I was debating myself on what to write, ignoring all the you-need-to-finish-so-you-can-finally-post-it-after-all-these-months drafts when my podcast app surprised me with the year's report. Gosh, can you believe it's already December? In my mind, it's still November 32nd.

One of the things I most enjoy both as a language-learning activity and a general daily activity is listening to podcasts. I would say I'm an avid listener of podcasts. I have a lot of house chores to go through on a daily basis, and I like to pop in my bluetooth earbuds to listen to podcasts or music in the meantime (so that I can keep my sanity intact). I don't listen to audiobooks this way, since they demand too much of my attention, making it difficult for me to do anything but listen attentively. Not that I don't get distracted with podcasts, sometimes they do. But, as long as the chores are mundane routine tasks that does not require any brainpower, I don't have a problem. I do use podcasts for extensive listening/learning, though. In that case, I would sit down and listen to them on my computer so that I can take notes or research further. So, the yearly review of this podcast app is basically about my daily casual listening on my mobile phone.

The review says I listened to podcasts for 9 days and 5 hours this year. That's 221 hours in eleven months. This is 13, 260 in minutes, and it gives an average of 40 minutes of listening per day. Well, I also listen to some podcasts that are only available on Spotify, so the figure could be much higher, but I don't think the number would be particularly high. I guess it's pretty average for a podcast user.

The report also says:

• I listened to 108 different shows

• I listened to 915 episodes in total

• The longest episode I listened was 2 hrs 15 min

The average length of a podcast episode is probably around 30–40 minutes, so I can say that I'm listening to one episode daily. It's worth mentioning that there are shows like 6-Minute English from BBC which I listen to regularly, in which each episode literally lasts 6 to 7 minutes; or daily news shows that last no longer than 15 minutes each. At the same time, there are plenty of lengthy ones that last more than an hour, too. In that case, I probably wouldn't listen to the entire thing in one go. Although I try not to do this often, I sometimes I turn up the playback speed, between 1.2 to 1.5, when the host is speaking painfully slowly or when I really want to finish the episode when I'm on a time crunch.

I don't listen to Japanese podcasts except for one or two particular shows that are exclusively on Spotify, therefore; said 36-minute average listening time is spent in non-Japanese languages that I use/study: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. This reflects evidently in the report, where it says:

My favorite category is:

1. Education (75 hrs)
2. News (41 hrs)
3. Culture (40 hrs)
4. History (15 hrs)

I suppose that those podcasts that teach me languages in any manner are educational podcasts, so in my case, I devote 34% of the total time for those. Interesting to know! I would love to know how much I spent listening to each language, but probably the ranking would be the same as my language level ranking: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. I would guess it would look like: 40% English, 30% Spanish, 20% Portuguese, and 10% French.

Assuming I'll be using the same app, I would love to see how the statistics turn out next year so that I can compare the result.

Dear God, winter is coming...

Happy Listening!

✔Corrected