842. A Pre-Baby Summertime Ramble ☀️👶 | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

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So, going back to June...

2023, you got actually two premium series in that month.

There was P49, a three part series and P50, a two part series.

And then in July, there was P51.

Another three part series, three episodes.

And then also in August, at the end of August, you got P52, a double episode.

So make sure that you have checked your podcast subscription and make sure obviously, the thing I always say make sure that you've added Luke's English Podcast Premium to a podcast app on your phone.

And if you do that, it's the most convenient way to listen to the audio episodes and then find the links for PDFs and video versions in the show notes.

Okay.

If you're confused about other things in your life, I might not be able to help you.

But if you're confused about LEP Premium and you want to know exactly how to use it, how to get the PDFs and how to find the video versions and how to find old episodes, go to teacherlukecouk slash premiuminfo.

OK, or just go to my website and look in the menu under the premium section, and you'll find frequently asked questions and their answers as well.

It would be useless if it was just the questions.

You'd be like, OK, here are some questions, but what are the answers?

Don't worry, I've given you the answers as well and lots of information.

And that's also where you can go if you'd like to sign up to LEP Premium and you'd like to know more about it.

OK, nice one.

Good.

Here's a new episode for you.

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You're listening to Luke's English Podcast.

For more information, visit teachaluke.co.uk.

Hello there.

Welcome to this podcast.

Hello.

Welcome to this new episode of my podcast.

All right.

How are you?

I hope you're okay.

Obviously, I have no idea if you are.

You might be there just like you know, lost in the desert with no water, all you've got is your mobile phone.

You're desperately trying to call for help and you accidentally start listening to this.

I need help.

You're just trying to call the emergency services because you're lost in the desert.

And you accidentally, because your thumb's not working properly, because you're so dehydrated and exhausted because you're lost in the desert.

Your thumb doesn't work properly.

You end up listening to this instead.

And there's me going, hi, how are you?

You doing fine?

Good.

Meanwhile, you're there going, water, water.

So I've got no idea what situation you're in, but I hope that you're fine and that you're okay.

Welcome back to the podcast.

Yes, we've started.

We're rolling.

This is a rambling episode, which means that I'm just going to sit here and talk to you for some time.

I mean, that doesn't seem to be too different to a normal episode, does it?

Normally, I just sit here and talk to you.

But rambling episodes are a little bit different.

But basically, the idea is that...

I talk to you without a script and without much planning involved.

I've got some ideas of what I want to talk about.

But the main thing is that I'm kind of speaking spontaneously and making most of this up as I go along.

It's an unplanned approach.

I ramble, me talking on my own for a while.

So hang out with me for a while.

I invite you to hang out and join me for a little bit.

Some of the things I'm planning to talk about in this episode include thoughts on the arrival of Child 2.

A recent recording of my daughter speaking English.

She's five years old now.

A few months ago, I recorded a little bit of conversation with her.

And so I'll play that to you.

Some news and some bits of podcast admin.

Some thoughts about some films I've seen recently because I saw a few films.

So I thought that I would talk about that.

And also a recording of me doing stand-up comedy live on stage recently as well.

So I'll play that for you too.

But here we go.

So we've started.

And in these rambling episodes, sometimes I give myself some rules.

And one of the rules is no editing.

So I've started recording, and I'm not allowed to stop and start again.

So no editing, which kind of, for me, is... guess what, exhilarating.

But the idea is that by forcing this pointless rule on myself, by forcing myself to not edit or to have the safety net of editing to take that away from me, That forces me to think on my feet and hopefully it brings a level of excitement and tension to the episode which makes it that much more interesting and engaging to listen to where you're just gripped.

You're just like, this is so gripping.

It's like a Mission Impossible film.

Is he going to be able to do it?

Is he going to be able to do this episode without editing?

It's not that exciting, I know.

It's not really equivalent.

It's not like I'm Tom Cruise and I'm holding onto the wing of an aeroplane as it flies out of the Earth's atmosphere, or something.

What's going to happen?

The stakes are not quite as high as that.

All I need to do is sit here and talk to you. you know, so it's not that bad.

But anyway, imposing that restriction hopefully just well puts me in a corner, means I have to kind of talk my way through it all.

Yes.

Okay.

No script either.

Some of my episodes are scripted in advance.

And that allows me to show you the text either on the website or a PDF, or on the screen, if you're watching the video version.

No script for this, just some notes for me to follow, just to remind me of the main things I wanted to talk about.

Another rule is that I have to switch off my internal editor.

I don't know if you know what that means, but to switch off your editor basically means to just try to block out those negative thoughts.

Thoughts like, oh, what are people going to think?

We shouldn't say that.

Switch off those thoughts that limit the things that you think and things that you say in a situation like this.

Average podcast listener or average YouTube person might be thinking as they click on this because they got maybe something in the thumbnail.

The video thumbnail looked interesting and they clicked on it.

And any minute now, their finger is hovering over the thumbnail of another video on YouTube.

And any second now, they're going to go for it.

You know, never mind.

Never mind that.

I'm not thinking about these things.

It's just me sitting in the comfort of my room talking to my lovely, lovely audience.

So those are the rules.

No editing, no script.

Switch off my internal editor.

And the fourth rule is no rules either because I'm trying not to limit myself with these things.

But there we go.

So we started and I thought that maybe at the beginning I could say something about the spirit, the spirit of this podcast or the spirit of these rambling episodes especially.

And I think...

I wanted to talk again about English teaching and because you know, I've taught English for like 20 years or something and a lot of the things I've learned from communicating in that scenario being an English teacher have inspired me in doing this podcast right.

It's that and also probably doing stand-up comedy as well.

Those two things.

I've done a lot more teaching than stand-up, but I've been doing stand-up comedy on and off for about 15 years.

I've been doing this podcast for...

Well, the podcast and the stand-up, I've been doing them for a similar length of time, but the teaching I've been doing for a lot longer than that and obviously I've done many more hours of teaching than I've done.

So it's probably I've done more teaching teaching first in terms of hours done, and then podcasting in terms of hours done, and then probably stand-up would be third.

But the stand-up and the teaching.

I kind of take inspiration from those two things in making this podcast.

And one of the things I thought of that I thought before I started recording this.

Maybe I was like walking down the road to come here to my office today, to my pod room.

And I thought, oh, no, there's an inspiring idea.

There's an interesting thing I can talk about. that thing that inspires me to record these episodes.

And even now, I'm now thinking, oh, is it that interesting?

I hope so.

But so as a teacher, you have your lesson plan, you've got your class of students and stuff like that.

Maybe they are studying with you for a couple of weeks. depending on what course is happening.

But you have your lesson plan and you have the material and all the things that you're going to be doing in the lesson.

And in the morning, you come in and you try to be professional.

You've got your group there.

You have to do specific exercises to make sure the group gets to know each other.

And then you get in there with some language work fairly quickly.

Whether it be grammar or vocabulary or pronunciation, listening skills, speaking skills reading, writing.

You know you get in there with some substantial training, right?

And you've thought about it in advance, you've planned it and stuff like that.

Let's say there's a group of about 15 students in the room and you really hope and do your best to make sure that they are engaged and fully involved in everything that you're doing and all the exercises that you're doing.

But there's always that sense that it's, you know...

You know as a teacher and just as a human being, you know when in a room you've got a genuine feeling of interest and engagement, when there's something kind of really human happening and you get a sense that people are really connecting on a truthful level.

And that's really what you want to get at all times in your lessons, right?

But that can be – it can be hard to get that.

And you can try to plan for it to happen by managing the activities and exercises that you do and managing yourself as a teacher.

