Do you know of any audio recordings that may be of interest to utilitarians? Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, philosophy, positive psychology, and productivity-enhancing self-help. CosmicPariah needs something to listen to while he's planting trees, and I need something to listen to on my walk to work. Here are my recommendations (the first two were recommended by others on this forum as well):

Philosophy Bites: Interviews with philosophers, academics, and other intellectuals
How Pleasure Works, by Paul Bloom (a professor of psychology at Yale). Entertaining, but the people on Amazon seemed not to have liked it. Maybe it was the graphic description of cannibalism.
Shelly Kagan's course on death: Kagan is another Yale professor, one of philosophy. His views seem pretty utilitarian. Personal identity is a focus of the course.

I'm currently listening to Brad Delong's introductory economics lectures. He's pretty funny: to illustrate the concept of negative externalities, he used an example of a movie theater's playing back-to-back Lord of the Rings marathons, which had the undesirable effect of reducing sales at the nearby Sauron's Ring Shoppe. Is there something I should listen to instead?

I currently only listen to free podcasts and audiobooks because there seems to be enough good free material that I doubt I could justify buying ebooks. However, if I listened to 40 hours per week, it's possible I might hit diminishing returns with free content.

So, here are some free podcasts that I like. I was too lazy to include hyperlinks because you can search for them easily enough.

• All in the Mind -- from ABC Radio National
• Big Ideas podcast from TVO
• Books and Ideas by Ginger Campbell
• Brain Science Podcast by Ginger Campbell
• Candide on Librivox -- I especially enjoyed the character of Martin the Manichean
• Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot (featuring Felicifia guest lukeprog)
• Librivox in general
• Nature podcast
• Philosophy Bites (again)
• Point of Inquiry (mainly skepticism, not always that applicable to utilitarianism, but I listen more for entertainment value)
• Rationally Speaking (featuring Felicifia guest Julia Galef)
• Science Fiction Book Review Podcast -- Unlike most futurists, I didn't read a lot of science fiction as a kid, so this is a good way for me to acquaint myself with the classics. I don't think most sci fi scenarios are very likely, but the good ones can help stretch your imagination.
• Scientific American podcast
• Short Science Fiction Collection on Librivox
• TED Talks

On a tangential note, does anyone have a recommendation for the best piece(s) of technology to listen to audiobooks on? I've never gotten far with them, partly because I find earphones quickly fall out or give me raw ears if I push them in too far, and partly because of the hassle of making audio files available on portable devices.

I was recently given something apparently quite swanky (an IPod Touch?) as a gift that I couldn’t discourage, which is currently gathering dust, but seems like it would give me the best opportunity yet to start this sort of habit…

Another question – can anyone recommend productive audio files that do something useful but that don’t require more attention, so that I could listen to them while performing other tasks?

Arepo wrote:On a tangential note, does anyone have a recommendation for the best piece(s) of technology to listen to audiobooks on?

I'm no connoisseur of electronics (I don't even have a cell phone), but I use an iPod shuffle with the shuffle turned off, since it's very small, and you don't need to see the screen to switch tracks. My first one lasted about 5 years before it broke down. I'm not sure if the ear pieces will be suitable for you.

Arepo wrote:Another question – can anyone recommend productive audio files that do something useful but that don’t require more attention, so that I could listen to them while performing other tasks?

You mean mindless podcasts? Some of what I put in my list are more mindless than others...

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Arepo wrote:Another question – can anyone recommend productive audio files that do something useful but that don’t require more attention, so that I could listen to them while performing other tasks?

You mean mindless podcasts? Some of what I put in my list are more mindless than others...

I don't have anything in mind (if I did I probably wouldn't need to ask the question) - it seems quite likely that no such thing exists. I mean something I can actually develop knowledge or ability or habits from without it needing any of my concentration. The best eg I have is listening to anime on YouTube without actually watching it so I get used to the language (though that's often quite distracting when it gets actiony). You also hear of subliminal hypnotherapy, but I assume if that actually worked I'd have heard more of it by now.

Thanks, Alan! I've subscribed to most of your suggestions on iTunes. I also don't own a cell phone.

Alan Dawrst wrote:However, if I listened to 40 hours per week, it's possible I might hit diminishing returns with free content.

An audiobook would have to be of only somewhat superior quality to a free podcast for it to be worthwhile for me to pay for it. For example, if an audiobook were 20 percent better than a free podcast, I think I'd pay for it.

