December 20, 2017

Top 15 Free Audio & Video Learning Resources from 2017

We’ve featured 100s of free audio & video learning resources in our Free Resource of the Day Email this year. Now that the year is wrapping up, we’d like to feature the most clicked-through free resources of the year. In case you missed any, here are the most popular free resources we featured in 2017:

1. 500 Best Free Movies on Tubi TV

This year we discovered Tubi TV! It is a free ad-supported streaming TV and movie network offering more than 50,000 titles from impressive partners including Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount Pictures, and Starz. They raised over $20 million earlier this year and offer popular apps on the iPhone/iPad, Android devices, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and more. Last year Hulu stopped offering free ad-supported movies and TV shows, but Tubi TV has stepped in to fill that void. And their platform seems a lot smoother in terms of user experience than other free movie platforms out there. A few things to note before you dive in. The viewing rights to their movies vary outside the United States, so sorry if you cannot watch these. Also if the movie is rated “R” you’re likely to have to create account and sign in, in order to view the movie. But we recommend creating an account, so then you can create a “Queue” of the movies and TV shows you want to watch in the future.

Like all movie sites there are a lot of not-so-good movies to sift through. To help you find some good movies, we’ve gone through their entire movie catalog and picked out the top 500 movies you can watch right now through their site and apps. We’ll start with their documentaries, since a lot of these we’ve added into our LearnOutLoud Free Documentaries Collection, and we’ll be adding a lot more soon. Beyond documentaries, we’ve picked out movies in the genres of Action, Classics, Comedy, Drama, Horror, and Thrillers. Here are over 500 of their best free movies that we picked out (we’ve sorted them by year) on our blog.

2. The Kama Sutra

For Valentine’s Day we featured this free audio book download of the ancient Indian Hindu text on human sexuality, love, and spirituality: The Kama Sutra. Written in about 200 CE, this work of Sanskrit literature by Indian philosopher Vatsyayana consists of prose, poetry, and aphorisms. While most known for being a sexual manual, much of the work is a guide on the nature of love, family life, and other aspects of pleasure in human life. This audio book edition is the widely known English translation from 1883 attributed to renowned orientalist and author Sir Richard Francis Burton. This unabridged audio book runs 6 hours and 15 minutes and is narrated by Mark F. Smith who has narrated many quality audio books for Librivox. If you want to dive deeper into The Kama Sutra, check out the Sounds True course by scholar Wendy Doniger called Erotic Spirituality and the Kamasutra.

3. 60 Free Language Learning Programs from Penton Overseas

Long ago the publisher Penton Overseas and their many language learning programs disappeared, but they’ve now been re-published and are available for free on streaming audio on Spotify. You listen to over 60 of their language learning programs including their popular Learn In Your Car series. The Learn In Your Car programs are digestible language tutorials offered in 3 step-by-step levels that you can listen to wherever you are, and they run 3 hours in length. They are also offering their Vocabulearn series which presents vocabulary words that will beef up the building blocks of the language you are trying to learn. The Vocabulearn programs run about 3 hours as well.

4. 45 Free Video Courses from UC-Irvine on LearnOutLoud.com

On LearnOutLoud we feature 45 free courses offered by the University of California at Irvine. Through their UCI open, online course initiative they are now offering these courses on YouTube. Many of these courses are in the areas of chemistry, physics, Earth science, math, and engineering.

5. The Book by Alan Watts

Listen to The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. This abridged recording of Alan Watts’s classic book is available to listen to on YouTube. In this book Watts puts forth his worldview, drawing on Hinduism, Chinese philosophy, pantheism, and modern science, in which he maintains that the whole universe consists of a cosmic Self playing hide-and-seek; hiding from itself by becoming all the living and non-living things in the universe and forgetting what it really is – the upshot being that we are all IT in disguise. Enjoy this classic interpretation of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience.

6. Over 70 Free Lectures from The Great Courses

For 2017 Back to School we featured 50 free video lectures from The Great Courses. When we started LearnOutLoud.com back in 2005, one of our main inspirations for launching was promoting audio & video learning content from companies like The Teaching Company. Founded in 1990 by Tom Rollins, The Teaching Company records courses from top professors around the United States in a broad array of university-level disciplines. If you’re a longtime fan of the Teaching Company you might recall Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto that started each lecture and Tom Rollins giving this quote at the start of each course: “By listening for less than an hour a day you can finish even the longest course in just weeks!”

