|
For list of excellent
audio interviews: see Great
Ones
Converting
Internet
radio into a 'sound'
search engine for
learning & listening
by Jim Trelease
 o there
you are, driving along, listening to National
Public Radio. Suddenly you realize the interview
you're listening to (for example, an ex-advertising
executive is explaining the techniques Madison Avenue
uses to trick people into buying what they really don't
need) would be perfect for the unit you do every year
on advertising. If only you had a tape recorder in
the front seat!
  Cheer
up: You do! True,
there are podcasts available via either an NPR station
or from iTunes, but those are not searchable by subject.
The method I'm describing here is archived and indexed
and available
as:
- Sound files (that can be listened to
(and copied) for free
- Text transcripts (fee)
- Cassette recordings (fee)
- Or you can use the free method explained
below.
NPR maintains an extensive searchable database that will
allow you to search by date or subject. Once the
file is located (see below),
you can freely listen to it, using the audio player RealAudio (a
free plugin for both Macs and PCs).
Once you determine it's the show you want, you can decide
what kind of copy you want. Some stations, like WNYC in New York City, provide
you with a link to an MP3 file to download, but that's rare. Most of the time
you'll find a link to LISTEN to the show on the Web. If you're using it for your
own personal use or only once in the
classroom, you can just record it off the Web (more on that below).
For multiple classroom use or in the library, copyright law requires you to purchase
either the transcript or cassette. With the show's date and time in hand (below),
go to www.npr.org/transcripts/index.html.
There you'll find the following options:
- Transcript
of an individual NPR story
(Delivered immediately online as a print-ready
page.)
Single
transcript: $5.95
 5
transcripts: $14.95
Select up
to 5 stories within 30 days of the first purchase date
25
transcripts: $29.95
Select up
to 25 stories within one year of the first purchase
date
- Transcript
of one hour of an NPR program
$18.00
each, e-mailed, mailed, or faxed to you.
- Cassette
tape of one hour of an NPR program
$23.00
each, mailed to you.
- NPR
Series available by cassette tape, CD or transcript.
Prices
vary, as do the transcript procedures; some of the
NPR
affiliates charge less for such services.
Available shows for searching
The
shows in the box below are indexed daily at the NPR archives,
with most ignored by Google indexing. But many other
local NPR affiliates are ignored by the NPR archives
and can only be searched at their local sites. Four of
the best of those include: Leonard
Lopate; Diane
Rehm; Forum-Michael
Krasny; and OnPoint-Tom
Ashbrook. You can visit their archives at any time
and pour through the list of interviews and listen at
your leisure. I scan both the NPR national and local
archives weekly and add the best to a master list here
at my Web site.
Click on Interview
List to see the master list of links to
authors and educator interviews available online, including Avi,
J. K. Rowling, Kate DiCamillo, Lemony Snicket, Lois
Lowry, Jon Sczieska, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Gary
Paulsen.
To
find the show you're looking for on NPR:
For
one, you can always use the links provided in the yellow
box above.
Or, open your Web browser, and enter this url: www.npr.org/archives/index?
The NPR archive will open, and at the top you'll find something
that looks like this:
Hold-clicking
on the white area "NPR programming"
drops down a menu of more than a dozen NPR shows from
which you can select one (see below)
and click the
"go" button. On the other hand, if you wish
to search all the available shows' databases for a general
topic, enter the subject in the smaller white area to
the right (as I did above with the words "children's
reading"), then click "search"
button.
A search of all available databases for the subject
"Children's books" turned up more than 120
features dating back to 1998. Similarly, a search for
NPR "Obits" (one of my favorite features) returned
a treasure trove of four-minute obituaries done
by NPR reporters on famous people who recently had died.
Some of the regional NPR stations have their own databases
that cannot be searched effectively via the main NPR site. Those would
be stations like WNYC (New
York), WAMU (Washington,
DC), KPCC (Pasadena), WBEZ (Chicago),
and MPR (Minnesota
Public Radio). Those you would search by going directly to the individual home
pages and clicking on the "archives" or "Past
Shows" page, which sometimes requires a little searching in the
forest of tiny type they love to squeeze onto home pages. If you click on hidden
archive, you'll see an example of how one show tucks away the archives
on its home page.
At the more sophisticated sites, you can search by subject,
but many of the local stations only allow searches by
date, though such surfing can be pleasingly serendipitous.
For example, there are few interviewers anywhere who
are better than Diane
Rehm. Based in Washington, DC, at
WAMU, her two-hour morning show is the prime spot for
national movers, shakers, writers, and thinkers. They
not only love to appear on her show, they also listen
to it avidly at home and work. To the intellectually
curious, scrolling down the chart of her archived shows
is like a kid being given an open-ended gift card to
the best toy shop in town. To find any city's NPR stations
online, go to: www.npr.org/stations/.
