Listen & Learn English with Luke 🎧 This is SOMETHING! (944) | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

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Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. How are you doing today?

Welcome to this new episode of my podcast for learners of English all around the world.

That must be you, right?

I mean, right? I guess, if you're watching this, listening to this episode, I suppose you're a learner of English and you're somewhere around the world.

If that's the case, hello.

Nice to be speaking to you again.

I'm Luke. I'm an English teacher from England.

And yes, this is episode number, I think it's episode 944 of Luke's English Podcast. Your chance to do more listening and learning of English here with me today.

Welcome to the episode.

At the moment, I haven't actually decided what this episode will be called.

Yeah, it's exciting, isn't it?

I just feel like living on the edge today and recording an episode which still doesn't have a name.

I know it's very, I'm taking a big risk here.

Just like, whoa, what's going on?

Haven't even chosen the name of the episode.

That's not to say that there isn't a plan for the episode.

Oh no, I've got plenty of things planned for this this one, as you will see, but still no title, no name.

Maybe the episode name can emerge while I'm actually doing the recording.

Maybe the name will just kind of write itself.

Maybe something will just pop up which will be a suitable name.

So anyway, that's something for me to think about while I'm recording.

What could I call this episode?

and will a good name just kind of come up naturally while I'm talking to you?

What makes a good name?

What do you think? What makes a good episode name for an episode of a podcast?

What do you think makes a good name?

Because you're the listener, right?

Or you're the viewer.

You're the one whose attention we're trying to attract, right?

And the title of the episode is quite an important one because you know that's what us content creators are trying to do we're trying to come up with names and titles that will get your interest and make you listen to our stuff so what do you think what would what's a good name um and what is a good name for an episode of my podcast what kind of thing is appealing to you this is an interesting question for me um let me know in the comment what do you think you know um do you need do you need episode titles to be descriptive do you expect the title to explain exactly what you're going to get in the episode

or does it really not matter that much for example a podcast i listen to the bill burr monday morning podcast these days he's adding more stuff more details in his titles but certainly for years the titles of of his episodes were just like Monday morning podcast and then the date that the episode went up and that's it you know each episode was like that and his podcast is massively successful so that seems to work for him does it not matter at all maybe maybe we are giving it far too much importance or maybe you're one of those people who will I don't know click on something if there are certain things

in the title I don't know let me know let me know but it's a good question I'll I'll come back to that in a moment because right now I've just realised I do need to set the usual timer.

So let me just set myself a timer here.

30 minutes, I think.

That is to remind me to drink some water because obviously it's very important to stay hydrated.

We are, what is it, 70 % of our bodies is water.

70%. We're just like big bags of water, aren't we?

Walking around, sitting around, talking into microphones.

We're just made of water.

Isn't that mad that we're We're just 75, 70 percent water.

So we've got to keep, I suppose, we have to keep topping up the level of water so we don't get dehydrated, right?

Anyway, 30 minutes, in 30 minutes time, an alarm will go off and I will drink water from a non -plastic water container just to make the people happy.

happy um also another thing i should say is that there are subtitles available for this episode if you're watching on youtube and there's a full episode transcript available for everyone you can find the link in the episode description for the subtitles if you're watching on youtube and you would like to see subtitles in english you can just turn them on just using the generic subtitle function on youtube and i hope that you know about that right that all youtube videos are well, most of them have some kind of subtitles, either they are automatically generated ones, or they are sort of subtitles

that have been added by the, the video maker.

The subtitles for this video are not automatically generated.

They are not I mean, not by YouTube's system anyway, but they're a transcript which I've generated with the help of AI transcript making software, which these days has got to the point where it's really brilliant.

I mean, it's amazing.

It's almost flawless, especially when it's just me talking.

And so what I do is I upload the audio into that, and it transcribes it.

And it's normally very correct, and it uses the right punctuation and stuff.

And then I export that.

This is fascinating, isn't it?

This is this is just fascinating stuff.

Anyway, I export that as a text file and upload it into YouTube, and then it converts that into subtitles for the video.

So, anyway, you can switch on subtitles for the episode in English.

I tend to just put English subtitles on my videos because the idea there is that I want you to, you know, do everything in English.

Sometimes people write to me and they say, can you add subtitles in this language or that language?

And for some reason, I often get comments from Turkish listeners.

Well, not that often, but sometimes I get comments from Turkish listeners.

Sometimes they're a little bit upset.

And I've had things in the past like, why are there no Turkish subtitles available for these videos?

Is this some kind of prejudice against Turkish people?

Well, no, it's not.

There's no subtitles in any languages, as far as I know, except English.

Because the idea being, I want you to practice your English.

I want you to listen in English and read in English.

This is the whole idea.

And I think that that's much better for your English rather than listening in English and reading in another language.

I think really you should just be operating only in English.

That's why my episodes only have English subtitles.

So that's YouTube. Subtitles are available.

Find the option to switch them on and switch them on if you want to.

You could survive without them, I think, if you really just want to focus on your listening then don't bother with the subtitles but they are there if you want to use them uh for everyone else uh you'll find a transcript in the episode show notes with every single word transcribed for you so you could use that however you want to um all right uh yeah so water timer subtitles transcript I've mentioned those things is there anything else in terms of housekeeping I don't think so let's continue with that stuff about what makes a good name for an episode.

I don't really know, really.

I mean, it's I think it's probably something that makes you, the listener, a bit curious, something quite catchy, something that tells you what to expect from the episode while also making you compelled to listen to it.

I don't really like clickbait, right?

You know what clickbait is?

It's the sort sort of over the top exaggerated title for a video or a podcast episode or an article that you might see online.

And it's the sort of extremely exaggerated thing that is meant to get your attention and make you click on something.

And often the actual content doesn't really deliver on the promise of the title, you know, so it would be something like these three fluency see secrets are what the English teachers don't want you to know.

Or doctors hate her because of her skincare routine.

You know, things like that.

So I don't like clickbait, but it actually does work.

It does make people click on your stuff.

So maybe I should be using more clickbait in my titles because ultimately what I want you to do is just start listening you know it's just like a to get you to you know just to click play um maybe I should use more clickbait but I'm I'm against it on sort of moral and aesthetic grounds but it does work I think probably the main thing is that the episode delivers on the title if you know you you get a title and the content doesn't actually give you what you expected from the title, then that's going to make people annoyed.

So if I did call this episode something like the one fluency secret that English teachers don't want you to know, if I called it that, then I would certainly need to deliver on that.

I would need to give you some sort of incredibly powerful fluency secret.

By the way, there are no fluency secrets.

There are no secrets that English teachers are not telling you about how to be fluent in English.

There really are no secrets, okay?

In fact, there is an entire English teaching industry which has existed for decades, including people writing course books, people delivering Delivering English courses in classrooms and online and a whole load of other things in this English language teaching and learning industry that has existed for a long time.

um there's an entire industry which is devoted to um you know telling you and teaching you every single bit of language learning advice and that includes for fluency that we have right and this also includes a lot of academic research into how people achieve fluency in a second language in adulthood and converting that research into actual materials, which could then be used to deliver English courses, right?

So there's no secret knowledge.

We are literally giving you everything that we know, doing our very best, trying to find the best method for helping you learn English.

There is no secret knowledge which is being held back from you.

you. As an English teacher, I'm constantly telling my English learners everything I possibly know about the best ways to develop fluency.

And there are thousands of other English teachers like me doing the same thing.

So please do not be fooled by the titles of some YouTube videos, for example, promising to tell you language learning secrets.

There are no secrets.

This kind of thing is clickbait.

Also, while we're on the subject of this kind of thing, I would like you to be aware that a lot of English learning content online, especially on YouTube these days, is AI -generated.

Were you aware of this?

Are you aware of this?

The sheer volume of AI -generated English learning content.

So I want you to just think twice about the content that you're consuming.

Does it sound like the most bland generic slop that you've ever heard with two generic hosts with almost no personality talking to each other in the most generic way possible?

If that's the case, well, yes, it's probably an AI generated podcast. Maybe that's what you want.

If that is what you want, bland, generic, faceless English language teaching slop, then, you know, obviously go ahead, fill your boots.

There's plenty of it for you.

you, maybe it's going to get better, I mean, I talk like this, maybe in, imagine, even just in five years, it's probably going to be astounding, and we won't be able to tell the difference, and my words right now will be redundant, as well as my job, and yours as well, I mean, God, has your job been replaced by AI yet?

Is there a hint of it happening?

It's probably going to happen and slowly, by degrees, slowly but surely, as the AI gains more traction, as it is able to do more and more things, the employers will realise, oh, wait a minute, we could save so much money.

I could put so much money in my pockets by using this software.

I don't know. When's it going to happen?

When's the tide going to turn?

I don't know. But anyway, so I don't know what this episode is going to be called yet.

Oh, how exciting. I do know that it will be episode number 944.

And actually this episode marks a huge monumental moment, perhaps even a tectonic change, a tectonic shift. Tectonics, that means the sort of the tectonic plates of the Earth's surface you know tectonics is large rock plates that move and shift there are what are those places called um fault lines and where the tectonic plates meet each other and they rub against each other at these fault lines causing earthquakes and volcanoes and things so tectonic shifts are large uh shifts of huge uh pieces of rock on the earth's surface we're talking about out the most monumental changes this episode marks

a huge monumental tectonic shift in the way that i do this podcast and i know what you're thinking now you're thinking luke what is that what is this huge monumental tectonic shift in the way that you do this podcast are you going to are you changing things how are you going to change things you're going to be doing eight minute podcast episodes no i'm not although actually if you if you're interested in short form episodes from me, check out my other podcast called A Phrasal Verb A Day.

It's available wherever you get your podcasts.

You'll find a link in the description.

A Phrasal Verb A Day.

There are over 100 short phrasal verb episodes in which you can learn a phrasal verb in each episode.

Each episode is just a few minutes long, just to prove to the world that I can do short episodes.

But no, I'm not going to be reducing the length of episodes or something.

No, this is the first episode in which the episode number appears at the end of the episode title, not at the beginning.

Yeah, big changes at Luke's English podcast. Like I said, monumental tectonic changes here at L .E .P.

So just to explain what I'm talking about, the last episode of the podcast was this.

The title was something like this.

943 dot Sherlock Holmes colon The Adventure of Silver Blaze.

That was the title.

But in the new style, that would simply be Sherlock Holmes colon The Adventure of Silver Blaze brackets 943.

How exciting. So, that's the change.

The number is going to be moved to the end of the title and put in brackets.

Now, yeah, don't send Send me your messages saying, don't change it.

Don't change anything.

I know that sometimes when a big, serious change like this is announced in the thing that you love, then the instinct is to throw your hands in the air and go, no, it's going to be different.

Let me explain the reasons.

Obviously, no one's doing that.

No one cares, of course.

I'm joking about the monumental tectonic change thing.

But, you know, having said that, for 15 years or whatever it is, or more, I've been doing it the same way with the number first. Originally that was because a lot of the time people used to download the files.

Some people probably still do.

You can download the MP3s of these episodes from my website.

And I felt it was important to put a number at the beginning of the file name so that you could get all the episodes in the right order in your MP3 player or something.

thing these days you know with streaming that's not so important but anyway the reasons for this huge change are a industry specialists have recommended this to me yes industry specialists uh they've recommended that i do this because it makes the episodes so much more appealing and exciting i expect this is the main reason you chose to to watch or listen to this episode in fact you you looked at the title and you thought look there's no number No distracting number like a sort of barrier at the beginning of the episode that is essentially, you know, causing me to lose interest and listen to something

else. You thought, no, there's no number at the start.

I'm definitely listening to this.

That's what you thought.

Anyway, industry insiders have recommended that I move the number to the end because it will essentially make the episode more appealing.

feeling and also the other reason is that i'm getting close to a thousand episodes in about a year i think it will be i'll be hitting episode 1000 of the podcast and i don't really want to have a four -figure number at the beginning of every podcast episode i don't really want that i mean i could almost it's i don't know is that a good thing is that would it be um somehow good good marketing for the podcast that you think wow this this guy's done over a thousand episodes this podcast must be brilliant or this guy's done over a thousand episodes oh my god he's wasted his life i don't know what you

would think let's just say it's an experiment uh but i don't really want a four figure number right at the beginning of the episode i think it would be wise just to go straight in with the episode title so there is this this marks a sort of tidal change change a sea change on Luke's English podcast where previously the episode number came first now it comes last will things ever be the same I don't know so in today's episode this still feels like the introduction but who cares in this episode hang out with me continue to hang out with me for the duration of the episode you don't have to listen

to all of it in one go you know how podcasts work don't you you know how YouTube works don't you you don't have to listen to the whole thing in one go.

