May 18, 2025

Stephen R. Covey Interview on Principle-Centered Leadership

Author Stephen R. Covey was best known for his mega-bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is still a bestseller over 30 years since its original publication in 1989. That same year, he published another popular book on leadership called Principle-Centered Leadership. This book focused on Stephen R. Covey’s principles for being an effective leader.

Covey didn’t give many interviews in his lifetime, but he did give an interview on C-SPAN in 1989 following the publication of this book. You can watch the interview here:

Leadership Styles & Ethics Interview with Stephen R. Covey

In this 40-minute interview with Stephen R. Covey, he discusses his book Principle-Centered Leadership and how leaders in business and government must apply principles in order to be effective. He articulately answers questions from the interviewer and from callers across the United States, often addressing the leadership qualities of past American presidents and other political leaders. This interview provides excellent insight into the leadership ideas of Stephen R. Covey.

While Covey passed away in 2012, his wisdom lives on. You can check out over 50 titles on audio & video from Stephen R. Covey on LearnOutLoud.com:

Stephen R. Covey Audio & Video on LearnOutLoud.com

May 16, 2025

Dr. Robert H. Lustig Confronts Sugar in These Five Talks

American pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Robert H. Lustig gained attention with his 2009 talk Sugar: The Bitter Truth that has been watched 25 million times in the past 15 years! Since then he’s given many more talks and published a number of books related diet, including Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine, and The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. We’ve featured a number of Lustig’s talks over the years, and here are five that stand out:

1. Sugar: The Bitter Truth

Of course we must start with the most famous one! In this popular video from UCTV, Professor Robert H. Lustig attempts to explain the American obesity epidemic as being due to the rise of sugar and fructose consumption over the past 30 years. He examines the history of high-fructose corn syrup and how it has made its way into drinks like soda, fruit juice, and sports drinks, along with many foods. He goes into a detailed biochemistry explanation of how fructose is converted into fat, and why he feels fructose is a poison with many of the same effects of alcohol. Lustig links these findings to the childhood obesity epidemic since children are drinking more and more high-fructose corn syrup beverages. He closes by advocating the elimination of sugar beverages, the increase of fiber in the diet, and more exercise. The talk is available on online video on YouTube and on audio and video download on the UCTV website. Caution: After watching this video you might never drink soda again!

2. Fat Chance: Fructose 2.0

In the follow up talk to his viral video lecture Sugar: The Bitter Truth (now with over 25 million views), superstar endocrinologist Robert Lustig dives deeper into the physiological effects of sugar and high fructose corn syrup on the human body. Countering the argument that it is lack of willpower in eating less or working out enough, Dr. Lustig shows how excessive sugar hijacks the brain’s reward center and pushes humans to want to eat more and more. Lustig is skilled at presenting science-based research in a clear and impassioned manner in order to strongly convey his message to eat less sugar and to advocate getting high fructose corn syrup out of the Western diet in which it has been dominating in the last 40 years or so. If you want to lose weight, then cutting down on sugar consumption is a good place to start! This talk is available to watch on YouTube from the UCTV channel and on MP3 audio download from the UCTV website. It has a lot of visual aids from Dr. Lustig’s slides that accompany his talk so we recommend watching it.

3. The Skinny on Obesity

Watch this great new series from UCTV Prime called “The Skinny on Obesity”. This 7-episode series (lasting one hour total) features Dr. Robert Lustig and two of his UCSF colleagues who look at the obesity epidemic and what has been driving it in the last 30 years. Dr. Lustig’s previous UCTV video Sugar: The Bitter Truth went viral and has received over 25 million views to date.

In this new series Lustig’s message is presented in an even clearer and more powerful way with the help of animations and documentary footage. He presents the science of obesity, debunking the idea that “a calorie is a calorie” and showing how the massive increase in fructose and sugar into our daily diets has led to a skyrocketing obesity epidemic which contributes to our most common diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. These short videos explain how sugar consumption and obesity have now become a major public health concern in the same way that drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol are through their unavoidability, toxicity, abuse, and negative impact on society. A must-watch from UCTV!

