バイリンガルニュース (Bilingual News) Michael & Mami

I love this podcast for supplementing my Japanese studies. I’m genuinely confused by all of the Michael hate though. New male host? Whhhhat? No way. I love him! Some of his comments makes me laugh so hard (the choking on gum episode...have you heard this one?!) A+. I listen to it occasionally with my older kids around who can handle an occasional swear word. They enjoy it and the topics as well. The accompanying app for transcripts is so, so helpful. I’m happy to subscribe and support this amazing podcast!

Neato

I love-love-love the format of this podcast. I need to get better at understanding the news in Japanese, and I think it’s great to have a short news story to ‘study’, followed by the kind of fun, natural conversation you get from friends discussing it.

However, Michael seems really arrogant and lacking in empathy, which is hard to listen to. I don’t care if a person has opinions that differ from mine, but it’s frustrating listening to Mami try to explain something to him while he spends the whole episode running his mouth and ignoring her. Their most recent episode (351) was really hard to listen to because of this.

Most of the other negative reviews here seem to be due to his attitude as well. It’s a shame, because this show could be amazing if he added a touch of humility to his delivery.

I hope it gets better. I really want to like this one.