Buy stock in ChinesePod ... now

For a comparison, I listened to a few other foreign language podcasts (in Russian, Spanish, and Japanese) to see if my enthusiasm for Chinesepod was misguided. It's not. Doing everything as well as Chinesepod does is difficult, or at least rare. Other podcasts suffer from annoying hosts, language that isn't challenging or current enough, or boring lessons that smell like a musty classroom. It's as if they've chosen to do a podcast so they don't have to deal in person with those pesky students.

Good work, guys.

At the top of this post you'll find one of ChinesePod's recent VideoHotpot segments. It teaches simple phrases that might be useful in a taxi. Another recent VideoHotpot episode teaches you how to make reservations in Mandarin.

Also on Shanghaiist:
Move over i -- there's a new Pod in town
Shanghai Daily starts podcasting
Raise your hand if you don't have a video blog

You can't really buy stock in ChinesePod as far as we know.

Shanghaiist didn't get reviewed by Slate, but at least we got linked to by the New York Times.