Chinese language podcasts

[wushijiao]

For the last little while I've been listening to a lot of the old antiwave broadcasts, which I think are excellent. They are much more interesting than most things on the radio, and they are made at a professional level of quality.

I’ve been trying to search for other things like that. Some stuff that I’ve found sounds like it was recorded off of a telephone, which I find is too hard to hear when you are walking along the street, with loud sounds of construction, motors, and the cacophony of honking horns.

So, does anyone know of podcasts that are A) interesting, and B) are decently made?

I’ve found two that I also kind of like. One is NEWS茶座, by 炒肝，晓烨. They kind of chat about weird internet news items, a lot of which have to do with sex. The other program 有一说二 by 胖大海 is pretty funny and fairly opinionated.

http://podcast.bokee.com/

Anyway, does anybody else know of other good podcasts? For me at least, I figure that if I listen to a few of these per day, my listening comprehension will hopefully improve.

[roddy]

No. I look every now and then and try to see what looks interested / highly rated on the podcast sites, but never with much success. The good people are rarely regular, and the regular people are rarely good.

What I have taken to doing though, is making good use of the FM radio function on my phone - endless source of random Chinese listening, there are enough stations that you can usually find something interesting. Not really what you are looking for though.

[wushijiao]

No. I look every now and then and try to see what looks interested / highly rated on the podcast sites, but never with much success. The good people are rarely regular, and the regular people are rarely good.

What? Not into the sex life of Furong Jieje?

Actually, I think that NEWS茶座 is pretty good. In most broadcasts, they have usually at least one semi-serious item, mixed in with other entertaining ones. They also come out with stuff fairly often.

[flameproof]

Not into the sex life of Furong Jieje?

I had to look this up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Hengxia

A short description: "On her Chinese blog, Sister Furong Jiejie describes herself as follows: D-cup breasts, round bottom, a 50-cm slim waist and weight under 45 kilograms."

No podcasts though, however, Youtube may bring up some search hits....

How about some radio call-in talks about sex? That could be interesting, entertaining, and educational I guess... (I don't know how to search, leave alone find them...)

[gougou]

No podcasts though, however

In fact, when I checked out the link wushijiao provided just now, she was right there on the front page! This is her page: http://podcast.bokee.com/furong.html

[flameproof]

In fact, when I checked out the link wushijiao provided just now.....

Oh yes, great link! There are 1000th of Podcasts. Interesting, Danwei is #4 . I didn't even know they have mandarin only podcasts.

http://podcast.bokee.com/danwei.html

[muyongshi]

Hey I just want to get everyone's take on this resource. I downloaded one at one point and found myself nodding of when listening, but maybe I just got a bad apple.

The things I am looking for in podcasts is 1) advanced material 2) (preferably) one that is news related 3) can be downloaded/subscribed in itunes 4) (preferably) has a transcript so I can reference it and look up new vocab.

So if anybody has recommends that fit these (and please noticed advanced listening- too many of the other recommends just are to low in there level.

But mainly what is everyone's take on anitwave and have they helped in your learning?

[imron]

Try searching for podcast. You will find several threads discussing this. There are also many posts regarding Chinese Radio International that provide useful suggestions/material. In particular, I found the methods suggested by 赫杰 in this thread to be useful.

[muyongshi]

I have looked at most of those and gone to every resource listed on this one.

None of them were ideal so what I guess I would really like to know is everyone's opinion of antiwave.

[gato]

Have you tried this site below that I recommended before?

http://www.cctv.com/program/jjbxs/01/index.shtml

CCTV's "Economics Half Hour" 《经济半小时》: videos (click on the little icon after the titles) and transcripts of many shows are available on the site. A little like a more commercialized version of "60 Minutes." The show covers many subjects, not just the economy, despite its name.

It also requires Windows Internet Explore to view the video, but if you click on the icon, you'll be led to a webpage, whose HTML source you can view to get the MMS URL.

