This is the Let's Master English podcast, and I'm your host, Coach Shane.
Hello, everybody. Coach Shane here.
Welcome back to the Let's Master English podcast, episode number 130, publication date July 21st, 2025.
How are you today? Did you have have a nice weekend.
I hope you did. We got a great show today.
You know, last week, if you're a member of my community, it's easy.
You can be a member of my community for free.
I'll tell you how in a minute.
Last week, I gave everybody a self -study quiz and worksheet for the podcast. I think people liked it.
A lot of people participated.
This week, I'm going to change it.
I'm going to give a study sheet, not necessarily a worksheet, but I will give you a study sheet again.
If you are a member, so how do you become a member of the Let's Master English podcast?
Well, it's really easy.
You can just go to www .school .com slash LME.
Let me spell it. www .school .com.
Okay. School .com slash LME.
LME. Let's Master English LME.
That's it. go there click join it's going to ask you some questions and just say uh you know like what class are you taking uh just say let's master english podcast okay it's gonna say i don't know what the questions are your email address stuff like that but that's it and then you're in okay now right now it's free i'm letting people in for free but normally it wasn't free and it's not going to be free but for now it's great it's free so go there school .com slash lme s -k -o -o -l .com slash l -m -e all right starting us off i got a country song to cook us off to kick us off you probably don't know the singer
his name is cooper allen and his song is plead the fifth uh which which means if you go to, like, if you're in trouble and you go to court, C -O -U -R -T, and the judge asks you a question, in America, we can plead the fifth, which means we don't have to answer the question.
And that's kind of what the song is about.
It's actually really funny.
If you're a member, you're going to see the lyrics version of the song, and it is truly funny.
After that, we got news and so much more.
Here we go. Let's master English.
Yeah, you can do it.
Coach is the guy who will help you prove it.
Grammar, pronunciation, it's all inside.
Say it loud, say it clear, say it right.
Let's master English.
More than 100 wildfires are blazing across western U .S. and Canada, with Canada's fire season now the fourth worst ever.
Provinces like Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia declared states of emergency and evacuated tens of thousands.
Smoke has drifted into cities like Toronto, Chicago, and Detroit, Two British social media chefs cooked a 17 -pound scotch egg, breaking the Guinness World Record. They used a whole ostrich egg, wrapped it in sausage, breaded it, and fried it carefully.
Despite a first attempt falling apart, the second worked perfectly, measuring 31 inches in circumference.
They sliced it and sampled it with a sword. And finally, a Massachusetts man accidentally bought two Powerball tickets for the same July 9th drawing.
Amazingly, both tickets matched all five white balls, earning him two separate $1 million prizes for a total of $2 million before taxes.
is he claimed the winnings on july 11th and hasn't decided how to spend it yet talk about accidentally lucky wow i'll explain that story in a minute that is a really crazy story but the first story uh yes wildfires wildfires every year we have them i don't think it's global warming i I think it's just every year we have them.
Forest fires, right?
So if you're familiar with America, the Rocky Mountains, right?
In the West, the Rocky Mountains, beautiful area.
But it's one big forest. It's a huge forest. And it goes all the way from the Southern part of the United States all the way up into Canada, into Alaska, way up there.
It's a huge, long, mountainous area with tons and tons and tons and tons of forest forest and they start on fire.
Mother nature. It's not man -made fire.
They're natural wild fires.
So in this case, wild fires.
One word, wild fires.
More than 100 wildfires are blazing, blazing, B -L -A -Z -I -N -G.
That fire is just blazing big.
You can imagine fire, fire, fire, fire fire across Western U .S. and Canada.
Not the eastern part.
I live on the eastern part of the U .S., the western part.
Out there, California, Nevada, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, those areas out there.
Up in Canada, you've got Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan.
This area of Western U .S. and Canada.
With Canada's fire season now the fourth worst ever.
It's really bad this year.
Really, really bad.
Provinces. In America, we say states, right?
States. But in Canada, they say provinces.
America has 50 states.
Canada has, I don't know, several provinces.
I'm sorry, Canada. I don't know the answer.
You don't need to know.
Don't worry, everybody.
You don't need to know.
