We've all been spending a bit more time at home lately but this doesn’t mean our wanderlust has dimmed. So, if you like to listen to the language and music of another country, there is always radio.garden.
The Radio Garden is a map of the globe and all the radio stations on the platform are there as a green light. You simply click on an area which interests you and the radio stations in that area will be listed for you.
Once you’ve done this, the feed automatically starts to play, showing you the name of the station you're listening to and where it is. You can listen to stations from anywhere. They can be in Europe, Africa or Asia – it's all your choice.
You can also click the search icon and type in the name of the country you'd like to listen to and the most popular stations for that country come up. Scroll through them, sample them, until you find one which interests you.
For music lovers it's a feast. You can scan the globe to find a pop station in New York or a reggae station in South America. Because music is the universal language, it still communicates so much even when you don't know exactly what the words mean.
And is there any greater way to brush up on your language skills? If you learnt French at school and like to listen to 'le francais', then type in 'France' and scroll down until you find a station speaking in French. Or if you've learnt Spanish before, do the same thing, only this time search for Spain or South America.
Radio Garden was launched in 2016 by the Amsterdam-based studios of Puckey and Moniker. What started out as a temporary project run by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision has now grown to 30,000 live radio stations, and the number is increasing every week.
Click here to join me in the garden for a spate of listening!
