Yes, I am 65 not 6.5 years old 🙂 This question is personal and specifically for Christopher, though everybody else’s insights are, of course, welcome. My second daughter is engaged to a German guy – they will be married in April in Cyprus. I will have to make a speech – in Greek, German and English – and also, since my new in-laws and lots of friends and relations are all coming over for the wedding I will wish to interact with them as much as I can. My German is very rusty and I’m taking online classes with DW but I’d like to switch my ‘background’ radio to a German station. In the same way as I don’t listen ot the BBC, I don’t want to listen to one of the main broadcasters with their boring talking heads so the question is, could you recommend a decent ‘talk radio’ station something on the lines of the London Broadcasting Corporation, where I can hear ordinary people expressing their views and having the occasional rant? (I can say what I want quite handily, and read well, but have trouble understanding what people are saying to me, if they’re speaking at ordinary conversational speed – especially when their normal, everyday usage. Annoying but, since I haven’t actually lived in Germany since 1991, understandable, I guess.)
Boadicea's Chariot 
Commiserations, Bravo, I’m the same with Danish. My listening skills are improving but Danish is swallowed before it’s properly enunciated. 😦
Goddam its bad enough trying to understand Americans sometimes!!
Sorry for the totally fatuous answer but it would be one of the occasions I would have to volunteer for ebola trials or a one way ticket to Pitcairn Island!!
I have to admit to much preferring funerals to weddings they tend to be far more entertaining and alcoholic (in Wales anyway!)
I can only be of limited use to you in this regard. I spent a number of years living in the USA. Soon after returning to Germany, I began to develop a pronounced chip on each shoulder — in part because I am not expected to dole out over 300 euro per year for a radio/television subscription even if I do not have a television, proper radio and do not stream either through my underwhelming internet connexion. This has elicited a boycott on my part with an ardour bolstered by GEMA, the main German agency representing record labels, effectively blocking much of what I wish to watch on youtube.
The best advice I can give is to try listening to German radio stations such as SWR3. They often have light-hearted commentary. This particular station also has regular short-skits aired.
Bayern 5 ist, fuer mich, eine der Beste. Obwohl es Bayern ist, ist der Dialekt normalerweise relative klar zu hoeren.
My wife is German. 🙂
http://b5aktuell.radio.de/
Jawohl! 🙂