You can stop and come back to it later.

That's how I listen to my podcasts.

I'll leave the house to go to work and I'll have a look at my podcast app of choice, which for me is Pocket Casts.

And I see which episode is up next and I play it and then I get to work and I stop listening to the episode.

And guess what? The podcast app knows where I was.

And then when I come home again, I can continue listening from where I left off.

The same thing with YouTube videos when I watch long -form YouTube content, which I love, if I decide I'm going to stop watching for whatever reason, I press pause, and often I'll put the episode in a playlist. I put the episodes in the watch later playlist, which is a private playlist in my YouTube account, and that way I can go back and find the episodes that I was watching and carry on later, and And YouTube remembers where I stopped.

Right. So, you know, hang out with me for as long as you want.

As I ramble about this and that, including these things, the trials and tribulations, the trials and tribulations of traveling to England with my one year old son.

So trials and tribulations.

This just means the sort of challenges, the difficult things that you have to do, the trials and tribulations of learning English.

you know the the difficult obstacles you have to overcome the challenges you have to deal with in this case the trials and tribulations of traveling to england with my little boy yes this topic never grows old whenever i make a long journey with my kids i have to talk about it mainly just i suppose just just as kind of therapy for me um i got back just uh yesterday no the day day before yesterday and I'm still coming to terms with the trauma of travelling on two trains and a taxi with my little boy.

I'll tell you about that at some point in the episode.

The episode, I've talked about that kind of thing before, so I might be running over the same old ground.

But in this case, to spice things up a bit, I've converted my account into a dramatic hollywood action movie screenplay because why not um also there's a grammar question yeah grammar on luke's english podcast again a grammar question about the verb tenses we use when we are describing stories a listener wrote in to ask me a grammar question and i am very happy to oblige by answering it so that's coming up um an amazing new website which is bound to shock the world of English language learning?

What's that? You're thinking, well, listen on to find out.

And also some random jokes, no, jokes, some random jokes explained.

So, I will be dissecting some imaginary frogs on the podcast. If you don't know what that means, keep listening.

And also some other responses to recent episodes.

And by the way, I've mentioned this is rambling.

I call these rambling episodes in a sort of make fun of myself, self -deprecating kind of way.

But I was actually thinking about this yesterday evening, and actually this is not just rambling, which means talking without a particular aim or particular direction.

this is not just rambling i mean to be completely fair to myself and after for 943 episodes plus 250 odd premium ones so it's over over over a thousand episodes and over 15 years to be fair to myself this is not just rambling i've been doing this i've been doing this 15 years now All right.

I've been in this rap game for 25 years.

I mean, not a rap game.

I mean, teaching English for over 25 years.

I've been doing this podcast for 15 years.

You could even say, no, I'm not saying this, but you could, you could say that I have single -handedly defined an entirely new medium of English language learning and teaching.

You could say that.

I'm not saying but you could, that I've defined, I've opened up new horizons in English language learning.

The podcast monologue.

This is my medium. I've changed the world, basically.

Now, you could say that.

I wouldn't, because it would be arrogant.

And I'm far too modest and humble to make an outrageous claim like that.

It's not for me to say.

It's for other people to point out, of course um so you could say that i'm a pioneer of english teaching in podcast form and i don't just ramble in fact everything i do here is crafted to help you learn english carefully crafted every word every syllable carefully selected and delivered so it seems like a stream of of consciousness, of unplanned bollocks, but hiding within that Trojan horse of unplanned bollocks.

Hiding inside that Trojan horse, there is an army of English teaching pedagogy.

Does that make sense?

I am basically, I'm a smuggler of the English language.

I'm a professional smuggler of English.

I smuggle English vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation into your brain right um all of these things discourse management uh the principles of communicative competence i smuggle all of these things into your brain under the guise of it being some sort of light -hearted rambling chit chat but no this is not just rambling this is nothing less than a revolutionary form of direct language facilitation and activation, the sort of industry shaking innovation in English language teaching that saw my podcast get nominated for a British Council Elton Award in Digital Innovation in 2016.

Yes, a British Council Elton Award for Digital Innovation.

motivation. Okay, I didn't win.

I got nominated. But that really is something.

Okay, that is definitely something.

And this is something.

Okay, just in case you had any doubts about whether or not this was something, this is something.

Okay, so as you listen, I do just want you to remember one thing.

This is something. You could think to yourself, I am listening to something.

I'm I'm definitely listening to something.

Okay? Now, just in case you're not convinced, there will be grammar. Let me start that again.

There will be grammar. There will also be vocabulary teaching in this episode.

So settle in and stick with me for the long run.

And remember, there is method in my madness, and this really is something that you're listening to.

That could be a good title for the episode, actually, couldn't it?

this is something I'll think about that uh that could be I don't know would that be good I don't know I'll think about it but there anyway there is a candidate for the episode title right there this is something anyway uh so here's a question from a listener uh on youtube tube um this is a question in response to episode 941 which was that story called the man who could work miracles if you remember in the story i told the story read it out to you and also i kind of summarized the story myself in my own words and then described some of the themes and discussed some of the interpretations and meanings

of the story right popular episode people seem to like it.

But I got lots of comments, but this one I saved because I thought that I could respond to it in an episode like this.

So the comment was from Neobrain.

I think the user's name is longer than that, but that's all I can see here in this screenshot, Neobrain.

So anyway, here's the comment.

Hi, Luke. Thanks for your hard, long -lasting and extremely effective work for people.

You're You're welcome.

That's nice, isn't it?

Would you be so kind as to elaborate a bit on what tense we should use for verbs while retelling a story about somebody else?

For example, while retelling this story in your own words, you use the present simple.

For example, he thinks, he points out, etc. Is that conventional or should we use the past continuous?

After all, we're describing the ongoing events.

I'd really appreciate it if you answered.

This is a way how I use your podcast for learning.

Trying to listen carefully, what grammar constructions you use.

Praying emoji. Okay, so that's great.

The thing you said at the end, this is, I wouldn't say this is a way how I use your podcast. I would just say this is how I use your podcast. Or this is a way I use your podcast so either this is a way I use your podcast or this is how I use your podcast podcast right but not this is a way how I use your podcast okay but that's great though you use the podcast and as you're listening you are paying attention and trying to listen carefully for which grammar constructions I'm using this is a very good thing to do right you should always be paying attention listening carefully thinking to yourself

how is it that Luke puts this because Because obviously Luke is the ideal user of English.

Luke is the example that we should all follow in terms of English usage.

I'm being self -deprecating there.

But, I mean, you know, that's a good thing to do.

You should always be noticing, be mindful of the English that you're hearing and the way it's being constructed.

Not just the vocab, the pronunciation, but also the grammatical structures that are being used.

So, yes, NeoBrain, you noticed that when I was describing the story, the man who could work miracles, when I was retelling the story, I actually used present simple tense.

I used present tenses.

And you quite rightfully thought to yourself, wait a minute, is that normal?

normal okay so here's the thing uh yes that is completely normal so um thankfully um i wasn't just making some terrible mistake or uh giving you an example of lazy uh english usage or anything no that's completely normal and completely conventional so here's what's going on right um i've got so this is a question that i have been asked before so let me give you my full answer in a in as carefully described way as I possibly can here are some questions that are going to help me so first of all and you can think about these questions too how do we describe events or stories that happen to other

people because that is in your question right yeah would you elaborate on the tense we should use for verbs while telling a story about somebody else.

So how do we describe events or stories that happen to other people?

Real events and stories that happened in the past. For example, if I was describing my brother's skateboarding injury when he dislocated his shoulder, how would I actually describe that?

And second question, how do we talk about the plot of a book or the plot of a film or TV show?

A lot of books are written in the past, you know, in past tenses.

This is normal, right?

Stories, they're often written in past tenses.

So let's say if I've read Lord of the Rings, and I then want to describe the story to you, or we discuss it, what tense do we use in that conversation?

So that's two questions.

I'll deal with the first question first. How do we describe events or stories that happen to other people?

Well, we use exactly the same verb tenses that we would use when we're describing things things that happened to us okay so for example if i talk about a car accident that i had when i was much younger i was in the car with my friend mike i talked about this in on lep premium recently this is maybe why it's in my mind i was in the car with my friend mike my my mate my friend mike used to give me a lift to college sixth form college when i was 19 um so mike picked me up up in the car and we were driving along quite fast because mike drove his car much too fast he was one of those young guys who drives

their car too fast so he was driving far too fast we were driving in a his car at the moment at the time was a reno 5 gt turbo which is a notorious car for boy racers just like Mike, anyone who drove a Renault 5 GT Turbo probably drove it far too quickly and probably ended up crashing it at some point.

I would be surprised if there were any Renault 5 GT Turbos that still existed.

I suppose they'd all been destroyed in various car accidents over the years.

So we were driving round this main road going too quickly.

We were going too too quickly mike was uh fiddling with the stereo trying to change the volume or something he didn't notice that a big truck a big lorry was pulling out of a farm he uh i shouted mike mike look out he slammed on the brakes we skidded and we hit the truck that's that's a timer um i don't need to give you more details of the story uh you can listen to luke's english podcast premium episode p69 part 4 if you want more details of that but anyway that's an event that happened to me you could see that I was using past tenses we were driving along Mike was driving too fast he was fiddling

with the stereo I saw the truck he slammed on the brakes we script we skidded and we crashed into it I actually used past continuous and past simple there we were driving we crashed okay uh if i was to describe what happened to someone else if i'm talking about real things that really happened i use exactly the same tenses for example if i'm talking about my brother's uh skateboarding injury did you hear about uh james he he dislocated his shoulder yeah he's in hospital yeah oh what happened um well he was skating and he was trying to do a rail slide a board slide on a block in the skate park

and he jumped ollied up onto the block and slid along and the board fell out slipped out from under him and he fell really awkwardly on the side of the block and pop his arm came out of its socket he went to hospital they gave him morphine and stuff he's okay so just the same past tenses did i use any past continuous in that he was skating maybe he was skating he tried to do a board slide and you know he he lost his balance and he fell over okay so just past tenses in the same way so whether we're talking about ourselves whether we're talking about someone else if we're talking about real events

um in the past we use a range of past tenses.

I'm going to talk about those different past tenses in a moment because there are three of them.

What about my second question?

How do we talk about the plot of a book written, the text of the book is written in past tenses, or the plot of a film or a TV show?

How do we have a conversation about that?

Well, this is actually where we often use present simple tense to do it.

For example, if I talk about the story of the man who could could work miracles so the story is about george fotherington he's a normal guy um one day he's in the pub and he is debating with this other guy and they're talking about miracles and fotherington doesn't believe in miracles and he to prove his point he points his finger at a lamp and he says flip upside down in the air and the lamp actually does and then it smashes on the floor and so on and so forth okay and you can see there i was using present tenses so this is just totally normal okay and i guess the reason that we do this when we're

talking about the plot or the story of a book or tv show or film or something it's because the book exists permanently okay it's not just some events that happened once in the past but these are events that are permanent always always true if someone opens up the book and reads it then the events will be there they're always there so we do use present tenses to describe the story of a film tv show book or something so that is just totally normal okay for example the story of star wars luke skywalker is a lad who lives on a farm, but he dreams about having a bigger life.

And then one day he meets these droids and he discovers a hidden message inside one of the droids.

And he decides he has to help this girl.

And so he finds Ben Kenobi, who apparently is, you know, in the message and they go off on an adventure and blah, blah, blah.

Right. So we do use present tenses for that.

so there you go does that answer the question um now you could think about that yourself you could just practice it yourself think about your favorite book think about a film think about about a tv show and just describe what happens in present tense in in the present tense you can think about those storylines as permanent always existing always true rather than just single events that happened once in the past you see that's the reason why also i should add that sometimes when we're giving anecdotes when we're telling stories we do actually use present simple tense as well we use present tenses

sometimes when we're telling stories right that's a kind of conversational almost colloquial way of telling a story especially if it's an anecdote for example what was the one?

That's it, the car accident.

So I was in the car with Mike and we would, no, that's past tenses again.

Okay. We could use present tenses, even if it's a past story, because it kind of brings the action, it brings you into the action a bit more, but it's kind of colloquial, conversational, informal style.

So did I tell you about the car accident?

Yeah. Okay. Let me tell you what happened.

