Hello, everyone, and welcome back to EnglishPod.
We have an advanced lesson for you today.
My name is Marco. And my name is Catherine, and I'm very excited about this lesson, Marco.
It's very interesting. It's about a very controversial topic and a very popular person in history, Charles Darwin.
That's right. So he's most famous perhaps for his book, The Origin of the Species.
And we're going to be talking a lot about science today.
So put your thinking caps on. Alright, so without further ado, why don't we listen to this dialogue for the first time.
Man, it's been forever. What have you been up to lately?
I've been busy preparing for my exams, not to mention all the term papers I've had to write.
Same here. I'm up to my neck in work, but at least we've got summer holidays after finals.
Where are you headed now? I'm going to my anthro class.
We've been focusing on Darwin all term. Since it's the 200th anniversary of his birth or whatever.
I'm sick and tired of Darwin, Darwin, Darwin!
What? Why? How can you not like Darwin? His work turned thousands of years of ideas about creation on their head.
His theory of evolution revolutionized the fields of biology and anthropology.
I don't like him His theory of human evolution and natural selection is full of holes It's not as solid as you make it out to be Say that again and you'll make enemies with half of the academy, not to mention your professors.
Furthermore... The explanation proposed by Darwin about the origin of the species and the process of natural selection constitutes a grand step towards a coherent understanding of the world and its very beginnings.
I'm not minimizing his huge contributions to science.
It's just that his theory reminds me of the conundrum of the chicken and the egg.
What are you talking about? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
This is a classic logical problem, and I think it applies to Darwin's theory.
How did the very first living organism come to be?
Interesting. I think that question is better suited for my philosophy class.
In the meantime, how about we settle this with a duel?
All right, interesting. They have very different views on Charles Darwin, right?
They do, and they're both pretty nerdy people.
This is a very nerdy university conversation that's happening between classes.
Yeah, I think maybe they're like PhD candidates or something.
All right. So before we get to talking about some of the ideas in today's dialogue, let's talk about some of the words and phrases that we hear to understand better what's going on.
The first part we're going to talk about in today's language.
Language Takeaway. All right, on Language Takeaway today, let's take a look at the first word.
And well, one of the things that many people say is that Darwin revolutionized the fields of biology.
And so he revolutionized these because he pushed them forward.
He made many changes. He forced changes.
So people had to change the way that they thought about these things.
If you revolutionize something, a topic or an idea, you are creating new knowledge almost.
Right. Exactly. You can think of the word revolution, which is a thing.
So you think of the Russian Revolution or the American Revolution.
These are times of change. So to revolutionize is to bring about change.
Very good. All right. So moving forward, they were talking about human evolution.
Human evolution. What is that exactly? Good question.
So you're not a monkey. I'm not a monkey, but we come from monkeys, right?
So we evolved. Right. So the process is called human evolution.
That means the process by which humans changed forms to become what we are today.
Okay, so you evolve. Now, is it evolution?
You usually think of something positive, right?
Something evolves into something better.
Is it always that way? No, we have another word for the negative, right?
So the positive is to evolve, to become better.
To get worse is to devolve. To devolve, to go back and to kind of lose things that you had.
Okay, interesting. And then they were also talking about Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Natural selection. Okay, this is maybe one of the things that Darwin was most famous for, and that's why we've included it in this.
Language takeaway because it's a it's a key phrase.
It's something you hear people talk about a lot Okay, so natural selection is a process again, and it's the process by which stronger animals survive over time and weaker animals don't so um if there's a weak species it can't really survive because it keeps dying and dying and then finally there's no more and so this is called natural selection because No one's actually choosing what animals will survive, but it's kind of a natural process.
Right. Mother Nature is choosing it. Right.
Very good. So natural selection. This is one of...
This is one of the things that Darwin is most famous for.
And, well, as Catherine mentioned, Darwin wrote the book Origin of the Species.
Right, so origin means beginning. So the origin of mankind, right?
So there are many different kinds of animals.
You could even say there are many different kinds of... like mammals.
But there are many different species within that.
So human beings, black bears... Koalas, chimpanzees, these are all species.
And so a species is a classification. So the origin of the species is Kind of a way of telling the story of how all these things came about.
All right. The origin of the species. And the last one, this word is kind of strange.
He talked about the conundrum of the chicken and the egg.
Okay, conundrum. I love this word. It's very funny sounding, conundrum.
It means like a problem or a riddle or something that's hard to understand.
All right. In this case, it's the conundrum of the chicken and the egg, right, which came first.
How else can you use conundrum? You could say that maybe there's a situation that's very strange and hard to understand.
This is quite a conundrum. This is quite a conundrum we have.
Yes. So it sounds very fancy, very well educated.
It does. All right. So interesting words on language takeaway.
Why don't we move on now? to four phrases on Fluency Builder.
Fluency Builder. All right, on Fluency Builder today we have four phrases as we said.
So what's the first one? The first one is great.
