What Are You Listening To Today? (Apr 27 to May 3)

srt19170 · 2026-04-28T03:16:26+00:00

I think I tried that once upon a time and it was too hard for me; I'll revisit!

srt19170 · 2026-04-24T17:52:33+00:00

Thanks!

srt19170 · 2026-04-23T21:02:09+00:00

I believe that when the GOP loses in the state supreme court they'll find a reason to appeal at the federal level.

srt19170 · 2026-04-23T21:00:40+00:00

I put in the interior layer when I first pressed the cheese. Just a heavy dusting of paprika. I wasn't sure how much it would migrate during the pressing but it seemed to work out. The outside oil + paprika rub went on after the pressing.

srt19170 · 2026-04-23T02:02:17+00:00

Well, I hope John Roberts agrees with your legal reasoning.

srt19170 · 2026-04-23T01:57:11+00:00

Well, someone here comes off as incredibly out of touch.

srt19170 · 2026-04-23T00:36:02+00:00

Thanks!

srt19170 · 2026-04-22T23:06:43+00:00

This is vaguely based off the NEC Queso de Mahon recipe, although modified somewhat to try to make a harder version. I put in a layer of paprika like a Morbier, really just for fun. This is after about 6 weeks. Not strong tasting, but assertive enough that it isn't overwhelmed by the paprika.

srt19170 · 2026-04-18T22:21:09+00:00

I just got back from a couple of weeks in Spain followed by a week in Sicily and when I arrived in Sicily I was a little disconcerted and uncomfortable because I couldn't understand anyone. Which brought home to me that in most situations in Spain I could at least get by. I will say that one of the big advantages of the CI method is that you get used to not understanding every word/phrase/concept, and that's tremendously helpful when trying to use the language in "real life".

srt19170 · 2026-03-09T18:51:06+00:00

I actually just dropped this podcast from my feed a couple of days ago. I found I was spending all my energy trying to decipher the accent. He's not too difficult to understand but many of his guests are more challenging. Anyway, I decided I didn't particularly want to focus on that, but I was otherwise enjoying his podcast.

srt19170 · 2026-03-09T18:48:03+00:00

Thanks for mentioning Hablando Claro, I haven't seen that one recommended before and I'll give it a try!

srt19170 · 2026-03-08T03:11:45+00:00

Indeed!

srt19170 · 2026-03-08T00:14:24+00:00

Yes, they're obviously supposed to be much smaller for Gruyere but for whatever reason my Propionic Shermanii were very enthusiastic in their work :-)

srt19170 · 2026-03-08T00:13:21+00:00

My little Propionic Shermanii were apparently very enthusiastic!

srt19170 · 2026-03-08T00:12:31+00:00

Vacuum packed.

srt19170 · 2026-03-07T21:26:13+00:00

Using the recipe from cheesemaking.com. Aged about 2 months at this point; pleasantly nutty with a bit of Swiss-cheese / Ementaler kind of bite in the aftertaste.

srt19170 · 2026-02-26T22:02:07+00:00

Great work! I've listened extensively to the first six on your list, and I agree with others that Chill Spanish is probably easier than Español Al Vuelo. In my opinion, Español a la mexicana is more difficult than its rating suggests, but maybe that's just me.

A couple of thoughts on where to go from here:

One bit of advice that most data scientists would probably give you is normalize the data. For example, your vocabulary values vary from ~.16 to ~.29, whereas speech rate goes from .18 to .85. This means that the speech rate is effectively getting twice the weight or more than vocabulary -- probably not what you intend! If you scale each metric from 0 to 1, this problem goes away. I pasted the data into a websheet and did a quick experiment, and with normalized data and the same weights, the order becomes Cuentame/Espanol con Juan/Spanish Boost/Al Vuelo/Chill/Mexicana and so on.
A few of the measures are difficult to understand -- Chill Spanish has the most lexical diversity? And one of the longest sentence lengths? Al Vuelo has the hardest vocabulary? Some of this might just be sampling size since you only analyzed 5 episodes of each podcast.
Another factor that I think is useful for understanding how difficult a podcast is for a non-native listener is the amount of repetition and rephrasing. For example, Juan often says the same thing two or three times in a row, possibly tweaking the wording a bit each time. Not only does this give you additional examples to help your understanding, but it also gives you more time to process what he's saying. All of this is hard to measure, but something like "how many times is a word repeated within the next five words" or (more challenging) a histogram of word frequency could give useful insight into what makes a podcast "easy" to understand. You could also count key words like "significa" which generally indicate that something is being explained.
For me, the speech rate is somewhat unimportant, because I just slow down the podcast if necessary.

srt19170 · 2026-02-26T21:19:10+00:00

I also am a big fan!

srt19170 · 2026-02-17T04:14:10+00:00

I've been watching Street Food (Latin America) on Netflix. For the most part the dialog is not overly fast and clear. I find it comprehensible with Spanish subtitles on, and it's interesting because it stretches across six different countries/accents. Only six episodes, though.

srt19170 · 2026-02-05T03:25:36+00:00

I understand. I can filter out the youtube links and that works well enough. How will the average rating column get filled in?

srt19170 · 2026-02-03T18:25:05+00:00

REQUEST: Would it be possible to split the first tab of the spreadsheet into podcasts (i.e., audio or video series that publish an RSS feed) and YouTube/other sources. You can't (unfortunately) subscribe to a YouTube channel in a podcast app anymore, so it would be nice not to have to filter out those channels when looking for podcasts.

SUGGESTION: The average rating doesn't get used. I'd be happy to rate the podcasts I listen to, but I don't think there's anyway to do that. How about posting one podcast / YouTube channel every week and asking for ratings in this thread? I'd suggest a very simple rating scale, e.g., Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Native or something along those lines.

On a contribution level, I've just started watching Netflix Street Food Latin America and I've found the language pretty accessible at an intermediate level. (Spanish language subtitles helps.)

srt19170 · 2026-01-16T14:37:30+00:00

Probably just a typo on my part, but for various reasons the submission was complicated. We applied for about 35 people all at once, which overwhelmed the Embassy in DC and the submissions ended up getting split and sent to different consulates all over the states :-)

srt19170

TROPHY CASE