November 24, 2025

Best of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Since 2013, the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation have created the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. This online digital archive now features over 150,000 works from public television and public radio programs dating from 1940 to the present. You can search, browse, and learn more about the archive at their website: americanarchive.org.

We recently spent a fair amount of time browsing the entire archive of over 150,000 titles and picked out about 60 of their best offerings to add to our LearnOutLoud Free Audio & Video Directory. You can browse what we added here:

Over 50 of the Best Programs from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Much of the archive features local public TV and radio programs and dated news programs (like over 16,000 episodes of the PBS NewsHour). So, sifting through it all, we tried to pick out programs that would still be interesting to a wider audience. We selected programs and series featuring authors and thinkers who are still popular today. Most of the titles we selected are on video, while some are public radio programs on audio. One of the best collections from the archive is the Bill Moyers Collection featuring over 800 programs produced by public television giant Bill Moyers (who passed away earlier this year at the age of 91). We’ve selected many titles from that collection. For each title, we’ve embedded their audio/video player so you can play them through our site or click through to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. So here are the titles that we added in no particular order. We’ll start with the series and collections and move on to the individual programs.

Series and Collections:

Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers – We’ve blogged about this 1993 series previously, which is a 5-part documentary on various aspects of the mind-body connection.

Prospects of Mankind – Eleanor Roosevelt’s public TV show from 1959 to 1962 covering global politics.

The Evolution of Jazz – Public radio series from the 1950s covering the history of jazz to that point.

A Word on Words – John Seigenthaler’s author interview show for Nashville Public Television from 1972 through 2013, featuring 900 episodes.

From Socrates to Sartre: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy – History of philosophy public TV show from 1978 with 30 episodes featuring Dr. Thelma Z. Lavine.

Dwight Macdonald on Film – Audio lectures from film critic Dwight Macdonald from 1967.

Self Encounter: A Study in Existentialism – Dr. Hazel E. Barnes leads this course on existential philosophy.

Archaeology and the Bible – Biblical archaeologist Dr. Nelson Glueck leads this course.

Great Ideas – Dr. Mortimer J. Adler discusses the “basic ideas fundamental to man’s everyday life” in 1957.

Six Great Ideas – Dr. Mortimer J. Adler join Bill Moyers in 1982 to discuss Western civilization’s greatest philosophical concepts: truth, beauty, goodness, liberty, equality, and justice.

Bill Moyers Journal – Over 120 episodes of the Bill Moyers Journal.

Genesis: A Living Conversation – 10-hour documentary on Genesis with Bill Moyers.

The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith – Religion scholar Huston Smith explores the six major faiths with Bill Moyers in this 5-hour series.

Exploring the Universe – Popular science series hosted by Dave Garroway from 1963.

The Public Mind: Image and Reality in America – Bill Moyers hosts this four one-hour program series exploring how public opinion is formed through the mingling of fact and fiction in a society saturated with images.

On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying – 6-hour series from Bill Moyers on dying.

Individual Programs:

Leo Buscaglia: Teach Love

Isaac Asimov on The Future

Creative Person: Fred Rogers – Short 1967 documentary on Mr. Rogers.

Joseph Campbell: Myths to Live By, Part 1

Joseph Campbell: Myths to Live By, Part 2

Facing Hate with Elie Wiesel

Interview with Coretta Scott King – 90-minute interview with Coretta Scott King for the Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement documentary.

Interview with Reverend Ralph Abernathy

Interview with Rosa Parks

Pauline Kael and Woody Allen on Film in the 1970s

Woman: Betty Friedan

Ray Bradbury: The Fantasy Maker – Interviewed by Maya Angelou.

Conversation with a Native Son – James Baldwin talks with Maya Angelou in 1975.

USA: The Novel with Vladimir Nabokov

USA: Writers with John Updike

USA: Writers with Philip Roth

Marianne Williamson on A Woman’s Worth

Bill Bryson on One Summer: America, 1927

Garrison Keillor on Wobegon Boy

John Callaway Interviews Dr. Jonas Salk

John Callaway Interviews Howard Cosell

Jung Speaks of Freud – Half-hour interview from 1958 with Carl Jung talking about Sigmund Freud.