It's very visual. You say, I'm up to my neck in work.
I'm up to my neck in papers to write. All right.
So this means I have so much stuff to do that you could pile it up and it would come up to my neck.
So I have as many papers that are almost as tall as I am.
Exactly. And so I could say I'm up to my neck in work.
I have no more time to do anything. Sometimes people also say, I'm up to here.
And then they'll point at their forehead or somewhere around their head.
I'm up to here with your nonsense. Exactly.
So this is a way of saying that I'm really busy.
Really busy. I'm really tired of it. All right.
And our next phrase is one that most mothers use.
I'm sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of all of your whining.
Go do the dishes and don't complain. Right.
So it always goes together. You are sick.
And tired. Right. And sick comes first. So I'm sick and tired of this.
I'm sick and tired of your bad attitude.
Okay. And that means that you are... just tired of it.
I don't want you to have a bad attitude anymore.
I'm just, yeah. I'm really annoyed by it.
I'm annoyed. Okay, sick and tired. And then we saw a phrase that was a little bit separated.
He said, the sentence went like this. His work turned thousands of years of ideas about creation on their head.
So to turn something on its head. Like you said, Marco, it's split into two parts.
So he turned the field of computer science on its head.
So to turn on its head means to completely reverse something, to turn it around.
You think 180 degrees. And so if biology used to be one way, then Darwin made it completely different.
So we can say that Isaac Newton completely turned physics on its head with his theory or his findings on gravity.
And then years and years later, we had Albert Einstein who turned those theories or who turned that theory on its head with his own ideas about physics.
Very good. So to turn something on its head, to completely change the course of or prove something to be maybe wrong.
And the last phrase that we have is the person argued that Darwin's theories were full of holes.
Okay, so to say a theory is full of holes is a little bit different than saying that his pants are full of holes.
When you say something is full of holes, maybe they actually have holes.
But a theory is it's an idea, so it can't have holes.
What you're saying is that it's not completely sound.
It's not without some problems. And so maybe you're saying that, well...
The cookies are gone out of the kitchen, Marco, and I saw you in the kitchen, so clearly you ate the cookies.
Right. So I can say that's full of holes because it was me and it was three other people who were in the kitchen.
So you can't blame me. It could have been the other two people.
Right. So if something is full of holes, it's that.
It has maybe mistakes or it's still missing complete evidence to prove it right.
Or it has bad logic. Bad logic. All right.
Interesting. So we've taken a look at a lot of words and different phrases here.
Let's listen to this argument one last time.
Man, it's been forever. What have you been up to lately?
I've been busy preparing for my exams, not to mention all the term papers I've had to write.
Same here. I'm up to my neck in work, but at least we've got summer holidays after finals.
Where are you headed now? I'm going to my anthro class.
We've been focusing on Darwin all term. Since it's the 200th anniversary of his birth or whatever.
I'm sick and tired of Darwin, Darwin, Darwin!
What? Why? How can you not like Darwin? His work turned thousands of years of ideas about creation on their head.
His theory of evolution revolutionized the fields of biology and anthropology.
I don't like him. His theory of human evolution and natural selection is full of holes.
It's not as solid as you make it out to be.
Say that again and you'll make enemies with half of the academy, not to mention your professors.
Furthermore... The explanation proposed by Darwin about the origin of the species and the process of natural selection constitutes a grand step towards a coherent understanding of the world and its very beginnings.
I'm not minimizing his huge contributions to science.
It's just that his theory reminds me of the conundrum of the chicken and the egg.
What are you talking about? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
This is a classic logical problem, and I think it applies to Darwin's theory.
How did the very first living organism come to be?
Interesting. I think that question is better suited for my philosophy class.
In the meantime, how about we settle this with a duel?
All right, we're back. So interesting, this Darwin's theories and his explanations for the origin of species and life as we know it.
But there is the opposite to this, right?
There is a certain thing called creationism.
There is. And this is a big source of controversy, especially in the United States, because in some places.
People want to teach creationism as well as evolution in schools.
And so this is the big question. Are they still equal? as theories or is one theory more proven than the other?
Right. And it is kind of hard to determine which one is better because one is based on faith.
Yeah. It is. And there are some people who would say that we have lots of ways of of quote unquote proving what happened in the past.
But as long as we weren't there, we never really do know.
Right. And there's always changes in science.
So how can we be sure that what we know now isn't? false, isn't misunderstanding.
Right. I think for now, this is the best explanation.
But That doesn't mean that it's the correct one.
Maybe in 100 years from now we'll have another explanation that's much better or maybe complementary to this one.
Well, we want to know what you guys think.
Come to our website, EnglishPod.com. We really want to hear your opinions.
What do you think about this topic? It is a little bit controversial.
We really look forward to your comments and any other questions you may have.
Yep. And just a reference, creationism is the idea that God created the world or a superior being created the world and that everything came. from that and so let us know what you think i am very curious too and uh that's about it for today all right we'll see you guys there
