Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 918, Preparing for a Disaster.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 918.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Go to our website at eslpod.com.
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This episode is a dialogue between Lily and Paul about getting ready for something disastrous, something very bad that might happen in the future.
Let's get started Quick.
We need to go get some supplies.
I was listening to talk radio on my way home from work and this guy was on talking about how doomsday is coming and we need to prepare.
Oh no, not this again.
You have to stop listening to that garbage on the radio.
Listen, there is no impending doom, and this guy was just crying wolf.
No, he wasn't.
He had proof that the world is going to end soon, and he was sounding the alarm.
Those people killed in the storm last week?
They were the canaries in the coal mine.
Disaster is coming.
Let me be the voice of reason for a minute.
How many times have you believed that the world was ending in the past few years?
A few times, but this is for real.
There'll be a disruption of services, a run on food and water, and chaos.
Let me ask you this.
If the world is ending, aren't we all just going to die?
Not if you have an underground bunker.
Start digging.
Lily begins our dialogue by saying to Paul, quick, meaning do this quickly.
We need to go get some supplies.
Supplies are materials you use to do something else.
Lily says, I was listening to talk radio on my way home from work.
And this guy, this man was on the radio talking about how doomsday is coming and we need to prepare.
So Lily was driving home from work and she was listening to talk radio.
Talk radio refers to radio programs that don't have music but have people who are being interviewed or people who are talking, usually giving their opinions about something.
In the United States in the last 30 years or so, talk radio has become very popular, especially for political reasons.
People who have strong political opinions, whether they're conservative or liberal.
You can find a talk radio station that has mostly people who are on there talking about their political views.
Many people associate talk radio also with not being very reliable, with having people on there who have very
Extreme views, views or opinions about things that are not ones that the majority of people would have.
This is what has happened to Lily.
She was listening to talk radio and some man, some guy was on the radio was on the radio program talking about doomsday.
Doomsday, D-O-O-M-S-D-A-Y, is the word we give for the day that the world will end.
At some point in our future, something bad will happen and we will all die.
The entire human race will die.
That will be the doomsday.
Doom, D-O-O-M, is something bad.
Death, destruction.
Paul says, oh no, not this again.
That expression, not this, again means or implies that this is not the first time that Lily has had this idea or has had a strange idea.
Paul says you have to stop listening to that garbage on the radio.
Garbage, G-A-R-B-A-G-E, normally refers to something that is worthless, something that has no value.
We In other English-speaking countries, they use the term rubbish, R-U-B-B-I-S-H.
In the U.S., we use more commonly the word garbage.
Paul is referring here to things that are not worth listening to.
He's talking about the garbage on the radio.
He means that the people who are on there are idiots, that they're saying stupid things.
Paul says, listen, there is no impending doom, and this guy was just crying wolf.
Impending I-M-P-E-N-D-I-N-G is something that will happen soon, usually something negative that will happen soon.
Paul is saying that there is no impending doom.
There is nothing bad that is about to happen.
He says this guy was just crying wolf.
The expression to cry, C-R-Y, wolf, W-O-L-F, refers to an old story about the boy who cried wolf.
This might even be one of the stories from Aesop, from the ancient world, from ancient Greece.
To cry wolf means to refer to or to say that something bad is going to happen as a joke, as a trick.
If you cry wolf, you are saying something bad is going to happen, even when you know that it's not true.
In the original story, the boy was out to protect the sheep and other animals.
If the boy saw a wolf, he was supposed to yell very loudly to cry, which means here to yell very loudly wolf, so that all of the other adults would come and kill the wolf and protect the sheep.
Well, the boy was lonely and wanted some attention, so...
He cried wolf, even though there was no wolf.
And of course, all the people came running.
Well, he did this once.
He did it twice.
The third time he did it, there really was a wolf, but no one believed him.
No one came running because he had already cried wolf twice.
And it was just a joke.
It was something that wasn't true.
The general idea then, of this expression is that if you say something is true and it's not, and you keep doing that, eventually people will not believe you.
That's what Paul is saying that the guy on talk radio is doing.
He's crying wolf.
He's saying something bad will happen when he knows that there is nothing bad that will happen.
