Working in Movement

American public radio station programming can be really informative and entertaining. I love programs like Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, and Prairie Home Companion. Unfortunately they're not always on the local public radio station at convenient listening times. And some favorite programs aren't available at all in the local radio market. (It's the way the industry is structured, but don't get me started on that ; ) That's not much of a problem anymore because of streaming Internet audio and some cool software that lets you capture the programs and listen to them later on the computer or a portable device. Makes those long drives bearable and even entertaining.

Many stations stream their programming, so mostly any program you can think of is available on the web. For a complete guide to programs, stations and schedules, you can't beat PublicRadioFan. Once you've chosen a program to record, you'll need software to capture it so that you can play it back later. On Windows, try Replay Radio. On the Mac, it's Irecordmusic. Both Replay and Irecordmusic let you set up scheduled recordings, so you don't have to be there to capture your favorite program. These software packages perform somewhat like TIVO does for television programming.