I'm not sure what prompted it, but lately I've gotten back into the old Green Acres TV show. I remember seeing it when it was first on, but not thinking much about it. Some years back, I heard James Lileks call it the most surreal program ever on TV and decided to check it out again. Sure enough, it was sublimely surreal. Eddie Albert is the only sane person on the show and everyone else lives in this strange semi-reality.
I don't have the time to sit and watch episodes these days, but I do have time to listen to them and Green Acres makes for excellent audio comedy-drama. Since I already know the characters and sets and there was very little physical comedy involved, I don't miss much by hearing the episodes instead of seeing them. Creating audio versions of them is where RealPlayer comes in.
When you download the RealPlayer, you get a YouTube video extractor and a media converter as well. After installation, when you hover over a YouTube video, you get a little link above the upper right-hand corner of the video that says Download This Video. Click on that and RealPlayer will extract the video from YouTube and put it on your hard drive. Once completed, you can convert that to MP3 using the RealConverter. With Dropbox, I can make that file available to my phone where I download it and can listen to it while I drive, while I work, wherever.
With all the shows available on YouTube these days, there's no shortage of things you can convert into radio dramas with this process. It certainly breaks up the monotony of music, books and podcasts.
If you've got a better process for doing this, let me know. In the meantime, here's my favorite Green Acres episode of all time, "Old Mail Day".
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