David Givens, a compliance engineer with Cisco, is sometimes touted as the man with the world’s longest commute. Every day he drives halfway across California from his beloved home in Mariposa, near Yosemite, to his workplace in San Jose: a 372-mile round trip, lasting more than seven hours. His commuting week alone is a French working week. So what does he do with all this time alone in the car?

Mainly he listens to the radio. “It’s mostly [satellite radio] with old-time radio shows, various serial episode books and stories and, of course, traffic reports,” he says. “Very little music, but some country and western.” He also invests some of his commuting week in audio books.