Radio Ambulante is an award-winning podcast series which tells Latin American stories, covering a range of issues from immigration to bee-keeping. They have thousands of episodes to choose from, allowing listeners to filter by country, topic, and length. Most episodes are both in Spanish and English, which makes Radio Ambulante suitable for both beginners and advanced Spanish students.
LightSpeed Spanish – Podcast
With sections ranging from beginner to advanced, this podcast covers a wide variety of topics, most of which center around using Spanish in everyday life. The episodes are mostly 10-15 minutes long and gradually move from using some English to explain ideas to speaking exclusively in Spanish. The hosts do a great job of explaining their ideas and topics for every level learner.
La Casa de las Flores, Netflix Series
This brand-new Netflix telenovela, already critically and popularly acclaimed, revolves around a powerful family in Mexico City, attempting to preserve its image after the father’s mistress hangs herself from the family’s house, uncovering the family’s dirty secrets. While inhabiting the best tradition of hyperbolic and postmodern Mexican telenovelas, this series offers an original dark comedy twist. The spoken Spanish is clear yet abundant in colloquialisms.
Phone apps for beginning language learners: Duolingo vs. Memrise
Duolingo: Duolingo’s app is very intuitive, is free, and has short exercises for both grammar and vocabulary for 100-level French. Structured exactly like the website, Duolingo features a ladder-like structure of learning; each lesson introduces new material based on past information. One nice feature to the app is the possibility of “testing out” of lessons, which is helpful if you find yourself bored by the current material.
Memrise: Almost identical to Duolingo’s mini-lesson/game-based platform, Memrise uses incrementally more difficult lessons with easy responses, presenting words or phrases and then asking for repetition. Some minor variations are present, however: Memrise uses short videos of native French speakers to help with listening comprehension. There is also a texting-based portion, where you can practice composing short messages by stringing together suggested words or letters. Memrise is less polished than Duolingo, and each lesson seems to introduce less material overall, with more repetition. This may be useful for learners who have a more difficult time learning new words or phrases. Memrise is free, but has frequent prompts to purchase a subscription. These can be ignored by simply tapping anywhere on the screen (other than the “purchase” button).
Image credit: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/duolingo-ios-app-new-bot/
https://www.pcmag.com/review/356293/memrise
Algarabía
Algarabía is a Mexico City-based magazine with a distinct quirky and ironic style. They publish pieces on science, language, history, art, and, according to their website, “little explored aspects of cotidianity.” Examples of their articles (which can be found on their website) include “Position Changes in Erotic Art”, “People don’t know how to drink coffee”, and “The Science on Cursing”. Better suited for advanced Spanish learners, articles in this magazine are characterized by playful yet accessible prose. Their series on etymologies is particularly good; sometimes poignant, often hilarious, always informative.