The Folkways Collection is a downloadable, 24-part podcast series that "explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)."
posted by Miko on Feb 16, 2009 - 27 comments

2009 marks not only the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species* but the 200^th anniversary of his birth as well. To celebrate, BBC Radio 4 presents a special series of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time exploring Darwin's life and work: Episode 1 explores Darwin's unhappy childhood, his time at Cambridge University and his failure to become a priest, episode 2 focuses on Darwin's round the world voyage on the Beagle and the objects and the ideas he bought back, episode 3 looks at the publication of Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, and the controversy it stirred, and episode 4 is set in Down House where Darwin lived out the final years of his life and which became both family home and experiment lab. [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand on Jan 8, 2009 - 14 comments

The recent passing of Studs Terkel sparked a renewed interest in his interview projects, like Working, Race, and Hard Times. But Studs was not just a broadcaster who liked people; he was a practitioner of oral history, a method of gathering information about the past through preserving individual recollections. It's a subfield of history, with its own ethics, techniques, professional literature, uses, and limitations. Learn how to collect and share oral histories yourself, from interviewing to recording and getting clearances to preserving and disseminating. Oral histories have been preserved as text transcripts for decades; now digital media isreinvigorating the form, bringing new ease to recording and wider opportunities for the public to see and hear the content. Explore oral history projects on the web with stories of veterans, suffragists, Tibetans, jazz cats, Nevada nuclear test site witnesses, Basque Americans, rodeo cowboys and cowgirls, musicians, Katrina survivors, ACT UP activists, Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge, Native Americans, women whose lives were affected by the Pill, survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire,women in World War II, Hawai'ians, workers in Paterson, NJ....
posted by Miko on Dec 11, 2008 - 20 comments

Sound glimpses into the past. The Phonogrammarchiv was founded in 1899 and is the oldest audiovisual research archive in the world. There are some fascinating sound samples listenable online from the Historical Collections-1899 to 1950, including: The First Expeditions 1901 to Croatia, Brazil and the Isle of Lesbos; Zulu Recordings 1908; Papua New Guinea (1904-1909) and some lovely recordings of old Musical Boxes from Vienna and Prague. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Sep 24, 2008 - 7 comments

The first known recording of a digital computer playing music, recorded by the BBC in 1951. The music played on a Ferantti Mark 1, one of the first commercial general-use computers, and was entered via punchtape and played on a speaker usually used for making clicks and tones to indicate program progress.
posted by Artw on Jun 18, 2008 - 14 comments

Illustrated Histories of Various Recording Technologies
posted by carter on Apr 22, 2008 - 13 comments

NPR: 'My Lobotomy'
In 1960, Howar Dully was a badly behaved 12-year-old. He was lobotomized with an icepick (as were hundreds of others) and talks about it on this radio show. See also.
posted by Tlogmer on Nov 16, 2005 - 49 comments

Ignition sequence starts ... A spoken word documentary album of the flight of Apollo 11 to the moon. Dramatic - evocative - the right stuff. Provided by Hepcat Willy.
posted by carter on Sep 13, 2005 - 9 comments

Henry Jacobs is, a unique and mostly forgotten (but recently reissued) sound artist and humorist, an inventor of surround sound and, apparently, really really good at left handed ping-pong.
posted by gilgamix on Aug 23, 2005 - 6 comments

What's so funny?
posted by gilgamix on Aug 9, 2005 - 9 comments

Voices from the Days of Slavery. A collection of audio recordings made between 1932 and 1975 of African Americans known to have once been slaves. Hear Isom Moseley describe how he used to make soap, and express his opinion of the "white folks" who owned and ran the plantation where he was held. Wallace Quarterman describes his experience as a freed man in Georgia, and recounts the violent atmosphere of the Reconstruction South. Aunt Phoebe Boyd describes the demands of agricultural work. Even more narratives are available as transcripts from the companion exhibit, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 (linked to previously on Metafilter here), though some of these were unfortunately edited selectively.
posted by profwhat on Jan 19, 2004 - 15 comments

Hear ye, hear ye! Supreme Court arguments now available in MP3 format, thanks to the OYEZ project. Arguments include Roe v. Wade and Bush v. Gore.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Aug 6, 2003 - 6 comments

What's the oldest MP3 on the web? Not the first MP3 created by the Fraunhofer Institute, but the oldest recorded sound that's been turned into an MP3? Audio restorer Art Shifrin has a 1931 detective show; PBS offers some early recordings, including a 1919 track by Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band; but the reigning champeen seems to be Tinfoil.com, a website dedicated to early recordings, which features a largely unintelligible recording ripped from an 1878 "talking clock" recording.
posted by snarkout on Apr 8, 2002 - 15 comments

Initial audio from the WTC. Police, fire, etc. "Please note that these files can be disturbing to listen to..." If your tired of political commentary about this but are hooked none the less, you too can be an audio voyeur (audeur?). I really only post this for historical reasons.
posted by a_green_man on Oct 4, 2001 - 5 comments

Nixon caught with his pants down Selected Watergate tapes & other audio items of historical interest, including the smoking gun.
posted by lbergstr on Feb 10, 2000 - 1 comment