I'll chip in with my shameless plug - Latudio [0]. A language learning app where all the content was written and audio recorded by real humans™.
We purposedly went that way, with no ads and a one-time payment option.
I feel that human touch is what makes our interactions special as everyone is different, unique, imperfect while being the same like everyone else, in a way...
Howewer as a relatively new and bootstrapped app in the market we have still some way to go. As a next step we are investigating how to add audiobooks and podcasts. Would someone be interested to cooperate?
To se what's inside: [1]