audible Premium Plus absolutely free!

Get 3 Months Free of Audible with their 2025 Prime Day Deal

With that deal, you get to choose one audiobook from their library of over a million titles during each month of the trial. These audiobooks are yours to own forever! Plus during the trial, you’ll get Audible Plus which features over 70,000 audiobooks to choose from that you can access and listen to at any time. You’ll also get member savings for any other audiobooks you purchase.

If you’re a Prime Member and have wanted to try out Audible, it’s quite a deal!

Get 3 Months Free of Audible with their 2025 Prime Day Deal

Choose any title from these categories:

59,557 Relationships, Parenting & Personal Development Titles

57,389 Health & Wellness Titles

67,766 Business & Careers Titles

58,299 Money & Finance Titles

60,652 Religion & Spirituality Titles

59,245 History Titles

65,457 Politics & Social Sciences Titles

52,750 Education & Learning Titles

63,138 Arts & Entertainment Titles

61,811 Literature & Fiction Titles

58,221 Biographies & Memoirs Titles

6,931 Computers & Technology Titles

53,914 Science & Engineering Titles

55,508 Sports & Outdoors Titles

28,064 Home & Garden Titles

39,868 Travel & Tourism Titles

66,410 Titles for Children

35,353 Titles for Teens & Young Adults

21,947 LGBTQ+ Titles

66,925 Romance Titles

62,050 Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Titles

57,004 Science Fiction & Fantasy Titles

49,420 Erotica Titles

There is some crossover in the categories but that total comes to 1,261,593 titles to choose from! Wow!

Get 3 Months Free of Audible with their 2025 Prime Day Deal

June 3, 2025

20 Free Audio Guides to Classical Music

One of the best ways to learn about classical music is through audio learning. Skilled lecturers can take you through a piece of classical music piece by piece highlighting different significant elements of each work. That’s just what American conductor Gerard Schwarz has done with his educational Musically Speaking series:

Over 20 Musically Speaking Conductor’s Guides to Famous Classical Music Pieces

These guides are available to listen to for free on Spotify. On each album in the series, Schwarz provides a full recording of the work, followed by an hour-long lecture that incorporates excerpts from the music. He starts each lecture with a short introduction of the composer followed by a breakdown of their work. As he highlights different components of the piece, he’ll play a short piece of the music he is talking about. For example, here’s a review of his:

Conductor’s Guide to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons

In this free title from the Musically Speaking Conductor’s Guides Series, American conductor Gerard Schwarz breaks down one of Antonio Vivaldi’s most famous works. The album starts off with a full performance of Vivaldi’s four violin concerti The Four Seasons. Then Schwarz gives you a brief biography of the prolific Baroque master Vivaldi. He follows this introduction with a breakdown of each concerto for each season, movement by movement. Vivaldi wrote four sonnets to accompany the seasons, and Schwarz uses these sonnets to paint a picture of what the music was attempting to convey. Short pieces of The Four Seasons music are interspersed throughout Schwarz’s lecture. At the end of the lecture, Schwarz describes how Vivaldi’s work was rediscovered in the 1920s after fifteen volumes of his work were discovered in a monastery. Enjoy this brief introduction to one of the most famous works of classical music of all time.

Here are the other guides you’ll find in the series:

Conductor’s Guide to Handel’s Water Music in Three Suites Complete

Conductor’s Guide to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 & Symphony No. 41

Conductor’s Guide to Stravinsky’s Petrouchka & The Rite of Spring

Conductor’s Guide to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 & Piano Concerto No. 4

Conductor’s Guide to Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra and Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome

Conductor’s Guide to Schumann’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Minor & Symphony No. 3

Conductor’s Guide to Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 & Symphony No. 8

Conductor’s Guide to Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, Das Rheingold, & More

Conductor’s Guide to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique & Les Troyen: Royal Hunt and Storm

Conductor’s Guide to Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 & Variations on a Theme by Haydn

Conductor’s Guide to Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin & Concerto for Orchestra

Conductor’s Guide to Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain & The Three-Cornered Hat