So I'm in the car with Mike, right?

and he's driving and we're and we're listening to music and mike's not really looking at the road he's looking at the stereo and i look up and what do i see but a truck there's a huge truck pulling out of a side road so i shout mike there's a there's a truck mike slams on the brakes we skid and i think oh my god what's going to happen um and everything where everything goes into slow slow motion we slam into the side of the truck and the whole thing explodes in a huge fireball like that mike goes flying that way i go flying this way luckily i use my kung fu skills to land on my feet and um then

i use my webs to save mike rescue him with the webs and the driver of the the truck i'd fly through the air and put a big web net in the air and it catches him and we uh we all survived oh yeah i didn't forget i forgot to tell you that i'm spider -man as well um anyway that's just an example of using present tenses to describe a story an anecdote that's happened to you in a sort of very dramatic way the present tense is there yeah it's kind of colloquial it's informal conversational English in in all other situations we would use past tenses to to tell a real true story that's happened to describe

past events like that okay I thought I would take this opportunity now to have a to have a bit of a ramble about narrative tenses in English because it's always quite an interesting subject for English learners right right?

Which verb tenses do we use when we're talking about past events?

Now, I have done episodes about this before, right?

I've talked about narrative tenses on the podcast in some detail before, notably in an early episode, episode number 29, which was called Mystery Story Narrative Tenses.

I told you a mystery story that I'd written, and then it used it as a way of explaining the different narrative tenses.

But anyway, let's have another look.

So which verb tenses do we use when telling a story set in the past?

For example, describing something real that happened to us or someone else in the past?

Which verb tenses do we use?

Well, we use three different verb tenses, past simple, past continuous, past perfect.

Which verb tenses are the most common?

past continue past simple past continuous or past perfect right so past simple is uh um i booked my ticket i went to the station i got on the train i fell asleep those are past simple i did this i did this i did this past continuous would be while the train was was moving while the train was moving the door suddenly opened and three of the passengers were sucked out and and um they died while the train was moving the train was moving so that's past continuous um it was at that moment i realized that the train had been hijacked some hijackers had taken control of the train and were taking us to

the same destination because how i don't know how you hijack a train because like where are we going we're going to hijack this train where are you going we're going well we're going to paris good just speed up a bit um it was at that moment i realized the train that some guys had hijacked the train had hijacked or in this case had been been, the train had been hijacked.

That's past perfect.

Had plus a past participle.

So which verb tenses are the most common of those three?

Which tense do we use to simply describe events one after the other?

How do we set the scene by describing the situation at the start?

How do we describe an action which is interrupted by another action?

And how do we make it clear that a certain action actually happened before another one?

You know what? I'm actually just answer those questions right now.

I've got some notes here and I'm slightly confused by my own notes because I've added a lot of information here both yesterday evening when I was falling asleep and this morning and it's all a bit confused but I'm going to kind of clean it all up and explain it to you.

So let me answer those questions that I've just asked right now and I'll also give you various examples.

So which verb tenses are most common?

Past simple is definitely the most common. I did this, then I did that, then this happened, and then this happened.

Those are definitely the most common ones.

And then in terms of past continuous and past perfect, they're sort of quite similar, really.

I think they're actually quite comparable in terms of how frequently they are used, but they've both got different functions.

They both help us to describe context and provide sequences of events in ways that are more sophisticated than simply this happened, then this happened, then this happened.

I'll show you in a moment.

So how do we set the scene by describing the situation at the start?

Often we use past continuous to describe the context or situation at the start of the story.

For example, I was was traveling to Paris on the Eurostar.

Okay. I was traveling to Paris or I was traveling to London on the Eurostar.

The sun was shining.

The birds were singing.

I was sitting reading a book, right?

Then suddenly, um, there was a big noise from, uh, the roof of the train.

And, uh, one of of the doors came flying off its hinges and three guys in uh camouflage with hoods over their faces and machine guns jumped into the train right so the sun was shining the birds were singing i was reading a book i was traveling to london there you go past continuous that's was or were plus an ing verb and that just describes think the general situation things that were in progress at the start of the story so it's very normal to use past continuous to sort of set the scene i was walking down the street i was listening to luke's english podcast when suddenly i achieved total consciousness

and i ascended to uh nirvana and became immortal you know the sort of thing that happens just on an you know normally when you're listening to this podcast suddenly i understood all grammar i achieved total english understanding um past continuous right um how do we describe an action which is interrupted by another action this is basic stuff isn't it this This is past continuous as well.

For example, what would it be?

Mike was turning down, turning up the volume of the music.

Or while Mike was looking at the stereo, I noticed a big truck.

OK, so it's kind of like the same as I said before, past continuous being used to describe the situation.

but also it's like mike looking at the stereo this is a long action that starts he's looking at the stereo and then it's interrupted by me seeing the truck right so you can see that it's sequencing the events mike was checking the stereo when i saw a truck okay um the truck was pulling out of the side road that means it started pulling out before we arrived and at the moment we arrived that pulling out of the side road was in progress yeah you get it uh which verb form do we use to make it clear that a certain action actually happened before another one so that would be past perfect right so we

use past perfect to show that certain actions actually happened before for example i don't know what um as we were skidding towards the lorry i was really scared because i had never had a car crash before and i was thinking oh so this is what a car crash is like everything's in slow motion i hope i don't get hurt i was feeling quite strange because i'd never had a car crash before now let me let me let me demonstrate then i'll go into those tenses again in a bit more detail in a moment but right now let me demonstrate how it's important to use past continuous and past perfect, to be able to give

slightly more sophisticated, nuanced narratives or anecdotes or stories.

I'm going to show you this by telling you about how I moved to Paris.

I've been living in Paris since 2012.

Let me tell you about how and why I originally moved here from London.

I was living in London, then I moved to Paris.

So, let me describe what happened.

But first, I'm going to explain that, I'm going to describe that only using past simple tense, the most basic, easy one.

And you'll see how, sure, it does the job, but it's a bit too basic.

So, here's a description of the day I packed my stuff in a car and drove from London to Paris, but it's all given only in past simple tense.

So this is the basic version.

Now it's not that bad, as you will see, but it is basic.

And to be honest, while I was preparing this, I struggled a little bit to describe certain things with this limited range of grammar. This is actually interesting, I think, because it makes you realise how a limited range of English makes it frustrating to try and communicate.

So the bigger range you have, the more fluency you you have, of course.

So anyway, here is my description only using past simple tense.

So I was in a relationship with a French girl.

She lived in Paris and I lived in London.

Basically, I decided I had to move to Paris to be with this girl.

I rented a car and I packed everything into it.

I felt nervous. It was my first time driving to Paris from London.

That driving, that's not past continuous.

That's because after first time, we use a gerund form.

It was my first time doing something, right?

It was my first time driving to Paris from London.

Of course, they drive on the other side of the road in France.

That's a permanent fact, so present simple.

I drove to the Eurotunnel in Dover.

I loaded the car onto the train.

The train went through the tunnel.

I sat in the car and waited.

It felt cool. I was in a car, on a train, in a tunnel.

I turned around and looked at my bike.

my bike was in in a car on a train in a tunnel under the sea maybe under a boat i hoped so then i drove from calais to paris on what felt like the wrong side of the road i felt nervous so i listened to country music to keep me relaxed i arrived in paris and it was a nightmare to find a parking space i parked the car and unpacked my stuff into my girlfriend's flat that night somebody in the street saw my British car and they spat on it.

In the morning, I noticed the spit and I thought, oh, that's not a nice welcome.

And then I drove the car back to London because I'd rented it in London.

Oh, I used past perfect by mistake.

So that was okay. But here's another version using past continuous and past perfect.

And it should be better because it allows for a a more sophisticated telling of the story with background information and a more complex explanation of the events.

Okay, so here we go again.

So this happened a few years ago when I was living in London.

I'd been seeing this French girl for over two years and we wanted to be together.

She'd been planning to move to London but had just been turned down for a job in London she was hoping to get and she was very disappointed.

So I decided that I could move to Paris instead and find work as an English teacher.

I'd lived abroad before and I'd loved it so I thought it could be time for a new adventure.

I rented a car and packed everything into it.

The day of the drive I was feeling nervous.

I'd never driven from London to Paris before and in France of course they drive on the other, I mean wrong, side of the road and I would be driving a car, a UK car, I mean with the steering wheel on the wrong side so I was feeling a bit nervous.

I drove down to the Eurotunnel in Dover.

I loaded the car onto the train.

The train went through the tunnel.

I sat in the car and waited and while I was sitting there behind the wheel it felt pretty cool.

I was in a car on a train in a tunnel going to Paris.

I turned around and and looked at my bike which I had squeezed into the back of the car earlier that morning and yeah my bike was in a car on a train in a tunnel under the sea maybe at that very moment a boat was sailing above me I hoped so when we arrived in Paris I drove from Calais to Paris sorry when I wrote when we arrived when I arrived in France I drove to Paris while I was driving I I felt nervous.

About the whole thing.

Was this a huge mistake?

It wasn't. So I listened to country music to keep me relaxed.

I arrived in Paris and it was a nightmare to find a parking space.

I parked the car and unpacked my stuff into my girlfriend's flat.

In the morning, I had to drive the car back to London.

When I found the car again in the street, I noticed that during the night someone had spat on it.

What a lovely welcome for an English guy in Paris I thought to myself.

So I think you'll probably agree that the second version is better right because it allowed for a more nuanced telling of the story.

So now let's go through that extract that story the last one with the three different tenses in it let's go through that step by step and I'll I'll identify every instance of the past continuous and past perfect I'll quote it and I'll explain its use in context.

No need to explain past simple, you understand how that works.

Oh, I need to drink some water.

Let me drink some water first and then we will analyse the grammar. Cheers.

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Right, I'm fully topped up with water again.

I think I dropped down to about, what, maybe like 69, 68 % water there.

air. So, don't worry.

I've topped myself up back to 70 % water again.

Is that true that we are, that humans are 70 % water?

Is that true or is that just a myth?

I don't know. You can tell me in the comments section.

I can't be bothered to check right now because we're in the grammar zone.

So, I have to carry on with this, right?

So, let's consider past continuous, which of course is was and were was or were depending on the subject plus an ing verb form and that's that's not a gerund that's a present participle was or were and an ing verb this is used for an action in progress at a past time it's often used for background situations i was traveling i was traveling to to to paris when this happened you know so number one i was living in london at the the time so this sets the background situation at the time it describes an ongoing state over a period in the past right i was living in london note that we don't say how

long now if i said how long then i would need to use uh past perfect to describe that past situation and how long I had been living in London for 10 years.

But I don't say how long.

So it's just past continuous.

I was living in London.

Right. Another one.

While I was sitting behind the wheel, it felt pretty cool.

So this shows what was happening at the exact time something else happened.

So sitting at the wheel is the long action or continuous or repeated action that's interrupted by that feeling of it being cool so i was sitting there and then this feels pretty cool and also while i was driving i felt nervous so again this describes what was in progress that's the driving when i felt nervous okay pretty simple stuff um past perfect in fact in this story there were there were more examples of past perfect than past continuous in in this particular anecdote.

So past perfect, of course, is had plus a past participle.

That's verb three. And it's used to show that something happened before another past event.

For example, I'd been seeing this French girl for over two years.

This is actually past perfect continuous.

It describes an action that's seeing this girl that started before, you know, the main events of the story so this is background information it started before and continued up to this point and because I say for over two years that's why it's past perfect continuous and not past continuous.

The same thing is true for present perfect continuous for example it's now one hour I started this podcast an hour ago I'm still recording the podcast so we don't say I am am recording this podcast for one hour, we do say, I have been recording this podcast for one hour.

Okay. And similarly, we don't say, I was seeing this French girl for over two years.

It's, I had been seeing this French girl for over two years.

That's just one of the ways that we use past perfect continuous when we're talking about how long for a past, like a continuous past action.

Number two, she'd been planning to move to London.

Again, it's past perfect continuous.

It shows an ongoing intention that was happening before she was turned down for the job.

The assumption is that when she was turned down for that job, she stopped planning to move to London.

She was like, oh, you know, that kind of ruined her plans.

She'd been planning to move to London, but she had just been turned down for a job.

Again, these things are all background information before the main events of the story, being me driving to Paris.

She had been turned down for a job.

It's actually passive.

She had been turned down.

Someone had turned her down for a job.

If you get turned down for a job, it means you get rejected.

You're not given the job.

job they said no so she'd been turned down for the job this shows the rejection happened before the main story decision which was me deciding to move I'd lived abroad before so I thought it was a good idea because I had lived before lived abroad before rewrite in Japan of course as you know so this I had lived this indicates that my earlier experience you know I had that that I had an earlier experience before deciding to move to Paris.

Again, background information before the main events of the story being me moving to Paris.

All the stuff you heard in the first account.

I'd never driven from London to Paris before.

Again, a life experience, in this case, never done this before up to that point.

Notice that we often use past perfect with with other words.

We use it often with before.