Anyway, I'm sorry, Canada Provinces like Manitoba Saskatchewan And British Columbia You guys know British Columbia That's where Vancouver is, right?
Anyway, those areas Declared States of emergency They have officially said They declared The government said States of emergency A state of emergency This is a period of of disaster, very dangerous situation, a state of emergency.
It's very dangerous.
It's a disaster. People could die.
Land could be destroyed.
So these three areas, parts of the areas, not all of it, but parts of the areas have declared states of emergency and evacuated tens of thousands, tens of thousands of people, 30, 20, 30, 40, 50 ,000 people have been moved moved from their homes because of these fires.
That is so scary. You guys remember Los Angeles.
That was big news. Los Angeles earlier this year, lots of big fires, burning down really expensive houses.
Yeah, same here. Same in Canada.
Smoke has drifted. Drifted, in this case, floated.
F -L -O -A -T. t same thing drifted floated into cities like toronto chicago and detroit toronto is in canada of course chicago illinois detroit michigan american cities causing air quality alerts so i live in uh vermont uh which is uh we get we get affected by the smoke from these canadian and fires and i'm looking right now at the uh air quality uh oh the air quality is good the air quality index on my iphone says 30 which is good but if you're in chicago it might not be yeah i used to live in minnesota very close to manitoba and uh yeah we definitely the the sky would be yellow the sky would be
yellow because of the smoke serious stuff so if you're in that area I hope you're safe That smoke is bad for you Don't be outside exercising This is the time you wear a mask Okay, wear a mask to protect yourself from that smoke seriously All right, second story Two British chefs C -H -E -F -S A chef is a professional cook But these are social media chefs chefs so they're like on twitter and or whatever that what instagram and i don't know what they are all the tiktok those things facebook two british social media chefs cooked an egg but not just a regular egg they cooked a 17 pound egg 17 pounds is 7
.7 kilograms Kilograms. Huh?
Ah, it's not just a regular egg.
It is called a scotch egg.
S -C -O -T -C -H. A scotch egg.
A scotch egg. What is a scotch egg?
I'll explain. Don't worry.
Two British social media chefs cooked a 17 -pound, 7 .7 kilograms scotch egg, breaking the Guinness World Record. Ah, new world record. That's cool.
So how did they do this?
What is a scotch egg?
They used a whole ostrich egg.
You know ostrich, right?
The bird, Australian bird, really tall bird that can't fly, ostrich. They lay eggs, huge eggs.
So they used an ostrich egg, a whole, an entire ostrich egg.
And they took that egg and they wrapped it in sausage.
so they have this egg, they wrapped it in sausage, now I'll explain, they boil the egg, they hard boil the egg and then they peel off the shell and now you got this, you know, the white egg, it's cooked, it's boiled, right, you got the egg and then they wrapped it in sausage and then outside the sausage, they breaded it, which basically means they put dry pieces of bread on the outside like when you make stir fry or not stir fry when you fry like food tempura or something I can't think of anything you know what I mean right fried chicken right that like crust on the outside fried chicken there
you go so they wrapped it in bread this breading material and fried it carefully that my friends is a scotch egg it's an egg wrapped in sausage sausage and then covered in breading and then fried.
That is a scotch egg.
They're actually quite expensive.
There's a bakery that I go to that sells scotch eggs.
It's ridiculous. It's like $20 for a scotch egg.
Why? Because it's not easy to make.
It breaks. And they say here in the story, Despite a first attempt falling apart.
Ah, so they tried it the first time, but the egg fell apart.
The sausage and egg, everything broke.
It's a disaster. The second attempt worked perfectly, and they set a world record. Measuring 31 inches, 31 inches in circumference, all the way around the egg was 31 inches.
31 inches is what? 79 .5 centimeters.
That is huge. 79 .5 centimeters around.
It's a 7 .7 kilogram deep fried egg.
Egg and sausage. Wow.
They sliced it and sampled it with a sword. Sword, S -W -O -R -D, the W is silent.
A sword is a big knife.
Right? You can think about a knight, a European knight, K -N -I -G -H -T, or a samurai with his sword, right?
A sword. They used a sword to slice it.