Conductor’s Guide to Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D Major & Symphony No. 103

Conductor’s Guide to Prokofiev

Conductor’s Guide to Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, & Fanfare for the Common Man

Conductor’s Guide to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, No. 5, and Orchestral Suite No. 3

Conductor’s Guide to Chopin’s Impromptu in C-sharp Minor, Nocturne in E-flat Major, & More

Conductor’s Guide to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, In Nature’s Realm, & Carnival

Conductor’s Guide to Debussy’s Prelude, Nocturnes, & La Mer

Conductor’s Guide to Liszt’s Les Preludes & More

Conductor’s Guide to Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 & No. 4

Conductor’s Guide to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 & 1812 Overture

Enjoy these guides to some of the greatest classical music of all time! And if you enjoy these, you might also enjoy the titles found in this blog post:

Free Introductions to 27 Great Operas on Audio

May 31, 2025

Three Talks on the Science of Sleep

Learn more about the science of sleep with these three talks from three different sleep experts! These talks will dive into why we sleep, how to get healthy sleep, and what happens when you don’t get enough sleep. We’ll start the list off with a talk from Dr. William Dement, who was a pioneer in sleep research. He passed away in 2020, but gave this excellent talk at Google back in 2008.

1. Dr. William Dement on Healthy Sleep and Optimal Performance

Dr. William Dement was one of the leading authorities on sleep, sleep deprivation, and sleep disorders. In the 1950s he was part of the sleep research team that discovered REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and connected it to dreaming. Since then he founded the Sleep Research Center at Stanford University and authored numerous papers and books on sleep, and he taught one of Stanford’s most popular courses called “Sleep and Dreams”.

In this one-hour talk at Google, Dr. Dement presents many of the findings he has made throughout his career. He talks about studies that reveal that healthy sleep is key to high-level performance and productivity and that the sleep debt of numerous nights without enough sleep causes a significant reduction in the quality of performance of physical and mental activities. Dr. Dement also speaks about sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and narcolepsy. Learn more about something you do every day with this enjoyable talk on sleep. If you liked his talk, check out his audio book: The Promise of Sleep.

2. Shawn Stevenson on Sleep Smarter

Shawn Stevenson is the host of the popular Model Health Show Podcast and the author of the book Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success. In this talk that Stevenson gave at Google, he offers a bunch of practical ways to improve the quality of your sleep which in turn will improve your overall health. He starts by explaining how getting enough sleep will help you burn fat to look better. He also emphasizes the importance of getting good sleep for improving your productivity by citing many studies. Stevenson then lists a variety of ways to improve sleep, from managing alcohol and caffeine consumption to reducing screen time right before bed. It’s an informative talk that will at least get you thinking about sleep, which the average person spends about one-third of their life doing.

3. Matthew Walker on Why We Sleep

Bad news for those of us who get less than 7 hours of sleep per night! Professor Matthew Walker is the Director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, and in this talk at Google he shares his findings from his book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Basically, his findings are sleep deprivation leads to shorter lifespans, more cancer, less reproductive health, reduced ability to learn and remember, more mental illness, and a whole lot more disadvantages in life. The adage “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” never sounded more foolish than after listening to this talk. Walker answers many questions about sleep-related topics towards the end of the talk. And if you enjoy this talk you might want to check out his podcast, which is all about sleep: The Matt Walker Podcast.

Hopefully, these talks will give you some science-based tips for how to get healthier sleep!

May 30, 2025

4 Talks by Brene Brown on Shame & Vulnerability

Author and podcaster Brene Brown has written six bestselling books and hosts two podcasts: the Unlocking Us Podcast and the Dare to Lead Podcast. Her popularity exploded with her 2010 TED Talk The Power of Vulnerability which has now been viewed over 20 million times.