Okay. For over two years, I'd been seeing this French girl for over two years.

I'd lived abroad before.

I'd never driven from London to Paris before.

I noticed that someone had spat on my car.

When I arrived, when I found the car, I noticed someone had spat on it.

So this shows that the spitting on the car happened before I I found it.

OK, right. So there you go.

Now, past perfect is often the one that causes people problems. Here's some more rambling about past perfect and then we're going to move on to something else.

OK, so a little bit more rambling.

Here we go. So first of all, I should say that past perfect does not just mean a long time ago.

OK, now I'm saying this because this is a common an error I've seen in my students many times where learners of English first encounter past perfect and the teacher tells them, well, it's past in the past. And they sort of do this motion with their arm showing you've got a past event and then things that happened before that.

So a lot of learners assume, oh, so it's just like past events that happened a long time ago.

And then you hear people saying things like, you know, when I was a teenager, I had studied maths.

And what they mean is, when I was a teenager, I studied maths.

It's just that it was a long time ago.

You don't need to say, I had studied maths.

In fact, if you say, when I was a teenager, I had studied maths at university, it suggests that you went to university before you were a teenager, and you studied maths before you were a teenager which is strange so instead you should just say when i was you know when i was a teenager i studied maths you know so it's not just a long time ago remember it is a way to sequence events think of it in those terms look at this example listen to this example there was a party at my friend's house so this is past simple there was a party at my friend's house everybody was there, then everyone left, and then

I arrived and I was disappointed because there was nobody there.

Right, now let's tell that story again but use past perfect.

So, there was a party at my friend's house but when I arrived everyone had left so I was disappointed.

Now, using had left clearly shows that they left before I arrived.

Now, there are are other common uses of past perfect.

I mentioned that it's used with before, it's used when you're talking about how long for past sort of repeated actions.

Here are some other examples of this.

We would say this structure, when I did this, I had done that before, right?

Or when I did this, I hadn't done that before.

For example, when I went skiing, I was a bit nervous because I had had never done it before when i went to london i was excited because i had never been there before right when i was moving to france i felt okay because i had lived abroad before so when i did something i had done something before and that had done something before shows that this happened you know emphasizes that it happened before the first verb in that sentence when i moved to paris i was okay because i lived abroad before that works as well because you've got the word before so that does contextualize it but it's better we

prefer it in english if you use past perfect for that sentence other cases when we often use past perfect is with phrases like this yes, by the time, and when, and after, and before.

So, examples, by the time we arrived, the film had started.

When I got to the station, the train had already left. After I had finished my work, we went out for dinner.

Now, that's arguably unnecessary there.

After I finished my work, we went out for dinner also works.

I left before he had said goodbye.

by now you often see that past you often see past perfect in the event that happened first it shows that this happened first but past simple is also common if the order is clear so there are cases where you can use past perfect or past simple if the sentence makes it completely clear i'll give you examples of that in a moment um we're nearly finished with this bit also we use use past perfect in sentences with already just never ever and yet as i hit the microphone these adverbs fit naturally with past perfect to distress the completion of something before another past moment for example she had

already gone when i called so she wasn't there i had just sit i had just sat down when the doorbell rang oh i'm gonna have to get up again i'd never seen such a mess before.

When I went into her room, I was shocked because I had never seen such a mess before.

Had you ever visited Paris before you moved there?

No, I'd never visited before.

It was my first time or yeah, I knew the city quite well because I'd visited quite a few times and he hadn't finished yet when they arrived.

Okay. Those are just examples of how it's often used.

Um, now I mentioned before that there are some cases where past simple or past perfect could both either either of them could be used sometimes you can use past simple or past perfect if the context of the sentence makes it clear that one action happened before the other right so there are quite a few situations in english where either the past perfect or the past simple could be used you know it could be either or because the sequence of events is already clear from context there's a logical order or time expressions that show it so in these cases the past perfect becomes optional often adding

emphasis or clarity but is not strictly required examples so this is for example when the order of events is obvious from context or logic for example i finished my dinner and went to bed obviously you finished your dinner first and then went to bed past perfect isn't really needed you could say i had finished my dinner and went to bed but it's not necessary she packed her suitcase and left the hotel.

Obviously she packed her suitcase first and left the hotel.

You could say when she had packed her suitcase she left the hotel.

Okay. Otherwise it's when she packed her suitcase she left the hotel.

Sounds like they happen at the same time.

I had finished my dinner and went to bed.

Okay, not really necessary though.

What about when time words or clauses make the sequence clear.

Words like after, before, by the time, when, once already signal the time relationship.

For example, after I finished my work, I went for a walk.

Fine. Or after I had finished my work, I went for a walk.

Fine as well. By the time we arrived, the movie had started.

Fine. Or by the time we arrived, the movie started.

Okay. I prefer the past perfect in that one because it makes it more obvious and clear.

By the time we arrived, the movie had started, so we missed the first five minutes.

One more thing, past perfect, as you may have noticed, is often used after certain verbs.

Realise is the most obvious example.

For example, when I got home and saw the door, the broken door, the door was off its hinges, meaning the door had come off the wall.

when I got home and saw the door, I realised someone had broken into our flat.

So I realised someone had broken in.

So realise is often followed by past perfect when you realise something happened before, right?

So verbs like realise often introduce clauses with the past perfect to show that something happened before the moment you realised, for example.

So let's have a look at some examples.

We've got realise, notice, discover, understand, remember, forget, see, or hear, know, say, think, hope, decide, learn.

For example, realise.

I realised I had forgotten my keys.

So I forgot my keys before I realised, but then I realised.

So when I arrived at the door, I realised I had forgotten my keys.

She noticed he had already left. So he left before before she noticed, right?

So she noticed he'd left. They discovered she had lied.

He understood they'd been waiting for hours.

I remembered I had locked the door.

He forgot he'd had, he forgot that he had promised to call.

Oh God, I, I, yeah, I promised to call, didn't I?

and so on and so forth.

So all those verbs, right, often have past perfect after them or can do.

There's also past perfect continuous as well, which emphasises the duration of an activity if it's a repeated thing.

I think I probably need to stop here and leave the grammar zone, get out of this grammar hole that we found ourselves in, down this rabbit hole of grammar. We're going to leave that.

In fact, I have to go out now.

So I'm going to put the podcast on hold.

OK, I'm going to put the podcast on hold and I'm going to go out for a band practice and lunch. When I come back, we'll continue and there'll be more podcast rambling with some fun stuff and responses to other episodes.

Anyway, I hope you found that grammar stuff interesting.

That took a bit longer than I expected, but that's always the way it is.

And we can have another break now.

You can just do something else for a bit.

Or in fact, through the magic of podcasting, the edit will be seamless.

I'm just going to click my fingers.

And when I when I finish clicking my fingers, I'll be back and an hour or two will have passed and I'll be back at it.

OK, so let me click my fingers and I'll continue after lunch and band practice.

So I'll see you in a moment.

Here we go. And I'm back again.

And it's three hours later and I'm slightly hotter, slightly less hungry, slightly more sweaty and disheveled than I was three hours ago.

But let's continue.

How are you doing? You're still out there.

You're still alive.

Good. you're still listening, your head is still attached to your body, everything's still functioning.

Let's continue. So I got stuck into quite a big grammar hole there, didn't I, before I had to go off to band practice.

Band practice was good, by the way, quite dramatic.

During the practice, our guitarist hurt his back.

I think it's an injury he already had, but he's done done something to his his back he's got like a slipped disc in his lower back and so at the end of the practice he was he almost couldn't move he was in so much discomfort the poor guy i don't know if this is going to affect our concert that we're doing at the end of next week so we are preparing to perform live music at the british ambassador to paris's leaving do so the british ambassador to Paris the British ambassador right you know the way these things work you know someone on a diplomatic mission in France representing the British state

the British ambassador to Paris so we're performing at her leaving do because she's leaving her term is is is finishing and she'll be leaving and she's requested that we play at her big leaving party which is going to be this big outdoor summer party next week and she has requested that we do britpop songs i don't know if you're familiar with britpop it was a kind of a musical movement in the 90s in britain and it's basically british guitar bands from the 90s so i'll give you a quick selection of the songs we're doing we're doing girls and boys by blur live forever roll with it and don't look

back in anger by oasis no wonderwall controversially no wonderwall because our bass player vetoed it he just refused he flatly refused to do wonderwall i don't know how people are going to react to no wonderwall but we won't be doing that and a few other brit pop classics like disco 2000 by pulp all right by supergrass we are doing road rage by catatonia arguably that is kind of post britpop maybe right at the tail end of britpop and a few others we're doing bittersweet symphony by the verve we're doing there she goes by the la maybe pre -britpop that one and a few other songs which i can't think

of at this moment in time but it's going to be good it's going to be good as long as our guitarist is actually able to stand up we'll we'll be doing that right let's let's carry on then with this episode even though I'm all boiling hot now but that's all right I'm going to cool down as we continue so the next thing I want to talk to you about is something that was sent to me I guess it's a month or two ago now by one of my listeners I think this was is this on YouTube I I think it is.

It could have been on my website at Tish 8848.

You know, at Tish 8848, don't you?

Maybe you don't. At Tish 8848 wrote this to me.

And this is this is this is potentially huge.

Potentially huge. OK, so this is the message in response to my birthday episode that I did a few episodes ago so this is it small but hopefully useful project is the name of the message that's sort of the subject line hi luke happy birthday thank you very much thank you very much for your podcast it's brilliant thank you very much for saying thank you very much and for saying nice things so i'm a lepster since last year that year i started listening to a few episodes a week but this year I listen for an hour every day.

This improves my English skills a lot.

I work as a software engineer and recently I started learning some new technology.

Technology is uncountable, so we don't tend to say a new technology.

We might say some new technology.

When I learn something, I follow your 5P rule.

Remember what that is, everyone?

Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.

So I decided to make a small project with this new technology.

On your YouTube channel, you mentioned sometimes the website Youglish.

Everyone, listeners, have you heard me talking about Youglish?

Have you heard me talking about Youglish?

Youglish is a website that allows you to search for samples of words and phrases being used, it's a bit like a kind of a sample library.

You can hear words being spoken and what it does is it searches YouTube videos which have subtitles in them.

It searches all of the videos on YouTube with subtitles and then it presents the results to you.

So, for example, if you're looking for the word, I don't know, what fish, you're looking for the word fish for whatever reason.

I don't know, you'd want to know how to pronounce the word fish and I think you probably got it, but who knows?

Excuse me while I drink some coffee.

Decaffeinated coffee is disgusting.

I don't know why I'm drinking it.

It's because I've got nothing else.

Anyway, if you want to know how to pronounce the word fish, you would type it into Youglish, hit enter, and it will give you loads of results of people saying the word fish within the context of lots of videos on on YouTube.

It's actually very useful for exploring vocabulary, one of the many different tools you can use to explore vocabulary in context.

So that's Youglish, right?

It's not YouTube. It's like YouTube meets English, so Youglish.

Right, so the message then.

On your YouTube channel, you mention sometimes, or you sometimes mention the website Youglish.

I like the idea of the website and I created my own simple version of it, but focused on your channel.

I called it Luke Glish.

Like YouGlish, this allows you to find videos by words, but there is a big difference.

YouGlish searches for exact matches.

So if you have a typo in the word, it won't find anything.

But Luke Glish searches by relevance.

So if you have the word, for example, Sherlock, but with a missing letter, so that's Sherlock, S -H -E -R -L -C -K, it will find suitable videos that's clever if you want to try it yourself luke glish luke glish .com uh you can you can do that maybe you will find this project useful maybe you will even want to share this project with your listeners and maybe they will find it useful too that would be great please let me know what what do you think of this project actually that should be let me know what you think because that's not a question it would be what do you think of this project that's a a question what do

you think but let me know this is no longer a question so it's you it follows the same normal structure of a sentence let me know what you think let me know what you think um about this project thank you very much again for your work i'm looking forward to your reply okay so this so this listener this lepster has created a search engine in.

Okay. For my YouTube channel.

Okay. And what it does is it searches all my videos for instances of a certain word being spoken.

Right. Now let's, let's just try this.

I'm going to just search for the word fish.

That's just the first word that came into my head.

Let's see what happens.

So apparently, apparently there are 989 instances of the word fish being spoken by me on my podcast over the years.

Let's have a little look.

I know it's one fish, two fish, three fish, four fish, right?

But fish is also a word and it means different types of fish.

There you go. So that was me explaining the fact that fish is one of those irregular nouns that where the singular and plural forms are the same, one fish, two fish, three fish.

But we do also have the word fishes, which means different types of fish.

There you go. That that was interesting.