Another show worth noting: "The
Story" with Dick Gordon, formerly of
Boston's "The Connection." Gordon's theory is simple—everyone
has a story, some longer than others, some shorter,
but therer's a story lurking in everyone's life. What
sets this shjow apart from some others that have tried
the same idea is Dick Gordon. Few people in the business
know how to unravel a guest's story or make them feel
more comfortable while doing it. An example would be
his
interview with Rodolfo Acevedo who emigrated to
the U.S. from Agentina. He came with the trtaining
of an achitect but the only job he could find was waiting
tables in a Florida restaurant. But he "waited" with
a determination to succeed in America. At the time
of the interview, four new U.S. Citizenship & Immigration
buildings were being built in Florida. The lead architect
is Acevedo. The story is the epitomy of the American
immigrant. When you click on the "listen" link at the
site, it automatically downloads an mp3 file of the
show to your computer.
 Needless
to say, for someone teaching or studying almost any subject,
this database is a treasure trove. RSS feeds (which stands
for Really
Simple Syndication) allows you to
subscribe to an alert system informing you of each day's
programming topics for most NPR shows (as well as daily
newspapers like The New York Times). If you
have an iPod or its equivalent, you can download each
day's podcasts or have them appear for your consideration
in your iTunes menu and then decide if you want to upload
them to your iPod. Most of the top NPR shows
are also available as podcasts. The disadvantage of
podcasts is they are not archives in a searchable database.
they just appear in a two-week list. To see a complete
listing of all available shows (including a button on
which you can click to subscribe for for a podcast),
go to: www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=7060034.
You can also find the podcasts listed online in iTunes.
Recording
procedures
Suppose you took an hour
to browse through the archives, bookmarked your favorite
items in either your browser or RealAudio, and then burned
them to your hard disk or taped them on a cassette recorder
(plugging your recorder's line into the microphone input
jack on your computer). Either the CD or the audiocassette
would both enlighten your mind and lighten the load of
a dull commute or long drive to visit relatives.
  Unlike
text files or images, "streaming audio" files cannot
be directly downloaded to disk. (If you try to to save them to
disk, all you get is the link.) They also take up large amounts
of disk space unless you can store them as MP3 files. Two applications
now allow you to copy audio directly onto your hard disk, either
as AIFF or MP3 files. For Mac users, the program
to use is Audio
Hijack Pro ($16-$30); for PC users,
there are two choices: Total
Recorder ($11-$38) and Replay
Radio ($30). All three applications allow you to
even set timers so any program broadcast via the Internet can
be copied without your even being awake or in town. (Additional
radio recording applications: for PC's, Audiostreamer [www.rmbsoft.com/as.asp];
and AudioXtract [www.audioxtract.com];
and for MACs: Radio
Lover [www.bitcartel.com/radiolover/]); and Ambrosia Software
offers WireTap
Pro ($19) which can do only some of the
things that Audio Hijack can do but will do them for PCs and
well as MACs. But Audio Hijack Pro remains the premier product
of the lot.
If
you have a CD burner, it's an easy step with Roxio's Toast to either
burn an MP3 disk or convert MP3 to AIFF files that will
play on a normal CD player.
NOT TO BE MISSED!
Teachers
and principals are always looking for convincing
messages to share with at-risk families.
The following
interviews on the Web spotlight great achievers
who overcame great obstacles. More such shows
can be found here at Interviews. |
From
Poverty to Carnegie President
 For
more than 20 years he's been one of America's
premier cultural leaders: from classical scholar
to leading the world's busiest library (NY Public)
out of near bankruptcy to president of Brown
University to president of the Carnegie Corporation.
Few realize the humble beginnings of Vartan
Gregorian's journey from childhood impoverishment
in Iran. His story is one of inspiration and
courage, trademarks of American immigration.
(His grandmother should be the patron saint of
grandparenting.) Listen to
his interview with Gail Harris of Boston public
radio's "The Connection" May
12, 2003.
From
Refugee Camp to Harvard
 Harvard is
the most difficult college to gain entrance to
in America. To attain that distinction even via
the privileged suburbs is a major achievement but
to reach it from a Thailand refugee camp by way
of a New York city hardware store is almost inconceivable. Listen to
24-year-old Van Tran tell his
story to NPR's Scott Simon. (7
mins., Weekend Edition, June 5, 2004). Two
weeks later, The New York Times covered
the same story. "From
Hardware to Harvard in a Few Hard Years," by
Lynda Richardson, June 22, 2004; www.nytimes.com/2004/06/22/nyregion/22profile.html.
The
Library Route to Pulitzer Prize
 He
grew up in a working class family in an Ohio
steel town and until he was in fifth grade his
teachers thought he was slightly retarded. He'd
never eaten in a restaurant until a beloved teacher
treated him in his senior year of high school.
Nonetheless, Michael Dirda earned
the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism as a senior Washington
Post Book Week editor.
Listen to
Diane Rehm's interview with Dirda
about his memoir An Open Book and his
journey from Hardy Boys at the library to one of
today's most encyclopedic literary minds. You also
can chat live online (or read archived chats) with
Dirda at: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/liveonline/style/books/dirdaonbooks/.