Her research and talks on shame and vulnerability have certainly struck a chord with millions of people. And all her books since then have been bestsellers, including The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, Dare to Lead, and Atlas of the Heart. Below we’ll highlight four talks that Brene Brown has given on these topics starting with her original TED Talk:

1. Brene Brown: The Power of Vulnerability

Watch this powerful TED talk by author and researcher Brene Brown. In this insightful talk, she tells the story of how her social worker research lead her to study shame for over 6 years. Convinced she could use her data to deconstruct and control shame, she eventually came to a much different conclusion. She saw that the people who have a sense of love, belonging, and worthiness, also had a sense of vulnerability where they did not know the outcome of their decisions. This led to Brown having a “breakdown” in her own ideas of shame and worthiness, which lead to even more insight into how we numb our emotions to avoid vulnerability.

2. Brene Brown: Listening to Shame

Watch Brene Brown’s follow-up TED Talk to her popular talk The Power of Vulnerability. In this talk, Brene confronts the shame epidemic head on, and she explores how shame is brought about for men and women throughout our culture. She emphasizes that vulnerability is not weakness, but that it is at the heart of creativity and “daring greatly”.

3. The Courage to Be Vulnerable

Professor and author Brene Brown’s research on shame and vulnerability have hit home with many people as evidenced by her popular TED talk The Power of Vulnerability and her bestselling books including The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly. In this interview with Krista Tippett from the On Being radio show, Brene Brown tells the story of how she found out the characteristics of someone who is “whole-hearted” and how she discovered they were the opposite of who she was at time. In a culture that often demands perfectionism and shames those who fall short, Brown’s work has been insightful into how we can develop the courage to be more vulnerable and open to our own emotions, in our relationships, and in parenting.

4. Brene Brown: The Power of Vulnerability

This talk is also called The Power of Vulnerability, but it’s different from her TED Talk. In this talk from the RSA, Brown emphasizes the prevalence of fear and blame in contemporary society. When we go through the day’s news, it’s almost always concerning what we should be afraid of and who is to blame. Brown says this societal obsession also translates into our personal lives, which are plagued with fear and blame. She also points out the pernicious pervasiveness of shame and perfectionism. Brown encourages us to flip the script on these emotions by pushing us towards empathy and vulnerability. She defines the difference between sympathy and empathy and provides many examples of how we can put empathy to work in our daily lives.

Enjoy these talks from Brene Brown, and you can check out all her titles on our site here:

Brene Brown Audio & Video on LearnOutLoud.com

May 29, 2025

Watch for Free Bill Moyers 5-Part Documentary Series Healing and the Mind

In 1993, journalist Bill Moyers created a five-part documentary series looking to explain aspects of the mind-body connection and ways it can be applied in alternative healthcare. This series won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series and had a lasting impact on new ways people thought about healing and health. Two of the parts of the documentary are available on Vimeo and the other three parts available on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. You can check them all out at the links below:

1. Healing and the Mind: The Mind Body Connection

In this introduction to his 5-part series Healing and the Mind, Bill Moyers takes a look at the mind-body connection and why separating the mind and body in medicine may be neglecting a powerful tool in staying healthy. Research has come a long way since this 1993 documentary in proving the importance of the mind-body connection for various illnesses. In this documentary, Moyers asks doctors and scientists fundamental questions about the mind and emotions and the role they play in our physical health. He follows patients who’ve tried Western medicine like medications without success and are turning to alternative treatments that relate to the power of the mind. Moyers even connects with a young Dr. Dean Ornish, who is utilizing diet, meditation, and group therapy to help treat heart disease. This is a good introduction to Moyers’ popular series.

2. Healing and the Mind: The Art of Healing

In this episode of the Healing and the Mind series, Bill Moyers goes into hospitals and interviews the doctors and patients involved in medical care in the United States. He explores the connection of mind and body through the relationships a patient has with his doctor and his support network of friends and family. He goes into a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and shows the bonding necessary to nurture a preterm baby. Moyers also is told again and again how a patient and their family need to take initiative in their own healing for the best outcomes. With the modern technology and busyness of today’s hospitals, they can often feel cold and intimidating, and Moyers seeks out a hospital that is looking to change this viewpoint with the help of mind-body medicine.