That was episode, that was when I, that's when I got my first YouTube shiny thing a few years ago when I'd reached 100 ,000 subscribers.

Look at me now, folks.

100, 1 ,500 ,000 now.

This week, I hit the 1 .5 million subscriber mark on YouTube, which is nice.

Thanks very much for the subscriptions, everyone.

Thanks for the sub.

If you did sub recently, you might have helped me breach that 1 .5 million subscriber subscriber number, which is stunning.

I mean, it's amazing, isn't it?

The thing is, though, not everyone who's subscribed watches my episodes.

I've got 1 .5 million subscribers, but my videos, you know, I mean, some videos get nearly a million, some get over 100.

A lot of them get between 50 and 100 ,000 views.

So that's a tiny portion of my 1 .5 million subscribers.

So what's going on, subscribers?

You click subscribe.

Oh, this looks interesting.

subscribe i will now never watch his videos again is that what's going on anyway um let's have a look at the next instance of me saying fish on this podcast it was in it was in an episode called meditation and learning english with anthony rotuno here it is slapping fish slapping each other's faces with fish and it's it's wonderful okay that's where i was talking to anthony about about the fish slapping dance from the Monty Python TV show.

What else? Learning English with Carl Pilkington, episode 748.

I like to catch fish seals, and they go, like that.

Okay, that was a seal impression.

You know what seals are?

Well, they're animals that swim around in the water.

They catch fish, and they go, go oh oh oh oh oh that's my impression of a seal catching fish and celebrating i mean it goes on and on and on it was actually a whole story called the prawn story from years ago an improvised story fish in the ocean the sharks they're amazing they're movie stars people are they get respect from from humans sharks are definitely the coolest and christian said well to be honest i prefer prefer killer whales myself i think okay so you get the idea i mean there's a lot more you could do what else just random stuff it's quite fun to just play around with this and see

the kinds of things i've said golf when did i talk about golf look don't you think across the gulf of space meaning this across the gulf of space a gulf is like a large open area right like the gulf of of Mexico.

Or is it the Gulf of America, Donald Trump?

Right? Golf, not golf.

Have I ever talked about golf?

Put snooker on it, it relaxes me.

Watch a bit of golf.

Oh, I'm talking about watching golf.

It helps me to relax.

I mean, there's so much. Right?

For example, in golf, you swing the golf club to hit the ball.

And then the bit after you've hit the ball where the golf club continues swinging, that is the follow through.

There was me talking about the phrasal verb to follow through, like when you swing a golf club, you hit the ball and you follow through.

I mean, this website is very interesting, and I think there is a lot of potential here.

What could, you know, okay, we think of vocabulary, we think of the big nouns like fish and golf and so on.

But sometimes a good way of exploring vocabulary is to look at the little things, the grammatical words, the prepositions.

Follow through, that actually led me to do a long premium series all about the word through.

Everything you always wanted to know about the word through but were afraid to ask.

And I covered noun phrases and phrasal verbs and all sorts of other collocations and things, every time the word through is used in English, all the different phrases and situations it's used in.

And I could have used Luke Glish to research that.

So if I type in through, there's bound to be a lot of results.

Yeah, we've got 10 ,000 results with the word through.

So let's just, let's find five different examples of the word through being used.

And right Right now, we'll just consider what those examples are, okay?

And what they, how to classify them.

Maybe you'll learn a phrasal verb or something.

Here we go. Tough, thorough, thought, though.

Oh God, it's that. Okay, let me just backtrack.

So all those words are very difficult, but it can be understood in, you know, detailed thought, though.

So English is difficult, but it can be understood through tough, thorough, thought, though.

English is difficult, but it can be understood through tough, thorough, thought, though.

That is one of those little word jokes that comes up sometimes in things like English learning forums. English is difficult.

It can be understood through, meaning by the method of, through tough thought.

So tough meaning difficult, thought meaning thinking.

So English can be understood by means of difficult in -depth thinking.

And in fact, it's tough, thorough thought.

thought. Thorough means in -depth, looking at every single detail, every step of the way.

So through tough, thorough thought, though, we use though at the end, a bit like we would use but in the middle of the sentence.

English is difficult, but it can be understood through tough, thorough thought.

English is difficult.

It can be understood through tough, thorough thought, though.

So though goes at the end in the way that but can go at the middle or the beginning or in the middle okay so there's that english can be understood through tough thorough thought though all right that's one instance of through let's have another one next it's that's from the same okay the next one is from the same episode so i'm assuming it's the same thing uh okay this one is from episode 823 chat gpt and learning english part three here we go more carefully thought through in english grammar in use which are okay hold on or indeed the exercises presented in english grammar in use which are more

carefully thought through okay so in this episode i think i was evaluating the um usefulness uh of chat gpt as a way of practicing your grammar and i was using it to generate grammar practice exercises.

And my conclusion was it's probably better to use a published course book or practice book like English grammar in use by Raymond Murphy in which the exercises are more carefully thought through.

So to think through something is to think about it in a careful, detailed way from one end to the other.

And the exercises in the book are carefully thought through.

through. They are carefully thought through.

So that's passive. People, the author thought them through carefully.

They were carefully thought through.

So to think through something, think about it carefully from one end to the other.

All right, let's have another one.

Rambling about the Beatles in episode 851.

Here we go. Carefully thought through.

So, okay, it's exactly the same same phrase used it again what did i what was the context something you worried about when you needed to eat and now i have to plan everything carefully in advance everything has to be carefully thought through okay i was talking about at the beginning of the episode worrying about leaving the apartment because i was cooking some chicken do you remember this um i had to record this episode at home because i put a chicken dinner in the oven and then i I thought, oh, no, I can't just leave the chicken dinner cooking in the oven and leave the apartment.

So I stayed at home and recorded it there.

And I was talking about how these days with kids, you know, you need to plan everything in advance.

Everything has to be carefully thought through.

The same phrase again that I used.

Apparently, I like that one.

What else have we got?

878 from learning to teaching and beyond with Elena Mutunono. Is that her name?

them through the process even though you're not a native speaker so through a process to guide them through the process to guide someone through a process okay through a process that's pretty easy one preposition plus noun through a process through a complex difficult process this is what teachers do to an extent we guide learners through the process of learning Okay, so that's how many.

Is that four? Carefully thought through.

Understood through thorough thought.

Then another thought through.

Now guide someone through the process.

Let's have at least one more.

Okay, this is from an episode called IELTS Q &A with Ben Worthington, Worthingshaw from episode 579.

Very, very carefully thought through.

I used it again. I love this phrase apparently what was I talking about the IELTS questions are carefully thought through how in depth it is and and how much time and effort is spent on the way that the test is designed so everything is very very carefully thought through from for various reasons so yeah I was talking about how in IELTS they very carefully plan and prepare the test everything is very carefully thought through for various reasons there's that phrase again if you learn nothing thing from this.

Nothing else from this episode.

You will at least learn the phrase to think something through carefully.

Are you the sort of person who thinks things through very carefully before they do them?

Or are you the kind of impulsive person who just does stuff without really thinking it through?

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't think it through.

Let's have one more.

This is from episode 817, Parson's Pleasure, the short story.

As though in deep thought, Hmm.

You know what? He said, looking back at the commode, I've wanted a set of legs, something like that for a long time.

I guess that's because of the word thought.

And so thought and through are quite similar.

So because this search engine searches by relevance, I guess it's kind of conflated the two words thought and through together.

other so let's move on to another one then it's a conversation with my dad from episode 888 about the uk's general election and again and euro uh 2024 2020 something we're talking about football as well get through to the knockout stages uh there it is if we perform like so i was talking about england football saying we might get through to the knockout stages to get through to the next round meaning to qualify in a job interview process right you have the first round you're interviewed and if you're if you're successful you will get through to the next round same in football if you win your game you

get through to the next round you get through to the final like that so you know we'll probably get through to the knockout stages but I don't really fancy our chances of getting through to the final even though before the competition people were saying saying lots of very complimentary, positive things about England.

OK, there you go. So anyway, that's Luke Glish, which I have to say could be a really useful thing.

It's just lukeglish .com, check it out, have fun, play around, search, use it.

There's some homework for you.

Use that to search for samples of English.

You don't have to just look for big words like nouns.

look for parts of speech like through or into, over, things like that, and search for fixed phrases.

You know, find the word and work out what other words it's used in connection with.

Is it part of a fixed phrase with a noun?

Is it a phrasal verb?

It's quite a good way to discover and explore vocab.

OK, so thank you so much for that, listener, Tish8848, for doing that.

Matt, that's wonderful.

Thank you so much. Let me just drink a little bit more coffee here.

And then we're going to do some jokes.

We're going to enter.

I don't know what to call this section now.

We'll see. I know I'm calling it Luke's Comedy Corner.

OK, let's enter Comedy comedy corner, where I'm going to tell you one, two, three, four, five, six jokes.

Okay, I have to give a shout out to Kermode and Mayo's Laughter Lift on their podcast, which is called Kermode and Mayo's Take.

They do film reviews, but they also have this mini section called the Laughter Lift, which is like going into a lift and there are jokes.

Yeah, and I took a lot of these jokes jokes from them.

I think their jokes admittedly have been sent into them by their listeners and they are the sorts of jokes which don't really have authors.

They're just the sort of authorless jokes that get shared around on the internet and stuff.

And so anyway, I've just got these six jokes.

I'm going to tell you the jokes, see if you can get the jokes, and then I will go back and I will dissect them and you will hopefully learn one or two things from them.

Okay, there's music.

I'm going to play a little bit of background music to set the tone here in the comedy corner here we go all right as we play this background music some people hate background music in my podcast so it happens rarely these days there used to be a time when I would put background music behind everything and I got some comments from people saying I don't like the background music or I got one saying I was listening to this podcast and it was interesting but then I heard some horrendous background music it was really that that kind of thing so I'm a bit cautious about playing too much background music

on the podcast recently I did the what was it ASMR Zen school of English which was a bit of a laugh most of the comments were good one person said is there a is there a version of this without the background music and I thought that's just another way of telling me that you really don't like the music music which is fine that's fine that's fine i don't mind maybe i should maybe i should upload a version of that without any of the music anyway welcome to the comedy corner here we're going to share a few jokes let's get started so did i tell you about my wife i was having a chat with her the other

day we were we were having a deep and meaningful conversation i told her i gave her some wisdom i told her that she should embrace her mistakes Right.

I told my wife she should embrace her mistakes.

She gave me a hug. Welcome to the comedy corner, everyone.

OK, let's keep the humor rolling.

Moving on to the next joke.

News in from Sweden.

News just in from Sweden.

Yes, Sweden. The chief executive of Ikea.

Yes, the CEO, CEO of Ikea has become the Swedish prime minister.

Did you know this? It's not actually true.

The chief executive of Ikea has become the Swedish prime minister.

He is currently assembling his cabinet.

Welcome to the comedy corner, everyone.

Let's move on to the next joke.

Now, obviously, you're an English learner, so you know that the phrase, I apologize and I'm sorry, mean the same thing, right?

I apologize and I'm sorry, they mean the same thing, don't they?

Except when you're at a funeral.

moving on um so my english teacher did i tell you about my english teacher i wanted to marry my english teacher when she got out of prison did you get that i wanted to marry my english teacher when she got out of prison but apparently you can't end a sentence with a proposition oh welcome to the comedy corner moving on back to my wife so we've We've been talking a lot, and she thinks I need to keep fit.

She thinks I need to do more exercise.

She's very keen for me to stay fit, stay in good shape, and she suggested that I do some lunges, you know, to work my hamstrings and my glutes.

She thought, you should do some lunges, Luke.

And I agree, that would certainly be a big step forward for me, wouldn't it?

What happened to the music?

Yes, doing some lunges would certainly be a big step forward. Okay, it's just one more.

It's just one more.

Okay, so, yeah. Did I tell you about the police detective who knocked on my door?

Mm, yeah. The other day, a police detective knocked on my door.

Knock, knock, knock.

Hello. It was a police detective.

And he said, hello, Mr Thompson.

I'm looking for a man with one eye.

And I said, well, if you use both eyes, you might find him a bit quicker.

this has been the comedy corner thank you so much for listening all right so let me dissect the frog now so my wife i told my wife she should embrace her mistakes she gave me a hug right so this is really the joke on the word embrace so you can embrace something meaning you totally accept it completely like for example you know when you're you're learning English you need to embrace your mistakes you need to accept them pull them close to yourself become friends with them even learn to love your mistakes because you realize your mistakes are opportunities to learn so you need to embrace failure

see it as an opportunity right embrace your mistakes um to embrace something also to embrace a person means to hug them like when you love someone you hug give them a hug so i told my wife she should embrace her mistakes She gave me a hug.

