Passing Time, Not Killing It

I spend a lot of time driving. Oh, you knew that already. I pass the time listening to lots of podcasts and occasional books.

Recent books I have listened to include Mignon Fogarty's Grammar Girl's Quick and DIrty Tips for Better Writing; Mark Levin's Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America; Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain; and Scott McClellan's What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. I recommend all of these books, and—as much as I resent the loss of those two hours from every day—I appreciate the time to use and expand my brain and learn things I would not otherwise have the time to learn.

I gave you the links to the hardcopy books, but I get my reading material off Audible. Audible makes it very easy to download audiobooks to my iPod, and iTunes makes it easy to sync and go.

As part of my Audible membership, I get the daily feed from the New York Times. That's the first in my list of podcasts I choose from during my drive.

Other podcasts are:
American Public Media: News from Lake Wobegon (Prairie Home Companion), Composer's Datebook, Jon Gordon's Future Tense, Writer's Almanac, and Performance Today's Piano Puzzler
National Public Radio: Car Talk's Call of the Week, Sunday Puzzle, and Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! (Wait Wait is an hour long podcast, the complete show, and I wish they broadcast every day. They make me laugh out loud.)
Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Sewing: Grandma's Sewing Cabinet, Mad Quilter, Material Mama, Miss You Sew Much, Sew Chick, Sew Forth Now, Stitch by Stitch (I'm still sorting through these to see which I'm going to continue to subscribe to and which I'm going to drop. Some are extremely amateurish—ear-hurtingly so—and some are filled with great information.
The Splendid Table
The Accidental Creative (This was recommended by my cubemate Keith, who has a commute just a little shorter than mine and also fills his time with podcasts.)

I also download a few vodcasts (video podcasts), but do not watch them while driving! These are:
PBS Great Performances;
DIY Style;
The Larry King Podcast;
New Yorker - Conference Video; and
What Makes It Great, with Rob Kapilow

So there you go. If you're looking for some good and/or fun stuff with which to feed your mind, try some of these.

In a future post, I'll tell you the blogs I read on a regular basis.

Gee, it's amazing there's any time left in the day with so much fodder for thought flying around cyberspace!

<Footnote>If you've never listened to a podcast before, let me share some info. I will assume your computer has iTunes installed. If not, go to the iTunes home page to download and install it. You can then click on iTunes Store, then on the Podcasts link within the iTunes Store navigation section. You can browse the available podcasts, or you can stick a search term (e.g. football, cooking, fiction, poetry, comedy—whatever your interest may be) into the search bar in the upper right, and you'll see a list of available podcasts. Most are free. Just click on one that grabs your interest, then click the Subscribe button.

There are other podcast catchers, and I'm sure Tyler will add a comment to this post if he has better information to give you than I've done.

Other good resources are the NPR Podcast Directory and American Public Media's podcast page.

Pretty soon you'll be able to understand why I've been heard to shout, "I love podcasts!"