Cayendo en Rabbit Holes

Cayendo en Rabbit Holes
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Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Each episode, Rui (an intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (a native Spanish teacher) sit down for a real, unscripted conversation in Spanish. No scripts, no simplification — just authentic discussion that goes wherever it goes. Mistakes, corrections, and natural learning moments are all left in. If you're learning Spanish and tired of content that feels too polished or too slow, this is for you. Real conversation. Real errors. Real progress. New episodes every Monday.

  1. Sep 28

    Episode #36: The Word 'But', Compliment Sandwiches & Playing To Your Strength | Intermediate Spanish

    Roberto has a theory about the word "but." Whatever you say before it gets erased by whatever comes after. "You're beautiful, you're smart, you're kind, but…" — everyone braces for the shoe to drop, and the shoe always drops. In this week's rabbit hole, Rui and Roberto start with one small linguistic observation and wander through the entire toolkit of everyday persuasion — compliment sandwiches, subconscious gestures, the fuzzy line between good communication and manipulation — before landing on a much bigger question: what's the one thing you should actually spend your life getting good at? In this episode of Cayendo en Rabbit Holes, Rui (intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (native Spanish teacher) test whether the "but" effect can be flipped by leading with the bad news first, and land on the classic compliment sandwich (positive → negative → positive) as a way to give feedback without wrecking someone. Roberto walks through the tiny persuasion cues he's picked up from years of reading Robert Greene — palm up vs. palm down when you wipe your face, wearing a watch to signal reliability — and Rui pushes back on where the line between persuasion and manipulation actually sits. They cover the sad flip in relationships (the trait that first attracted your partner is often the same one they later complain about), Nietzsche's pragmatic take on moral priorities, and Roberto's own habit of using distance instead of confrontation. From there it opens into a longer thread on personality types: the analytical/cold person and the charismatic one can both succeed, and the real rule is "play to your strengths." Roberto shares a study he read years ago that has stuck with him — successful adults tend to be people whose parents doubled down on their childhood strengths, while unsuccessful ones had parents who tried to patch up their weaknesses. They close on the modern specialization landscape (Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters) and the small mercy that Rui has never needed to recall chemistry nomenclature at his engineering job. Plus, two enormous personal-life updates: Rui defends his PhD thesis in ten days, and Roberto is launching his own online English school this Monday — quieroaprenderingles.com.mx. 🎧 Listen on other platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kqxHxyZbyK00qPxB3NIGJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cayendo-en-rabbit-holes/id1866466665 📝 Annotated scripts with error tracking and vocabulary notes: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/CayendoenRabbitHoles 👨‍🏫 Take lessons with Roberto: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robelprofesor Roberto's English school: https://quieroaprenderingles.com.mx 📱 Follow us: TikTok: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles Instagram: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles

  2. Sep 21

    Episode #35: The 90-10 Fallacy & Why Initiative Isn't Always A Good Thing | Intermediate Spanish