Well, yeah, because apparently I'm a mistake that getting married to me was a mistake.

So I'm her mistake.

So she's embracing her mistake by giving me a hug.

I mean, these these are good jokes.

You have to take it from me.

If you didn't get it, then you missed something.

They're definitely jokes.

Next, the chief executive of IKEA has become the Swedish prime minister and he is currently assembling his cabinet.

this is a good joke right it works on two levels so he's assembling his cabinet in terms of politics when a prime minister assembles their cabinet it means they choose they select their ministers their government ministers who are going to be responsible for the different government ministries this is the group of high -level government ministers who work closely with the prime Prime Minister, that group of people is called the cabinet, right?

But also, if you ever go to IKEA, you might buy a cabinet.

A cabinet can be a little wooden cupboard. And as we know, when you go to IKEA, you buy the furniture, but it's not been constructed already.

You have to take it home and you have to build it yourself.

You have to assemble it.

You would have to assemble your cabinet.

So, assembling a cabinet could mean two things.

It could be when a Prime Minister to choose his minister ministers for their government or it could be when you literally build a wooden cabinet from Ikea the chief executive of Ikea has become the Swedish PM and he's currently assembling his cabinet that's a good joke um if you disagree you're just wrong next is um I apologize and I'm sorry mean the same thing except when you're at a funeral this This is true.

Oh, if you spill a drink.

Oh, I do apologize.

Oh, I'm sorry. If you spill a drink on someone, they both work.

But if you're at a funeral, this is because I'm so sorry.

Also is a statement of sympathy.

Even if you didn't do anything.

For example, if someone lost their, you know, someone's dog died.

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about your dog.

I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?

I'm very sorry for your loss.

Obviously, it doesn't mean that you're the one who did it, right?

In this case, it just means I'm sympathetic.

I'm so sorry to hear about what happened to your dog.

Right, so in that case, it's different.

So that's why I'm sorry and I apologise.

Most of the time mean the same thing, meaning it was my fault and I'd like to apologise.

Except at a funeral when they don't mean the same thing.

and if you at a funeral if you say oh i do apologize that means it's your fault that the person died because of you what do you mean you apologize oh well are you he didn't know uh no uh oh it was me who was driving the car at the time what you know quite dark next the english teacher this is a good joke this is a really good joke although the setup of the joke is a bit convoluted i wanted to marry my english teacher when she got got out of prison, but apparently you can't end a sentence with a proposition.

Okay. To end a sentence with a proposition.

So on one hand, this is to end a sentence like an English sentence with a preposition actually on, in, to, at, and so on.

The old rule is that you mustn't end a sentence with a preposition, right?

So what are you looking at would be wrong.

It should be at at what are you looking, they said, was the more grammatically accurate sentence.

I mean, it's not true.

I have to say it's a myth, that whole thing.

But anyway, it's a common sort of grammatical rule that people think of when they think about English teachers.

You can't end a sentence with a preposition.

But also it could be end a sentence, end a prison sentence.

A prison sentence is a period of time that someone has to spend in prison because of a punishment.

That's a sentence, a prison sentence.

You can't end a prison sentence with a proposition.

A proposition is when someone proposes to someone, asks them to marry them.

Quite difficult to explain that one.

You can't end a sentence with a preposition.

You can't end a prison sentence with a proposition.

I wanted to marry my English teacher when she got out of prison, but apparently you can't end a sentence with a proposition.

Oh, dear. Lunges. So a lunge Lunge is in maybe in when you're doing exercise like Pilates or maybe yoga or something.

It's where you step forward and lean forward and stretch your legs and stretch all the muscles and things down the back of your legs by leaning forward and stretching out your leg behind you.

This is a lunge. Right.

These are lunges. so my wife is very keen for me to keep fit and has suggested that i do some lunges to work the hamstrings these are the the um tendons down the back of your leg and the glutes these are your muscles in your bum to work the hamstrings and the glutes that would certainly be a big step forward so a big step forward it's got two meanings literally it means stepping forward doing a big doing a lunge is a big step forward but also um in a more idiomatic sense it means making progress doing exercises doing lunges would be a big step forward and then the detective who knocked on my door he

said hello mr thompson i'm looking for a man with one eye i said well if you use both eyes you might find him a bit quicker speaker.

So that's got two meanings.

I'm looking for a man with one eye, means he is looking for a man and the man he's looking for has one eye, a man with one eye.

This is an example of when English can be ambiguous.

It can mean two things at the same time because of an ambiguity.

I'm looking for a man with one eye.

I'm looking for a man who has one eye, a man with one eye, or I'm looking with one eye for a man.

I'm looking for a man with one eye.

Meaning he's got, the police detective has got one eye closed and he's only using one eye to look for the man.

I'm looking for a man with one eye, but I just can't find this man.

It's like, well, if you use both eyes, that would help.

I'm looking for a man with one eye.

Well, if you use both eyes, you might find him a bit quicker.

I like that joke a lot.

Anyway, there you go.

that was the comedy corner thank you very much tune in next time for more stupid jokes now actually i wanted to say if any premium listeners hello hello hello hello premium listeners hello hi there this is just a quick message for premium listeners a normal listeners i'll i will let you listen to this too you don't have to pay to listen to this message but this is just a desperate attempt to get the message out to all my premium listeners it's quite difficult to get through to the premium listeners because if i send an email a lot of people just don't open the email because this is just the way

email is these days right you mean you know you get so many emails that we just don't open them all we don't really read them um if i if i talk to you in the premium podcast um this is part of the problem right the problem is a lot of i've noticed that a lot of of premium subscribers are not listening to the episodes.

What's going on there?

A lot of premium subscribers are not listening to all the premium episodes.

The number of subscribers I has, I has what I think I need to listen to.

Clearly I need to listen to LEP premium to a lot of the subscribers that I have. Sorry.

So I have this many subscribers, but the number of people, number, the number of people listening, what's wrong with my mouth?

i don't know the number of people listening is about half so about 50 of my premium subscribers apparently are not listening to the premium episodes is that you are you subscribed to lep premium but you don't listen to the episodes what is going on why is that this is a call to all premium lepsters what's going on now here are the possibilities i think option number one Now you let me know, if you're a premium subscriber, you let me know what's going on.

Option number one is this, you don't know how to listen to them.

You've got a premium subscription, but you just don't know how to listen.

How that's possible, I don't know, considering the amount of time I spend going on about it.

All you need to do is log into your account, teacherluke .co .uk.

And just take it from there.

Add the show to a podcast app on your phone, it's easy.

when you've logged in.

Look on the left side of the screen.

There's a big logo.

Under the logo, there's a plus.

Click that and follow the steps.

You will need a podcast app on your phone.

So either that, maybe that you don't know how to listen to them, right?

Or maybe you don't get email notifications of new episodes.

And so you don't know that they exist. You don't know that they've been published.

These days when I publish new premium episodes, I send out an email with it saying hi everyone new new premium episode is here here are the links for the pdf and video versions you can listen to it now in your supercast account or in your favorite podcast app of choice but a new episode is now available yeah hey i think you need to be you need to have email notifications switched on to get those emails you can manage your notifications in your account teacherluke .co .uk slash premium or slash account either they go to the same place or maybe you haven't added the show to a podcast app on your phone,

I mean, what are you doing?

Just do that. Do that.

Don't, you know, whatever it else, whatever it else, no, whatever else you were considering doing after listening to this, like eating, going to the toilet, don't do those things.

Just sign in to teachaluke .co .uk slash premium, and then add LEP Premium to a podcast app on your phone.

You will need a podcast app on your phone first. So if you don't have one, on, just get Pocket Casts, search your app store on your phone for Pocket Casts.

It's free, get it, and then you'll be able to listen to LEP Premium with that.

Really good idea. So maybe that's what's happened.

Or maybe you've added LEP Premium to a podcast app on your phone, but you don't have push notifications turned on for LEPP in your podcast app.

In which case, go into your podcast switch on push notifications for lepp or maybe you just want to support the show with your subscription and you're not interested in the premium episodes maybe that's the case and you're just like nah new episodes available i know it's there but i'm choosing not to listen but i'm still happy to be a premium subscriber which is great you know that is great thank you for your support or maybe you just don't have time to listen to all of the stuff which raises the question should Should I publish less premium content?

And at this stage, I am sort of part of the way through P69, which is a seven at least a seven part series looking at English that came up in the episode story.

The man who could work miracles.

And I'm I'm doing a really in -depth deep dive into the vocab that came up in that story, going through the story again, explaining and highlighting bits of vocab, giving more examples more relevant examples then in the episode giving you a memory test quickly testing your memory see if you can seeing if you can remember the words and phrases I taught and then giving you discussion questions to help practice using the vocab that's the process in lep premium p69 parts one to about one to four maybe one to five of that series are available for you right now so if you're a premium subscriber that is there

all that stuff is it's there for you.

So go ahead and listen to it.

If you don't listen, please let me know why, what's going on?

Which of those reasons is it?

Is it because you don't know how to do it?

You don't know they exist?

You don't know how to sign in?

You don't know how to add them to an app on your phone?

You just don't want to listen to the episodes because you don't have time?

Or you don't listen to the episodes because you don't like them?

Why would that be the case?

I don't know, for whatever reason, just let me know, please.

Okay, teacherluke .co .uk slash premium.

That's how you get into your account.

You can contact me in any way you want with your feedback on my website, teacherluke .co .uk by email, luketeacher at hotmail .com or in the comments section of this, wherever you are listening to it.

You can add LEP Premium to Spotify these days.

Just wanted to add that.

Right. Let me just give some more.

We're getting to the end of this.

some more responses to recent episodes.

So where I am now recording this, last Monday, I uploaded the ASMR Zen School of English.

Before that, it was The Man Who Could Work Miracles.

Before that, we had Walk and Talk London and the audio episodes called Our Favourite Things to Do in London and also The Life of Brian, the film club episode about life of brian so the one about life of brian i consider it to be a bit of a flop actually a flop means like a film let's say a film that you that gets uh released and it kind of fails like not enough people see it and it's considered to be a bit of a failure that would be a flop um i'm trying to think of good examples of flops i can't think of a good example of a flop these days but uh maybe one of those recent marvel movies like the eternals

marvels the eternals a complete flop it was bloody awful and i think it did very badly at the box office it's considered to be a flop but yeah the life of bryant film club life of bryant episode is a conversation with anthony rittuno about uh this very very popular much loved british comedy feature feature film by Monty Python's Flying Circus, all about the life of this guy called Brian, who lives a sort of parallel life to the life of Jesus.

It flopped on YouTube.

I think on the podcast, on the audio podcast, it did okay.

It got a similar number of listens to most episodes.

Episodes on the audio podcast are generally a bit more consistent, but on YouTube it kind of goes up and down it's a bit a bit of a mysterious dark art understanding how to make sure every video you publish on youtube gets a similar number of views some of them get loads of views like millions and some of them barely get more than about 20 000 uh life of brian the life of brian one i understand it's quite a specialist sort of maybe special um uh appeal a certain specific appeal it's not the sort of thing that would appeal to everyone but i know that i've got lots of listeners who love monty python and love

that kind of thing um but anyway i consider it to be a flop on youtube and that's if you consider 20 000 views to be a flop um that's not that's That's not bad.

It's nothing to be sniffed at.

But still, in my opinion, that's a flop, which is a pity.

But I suppose it just didn't quite catch the algorithm on YouTube, probably because not enough people clicked it.

The title wasn't appealing enough.

You know, going back to that thing about titles.

Maybe if I'd chosen a different title, it would have made a big difference.

If I'd said, you know, this film shocked the world, some something hyperbolic like that.

Instead, it was Film Club, Monty Python's Life of Brian with Anthony Rotuno, you know, not exactly clickbait.

But still, I got some nice comments on that video.

for example one from agnes kag 9581 who said it's not easy to follow the message always look on the bright side of life by the way that's the message at the end of the film the end of the film the lead character brian is killed and he's being executed but he's surrounded by other people and one of them ends up singing a song it's a famous famous song always look on the bright side of life right that song I think it's a really famous bit of British culture that so many people know that song and it's all basically about the fact that yeah ultimately we all die at the end of our lives it would be

you know be strange if we died at another part of our life normally you die at the end of your life don't you that's normally the way it happens but anyway we all die blah blah blah and there's you know it's it's kind of shit and there's nothing we can do about it and so ultimately you just kind of have to try and stay positive and try and enjoy the time you've got and always look on the bright side of life stay positive um don't forget to love your life as well as live your life you know um so agony s gag it's not always easy to follow the message, always look on the bright side of life.

