David Byrne’s successful book, Bicycle Diaries, probably would have sold just fine as a traditional audiobook, as well. However, never one for the status quo, Byrne wanted to do something a little more interesting than simply reading the book in silence and releasing it as a download or cd. Instead, he looked to other successful audio formats for inspiration, namely NPR shows that incorporate scene sounds and podcasts.

Starting with the chapter on New York, Byrne experimented with the sounds of the city to bring his book to life. He liked the results so much that he decided to make the whole book a fuller experience, with sounds working in tandem with the author’s essays about his experience viewing the world from his bike. Chapters are also available separately, similar to a podcast model.

Technology had, it seemed, created an opportunity for a whole new format to come into being. I’m not sure anything exactly like this has ever been done before. Sure, there are NPR radio shows with sound effects (Joe Frank comes to mind) as well as ye olde radio dramas (The Shadow was one), but if there’s anything similar out there I’m unaware of it. And yes, there are loads of downloadable audiobooks—but you have to listen to the chapters in the prescribed order, unless you are into self created meta fiction.

You can listen to and download the introduction, and pre-order the rest, which will be released on September 28.

Linguistic anthropologist Flagg Miller spent years transcribing the contents of Osama bin Laden’s personal cassette collection. In the May-June 2010 issue of Utne Reader, we reprinted an article on Miller’s work from The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here’s an excerpt:

The tapes surfaced in December 2001, following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, when CNN acquired them from a prominent family in bin Laden’s former neighborhood. CNN turned the tapes over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which eventually deemed them of limited intelligence value. The FBI then passed them along to the Afghan Media Project at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. That’s when Miller’s phone rang.

It made sense to call him. Miller, a linguistic anthropologist, is fluent in Arabic and was working on his first book, The Moral Resonance of Arab Media: Audiocassette Poetry and Culture in Yemen. When the bin Laden tapes arrived, they were dusty, poorly marked, and crammed haphazardly into cardboard boxes. Of the more than 1,500 tapes, 23 feature bin Laden himself; the rest are an assortment of sermons, lectures, and scripted melodramas. They were recorded at weddings, in mosques, and in the backs of taxicabs.

For several years, Miller would fly to Massachusetts and spend days transcribing, translating, trying to make sense of what he heard.

In this episode of the Utnecast, Utne Reader Editor in Chief David Schimke talks to Flagg Miller about the tapes and what he’s learned from them.

Listen now:
Flagg Miller on Osama bin Laden’s Cassette Collection (18:43)

Or download the podcast at iTunes or the UtneCast blog.

Marwan Hussein was a child during the Gulf War in 1991. He learned to ride his bike while American warplanes screeched overhead. He left Baghdad not long after the invasion and the rest of his heavy metal band, called Acrassicauda, came with him. They were the subject of the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad. In this episode of the UtneCast, Marwan Riyadh talks about growing up in Iraq and the precise moment he knew an American invasion was inevitable.

Listen now:
Marwan Hussein on growing up Iraqi (8:54)

Or download the podcast at iTunes or the UtneCast blog.

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In her latest collection of essays, novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy turns her critical eye to her home country of India. Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers is published by Haymarket Books. In this UtneCast conversation, Roy challenges the mainstream media story of "India shining" and describes the recent laws and military operations inside the country that she says challenge India's image as a great democracy.

Listen now 

Download the UtneCast interview with Arundhati Roy

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Image by Pradip Krishen.

Sometimes great writing is absorbed best through the ears, not the eyes, as bedtime stories and poetry slams prove. A recent episode of Poetry Off the Shelf—a Poetry Foundation podcast distributed by NPR—featured an organization called From the Fishouse that really drives that point home.

From the Fishouse is an audio archive of emerging poets reading their own works; it takes its name from the tiny writing shack that belonged to Lawrence Sargent Hall. The Poetry Off the Shelf episode featured a Fishouse recording of West Virginian poet and cabinetmaker Steve Scafidi reading “To Whoever Set My Truck on Fire.” Poetry like Scafidi’s is the perfect raw material for audio, packed with passion and powerful images:  “You were miles away and I, like the woodsman of fairy tales, / threatened all with my bright ax shining with the evil / joy of vengeance and mad hunger to bring harm—heavy / harm—to the coward who did this….”

Listening to Scafidi speak about a stranger invading his property is especially evocative with the sound of chickens clucking in the background; the poet had retreated to the quietest spot on his property, his coop, to record. One other nice thing about From the Fishouse recordings is they’re the perfect length for antsy lit lovers like me who lack the patience to sit through entire audio books.

Image by Yvonne Tsang, licensed under Creative Commons.