But sometimes –

No matter how hard you plan for it in advance, you can't manufacture it.

But then there are moments in English lessons when those things do happen, sort of, as we say, organically or naturally.

Those moments do come up where suddenly you feel like everyone in the room is all on the same page.

Everyone's thinking about the same thing.

Everyone sort of seems to put down their pen or they kind of stop being a student in a classroom for a moment and they become just a person connecting with other people in a room and something much more truthful and interesting and engaging happens.

And often those moments happen sort of outside the formal boundaries of the lesson.

I mean, they all happen For example, maybe when you say to the class, OK, let's have a break.

And you say that and it's kind of like you've drawn a line or you've closed the door and another door has opened.

The door that closed is closed. the room of the sort of metaphysical room of the English lesson.

And then when you say let's have a break, then everyone's just kind of a lot more human on the same level.

It's very strange to explain this.

I'm not sure I'm doing a good job of it.

Another example might be after you've had a break or after the lunch break.

You come back to the classroom and the students are kind of relaxing.

Maybe some of them aren't in the room and you just start talking to them or they start talking to each other.

There's a conversation going on and you get involved in the conversation, or someone asks you a question and you start kind of talking about stuff that you hadn't planned for.

Something spontaneous happens and in those moments I feel like there's a much better connection and those things can't be planned for.

So, I suppose...

I've always tried to achieve that in my episodes.

Try to get that spirit in those moments outside of the normal formal teaching.

Does that make sense?

Do you know what I'm talking about?

I hope so.

I hope you do.

So anyway, that's kind of like the spirit.

Let's imagine that this is a break from the English teaching lesson.

It's a break from the English course that we're enrolled in.

Maybe even we've gone to the pub after class in the evening.

Because we do that in language schools sometimes.

When I worked in London, we used to do that quite a lot, especially during summer courses.

There would be a two-week intensive summer course where you'd be with a group of students for six hours a day.

And then one of those evenings would be a trip to the pub.

You'd take the students to a nice pub with a nice garden.

And they can have some drinks and socialize.

And in those moments you get the impression that those are the moments where you're sitting around a table in a pub garden having a few drinks.

And those are the moments that the students remember.

And sometimes those are the moments when people really learn things or really have a kind of important relationship, watershed moment in their learning of English where they kind of make a breakthrough maybe in fluency or they make a more sincere human connection with the language there.

So that's where this podcast happens, in those moments outside the formal boundaries of an English lesson.

And that's definitely the spirit of these sort of rambling episodes.

And that's why I try to impose these pointless rules, which is like I'm not allowed to edit and I'm not allowed to have a script and I'm not really allowed to prepare too much in advance, because I want it to be spontaneous, to create the right human connection, but also for the English to sound spontaneous too.

I think there is a difference.

I've talked about this many times, I won't go on about it a lot right now, but I think there is a difference between spontaneous speech and pre-written speech.

When someone is reading from a script, it's Even if you're a really good actor and it's a really good script.

We can tell on an almost subconscious level that this is a person reading something that has been written in advance.

Whereas speaking spontaneously and responding to sort of whatever's happening in the moment.

I think that we are more attuned to that kind of speech and we probably find it a lot more engaging and interesting to listen to.

There are pros and cons of both.

The pros.

The advantage of listening to non-scripted speech is what I've just said that hopefully it's more engaging and sounds more natural and therefore is easier to focus on.

But the negative is that you don't get a script to check, right?

You can't read what you're hearing at the same time or go back and check for certain words.

If you're watching this on YouTube, you can switch on the automatic subtitles and you should be able to see.

You know what I'm saying.

And these days the automatic you know, auto-generated subtitles on YouTube are very good, like surprisingly accurate, especially when it's just me talking on my own.

It's able to follow 99% of what I'm saying and it does get most of it right.

Obviously, it does make some mistakes, but, you know, That's just what we're dealing with.

Okay.

On the other hand, if you're listening to the audio version, the advantage there is that sure you can't look at the subtitles, I think, unless Spotify does that these days.

I'm not sure.

But you can't look at the subtitles.

But you can do something else.

You can walk down the street, or you can ride the bus to work, or you can drive a car or something like that.

You can just close your eyes and just focus on the words and the sounds without being distracted by the visuals.

Like, oh you know, just being distracted by my haircut or whatever it is that you feel moved to think about while I'm talking.

This is fascinating stuff, isn't it?

This will be the last episode I record.

That's not the end of the sentence.

Don't worry.

This is not the last episode I will record.

This is the last episode I will record before taking two months off.

OK, now you've probably heard me say this. again and again on the podcast recently, but there it is.

That's just what's going on with me.

So I'm going to take two months off because my wife is going to give birth to our second child like any minute now, any moment now.

In fact, I have to keep checking my phone just to make sure my wife isn't texting me saying I think it's happening.

I have to keep an eye on my phone. because it could happen at any moment.

I mean, some of you might be thinking, well, shouldn't you be at home, Luke?

No, it's all right.

I'm not far.

We're not far away from each other.

I don't think it's necessary for me to just stay there with my wife just like watching her like this.

Is it happening?

Is it happening now?

How about now?

Is it happening?

Nothing?

You know, that's not necessary.

In fact, she's at work.

She's still going to work, which is very impressive.

She is, yeah, the due date for the birth is, Two days from today.

Today's Friday.

The due date is on Sunday.

And she's still going to work and stuff.

It's very impressive.

She works for herself.

She doesn't have a boss breathing down her neck.

But still, she goes to the office where she works and goes there every day.

So that's impressive.

So anyway, everything's fine.

We did go to a hospital just for a check last Monday and they said yeah, everything's totally fine.

The baby's doing great.

He's not ready to come out yet because they check for contractions.

They kind of put something on my wife's tummy and checked for contractions.

There were no contractions happening.

And they scanned the baby.

The baby's fine.

So the plan is basically we'll go in again on Sunday, go to the hospital again on Sunday so they can have another look and see if the baby is starting to come out or not.

And anyway, so Sunday's the day.

So what...

The baby might be born on Sunday.

The baby might be born any like five minutes from now.

We don't know.

But in any case, the plan is that I'm going to have two months off.

You've heard me talk about this ad nauseum, no doubt.

But so I'll be taking two months off.

But for you it's really not going to be noticeable at all, I think because, as I've said before, I've done lots and lots of episodes pre-recorded, loads of episodes.

I've got them all in a queue and And at this moment, it's the end of June.

Today is Friday, the 30th of June.

And I've got episodes that are going to take me all the way through until the end of August or even the beginning of September.

OK, so you're now listening to this after having heard all of the hopefully, and hopefully you've heard them all.

Anyway, you're listening to this after possibly hearing all of those episodes I've got in a queue.

So I hope you've enjoyed those episodes.

The one about Monopoly, which was the last one.

What else?

What else is there?

What else have you probably heard?

The conversation about Monopoly.

The episode called Things That Make You Go Hmm, which I really enjoyed.

I really enjoyed all of them, actually.

I've had a really good run of episodes.

The episode with Kate Billington, the three-hour mega ramble.

And the Lemon Adventure, the Lemon Simulator, the article about the best way to learn a language according to research, the red-headed league, the Sherlock Holmes story and stuff like that.

So you will have heard those things.

So this is going to be after all of those.

So you might be listening to this at the beginning of September.

But I'm recording it at the end of June.

And so I'm going to talk about in more detail, about how it, how it feels to be on the brink of having a new human life just happen.

That's not the best way of putting that.

To be on the brink of becoming a new father for the second time, to be on the brink of having a new baby at home, a new member of the family with us, which is a very strange and interesting feeling.

