Podcasting

Jump to Comments

The recent article in Cursor about me mentioned I get my news about the Netherlands from a variety of sources, in particular podcasts. I am a bit of an Apple fan (as you can see from the MacBook in the Cursor photo) and can usually been seen walking around campus with my iPod nano (it is a long way to the Tech Management library), so I use iTunes to manage all my podcasts.

I’ve already mentioned Curious Orange [en] from Radio Netherlands. This is really interesting for expats, as it’s in English, and is hosted by an “insider” (Dutchie Michel Walraven) and an “outsider” (Canadian Ashleigh Elson). They cover some fairly topical issues, as well as talking about music and museums. I recently discovered Kraak en Smaak [en] via this podcast.

For those who are can understand Dutch or are learning and would like to practise in their spare time (*sigh*), there is the Dutch programme [en] from Australia’s SBS [en] Radio, which covers both Dutch and Australian news. SBS broadcasts in 68 languages, and the amount of time given to each language is dependent on the number of speakers in Australia. Dutch gets four hours a week, I think. (Another interesting fact: all World Cup matches were broadcast on SBS in the participating countries’ languages, and the same happened for Euro 2008.) Not all programmes are available as a podcast: it just so happens that the Dutch ones are. The programme covers both Australian and Dutch news, and often talks to famous Dutch people who are about to visit Australia or something similar. I once heard an interview with Sonja Bakker, whose weight-loss recipe book will be translated into English at some stage, and learnt that sonjabakkeren (to follow the Sonja Bakker diet) is apparently a real Dutch verb, however I still haven’t managed to use it in my Dutch homework yet.

Finally, I try to listen to the podcast of Met het Oog op morgen [nl] from the Netherlands’ Radio 1. It is broadcast from 11pm-midnight (podcasts are usually available by breakfast time) and covers the next day’s news, as well as longer interviews and music. There are two cute/strange things about this show. The first is that the intro always ends with “Buiten is het … graden. Binnen zit …” (Outside it’s [current temperature] degrees. Inside it’s [the presenter's name]). The other is the theme tune, which has been the same since the first episode in 1976: it’s in German, of all languages.

2 Comments

Filed under expat, media, numbat, tech