Audible.com, Ralph Ellison, and a World-Class Education for $200
Donald Katz, founder of Audible.com
The storytelling tradition extends back in time to the early days of humanity’s intercourse with language. Before stories were written they were told and heard in our ears, with characters, scenes, journeys, and the “moral” of tales reverberating in our bodyminds from generation to generation.
With today’s sensory overload, the visual predominates. Yet, since the grooves of our brains are set to the key of narrative, listening to well-wrought tales of ideas in motion and people in conflict to resolution still resound with meaning and the potential to capture our attention, one more time.
Which brings me to Audible.com, based in Newark, New Jersey. If you’re one of the 150 million members of Amazon Prime (and even if you’re not), you’re likely aware of this company that distributes and originates audio content, marrying high tech and the human voice. Audible was founded in 1995 by author Donald Katz, who, in a decade where spoken word poetry and hip hop music were the rage, also saw the commercial opportunity afforded by the Internet.
In my own relationship with Audible, I’ve found many opportunities for growth and learning through audio books. In fact, I discovered that it’s possible to get a world-class education for about $200 per year. I’ll give details below, but first let’s hear the ties that bind Audible and grandmaster writer and thinker Ralph Ellison.
Jazz in the Key of Ellison
On November 1, 2016, Jewel and I traveled from New Rochelle to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark for a joyous occasion, “Jazz in the Key of Ellison,” at the TD Bank James Moody Festival. Honoring Ellison through words and music was the brainchild of Katz, who studied with Ellison at NYU in the early 1970s. (Here’s a short video account of the evening, which you’ll find on the bottom of this post at Tune In To Leadership.)
Aside from the great music, with songs that Ellison loved sung by Patti Austin and Catherine Russell, accompanied by a jazz orchestra led by Andy Farber, the words of Ellison as read by Wynton Marsalis and Joe Morton were highlights for us. Speaking of Joe Morton, if you haven’t listened to his rendition of Ellison’s Invisible Man, you are depriving yourself of one of the most sublime audiobook experiences ever. Really, it’s that good.
Without Ellison’s influence on Donald Katz as a college student, Katz may not have become a writer. His work as a journalist researching a book on the Information Superhighway inspired his entrepreneurial venture, Audible.com. Outside of Katz’s office, there’s an inscription which makes the connection crystal:
Ralph Ellison’s understanding of the power of the oral tradition and his ability to hear the music in well-wrought arrangements of spoken words informed the vision and mission of Audible from the beginning. Ellison was the teacher and mentor of Audible’s founder. According to Ellison, the way the early American vernacular embraced storytelling around campfires, the braggadocio of our salesmanship, and the sound of our lamenting in the fields became the distinctive voice that defined American novels and our singularly “conscious and conscientious” culture, a culture that created itself “out of whatever it found useful.” Ellison loved the melodies in language and he told stories in a voice that sounded like a coal car coming out of a mine. He loved enormous cigars, jazz, and ideas. In many ways Audible exists to honor his legacy.
Getting a World-Class Education for $200 a Year
I’ve been a subscriber to Audible.com, the world’s largest audio book company, for nearly a decade. Subscribers pay $15 a month, and get a monthly credit, which allows us to download any one of the hundreds of thousands of titles online. If you buy hard cover or even soft cover titles, you know that $15 is a decent deal for a book.
My favorite educational content on Audible is The Great Courses series. Top professors in a fabulous range of subjects teach an entire course, sometimes lasting from 12 to even 50 half hour lectures. At no extra charge, a pdf with class summaries comes with most of the courses. Via the 100+ audio books I’ve listened to on Audible, I’ve supplemented my education in American History and World Literature, Shakespeare, Philosophy, Mythology, Science, Culture, and more.
What I found most interesting is that after subscribing to Audible for at least a year, they offer you a chance to purchase three monthly credits at an even larger discount, say, $12 per credit rather than $15. So, for about $12 bucks per course you can access university courses that originally cost $100 or more per class onlne!
But even at the $15 level, in one year that’s less than $200. Take a course a month and get a world class education for north of $200 annually. Audible’s business model and execution is tight, which is why Amazon bought them in 2008 for $300 million. But for wise consumers, the potential for lifelong learning by all with ears to hear, and a little skin in the game, is endless.
How’s that for a fine investment in your own education?
There’s still time to enlist in my course, Cultural Intelligence: Transcending Race, Embracing Cosmos, which begins October 14th. Here’s what my colleague and friend Amiel Handelsman had to say:
Greg Thomas has the rare ability to help you see, feel, and act more broadly and with greater wisdom than you imagined possible. The word that comes to mind is “ennobling.” Greg has traveled far intellectually, morally, and emotionally and come back to say, “We can be bigger than this. We are bigger than this.” Personally, I’ve learned from Greg how to “stomp the blues” and why this cultural habit matters for everyone, now more than ever. Sign up, tune in, and you will grow.
—Amiel Handelsman, Fortune 100 executive coach and podcast host