I'll talk about that again in some detail in a moment.

But for you, in terms of the two-month break, you're not going to notice because I've got all these other episodes that are going to be published while I'm away.

But...

But maybe what I can do is the next episode of this podcast.

Maybe I can do another episode like this.

Maybe I can do one with my wife.

We'll see.

I can't make any promises because I don't really know what things are going to be like at the end of August or the beginning of September.

I've no idea.

But maybe it could be interesting, if possible, to record another episode that will be published immediately after this one, where I'll talk about, you know, the situation and the baby and stuff like that.

And it'll only be one week for you, but it'll be two months for us.

Maybe that'll be interesting.

So anyway, yes, two months break.

And then, but for you, it's going to be just one week.

Okay.

So what about having a second child?

Now, a lot of you will be parents and you'll know what it feels like.

A lot of you haven't had kids and you don't know.

I wonder what you think, but just try and put yourself in my shoes that...

At the moment, it doesn't seem real.

It just doesn't seem real.

Of course my wife is fully pregnant and I understand what this means, but I just can't quite understand what it means to have a new member of the family about to join us.

It's a very strange thing.

Some people call it a miracle, don't they, childbirth?

I wouldn't go that far, but there's definitely something very strange about it, because any moment now, or any day now, there's just going to be three of us in the family.

Right now, in the immediate family, just three of us.

But then it's going to be four.

Where's that other person? coming from.

Now, I know physically he's going to come from my wife's uterus, right?

I know the biology of it, but it's very odd when you imagine that.

So, the child is going to be born.

And the thing about babies is that they arrive, right?

They're born, but to some extent they arrive already with a personality.

Like, they just have a character.

They have a spirit and a personality and a character, often from day one.

Obviously that character, that personality probably gets molded and changed and adapts and stuff over time because of the experiences that person has as they grow up.

But you can definitely sense that when a child is born, Obviously at the beginning it's hard to read the child's emotions and personality and stuff.

But the personality emerges, you know, over the following few weeks and months.

And you can definitely notice a personality.

You know, kids are either... They can be calm.

They can be angry.

They can be energetic.

You know, or other things...

Anyway, you just, and the face, you know, you see the face.

It's like a person.

Where does this, where's this spirit come from?

It's a very strange thing.

Religious people will obviously have their interpretation of what that means and the rest of it.

But there's something unexplainable about it and wonderful.

It's incredible.

But at this moment, so yeah, there's three of us.

We've got a five-year-old daughter and we've achieved a sort of equilibrium in the family where when a child arrives, it is.

I've heard people say that it's like a bomb going off in your home.

I mean, that's not a very good analogy, is it really?

Because that's terrible.

A bomb going off is a terrible, terrible thing.

So that's not a great metaphor.

But I suppose what it means is that it can destabilise things.

It has a powerful effect.

And the order that was in place... before can be turned upside down.

It can kind of make things that were previously ordered, it can make them chaotic in some way.

I mean, this is our second child, so we kind of know what to expect to an extent on that in that regard.

Although our first child as a baby, she was pretty easy to manage really.

She didn't cry a lot.

There wasn't too much drama.

So we hope that the second child will be similar.

But anyway, I was saying that as a family of three...

Our daughter is now five years old.

And so things have achieved a sort of stability or equilibrium.

And that equilibrium is about to be sort of upset by the arrival of the second one.

So we don't know.

There's a lot of unknown stuff here.

We don't know what he'll be like.

We don't know what the birth will be like.

We're not entirely sure how it's going to affect the equilibrium.

I mean...

We cannot wait to meet him.

We can't wait to meet him, see his face, see what he looks like, see what colour his eyes are, what colour his hair is, if he looks like me, if he looks like my wife, you know, or some incredible combination of the two.

Which is another miraculous thing about childbirth is that you see that a child is like.

Somehow they can look like two people at the same time, which is really, really fascinating.

So, yeah, it's a lot of unknown stuff.

And obviously I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything's going to be healthy, that my wife will be healthy, that the baby will be healthy.

That's the most important thing, of course.

But yes, so there's some anxiety, some nerves, some stress and some excitement and some wonder.

You know all those sorts of things.

I've kind of forgotten what it was like when the first one was born.

It's five years ago, but I've sort of forgotten what it's like.

It's a bit of a blur.

But I remember that it was incredibly intense, like in the hospital, in the maternity ward, in the room.

It was intense when the baby is coming, you know.

It seemed to take a long time, but at the same time, it was immediate as well.

You know, it seemed to take a long time, in the sense that we waited a lot in the room and in the ward because although the baby was coming, he wasn't quite coming fast enough.

So we had to wait and wait and wait.

But then when it was time, you know, when the midwives and the doctors basically said okay, it's got to happen now.

And they induced the birth to some extent.

That means that they I don't know quite how they do it, but I think they introduced some hormones to essentially accelerate the birth process.

So our first child was born... It wasn't a caesarean.

She was born naturally, let's say, although my wife did have an epidural to help with the pain.

So when it was time for her to arrive... getting mixed up.

When it was time for her to arrive, it did happen very suddenly and it was very intense.

And that's what you see in the movies, where you know everyone's saying push push push breathe breathe, breathe.

And the mother-to-be is getting, is experiencing a lot of pain and the husband is standing there like not knowing what to do, like that.

And then there's a baby, you know, and then it's all emotional.

But that does happen very quickly and it's quite intense.

So anyway, but my brain can't really handle the fact that a new life is going to arrive.

Where's it going to come from?

You know, It's very strange.

So right now, I'm just trying to manage my expectations.

And, you know, to be honest, probably I shouldn't, to an extent, maybe I shouldn't be doing this.

Maybe I shouldn't be sitting here talking to you about this.

Maybe what I should be doing is just lying down and just trying to sleep, just...

Just using these moments to just absorb as much sleep into my body as I possibly can so that when the baby is here, I can.

I don't know if that's how sleep works.

It doesn't work like that, does it?

You can't be like a camel for sleep.

You don't just absorb... sleep in the way that a camel absorbs water, which it can then use later.

That's not how the human body works, is it?

You can't just absorb sleep and then sort of use it.

Use the stored sleep later to help you survive those sleepless nights.

But I probably shouldn't be getting too tired or anything.

But anyway, we don't know.

We don't know what it's going to be like.

What's How is the landscape of our lives going to change?

Also in a practical sense.

You know just stuff, like stuff we take for granted now, like just going out and doing things, going out to the shops or going out for lunch.

We can basically do that now with our five-year-old daughter.

Sometimes, you know, she gets easily distracted and things, but it's doable, you know?

If you're a parent, you understand.

If you're not a parent, hopefully you at least will find it sort of interesting to think about that.

But that's probably enough about that.

Let's just say that I'm trying to stay calm.

I'm trying to stay philosophical about it.

I can't wait to meet this boy, my son.

Whenever I say my son, it sounds very Star Wars.

My son, I'm going to be like Darth Vader.

Hopefully I won't be Darth Vader.

Hopefully I'll be a nice dad, rather than the sort of the Hollywood movie father figure, bad guy type character.

I mean, I don't think I will be.

But I mean just from a Freudian point of view, every father probably to some extent somehow, just by just by being the father, by being the paternal figure.

There's a bit of Darth Vader in there, isn't there?

Even if you don't mean to be scary just by being the father, there's something Darth Vader-ish about it.

There's a lot of complex psychology involved.

But anyway, I hope that it's all going to be nice.

I'm looking forward to it.

Looking forward to having a boy and a girl.

It's going to be great.