And, this is cool, they used a sword to eat it.
Yeah, I like that. When I cook meat on the grill, when I'm cooking steak or something, I'll use a knife to cut the meat and then I'll use a knife to eat the meat I don't need no fork just give me a knife same idea a scotch egg amazing you know it's really funny everybody if you had asked me three months ago what's a scotch egg I would have no idea I would think maybe scotch whiskey i have no idea but because of that bakery i found out so when i saw this story in the news i was like oh my god here it is scotch egg again even me coach shane i'm learning english i'm learning british english oh and speaking
of british english have you listened to our new ddm assignment there's so much to learn it's amazing okay uh the third story A Massachusetts man.
Once again, America has 50 states.
One of those states is Massachusetts.
The most famous city in Massachusetts is Boston.
Boston is famous for education.
You've got MIT and Harvard. Harvard University, lots of Berkeley School of Music, lots of great places there.
A Massachusetts man accidentally, not intentionally, bought two Powerball tickets.
Now, America, we have some lotteries where you can win lots of money, right, every week.
And one of the lotteries is called the Powerball.
So this guy bought two Powerball tickets for the same July 9th drawing.
That's kind of dumb.
You just buy one ticket.
Why did he buy two?
It was an accident.
He didn't mean to. It was an accident.
However, amazingly, amazingly.
Both tickets matched all five white balls.
So in the Powerball ticket, I think that they have five white balls and one red ball.
If you get five white balls and the red ball, you win like millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars.
But if you get all five white balls, you still get a million dollars.
This guy I had two tickets and somehow both matched all five white balls so he won a million dollars on each ticket so two million dollars before taxes that is crazy that is insane he claimed the winnings on July 11th and hasn't decided how to spend it yet Net.
Talk about accidentally lucky.
My gosh, that is crazy.
So $2 million minus taxes, who knows, 50%.
So a million dollars right now.
So a million dollars, that's a lot of money, right?
That's a lot of money.
But it's not a crazy, crazy, crazy lot of money.
If you had a million dollars, if I had a million dollars, what would you buy?
What would you spend ended on for me if I had a million dollars I would pay off all my debt I got so much debt um yeah I would pay off all my debt and I don't know I guess save money for my kids for college right for their future um yeah maybe maybe build a building for my business and then oh that would be cool how about this if I want a million dollars I'm gonna pay off all my debt and then I'll create create a let's master English, not a hotel, but like a place to stay.
So people, if they come to America, they have a place where they can stay and study English and explore the area and have fun.
Yeah. It'll be like the let's master English lounge.
That's what I'll do.
Yeah. Yeah. That's what i'll do bad idea let me know what would you do what would you do that's what i want to know all right we're gonna listen to the two stories uh of course once more i'm gonna read it one more time and then we got two songs and i just love the songs wild wild west will smith that is for the record -breaking wildfires in canada and the u .s and originally i had in a big country by big country But then that song, if I had a million dollars, we're going to listen to that song instead.
And joy. Here we go.
More than 100 wildfires are blazing across Western U .S. and Canada with Canada's fire season now the fourth worst ever.
Provinces like Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia declared states of emergency and evacuated tens of thousands.
Smoke has drifted into cities like Toronto, Chicago, and Detroit, causing air quality alerts.
Two British social media chefs cooked a 17 -pound scotch egg, breaking the Guinness World Record. They used a whole ostrich egg, wrapped it in sausage, breaded it, and fried it carefully.
Despite a first attempt falling apart, the second worked perfectly, measuring 31 inches in circumference.
They sliced it and sampled it with a sword. And finally, a Massachusetts man accidentally bought two Powerball tickets for the same July 9th drawing.
drawing amazingly both tickets matched all five white balls earning him two separate one million dollar prizes for a total of two million dollars before taxes he claimed the winnings on july 11th and hasn't decided how to spend it yet talk about accidentally lucky where education and and entertainment come together.
Let's master English.
Do it. How you doing, everybody?
This is Country Shane, and I'm bringing you the facts.
Hey, everybody, Country Shane here.
Thanks a lot for those great stories.
Did you know major wildfires in western North America every year, They're caused almost always by lightning.
