This is an all-ir's English podcast, episode 2258.
Putting up with Brazl Verbs, part three, pull in.
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[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ In this third episode in our Brazl Verbs series, find out four ways to use the Brazl Verbs pull in based on a listener question.
[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hello, Aubrey.
What's going on today? Not too much.
How are you, Lindsay? I have a question.
I'm doing great, but I do want to ask you something to start off today's episode.
You ready? I'm ready. Yes, I am.
So I'm curious, what pulls you into a movie or a book when you consume a movie?
Definitely the characters, right?
Character development.
If something's very character-driven, I love it.
As soon as no one is relatable or like, I don't like anyone, I can't do it anymore.
Like, the boys is a good example.
I know a lot of people love that show, but I got to the point where I didn't like or respect anyone in the show and I couldn't watch it anymore.
That's interesting. I've never watched that show before.
So as soon as you can't relate, and I feel like that is such a human answer, right?
We need to be able to relate to the people who are watching on TV or reading about in a book.
Yeah, we can see. Exactly.
You can see how someone I want to support, someone I'm cheering for.
Once I don't like any of them or don't relate to any of them, I lose interest.
So definitely the characters.
Yeah. I love how you use this phrasal verb pull in, which has several meanings in English.
This is actually part three of a series where we got some questions from a student, Max, about some phrasal verbs.
And this has been an awesome series.
Yes. Yes. We love getting questions from our listeners, from our students and our courses.
Should I go ahead and read this question from Max?
Let's do it. All right. So Max says, I heard Lindsey say on the podcast that something would pull in the listeners.
I looked up the phrasal verb pull in, and there are a lot of definitions.
I'd like to know what Lindsey meant by pull in the listeners and what other ways it's used.
Great question. Awesome.
And so Max's question about phrasal verbs inspired this whole series because he was asking about put up and put down and a lot of related phrasal verbs.
So we want to make sure you don't miss those previous episodes.
And then today we're going to dive into pull in.
So the first one was 2252.
Just scroll up for that one.
It was a couple of weeks ago.
Putting up with phrasal verbs part one, put up.
And then the second one was last week, 2254, right, Lindsey?
Yeah. That was put down.
So this summer we've really gotten into these complicated phrasal verbs, but we're trying to make them fun for you guys.
We're taking the pressure off here in these episodes.
We're telling you which ones you really need to worry about and then the hundred others that you can just ignore.
Exactly. There are so many meanings to all of these.
And some are less common.
So we're focusing on the ones that you definitely need that you should start using and make sure you understand when you hear them.
Yeah. And as always, showing you what it means for human connection.
That is our value here. That's what we actually care about.
So with that in mind, Aubrey, we're getting into pull, right?
Pull in. Should we start with that?
Pull in. This is what Max was asking.
He heard you say this on the podcast, which makes sense, right?
We're always thinking about pulling in the listeners.
It means to grab interest to engage, right?
We don't want to be boring.
We want to pull you guys in.
Yeah, that's why we tried to start off our episodes with some kind of conversation that is linked to what you're going to learn, but it's very real.
It's very realistic and authentic, where we bring our true selves and makes me think of what you said, Aubrey, what pulls you in is when you can relate to the characters.
Absolutely. It's the same thing on the podcast, right?
Our listeners. We're sharing stories about our real lives.
We're not making stuff up here.
I think that helps pull you guys in.
We've definitely heard that from listeners from our students.
We have fun doing it. We love seeing you guys improve your fluency, be able to make those connections in English.
So yeah, that's our goal.
We want to pull you in. And this, we've talked about storytelling a lot recently too.
The way we start a story, we want to pull in our audience too, right?
It just means to engage to interest.
You don't want to start in a boring way.
Yeah, there's 100%. And you and Jessica did an episode.
I think it was 2252 about that, right?
How to make sure you don't bore your listeners when you do tell a story, because we all have interesting lives, but it's just about how do we actually convey that, right?
We don't want to share all of the unnecessary details.
Even if you pull in your audience in the beginning, you will lose them.
If you are sharing information they don't care about, yes, that was a great episode.
But let's come back to pull in.
So the first meaning, right, that Max heard, this is the one that Max heard, right, to grab interest to engage.
Any other examples we want to share with our listeners for this one?
Yeah, so we shared these two pulling in the listeners for the podcast, we would say, we always want to pull in listeners.
And then I'm talking about story-story telling.
You might say, the way she started her story really pulled in the crowd.
