150 - Review: Season 3
I can’t believe it! We’re on episode number 150. Thank you so much for tuning in wherever you are in the world. I hope you feel productive learning English while you’re driving to work, cleaning your house, walking around the block, or even working out at the gym. I feel privileged to fill the free space in your day whenever that is, and I hope that continues for Season 4.
As you may know, this is the very last episode of Season 3, and I want to reflect on a number of different things. First of all, I want to talk about some statistics I find interesting, and then I want to go over what we spoke about in the last 50 episodes. It’s been two years since I started Season 3, which is nuts, and we’ve covered so many fascinating topics regarding American culture and history. We’ve also spoken a lot about the language!
Before we begin, I want to share something personal. When I started this podcast four and a half years ago, about a month after my first daughter was born, I didn’t know much about podcasting. To be honest, I knew a little bit of nothing about podcasting, so listening to early episodes makes me cringe a bit.
While I still find the stories so important in the scheme of American history and also entertaining, the quality of those episodes is most definitely not up to the standard that I have today. Thank you to all of you who listen to those episodes and have stuck around till now. The audio has gotten better and it means a lot that you’re here.
Let’s start with some stats.
Out of the many different apps to listen to podcasts, the majority of you, 48%, listen on Spotify. Spotify also tells me you like listening to Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, which is kind of funny. I didn’t ask for that information, but yeah, I like them too.
The top five countries listening are the United States, Brazil, Japan, Vietnam and Mexico. So non-native English speakers in the United States listen the most. Although you guys are listening from every country in the world, which is so cool. I never expected to have that sort of reach.
Now, your favorite episode type, according to a survey I did on Instagram, was the expression episodes tied to a cultural fact or story. However, based on the statistics I have, the five most popular episodes in Season 3 were 5-minute English episodes and the expression episodes.
The most popular of the 5-minute English episodes was, well, the most recent episode, 149 – Injuries and Getting Hurt, where I told the story of an injury I got in Brazil that resulted in a trip to an indigenous hospital where I got stitches. The doctor stitched me up with a needle and thread. She sewed my skin back together. Now, there were a lot of terms in that episode, everything you need to talk about this topic in English. Once again, that’s episode 149.
Another one of the most popular episodes in Season 3 was Grocery Shopping, episode 143, which you guys described as "useful." The goal of that episode, in addition to introducing vocabulary needed at the grocery store, was to help clarify common confusion [00:05:00] on products and labels at US grocery stores. I’m glad you liked that one.
Episode 138 was also very popular. It was called How to Order a Cocktail in English. You can probably guess what that’s about.