Audiobooks cost $1–2 an hour with an Audible subscription.
If an audiobook is 20% better than a free podcast, that means you'd be indifferent between listening to 50 minutes of the audiobook and 60 minutes of the podcast.
10 minutes saved at $15/hour equals $2.50 per hour.

The more you value your time, the more sense paying for content would make. I've found the selection of audiobooks to be lacking, though. It would take some time to pick them out, and you might end up paying for a dud.

I just think that people are sometimes willing to use cheap or free things when they'd be better off paying full fare. Some of my classmates in college would be reluctant to print assigned readings out because doing so cost $0.04 per page. If you're paying $150,000 for an education, it's silly to worry about spending a few dollars so that you have high-resolution printouts that you can mark up, flip through, and take to class.

P.S. The lectures from John Searle's philosophy of mind class (philosophy-of-mind class?) are on iTunes (http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/phi ... d354819361).

I'm a fan of EconTalk. I feel like it gives me a decent sense of how economists think about things, which I think is a valuable skill for utilitarians.

There were some good Berkeley lectures on psych and social pscyh that I listened to back in the day.

I also valued the Great Courses intro to macroeconomics.

utilitymonster wrote:There were some good Berkeley lectures on psych and social pscyh that I listened to back in the day.

Me too, actually. I listened to a full Berkeley course on consciousness (John F. Kihlstrom) and almost a full course on social psych (can't remember the lecturer). They weren't exceptional, but I'm glad I heard them.

Robert Wiblin has posted some links to what hes listening to on his blog http://robertwiblin.com/2012/05/13/podcasts/

http://www.netvibes.com/jesperostman#Audio

I also recommend using an app which can speed up the file, typically 150% if good, but sometimes much more (you can also do this with a program on the computer, although that takes more time).

I reccomend listening at 200% speed.
I listen to 140+ hours of content per day so I'm particularily interested in free stuff.

As to reccomendations that have not been mentioned:

- The Flaming Sword of Justice
One of their episodes is an interview with the founder of Givewell.
- The Compass of Pleasure - I haven't listened to this yet but I want to.
Planet
- The Way We Eat - Peter Singer
'nuff said
- Autobiography - John Stuart Mill
You can find this on Librivox. I found it inspirational.

Many of the Open Yale audio lectures are also very good and free.

CosmicPariah wrote:I listen to 140+ hours of content per day so I'm particularily interested in free stuff.

Doesn't that imply listening at 6 times normal speed all day with no sleep??

Maybe you are an AI with super-fast processing speeds and have been hiding it from us.

That should really be 140 hours a week...

Still not shabby. If it were at normal speed, it would be 20 hours per day!

Is anyone here familiar with an Android podcatcher or (less ideally) an audio player that allows one to play podcasts at faster speeds?

I suggest you replicate the question on the Whirlpool forums, Pablo. A phone app with any brand that could do such a thing would be very useful to me.

I have recently discovered that using the application Textaloud to convert ebooks to audiobooks is very effective. I would actually just recommend getting it and neospeech bridget or maybe another high quality voice and converting ebooks. I'm working my way through Peter Singer's bibliography right now.

I have recently discovered that using the application Textaloud to convert ebooks to audiobooks is very effective.

Thanks for the recommendation! Have you tried any free alternative to Textaloud? I'm reluctant to pay money for software (or anything else, for that matter).

It's been a while since I tried others so I'm not sure how good they are. I don't remember them working very well, though. It's never too difficult to find stuff on torrent sites, though.

I use ASC pro player to speed up podcasts. It is a bit buggy sometimes but does what I need it for. I think it would still be useful if you ask on that forum for other players since superior players are possible.

Pablo Stafforini wrote:

I have recently discovered that using the application Textaloud to convert ebooks to audiobooks is very effective.

Thanks for the recommendation! Have you tried any free alternative to Textaloud? I'm reluctant to pay money for software (or anything else, for that matter).

Are you particularly hard up at the moment? I have this reluctance too, but it seems to be more of a cognitive bias for me than a rational response - most of the time spending money on anything that's designed to increase productivity seems to be well-worth it (Rob Wiblin has written a nice short argument on a couple of eg cases).

Pablo: I've had a similar reluctance to pay for software. But I think this is irrational. Due to the high value of time often it is far cheaper to pay up than to spend more time looking for free alternatives, lose a potentially time-saving product for some time, or use an inferior alternative.

It's available on torrent sites if you are so inclined.