Lily says, no, he wasn't.
He had proof that the world is going to end soon.
Proof, P-R-O-O-F, is evidence.
It's something that tells you something is true.
Lilly says the man was sounding the alarm.
To sound the alarm means to warn people about some danger, about some problem.
Lily says, those people killed in the storm last week, they were canaries in the coal mine.
This is another expression that refers to an old concept.
A canary is a kind of bird.
Coal, C-O-A-L is a very hard black substance that you dig out of the ground to use as fuel, to use for energy.
A mine.
M-I-N-E is when you dig holes in the ground to get coal or some other object that is inside of the earth.
In the old days they used to put a canary inside of a coal mine because if the canary smelled gas, the canary would die.
And that would be an early indicator that there was a problem, that there was gas and that the men who were working in the coal mine should leave.
So the canary was like a warning sign.
A warning system that told you that there was a problem.
Lily is saying that the people who were killed in this storm in the story last week were canaries in the coal mine.
They were indicating that there was a greater danger to the rest of us.
She says disaster is coming.
Disaster is something horrible, something very bad that is going to hurt or kill many people.
Sometimes we use disaster to refer to something that's really bad, a very bad situation or even a very bad movie.
If you say that movie was a disaster, you mean it was a very poorly made movie, not a good movie at all.
Paul says let me be the voice of reason for a minute.
The voice of reason is the person who is calm, the person who is logical.
Paul says how many times have you believed that the world was ending in the past few years?
Paul is asking Lily how many times she has had this idea that the world was going to end soon.
Lily says a few times, but this is for real.
This is actually going to happen, she says.
Lily says that there will be a disruption of services, a run on food and water, and chaos.
A disruption, D-I-S-R-U-P-T-I-O-N, is an interruption in something, a temporary stop of something.
In this case, it will be a disruption of services, which might refer to electricity or water or transportation anything required for us to survive.
The expression a run on something refers to a situation where everyone goes out and tries to buy the same kind of thing.
So if there's going to be a lot of rain, there might be a run on umbrellas.
Umbrellas are things we use to protect ourselves from the rain.
Everyone is going to go out and try to buy umbrellas.
There's going to be a run on umbrellas.
Chaos, C-H-A-O-S, is a general word referring to lack of order.
We might even use the word disorder.
A situation where no one is in control, where the world is without any sort of authority.
Everything is going wrong and there is no one there to take care of it.
Paul says, let me ask you this, Lily.
If the world is ending, aren't we all just going to die?
Paul is asking why they should do anything if the world is going to end.
There's nothing we can do to stop it.
Lily, however, doesn't agree.
She says, not if you have an underground bunker.
Lily is saying that we won't die if we dig a big hole in the ground and hide under the ground in a protected room.
That's what an underground bunker, B-U-N-K-E-R, is.
Lilly ends by saying, start digging.
To dig D-I-G means to use usually a tool called a shovel that removes dirt and allows you to create a hole in the ground.
Billy is telling Paul to start digging into the ground so they can create this underground bunker.
There are actually people in the United States who believe that they have to have that kind of protection and they make their own bunkers.
I don't know anyone personally who's done that, but I have read stories about it and heard about it on talk radio.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Quick, we need to go get some supplies.
I was listening to talk radio on my way home from work and this guy was on talking about how doomsday is coming and we need to prepare.
Oh no, not this again.
You have to stop listening to that garbage on the radio.
Listen, there is no impending doom, and this guy was just crying wolf.
No, he wasn't.
He had proof that the world is going to end soon, and he was sounding the alarm.
Those people killed in the storm last week?
They were the canaries in the coal mine.
Disaster is coming.
Let me be the voice of reason for a minute.
How many times have you believed that the world was ending in the past few years?
A few times, but this is for real.
There'll be a disruption of services, a run on food and water, and chaos.
Let me ask you this.
If the world is ending, aren't we all just going to die?
Not if you have an underground bunker.
Start digging.
I am the voice of ESL Podcast, but our scriptwriter is the voice of reason here at the Center for Educational Development.
That is the wonderful Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2013 by the Center for Educational Development.
