I'll occasionally put the TV news on, since I don't have to see it. I have it quiet when I'm trying to figure something out. I used to listen to a lot of audiobooks, but it seemed like more and more of them were becoming rejects. It's hard to know what to choose in an audiobook. I listen over and over to my Lord of the Rings audiobook; it's 64 discs in total, so it lasts a long time. My other default option is tapes I've made off of a local, non-commercial radio station, mostly of a Sunday show of what they call Americana music, which is a wide variety of types. Happy to have any recommendations of audiobooks or authors! They're switching a lot of them from CD to what they call 'playaway,' which I haven't made an effort to figure out yet.