For example:

Video:

mms://winmedia.cctv.com.cn/jingjibanxiaoshi/2007/06/jingjibanxiaoshi_300_20070627_1.wmv

Transcript at:

http://www.cctv.com/program/jjbxs/20070627/109490.shtml

手机充电器统一标准动了谁的奶酪？

[wushijiao]

I was planning to update this post, and I saw muyongshi had a similar question, so here it goes:

You can find these podacts on iTunes:

-NHK Chinese (10 minute radio news, focusing on Japan and China, but also other parts of Asia. This is produced by the Japanese government)

-SBS Mandarin (news and other show of 10-30 minutes, focusing on the whole world, but especially Australia and China. Made by Australia)

-德国之声 (focusing on Germany, Europe and China).

All of the above are great resources. I listen to every episode.

I was able to get the US's Radio Free Asia for a day or two before the authorities caught on. I'm sure it's only a matter of days before they ban the above as well.

Also, as far as advanced/intermediate listening, I also listen to Chinese Pod, which I think is great because they are good at analyzing grammar points, and the vocab they introduce (especially the slang) is something that you don't find in the newscasts. The dialogues are really well made, I think. I have also just started.listening to CSL Pod, and I think it is also a good resource for people looking to understand the news in Chinese.

I've searched iTunes pretty carefully, and I can't seem to find much more than that.

Since early March, I've listened to all the NEWS茶座's. It's a the most entertaining all around "news/talk" program that I've found. The easiest way to get that is at their website (just click on the blue icon, download it, and iTunes will convert it to podcast form):

http://gb.cri.cn/inet/programs/cz.htm

Anyway, I can't overstate how helpfull listening to these podcasts has been to improving my listening, and by extension, my vocab and speaking. I wish I would have got on the podcast bandwagon years ago.

[imron]

Threads merged. No point discussing this in two places.

[dittonamed]

Not exactly a podcast, but endless semi-funny listening nonetheless

http://flash.ent.tom.com/

[roddy]

德国之声, mentioned by wushijiao above, is great - over two and a half hours of high-quality news and content every day, balanced coverage, and funny German music as well. Been listening for a couple of weeks on and off, highly recommended.

[muyongshi]

I was able to get the US's Radio Free Asia for a day or two before the authorities caught on. I'm sure it's only a matter of days before they ban the above as well.

I am able to get it through iTunes no problem.

I recommend the CSL Pod. There are pretty good and speak REALLY clearly and a bit too slow.

I don't know if it is normally this way but it seems that the NHK Chinese has just been rambling on and on about the atomic bomb from world war 2 and I am getting tired of it. I just started listening to these. I know that Japanese have a tendency to always talk about those type of political things....my question is do they do a lot of stuff like this because they are produced by the government?

[wushijiao]

Actually, Abe's Defense Minister had to resign because he said that the atomic bombs were a factor in ending the war, and by extension, condoning the bombing, which some people in the Japanese public disagreed with. So, I think NHK was reporting on it because it was the biggest story in Japan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/world/asia/03briefs-atomic.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I do think that NHK isn't nearly as good as 德国之声. 德国之声 is as interesting as NPR or the BBC. They report on stories from the Hong Kong press, on Europe, Germany, on popular music, science. They also have one question per day (i.e. "Will China's buying of lots of European wood resources threaten European forrests?") then people respond by sending text messages for the next day's show. That's good because it gives the shows some continuity from day to day. Nonetheless, NHK has some good points. They reported a lot on the North Korean issue, and there have been fairly important breakthroughs in American-North Korean relations in recent weeks. I haven't seen much about those reports in the mainsteam US press. It just goes to show that it is always good to get the news from many different sources.

[imron]

Have the SBS broadcasts been working for you recently? The links don't seem to be valid for me on any of the last 10-15 podcasts.

[muyongshi]

Have the SBS broadcasts been working for you recently? The links don't seem to be valid for me on any of the last 10-15 podcasts.

Yah it doesn't work for me other but I tried it through my VPN and it still doesn't work. I think it might be something on there server side.

[wushijiao]

Have the SBS broadcasts been working for you recently?

No, I can't get it either, and since Muyongshi can get Radio Free Asia (which I am pretty sure is banned now), it seems that it must be a problem on their end. Radio Free Asia tries to load for about 20 seconds, and then times out. That same thing happened with other "bad" websites, like some of the Tibetan ones. SBS, in contrast, only tries for about 5 seconds, and then times out. I don't know.

[imron]

It all seems fine now for me. If you're using iTunes, make sure you delete any existing podcasts that are displayed but not downloaded, then refresh the list.