These courses were developed for adult lifelong learners, and back in the early 2000s when we started listening to them, they were available on audio cassettes, CDs, VHS tapes, and DVDs from their website or the local library. Cut to 2017 and now The Teaching Company has changed their name to The Great Courses and they’ve now created over 600 audio & video courses available on CD, DVD, and audio & video download through the TheGreatCourses.com and they’ve launched The Great Courses Plus, which is a subscription service giving you unlimited access to over 350 of their courses which can be streamed online, through their apps, and even downloaded now for offline viewing and listening. They’ve also made their courses available on audio download through Audible.com, and they’ve even launched a channel on Amazon.com called The Great Courses Signature Collection which features access to 100 of their video courses (for $7.99/month for Amazon Prime members).

Although they’ve re-branded and updated their service with the latest technology, The Great Courses still maintain the highest standards for their professors and production quality. They’ve also expanded their course offerings over the years from the history, literature, religion, philosophy, music, economics, and science courses they became known for to newer courses on better living and professional development, along with courses on travel, food & wine, and hobbies like photography and gardening. While free audio & video courses have exploded on the Internet, nothing really tops the audio & video learning content of The Great Courses. To introduce The Great Courses, they’ve uploaded over 70 free sample video lectures on their YouTube channel, and after watching many of them we’ve been reminded of just how great their offerings are. For Back to School we’re featuring reviews of over 50 of these free lectures that we’ve watched. We’ve added these 50 lectures to our LearnOutLoud Free Audio & Video Learning Directory and are linking to them there.

7. Unshakeable by Tony Robbins Podcast

Coinciding with his 2017 book Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook, Tony Robbins released a brand new Unshakeable by Tony Robbins Podcast featuring interviews with Tony and his co-author Peter Mallouk. In the first podcast they introduce the idea of being unshakable in the world of investing and finance by not being swayed by the market corrections. Many financial advisors and investment gurus teach investors to buy and sell their investments at different points of the ups and downs of the market, but Robbins and Mallouk encourage listeners to stay with the market throughout the perceived volatility. Tony sought out Peter Mallouk because of his consistent investment gains in good times and bad, remaining one of the top rated financial advisors in the United States. Be inspired into confident investing and wealth from Tony Robbins!

8. The Lessons of History

Will and Ariel Durant are perhaps best known for their monumental 11-volume work The Story of Civilization written between 1935 and 1975. Will Durant also wrote the philosophy introduction book The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers in 1926. In 1968, Will and Ariel Durant summarized some of the periods and trends in history they had recognized from their study of 5,000 years of world history in their short work The Lessons of History. This book is available on audio through YouTube in an abridged format running 3 Hrs. and 15 Min. and is read by narrator Grover Gardner.

9. 100+ Free Made For Success Audio Programs

We’ve been selling personal & professional development audio programs from the publisher Made for Success for many years now. In the past few years they’ve started distributing over 100 of their audio programs through YouTube. Most of these programs are shorter and usually run from 30 Min. to 1 Hr. You’ll find titles from popular authors and speakers like Mark Victor Hansen, Loral Langemeier, Sharon L. Lechter (co-author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad), and Zig Ziglar. Many of these audio programs below we are still selling on audio download, but we have embedded the YouTube video on each page of the full audio program, so you can listen to these programs by streaming them through YouTube. Enjoy over 100 free audio programs to help you on your way to success!

10. 11 Joseph Campbell Lecture Series from the Joseph Campbell Foundation

Joseph Campbell was known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion, including his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He was also a great teacher and lecturer and thankfully many of his lectures were recorded. The Joseph Campbell Foundation has put up the Joseph Campbell Audio Collection on the popular music streaming service Spotify. The Joseph Campbell Audio Collection features 11 series of talks (most of them consisting of five hour-long lectures). The lecture series cover the wide swath of Campbell’s field of knowledge incorporating mythology, religion, psychology, philosophy, and a great deal more. We organized each series into playlists on Spotify and have linked to them and embedded them on our product pages.

11. 15 Free Audio Books by James Allen

Self-help movement pioneer James Allen penned over 20 books in his lifetime all of which are in the public domain. You can now download 15 of these audio books through Librivox thanks in large part to volunteer narrator Andrea Fiore who has narrated most of them. You can download and listen to our version of his most popular work: As a Man Thinketh along with 14 others.

12. Talking Classics: 40 Abridged Audiobooks

The Talking Classics are a series of abridged audiobooks read by some of the best professional narrators in the audiobook business. Each classic audio book runs about 2 Hrs. 20 Min. in length. We’ve assembled a Spotify playlist that features 40 of the most beloved works of literature from The Talking Classics series. We’ve added the audio books in alphabetical order to the playlist which runs over 94 hours in total. Pick some of these unabridged classics for enjoyable listening.