But so as I said.

Probably what I'll do is, or what I could do, is the next episode I do after my two month break could be a chance for me to talk about what happened and talk about the baby and maybe talk with my wife about it and stuff, like we did for our daughter when she was born.

Is it episode something episode?

I can't remember which episode it is.

I can't remember which episode it is, but somewhere in the archive there is an episode called The Birth of My Daughter.

And so my wife and I in that episode talked about you know yeah, exactly that the birth of our daughter and what happened and what it was like and what it's like having a baby and stuff.

Maybe we can do that for the next one as well.

Hmm.

Okay.

Now, I've got my window wide open here.

I've got the window wide open because it's a hot day.

Whenever I have the window open, I'm always very conscious that my neighbours might be able to hear me saying all of these things.

Because there's a courtyard with lots of other windows from other apartments all facing into the courtyard.

And I'm on the top floor, so it's just sort of the roofs and the sky above.

But still, I'm sure that my voice is probably carrying around this courtyard and i can see a couple of windows that are open down there, and so i always wonder if my neighbors can hear me talking, and i don't know what i think about that.

On one hand, i kind of think well, they shouldn't really be able to listen to this because, you know, i've made this joke on the podcast before.

Those people are getting ad free episodes of luke's english podcast, aren't they?

You know, they're managing to listen to this without advertising at the beginning and sometimes in the middle of the episode, without having become a member of Luke's English podcast premium.

That just doesn't seem right.

But then again, maybe they don't have a choice.

You know, maybe they're just listening to it like OK, I'm listening to you Luke, but I didn't choose to listen to you.

So, yeah, I don't get ads.

All right.

That's the that's the only advantage that I get.

So I don't know.

I think it's all right.

But if someone I don't know if OK, if you're one of my neighbors and you can hear me right now, just just shout out to me something like close your window.

I won't be I won't be offended and say close your window, please.

Now, in fact, you can shout out.

Could you close your window, please?

Thanks.

And then say, nice one, as well.

Okay?

If you can hear me and you'd like me to close my window, just make a polite request to do so and I'll be happy to do it.

Nothing.

No one.

Either A, they're not listening.

Either A, they can't hear me.

Or B, they can hear me, but they're just not listening.

Or C, they can hear me, and they don't understand.

They...

Maybe they're French and they don't understand what I'm saying.

Or option four, ABC four.

I mean, ABCD.

Option D is that they are listening and they're just having a fantastic time.

Just sitting there.

Oh, great.

Add three episodes of Luke's English podcast.

Carry on, Luke.

This is great.

My English listening comprehension skills are improving exponentially with your content.

Maybe that's the case.

So I said before that I would give you an update from my daughter.

So the latest recording that I did with my daughter.

So you can see how her English has developed.

Now, I'm not inviting you to to judge her English or anything.

She's five.

All right.

But let's just say that my daughter is an occasional contributor to the podcast.

I can't get a full episode of conversation with her because you know she's five and after about five minutes.

She gets quickly distracted and usually she wants to hold the recording device.

I use my portable recording device, which I have got with me here.

Suddenly now it's very, it's just really important for me to open this.

And if you're looking at the video version for me to show you.

If you're not looking at the video version, I can describe it.

It's a little handheld portable audio recorder.

The Zoom H1n handy recorder. available now from all good shops.

But no, I'm not sponsored by Zoom, but it's a really good little handheld recorder.

So anyway, that's what I use when I'm out and about.

So when I talk to her, normally I can get a few minutes of reasonable conversation with her, but then quickly it breaks down and she just wants to hold the recorder and press all the buttons and stuff like that.

So, So I've got about, I don't know, maybe five to ten minutes of recording for you to listen to here.

Now, if you are a long-term listener to this podcast and you've heard other recordings with my daughter, then you might have got a sense of how her English has been developing.

I've said before in previous recordings, I think that was the first time I had a Well, the first time she was on the show was just when she was a baby and you could hear some baby noises in the background, sometimes just like gurgling and gaga noises in the background.

You know, we had a fun little conversation about a movie that she was imagining.

We imagined that we were watching a film with some of her teddy bears in it.

And then other conversations over the last few years.

And...

So in previous recordings, when she was smaller, she was mixing up French and English quite a lot because, as you may know, I live in France and my wife is French.

Our daughter, she's gone to French local public schools.

She's also spent time in a bilingual section in a school where they had English-speaking teachers in the morning and French teachers in the afternoon.

And these days, she's in a school where she has twice a week.

She's with a group of other kids who are in the same situation as her, meaning that they've got at least one parent at home who speaks English as a first language.

And so she's in a class twice a week with these kids.

And the class is done in English and it's all in English.

And so she has like two English classes in English, not about English, but just normal school lessons where they learn whatever kids learn at five years old.

But everything's done in English and all the other kids speak English, like her, as one of her primary languages, one of their primary languages.

So that's a bit of context.

We speak English mostly at home, including my wife, whose English is good.

And so we tend to do most things in English at home.

But anyway, you may remember that previously, when my daughter was on the show, you could hear that she mixed up French and English quite a lot.

You know, she kind of would... It would just kind of be a bit half and half.

And I said before that I expected that the two languages would diverge over time, that they would kind of separate, that she would get more and more of a sense of when she's speaking English, it's only English, and when she's speaking French, it's only French.

And that has definitely been happening, which is really interesting to see.

And so she is much more able to now... sort of stay in one language exclusively.

She can switch like that.

She can switch between the one and the other just like instinctively.

It's incredible.

But when she's in one, she can stay in that one language and she knows more or less not to use French words.

Every now and then she'll use a French word for something.

For example, the word pencil case.

She doesn't seem to use the word pencil case.

She calls it a trousse, which I'm probably pronouncing badly, but that's the French word for a pencil case, the little case that you put your pens and pencils in.

But for the most part she speaks exclusively in English when she's speaking English and exclusively in French when she's speaking French.

Every now and then, every now and then, you do hear her saying le instead of the. for some reason.

So she'll say, you know, the podcast or whatever it is, instead of the, in the recording.

But this recording is about two or three months old.

And these days, she's actually stopped doing that, as far as I can tell.

And other things.

You might hear some other things, other traces of her.

You know her other language, in her English.

But Yeah, so bilingualism is a fascinating thing.

Anyway, I'll let you listen to this little chat with my daughter in her bedroom, the two of us.

So let's take a break from the pod room and go to my daughter's bedroom.

Not in the video version, though.

I'm going to make myself a cup of tea while you listen to me and my daughter, and I'll let you discover what happens and what we talk about.

Here we go, okay.

Okay, there have to be some rules to this.

Okay, the rules are that hold on, wait a minute.

The rules are that i'm holding it okay.

Okay now, first of all.

Uh, welcome back onto the podcast.

How does it feel to be back on my podcast kids?

Yeah, when was the last time?

Do you remember?

It was in Granny and Grandad's garden.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Do you remember what we talked about?

No.

We talked about certain food that Granny likes to cook.

Oh, yeah.

That was super.

Do you remember what the food was?

No.

You can't hold it yet.

Not yet.

Maybe later.

What was the food?

I don't remember.

It was really, really tasty cakes that Granny's famous... Yeah, that was super.

What was it, though?

Strawberry.

Come on.

Granny's famous cakes.

Oh, yeah.

Bagel tarts.

Exactly.

You were doing that the whole time.

Now, here we are in your bedroom.

What are we doing in your bedroom?

Playing as a teacher.

Playing.

That's right.

I think we can do different situations.

Let's have a situation where, if you come over here, let's have a situation.

