Podcasts are great: I can freely skip parts and jump around and learn great deal of topics I do not know and I can learn how to pronounce polysyllable terms of academic jargon.
My favourite are
BBC has a great selection of podcast
In Our Time: They discuss many topics: science, religion, history and culture. Guests are mostly well established professionals. It is great way to learn how to discus topics and ask and answer questions. The best part is there is no dummy in the shows unless the topic itself is dumb. You can sense how you would feel if you were at a dinner table among specialists. The host is great.
BBC – Radio 4 – In Our Time – Homepage
Forum: it discuss many provocative topics. It is often great but a layman guess often spoiled a show, who ask surprisingly dull questions: no question is a stupid question, often said, but some guests manage to pull off truly pathetic questions.
BBC – BBC World Service Programmes – The Forum
This week in virology: Vincent and many great hosts and a guest discuss virology. Viruses are a stripped down minimalistic entity, enabling to discus many important topics in biology.
This week in parasitology: Dickson and Vincent are great hosts. Their free flow conversational style engages audiences.
This week in microbiology: Unfortunately sometime hosts engage in long monologues. They talk about intriguing topics but the style is not so enjoyable to my ears.
Future in Biotech: It is great but sometime guests were got hammered. It sounds like a PhD committee meeting. Great guests including Novel prize winners. I did not like the style but I started like it.It aims to PhD or professionals.
Dr Kiki’s science hour: Too much psychology related things. The quality of a show varies depending on the topics or a guest: some show are nothing but chatting.
Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour | TWiT.TV
TED: It is great but it can become an artificial monologue where a speaker never face hostile questions. It might be good for learning English but we cannot learn more sophisticated discussion skills.
Science Magazine Podcast: Science podcast. Excellent relatively long discussion of topics of a week.
Nature podcast: News from Nature: good but too much background music.
More science podcast
60-Second Science: too short
Meet the Scientist
Naked Scientists
NPR: On Science
scienceTASTIC
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe: too creepy and self-congratulately
This Week @NASA
BBC in UK has many science programs.
Tech:
TEDtalksDirector : Many interesting science videos. High-tech oriented.
voxaleadnews: Language casting with text. Read out real news in many language of your choice. It is amazing. Good for learning languages.
Popular science:
Scientific American : Scientific American provide excellent podcasts.
BBC programs:
Talk aloud Talking about news in detail. Great discussions.
French:
Evolution, des clés pour comprendre: tres intereste
science podcast en francois
http://www.lingq.com/learn/fr/welcome/: Apprendre le français
http://www.universcience.tv/ : Beaucoup de Français conférences
http://itunes.apple.com/fr/podcast/ens-paris-biologie-audio/id324879712 :ENS biologie Les derniers cours et séminaires, colloques et conférences en biologie enregistrés à l’École normale supérieure (Paris).
Dutch:
http://soundcloud.com/eosmagazine
http://www.radiocast.nl/?sct=podcast&id=163
More audio learning
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Home provides many audio learning materials.
Learning English
ESL lessons
Advanced English:
Just Vocabulary Home
http://www.justvocabulary.com/podcast/
“If you want to improve your English, you really need to expand your English vocabulary. That is why we introduce slightly more difficult words. All of Just Vocabulary’s words are selected from GRE, SAT and TOEFL word lists. Because usage examples are so important when learning the correct meaning of the word, we give 3 to 5 example sentences for each word, followed by the explanation of the meaning of the word.”
I will not likely take any English tests but this is a good program to increase vocabulary.
Let me know if you know any other good science podcasting or videos.