I think the presentations too, right?
You're always started keynote speakers always are trying to start with something that really grabs your interest.
You're saying this, I want to pull in the audience.
Or the other thing I think about is the moth.
You know the moth, right?
The moth storytelling.
Do you know the moth? I'm not sure what that is.
You don't know it? Oh my gosh.
It's a brand where it's a book.
You can buy it stories just by normal people.
And you can also sign up to go on stage and tell your story in local cities.
So people buy tickets to go to these just normal people that have been through something noteworthy, which could actually be very basic, but they do a good job of telling the story or something you ever brought into.
Have you gone to one of these events?
Oh, cool. Embrace and I went.
And I think someone had a story where they were like deeply involved with 9-11 somehow, either they were, I'm not exactly sure what they were, they were related to it, a family member or something.
So check it out, Aubrey.
Yeah, I want to check it out.
Let's give some good pointers on how to really tell an engaging story, how to pull in the audience, pull in your list.
Because at that point, it's just you, a microphone and a quiet audience.
Right. It'd be really good at it.
Right. Exactly. So that first meaning just means to grab interest, right, to engage.
And then the second meaning we're going to talk about, when you say pull in, often people mean make money, right?
So someone might say, I pull in more these days than I did as a teenager.
And it might be confusing.
What does that mean? Because you're often thinking of physically pulling, but this razorlver also means to make money.
Exactly. So I would think, I would imagine if I didn't know what this meant, like a tug of war.
I'm going to pull the in that rope towards me.
No. Or you might assume they're talking about effort.
Like it's harder work. I'm putting in more effort, right?
That's not what it means.
It means they're making more money than they used to.
Yeah. Or we could ask the question, how much do you think he pulls in?
So clearly we're asking, what is his monthly income?
Or yearly income? Exactly.
How much does he make? How much do you think he makes?
And it's interesting how in US business culture, we rarely talk about money.
You would never ask someone what they make, but we do sometimes speculate about what other people make.
So you might, someone might ask you this about a coworker, a friend, just speculating, how much do you think he pulls in?
Yeah. And this is another example of how in American English, we use brazil verbs to soften the blow of asking, even a direct question there, talking about someone, a third party, we're not asking the person directly.
It's still a little controversial to ask that question, it's a little taboo.
That's true. I would feel uncomfortable saying, how much do you think he makes?
Or how much money do you think he'd be like, ooh, ooh, but pull in.
That's a lot. Why is it okay with the brazil verb?
We don't know. We're informal.
It's a little little bit more.
Yeah. No pressure. I would still be a little bit careful here.
It's still taboo. But it lessens the taboo in a way.
It softens the blow. Yeah.
That's a good point. Like a coworker, I didn't know really well.
I would never ask this. It's more something I would ask a friend about either.
Yeah. Another coworker about, so yeah, this is tricky, especially at work in a business setting.
Oh, yeah. It's still pretty taboo, at least in the States.
I'm curious what this is like in other cultures.
I know. We could definitely go into that another day.
The taboos of money, religion, all these taboos we have fascinating.
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Okay, Aubrey, there is a third meaning there's always a third of fourth of fifth, that's sixth.
I know. Meaning of these phrasal verbs, but we're not panicking here, right?
We can do this. What is the third?
Yeah, the third year, this is very common.
You'll hear this pull in meaning to move a car into a space.
So you might say, oh, pull into that spot over there.
And what they mean by that is move your car into like a certain parking spot.
Yeah, or saying, should I pull in here?
And I think we did an episode years ago about the difference between pull in and pull over and pull up, right?
All related to the car. It's a driving.
Yeah, we use a lot of phrasal verbs with driving.
These are all so similar, they're all with pull and they mean different things.
Different things are doing with your car.
Yeah, but I mean, the way to learn that is get in the car and drive and articulate what you're doing, right?
Experiential learning such a good way to learn natural English.
Absolutely. All right, let's move on to the fourth one, which means to restrain, and we use it in a couple of different contexts.
First of all, you might say, you know, we need to pull in costs if we're going to stay under budget and we mean restrain.
We need to limit our spending.
Interesting. This one's a little less common, but I like it.
It's more high level, articulate.
Or he was pulled in for questioning after he witnessed a robbery.
So, yeah, so this one, it feels like a very different context.
They both mean restraint, right?
Or someone if the police are like restraining someone, taking them to the police station for questioning, they would say he was pulled in.
