I definitely have obsessive tendencies when it comes to planning our curriculum and at the moment I'm completely obsessed with audio. It started when planning literature for my high schooler next year, when I realized that there were recordings made of authors reading their own work:

Caedmon was formed in 1953 by college graduates Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Roney. Its first release was a collection of poems by Dylan Thomas as read by the author himself. The company went on to record other notable writers reading their own works, such as W. H. Auden, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and many more. The label expanded further to encompass other types of spoken word recordings, including children's stories, speeches, plus English- and foreign-language classics. (Source
More about Caedmon here.

History (Old Time Radio at Internet Archive)

To save the audio files to your computer, right-click on the MP3 link and select "Save Target As..."
  • American History Through the Eyes of Radio - An AMAZING resource!
  • Adventures in Research - Sponsored by Westinghouse, Adventures of Research was broadcast from 1946 into the 1950s. Historically accurate, these fifteen-minute shows are highly entertaining and a fantastic way to learn about scientific discoveries throughout history.
  • Biographies in Sound: An excellent hour-long documentary radio program that was produced in the 1950s - audio biographies include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis,Carl Sanburg, Thornton Wilder, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc.
  • You Are There: Dramatised events from U.S. and world history
  • Classic Labor Songs from Smithsonian Folkways
Literature
Art / Architecture