I like the one where let's say you're the doctor and I'm a patient and I come into your office, okay.

Knock, knock, knock.

Yes.

Is this the doctor's office?

Yes.

Okay.

Right, because I've got an appointment with you.

You're Dr. Thompson, right?

Okay, yes, I am Dr. Thompson.

OK, so shall I sit down or...?

Yes.

OK, all right, so I'm sitting down.

Sit down.

I'll sit here, OK.

Right, so as the doctor, you've got to ask me questions and things now.

What's your illness?

I'm not sure, but I just feel sort of very tired and I've got a really painful leg.

Put it on my special chair.

Okay, I'll put my leg on your special chair there.

Your feet.

My foot.

Okay, you're going to investigate, you're going to inspect it.

Okay, she's having a look with a special device of some kind.

Like in Paw Patrol.

Your leg is a tiny bit broken.

Your muscle is a tiny bit broken.

Really?

Yes.

Oh, dear.

I was wondering why it hurts so much.

Is there anything that we can do about it?

I don't... We can bandage it.

Bandage it?

Okay.

I finished.

Now you need to have a... I need to have a wheelchair.

Okay.

Yes, and... Crutches.

Yeah.

Crutches and a wheelchair.

Both?

Yeah.

Oh, gosh.

Okay.

Do you know how long it's going to take to get better?

A lot of weeks.

Oh, no.

So I'm going to have to be in this wheelchair for a lot of weeks?

Yeah.

What does a lot mean?

Like how many weeks?

All of the weeks.

All of the weeks?

Yes.

All of your life.

What?

Not when you're big.

Not when I'm big?

Yeah.

Only when you're little.

Ah, so for the rest of my childhood, I'm going to have to be in a wheelchair and on crutches.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

That's really sad.

Yeah, I know.

Sorry, I don't know why I'm laughing.

This is terrible news.

You need to wash your hands a tiny bit.

I see an inch on your hand.

Oh, something else?

Look.

A lot of blood is coming out.

I'm going to put a bandage on it.

That's because I put my hand down just now on the table and one of your knives was there.

Ow, my hand has been cut by one of your knives.

Why don't you tidy up your room, Doctor?

I finished.

You finished?

That was quick.

Okay, can you fix my hand, please?

I'm losing a lot of blood here.

I'll put it in the water, please.

Okay.

Finish and I'll bandage it.

Okay, wow.

Bandages are just the solution to all problems, aren't they?

And a plaster, I think, and bandage.

Bandage.

A bandage, a plaster, and then another bandage.

A bandage, a plaster, a bandage.

Okay, brilliant, brilliant.

Wow, thanks so much, Doctor.

I mean, I don't know why...

The foot thing means I have to stay in a wheelchair for the rest of my childhood.

But anyway, thank you so much for helping me.

What would have happened if I hadn't come to see you?

If you hadn't put a bandage on my foot, what would have happened to my foot and my body and my life?

I don't know.

Really?

I thought you were a doctor.

Don't you know about these things?

I don't know about that.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thanks a lot, Doctor.

How much do I owe you for that?

What's the fee for this kind of service?

Oh, nothing.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, it's free.

Yeah.

Oh, you are a nice doctor.

You are a nice doctor, aren't you?

What's that sound?

A unicorn has arrived in the room.

Where did that come from?

It keeps trotting around the place.

Wow, it's a magical unicorn as well.

Does it speak?

Hello.

Oh my gosh, it does speak with a very high-pitched voice.

That's nice.

I am a unicorn, it says.

Okay, that's pretty cool.

Okay, very good.

Now, do you have any stories that you can tell us?

Let's put the unicorn down for the moment.

Do you have any stories?

What game do you like to play with me sometimes?

Monopoly.

Monopoly, oh yeah.

Okay, what do you like about Monopoly?

It's to win a lot of cash and a lot of buildings.

That's what it's all about, isn't it?

Owning everything and taking all the money from all the other players.

Are you good at Monopoly?

Yes.

How do you win a game of Monopoly?

I beat first.

Let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see.

Tell me about music.

What kind of music do you like?

I don't know.

But you like the Beatles, don't you?

Yeah.

Which Beatles can you name?

Paul and Jack.

Almost.

Not Jack, it's... John.

John, yeah.

Paul and John.

Right.

And which one's your favourite?

Paul.

Oh, yeah?

Why do you like Paul?

Because he doesn't have a lot of nose in.

He doesn't have a lot of nose in it, yeah?

He doesn't like a lot of...

Like when he's singing, he doesn't have a nasal sounding voice.

Unlike Lennon, John Lennon's got a sort of nasal sounding voice, doesn't he?

What does he sound like when he sings?

It's quite good.

It's actually quite a good impression.

And what about Paul?

What does Paul sound like when he sings?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it, I would say.

Yeah, okay.

I'm washing the floor.

Oh, that's nice.

Great, great.

Good.

Please continue to do the housework.

You don't normally do this kind of helpful stuff.

Is this just because this is on the podcast and you want to make a good impression?

Yeah.

Okay, all right.

I'm going to wash shoes. you're gonna wash me ah how was your day at school today i don't know you don't you never know do you yeah it's a secret or something yeah what just do they wipe your memory when you leave the building yeah okay i'm wiping the board you're wiping the board just like the way they wipe your memory apparently when you leave the school there must be something you can remember about your day today um no really nothing didn't you play the violin No, I didn't.

I think you did.

I didn't.

Okay, well, it's been fun doing this little recording.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Do you have anything else to say to the people of planet Earth?

Any messages for them?

No.

What do you think people should do generally?

I know.

What?

Not to put some dirty things on the floor.

Right, don't litter, you mean.

Don't drop litter.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's good.

Good advice.

Don't drop litter, everyone.

Okay.

There you go.

Look after the environment.

Keep the streets clean and tidy.

Yeah.

And we will speak to you soon, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you want to say goodbye?

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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OK, so there you go.

That was my little daughter, five years old.

I think when we recorded that, yeah, it was probably March or February.

So she just turned five at that point.

She's five and a half now.

So there you go.

Yeah, listeners.

All right.

It's words of wisdom.

Don't put some dirty things on the floor.

OK, don't drop litter.

And yeah Monopoly, you heard I mentioned that, which is a nice coincidence, considering the last episode of this podcast was about Monopoly.

And we do like to play Monopoly a lot.

We normally play the junior version, which is a simplified version, but we also play the adult version with her these days.

When I say the adult version, I mean the grown-up version, if you know what I mean, right?

The full version with the green houses and the red hotels.

She is almost old enough now to be able to handle that.

In fact, we played it the other day.

And I said, yeah, the orange is the most powerful set in the game, the orange set.

And you stand a good chance of winning if you get the orange set.

And the green set is overrated.

It's actually problematic because the return on investment on the green properties is not that great.

And it's a difficult set to win with.

So after all that stuff and after I sounded like I really knew that I was some master of Monopoly.

We played Monopoly, the three of us, me, my wife and our daughter.

And I got the oranges.

And my wife got the greens.

And of course, she won.

So despite having the orange properties, I still managed to lose.

And despite having the green ones, my wife managed to win.

I mean it helped the fact that halfway through the game, my daughter, our daughter, basically decided that she wanted to team up with her mummy.

And she just gave her mum all of her properties and all of her money.

So that's probably the reason that she won, despite having the green properties.

But there you go.

So they teamed up against me.

So there you go.

And that's.

I just thought I'd play you that, and maybe in another six months or so I can do another recording with her and we'll we'll see how things go.

And then maybe one day when I'm when I'm ready to retire, I can hand over the the the, the podcast, to my daughter and she can continue the legacy in the future.

