hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0663.txt

Episode: 663
Title: HPR0663: What is on your mp3 player
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0663/hpr0663.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:35:02

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Hello, this is Brother Mouse. I thought I wouldn't have an opportunity to do any more shows in the short term.
But my school district that I work in has a snow and ice day today.
So I thought I would do it a little bit of my spare time to hack our public radio today and help out.
The show I'm doing today is one of the recommended shows and it is on what is on your MP3 player.
I'll start out by saying that I have a long, long history of listening to things on the radio and recorded devices when I was a child.
I used to go to bed with an AM radio under my pillow and I would just sit there and listen to those far away signals, particularly at night, you know, how they can propagate along ways.
And they have that kind of coming in and going out ghostly sound to them.
Plus you could always hear the most, you know, craziest conspiracy theorist folks late at night.
So I always enjoyed that. When I was a little bit older, I started listening to Old Time Radio and CBS Radio Mystery Theater on AM.
And I just loved hearing radio drama. This would be in the early 70s that I was listening to Old Time Radio.
And then by 74 or so CBS Radio Mystery Theater came on board.
So I also collect all of those. I have all 1400 nowadays. I have all 1400 of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater shows.
And about 50,000 Old Time Radio shows. I'd say the best of the Old Time Radio stuff is probably gun smoke, which is just fantastic writing.
Broadway as my beat is very dark and noir and edgy for the 50s when it was done. It's just an amazing series.
You can download lots of OTR Old Time Radio often that because most it was done in the 50s and 60s and wasn't covered in a normal sense by copyright at that time.
After the recording act of 1974, a lot of stuff became copyrighted and trading and downloading that is problematic.
I was listening to Old Time Radio basically as a way to have something to entertain me while I worked or drove or did housework or worked in the yard or what have you.
But about around 2000 or so I got a little USB radio which had some freeware software that you could use to program and record.
Basically it was like a little DVR for radio. So I started taping shows that I knew I would like and listening to that.
And that started to eat away at my OTR listening.
Then once podcasts became widely available, I would say that you know 95% of my audio listening now is podcasts.
I think podcasts are wonderful since they can be so they can be microcast basically. They can be on some really tiny topic.
Just some little micro if you're interested in goat raising. I mean there's someone somewhere who's doing a podcast on goat raising.
I'll let you know the devices that I use for my podcasts now. I have a Sans E200 series MP3 player which I've rock boxed.
If you haven't used rock box before, check it out. You can add all kinds of interesting stuff.
Different codex video playback and two devices that have just crummy crummy firmware. So I'll put a link to rock box in the show notes.
Those E200s of that type run about 20 bucks or so off eBay last time I looked.
The next player I have is an iPod Mini 4GIG which I got for about $23 on eBay. Normally they go for about $40 but I got it for about $23 because it had a dead battery.
So I bought a little $6 battery shipped and opened up the case and threw in the battery and she's been working just fine for about two years.
That's also rock boxed by the way. And even though it's a black and white low res screen, it can actually playback video.
You can playback impacts on the Mini which it was never designed to do. You can play Doom on it if you want.
But the player that gets the most airtime over the last couple of years has been my phone.
Whether I did this on a Palm phone, Palm Trio 650 on various kinds of windows hardware, windows mobile SDA and MDA dash which I love.
The T-Mobile dash looks like a blackberry and it's just a fantastic little phone. It's about 50 bucks.
With all those tools I used a Bluetooth redirect application that would take normal phone audio and send it over the SCO which is this standard mono phone call in your ear channel of a $10 Bluetooth earpiece.
But I eventually traded in all of those and now I'm using an Android device. Currently using a G1 although I have a Optimus T on the way from eBay.
I use a tool called Super mono BT I think is what it's called is about $3 these days which traps the audio and sends it over the Bluetooth earpiece.
So I probably do that at least two or three hours a day. I use the music app and my Android phone but I don't know how stock it is because it's the one from Sionogen Mod and I know that they've made some tweaks to it.
And the things I especially like about it and I don't know if this is hacked or if this is normal is when the phone is locked, when the display is locked you can hold the up or down volume buttons and it will go to the next track or to the previous track.
So if I'm listening to a podcast and I hear the first few seconds and I realize this particular episode is not a topic I'm interested in, it's hold down that volume button and it goes to the next one and no time wasted.
Also there is a lock screen widget which the screen is locked but you turn it on and you get the unlock screen. It actually has a pause, pause play toggle and a forward and back.
