I looked in the translation and, unless they changed it, they translated the phrase ha tenido que ser as "he has had to have".  You missed the word "has" earlier.

This is a direct translation.  Has had = ha tenido

Your question about "había tenido que ser", in this case había tenido = had had, so "he had had to have".

I believe I'm using the word plosive correctly, but not 100% on that....

Interesting question!  This is really an English question; the Spanish is what it is.

The whole verb phrase is: ha tenido que ser operado, which is kind of a tangle of present perfect, tener+que+infinitive (obligation construction), and true passive. The conjugated verb is tener, but the content verb is operar--so don't leave operar out of the equation! 

So the passive of "to operate" in English would be "to be operated on."  So a closer translation would be "he had to be operated on," which ends with a preposition, which somepeople frown...upon.  ;)

And then, you throw in de urgencia which indicates urgency, but I'm not sure how to incorporate that with "he had to be operated on." 

I guess I could have said "he had to be urgently operated on" but that doesn't sound good to me.  That's why I chose the paraphrase "he's had to have an emergency operation," which does sound more natural English. 

I realize it takes the learner a few logical steps to get from the Spanish version to my English paraphrase, but... those are the breaks!  :)   The more advanced you get in your Spanish learning, the more familiar you'll get with the fuzzy art of translation.  It's not always going to be cut-and-dry. 

At this level, you'll notice I tend go for the 'natural Englsih' version of the translation.  At lower levels, I spend more time explaining literal translations (like reflexive-as-passive, or gustar constructions). 

thesmithtopher,

ha ha, you said "plosive."  I usually say 'occlusive' or 'stop,' but yes, you used 'plosive' correctly!  :)

Thanks for the advice. Seems to work nicely.

Gracias. Parece que funciona perfectamente.

áéíóúñ

Pues, no puedo entender bien que dice a 1:00. Me parece que diga:

"A el se sumaron el rejoneador Felipe Vallina que provisto de un descabello sacrifico al astado en este sitio."

¿Es correcto? Pues, ¿el pobre Pajarito fue matado?

Que acontecimiento trágico para las personas sentadas en la primera fila. También me siento por el toro "Pajarito". Me pregunto si ese animal fue maltratado para se volvió tan loco.

Don't worry, it's normal not to understand everything! 

If listening to this dialog with the PDF transcript doesn't help, I recommed that you put this lesson aside for a while, study other things, and come back to it later.  That's the beauty of learning by podcast!