Podcasts for advanced French lessons

Having just been jarred awake about getting podcasts "over the air" onto my iPod, here are my candidates for working on improving my French (I may update this list over time):

• French Podcast ("Linguistic 360: News in Slow French". Around 30 minutes each. Probably slowest speed French of these 3 podcasts, as befits its name. Acknowledging the difficulty in getting used to larger numbers in French, the hosts typically repeat them twice; a grammar and idiomatic expressions [e.g., poser un lapin, to stand someone up, not to give someone a rabbit] segment comes at the end of each program. Text included: summary; outline of news; outline of grammar and idiomatic expression topics.)
• Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com (Around 5 minutes each. Mix of normal and slower speed French, depending on the episode. Words and expressions are routinely repeated to assist listener learning. Spelling tips for words are often given. Occasional dictation exercises, which can be checked at the website. Text included: ~3-4 lines introducing the lesson content, typically ending in "...".)
  8/22/11: I wonder if there is some hidden internal number for each podcast episode, or some other issue at play. I had (have) episodes 835-1212 showing sequentially from top to bottom on my iPod, but subsequent episodes, starting from 1213, are loading (sequentially) at the top (before 835). Not a particular problem, but odd.
  10/24/11: After a sync with my PC, the sorting was corrected for all the episodes I had. However, episodes 1213 and on had their playing times changed to 0:00, and their "album art" was lost. Newly downloaded episodes are coming with the album art and proper playing times, but they are regrettably loading at the top of the list, just like 1213 and on did previously.
  10/29/11: I think it was another subsequent sync with my PC which ended up eliminating the album art from the main listing of episodes in the Music app (which is actually good, since more of each episode's title is now visible in that list), and the sorted the episodes properly again. We'll see what happens after future episode downloads and syncs with PC iTunes....
• One thing in a French day (Around 3 minutes each. Normal "gentle" speed French. FULL TEXT, minus standard introduction and closing, of podcast is included!!)

I found the longer News in Slow French nice to listen to during hands-full cooking. Some listeners may object that one of the hosts is not a native French speaker (probably an American, I would guess; don't know if he ever states where he's from), but he has good style and carries on lively dialogue with the other host (hostess, actually; two different women during the time I've been listening).

I previously listened to my old friend Louis (Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com) on the Zune during quiet lunches, when it was convenient to replay things for review. Louis explains many words and expressions. Dialogues are at normal "unfettered" speed; he explains selected content, and then you hear the dialogue a second time.

I was beaming for quite some time when I accidentally tapped the iPod screen and discovered that text is included with these podcasts (associated text may be available at the websites, too, but I don't normally go to those, I just listen on the iPod). I happened to be listening to One thing in a French day, which, as noted above, includes the full text, so this discovery was particularly exciting. That text gives me an option to just have some French reading practice, if I'm ever in a situation where listening to the podcast is inconvenient or undesirable. Because of its format, One thing in a French day lends itself well to including the entire text (swipe up and down to scroll). The other two podcasts have lengthier content, so it's perhaps less practical for those creators to include the full text.

All of these podcasts are wonderful, and in just a couple of days of listening, I feel I have already learned good stuff. Did you know the (or at least some) French say arobase for the @ in e-mail addresses? Laetitia (One thing in a French day) includes that in each episode's closing, so I looked up what I incorrectly imagined was a robase. Common name for a cell phone? That's portable, which I know now from Rylan (French Podcast). Louis (Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com) taught me that I had the wrong impression of how to pronounced suggérer (to suggest) -- I didn't think there was a (brief) hard g sound in it at all.

There may be other similarly wonderful advanced French podcasts, but these showed up first on iTunes in my search (real estate's "Location, location, location!" is analogous to the value assigned by Google's Page Rank), but I doubt I'll look further as long as these creators continue to produce more, similar quality episodes.

Occasional episodes from Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com (e.g., 1270 - Real Life French: un attroupement) and from One thing in a French day (e.g., Le parc de Couzieu) report that they "cannot be played on this iPod" when I try to download them. I'm not sure why, but it is not a big deal if I miss an episode here or there.

While some podcasts have little value after having been listened to, I always wished that I could mark a podcast series as one whose episodes should not be deleted by Zune sync-with-PC operations. I never found an option in the PC Zune software to do that.

I am so pleased that retention of podcasts on an iPod is totally under the user's control (some info from Apple discussions). An iPod hardware port problem prevents me from reliably syncing my iPod data with my PC, but if that is ever rectified, I will not have to fear that my French (or other) podcasts will be deleted against my wishes during such synchronization.

On my 3rd generation iPod Touch running iOS 4.3.5, processing a long list of podcast episodes does take a significant amount of time:

• When the Music app displays the list of my ~300 and growing episodes from Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com.
• Directly switching from the Music app to the podcast source in the iTunes app as I describe here is also slow. On 10/29/11, that podcast lists 293 episodes.

In the iTunes app on 10/29/11, Linguistic 360: News in Slow French has 35 total (lifetime) episodes, and One thing in a French day has 20, which Laetitia has presumably chosen as the maximum to show there at one time.

After syncing to a PC, in the left panel under Devices > (your device name) > Podcasts, you can see how many times you've listened to a particular episode, which may be of interest.

Although I often use the White Noise app to help drown out external noise when trying to sleep, on quieter (too quiet?) nights, I have sometimes found it helpful to fall asleep to some One thing in a French day episodes (perhaps excluding those involving excited children ;-) ), though I doubt that is greatly strengthening my French....

11/26/11: Under iOS 5.0.1 (I used iOS 4 when I first wrote this entry), I recently noticed that after tapping the FREE button for an episode, it turns into DOWNLOAD for some podcasts, but into GET EPISODE for others (only Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com of the above three podcasts). DOWNLOAD doesn't get redrawn on the iPod when tapped, which speeds up the process of queuing for download, particularly helpful when you're downloading many episodes. Maybe the GET EPISODE button has some benefit for podcast producers?