That's right, lightning from the sky.
Lightning causes around 30 to 50 % of major wildfires.
Be careful out there.
And wildfires smoke.
Oh, that can be dangerous too.
Not just outside. Coach Shane said don't be outside exercising, but inside the house too.
Make sure you shut your windows for sure.
And you know what? But if it's dusty, put on a mask.
Those smoke particles can harm you inside the house.
Wow, I didn't know that.
Yeah, make sure the windows are shut.
That's really important.
My boys always keep their window open.
I'm going to have to watch that.
Right now, we don't have any smoke issues, but got to be careful.
You know, in Manitoba, the wildfire smoke was so thick not long ago, So it was compared to smoking several cigarettes.
Yeah. The smoke was so bad, it was like you're smoking cigarettes.
So it's a serious thing.
Do you have wildfires in your country?
In Canada and the U .S., it's like all summer.
You can have smoke for weeks.
Yeah. And they just let them burn because what can you do?
It's in the middle of nowhere.
What about where you live?
What happens? All right.
Right, we got, you know, Country Shane mentioned lightning.
Well, when you have lightning, you probably got thunder.
Imagine dragons. Simple tips for mastering English.
Yeah, today we got a phrasal verb, a listening tip, and a communications tip, of course.
Our phrasal verb in line with the wildfires, to fire up.
F -I -R -E, fire up, U -P.
Now, usually, not always, when we use U -P as the participle, as the, so to speak, preposition for a phrasal verb, it's there to emphasize, just to emphasize.
So to fire up means emphasizing fire.
Well, it has two common meanings.
Number Number one, to start something, to fire up an engine, right?
And you can imagine there's a little bit of fire in the engine.
It starts the engine.
Another meaning of fire up is to motivate, to get that energy inside people, to make it really strong so people are, yeah, let's go.
So here are four sentences.
You need to make your own, but here are four sentences with fire up.
Listen carefully. They fired up the generator when the power went out.
Fire up the grill. Let's cook some hamburgers.
The coach fired up the team before the game.
And finally, the Let's Master English podcast always fires me up to study English.
Remember, you can see all these sentences.
audiences the news to all the song names everything uh if you're a member of our community and right now it's free it may not be free in the future but as of today it's free how do you join listen carefully school .com slash lme school s -k -o -o -l .com slash l -m -e all right join us Listening tip So one thing that we have in common In every country Is the weather I don't know about wildfires But we do have the weather So here's my challenge for you this week I want you to find a news clip A video of a news show Where they're talking about I don't know, the weather For example, the weather Or maybe
about wildfires okay make sure it's short the video should be short three minutes is good five minutes it's a little bit long three minutes is great three minutes four minutes long that's it what I want you to do I want you to listen to it at least two times but the first time you listen just listen for just gist gist for For the basic idea.
You don't need to hear any words.
Watch the video. Just listen to it from beginning to end.
Even though the English is like...
Whatever, that's okay.
Just watch the pictures.
Watch the reporter.
Watch the anchor. Watch them speak.
Just listen one time.
And then listen a second time.
Now you can do it a third time and a fourth time.
That's okay. But I really hope you can just do it two times.
As you listen the second time, I want you to write down three things.
Not dictation. I don't want you to do dictation.
I want you to basically take notes.
Okay? Write down three facts.
And then I want you to say, I want you to read the facts out loud.
You say them. Read them out loud.
Okay? And then listen one more time.
That's it. This will help you build your listening comprehension and your speaking fluency.
It's a little game you can play by yourself.
It's not too difficult.
It doesn't take much time.
But if you do this, it'll help you so much. Now, better than this, join my DDM classes.
Our DDM classes are created for exactly this.
Okay? And we get, it's so much fun.
It's fun. It's amazing.
But for some reason, I don't know why, for some reason, if you do not want to study with me, you can do this.
Eventually, you'll study with me, right?
Good. All right. Finally, communication tips.
So I had an English camp.
One of my classes is an English camp.
And I actually had it yesterday morning, Sunday morning.
And we were doing a speaking assignment.
And I'm listening to people speak.
And the students were Chinese.
