[joggery]

Exhalation is one of the best SF stories ever written:

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/

(Somewhere out there is an audio version crisply and cerebrally voiced by Tom Dheere.)

[hentrep]

I don't think this is the recording you refer to, but here is an audio version of Exhalation: http://escapepod.org/2009/04/10/ep194-exhalation/

[joggery]

Thank you! That's actually the one I meant.

(With apologies to Mr Dheere. I haven't heard his rendition.)

Ray Sizemore reads it in a detached manner (reminiscent of the Emergency Medical Hologram in Star Trek Voyager) which is highly suited to the material.

Consider: A monologue. No relationships. No sex. No strikingly new ideas. Mostly expositional. Yet so darned good.