Roger Ebert Interviews Arthur C. Clarke About 2001

A Second Look: Maya Angelou – Bill Moyers travels to Maya Angelou’s childhood home in Stamps, Arkansas.

Waiting for Beckett – 1993 documentary about author Samuel Beckett.

Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason with Pema Chodron

A Conversation with Howard Zinn

A Conversation with Susan Sontag

20 Years of Listening to America – This is a 20-year compilation of Bill Moyers’ work that features documentary segments and a wide range of guests, from average Americans to lauded scholars, artists, heroes, and leaders.

Leo Braudy on The Frenzy of Renown

Deepak Chopra on The Path To Love

James Redfield on The Celestine Vision

David McCullough on Truman and Character

Shakti Gawain on Transformations

Stephen E. Ambrose on Eisenhower and Character

A Conversation with Eudora Welty

Kaleidoscope: Christopher Isherwood

Kaleidoscope: Robert F. Kennedy

Conversation with Ingrid Bergman

The World of Henry Miller – 1 hour portrait of American author Henry Miller.

Poet at Large: A Conversation with Robert Bly

A Conversation with Robert Penn Warren

A World of Ideas: Joseph Heller

A World of Ideas: Peter Drucker

A World of Ideas: Chinua Achebe

Sports for Sale – Documentary from Bill Moyers on the commercialization of college sports.

Dick Gregory is Alive and Well

Lots to enjoy from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting!

October 23, 2025

25 Best Librivox Audiobooks from the Past Year

In their 20-year history, Librivox.org has now published over 20,000 titles for free on audiobook download! These are volunteer-narrated audiobooks in the public domain that have been generously read and edited for free for your listening enjoyment.

And as the public domain expands every year, so does Librivox’s catalog with great new novels and works of nonfiction added every year. They also put out new narrations of classic works, which we’ve updated in our catalog for many of their titles. We’ve tried to pick out the best Librivox has to offer, and we now feature over 3,500 of their audiobooks on our site:

Browse Over 3,500 Librivox Audiobooks on LearnOutLoud.com

We last updated our Librivox offerings about a year ago, and now we’ve gone through their catalog and added the 25 best Librivox audiobooks from the past year. Here they are in no particular order!

1. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes

2. The Life of Buddha by A. Ferdinand Herold

3. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge by Calvin Coolidge

4. Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck

5. Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos

6. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

7. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

8. English Prose Style by Herbert Read

9. The World Crisis: Volume 1 by Winston Churchill

10. Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust

11. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

12. The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett

13. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Oswald Chambers

14. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

15. An Outline of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

16. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

17. Oil! by Upton Sinclair

18. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report

19. Science and the Modern World by Alfred North Whitehead

20. The Shooting Party by Anton Chekov

21. The Book of Musical Knowledge by Arthur Elson

22. The Basic Bible: Old Testament

23. Is Sex Necessary? by E.B. White & James Thurber

24. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

25. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

September 20, 2025

A Documentary on Film Critic Pauline Kael Along with Four Interviews

Pauline Kael was an influential American film critic who wrote during a renaissance period in American cinema and championed many of the films that today we recognize as classics. She wrote 13 books featuring her reviews and gave many interviews throughout her life. In 2018, a documentary called
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael was made on her life, highlighting many of her most famous movie reviews. Below, we’re featuring a review of that documentary, along with four interviews she gave over the years that you can listen to. The documentary is free to watch on YouTube and Tubi TV.

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018) Documentary

Watch this enjoyable documentary on the life and film criticism of Pauline Kael. Through interviews with her friends and family and countless movie clips, Kael’s life is told in chronological order as her opinions on movies are interspersed throughout. From her early life growing up on silent cinema and the films of the 1930s to her death in 2001, Kael enjoyed a lifelong love affair with the movies. This documentary covers her rise as a critic from San Francisco to her eventual arrival at The New Yorker in 1968, where she wrote reviews for 24 years.

You’ll get some of her most famous takes on movies from The Sound of Music (1965) (which got her fired from McCall’s magazine) to the American New Wave movies like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Godfather (1972), and Mean Streets (1973). Through interviews in the documentary and excerpts read from her writings, she championed filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Brian De Palma, and many other film directors. At times her writing clashed with popular tastes, and she received much criticism herself, which is covered throughout the documentary. Ultimately, she loved to get people thinking and talking about movies which is apparent throughout her life and writing.

