I have been driving by myself more often lately since I’m off doing an internship.  As a result, I’ve been listening to a lot of the radio (by that I mean NPR) and to various podcasts.

I always enjoy Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me, NPR’s news quiz show as well as Prarie Home Companion when I’m looking to be entertained. The latter option only has podcasts of Garison Keillor’s ten minute long weekly update on the News from Lake Woebegone, but it is always good. Of course another great show is This American Life, which provides a series of stories and interviews each week on some intriguing topic. One episode in the last few weeks was on the scandal of a famous southern evangelical preacher who decided that he didn’t believe in hell. He has been formally ostracized by his former colleagues and labeled a heretic, all because he thinks starving babies in africa shouldn’t have to spend eternity burning in the fires of hell.

A completely different kind of podcast that I’ve also been listening to is a series of Spanish language lessons. Coffee Break Spanish is a pretty good introductory Spanish course, although I can’t judge how useful it would be if you were starting with no knowledge of the language. There are over 70 free episodes available for download.  Most were too easy for me, but I did appreciate the review on some trickier tenses like the subjunctive. Unfortunately I could not find a good index of each episode’s contents, so it is tough to find particular topics of interest.

From the same group, Radio Lingua Network, comes Showtime Spanish, which seems to be exactly what I need. Each 20 minute episode starts with a conversation between the two hosts (in reasonably slow and well ennunciated Spanish), followed by a review and discussion of what they talked about. Most of the discussion is in Spanish as well, with English just used to clarify vocabulary. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my ability to understand what is being said even though I haven’t had any formal training with the language in (wow!) eight years. A further bonus in this podcast is that every five episodes is a mini (audio) soap opera. I’ve always wondered whether Spanish people themselves are as in love with soap operas as Spanish language instructors seem to be…

I’m very impressed by the amount of work that clearly goes into both of these free podcasts (they also have ones for a variety of other languages, including Luxumbourgish). On the down side, both Coffee Break Spanish and Showtime Spanish feature absolutely ridiculous introductory jingles…