And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm joking about that.

Sorry, I slurped my tea there.

Very rude of me.

I'm joking about that.

Kind of.

I mean, partially joking.

But I mean, that's something that I feel older generations used to do.

They would.

You know you'd have a family business and the expectation would be that the children would take on that family business and continue the legacy.

But I don't know if I could expect my daughter to carry on doing Luke's English podcast.

It'd be Luke's daughter's English podcast, I suppose, wouldn't it?

Anyway, moving on to something else.

Telegram, Telegram, you know, Telegram, the app.

Some people sometimes ask me, Luke, are you on Telegram?

And the fact is, I'm not on Telegram.

So I'm not on Telegram.

But I understand that there are a couple of accounts on Telegram which are called Luke's English Podcast, that you can find Luke's English Podcast on Telegram.

But I just wanted you to know that that's not me, okay?

So if you find an account that looks like it's me, that it's publishing my episodes there and it's got the Luke's English Podcast logo and maybe the name is Luke's English Podcast, that's not me, okay.

That's all I wanted to say, just so that you know, just so you're aware that those accounts are not actually run by me.

And I suppose, you know, to an extent, we need to be a little careful of these things.

I saw on YouTube fairly recently there was a sort of a spate of scams going around on YouTube.

These things happen sometimes.

The way it works on YouTube is.

Often you'll find that someone a scammer.

A scammer is a person who is kind of doing something to trick people into giving you money or personal information.

They're trying to scam you.

You do get some scams on YouTube, which you should be aware of.

And the scam is usually that the account will use a picture of me or a picture of the content creator or the vlogger or whatever it is the person running the channel.

Let's just use mine as an example.

So they'll use a picture of me and the name will be something like Luke's English Podcast Official or something like that.

It'll be a different name to the actual name of the account, my actual YouTube channel.

But it'll be a picture of me, the same picture that I use for my channel's picture, you know, profile picture or whatever.

So it'll have that same picture.

The name will be something very similar.

And then it'll say something like this.

You know, send me your phone number for my exclusive Telegram account, or or this, something like this.

You've been chosen to win a special prize.

Just send me your phone number. and you can get it.

You know, things like that.

Like someone saying that you've won a prize or that I'm going to give you something special something like that in the comments section of one of my videos.

That's a scam.

It's not me, and you shouldn't respond to it.

In fact, you should probably block it or report it, okay?

So watch out for that, okay?

And if you find Luke's English Podcast on Telegram, just for your information, it's not actually me that's running that account.

All right.

Now, I did say at the beginning of this that I would talk about films and stuff.

I don't want to talk too long because actually, well, I don't want to take ages for this.

And also, I do want to get a bit of rest, actually, today.

I am officially, I am actually officially on parental leave now.

I am on paternity leave.

You know, paternity leave.

Maternity leave, that's when the mother... after giving birth or just before giving birth takes time off work she's legally allowed to have a break from work and she gets paid that's maternity leave the same thing for for the man is paternity leave and both maternity and paternity leave are both called parental leave so i am actually officially on parental leave right now um so i'm i'm you could say i'm doing this episode in my spare time but i feel like i always do them in my spare time don't i or do i i don't know i work-life balance what is that um so i'm not going to make this too long but i just thought i'd mention i could i could do full episodes i feel like i could do full episodes about all of the films that i'm going to mention in this list of films that i've seen fairly recently so i watched um I watched Guardians of the Galaxy 3, which is one of those Marvel movies.

I don't know if you're into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Many of you, you'll just hear me say Marvel.

You'll just be like, yeah, whatever.

Not interested.

But some of you might like them.

So I think Guardians 3, is it part of Phase 4 or Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

I don't know.

But...

For me the films that came out, most of the films, the Marvel films that have come out after Avengers Endgame.

Right.

Most of the films that have come out after that have not been up to the same standard.

I mean, Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame, I thought were both sort of.

For what they are, which is popcorn comic book movies.

I thought they were like really well done and actually sort of amazing achievements, to an extent that they managed to make films that were that engaging and that exciting and that gripping and felt original and felt good.

Yeah.

Despite having so many different characters and so many different character storylines and so many different storylines from different movies all converging in one or, in this case, two films, they managed to do that so well.

It was a really it felt like the high watermark of the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And since then, I have to say, the other films have not been up to the same high standard, except for a couple of ones.

I watched the Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

I liked that.

I enjoyed that.

The Spider-Man one.

What was it?

Spider-Man No Way Home.

That's good.

I enjoyed that one.

But I saw The Eternals, which I thought was just absolutely terrible.

The Eternals, I won't, I mean, again, I could do a whole episode on this, but I'm not going to.

The Eternals was just appalling, like just terrible script.

A storyline that, it was so bad that I'm amazed, really.

It was amazingly sort of stupid, the story.

Apologies if you loved The Eternals.

I mean, some things were quite good about it.

Like there was a, for example, one of the superheroes was deaf and used sign language.

And it's not often that you see sign language in any film, especially in a sort of high budget Hollywood blockbuster.

So the fact that some of the characters were communicating using sign language, I thought was actually really cool.

And it had some interesting sort of elements to the story as well.

The fact that some sign language was being used.

And I love sign language.

I think it's fascinating to see i love watching people communicating with sign language so that was a really interesting thing and a couple of other things but overall i thought that it was a it was a it was it was a it was rubbish really the eternals and i think it's it was a huge flop at the box office also i saw uh ant-man 3 quantum mania which was also not good i could go into reasons why but i mean it had its funny moments but overall it just felt like a complete mess And very sort of unoriginal.

It just looked like a bad copy of a Guardians of the Galaxy film.

And just... Anyway.

And some of the others as well.

What else...

But Guardians of the Galaxy 3, oh my God, I was not expecting it.

I didn't expect it to hit me in the way that it hit me.

I'm not going to spend ages talking about this, but basically So I'd seen the first two and enjoyed them, you know.

It was an interesting, funny group of characters who are sort of weirdos and it's like a...

What's the word I'm trying to use here to describe these characters?

A sort of mix-match or mishmash of oddball characters, but you strangely become emotionally attached to them.

So I lowered my expectations for Guardians of the Galaxy 3, thinking this is probably going to be bad.

I'll probably be disappointed, but come on, let's do it.

And...

Yeah, it really got me.

And I'm not ashamed to admit that the tears were running down my face.

I was moved.

And more than moved, it was really quite upsetting to watch some of the scenes.

I found it really, really upsetting, emotionally upsetting.

Because there's...

I won't go into the storyline too much, but one of the characters is called Rocket Raccoon.

And yeah, he's basically a raccoon who's been sort of, I guess, genetically modified or experimented on to the point where he's super intelligent.

He speaks like a person.

He walks on his hind legs like a person does.

And he's kind of genius level intelligence and...

But anyway we get the origin story of Rocket Raccoon and what happened to him and how he was basically taken as a little baby raccoon.

And there's a very bad character, a real bad guy, like a really really despicable bad guy character.

Not one of these bad guys who you kind of, to extent, you understand their motivation and there's a part of them which is maybe quite good in a sense, but they've just done it wrong and you know they ultimately have to be stopped.

The bad guy in Guardians 3 is just 100%.

Evil and despicable and hateful.

Like it's.

I haven't hated a character in a movie quite with as much emotional force as I did the character in this one, because of the things he does to these animals.

Even thinking about it now makes me feel um upset, and i know a lot of you are just thinking finding it funny right, that that uh, uh a movie called guardians of the galaxy 3 about like a raccoon and a tree and uh a woman who's who's green and you know uh one who's like half robot, and It's ridiculous.