And here are four interviews she gave over the years. Two with Studs Terkel and two with Terry Gross of Fresh Air.

1. Pauline Kael on the Movie Business in 1968

In 1968, film critic Pauline Kael weighed in on the state of the movie business in this interview with Studs Terkel. Kael had just published her second collection of reviews with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and discussed many of the opinions that she put forth in that book. At this time in film history, filmmaking was about to be revolutionized in the United States by the New Hollywood filmmakers who made their mark in the 1970s. You can tell by Kael’s attitude toward the stodgy old studio system that she and the audience were ready for something new. She rips into the “creative” producers who judge a film’s artistic merits based on its box office receipts. She talks about her essay in the book on the frustrating making of the movie The Group (1966), directed by Sidney Lumet. She also talks about her infamous review of The Sound of Music from the book, which got her fired at McCall’s magazine. And she makes fun of that year’s Academy Awards. Towards the end of the interview, Kael laments that, at the time, there were no working female directors in Hollywood. It’s an exciting hour of movie opinions with one of America’s best and most influential movie critics.

On the Studs Terkel Radio Archive website, it states that the year of the interview is 1966, but from the movies talked about, it is clear this was recorded in 1968. The interview is broken up into two parts, and you can listen to them each here: Part 1 and Part 2.

2. Pauline Kael on Stanley Kubrick and More in 1972

Pauline Kael sits down with Studs Terkel for an hour-long conversation about movies in the year 1972. She pans many beloved films of the time including Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971), which she denounces for their coldness. Kael talks about the new popularity of violence in movies which she feels is often portrayed as a sensual pleasure absent of pain. She also has harsh words for The Graduate (1967), Straw Dogs (1971), The French Connection (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), Five Easy Pieces (1970), and more. She praises the works of Jean Renoir and Vittorio De Sica as directors who have feelings and love for all of their characters. In general, Studs agrees with her throughout. Note: The Studs Terkel Radio Archive says this is from 1980, but it’s from 1972 according to the films discussed.

3. Pauline Kael on Film in the Eighties (1986)

Film critic Pauline Kael is interviewed about the state of movies in the mid-1980s and her book State of the Art (1985). She bemoans the state of movies in the 80s, lamenting that many of the directors she was interested in in the 1970s were no longer making interesting work. She talks about how she came to be a film critic in her mid-40s after working odd jobs both related to cinema and otherwise. And she describes her eclectic method of analyzing films from all of the arts that go into it, along with placing them in a social and political context.

4. Pauline Kael Says Good Movies Never Make You Feel Virtuous (1988)

Pauline Kael weighs in on many films from the 1980s in this interview from Fresh Air. At the time she was championing smaller films and genre pictures that she felt were better than the big blockbuster movies of the 1980s. She comments on all the hate mail she receives for panning movies that most other critics liked. Kael loved to take the air out of pompous, important cinema and she does so in this interview. She also pokes fun at the virtuous, feel-good, life-affirming films out there that have been made forever but were popular in the 1980s. She points out that in the 1980s movie audiences were starting to fragment with most people attending the blockbuster movies, while smaller audiences found the niche of arthouse cinema. This fragmentation of the audience would increasingly accelerate into the 1990s and beyond.

Enjoy, and feel free to disagree with, the many cinematic opinions of Pauline Kael!

August 30, 2025

250 Free Full Movies from Shout Factory on Their YouTube Channel

There are a lot of legal distributors of free movies on YouTube these days. From the Official YouTube Movies Channel, which offers thousands of free ad-supported movies to dozens of smaller channels that license out movies. On our LearnOutLoud channel, we’ve put together a massive list of over 4,000 of the Best Free Movies on YouTube, and the popular list is approaching 1 million views. You can check out this playlist here:

4,000 Best Free Movies on YouTube

One distributor that’s been leading the way in offering their movies for free online is Shout Factory. Movie buffs have probably heard of Shout Factory. Since 2002, they’ve been releasing great movies and TV on home video, along with music releases. They license out movies from studios and release beautiful DVDs and Blu-Rays with top-notch film transfers. Thankfully for movie fans, Shout Factory has embraced the streaming age, offering hundreds of its movies on Amazon Prime, Tubi TV, Pluto TV, Plex TV, The Roku Channel, and the official YouTube Movie Channel. Shout Factory even has its own free ad-supported streaming website ShoutFactoryTV.com which streams even more of its releases. Shout Factory TV also has apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and other streaming devices.