So I had the Chinese translation of what we were saying.
And I had the students read it in English.
And two ladies did a really good job.
They did a great job.
But it was not 100 % perfect.
Perfect. So this is what I did.
I had them read it in English.
They did a nice job.
Then I gave them the Chinese and I had them read it in Chinese.
Even though they're Chinese, I had them read it.
I wanted them to read it.
And then I had them read it again in English and they did so much better.
Do you know why? Because when they read it in English, they concentrated on English they understood what they were doing and they did a great job very very nice job but they concentrated on English when they read it in Chinese they know Chinese now they were imagining the situation they were concentrating on communication so that means they used body language they used their hands they use their face they use their voice they use their eyes to communicate not just words and sound does this make sense when you're communicating you need to use your face even a little bit you need to use your hands
even a little bit. The more body language you use, the more easier it is for people to understand, but also the more interesting it is for people to listen to you.
Even if your vocabulary is terrible, even if your grammar is terrible, use body language.
For example, example, when you say the word yesterday, what kind of body language can you use?
You can point behind you, like use your thumb and point behind you.
Yesterday, I was really busy.
Yeah, that's good body language.
Yesterday, behind you.
When you're asking a question, raise your eyebrows.
Oh, do you like Imagine Dragons?
And raise your face, Raise your eyebrows.
Raise your voice. Did you know you can hear a smile?
So if I answer the phone, hello, let's master English.
Can I help you? Do I sound nice?
Hello, let's master English.
Can I help you? I don't sound rude, but if I say, hello, let's master English.
Can I help you? You can hear my smile.
You can hear a smile.
mile. So use your hands, use your face, use your body when you speak.
Start with little things.
It's really important.
All right. So there's some simple tips for you.
Of course, fire up was our phrasal verb.
New Medicine's got a song, Fire Up the Night.
weekly speaking challenge all right everybody last week's theme talk about a pet you know oh my god so many people sent in their recordings thank you so much and pictures of their pets cats, beautiful puppies and beautiful kitties, amazing stories.
One lady has 10 cats.
Can you believe that?
That's just crazy. So it was really difficult to choose.
So I got a cat lover and a dog lover here.
I don't know about that, but for sure.
Fulia had a beautiful, a beautiful, Beautiful.
The picture is amazing.
A golden retriever named Bonnie.
We had a dog named Bonnie.
She was a golden retriever and like most of her kind, she was very sweet, playful and always seemed to be smiling.
She treated my little daughter like a sister and always wanted to wrestle with her.
They looked so funny together.
Ah, Fulia, that's beautiful.
That's just wonderful.
The picture of Bonnie was just gorgeous.
Olesya had a cat. It actually wasn't her cat.
The cat's name was Marusa.
Marusa was a hunter.
I used to rent a house with a cat named Marusa.
She regularly delivered to my door mice, bats, moles, swallows, and even pigeons who used to make their nests in a pine in the garden.
But when she was unlucky with her hunting, she walked in and ate my sausages with great pleasure.
I wanted to share this memory when I heard about coach Shane's cats.
thank you so much thanks to everybody for the beautiful pictures and stories uh it's really it's really special again if you're in the community you can see all of this stuff and uh yeah it's uh it's a family get in there this week's theme this week's speaking challenge theme describe a place you like to visit okay a place you like to visit where is this place Why do you like it?
What do you do there?
Here's my example. I love the old library downtown.
I like the quiet and the smell of the books when I read there after work.
That's it. Keep it short.
I like to say keep it under 20 seconds.
Be concise and precise and interesting.
Keep your voice clear year so everybody can understand.
Do not talk quickly.
Again, make a recording.
Use your smartphone to make a recording and share it with us.
Speaking of pets, would you like to have a pet monkey?
Michael Jackson not only had a pet monkey.
As far as I know, Michael Jackson had a pet gorilla.
This is a request song, the gorillas, Clint Eastwood.
It is July 21st, 2025, the 202nd day of the year.
There are 163 days left in 2025.
What's happening today?
Important upcoming dates.
Space Exploration Day is today.
Uh -huh. Have we been to the moon?
That's the question.
It's also National Junk Food Day.
