Do you remember the first lullabies that were sung to you as a baby? Probably not, but there definitely is a song in your mind that brings you back to your earliest, most innocent days. Latin America, a cultural mix, has plenty of lullabies with interesting origins.

Some came to arrive all the way from Africa, with the slaves that crossed the oceans and worked tirelessly under colonial rule; others were passed down from the ancestral peoples who called Latin America their home (and certainly did not call it "Latin America", of course). While another group of songs were brought by the Spanish colonizers, who had their own beliefs, their own dreams and worldviews.

In this special DUAL NARRATOR episode of the Learn Spanish with Stories podcast, we listen to those songs that marked our childhoods, sing them out loud, and travel across the region to discover the origins, tunes, and meanings of all of these wonderful expressions of life. Enjoy!

Transcript of this episode is available at: https://podcast.lingomastery.com/listen/5132

Unless you've missed a lot of the recent news, you'll probably have heard about María Corina Machado's Nobel Peace Prize award, and how US President Donald Trump soon became the recipient of her winning medal... but what is the backstory behind all of this?

Too much has been spoken about Venezuela from sides that are extremely politically driven (on both sides of the spectrum), but who really is María Corina Machado? And what did she do to earn her Nobel Prize?

In this week's episode of the Learn Spanish with Stories podcast, we dive into her political journey, why her efforts have mattered so much, how she fought a literal dictatorship without violence, and how she ended up "stealing" Donald Trump's Peace Prize before generously donating it. Enjoy the episode!

Transcript of this episode is available at: https://podcast.lingomastery.com/listen/5099

There are some really amazing stories regarding independence and freedom in Latin America, but what if I told you that the episode you're about to listen to is about the first settlement to gain freedom in ALL of the Americas (North AND South America): San Basilio de Palenque.

Located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, Cartagena was one of the main slave hubs of the continent, and a place where thousands of African men and women disembarked every year to be sold to colonists that needed manpower for their land and homes. And this slavery was brutal - these peoples from the Congo, Angola, Guinea, and Senegal.

But a ray of hope appeared in the form of a man: a rebel leader named Benkos Biohó, who decided to take a group of slaves (including his family) and escape to a new place, a new village, where freedom would be born in the Americas, and inevitable change would begin in a place called San Basilio de Palenque... find out more in this week's episode of the Learn Spanish with Stories podcast!

Transcript of this episode is available at: https://podcast.lingomastery.com/listen/5066