13. The Butterfly Effect Podcast

The new Audible Originals series called The Butterfly Effect: Who Really Pays for Free Porn? has been one of the most popular titles on Audible. This new free series from Audible is basically a multi-part audio documentary by bestselling author Jon Ronson who narrates and conducts interviews for the series as he spends a year examining the wide-ranging effects that free pornography has had on individuals throughout the United States and the world. The series starts with a man named Fabian who launched the site called PornHub which became the YouTube of free porn. From there Ronson follows the butterfly effect of how free porn has changed the lives of people in the porn industry, fueled some new industries, and affected the lives of porn viewers who were flooded with free streaming adult content. The series takes many twists and turns that are fascinating, amusing, bizarre, depressing, and even a few up-lifting. It does contain some sexually explicit language, but in general is focused on the effects that the Internet and free porn have had on people’s lives. You can get the entire 3 Hrs. 30 Min. series for free as a podcast.

14. A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis

Learn how to hypnotize yourself and make positive changes in your life through the power of suggestion. This guide was written by self-help and inspirational book publisher Melvin Powers in 1961. Because it is more modern it includes a information on the medical uses of hypnosis which is now used in many forms of psychological treatment. Powers introduces his hypnosis to the newcomer interested in what it can do. He then gives detailed instructions on methods to achieve various levels of self-hypnosis. Listen to this unabridged 4-hour audio book on the methods and benefits of self-hypnosis. It is suitably narrated by Andrea Fiore and available on MP3 download from Librivox.org.

15. The Science of Mindfulness: Who Am I?

In this free lecture provided by The Great Courses, psychiatrist Ronald Siegel outlines the havoc that comes about when we identify “I” or “me” as something separate from the rest of the world. As Siegel argues, mindfulness practice reveals “the self” as an impersonal series of sensations that form a consistent storyline of who we think we are. But what if what you call “you” is actually not what you experience, but something deeper, and more interconnected with the rest of creation? As Eastern spiritual practices tell us, the path to happiness lies in transcending the suffering that comes as a result of identifying ourself as a separate individual. This 30 minute lecture is a good introduction as to why mindfulness meditation practices are becoming a more accepted therapeutic tool in mainstream psychiatric circles. The lecture is available on The Great Courses YouTube channel. This lecture is part of a course from The Great Courses called The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-Being taught by Professor Ronald D. Siegel, Psy.D.. This course and over 300 other courses can be accessed with a subscription to The Great Courses Plus.

December 4, 2017

Listen to A Christmas Carol Free, Plus 30 Free Charles Dickens Audio Books

Free Audio Book of A Christmas Carol on LearnOutLoud.com

Our free audio for the month of December is none other than A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Listen to the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge as he’s haunted by The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. This classic tale has become Charles Dickens’ immortal holiday gift to generations of readers. This audio book has a running time of 2 Hrs. 45 Min. and is available for free on MP3 and bookmarkable MPEG-4 download. It is wonderfully narrated by Antonia Bath and can be downloaded exclusively through LearnOutLoud.com from now until the end of December. You can also watch it for free through our YouTube video which we’ve embedded on the page.

Free Audio Book of A Christmas Carol on LearnOutLoud.com

Also we feature 5 other free editions of this classic tale, if you’d like some to choose from:

A Christmas Carol from LibriVox – Read by a top narrator from LibriVox named Bob Neufeld and available on MP3 download.

A Christmas Carol from Lit2Go – Read by a solo narrator for Lit2Go.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Audio Book Podcast – Professionally narrated by Patrick Horgan. We’ve been told that one of the staves might cut off, but are not sure which one.

A Christmas Carol from WOUB Digital – Well narrated by Karen Chan and a full cast. This edition is on streaming through SoundCloud.

A Christmas Carol Performed by Orson Welles’ Campbell Playhouse – One hour radio dramatization performed by Orson Welles and the Campbell Playhouse crew on December 23, 1938. Available on MP3 Download.

Plenty of editions to choose from and they’re all free! Listen to these audio books to get into the Christmas spirit!

Also if you’d like to get further into the works of Dickens, we currently feature 30 free audio books by Charles Dickens from Librivox and Lit2Go:

American Notes for General Circulation

Barnaby Rudge

The Battle of Life

Bleak House

A Child’s History of England

The Chimes

The Cricket on the Hearth

David Copperfield

Dombey and Son

Great Expectations

Hard Times

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain

A House to Let

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit

The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby

Little Dorrit

Mudfog and Other Sketches

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Old Curiosity Shop

Oliver Twist

Our Mutual Friend

The Pickwick Papers

Pictures from Italy

The Seven Poor Travellers

Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People

The Strange Gentleman

A Tale of Two Cities Podcast

Three Ghost Stories

The Uncommercial Traveller

The Village Coquettes

The Wreck of the Golden Mary

You can check out over 200 audio books by Charles Dickens (both paid and free) on our Charles Dickens author page here:

Charles Dickens Audio Books