    Roberto hired a cleaning lady who is genuinely great. She cleans his apartment faster than he ever did and to a standard he could never quite reach on his own. The problem — if you can even call it a problem — is that she takes initiative. She threw out his almost-empty bottle of favorite hot sauce because there was a new one behind it. She reorganized his bathroom and closet, swapping items between them. She cleans the inside of his fridge, which was never part of the job. In this week's rabbit hole, Rui and Roberto start with the small everyday puzzle of how to give feedback without killing someone's willingness to try new things, and end up somewhere bigger: the 90-10 fallacy, and why we so often chase the 10% we don't have while losing the 90% we already do. In this episode of Cayendo en Rabbit Holes, Rui (intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (native Spanish teacher) argue that "initiative" is almost always assumed to be a good thing but really depends on the situation and the execution. They cover why McDonald's specifically doesn't want a line cook improvising a new Big Mac recipe, the Flaming Hot Cheetos story about the janitor whose pitch made him a millionaire, and Google's "moonshot" departments — a controlled channel for wild ideas so nobody's improvising with the core business. Roberto walks through his own dilemma with the cleaning lady and quotes his psychologist friend's diagnosis: "your margin is too small — this is a good exercise for your patience." From there they get into the 90-10 fallacy — the way people who have 90% of what they want (in a marriage, a job, a city, a president) will burn it all down chasing the missing 10%, then discover the new version has a different 10% missing and the old 90% is gone. They connect it to our human tendency to notice bad news over good news (the enormous progress in HIV treatment as a case study), and land on gratitude as something you have to work at, not something that shows up on its own — Roberto is currently reading a Greater Good Science Center book on exactly that. Plus, some quick life updates: Rui just came back from his brother-in-law's bachelor party (his sister is getting married in five weeks), and Roberto spent the weekend at a Mexican Independence Day event at his coworking space. 🎧 Listen on other platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kqxHxyZbyK00qPxB3NIGJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cayendo-en-rabbit-holes/id1866466665 📝 Annotated scripts with error tracking and vocabulary notes: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/CayendoenRabbitHoles 👨‍🏫 Take lessons with Roberto: italki: https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/Aa6HHec/bFBHdH/spanish Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robelprofesor 📱 Follow us: TikTok: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles Instagram: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles — Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Every episode features real, unscripted conversation between a learner and a native speaker. Mistakes are left in — because that's how real communication works. #SpanishPodcast #IntermediateSpanish #LearnSpanish #ComprehensibleInput #SpanishConversation #LanguageLearning

  3. Sep 7

    Episode #34: AI, Fake Breathing & Why Nothing Is Harder Than Acting Natural | Intermediate Spanish

    Google's Notebook LM can generate AI podcasts on a research topic. The podcasts feature two AI voices talking to each other and, weirdly, breathing. Actually breathing, the way humans have to. It is deeply unsettling, because, obviously, AI doesn't need to breathe. Somebody added those sounds on purpose so the whole thing would feel more human, and instead it lands as the exact opposite. In this week's rabbit hole (a direct continuation of last week's episdoe), Rui and Roberto pick apart what AI can and can't fake about being human — and what happens when it tries too hard. In this episode of Cayendo en Rabbit Holes, Rui (intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (native Spanish teacher) start with the strange irony that AI, trained on the averages of all of us, ends up sounding like none of us — because real people are inconsistent, asymmetrical, and constantly making tiny mistakes that a training set can't reproduce. Roberto's prediction: the same experts already tuning TikTok and Instagram for maximum engagement will start engineering imperfections into AI on purpose (a bumped mic, a broken sentence, a face that isn't quite symmetric). They cover the AI influencers who already exist, the AI-only OnlyFans pages, the grandparent-voice-cloning scams that target the elderly, and Roberto's neighbor who dislikes the new Superman movie because "the dog is AI" (he means CGI). Then it gets funnier — the fact that the industry standard for evaluating AI video is, for some reason, Will Smith eating spaghetti, which two years ago looked like horror and now looks nearly cinematic. Rui pushes back on the whole enterprise: what is any of this actually for, other than tricking people? Roberto answers with a nice reframe — the dualidad de la naturaleza humana, that any tool (a hammer, a Barbie doll, an AI video generator) can be used to build or to break, and it's not possible to make anything the whole world will agree is good. 🎧 Listen on other platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kqxHxyZbyK00qPxB3NIGJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cayendo-en-rabbit-holes/id1866466665 📝 Annotated scripts with error tracking and vocabulary notes: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/CayendoenRabbitHoles 👨‍🏫 Take lessons with Roberto: italki: https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/Aa6HHec/bFBHdH/spanish Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robelprofesor 📱 Follow us: TikTok: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles Instagram: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles — Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Every episode features real, unscripted conversation between a learner and a native speaker. Mistakes are left in — because that's how real communication works. #SpanishPodcast #IntermediateSpanish #LearnSpanish #ComprehensibleInput #SpanishConversation #LanguageLearning

  4. Aug 31

    Episode #33: Why It's Smart To Change Your Mind | Intermediate Spanish Conversation