For years now they’ve been adding hundreds of free full movies to streaming services like Tubi TV. You can check out some of their offerings on Tubi TV here:

Browse Shout Factory Movies on Tubi

Lately they’ve also been adding over 250 movies to their own YouTube Channel. And they’ve been adding them in full 1080p HD! You can browse their full free movies list here:

Free Full Movies from Shout Factory on YouTube Playlist

Below we’ll highlight some of they best free movies they’ve added that you can watch for free. We’ll list them in order by year and link directly to them on YouTube.

The 39 Steps (1935) – Classic British spy thriller from Hitchcock.

The Lady Vanishes (1938) – Another British thriller from Hitchcock, considered one of his best British productions.

49th Parallel (1941) – Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger team up for this British war drama.

In Which We Serve (1942) – Noel Coward and David Lean team up to co-direct this British patriotic war film.

The Life and Death Of Colonel Blimp (1943) – Powell and Pressburger join forces to create this acclaimed wartime romance.

A Canterbury Tale (1944) – Powell and Pressburger direct this wartime film that covers the story of three young people.

Great Expectations (1946) – Director David Lean’s adaptation of the 1861 novel by Charles Dickens.

The Red Shoes (1948) – Powell and Pressburger’s masterpiece covering ballet.

Oliver Twist (1948) – Director David Lean’s adaptation of the 1838 novel by Charles Dickens.

Hamlet (1948) – Laurence Olivier directs and stars in this William Shakespeare adaptation.

Hobson’s Choice (1954) – David Lean’s romantic comedy starring Charles Laughton.

A Night to Remember (1958) – Depicts the sinking of the Titanic long before James Cameron did.

Zulu (1964) – Epic British war film introduces Michael Caine in his first major role.

Voyage of the Damned (1976) – Drama about an ocean liner of Jewish refugees in 1939. With a great cast featuring Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Max von Sydow, James Mason, and Malcolm McDowell.

Piranha (1978) – Very funny Jaws rip-off directed by Joe Dante about mutant piranhas who attack swimmers in a river.

The Boys from Brazil (1978) – A thriller adapted from Ira Levin’s 1976 novel. Nazi hunter Laurence Olivier faces off against Gregory Peck as the villainous Dr. Josef Mengele.

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) – Werner Herzog’s horror film casts Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula.

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) – Super fun high school musical comedy even features the punk rock group Ramones.

The Stunt Man (1980) – Richard Rush’s movie about making movies. Peter O’Toole plays a director who offers a young fugitive a role as a stunt double.

Alligator (1980) – Fun creature feature featuring Robert Forster.

The Decline of Western Civilization (1981) – Penelope Spheeris directs the ultimate L.A. punk documentary featuring many punk rock performances.

On Golden Pond (1981) – Prestige film from the Shout Factory! Stars Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda (in his final film), and Jane Fonda. Fonda and Hepburn won Best Actor and Best Actress at the Oscars.

Sophie’s Choice (1982) – Another prestige picture from Shout Factory, written and directed by Alan J. Pakula and based on William Styron’s 1979 novel. Meryl Streep is Sophie.

Sleepaway Camp (1983) – A classic summer camp slasher with an incredible ending. Must-see horror film.

The Protector (1985) – Jackie Chan tries again to break into the American film market but this failed at the box office.

The Stepfather (1987) – Terry O’Quinn is definitely The Stepfather!

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988) – Director Penelope Spheeris turns her camera on the L.A. heavy metal scene of the late 80s. Hilarious interviews with great concert footage.

Herdsmen of the Sun (1989) – Werner Herzog documentary covering the Saharan nomadic Wodaabe tribe.

Pacific Heights (1990) – Fun thriller starring Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine as they deal with the tenant from hell played by Michael Keaton. Directed by John Schlesinger.

A Midnight Clear (1992) – World War II film with a good cast including Ethan Hawke, Gary Sinise, Peter Berg, and Kevin Dillon.

Dr. Giggles (1992) – Enjoyable and silly slasher film starring Larry Drake.

