hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4674.txt

Episode: 4674
Title: Audiobooks
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4674/hpr4674.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:34 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4674, for 2026-07-02
Today's show is entitled, "Audiobooks"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:10:16
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "A response to Lee about my own history with audiobooks."
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Queue.
This show was submitted in November 2025 to cover occasions like this
where there are gaps in the schedule.
Hello, this is the Huka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio, and this show is being recorded for the reserve Q, so if you're hearing it right now, that means we are short of programs, and it'd be a good idea for you to record one.
I'm assuming if you're listening to this, you would like Hacker Public Radio to continue.
Now what I'm doing in this particular episode, I'm recording a response.
Something that was triggered by another show, and that's often a good way to come up with a show idea.
And in this case, what I'm thinking of is a show that was aired on November 17th of 2025.
It was show 45, 11, and the person who recorded it was Lee.
And so he was talking about audio books, and I have some history with audio books.
So I thought, well, I'll share a little bit of my own history here.
And the first thing that I wanted to mention, I Lee gave a long list in his show notes of all the audio books that he's enjoying.
There's some very good books in the area, many of which I have either read or listened to as the case may be.
It did his tend to focus on some things that overlap with me as the science fiction.
What I didn't see was history.
Well, not everyone is interested in that as I am, but there's a lot of audio books out there, and there are various ways you can get them.
So the first thing I would point out is there's a site called openculture.com, and I will have a link in the show notes for that.
And as the name implies, they're trying to make things freely available.
Now, in this case, it's stuff that is in public domain in the United States.
And they're very careful about stating that.
Librevox is similar.
I think that's the one that the HPR audio book club tended to use if my memory serves.
But you know, haven't heard from those guys in a while, which is kind of too bad.
You know, maybe pokey and some of the others will hear this and decide, you know, we should get that thing going again.
Another way you can get access to the obvious, you can go out and buy them.
I have done that sometimes.
But the other thing is, you know, they're very often available with your local library.
And I have, I go back to the days when everything was done on cassette tapes.
These days it tends to be more streaming.
But, you know, I could go into the library and pull out an audio book on cassette tapes.
You know, particularly when we had my wife and I would do a long 14-hour drive from our home in Michigan to visit family and Massachusetts.
You know, checking out an audio book to listen to on the way was often a good thing to do.
Well, nowadays it tends to be streaming.
And it check with your local library, but they usually have available things like apps like Libby, Hoopla, and Barrow Box to just name three that I found with a very long time.
I found with a very quick search, Hoopla is the one my local library uses.
I found these other apps doing a quick web search.
And that just means you can log into your library, local library website.
Pick a book that you want to listen to, download it to, you know, your phone or your tablet or whatever.
Listen to it. My wife does this constantly.
She, for some reason, she can't get to sleep without an audio book.
And, you know, great. So she does. She uses the Hoopla and downloads. She's big on mysteries.
So that tends to be most of what she downloads.
I listen to other things. And, and I did a little searching around.
I found interestingly, I'll put a link in the show notes to this.
There is a fairly extensive isic azimov audio book collection of his science fiction mostly at archive.org.
That you can download for free.
Another thing I found looking around is that there are a number of audio books on YouTube.
So you can just go there and listen.
I found some Arthur C. Clark audio books on archive.org.
Then, you know, I think Doc Smith is available at LibreVox.
And, you know, so those are some of the science fiction ones that I would mention.
Then there's history.
I have listened to the will and aerial Durant story of civilization.
This is 11 very large volumes.
So, you know, just volume one, I saw was listed and they said it was 36 hours to listen to it.
But the way I did it was that any time I was in the car driving, I would spend that time listening to an audio book.
And, you know, it did take a year and a half or two years to go through the whole story of civilization.
Yeah, but I did it and I enjoyed it.
Also, Winston Churchill's history of World War II.
That's six volumes that are pretty substantial.
And also Churchill's history of English-speaking peoples.
Now, those might not be things you would be interested in.
But I was interested in them and if anyone out there is interested in history, check some of that stuff out.
I saw at archive.org the volume one of the will Durant story of civilization seemed to be there.
So that would be another free download.
Now, another thing I wanted to mention is there's one, particularly with fiction.
There's a difference between reading a book and acting a book.
And until you've experienced it, it may not be entirely clear what the difference is.
But I'm going to mention one of to my mind the best examples of someone acting a book.
And that is the audio books for Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
Those are absolutely fantastic.
And I think Terry Pratchett was, unfortunately, he's passed.
But he was a complete genius.
You know, if you saw, you know, they've put some of his works now.
He's been turned into television shows.
And so you get a chance to experience it that way.
So, you know, if you like fantasy with a humorous slant, and you want to hear it done very well.
Get check out the audio books for Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
So, let's just a few thoughts that I had on the general thing about audio books.
And I want to thank Lee for the recording the show that he did.
That was a very nice show.
And, you know, anytime you hear a show that you have something you want to say in response, record a show.
Sometimes I see people writing long comments.
And, sight will, you know, most people are never going to know about a long comment.
But if you record a show, which is pretty easy to do, you know, all you have to do is plug in a microphone and start talking.
And just say whatever you would have said in the comment.
And you get to get yourself a show.
So, this is Hoka for Hacker Public Radio, signing off, and as always encouraging you to support free software.
Bye-bye.
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