However, Luke's English podcast brings a dose of optimism, positive vibes, and simply good old human kindness into my life.

A wonderful, engaging conversation with Anthony Rotuno. It could have gone on and on and on.

Thank you. Thank you, Agnieszka for writing that.

I really appreciate that kind of feedback.

And I'm very much very happy that you you enjoy the conversation i put a lot of time into that episode with clips and pictures and all the rest of it audio and video um in ju juan in ju juan i don't know how to pronounce your name this is a long -running trope on this podcast of me not knowing how to pronounce people's names especially their usernames anyway blessed are the podcast doers what have the romans ever ever done for us well there was sanitation except for sanitation what are the romans ever done for well um well the roads of course all right except for sanitation and the roads what are the romans

ever done for us well that's the aqueduct right well obviously yeah obviously the aqueduct but apart from the aqueduct the roads and the sanitation what are the bloody romans ever done for us well there's always the wine well of course there's a wine right except for the wine the The aqueduct?

You get the idea. That's a scene from the film.

Blessed are the podcast doers.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Brilliant show and your podcast really does justice to the legendary film.

Loved it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'm very glad that those people who watched the episode, listened to the episode, enjoyed it.

And, you know, your feedback does mean a lot to me.

It really does. So if you have similar things to say when you listen to my episodes, do write.

it's not too difficult to find a way to leave your comments wherever you're listening so do, you know, do write that and do that now, ok everyone?

write a comment under this episode, please do it really helps it helps me because I get the sense that I'm connecting with human beings there are actual people, real lepsters out there really listening to these episodes so leave your comments, it makes a big difference to podcasters like me me.

The Walk and Talk London video was a big hit.

That seemed to have caught people's attention.

Also the audio episodes too.

So a reminder on YouTube I published a Walk and Talk in London but on the audio podcast you've got two episodes where I spoke to my friends and family about things they like to do and they gave some tips and things.

So that's two audio episodes and one on video.

And they were really popular, which is good.

I'll do more walking and talking when I can.

It's quite rare that I get to be in London on my own like that.

I'd like to do another one in London.

I love walking around the streets of London in various places.

So I'd love to do another walk and talk in London when I get the chance.

But like I said, it's rare that I'm there on my own, you know.

But I'll try and do that as soon as I can.

And next time I'm doing that in I'll try and maybe do some more research so that I can give you more facts.

You know, if I can plan out my route in advance and actually prepare a list of information that I can tell you about for each location, that would be good.

But having said that, it does seem that just rambling, just talking about whatever, you know, I think of without really thinking it through too much in advance.

That's also great, apparently, which is nice.

The next one of those might be in Paris, of course.

so I have done ones in Paris in the past but obviously because I live here it's going to be easier have you seen the ones I've done in Paris have you seen them I did two outside and one inside in the medieval museum um but hey video viewers did you listen to the audio episodes of the London that London series there were lots of recordings of my friends and family So this is episodes 939 and 940.

Recordings of my friends and family plus some extra rambling and vocabulary explanations with some top tips for visiting London, including stories like the time a red London bus jumped over the gap on Tower Bridge.

That's that bridge that separates to allow ships through.

one day in the 1960s the bridge was rising and a bus went through the barrier and had to jump across the gap and actually made it so that story is in there um you find out from my daughter how to get the best sausage roll in London um why you should definitely what you should definitely visit or pop into in Trafalgar Square some historic old pubs plus my mum my dad my brother my daughter and loads of other people um talking in those episodes so check them out 739 and 740 um last week as i'm recording this now it was the asmr zen school of english for you the last episode is the sherlock holmes

um adventure of silver blaze which i at the time of recording this i haven't published that yet so i've got no idea what people will think of it i hope that it'll will be popular.

Generally, people like the Sherlock Holmes stories.

And that one's been updated into modern English.

So I'm very curious to see what people are going to think about that when I publish it on Monday.

But anyway, for me now, the last episode was the ASMR Zen School of English, which for me was really a kind of a chance to do two things.

One thing was I genuinely really wanted to create something peaceful and calming to help keep you serene and peaceful and all those other things right so that was one of the things i wanted to do but also i wanted to just have a bit of fun and do some stupid jokes and i quite like the idea of getting you into a kind of meditative relaxed state where you're listening maybe lying down in a dark room and And you're paying complete attention to everything I'm saying.

You've got your eyes closed.

You've got headphones on.

And you're listening to every single word. And then I tell you some really stupid jokes and make you laugh.

If I've got your complete undivided attention, the chances are I'm really going to be able to make you laugh a lot more.

And I was happy to see that some people did write that.

They were like, I was trying to relax with this, but I couldn't stop laughing.

Or how am I supposed to fall asleep when I can't stop laughing?

This was brilliant.

good that was the idea but this episode also flopped on youtube um but i want to just say hi to those people who listened and enjoyed it and got the jokes i think some people listened to it and didn't realize that there were that i was making fun of things i think some people just took it on face value and didn't really realize that it was all a bit of a joke um but it was meant to meant to work on several levels on it's meant to be genuinely relaxing but also a bit of a comedy show as well so props to those people who got all of the stupid jokes if you liked it you could listen to episode 314

of um of the podcast which was a similar thing that i did a few years ago called luke's guided sleep meditation for more of the same kind of thing um and i genuinely challenge you to listen to episode 314 without falling asleep because because there are lots of, let's say, hypnotic techniques that I used in that episode to make sure that everyone would fall asleep while listening.

And of course, there are quite a lot of stupid jokes and things in that too.

But yeah, that's perfect for those of you who like to use my episodes to fall asleep.

Right. And so at the end here, I'd like to just tell you about my recent trip to the UK with my son.

Now, I would just tell you what happened, write about the journey with him, my little boy, I would just tell you about it.

But I thought that it would be fun and maybe more interesting to rewrite this as a Hollywood action movie because that's what it felt like to me.

So here it is. Now, first of all, the basic events.

So just last week, I went to visit my parents.

My daughter and my wife were off in the French countryside doing something else.

So my son and me, the two of us, we went to England to visit my parents and stayed with them for about a week.

And that involved two train journeys.

Two train journeys.

One is about two and a half hours long.

The other one is about an hour and a half long.

Not too bad, but still.

Now, you know, when you're on a train and somewhere on that train, there is a small child screaming and having a meltdown and you kind of roll your eyes and you get annoyed with the noise and you silently judge the parent for whatever reason and you think to yourself why can't parents just do x y and z why can't parents handle their kids why can't parents do this why can't parents just stay at home with the kids or why can't parents Parents just never have children in the first place.

You know that? Well, on this trip, I was that parent.

That was me with the crying child.

I was the one dealing with the crying child.

So the basic events.

I'll give you the basic events, the boring version, and then I'll give you the Hollywood dramatic Mission Impossible version.

So I went with my small son to visit my parents in England.

My wife and daughter were away in the French countryside.

We travelled on the Eurostar from Paris to London.

then we had to eat a little bit of lunch in the station then we took a taxi to Marleybone station and we took another train to the Midlands where my parents live I was worried that my son would be restless and would run around be unruly and would have a meltdown to have a meltdown means to get very upset to lose your to get extremely emotional probably angry so like when a tantrum, when a child has a tantrum.

A tantrum, a meltdown actually is more something you would say for, let's say, a tennis player, you know, who has an emotional argument with the referee and throws their racket on the floor.

That's a meltdown. Or maybe a director of a Hollywood movie and the director is under a lot of pressure and they have a meltdown and shout at all of the actors and the staff on the movie set.

Normally, for children, we say that they have a tantrum.

That's when they roll on the floor, kicking their legs and screaming and crying.

But for some reason, my wife and I always talk.

We always say this is a meltdown.

So I was worried that that would happen.

I hoped he would sleep on the Eurostar.

So we left early in the morning.

We got a train. It was delayed.

We had to wait an extra hour.

That was difficult.

But the train was about 9 .30, 10 o 'clock in the morning, right?

so on the Eurostar we sat next to a girl who thankfully didn't complain I sat down next to her and my first thing when I arrived with this child I said to her we're probably not going to sit here very much and she said oh no no problem like that and that was nice makes a big difference but my son couldn't sit still at all and so I couldn't just keep him on my lap absolutely impossible.

It was like trying to keep a wild animal on your lap.

So I had to just follow him around the train as he ran.

He just ran down the train from one car to the next car to the next car running between, running down the aisle.

That's the A -I -S -L -E.

The aisle is the middle walkway of of the train with seats on both sides.

And as he ran down, often running past the same people again and again with me following after him, different passengers had different reactions.

Some of them obviously thought he was cute.

Others just stared at him and stared at me as if they disapproved like that.

And I just stared back at them.

And I had to divide the journey into 10 minute sections because he can't really do one thing for more than about 10 minutes so it's like 10 minutes running down the train 10 minutes fooling around on the floor of the restaurant car 10 minutes spent changing his nappy in the toilet 10 minutes looking out the window naming things we could see 10 minutes watching some cartoons on my phone 10 minute sections he didn't sleep at all on the eurostar then we arrived in london and i had to be strategic because I had to make sure that he didn't sleep until we got onto the next train because I needed him

to sleep on the next train.

I knew he would fall asleep at some point, but I needed him to stay awake until we got onto the next train so that we could spend that train journey with him asleep.

And then I could actually live in peace because that train, it's much more difficult to have him loose on the train.

On the Eurostar, there are spaces between the carriages where you you can sort of hang around but on the other train there are no spaces like that there's just people everywhere and it's really really impossible plus it's dirty on the floor oh dear so i needed him to stay awake until we got onto that that next train um we arrived in london i was carrying our large bag with all our stuff in it on my back my backpack as well my son and the pram um yeah he had a big meltdown on the eurostar about 20 minutes before we arrived in london He was tired and hungry.

And in these situations, he scratches and bites me and writhes around in my arms like an alligator or a fish.

Yeah, he scratches and bites.

Scratches. I've actually got a scratch on my face and this is from his nails.

I have to keep sort of like what's the word for it?

Filing his nails to make sure they're not sharp.

So he scratches and bites and he cries and he screams and he writhes around in my arms like an alligator.

most of the time he is adorable like the sweetest cutest loveliest little boy but when he's very tired or hungry he becomes sort of a monster and he bites my shoulder and scratches me yeah 28 years old he is yep 28 years old he's not really that's just a joke I have to say every single time but seriously uh no he's not 28 he's he's like nearly two years old he'll be two next next week but seriously I hope he grows out of this phase because when he's 28 when he is 28 it will be very tricky if he's still biting me and and throwing you know bits of banana at me and stuff so I had to show him a cartoon while

sitting on the floor of the Eurostar that kept him entertained it stopped his meltdown i managed to wrestle him into the push chair clipped him in you know hold him down and clip him in um and then we headed quickly to a cafe in the station to get lunch i knew he needed lunch walking along the platform he fell asleep his head was lolling around like this and i was trying to stop him sleeping it was like don't fall asleep now no no don't don't fall asleep i had to gently wake him up to stop him sleeping like whatever don't fall asleep because as I said I needed him to sleep on the next train we

got to the table in the cafe and he had another meltdown in his pram while we were waiting for the food I had to order the food quickly I said look can you I know exactly what I want you know this is before I'd even sat down I know exactly what I want I want a croque monsieur which is a toasted cheese sandwich it was like a french cafe in London croque monsieur please and some water thanks very much we're in in a bit of a hurry and i was like please come quickly as he had a meltdown the food arrived i managed to cut it up i got him on my lap i started as soon as i presented him with a fork of toasted

cheese on toast toasted cheese on toast melted cheese on toast with ham his crying switched to giggling almost instantly so he started giggling and laughing he was so delighted to get food i fed him up filled him him up with food I ate as well oh it was just wonderful there was a moment where the guy next to me at the next table when my son was crying I looked over at him and I was like oh sorry the guy just stared at me stared at my son stared at me like that and I was like oh great thanks for being understanding I apologized but he just looked at us the food arrived we ate he giggled he did

also also try to slide everything off the table at one point and i had to use my cat like spider -man reflexes to catch the glass the salt the pepper and stop it leaving the table this is what it's like to have a small child we took a taxi to the next station taking a black taxi in london is my guilty pleasure i absolutely love it i love black taxis in london they've got so much space in the back the seats the the doors open the other way there are massive seats the seats fold down just just amazing he fell asleep instantly in the back of the taxi which was perfect because when i got onto the train he

was asleep i let him sit in the pram in the push chair sleeping he slept for about 45 minutes on the train just absolute bliss then he did wake up with about 30 minutes to go and he continued to run around play on the floor wrestle with me kick his shoes off attempt to press every single button he could find, including the power plug and even the emergency door opening thing, which he kept trying to play with.