    There's a Spanish saying: es de sabios cambiar de opinión — changing your mind is what wise people do. Roberto lives by it. He experiments constantly, gives things a fair trial, and if the data doesn't back up the plan, he quietly reverses course. His most recent experiment: after not using a cleaning lady for a year to try doing it himself, he quietly rehired a new one this morning after running the actual math on his time. In this week's rabbit hole, Rui and Roberto pick apart what actually stops most people from changing their minds — the identity stuff, the ego, the political tribal instinct — and what real intellectual honesty looks like when you're wrong. In this episode of Cayendo en Rabbit Holes, Rui (intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (native Spanish teacher) start with the difference between simple decisions and identity-level convictions (religion, morals, patriotism) — and how almost nothing is really black or white when you look closely. Roberto shares his "Rainmaker" mindset: nothing is permanent, so try things, gather data, and adjust. Rui sees the same instinct in his research — you can have a beautiful idea, but if it doesn't work in the real world, it doesn't count for anything. From there they land on the bigger obstacle: ego. Roberto's theory is that most people can't change their minds because admitting they were wrong costs them more than being wrong does. They separate two kinds of debate — one where both sides are trying to find the truth, one where both sides are just trying to win — and Rui adds a nice nuance: you can be intelligent and still enter a debate to win, as long as you're willing to change your mind later when the evidence shows up. Politics is where all of this breaks down, because unlike math or science, there is no single correct answer to compare against. They wrap by teeing up next week's rabbit hole: Roberto's cousin explaining that what makes a live concert magical is the tiny imperfections that only musicians catch, the Midland singer dropping his mic mid-song, and the AI language-teacher avatars that can almost do Roberto's job — almost. Plus: Rui is still adjusting to Boston and his new job, and Roberto is in a transition period (four trips to the movie theater this week alone). 🎧 Listen on other platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kqxHxyZbyK00qPxB3NIGJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cayendo-en-rabbit-holes/id1866466665 📝 Annotated scripts with error tracking and vocabulary notes: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/CayendoenRabbitHoles 👨‍🏫 Take lessons with Roberto: italki: https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/Aa6HHec/bFBHdH/spanish Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robelprofesor 📱 Follow us: TikTok: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles Instagram: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles — Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Every episode features real, unscripted conversation between a learner and a native speaker. Mistakes are left in — because that's how real communication works. #SpanishPodcast #IntermediateSpanish #LearnSpanish #ComprehensibleInput #SpanishConversation #LanguageLearning

  5. Aug 24

    Episode #32: Milestones, Multiple Selves & The Fights Not Worth Fighting | Intermediate Spanish

    Roberto had a custom belt buckle made for himself. Five stars on each side — one for every thousand lessons he taught over four and a half years on the platform where he first met Rui. He's showing it on the podcast this week, which is not something he'd normally do; he describes himself as a very private person, and this is a piece of his life almost nobody has seen. In this rabbit hole, Rui and Roberto start with the small personal tradition of celebrating your own milestones and drift into something much bigger: the strange fact that dozens of versions of you exist inside other people's heads, and how much of life's friction come from mismatching persepctives. In this episode of Cayendo en Rabbit Holes, Rui (intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (native Spanish teacher) start with Roberto's habit of buying himself gifts for milestones — the belt buckle as a kind of "retiring as champion" trophy for 5,000 lessons — and compare it to the tradition of engraving personal dates on the back of a watch. Rui offers a nice reframing: objects like these are less about celebration and more about being a physical register of your life, and Roberto connects that to something a student said to him recently that has stuck — "one of the reasons humans want a partner is because we need a witness to our human experience." From there they open the door to the harder idea: the Roberto who lives in his friends' heads is completely different from the Roberto in his enemies' heads, his ex's head, or the head of someone with a crush on him — and most interpersonal friction is really a mismatch between those versions. Roberto shares a recent uncomfortable conversation he chose not to reply to, and the reasoning behind it: "if you win the fight, you don't actually win anything." They wrap with two beautifully practical extensions of the same idea — a BJJ coach's video that concludes the best defense in a street fight is often to just walk away, Roberto's lawyer friend's line that "a bad solution beats a good problem," and Rui's parents' advice for a mugging (give them everything, your things are replaceable and you are not). Plus: Rui went back to Atlanta for a wedding and noticed how much hotter it is than Boston, and Roberto spent the week in Chihuahua at a country festival. 🎧 Listen on other platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kqxHxyZbyK00qPxB3NIGJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cayendo-en-rabbit-holes/id1866466665 📝 Annotated scripts with error tracking and vocabulary notes: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/CayendoenRabbitHoles 👨‍🏫 Take lessons with Roberto: italki: https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/Aa6HHec/bFBHdH/spanish Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robelprofesor 📱 Follow us: TikTok: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles Instagram: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles — Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Every episode features real, unscripted conversation between a learner and a native speaker. Mistakes are left in — because that's how real communication works. #SpanishPodcast #IntermediateSpanish #LearnSpanish #ComprehensibleInput #SpanishConversation #LanguageLearning