And this is interesting.
These examples were in the dictionary under restraint, but I imagine when I think about someone being like restrained by police, I'm imagining handcuffs, maybe under arrest, whereas when we say they're pulled into the police station, usually it's like before an arrest, they're just sort of being taken in for questioning, when you say, yeah, I would agree with that.
I would agree with that.
But I guess you could consider it restrained if they don't have a choice.
If they're like, can you come to the police station if you don't we're going to arrest you, right?
I think you know this better because you watch crime.
I'm imagining you watched crime shows or crime shows and podcasts.
I assume yeah, exactly.
Oh, I know all about people getting restrained and pulled in for questioning.
Then we'll go with your answer in that case.
Funny. I love that. All right, Aubrey, shall we do a role play?
What do you think? Let's do it.
So you and I are driving to a salon appointment in this role play.
Do you ever go to the salon, Lindsay?
I don't. Sure. Well, yeah, to get my haircut, what do you mean?
Like a more or less? I have a friend who like does haircuts out of her home.
So I go to her for my hair and I never do like nails at a salon.
I know it's pretty common.
I think I'm the outlier that I rarely go to a salon.
I never do my nails, but I do.
Yeah, I had to follow my hairdresser once when she left her salon and decided to start doing it out of her home, right?
Doing the hair, but that's the only time I've ever gone to a home.
Usually the hairdresser's not at a salon.
They're at a salon. Or something.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right, so here we go.
I'll start us out. Yes. Did I pull in right here?
Yes. I think we can park in this space.
OK, it looks like they've remodeled the office.
Must be pulling in a lot.
Probably. I've been really impressed with the service, so that wouldn't surprise me.
Yeah, they ran a really good ad campaign too.
I saw a few commercials that really pulled me in.
Well, I probably shouldn't give them quite so much business.
I need to pull in my spending.
OK. So we use them all here.
Yeah, as we did. We did. And I'll start it with the driving one, right?
Should I pull in right here?
And I'm talking about, right, that's different.
Pull up would be like not parking in a space, like just driving to the front of the building.
Pull in means you are putting your car in a designated parking space.
Yeah, yeah. And if you guys are ready for a search, you can go through our bad catalog and try to find that episode.
Pull up, pull in, pull over.
It is in there. Maybe come back to our website and type in the search bar, right?
Yeah, you can search phrasal verbs or any of those pull up, pull over.
Or you're going to find that episode for a refresher on those driving phrasal verbs.
Fun. OK. And then you said it looks like they've remodeled the office.
Must be pulling in a lot.
And which meaning were you going to?
Yeah, that would mean they're making a lot of money, right?
If we're like, ooh, it looks like they were able to remodel.
They must be pulling in a lot.
So you can talk about this for an individual, as well as a company, to mean they're bringing in a lot of income.
Right. You see this sometimes with a startup, they've gone through their series A around B and C and all of a sudden they're in a fancy office and you know they're raising money from investors or something.
All right, Aubrey. So where to next?
Which piece did we say next in the role play?
Yeah. So then I said, I saw a few commercials that really pulled me in.
And this is the what Max heard on the podcast episode, where you were saying we want to pull in listeners, right?
This means these ads really drew my attention.
They drew my interest. I was engaged.
Yes, 100% and then the last thing I said, I probably shouldn't give them quite so much business.
I need to pull in my spending.
And another way you could say this as a bonus would be rain in my spending, right?
Pull it in, rain it in, restress.
We use both, right? And they both just mean to limit.
I need to spend less money.
I need to limit my spending.
Pull it in, rain it in. Yeah, 100%.
What does it take away today for our listeners?
We have completed this series, right?
Is this the last episode of the series?
Aubrey? Yes, right? There's a three part series.
I think these were all every one of these episodes, covered phrasal verbs that have so many meanings in English.
So the best way to learn these is not to go to the dictionary and see 15 meanings and just get confused and overwhelmed.
We've pulled out for you the most commonly used ones.
So focus on these. Maybe just add two of these meanings to really start practicing and listening for to make it manageable.
Yeah. And as always, use it to connect, right?
Focus on which of these, if any, can I actually use to connect with the person in front of me?
And that is what we care about here, right?
Absolutely. Awesome. So good.
Thanks for joining me for the series.
Be sure to hit follow guys so you don't miss these amazing series.
So fun. All right. Talk to you soon, Aubrey.
You have a good day. All right.
Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to all ears English.
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