New York is multi-layered, multi-cultural and speaks with many voices. It makes exploring the city surprising, exciting and fascinating but it becomes all that and more when you have “company.”

What am I talking about? See, the thing is - I’ve recently been listening to a lot of audiobooks, lectures, podcasts and radio documentaries lately. I’ve dug down into the NPR archives, BBC World Service archives as well as the archives for BBC’s In Our Time. I’ve perused these as well as journalism school archives such as the Columbia Journalism School’s Uptown Radio Archive, websites like Talking History, bittorrent directories with robust spoken word collections (I’m still mourning the loss of demonoid in this respect - what a tragedy).

Most recently, I’ve been seeking out radio documentaries about New York and - where appropriate and logistically doable - listening to them in an area related to the topic. What I’ve discovered is a wealth of free, easily accessible material covering topics as widely varied and as fascinating as the city itself. Even if you can’t get down to the Port Authority or the areas formerly known as Radio Row, these pieces can take you there.

New York Times: downloadable  audio walking tours can make an ordinary walk into a mini-vacation, get you off the couch and enjoying beautiful weather (which days like this one make me long for)

The America Project Documentaries

• An Afternoon at Port Authority (2001) - Audio postcards from the Port Authority bus station in New York City.
• Urban Explorers (2000) - Exploring the defunct subways and abandoned buildings of New York City with a group of urban adventurers.

New York Folklore Society has a series of five-minute radio documentaries featuring the folk life (skills, traditions, stories, music, dance, folk art and material items) found in New York State. Fiddlers, wood-carvers, fishermen, polka dancers, storytellers, quilters and many others share their experience and explorations among the cultural riches of the Empire State.

Sound Portraits Documentaries

• The Sunshine Hotel (1998) - A journey into one of the few remaining flophouses on the Bowery in New York City
• Remembering Stonewall (1989) - looking back at the event that sparked the gay-rights movement in the United States.
• The Gods of Times Square (1994) - exploration of religion in the chaos and bustle of Times Square.

American Radio Works Documentaries

• New York Works (2002) - a series of audio portraits of the people who keep vanishing jobs alive in the city.
• Radio Row (2002) - from 1921 (when the radio was a novelty) until 1966 (when the clearing for the World Trade Center began), a six-square-block area around Cortlandt Street played host to the largest collection of radio and electronics stores in the world.

The sights and sounds of Gotham are rich enough, varied enough and - often starling enough - that one medium would struggle to do justice to them. But to hear the city - then as well as now, to be able to take the city’s past along with you as you walk the streets today - well, makes you MP3 player more than a music player. It makes it a doorway to a new time and place.