And I hope that that's built into vanilla Android. I don't know I've only been using Sionogen Mod.
Alright let's take a look at the actual shows. I've got these divided up some of them by the provider and some of them by content.
So the first one I'll say is that there's a few shows I listen to from the BBC. BBC has a long history with radio, high quality radio.
They've just started a recent series called like a history of whatever in however many objects. So for example one that I'm listening to right now is a history of Mozart and it doesn't objects.
And what they do is each episode is on a separate physical object that has some tie-in to Mozart's life and piano or whatever and they'll spend 20 minutes talking about it, how it fits into the story, how the where the object is now, how it functioned then.
How it functions now, what the technology was. It's really an interesting approach to doing history I thought. It kind of reminds me of that James Burke connection stuff.
But they're doing one now called like a brief history of mathematics. They did a history of the world in 100 objects or I think a history of Western civilization in 100 objects.
You know they might start with a Venus of Villain d'Or for whatever. Good stuff. Another show that I get off of BBC is called Americana which is basically a British take on American culture and events.
So if you are an American listener of the hacker public radio show you might be interested to hear the viewpoint of British folks on the American scene here on the ground. I think it's extremely interesting.
I also listen to In Our Time which is a show with Melvin Bragg and he normally invites on several academics and they discuss historical topics. But it's not super dense. It is usually accessible to the interested laymen. You won't get bogged down. I mean they'll it's actually something that normal people could listen to if you're interested in history.
So I think that's really quite good. On that same vein there's another show called Thinking Allowed and another show called Analysis. And I think both of those are worth a look. And I would be remiss if I did not mention the archers.
The archers is the longest running drama of any kind anywhere in the world apparently broadcast drama I should say. And it just went through in January it's 60th year of being on the air.
The archers is a 10 minute show six days a week and it's I don't want to say soap opera but it's a serialized drama in this little semi rural town. It's a good show. It really is and I don't like dramas for the most part. I don't like modern TV dramas and there's not much at all radio drama to speak of anymore.
But this is really worth the 10 minutes a day. A lot of interesting characters. Some people that you'll recognize from like British sitcoms and things like that.
Pull down a 10 minute episode and see if you like it or not. I've been listening about a year and I really like it across the pond over here on our side.
I also listen to the CBC and a couple of different shows that I listen to would be ideas and ideas tends to be a more academic abstract show.
Probably less accessible to Lehman but HPR listeners I think have the raw horse power to hold on tight and not get thrown by that horse.
But if you have an interest in intellectual history or philosophy and that kind of thing I would say ideas is a neat thing to listen to.
CBC also has a show called Listeners Choice which shows that are voted on by the listeners and so basically you get the most popular show of the day or I think it's maybe the week I don't remember.
There's a track of the day CBC track of the day and it is a new song five days a week I think and there's a little intro. They have different people hosting it and they list a song that they really like.
And I would say that most of it I don't like but each segment is only three or four minutes long it's a length of a song.
So if you don't like the song just fast forward to the next one keep on going. I've found some really great stuff on that show though.
The last CBC show I'll bring up is Quarks and Quarks which is a pop science show out of Canada.
It's a weekly show so you'll be familiar with a water cooler discussion about what's happened in the week science wise at least the important stuff.
It's been an hour long I think maybe an hour and a half and they have many segments not all of which I'm interested in.
So they have a regular feed and a segmented show feed which is each one of the segments of the show is sent out as a separate MP3 file.
So if you don't like that topic you just hit fast forward and it goes and next we do you know why whales sleep on the bottom of the ocean or whatever and then you can just kind of find one that you like.
On to NPR. NPR shows that I listen to are planet money first of all amazing amazing show and I don't even like finance but they really go out of their way to make it understandable and make it interesting.
Some of the best radio I have heard in the last year has been on planet money.
If you take one suggestion from this little episode I'm doing right now is go download a planet money episode and see if you like it because I think it's fantastic.
Before planet money for several years now there's been a show called Marketplace and it has a lot to do with the stock market and stuff but usually at the beginning of each of the half hour shows.
They discuss something that's happening in the economy and how it relates to to reality around us.
For example they might talk about you know bacon at the store and how bacon prices are fluctuating and then trace that back through you know hog belly futures and the price of corn going up because something happened over here.
So the price of pork just kind of flows all the way through the system so they'll take you through that whole thing and I feel like I understand the financial news better having listened to Marketplace.
Freconomics radio is another podcast on NPR and if you like the Freconomics book or column you would want to pick up Freconomics radio.
