List of English Podcasts I Listened To / Currently Listen To

(Might be updated from time to time)

📢 Disclaimer: Not affiliated with any of the podcasts listed below, recommendations are based on my personal interest, if you don’t like any of the topics/themes of the listed podcasts just ignore🤣

I started listening to English podcasts in high school, mostly out of a very pragmatic reason - as a way of achieving “immersion” in language learning - I was hyper focused on improving my English speaking back then (and I still am 😅).

Aside from that primary reason, listening to podcasts is also highly entertaining - there are so many interesting and engaging topics ranging from basically anything I can think of 😄 I also get to learn a lot more beyond the language itself!

Most of the podcasts can be accessed on apps like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts (I now use Spotify, but there was an Android app, “DoublePod Podcasts for Android”, that was also clean and compact in size, though I can’t seem to be able to find it on Google PlayStore any more).

Here goes the list:

• Scientific American 60s Science: (Not listening to it now, but this is the very first English podcast I ever listened to) This is the one that I would put in my MP3 player in high school. Looking back, it might not have been the most suitable one to get started with - the vocabulary/topics were too specific to academia, quite far away from a daily/casual context.

• Happier with Gretchen Rubin: Not listening to it now, but did listen to it a lot in college. It’s a podcast on personal development, mental health and self-help, so there were indeed episodes that I found helpful and enlightening.

• Anderson Cooper 360: Another podcast from my colleage years, not listening to it now. To be honest, I wasn’t really into news and politics, but somehow back then I found Anderson very charming and really liked his voice haha 😅

• This American Life: One of my favorites! Still listening to it. Although there is a problem if you are using a podcast app - they only show about 10 latest podcasts on the list, you can access full episodes from its official archive.

• Serial: Still following! True crime related, but one of my favorites as well.

• Directionally Challenged: Still listening to it! Again one of my favorites - I started listening to it when it first launched in 2018, initially because I was a huge fan of The Vampire Diaries TV series, and the two hostesses are actresses from that series. But it turned out so engaging that I have now been following it for 4 years! In each episode, Candice and Kayla interview a guest, and the past episodes have covered a wide variety of topics

• Podcasts from The Atlantic: This page actually contains a series of podcasts/stories launched by The Atlantic. They are not really of one single genre, so you probably have to choose based on your interests. Personally I listened to their Crazy/Genius, Floodlines, Social Distance, Radio Atlantic (these were my pastime during the pandemic lockdown)

• Home Cooking: Feel like listening to cooking podcasts recently, so this is one I found. It doesn’t have many episodes and doesn’t seem to be updating, but still, I think it’s worth recommending.

• The Cookbook Circle: Same reason as above haha 😆

Building my personal blog with GitHub Pages

This is not going to be a long post, just follow instructions from the two blogs below (with links!)

I’m not familiar at all with html/css, nor an experienced web developper😅 So if I can manage to do it, you definitely can too! (and building stuffs of your own from scratch did bring so much joy and sense of accomplishment, much more than using a pre-built template like Google Sites or Wix or Wordpress 😆)

This blog site is built using a Jekyll theme Hyde. Below are the two blogs that used the same template and helped me sort out the whole process rather quickly:

• How did I set up my blog using Jekyll, Hyde and GitHub

• Jekyll Tags on Github Pages

So if you would also like to give it a try, start from the first blog post. If you would like to further sort your posts by clickable tags, check out the instructions from the second blog.

Hi there! / Salut tout le monde !👋

Some Overview About Me

• 📫 I’m an avid Duolingo🦉 user! Struggling to learn French recently; still looking to improve my English; also hoping to be fluent in German someday in the future.

• 🔭 I’m currently a PhD student in Electrical Engineering at McGill University. / Je suis étudiante au doctorat en génie électrique à l’université McGill.

• 🌱 Enthusiastic about music/singing/piano, reading, and fitness training/bodybuilding. / J’aime la musique/chanter/jouer du piano, lire et l’entraînement physique/la musculation.

• 🤔 Coding is not my strongest suit yet, but I’m actively learning and hope to improve little by little! / Le codage n’est pas encore mon point fort; mais j’espère que je vais m’améliorer petit à petit !

Academic Background / Parcours Scolaire

Undergraduate Study

• ⚙️🔧 I studied at Peking University from September 2016 to July 2020, where I obtained my Bachelor of Science degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. / J’ai étudié à l’université de Pékin de septembre 2016 à juillet 2020, où j’ai obtenu mon baccalauréat en mécanique théorique et appliquée.

Graduate Study

• 💻🖥️ Starting from September 2020, I began my graduate study at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University (started with a master’s program first, and later fast-tracked to Ph.D. program in September 2021). / À partir de septembre 2020, j’ai commencé mes études au Département de génie électrique et informatique de l’Université McGill (j’ai d’abord suivi un programme de maîtrise, puis un programme accéléré de doctorat en septembre 2021).