But yeah, I found it really moving.

And I came home after going to this film with a friend of mine.

And I came home and my wife was like, so?

And I said, oh, my God, it was really good.

You know, really, really moving.

And she's like, did you cry?

I was like, yeah, I did.

I cried a few times.

And she just laughed.

She just laughed, laughed at me.

She found it uh funny, but um yeah wow, really good.

So if you like the guardians of the galaxy one and two or a bit and you like those characters then, um yeah, i recommend guardians of the galaxy three.

It was a real roller coaster ride of sometimes being really powerfully moved emotionally and then being entertained.

Like there were moments when it was really, really funny as well.

So that's my take on Guardians of the Galaxy 3.

In terms of horror movies, I did watch The Witch and I watched Hereditary recently on Netflix.

Was it Netflix or Apple TV or one of those streaming services?

The Witch and Hereditary.

Scary horror movies.

I love scary films.

Scary films.

I actually read...

Some articles recently about how scary films, horror films, can actually be very good for you, because they Oh, I won't go into it.

That's another episode for another time.

But The Witch is a disturbing one.

It's about a family of Puritan Christians from, I guess, the 17th century in the USA, like pilgrims, who belong to a very, very puritanical Christian community.

And they're cast out from the community and they go and live on their own next to a forest.

And it's very spooky.

And maybe there's a witch in the forest that kidnaps one of the children.

And then the family sort of seems to get caught up in the spiral of, is it paranoia?

Are they just losing their minds because they're out on their own?

Is it their religious beliefs, that are their belief in the supernatural, that's causing them to behave in this way, and they start turning on each other.

Or maybe there are dark, sinister, evil, satanic forces at work, black magic at work.

But it's it really had me scared.

And I watched that on my own when my wife was out having dinner.

And when she came back I was like in bed with a blanket held up.

You know it's like being holding onto the blanket.

She's like, what's the matter with you?

I saw a scary film, you know, so that I thought was really good. really good, effective, scary film.

And one of the good things about it is that it was kind of like terror rather than horror.

I think I'm getting this right because there's a difference between horror and terror.

Horror is when you see.

It's like the disgust that you see or the bad feelings you get when you see horrible things happening.

Like, for example, when you're actually seeing blood and violence occurring.

That's horror.

But then the threat of violence or a situation where you feel like there could be something scary, just that atmosphere of like oh, what's going to happen.

Oh, this is creepy.

That atmosphere, that is terror.

I think I'm getting that right.

Terror, horror, difference.

Terror is the feeling of dread and apprehension at the possibility of something frightening, while horror is the shock and repulsion of seeing the frightening thing.

So the witch.

For me, although there were moments of horror liberal moments of horror there were mostly it was terror just a feeling of dark scary, foreboding weirdness.

Very well directed.

The sort of film where it will show you a shot of just the forest, with the trees and the branches moving and maybe clouds overhead and a character walking through the forest.

And it just fills you with a feeling of dread.

Really effective.

I also saw another one Hereditary, which was similarly creepy and weird, with some really horrible moments.

I thought the first half of the film was a bit better than the second half.

In the second half, it got a bit silly.

But essentially Hereditary is about a family that gets caught up in a.

It's similar to The Witch, but Hereditary is set in the modern day.

And it's like a family who gets caught up in a demon-worshipping cult.

There's a bit of exorcist...

It's a bit similar to The Exorcist, but I didn't think it was as good as The Witch.

The Witch is the one that really stayed with me, especially the goat.

There's a goat in that film, which is very creepy.

The goat is called, they call him Black Peter, I think.

You have to watch the film to understand what it is about this goat, which is so, so memorable.

Um.

Going back to the superhero films, I watched Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse, which is an animated Spider-Man film, and I thought it was brilliant.

First of all the artwork, because it's animated, right.

So it's all artwork rather than live action.

The artwork is beautiful, really beautiful illustrations, and the animation is fantastic.

And the number of different styles as well is so cool.

Because you get all these different Spider-Men.

Spider-Mans?

Spider-Men.

Spider characters from different universes.

And each universe has got a different artistic style.

And it was so cool.

And colourful.

And almost overwhelming in its visual design.

But really good.

And a really good story.

Another moving story. about, in this case, the guy, the Spider-Man, I guess he's a 14-year-old.

And so it really does kind of capture something about the complex feelings that you can have as a 14-year-old, trying to find your place in the world, trying to find a sense of independence.

But you're not an adult yet.

You're still a child and trying to get independence from your parents and the parents, wondering how much trust they should, how much freedom they should give.

And in the midst of this, an incredible adventure through the multiverse of Spider-Man.

Really good.

The Mission Impossible films.

My wife and I have been binging the Mission Impossible films, although we started with Mission Impossible 3 and then 4, 5 and 6.

And this is because Mission Impossible 7, Dead Reckoning Part 1.

It's going to be in the cinemas soon.

And so we wanted to catch up on the other ones.

And those Mission Impossible films are good.

They're just good, solid action films.

Tom Cruise doing his Tom Cruise thing, running.

Usually, it's either Tom Cruise running through...

A different environment, like running across a rooftop, running through a crowded street in London or Paris, running through the desert with a big sandstorm behind him.

Just Tom Cruise running at top speed in different countries.

Or it's Tom Cruise nearly dying in different countries.

Not, you know, but somehow surviving.

Tom Cruise falling out of a plane.

Tom Cruise crashing a helicopter.

All sorts.

Tom Cruise nearly drowning.

You know if that's what you like.

If you want to watch Tom Cruise nearly killing himself on a big screen, then the Mission Impossible films are good.

Four, five and six.

I think they're all very high quality, I think.

But I think maybe they get a little bit better each time, like starting with Mission Impossible 4 3, 2 and 1.

1 is good.

Two is is a not great film.

Really, all things considered, it doesn't feel like a the other mission impossible films.

Mission impossible three is pretty good especially um, philip seymour hoffman, the actor who plays the bad guy is great.

He's just a brilliant actor and he's he always lifts a film, whatever he's in, whatever he was in, because unfortunately he's no longer with us, but whichever, whatever he did, philip seymour hoffman, he brought a uh uh, uh.

He brought a lot to the films he did, and it's also true for Mission Impossible 3.

But 4, 5 and 6, yeah, great films.

And it feels like they get a little bit better each time, with more crazy set pieces, more crazy stunts.

And so I'm looking forward to seeing Mission Impossible 7, if we ever get to the cinema ever again.

Because now that we're about to have a baby, maybe that's...

You know, we're not going to be able to get to the cinema again.

But, you know, who knows?

Babysitters, babysitters are a thing.

Top Gun Maverick as well.

Another recent Tom Cruise film, which just I have to say I was blown away by it.

I don't normally like films about war and stuff, despite what you might think, because I love Star Wars and I love Marvel movies where people are constantly punching each other.

I don't really go for the full on war movies.

Top Gun Maverick.

Although there is obviously a backdrop of war and fighting, it's not really a war movie.

It's about the characters and about these people having to do something impossible and the emotional context of it.

You know, it's the emotional context which is played out through the action.

But Topka Maverick, my God.

I mean, it's a film about fighter pilots, right?

Doing fighter pilot stuff, flying planes as fast as humanly possible and doing things that are almost impossible, like going through G-force that the human body shouldn't really be able to deal with, in order to achieve a seemingly impossible mission.

And a lot of it was filmed with real fighter jets.

You know, they don't use special effects.

They used real jets to do the real scenes.

And they had the actors in the planes.

They were flying them sometimes.

I mean, the action is just stunning.