It's not super regular I don't know if it's every week or not I don't hear it that often but it's usually quite good.
Here's another one I'll throw at you it's kind of a fluke deal it's called the business from NPR and it's about the Hollywood business now I'm not a big movie person I haven't gone to the movie in years but they dissect the underlying economics behind movies you know who gets hired for these roles.
How do movies make profits or not make profits how does that whole thing work money wise and I just think that's completely fascinating.
I listen to a few political podcasts most of them tend to be shows with several people on them and they discuss them kind of like the Sunday morning panel shows I don't particularly like one guy ranting type shows.
The first one I listen to is a Kato Daily Podcast C-A-T-O and it's from the Kato Foundation and I think that they are center right libertarian Austrian economic types.
I find some interesting insight there some some of it frustrates me but I think it's worth listening to certainly for free.
The next one is KCRW's left right and center which has traditionally three or four people from across the spectrum.
There's also a show called It's All Politics on NPR the couple of guys and it's really funny it's insightful but it's also just a lot of fun to listen to.
So I pull then a test test show that and see if you like it.
Under tech I listen to Android Central Podcast which is pretty good show about Android platform.
I listen to this week in Google which is from Leo Laporte and he has the delightful Gina Drapani on there and some of the people I don't remember kind of come and go but I think it's good on keeping track of kind of Googley stuff and also cloud computing in general.
So I think it's a good show.
I listen to autoblog which is the autoblog.com podcast and it is fantastic about cars.
Good dynamics between the people they know what they're doing they enjoy it if you have any interest at all in cars I would check out autoblog.
On the Linux front I listen to Linux outlaws if you haven't heard it before is a German fellow and a fellow from the UK and they record shows over Skype.
They tend to be quite long over an hour once a week but it can be very very good it can also be a little frustrating both Dan and Fab the hosts have identical accounts but be careful if you subscribe to Fab which is at Fab sh
because the guy dense like a madman and you'll have 50 things an hour from him so I never could stay subscribe.
And also here's a delightful little technical podcast out of the University of Houston it's called engines of our ingenuity and it's a little like 60 second 90 second podcast most every day and it's about like engineering history of engineering and devices that have changed how we live our life is good stuff.
All right I have a miscellaneous column here the first one in my miscellaneous column is called new books in history and it's by a history professor and he is generally speaking interviewing other history professors about historical books and publications.
Now sometimes he interviews popular non academic historians but unless you are interested in the academic side I would say this is probably not for you if you are interested in academic history then this is interesting.
He tips his hand and discusses a lot of what happens in academic publishing and how things work you know in the faculty and the politics of being in a university.
Interesting stuff perhaps the most famous podcast on my list now is a TED Talks TED which I think is technology entertainment and design usually short 10 15 minute talks from interesting people around the world and I would say that a good number of those are really really interesting.
The deal with TED Talks is a little odd because you know they won't post anything for a month and then just dump 20 or 30 shows on you at once and you wake up and you've got an extra 500 megs of show space on your drive but certainly worth listening to.
There's a couple of chicken podcasts they listen to one of them is called Bucky because backyard chicken podcast and the other one is called the chicken whisperer like the horse whisperer only with chickens and so if you are interested in backyard chickens that might be something to listen to.
If you have ever looked at the fantastic magazine out of Britain called the economist then you will be gratified to know that there is a free podcast available from them and they put out a couple shows a week really solid and interesting stuff and I cannot afford a subscription to the economist it's something like $300 a year but I do tag along with the free podcast absolutely worth the disk space.
Some of it is about economics some of it is about doing business in different European cities just really really interesting.
The last podcast I'll tell you about is called the survival podcast it's named a little funny it's not what you would think of when you think of like those crazy survival people it's more about like emergency preparedness and self-sufficiency his motto is something like helping you live a better life if things get bad or even if they don't.
So it's kind of like living like a boy scout you know is being prepared and thoughtful about how you do things and letting ahead and traditional skills like fire making and canning preserving smoking dehydrating gardening permaculture aquaculture small animal husbandry and you know rabbits chickens ducks that's kind of things.
Hunting fishing cooking those kinds of things basically just skills for living if you'd like to know more about the preparedness scene without getting involved in all the kind of whack job politics check it out I think you like it.
All right well that is what is on my MP3 players in this case my Android device and I appreciate you listening and I hope it gave you some leads or some ideas about interesting things that you could listen to.
Thanks bye bye.
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