Hello, everyone, and welcome to EnglishPod.
My name is Marco.
And my name is Catherine.
And today we're talking about some very interesting stories.
We're going to learn some words for stories or tales.
But specifically, what kind of stories, Marco?
They're popular stories that you hear maybe through emails or maybe in your town.
There's some particular story about maybe a ghost or many different things that they're kind of hard to believe, but that happened a long time ago and people still talk about today.
And they're scary.
Yeah, normally scary.
So let's listen to today's dialogue.
Here's some interesting stories.
And when we come back, we'll be talking more about what these words and phrases mean.
Have you read all these crazy things that are going on around the world?
What do you mean?
I was reading about how some people get tricked or drugged in their hotel rooms and have their organs removed.
Then they're sold on the black market.
Don't tell me you actually believe all that.
Don't be so gullible.
They are just urban legends.
They are just stories people make up to scare you.
Well, I was also reading about how some popular songs have subliminal or even satanic messages if you play them backwards.
Can you believe that?
You really think an artist or songwriter is going to go through the trouble of putting subliminal or satanic messages in a song?
Don't be so naive.
Well, maybe you are right, but how about the story about how KFC has rows of headless chickens which are super grown in order to get bigger chickens faster?
Sounds a bit too far-fetched to be true, don't you think?
Alright, we're back, so let's take a look at Language Takeaway.
Language Takeaway.
So here on Language Takeaway today, we have some words that will help us understand the dialogue.
The first word is drugged.
So I was reading about how some people get drugged in their hotel rooms.
That's right.
So if you get drugged, it means that someone gave you some drugs in order to make you sleepy or in order for you to not remember what happened.
Alright, so he was drugged means someone gave him a drug, something that made him go to sleep.
Right.
And it's not necessarily always a bad thing, because obviously if you go to the hospital, the doctor may drug you in order to you know not, so you don't feel so much pain or something.
Exactly.
If you're in an accident, you're in a lot of pain, the doctor drugs you so you don't feel that pain.
That's right.
Alright, so he was, this person is drugged and then what happens?
Well, his organs were removed.
All right, so organ, an organ is a noun, it's a thing.
Those are actually the things that are inside our body.
Right, so your heart, liver, your pancreas, kidneys, etc.
These are all organs.
And this is basically the category for the part of the body.
It's anything really inside your body that has a function.
Okay, so supposedly this story is that people, usually tourists they get tricked or drugged and then they get their organs removed.
Now, what kind of a story is this, Marco?
Because it's not just a normal story.
Right.
All of these stories that we saw in the dialogue are called urban legends.
Okay, urban has to do with cities, right?
Legend is a story that may or may not be true.
That's right.
It comes from a long time ago.
Right.
So an urban legend is actually a story.
That is probably not true that you hear from other people like your friends.
That's right.
So usually most of these stories fall under this category.
You know, they're urban legends.
You don't really know if they're true, but people say it happened to a friend of theirs from a long time ago or stuff like that.
Exactly.
So a friend of a friend of a friend of mine told me that in hotels, sometimes they take your organs.
Well, obviously, that's not right.
Right.
All right.
So after that, we have two great adjectives for describing people who like to believe stories like this.
What are those two adjectives?
Well, we have the adjective to be gullible and to be naive.
All right, so they're a little bit different.
To be gullible means to believe everything that people tell you.
Right, so if you're gullible, you pretty much believe anything you see or you hear.
Yeah, so maybe your friend says, did you know Michael Jordan is coming to the office tomorrow?
Right, and you believe it, then you're very, very gullible.
Very gullible.
You believe what people tell you.
But naive is similar.
It's similar, but I guess it has a little bit of a different meaning, in the sense that it's not that you're so gullible, but you wholeheartedly trust people.
So you're naive.
You're innocent, right?
You're innocent.
Maybe you don't have a lot of life experience.
So you trust people and you can call a person naive.
You say, well, he's very naive about these kinds of things.
I guess that's the main key, right?
Or the main point is that you don't really have too much life experience.
