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, which you can check out here:

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.

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.

The other three parts of the documentary you can view on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting:

Healing and the Mind: The Mind Body Connection – Moyers talks with physicians and neuroscientists about how emotions affect the brain and body.

Healing and the Mind: The Art of Healing – Moyers explores further the art of healing with doctors, therapists, and patients.

Healing and the Mind: Wounded Healers – Moyers visits the Commonweal Program for treating cancer in a holistic manner with a support system of cancer patients.

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

May 18, 2025

Stephen R. Covey Interview on Principle-Centered Leadership

Author Stephen R. Covey was best known for his mega-bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is still a bestseller over 30 years since its original publication in 1989. That same year, he published another popular book on leadership called Principle-Centered Leadership. This book focused on Stephen R. Covey’s principles for being an effective leader.

Covey didn’t give many interviews in his lifetime, but he did give an interview on C-SPAN in 1989 following the publication of this book. You can watch the interview here:

Leadership Styles & Ethics Interview with Stephen R. Covey

In this 40-minute interview with Stephen R. Covey, he discusses his book Principle-Centered Leadership and how leaders in business and government must apply principles in order to be effective. He articulately answers questions from the interviewer and from callers across the United States, often addressing the leadership qualities of past American presidents and other political leaders. This interview provides excellent insight into the leadership ideas of Stephen R. Covey.

While Covey passed away in 2012, his wisdom lives on. You can check out over 50 titles on audio & video from Stephen R. Covey on LearnOutLoud.com:

Stephen R. Covey Audio & Video on LearnOutLoud.com

May 16, 2025

Dr. Robert H. Lustig Confronts Sugar in These Five Talks

American pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Robert H. Lustig gained attention with his 2009 talk Sugar: The Bitter Truth that has been watched 25 million times in the past 15 years! Since then he’s given many more talks and published a number of books related diet, including Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine, and The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. We’ve featured a number of Lustig’s talks over the years, and here are five that stand out:

1. Sugar: The Bitter Truth

Of course we must start with the most famous one! In this popular video from UCTV, Professor Robert H. Lustig attempts to explain the American obesity epidemic as being due to the rise of sugar and fructose consumption over the past 30 years. He examines the history of high-fructose corn syrup and how it has made its way into drinks like soda, fruit juice, and sports drinks, along with many foods. He goes into a detailed biochemistry explanation of how fructose is converted into fat, and why he feels fructose is a poison with many of the same effects of alcohol. Lustig links these findings to the childhood obesity epidemic since children are drinking more and more high-fructose corn syrup beverages. He closes by advocating the elimination of sugar beverages, the increase of fiber in the diet, and more exercise. The talk is available on online video on YouTube and on audio and video download on the UCTV website. Caution: After watching this video you might never drink soda again!

2. Fat Chance: Fructose 2.0

In the follow up talk to his viral video lecture Sugar: The Bitter Truth (now with over 25 million views), superstar endocrinologist Robert Lustig dives deeper into the physiological effects of sugar and high fructose corn syrup on the human body. Countering the argument that it is lack of willpower in eating less or working out enough, Dr. Lustig shows how excessive sugar hijacks the brain’s reward center and pushes humans to want to eat more and more. Lustig is skilled at presenting science-based research in a clear and impassioned manner in order to strongly convey his message to eat less sugar and to advocate getting high fructose corn syrup out of the Western diet in which it has been dominating in the last 40 years or so. If you want to lose weight, then cutting down on sugar consumption is a good place to start! This talk is available to watch on YouTube from the UCTV channel and on MP3 audio download from the UCTV website. It has a lot of visual aids from Dr. Lustig’s slides that accompany his talk so we recommend watching it.

3. The Skinny on Obesity

Watch this great new series from UCTV Prime called “The Skinny on Obesity”. This 7-episode series (lasting one hour total) features Dr. Robert Lustig and two of his UCSF colleagues who look at the obesity epidemic and what has been driving it in the last 30 years. Dr. Lustig’s previous UCTV video Sugar: The Bitter Truth went viral and has received over 25 million views to date.

In this new series Lustig’s message is presented in an even clearer and more powerful way with the help of animations and documentary footage. He presents the science of obesity, debunking the idea that “a calorie is a calorie” and showing how the massive increase in fructose and sugar into our daily diets has led to a skyrocketing obesity epidemic which contributes to our most common diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. These short videos explain how sugar consumption and obesity have now become a major public health concern in the same way that drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol are through their unavoidability, toxicity, abuse, and negative impact on society. A must-watch from UCTV!

4. Robert Lustig on Sugar

Robert Lustig speaks at Google and gives us the history of the rise of the obesity epidemic as he attempts to debunk the idea that it is due to people being gluttonous and slothful. He goes into the history of the sugar and high fructose corn syrup industry, and how fat free processed foods have had sugar added to make them taste better and have longer shelf lives. He connects the rise of sugar consumption with the rise of obesity globally, and he shows that high sugar consumption has many of the same health effects as high alcohol consumption. He encourages political action in the face of a powerful sugar-based food industry, and on a personal level discourages eating foods high in sugar.

5. Dr. Robert Lustig on The Hacking of the American Mind

In this 30-minute interview from UCTV, Dr. Robert Lustig presents some of the ideas in his book The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. Dr. Lustig is the famed endocrinologist behind the viral video Sugar: The Bitter Truth. In this interview he expands his ideas beyond food, discussing the many addictions in American life including gambling, opioids, cell phone usage, and much more. He differentiates pleasure from happiness which he boils down to the battle of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. Dr. Lustig outlines the four C’s for happiness which are: Contribution, Coping, Cooking, and Connection. It’s a wide ranging and engaging talk on many of America’s predicaments with addiction.