What's your favorite junk food?
My wife just made me cheesecakes.
Oh, man. Man, she made me two kinds, strawberry cheesecake and pumpkin cheesecake.
Obviously, strawberry is the best. Actually, pumpkin is the first time I had it.
It was excellent, fantastic.
Thank you, wife. Tomorrow, July 22nd, is Pi Day.
Wait, wait, wait, 3 -14.
I thought March 14th was Pi Day.
Oh, oh, oh, it's Pi Approximation Day because it's 7 -22.
22 divided by 7 is approximately pi.
Ha, ha, ha. It's World Brain Day too.
So to understand that joke, you have to be really, really smart like me.
July 23rd. In the UK, it's National Hot Dog Day.
Isn't that nice? In the US, it's National Vanilla Ice Cream Day.
I like both. both July 24th.
It's international selfie day.
So let's do that on July 24th.
Everybody take a selfie and post it on in our community.
We'll do that in July 24th, international selfie day.
Just take a selfie and put it in our community.
That's really cool.
Yeah, let's do that.
I'll do it too. Of course.
July 25th is national wine and cheese day.
Ooh, do you like wine and cheese?
It's also National Feel Good Day.
That makes sense. If you drink enough wine, you will feel good.
If you drink too much wine, you will not.
July 26th is All or Nothing Day.
So what is All or Nothing Day?
Well, it's a day to encourage people to do something that they have been avoiding.
Or it's a day to make a change, to take a chance, or to speak up.
Or it's a day to carpe diem, seize the moment, because life is short.
All or nothing day.
And finally, July 27th is International Tiger Day.
I like tigers. It's National Scotch Day.
Not scotch eggs, but scotch, the whiskey.
So that's my day. I love scotch. And of course, July 7th, of course, really, it's also New Moon.
There's a new moon on July 27th.
Kind of cool. So I've got two songs coming at you, and they're very interesting.
You need to actually watch the music videos to appreciate the songs because the people who created the songs are extremely talented.
It's very, very interesting to watch the songs.
And the songs themselves are good.
The first song is called Cradles.
It's a cover of Suburban's song.
the guy who does it is Finn Draper and the next song is Bitte Bitte it's a German song by Rakede I don't know r -a -k -e -d -e I don't know how to pronounce that rakede Rakede but I just love these two songs because of the way the singers the artists created the songs the way they sing the song it's really cool so again I hope you remember if you are check out the music videos and enjoy.
It's your birthday.
Is it your birthday?
If it's not, when is it?
Let me know. Day of anniversary, retirement, something like that.
July 21st would have been Robin Williams' 73rd birthday.
Great comedian, actor.
Yeah, so missed. So missed.
It is, however, Jon Bon Jovi's 62nd birthday.
Congratulations. Happy birthday to Jon.
July 22nd, tomorrow, Selena Gomez is 33, singer -actress.
William Dafoe, actor, 69 years old.
July 23rd, Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe is 36 years old.
Wow. Woody Harrelson, I love that that guy he's 64 years old july 24th my wife likes this woman jennifer lopez she's 60 and barry gibb of the bgs the last remaining brother of the bgs trio he is 78 years old on july 25th joey from friends matt leblanc is 57 on july 26th jason statham is also 57 and kylie minogue is 57 57 everybody's turning 57 i am 57 everybody everybody's trying to be like me isn't that cool and finally on july 27th maya rudolph is 52 she's an actress comedian you might know her from king of queens got some songs we are young 57 years old is not old we're young by fun and of course
kylie minogue can't get you out of my head thank you so much everybody for listening to the Let's Master English podcast. I produce this podcast for you.
I hope you enjoy it.
I want English to be fun.
I want English to be interesting.
I want you to be able to listen to English stress -free and hopefully laugh a little bit and learn a little bit.
And yeah, I really enjoy making it for you.
Please share the podcast with your friends.
Please do that. Tell them.
And right Right now, like I said, it's a great time to join our community.
You can join for free, so please do that.
Get in there. And that's it.
Thank you very much for taking us out.
Request song, It's Summertime.
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong enjoy a classic.
And together, let's master English.
Thank you.