So that's why you're naive.
That's right.
And just be careful, because gullible and naive are things that we say about people, but they're not nice things.
They're not compliments.
Right, right.
So you shouldn't really say it to someone directly like in the dialogue.
Exactly.
Maybe as a joke, but not seriously.
Okay.
Okay.
So we have the great adjectives, way to describe people.
And lastly, we also have something else that how to describe the situation.
Maybe it's too far-fetched.
It's too difficult to believe.
So far-fetched, this is a great word.
It means basically that something is very difficult to believe, like you say.
For example, the story about Michael Jordan.
Michael Jordan is coming tomorrow.
You say, oh, that's pretty far-fetched.
I don't really think that could happen.
Right.
So something that is far-fetched is difficult to happen or very, very unlikely to happen.
Very unlikely.
Okay.
So very good.
We saw five keywords there.
Let's take a break and listen to the dialogue again.
Have you read all these crazy things that are going on around the world?
What do you mean?
I was reading about how some people get tricked or drugged in their hotel rooms and have their organs removed.
Then they're sold on the black market.
Don't tell me you actually believe all that.
Don't be so gullible.
They are just urban legends.
They are just stories people make up to scare you.
Well, I was also reading about how some popular songs have subliminal or even satanic messages if you play them backwards.
Can you believe that?
You really think an artist or songwriter is going to go through the trouble of putting subliminal or satanic messages in a song?
Don't be so naive.
Well, maybe you are right, but how about the story about how KFC has rows of headless chickens which are super grown in order to get bigger chickens faster?
Sounds a bit too far-fetched to be true, don't you think?
All right, let's take a look now at a couple of phrases on Fluency Builder.
Now in Fluency Builder, today we're going to start out with the story about organs, this urban legend.
Now, what happens when the organ is taken?
The story says that it's sold on the black market.
That's right.
So you probably hear this in the news or a lot of places, the black market.
Basically, it's not really a physical place, but it's where things are sold illegally.
So guns, organs, stuff like that.
Exactly.
So the black market, like you say, is not a place you can go to.
It's an idea.
And it's basically anything that's illegal that's being sold.
Like guns are often sold in the black market.
That's right.
Sometimes stolen cars. are sold on the black market.
Also, organs can be sold on the black market.
And this is a serious problem because obviously all of this is illegal.
That's right.
So the black market is where all this happens.
Now, moving on to the next urban legend that we actually didn't really talk about too much is how many people believe that popular songs have subliminal or satanic messages in them.
All right, so let's take a look at the word subliminal first.
We all know what a message is, right?
It's something that's told to us.
But a subliminal message is something that is told to us without us knowing.
That's right.
So it goes into your mind, but you don't even know it, right?
So it's something that a lot of people believe in, because they think that marketing people or big businesses are trying to control our behavior.
That's right.
So I could say very quietly...
Marco, buy me dinner.
And that's a subliminal message.
Marco says, hey, I was thinking about getting everyone dinner tonight.
And then that's basically a way to control your actions.
And so whether or not this is possible.
That's another discussion.
That's another discussion.
So yeah, that's basically what a lot of people say that some TV commercials or ads have these subliminal messages that are trying to convince you or persuade you into maybe consuming that product.
Exactly.
But they're a little bit different from satanic messages.
That's right.
So that's basically dealing with Satan or the devil.
That's right.
So the idea that there are satanic messages means that they're messages about the devil, about how maybe God does not exist or, like you know that you should do evil, not good.
So they're very dark and very kind of angry messages.
Yeah, I think they talk about, for example I'm not sure which song it is, but like by Ozzy Osbourne that if you play it backwards, supposedly there's this message that says you know, worship the devil.
And stuff like that.
So that's where these urban legends come from.
But obviously, it's either coincidence or not true, right?
That's right.
So we've got these messages that are also an urban legend.
But the final one is about KFC.
So KFC would be Kentucky Fried Chicken.
And what is the legend?
The legend is about their food.
That's right.