And I was like, no, I entertained him as best as I could.

I am now covered in scratches and bite marks, but still, I adore this boy.

He is so cute and amazing most of the time, but he is like a gremlin from the movie Gremlins.

Certain conditions turn him into a sort of homicidal maniac.

Thank goodness he's small.

If he was any bigger, it would be a serious problem.

Finally, we arrived at the station in the town where my parents live.

We spent a wonderful week in the fresh air.

That was lovely. He is obsessed with birds or cack cack, as he calls them.

So he'll see a bird out of the window.

He'll go, oh, a cack cack.

But he's obsessed with birds and the bird songs, the bells from the nearby church, which ring every 15 minutes.

They They play different melodies.

He's obsessed with all of that.

He was like really wide awake, noticing everything, having a great time.

It was a very healthy thing.

Now we are obviously back in Paris, but it was lovely to be in England.

I felt very at home.

I love just walking through the park.

It was lovely. And it was very important for me to take him there and have that good time in England, being immersed in English.

I'm sure it's very good for his English as well.

and then of course we had to come back to paris and do it all again so those are the basic events but now here's a dramatic over -the -top hollywood action movie screenplay based on my uk trip you can think it's like taken meets planes trains and automobiles with a dash of die hard all right and the film is called eurostar the run so fade in external paris garden or a dawn thorn the low hum of city traffic right it's just paris luke 47 i'm actually 48 but thanks 47 rugged charming but slightly disheveled okay rugged if you describe a man this is very flattering of course but it's you know just painting

me as the typical action movie hero if someone is rugged it means that they are sort of handsome with strong features features uh i think the chat gpt is being very flattering to me rugged could also describe a landscape a rugged landscape would be one with like large rocks cliffs and large rocks and things a bold rugged landscape like in a like in a cowboy film or something but a person who's rugged a man who's who looks rugged it's kind of looks rough but tough strong features yes that's me luke 47 rugged charming but slightly disheveled if someone is disheveled i used that word earlier when i

talked about how i looked after coming back from band practice if you're disheveled it means you look a little bit untidy a bit messy right but it's it's kind of a positive word if you if you're are using it to describe a man.

Like, you know, Indiana Jones is kind of rugged and disheveled after he's had a fight with someone, you know.

Luke strides into frame, so I walk with big powerful steps with a determined look on his face.

Slung over one shoulder is a massive bag.

On his other arm, a pram.

Inside the pram sits Joe.

My son's name is not Joe, but I've decided to call him Joe in this screenplay.

Inside the pram sits Joe, almost two years old.

A cherubic dynamo of unpredictable energy.

A cherub is like a little, a baby angel, right?

You see them in sort of um uh is it renaissance paintings and things a cherub like a little baby angel cherubic is the adjective a dynamo is like a thing spinning with full of energy a cherubic dynamo of unpredictable energy luke voiceover my wife and daughter were off in the french countryside it was just me and my son a simple trip to england to see my parents what could possibly go wrong cuts to internal eurostar terminal security checkpoint luke's eyes dart like a secret agent scanning for threats so my eyes dart meaning they move around quickly like a secret agent joe wriggles so he moves

like he's trying to escape from his chair he wriggles trying to break free security guard motioning to the conveyor belt sir the pram So the security guard says, I have to put the pram on the conveyor belt.

Luke, looking grim, meaning serious and...

kind of serious and negative.

Like, oh no, shit, I've got to put the pram on the conveyor belt.

And you know what that means?

I need to remove Joe from the pram.

So Luke says, I know.

He collapses the pram one -handed.

while holding Joe, expertly managing the chaos.

Passengers stare. Joe kicks off his shoe.

It skids across the floor like a dropped handgun.

You know, in every action movie, there's a moment where a gun falls on the floor and skids away.

It's like that, but with my son's shoe.

Very dramatic. Internal Eurostar train moving.

Luke and Joe settle into their seats meets next to a young woman wearing airpods.

Luke, uh, he'll be asleep in a few minutes, hopefully.

So I'm going to be Sean Connery in this film.

I'll be Sean Connery.

Either I'll be Sean Connery or I'll be Liam Neeson.

Oh, I think for a change I'll be Sean Connery.

Don't worry. He'll be asleep in a few minutes, hopefully.

And the young woman says, oh, oh, no worries.

Luke breathes a sigh of relief.

Luke, it was going to be fine.

He'd sleep. I'd even read a book.

Yeah, right. Imagine.

Cut to 10 minutes later, Joe bolts.

If someone bolts, it means they run away quickly.

Similarly, we say to make a bolt, like to make a bolt bolt for the door means to quickly run to the door.

Right. Which is like that joke.

I bought a dog from a locksmith.

When I got him home, he immediately made a bolt for the door.

Do you get that? I bought a dog from a locksmith.

When I got him home, he immediately made a bolt for the door.

So that means either he immediately tried to escape by making a bolt for the door, running towards the door or because this dog was from i bought this dog from a locksmith and locksmiths is their job to make locks and bolts on doors because the other meaning of a bolt is a metal bar that goes across the door i'm sure i explained that in p69 part four as well anyway the dog made a bolt for the door because it was a locksmith's dog bonus joke for you there anyway joe bolts luke sprints after him runs fast down the narrow train aisle the camera follows handheld shaking as if it's the born identity

older passenger with a disapproving glare control your child luke fighting for breath i'm trying they burst into the restaurant car where joe immediately drops to the floor giggling and rolling under tables like a tiny secret agent agent evading laser beams to be fair they don't actually have tables in the euro in the eurostar restaurant car it's just a sort of open area so it's not as bad as it seems it's the sort of place where you can kind of sit on the floor anyway internal eurostar toilet later a claustrophobic close -up of luke changing a nappy with military precision this is actually true

i did have to to change his nappy twice once on the Eurostar and secondly on the other train where there was there were no baby changing facilities at all and my son dropped a poo in his nappy that was like shit he's done a shit in his nappy what am i gonna do there's no baby changing on this train so i had to just take him into the toilet stand him on the toilet the closed toilet it i was like do not touch anything okay you cooperate you just stand there for two minutes and whip down his trousers carefully removed his nappy with military precision like i was like defusing a bomb carefully remove

the flaps of the nappy lower the nappy carefully i've already prepared my wet wipes on my arm you know and i'm holding him up making sure he doesn't fall off the seat and then like remove the nappy make sure the poo is in the nappy close the nappy quick wipes in the bum pam pam pam pam in the bin open the bin with my knee slide the dirty nappy in new nappy open it out with one hand whack in place pam pam the tabs are on the child is safe The nappy's clear.

Shorts go back on. Back in business.

Luke, voiceover. Every ten minutes, something new.

A meltdown. A giggle.

A chase scene. Internal, train area.

Twenty minutes from London.

Joe is red -faced and screaming.

Luke, this is a long shot, but it might just work.

Luke sits on the floor, arms around Joe, showing him a cartoon of petit -torser brun.

which is a famous French cartoon about a little bear.

Sweat drips down Luke's temple like an episode of Mission Impossible.

Other passengers watch like it's a gladiator fight.

Luke, just keep your eyes on the bear.

Internal London Station Cafe.

Luke, battered and bloodied, scratch marks, bite marks on his arms like from a zombie encounter, sits at a cafe table.

Joe is in mid -tantrum.

Neighbouring customer, silent, judging.

Luke, with an awkward grin, sorry about the noise.

The neighbouring customer gives a blank stare.

He has no idea what Luke has been going through.

Eventually, a waiter arrives with a croque monsieur, that cheese sandwich thing.

Joe stops wailing instantly.

Ping, his eyes light up, a soft giggle.

Luke exhales. adorable scenes as Luke and Joe share food together it would be a nice montage external London taxi moving Luke watches Joe finally doze off meaning fall asleep in the backseat a moment of peace London flashes by outside the window like a dreamy montage of red buses and black taxis Luke voiceover I always loved London but this was the start this was just the start of our journey internal midlands train moving joe is asleep on luke's chest actually he was in the pram but anyway luke leans back closing his eyes for 45 minutes pure bliss the soundtrack music swells with peaceful violins

then joe wakes up dun dun dun suddenly it's wwe the wrestling wrestling joe launches himself off luke's lap your lap is the your legs where you're like a cat would sit or where your son would sit he launches himself onto the floor giggling luke struggles to catch him luke through gritted teeth it's okay you're okay i'm okay we're okay to an elderly couple sitting in on the seats we're okay you're okay everyone's okay external small midlands station day luke steps off the train like an action hero after the big finale battered but victorious joe eyes wide listens to birds and the distant bells

of a church luke in voiceover we'd made it fresh air family english belge budge this is how sean connery used to speak it was everything thing we needed.

Cut to a montage of me and my son in England.

Joe chasing butterflies in his grandparents' garden, laughing at the church bells.

Luke with a pint of beer, smiling with his mum and dad.

Joe pointing at Robbins, repeating, cack cack.

External Midlands train station.

One week later, Luke, now a battle -hardened veteran, hoists the big bag over his shoulder.

Joe in the pram, Looks up at him innocently.

Luke smiles. So, ready for the sequel?

Joe lets out a mischievous giggle.

Mischievous, mischief.

Mischief is like doing naughty things, doing bad things.

Mischievous is the adjective.

Cut to black. Text on the screen.

Coming soon. Eurostar The Run 2.

Paris or bust. There you go.

that's the end of that that was a bit silly uh it's quite fun to use chat gpt to do that sort of thing you know it's quite a fun way of you just tell it about an experience you had and ask it to write a i don't know like a action movie screenplay or um shakespearean um soliloquy or something to describe it it can do that and that's quite a good fun thing to do that's the the end of this episode listeners thank you very much for listening all the way through to the end it's been about two and a half hours of podcasting fun and i think i'm gonna go with that title which was this is something this is something

this shall i have it as this is something or just this is something i think i don't i don't know i'll work it out but you can let me know i had had questions earlier.

What do you think about the titles of episodes?

Do you think it makes any difference to you?

And just have yourself a lovely morning, afternoon, evening, or night.

And just think, after two and a half hours of listening to me waffling along, remember, right though, remember, I'm a man with a plan.

This is something. I know what I'm doing.

I've been doing, I've been in this game 15 years plus.

And you're not just listening to Luke's English podcast, you're getting English, natural English, injected directly into your brain here.

So now after two and a half hours, just think how many English words, phrases, and so on have found their way deep inside your very being.

Yes, those words will stick with you.

They will be with you forever.

Some of the things that you've heard here, you will never forget until until the end of your days.

Right? Think about those poor fools maybe around you right now who are not, who haven't listened to this.

Those poor idiots. You can just look at them and sympathize.

Feel pity. Pity for the fools who don't listen to this award -nominated podcast for learners of English, Luke's English Podcast. Well done.

You chose wisely. Thank you for listening.

leave your comments in the comment section.

Don't forget to sign up to LEP Premium, teacherluke .co .uk slash premium.

And I will speak to you next time.

But for now, it's just time to say goodbye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teacherluke .co .uk.

See you next time. and also exposing each other's deepest, darkest secrets.

And if you've ever been ghosted, we have a little segment called Left on Red where we call the person who ghosted you and say, hey, why'd you do that?

And usually it leads to some pretty embarrassing and explosive things.

Yeah, so check out the Adam Wilde and Jack show available every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts.

ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

ACAST .com. If you enjoyed this episode of Luke's English podcast, consider signing up for Luke's English podcast premium.

You'll get regular premium episodes with stories, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation teaching from me and the usual moments of humour and fun.

Plus, with your subscription, you will be directly supporting my work and making this whole podcast project For more information about Luke's English Podcast Premium, go to teachaluke .co .uk slash premiuminfo.

[Reflections on Podcasting, Narrative Grammar, and Life's Little Adventures]-[Listen & Learn English with Luke 🎧 This is SOMETHING! (944)]

📋 Summary

Introduction: The Evolution of Podcast Craft

Grammar Zone: Narrative Tenses

Tech Innovation: The "LukeGlish" Search Engine

Comedy Corner: Dissecting Humor

Personal Anecdotes: The "Gremlin" Journey

Conclusion

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Reflections on Podcasting, Narrative Grammar, and Life's Little Adventures]-[Listen & Learn English with Luke 🎧 This is SOMETHING! (944)]

📋 Summary

Introduction: The Evolution of Podcast Craft

Grammar Zone: Narrative Tenses

Tech Innovation: The "LukeGlish" Search Engine

Comedy Corner: Dissecting Humor

Personal Anecdotes: The "Gremlin" Journey

Conclusion

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

ListenLeap Brings You Into Real Context Learning