My father was a big time aficionado of Old Time Radio, so I spent much of my childhood listening to The Shadow and Fibber McGee and Molly. When I married, I found that my husband also loved old radio shows. I've listened to so much that now I can recite Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine word for word.  For many years we listened to the old radio broadcasts on cassettes, now however, we can download a variety of free shows and play them on the computer, burn them to CDs to listen in the car or in the living room, or listen on our iPods.

The Internet Archive has a large selection of Old Time Radio shows, including The Shadow, The Whistler, Dragnet, Jack Benny, and many more. They also have other interesting old time audio like the Golden Age of Radio World War II News Broadcasts. All are in MP3 format, so you can simply click on a link and listen to the show or download them to your computer.

My only complaint is that some areas of the website can be a bit difficult to understand.  Most of the collections like Jack Benny, The Shadow, and The Whistler give the history of the program and have a rectangular gray area where you can play the selections. That is easy. Then, farther down on the page, you can right-click on the link next to the listed show and choose "Save Link As" or "Save Target As" to download to your computer. In most cases, that is easy too.

Don't get frustrated, however, if you encounter a page that has a lot of audio format choices. Just remember that the M stands for megabits. Files with a smaller the number of megabits will download to your computer faster, but be of lesser quality. Files with a high number of megabits will download slower, but have a better quality.

Be sure you look around the site to get used to its format. It has enough Old Time Radio programs to keep you listening for years.