  6. Aug 10

    Episode #31: The Butterfly Effect — Chaos, Chance & How This Podcast Exists | Intermediate Spanish

    The U.S. official who chose the targets for the atomic bomb had once visited Kyoto, years before the war, and fallen in love with a garden there. When it came time to make the decision, he pulled Kyoto off the list and put Nagasaki in its place. Because of one trip years earlier, millions of lives were rerouted forever. In this week's rabbit hole, Rui and Roberto pull apart the butterfly effect — how the tiniest, most invisible choices set off chains of consequence, and how far back those chains stretch in every direction, including the origin of this podcast itself. In this episode of Cayendo en Rabbit Holes, Rui (intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (native Spanish teacher) start with the science — Rui walks through Chaos theory and why weather forecasts fall apart after three days no matter how good the model is, and Roberto lays out why most people misread cause and effect (thinking one-factor when almost every real-world phenomenon is exponentially multi-factor). They cover COVID as a global butterfly effect that started with one person at one market, the ecosystems being quietly rearranged by species none of us have ever heard of, and the moments in history that turned on a single postponed decision. Then it gets personal: Roberto's parents met only because his grandfather decided to move to León decades before either of them was born. They close with the Buddhist framing (that suffering comes from attachment, and one way to end it is to stop clinging), a small everyday version of the same idea (Roberto's obsession with a clean truck vs. rainy season), and finally the actual butterfly effect that led to this podcast. Rui's friend's wedding in Colombia sent him back to Spanish. He picked one out of tens of thousands of teachers on italki, and it happened to be Roberto. The pandemic had already forced Roberto online, which was the only reason he was on that platform at all. And then, mid-lesson one day, an idea appeared. 🎧 Listen on other platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kqxHxyZbyK00qPxB3NIGJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cayendo-en-rabbit-holes/id1866466665 📝 Annotated scripts with error tracking and vocabulary notes: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/CayendoenRabbitHoles 👨‍🏫 Take lessons with Roberto: italki: https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/Aa6HHec/bFBHdH/spanish Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robelprofesor 📱 Follow us: TikTok: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles Instagram: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles — Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Every episode features real, unscripted conversation between a learner and a native speaker. Mistakes are left in — because that's how real communication works. #SpanishPodcast #IntermediateSpanish #LearnSpanish #ComprehensibleInput #SpanishConversation #LanguageLearning

  7. Aug 3

    Episode #30: The Tiger In Your Head — Awkwardness, Placebos & Flow State | Intermediate Spanish