4. Robert Lustig on Sugar

Robert Lustig speaks at Google and gives us the history of the rise of the obesity epidemic as he attempts to debunk the idea that it is due to people being gluttonous and slothful. He goes into the history of the sugar and high fructose corn syrup industry, and how fat free processed foods have had sugar added to make them taste better and have longer shelf lives. He connects the rise of sugar consumption with the rise of obesity globally, and he shows that high sugar consumption has many of the same health effects as high alcohol consumption. He encourages political action in the face of a powerful sugar-based food industry, and on a personal level discourages eating foods high in sugar.

5. Dr. Robert Lustig on The Hacking of the American Mind

In this 30-minute interview from UCTV, Dr. Robert Lustig presents some of the ideas in his book The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. Dr. Lustig is the famed endocrinologist behind the viral video Sugar: The Bitter Truth. In this interview he expands his ideas beyond food, discussing the many addictions in American life including gambling, opioids, cell phone usage, and much more. He differentiates pleasure from happiness which he boils down to the battle of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. Dr. Lustig outlines the four C’s for happiness which are: Contribution, Coping, Cooking, and Connection. It’s a wide ranging and engaging talk on many of America’s predicaments with addiction.

May 15, 2025

4 Mindfulness Talks by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Jon Kabat-Zinn has been championing mindfulness meditation and his mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program since the 1970s. He’s gained popularity through his books Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. He’s also given many excellent talks on mindfulness, which are available on YouTube. Today, we’re highlighting four of those talks that will educate you on the science and practice of mindfulness.

1. Mindfulness, Stress Reduction, and Healing

Jon Kabat-Zinn has spent his career since the 1970s attempting to bring mindfulness into mainstream medicine. His eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program has sought to bring a scientific, evidence-based practice of mindfulness to people suffering from stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, pain, and more. In this talk that he delivered at Google over 15 years ago, Kabat-Zinn introduces mindfulness as a mode of paying attention that can be re-contextualized in a secular setting separate from the cliches of Buddhist monks meditating. He discusses the long process of getting mindfulness meditation to be respected and studied by the scientific community and the successes that they’ve had with it up to that point. Kabat-Zinn challenges us to try out this mode of being in the present moment in order to take a break from the constant doing and thinking of everyday life. If his ideas sound interesting and you’re looking for a place to start practicing mindfulness, we highly recommend Kabat-Zinn’s three guided mindfulness meditation audio programs: Guided Mindfulness Meditation Series 1, Guided Mindfulness Meditation Series 2, and Guided Mindfulness Meditation Series 3.

2. The Healing Power of Mindfulness

Pioneering mindfulness researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn delivered this recent 2-hour talk at Dartmouth College. In the talk, he describes mindfulness and its many applications to mind/body medicine. He leads the audience on a brief guided mindfulness exercise in the middle of the talk. At the end, he answers questions and gives some inspiring words on how to kick-start mindfulness programs in schools, hospitals, and political offices! Take time out of your busy life to learn about another mode of being with Jon Kabat-Zinn.

3. Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn

Watch this popular talk with Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living and many other books on the benefits of mindfulness. In this talk at Google, Kabat-Zinn discusses what mindfulness meditation is, and then he leads the group on a mindfulness meditation practice where he provides guidance on the practice. After the meditation is over, he fields questions about the experience and covers things such as the issue of falling asleep and much more. This talk is 1 Hr. 15 Min. and is available on streaming video through YouTube.

4. Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to Our Senses

For decades now, Jon Kabat-Zinn has been teaching mindfulness meditation as a technique to help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness. Along with his teaching, he’s also written the classic Wherever You Go, There You Are and most recently Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and Our World Through Mindfulness. In this lecture from UCTV, Kabat-Zinn speaks about reintroducing you to yourself and developing an awareness of this moment in a fast-paced, technologically advanced world.