3. Healing and the Mind: Wounded Healers

In this episode of the Healing and the Mind series, Bill Moyers visits a one-week retreat for people who have cancer called the Commonweal Program in Bolinas, California. The program was founded by Rachel Naomi Remen and Michael Lerner who are both interviewed by Moyers in this documentary. They make no claims that alternative health can cure cancer, but they exist to deal with the holistic health of individuals. Most of the film focuses on a single group of people with cancer who are talking about their emotions over the course of a week. Along with talking about their disease, they participate in massage, yoga, creative arts, and other activities. This community-based approach seems to help the well-being of the group, even if some of them are preparing to die.

4. Healing and the Mind: Healing from Within

Bill Moyers investigates the connection between peace of mind and physical illness in this documentary that takes a look at the innovative work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and Dr. David Spiegel. We follow Kabat-Zinn as he leads a group of every day people dealing with chronic pain in guided mindfulness meditation at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Moyers also delves into a study Dr. Spiegel conducts with cancer patients on the emotional benefits of group psychotherapy. Both Kabat-Zinn and Spiegel approach these concepts of inner healing with a mainstream medical training background, but are open to finding new ways to help their patients heal, cope, grieve, and live with the stress of serious illness.

5. Healing and the Mind: The Mystery of Chi

In this hour-long episode of Bill Moyers’ Healing and the Mind series, Moyers travels to China to discover healing power of Chinese medicine and the mystery of Chi. Moyers is joined by Dr. David Eisenberg who served as the first U.S. medical exchange student to the People’s Republic of China and spent over 10 years there. Dr. Eisenberg teaches Moyers about Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, Chinese massage, tai chi, chi gung, martial arts, and the ideas of Taoism. Learn about Chinese medicine and health practices that have been around for thousands of years.

If you want to explore Moyers’s programs further, you can view a collection of over 800 programs in the Bill Moyers Collection on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website:

Browse Over 800 Video Programs in the Bill Moyers Collection on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

May 20, 2025

Tony Robbins Responds to the September 11th Attacks

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins has been leading seminars for decades. For an example of his seminars, check out the audiobook Unleash The Power Within. But nothing could’ve quite prepared Robbins for the seminar he gave on September 11th, 2001. He was giving a seminar on leadership and emotional mastery that day, and this video is a 2-hour condensed version of the seminar. The thumbnail isn’t showing, but the video still plays:

Leadership In Times of Crisis

Tony Robbins put up for free on his YouTube channel his 2-hour seminar “Leadership In Times of Crisis” which was recorded on September 11th, 2001. Robbins shows his leadership skills by weathering the emotional rollercoaster of the day and sharing dialogue with the wide array of responses to the attacks. He provides lessons in emotional mastery, demonstrating that the responses of individuals come from their habitual patterns, and pushes certain individuals to shift their response to a higher level. In the second half of the program Robbins facilitates a unique dialogue of peace between a Jewish man from New York and an Arab man who are both struggling with conflicting emotions over the September 11th attacks. Watch this free 2-hour seminar on YouTube.

May 20, 2025

Watch Wayne Dyer’s Documentary The Shift for Free

Dr. Wayne Dyer was the author of many self-help books from his 1976 classic Your Erroneous Zones to his bestsellers The Power of Intention (2004) and Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life (2007). Dr. Dyer passed away in 2015, but one of his publishers, Hay House, is making sure his wisdom lives on. They’ve recently uploaded over 20 of his full-length talks to their YouTube channel for over 40 hours of Wayne Dyer wisdom:

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer Official Playlist on the Hay House YouTube Channel

One of the videos they uploaded is a two-hour documentary starring Wayne Dyer called The Shift (2009):

In this feature film that skillfully mixes drama and interview footage with Dr. Wayne Dyer, the viewer learns various lessons on how to overcome the ego, break the chains of self-driven ambition, and find personal purpose in life. In three parallel story-lines, a selfish business executive, a bullheaded film director, and an unfulfilled homemaker learn how to “find their nature” as Dyer puts it during a weekend retreat. This mix of fiction and documentary not only illuminates Dyer’s concepts through dramatic illustration, but also provides new footage of the popular speaker talking lucidly about concepts he’s spent a lifetime developing. It is now available for free to watch on the Hay House YouTube channel.