They say that they don't really have real chickens.
Well, they take chickens and they just super grow them.
The chickens are super grown in order for them to get bigger and faster.
And that's basically that they don't even really have heads.
They just have some hoses that go into their bodies and feed them.
And in four weeks, you have a chicken.
That's disgusting.
That's disgusting.
It's the idea is, yeah, super grown chickens.
And so they're basically they're not real chickens.
Right.
That's what the legend says is that they're not.
I mean, they really are, but they're not like naturally grown.
You know, usually a chicken takes three months to grow or something.
Yeah.
All right.
That's disgusting.
I don't even want to talk about that.
But the idea of super growing is like using chemicals to do something that's not natural.
That's right.
That's right.
Chemicals are hormones and stuff.
So they use it, for example, on plants.
You can super grow a plant by adding fertilizer and vitamins and stuff to the soil that makes it grow faster.
Or maybe you have bigger carrots than normal, bigger potatoes because they're super grown.
That's right.
So, all right.
That's a lot of great stuff.
Let's take a listen to the dialogue one last time.
Have you read all these crazy things that are going on around the world?
What do you mean?
I was reading about how some people get tricked or drugged in their hotel rooms and have their organs removed.
Then they're sold on the black market.
Don't tell me you actually believe all that.
Don't be so gullible.
They are just urban legends.
They are just stories people make up to scare you.
Well, I was also reading about how some popular songs have subliminal or even satanic messages if you play them backwards.
Can you believe that?
You really think an artist or songwriter is going to go through the trouble of putting subliminal or satanic messages in a song?
Don't be so naive.
Well, maybe you are right, but how about the story about how KFC has rows of headless chickens which are super grown in order to get bigger chickens faster?
Sounds a bit too far-fetched to be true, don't you think?
All right.
So all these urban legends, they are obviously most of them, if not all of them, are untrue.
But they're very popular.
Why do you think that is?
I think people like to believe these stories.
They're gossipy.
You know, they're scary.
You get to make your friends kind of laugh.
Yeah.
Nervous about stuff.
But I think also we don't trust a lot of these things, because we've heard for years and years and years and years about subliminal messages, marketing strategies or or about these kind of hidden messages and songs.
So there's part of us that wants to believe them.
But the other part is that you hear it enough.
You start to believe it.
Right, because I was reading up on a couple of them, and the most recent ones are about how they make the connection about how Nostradamus predicted the 9-11 incident or how Coca-Cola is actually the one that invented Santa Claus.
And even this KFC one where people just believe a lot of different things.
A syringe or something on the seat that if you sit down it infects you with AIDS, or something like this.
So there's so many of them out there that if you think about it, they don't even really make sense.
They don't.
And I understand that sometimes there'll be one news story like about yeah, a needle in a candy box.
And all of a sudden people say, well, don't eat candy because there's needles in candy boxes.
Right.
And obviously, you know, one time event turns into this massive kind of craze.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it is interesting, especially with this whole topic of subliminal messages.
I do remember that actually there was a marketing campaign that was banned movie theaters.
When they're you know the previews before the actual movie came on, they supposedly they had the sound or maybe on the screen, somebody opening up a coke can and the smell of coke actually coming into the theater and that was kind of like subliminal marketing, making people want to go get a coke Definitely.
Well, we used to pump the exhaust from the popcorn maker when I worked in a movie theater, throughout the lobby.
There you go.
So everyone smells it and it smells so good that everyone wants to buy it.
You want to buy popcorn?
Oh yeah, we would totally use that.
So yeah, that is a way of like.
I guess it is subliminal, because you're not directly telling them to buy it, but you are just giving them all the.
You're suggesting it through audio or visual or oratory cues.
Right.
And then you have the opportunity to sell them the most expensive popcorn they'll ever buy.
Exactly.
$12 for a bag of popcorn.
All right.
So it's a very interesting topic.
Let us know if you have any comments or questions about it.
You can find us at EnglishPod.com.
We hope to see you guys there.
Bye.
Bye.