April 14, 2025

Brian Tracy Goal Setting Classic Audiobook Free on Spotify

Brian Tracy has been publishing self-development books since the 1980s, and he’s still alive and putting out content at age 81. You can currently find him on the Brian Tracy YouTube Channel. On LearnOutLoud, we feature over 150 of his audiobooks and audio programs, which you can browse here:

Over 150 Brian Tracy Audio & Video Titles

One of his popular audiobooks, which you can now stream absolutely free on Spotify (no Premium membership required), is Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible.

Listen to Brian Tracy’s Goals Free on Spotify

Give yourself a dose of positive uplift with Brian Tracy’s bestselling classic self-help book Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible. Tracy has learned from the best when it comes to achieving your goals, as he quotes from successful people throughout history in this book. This brief audiobook contains plenty of actionable steps towards achieving your goals, starting with writing them down. Then Tracy sets out ways to achieve your goals by aligning your thoughts, beliefs, values, and habits with these goals. The book is full of positive advice for your personal and professional life. Tracy narrates the book himself with clarity, and it will help you get in the right mindset to achieve to set and achieve your goals. For more from Brian Tracy, check out our Brian Tracy Author Page with over 150 audio & video learning titles by Tracy.

March 24, 2025

20 Years of LearnOutLoud.com

Hard to believe it has been 20 years since we officially launched LearnOutLoud.com back in March of 2005! It’s been quite a journey in the world of audio and video learning since then. Back in 2005, I was still popping CDs and cassettes into my car to listen to the latest “books on tape” available. The Apple iPod was in its infancy and I was connecting my iPod up to my laptop to get the audiobooks I downloaded from Audible.com onto my device. It would be another 5 years until I got my first iPhone (3GS I think it was).

When we launched, the term podcast was hardly known, as podcasts didn’t show up in Apple iTunes until June of 2005. We started our very first podcast back in March of 2005 called the Audio Learning Revolution Podcast where we attempted to be audio learning DJs playing samples highlighting various audio books. YouTube had just been launched in February of 2005, so the online video revolution was just getting started.

For many years we sold audio books, first on CD and cassette, and then on MP3 audio download for your iPods and iPhones. When Amazon Purchased Audible for $300 million in 2008, they really escalated the marketing and technology of digital audio books and eliminated most of the audio book retailer competition. After years of declining sales, we decided to stop selling audio book downloads in 2018 and now we just link to Audible on Amazon for about 70,000 Audio Books on Download. Now we stay alive through advertising and affiliate revenue.

In August of 2005, we launched the Internet’s First Directory of Educational and Self-Development Podcasts. It’s been amazing to see podcasting take off over the past two decades, and we now feature over 5,000 of the best podcasts you can learn from in our LearnOutLoud.com Podcast Directory.

And in late 2005, we launched one of the most popular sections of our site which is our LearnOutLoud.com Free Audio & Video Directory. This section features free audio books, courses, documentaries, talks, interviews, speeches, and many other great free audio and video learning resources. Over the course of 20 years, the free directory has grown to over 12,000 titles.

And in 20 years, we’ve certainly learned a lot! Our love for audio & video learning started by listening to audio programs from publishers like The Great Courses, Nightingale-Conant, and Sounds True. While working at LearnOutLoud, we’ve listened to and reviewed thousands of audio books, lectures, podcasts, courses, documentaries, and so much more. We’ve seen great audio & video learning resources come and go as the World Wide Web ebbs and flows.

Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen the Internet change a lot, some for better and some for worse. In the early days, we were scouring the web to look for any new audio books, podcasts, and videos to feature. Now there’s an unbelievable glut of audio and video you can learn from: 4 million podcasts, 14 billion YouTube videos, and 500,000 audio books on Audible. While the technology and sheer amount of educational audio & video has changed significantly, our mission to showcase the best audio & video learning content on the web hasn’t changed much. We’re still searching the web to try to find the best audio & video resources out there that you can learn from.