Judgment Night (1993) – Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven, and Stephen Dorff pull into the wrong neighborhood and are in for a crazy night.

The Crush (1993) – Classic erotic thriller with Alicia Silverstone tempting Cary Elwes.

The Getaway (1994) – Action thriller directed by Roger Donaldson stars Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Michael Madsen, James Woods and Jennifer Tilly.

Affliction (1997) – Acclaimed Paul Schrader film based on a 1989 Russell Banks novel, and stars Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, James Coburn, and Willem Dafoe.

The Decline of Western Civilization Part III (1998) – Penelope Spheeris takes a look at the gutter punk lifestyle of homeless teenagers in this final film of her trilogy.

Animal Factory (2000) – Steve Buscemi directs this indie prison film starring Willem Dafoe, Edward Furlong, and Danny Trejo.

The Agronomist (2003) – Jonathan Demme did this documentary on Haitian journalist and activist Jean Dominique.

Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap (2012) – Ice-T travels from coast to coast interviewing rappers in New York and LA, and stopping in Detroit to interview Eminem.

Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019) – Documentary on the lead singer of INXS.

Many of these movies have territory rights, so sorry if you can’t stream them outside of the United States. As with any movies on YouTube, they might get taken down at any time, so watch them while you can. More movies are getting added to the Shout Factory YouTube Channel every week, so you’ll definitely want to subscribe!

July 19, 2025

Four PBS Frontline Documentaries on Poverty in America

Frontline’s investigative documentaries cover a wide range of issues in both the United States and worldwide. Since they began in 1983, they’ve produced over 800 documentaries. Many of these documentaries are now available on the PBS Frontline website and on YouTube. We link to over 250 of these documentaries on LearnOutLoud, which you can browse here:

Browse Over 250 Frontline PBS Documentaries on LearnOutLoud.com

Today, we’re highlighting four of these documentaries that cover poverty in America. Over 35 million Americans live below the poverty line, making up over 10% of the population. These documentaries feature personal stories of people living in poverty and the challenges they face.

1. Two American Families

To make this documentary, journalist Bill Moyers checked in on two middle-class American families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for over two decades. Following the parents and their kids, this documentary shows their struggle to stay alive financially against an economy that is perpetually failing the working class. As wages stay stagnant over the decades, the cost of everything seems to rise, as these families struggle to pay their home payments, bills, healthcare, credit card debt, and more. Through it all, both families are resilient in the face of overwhelming financial stress. Both families are also remarkably honest about their financial situations, and you get to know them well on their emotional rollercoaster through the contemporary American economy.

2. Poor Kids

The documentary Poor Kids follows around three families as they struggle financially in 2012, and then follows up with them again in 2017 to see how they’re doing. The film is shown through the eyes of the kids in the family and how they view their situations and cope with growing up poor. As the parents struggle to pay the bills, get food, and find where they’re going to sleep at night, the kids have dreams of making more money in their future. Statistics on child poverty are shown throughout the documentary, with over 10 million kids living in poverty. The day-to-day struggles of the kids and parents in this documentary bring this reality home.

3. Growing Up Poor In America

This documentary takes a look at three families as they struggle with poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. It’s from the director of the documentary Poor Kids, and once again follows a kid from each of the families as they express the difficulties of living in poverty. All three families are in Ohio, and they deal with the emotional distress of being poor during the time of the coronavirus. The parents struggle to keep working, pay the bills, and keep their children’s education going. The kids struggle with what to do when they can’t see their friends. It’s a reminder of this challenging year in recent history, particularly for those living in poverty.

4. Left Behind America

This documentary takes a look at poverty in America through the lens of one of its cities: Dayton, Ohio. It takes a look at the history of what was once a bustling economic town that has since the 1980s lost its manufacturing base, and where over 30 percent of its residents now live in poverty. Along with economic hardship after the 2008 financial crisis, Dayton was also hit hard by the opioid epidemic. In this documentary, Dayton residents are interviewed about their financial and employment situation. Despite many of them working full-time jobs, they still struggle to make ends meet due to low wages and often need assistance. There are some signs of hope in the city, and the documentary highlights those as well.

Learn about this important social and political issue with these well-made documentaries from Frontline.

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

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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

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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

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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