Spanish On the Go! - Improve your listening comprehension skills with our authentic podcasts

The Spanish language is the fascinating and always-changing result of hundreds of years of peoples, cultures and languages coming together. Sanskrit, the ancient classic language of India, is one such influence. From Sanskrit the Spanish language has indirectly adopted words like 'naranja', 'ajedrez' or 'azúcar' and directly embraced words like 'avatar', 'nirvana' or 'mantra'.

Click play to hear how this ancestral language became a part of our everyday Spanish conversations!

Arsenio Rodriguez was a Cuban musician, composer and bandleader who revolutionized the Afro-Cuban music scene. Blind from a young age, Arsenio grew up understanding the world through its sounds and rhythms. Arsenio was proficient in several instruments and he merged and developed musical styles with ease, laying the foundations for salsa and other Latin music genres.

Click play to hear how Arsenio overcame his physical limitations and social disadvantages, earned the nickname of 'El Ciego maravilloso' (The Blind Marvel) and how his ground-breaking career changed the music world forever.

Have you ever wondered what are those little balls at the bottom of your bubble tea? Those are tapioca pearls. Tapioca is the starch extracted of the yuca (cassava) root. Yuca and tapioca had been staples in the diets of the Amazon indigenous peoples for hundreds of years. The Portuguese colonizers took this nutritious plant to their territories in Africa and Asia. Now, both the cassava plant and its starch are widely-used all over the world and highly-valued for its many properties.

Click play to learn more about tapioca, its origins and how it became a must-have ingredient in kitchens all over the world.

Yma Súmac was a remarkably talented vocalist and actress from Peru. With no formal training but unwavering discipline and prodigious musical skills, she became a sensation in the United States in the 50's. Yma's amazing vocal range was capable of reaching the highest highs and the lowest lows. She got her start in the 1940s performing Peruvian folk music, but her talents soon took her around the world, pushing musical boundaries, breaking records and reaching new milestones at every turn.

Click play and listen to the impressive musical journey of Yma Súmac, the 'Inca princess' that enchanted the world with her voice.

In a multicultural nation like the United States, finding interpreters for Spanish-speaking immigrants is quite easy. However, not everyone who comes from Latin America speaks Spanish; many immigrants only speak indigenous languages, some of which are quite rare. To meet the challenge of finding and training people to assist with these lesser-known language varieties, Latin American communities in the US started banding together.

Click play now to hear about the remarkable efforts of these communities of interpreters helping immigrants navigate legal, administrative, educational and healt-care systems for a chance at a better life in the US.

Camilo Torres Restrepo was a Colombian priest, political leader, professor and guerrillero. These roles might seem at odds with each other, but Camilo was at heart a man who witnessed first-hand the hardships and inequalities experienced by the lower classes in Colombia and was determined to make a change for good. While his ideology combining social Catholicism and Marxism ruffled many feathers within the Church and the ruling class in Colombia, he also became a revolutionary symbol to many others.

Click play to hear about the remarkable life and legacy of el cura guerrillero from Colombia!

La Habana café is not just another coffee shop in Mexico City. Its an epicenter of culture where poets, writers, journalists and revolutionaries from all over the world have stopped by for un cafecito y huevos rancheros on their way to make history. In fact, on this very café Gabriel García Márquez worked on One Hundred Years of Solitude and Fidel Castro and Che Guevara planned the Cuban Revolution.

Click play now to learn more about the fascinating history of el café La Habana and the many renowned characters that have passed through its walls.

Better known as Juan Latino, Juan de Sesa was a man ahead of his time. He was raised in slavery as the page to the heir of a noble Spanish family but he grew to be a free man, poet, writer and highly-respected Latin professor in the University of Granada. As an Afro-European man he broke countless of barriers, such as being the only recognized Black writer of the Spanish Renaissance, the first Black university professor in the Western world, and forming one of the first legal mixed-race marriages in Spain.

Click play now to hear the remarkable life story of Juan Latino, the beloved Black scholar that was almost erased from our history books.

El jamón ibérico is more than a delicious Spanish delicatessen; it's a fundamental part of Spain's history and cultural identity. This Iberian ham is a type of dry-cured pork leg that stands out from other hams for the quality of its ingredients and careful, ancient preparation process. Made only from an indigenous breed of Iberian free-range pig, this exquisite ham has numerous health benefits as well.

Tune in now and listen to the mouthwatering story of el jamón ibérico and learn how it became one of Spain's star foods world-wide.

Rafael Cordero ('El Cordero negro') was a free Afro-Puerto Rican man with a passion for teaching in a time and place where education was only available for those who were rich, white and male. Rafael and his sisters were raised in a home that highly-valued education and knowledge and they gave those values back to their community. Rafael opened a modest school for kids of all races, social classes and economic backgrounds at his home and never accepted a penny for his education endeavors.

Click play to hear about the inspirational life and work of the Cordero siblings and their dedication to make education accessible to everyone in Puerto Rico.