From
Chauffeur to President's Counselor
 He
was the only African-American in his college
class. His college summers were spent as a chauffeur-butler
for an aristocratic Southern family that was
shocked that he could read. Yet Vernon
Jordan would become a young lawyer helping
to integrate the University of Georgia, president
of the Urban League, survivor of an assassin's
bullet, and counsel to not only a president
of the United States but also to the wealthiest
leaders in corporate America. Listen as
he tells his life story to Diane Rehm (55
minutes). including where
he describes the frank exchange between father
and son when his unlettered parents delivered
him to college, knowing his reading scores were
lower than those of his classmates. A
two-minute mp3 excerpt is available online here
at
Jordan.
Check
out BBC 7 's children's shows
 If NPR
has an achilles heel, it's in children's programming.
By comparison with British Broadcasting, America's
effort is embarrassing. Fortunately, more than
a hour a day of the BBC's programming for children
is available on the Web at any time of day. For
preschoolers, check out "CBeebies
Radio." For
older students, "The Big Toe Radio Show" isn't
as easily accessible daily but its chapter books
can be heard independently at Big
Toe Books. Simply click on the chapter
and listen (or download using on the applications
listed above). The British readers on both shows
are good examples of readers aloud, although
the accents may take some getting used to. Book
selections are mostly British with a few American
titles like Because
of Winn-Dixie sprinkled
in. The book selections stay posted for one week
and then disappear daily, chapter by chapter.
This allows people who miss a particular day's
broadcast to catch up later. |
CAUTION:
Avoid listening to this while driving!
While
humor is not NPR's long suit, it does occasionally
surface.  My
personal all-time favorite was Scott
Simon's "Weekend Edition" interview
in 2003 with Dame Edna Everage (that
outrageous champion of political incorrectness
created by female impersonator Barry
Humphries). Half the fun of this 30-minute
interview is listening to Scott Simon falling
off his chair with laughter. Having been forewarned
(so don't blame me), the audio link
is:
www.npr.org/ramfiles/wesat/20030125.wesat.dameedna. |
A fast-growing
download option!
 Anyone
observing the behavior of commuters in the
USA would declare it a "drive-time audio
nation." Even among those who are commuting
solely as passengers, increasing numbers are
now hooked up to portable audio devices, with
MP3 players in the fastest-growing category.Add
to this audience the hundreds of thousands
who drive long haul trucks, as well as the
millions who exercise regularly, one sees immediately
the huge potential for the U.S. to become a "downloaded" nation.
One company has moved to the front in this
regard — audible.com.
After only a few years in business, this New
Jersey-based company is offering spoken word
products from 165 publishers, amounting to
45,000 hours of valuable spoken word audio,
and its customer base is now at more than 350,000.
Not only is audible.com offering
standard audio fare like popular novels, but
also a broad array of NPR programming like "All
things Considered," "Prairie Home
Companion", and "Car Talk" — all
available for download as MP3 files for either
Mac or PC and each can be uploaded to your
MP3 player for on-the-go listening. |
Before
there were iPods or NPR, there was 'Old Time Radio'
  ne of my favorite things to do when my
children were growing up in the
70's was to gather them around the stereo
or tape deck and listen to old time radio dramas
on albums or audiocassette. It stimulated their
imaginations far better than anything they
saw on television, since radio
required the listener to imagine how everyone
looked, how they were dressed, and even what
they were doing. That could amount to a lot
of mental effort in just one episode of "The
Lone Ranger" or "The
Green Hornet."
Now
for the good news: Thousands of those old shows
are now available on MP3 disks that can be
either uploaded to an iPod, played on common
CD/MP3 players, or converted to regular CD's
with the applications listed
above. For
example, as many as 43 hours (90 shows) of "The
Lone Ranger" on one CD can be
bought for just for just $5 (less than 6 cents
a show). Check out the mammoth listing of old-time
radio shows at: OTR
Catalog. |
BBC—the
world's leading 'publisher' of original fiction
  ost people's
idea of the BBC is through Public Broadcasting
offerings of "Masterpiece Theater" and
the like. The rich world of BBC radio is lost
on such people and that's a shame. The BBC leads
the world in the commissioning of original fiction,
offering more than seven hours a day of readings
and dramas. The selection dwarfs anything NPR
could dream of doing here. There are short stories,
nonfiction readings, dramas, biographies, book
discussion groups, book reviews, and classic
serials. To top it off, the performers and readers
are among the best in the world. To see the full
range of offering, go to
the Arts
and Drama master list and start
bookmarking. I might also add that two of my
regular shows for recording are Last
Word (a weekly obituary
show) and Friday
Night Is Music Night (110 minutes
of live concert music for everyone). Also see
the BBC
children's offerings above. Keep in mind that the
BBC does not archive most of its shows for more than
a week. (It's an island, remember? Not much storage
space.) |
For more on audio books, see AUDIO. |