For much more from Wayne Dyer check out our author page on him:

Wayne Dyer Audio & Video on LearnOutLoud.com

May 19, 2025

Two Audio Documentaries on Great African American Speeches

American Public Media’s documentary unit American RadioWorks (now called APM Reports) has produced over 100 high quality audio documentaries on various topics which you can check out on our American Public Media Publisher Page or on their APM Reports Documentaries Podcast. We’ve previously blogged about some of these documentaries:

Free Audio Documentaries from American Public Media

Two of their best audio documentaries cover great African American speeches that are mostly from the 20th century, with excerpts and analysis of these speeches. Listen to these one-hour audio documentaries from American Public Media:

Say It Plain: A Century of Great African-American Speeches

This hour-long audio documentary from American RadioWorks is an excellent introduction to great African American speakers of the last century. In chronological order it covers speeches all the way back to Booker T. Washington’s address at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition up to Barack Obama’s recent speech at the Democratic National Convention. The hour-long documentary features excerpts of the speeches with interviews and commentary on their significance, and if you liked a particular speech American RadioWorks offers each speech individually as streaming audio so you can listen to it in its entirety.

Say It Loud: Great Speeches on Civil Rights & African American Identity

American Public Media presents this follow-up audio documentary to their production Say It Plain: A Century of Great African-American Speeches. In this audio documentary, they present speeches from prominent African-American figures from the 1960s up to the 2000s. They start with Malcolm X’s The Ballot or the Bullet speech, which was critical of the nonviolent protests of the civil rights movement and in support of Black Nationalism. Other speeches in the documentary come from a variety of voices, including playwright Lorraine Hansberry, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Panther founder Bobby Seale, affirmative action critic Ward Connerly, comedian Bill Cosby, and President Barack Obama. In this documentary, you’ll get a wide range of views on the political goals of African-Americans at a time where significant civil rights achievements had been made, but rates of poverty and incarceration among African-Americans are also disproportionately high. Historians and intellectuals chime in with commentary on the speeches presented throughout the documentary. For transcripts of speeches and some audio excerpts of the speeches, check out the American RadioWorks website.

Enjoy these and more excellent audio documentaries from American Public Media!

May 18, 2025

Psychology Audio Seminars from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago

Want to learn more about the analytic psychology of Carl Jung? The C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago has been recording its seminars on audio for decades now. You can check out their educational archive store here: The C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago Archive Store. The archive of over 300 audio & video titles features renowned presenters in the field of Jungian psychology like Robert L. Moore, June Singer, Murray Stein, John Beebe, Ann Ulanov, Andrew Samuels, Jean Shinoda Bolen, and many others.

The Institute has also been podcasting many of their seminars on their podcast they launched in 2014:

Jungianthology Podcast: Analytical Psychology Seminars from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago

On this podcast, you’ll learn about the influential Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung and the psychological concepts he founded, which have formed the basis of analytical psychology. These podcasts are recorded lectures from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and cover topics such as individuation, archetypes, dreams, relationships, and more. If you’re new to Jung or want a refresher, try out the podcast episode called “An Introduction to Jung’s Life and Work”. In this podcast, Murray Stein (who has authored many books on Jung) tells the life story of Carl Jung from his relationship and eventual split with Sigmund Freud and Jung’s turbulent midlife crisis, which he came out of and went on to develop the psychology we now know of today as “Jungian”.

To get more in depth into Jungian psychology, there’s a YouTube channel dedicated to the late Jungian analyst Robert L. Moore:

Robert L. Moore YouTube Channel

On this channel you can hear popular seminars that he delivered at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago on Jungian archetypes such as:

The Magician Within

The Warrior Within

The Lover Within

The King Within

For more, check out the Robert L. Moore author page on LearnOutLoud.com:

Robert Moore, Ph.D. Audio Seminars on LearnOutLoud.com

And for much more on Carl Jung, check out the:

C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago Website