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I drive about three hours a day- a potential hole in my day that could suck the life out of me and any productivity I have along with it. It seems like a waste- just sitting behind the wheel doing nothing, staring endlessly into space. Probably the rest of my family would agree that when you leave time for your mind to wander like that you can very easily become stressful. I need my mind to be engaged especially during drives so that I can stay focused and so that when I do get to school I’m ready for the day. Usually this means a healthy dose of NPR, especially Morning Edition, and All Things Considered.  (By the way, if you don’t already, please support public radio- support your local station.) But the news can often become repetitive, and I need breaks from it, but I have found a solution.

Now basically all digital content has been made available on demand via the Internet. You can get streaming radio- or podcasts downloaded to your iPod (or other mobile audio player) and listen to them when you want to. For instance, I listen to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me- an NPR news quiz that is hilarious and informative during the week. Unfortunately it comes on during the weekend when I’m not available to listen live, so I download it as a podcast. My Chumby streams live internet radio and podcasts from my iTunes, so I can listen while I work. If you are not doing this already, I highly encourage it- there is a lot of great content out there that can really add a lot to your daily routine.

To carry this forward, I want to talk about two services that allow me to get varied intellectual content that I couldn’t get elsewhere- Audible.com and iTunes university. Audilble.com is a repository of all sorts of audio files from audio books to speeches, to the daily newspaper read out loud to you. But more on this in a second. iTunes university is a download service from Apple that allows you to download lectures and other academic audio recordings from professors from schools all over the United States. Talk about ways to keep your mind engaged while you’re driving!

While iTunes University is mostly free lectures- Audible.com is a paid for service. You can either purchase audio content individually for a premium price, or pay a subscription fee (of varying levels) that give you monthly credits to purchase audio works. Personally, I am on the subscription plan, and I have already “read’ (heard) many great audio books as a result. Each reading is a performance, and they have some really excellent authors and narrators. I highly recommend it. Don’t have an iPod? Don’t worry- Audible has 5 different formats that you can download to- so you won’t be stranded just because you went with the Zune.

My father-in-law has just got a new job driving a tanker out here- and we are already getting him set up with these services. They keep you sharp and engage you, all while allowing you to do other things. People have been predicting the demise of radio- but audio content is still very accessible and very important- certainly it is much better than TV and much more engaging! Stay tuned for some podcast and Audible recommendations!