    Roberto has a phrase he loves: fear makes the tiger look bigger. If your reaction to a situation is emotional, your brain quietly inflates it until it doesn't match reality anymore — and half the time, nobody around you has any idea it's happening. In this week's rabbit hole (a direct continuation from Episode 29), Rui and Roberto start with the everyday moments where nobody has taught you how to react — the Happy Birthday sing-along, a stranger crying, standing alone at a party you don't want to be at — and end up somewhere more useful: you can manipulate your own mind on purpose, and the best performers all quietly do. In this episode of Cayendo en Rabbit Holes, Rui (intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (native Spanish teacher) start by comparing their default reactions to awkward moments (mostly: do nothing, keep a poker face) and land on the reassuring insight that the people around us are not thinking about us nearly as much as we think they are. From there they get into the flip side — you can use that same amplification for your benefit. They cover Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and the argument between Roberto and his psychologist friend about whether self-suggestion is a spiritual gimmick or just intentional placebo, why gym playlists and pre-interview breathing exercises count, and Tony Robbins' little bounce-and-yell ritual before he hits the stage. Roberto brings a great example from teaching — his 30-minute "warm-up" English conversations with clients before their real English meetings, essentially getting their brains onto the right track before the pressure hits. And they wrap with two more layers: Jordan Belfort's Straight Line System argument that the fastest way to build rapport is to skip the small talk and cut straight to the customer's problem, and Roberto's reflection on how much sales has changed in the twelve years since he took that course — from cold-calling factories from a phone book to the fully online, algorithm-driven world we live in now. 🎧 Listen on other platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kqxHxyZbyK00qPxB3NIGJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cayendo-en-rabbit-holes/id1866466665 📝 Annotated scripts with error tracking and vocabulary notes: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/CayendoenRabbitHoles 👨‍🏫 Take lessons with Roberto: italki: https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/Aa6HHec/bFBHdH/spanish Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robelprofesor 📱 Follow us: TikTok: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles Instagram: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles — Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Every episode features real, unscripted conversation between a learner and a native speaker. Mistakes are left in — because that's how real communication works. #SpanishPodcast #IntermediateSpanish #LearnSpanish #ComprehensibleInput #SpanishConversation #LanguageLearning

  8. Jul 27

    Episode #29: The Domino Effect — How One Good Habit Changes Everything | Intermediate Spanish

    Roberto has noticed a pattern. When someone starts making a positive change — hitting the gym, cleaning up their space, cutting back on drinking — other good things quietly start showing up in their life too. New opportunities. Better sleep. That indefinable "glow" where someone looks different and you can't quite say what changed. In this week's rabbit hole, Rui and Roberto try to figure out why one small positive habit tends to knock down dominos in every direction — and why the reverse works just as reliably (and much more quietly). In this episode of Cayendo en Rabbit Holes, Rui (intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (native Spanish teacher) trade two theories about why "one good change" tends to snowball: Roberto's student thinks the good stuff was always there and a positive mindset just makes you notice it, while Rui thinks it's really about the confidence you gain from following through on one change. They land on something Roberto's therapist told him years ago that has stuck with him — a clean apartment both reflects a good mental state and creates one, and the loop works in both directions. Then they get into the harder version of the same idea: negative changes are gradual and dangerous exactly because you don't feel them arriving. From there they detour into the etiquette of compliments — Roberto's habit of giving them intentionally and honestly, why "The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" argues you should just accept a compliment instead of reflex-returning one, and the deeply awkward moments in adult life where nobody has taught you how to react (compliments from strangers, being sung Happy Birthday, opening a gift). Plus, the moment that melted Roberto: his six-year-old niece wearing the pink cap he gave her every single day of vacation, and telling him, "porque me la diste tú." And on the personal side: Rui just had his first day at his new job, his furniture finally arrived, and he's on the hunt for a tennis team in Boston. Also: Roberto has a new dog. 🎧 Listen on other platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kqxHxyZbyK00qPxB3NIGJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cayendo-en-rabbit-holes/id1866466665 📝 Annotated scripts with error tracking and vocabulary notes: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/CayendoenRabbitHoles 👨‍🏫 Take lessons with Roberto: italki: https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/Aa6HHec/bFBHdH/spanish Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robelprofesor 📱 Follow us: TikTok: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles Instagram: @CayendoEnRabbitHoles — Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Every episode features real, unscripted conversation between a learner and a native speaker. Mistakes are left in — because that's how real communication works. #SpanishPodcast #IntermediateSpanish #LearnSpanish #ComprehensibleInput #SpanishConversation #LanguageLearning

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About

Cayendo en Rabbit Holes is a Spanish conversation podcast for intermediate and advanced learners. Each episode, Rui (an intermediate Spanish learner) and Roberto (a native Spanish teacher) sit down for a real, unscripted conversation in Spanish. No scripts, no simplification — just authentic discussion that goes wherever it goes. Mistakes, corrections, and natural learning moments are all left in. If you're learning Spanish and tired of content that feels too polished or too slow, this is for you. Real conversation. Real errors. Real progress. New episodes every Monday.

Information

  • Creator
    Cayendo en Rabbit Holes
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Cayendo en Rabbit Holes
  • Show Website
    Cayendo en Rabbit Holes