Edge of your seat action.

And Tom Cruise again, just with that incredible star power that he's got, that level of charisma that he brings.

But I thought that Top Gun Maverick was definitely better than the original one.

Maybe the love story, the romantic side of it, they could have had a bit more romance in it.

But in terms of the action and the storytelling, it was just almost flawless.

It was like a fighter jet.

The film is like a fighter jet.

It's just incredibly efficient.

You know incredible levels of performance and efficiency and design and work has gone into this thing.

And it's so crafted, so well put together, a story so well told and timed and directed.

I thought it was incredible.

And what else?

Sorcerer, a film from the 1970s about some guys trying to drive trucks full of volatile explosives through the jungle.

And that's a masterpiece in tense movie making.

I did a whole episode with Anthony Rotuno about it.

You may have heard us mention it.

You can find it on his YouTube channel.

I'll put a link to it in the description or I'll embed it on the page for this episode.

Our conversation about Sorcerer.

I don't need to talk about it more really, except to say that it's a film from 1977 which was directed by the director of The Exorcist, William Friedkin.

Friedkin had had great success with The Exorcist and with another film called The French Connection.

These two films were huge hits.

And so he was given a lot of creative control to make this third film called Sorcerer.

And it was made under extreme conditions in the jungle.

It sounds completely insane the way they made it.

Like the making of the film is almost as mad as the things that happen in the film itself.

There's a scene where they have to drive these trucks over a very precarious rope bridge, going over a torrent of a river in the middle of a storm.

And the trucks are They're going to fall into the water at any moment.

It's incredibly exciting and tense.

Really, you bite your nails.

You're right on the edge of your chair.

And they actually did it as well.

When making the film, they actually did that.

And the trucks did fall off the bridge and fall into the water.

It's a miracle that no one died making the film.

But anyway, if you'd like to hear my conversation with Anthony all about Sorcerer, then just check the page for this episode on my website.

I'll put the video for that there.

It's going to be an episode of Anthony's podcast called Film Gold.

So, yes.

Also, I wanted to see the latest Fast and Furious film.

Okay.

Now, in terms of films, I think I like the fairly intelligent highbrow films.

But I also do like cheesy mainstream blockbuster movies as well, especially when they are genuinely good.

Now, the Fast and Furious films, I don't know if they're genuinely good or not.

They're exciting films.

There are some exciting moments of action in those films.

But I wanted to see Fast and Furious 10, the latest Fast and Furious film.

The Fast and the Furious.

I wanted to see that.

In fact, my friend and I went to see that.

We were going to see it.

We got to the cinema.

It was full.

There weren't any seats left.

So we went to see Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse instead, which was probably a better film.

But anyway, there has been a new Fast and Furious film in the cinemas.

And that got me thinking about The Fast and Furious.

And I wrote some stand-up comedy material about it.

And before I kind of took a break from stand-up, because you know my wife being pregnant and stuff, I didn't want to be out in the evenings, because you know I wanted to be at home to help, you know, just put our daughter to bed and stuff, because I'm such a great husband.

But before that, I had been doing some stand up quite regularly every week.

And so I, you know, because I saw Fast and Furious posters.

You know the Fast and Furious.

It's a series of films about some guys who basically drive cars really fast in order to solve problems.

Like whatever the problem is, the solution is get in the car and drive really fast.

Lots of car chases.

It's got Vin Diesel in it.

In the films, there's been 10 films.

They've had The Rock in there.

They've had, what's his name?

Jason Statham.

And other big movie stars have been in this series.

So, Fast and Furious.

I think it's an international franchise.

I'm sure it's famous around the world.

So seeing the posters everywhere, seeing the trailers in the cinema and on the internet and stuff, it got me thinking about the Fast and Furious.

And I wrote some stand-up material.

And I did it on stage a few times.

And I recorded myself one of the shows I did recently.

I recorded the audio.

Now, I'm going to play you a clip of it.

I can't play the whole thing because the sound quality is not good enough.

Because I had my phone recording me on a table in front of me and it didn't pick up the sound very well.

But then at some point during the show, I picked up my phone in order to read from it.

And I'll play you that part.

I'm talking about the names of the different Fast and Furious films, starting with the first one, and then the second third fourth fifth, all the way up to the 10th one.

So I'm talking about the names of the films.

But the other bit I can't play you that because the sound quality is not good enough.

But I'll basically say the material that I wrote.

It won't be as funny because it's just not the same when you're not in front of an audience.

But anyway, here's the stuff I wrote.

So there's a new Fast and Furious movie out.

It's Fast and Furious 10.

How long has this franchise been going on now?

Over 20 years.

20 years.

That's a long time.

And they're still furious.

20 years later, we're still furious.

Usually anger dissipates over time, doesn't it?

You know, after a while, eventually you're just like, you know, I'm too tired to be angry.

Never mind.

Not these guys, though.

They're still holding on to their anger.

They're still fast and furious.

Always angry.

Always in a rush.

Because they're fast and furious.

Just in a rush.

I'm angry here.

I want to be angry over there now.

Tell you one place they're not in a rush to get to.

Therapy.

Yeah, because if they all went to therapy, that would be the end of the franchise, wouldn't it?

They wouldn't be furious anymore.

They'd have to rename the franchise, the formerly Fast and Furious or the taking our time and everything's okay, which I don't think would be such a successful film franchise.

Can they even remember why they're so furious after so many years?

Like, what were we furious about anyway?

I can't remember.

I think it was something to do with cars, wasn't it?

And family.

Vin Diesel, he's the star of the films.

Vin Diesel, you've seen him in the posters.

He doesn't look that furious, to be fair.

He's mainly kind of stoic, you know, he's just quite calm.

Quiet and calm, really.

The fast and fine.

Right.

Yeah, Vin Diesel.

He pumped all the fury into his arms, didn't he?

He just pushed all his fury into his arms.

That's where all the fury went with Vin Diesel.

Just pow, into the arms.

I think one day Vin Diesel will probably be too old for the fast and furious.

You know, he's basically able to do it now.

He's able to shuffle himself around the film set.

But one day he will be just too old, you know, when he's an old age pensioner, when he's in his 60s or 70s. or into his 80s i don't think he'll be able to keep doing it they'll have to you know if they do they would have to rename the film it wouldn't be the fast and furious it would be the slow and incontinent i think probably the slow and incontinent there's a movie franchise nobody is looking for but which we will all have starring roles in eventually we've all got a part in that particular movie one day haven't we the slow and immobile um Anyway, so there you go.

That was some of my stand-up material, which I'm telling you, you just believe me, folks.

When I do that on stage in front of an audience of nine people, oh my God, absolutely electric.

So let me play the recording though, of the rest of my set, where I talk about the names of the films.

And this was recorded in front of, I think, about 15 people.

So a small audience of people, which is often the way it goes with doing stand up comedy shows in English in Paris.

It's kind of potluck.

Some shows you get an audience.

Some shows, just no one seems to turn up because no one understands anything or no one knows about the show.

It depends.

Some shows, you always get a fairly good audience.

Other shows, just no one seems to know about it.

And so you just get a random audience of people.

Yeah, I think actually at this show, I think there was a Lepster in the audience.

So, hello to you, if you were there.

Oh, no, I've got to remember her name now.

This is embarrassing, and I'm not allowed to edit.

Oh, dear.

Oh, God, this is embarrassing.

I can't remember her name.

But she follows me on Twitter.

What am I going to do now?

Go through my entire Twitter feed in order to find the name of that lovely Lepster who came to the show.

I'm terribly sorry.

Look, I'm going all red in my face because I can't remember your name.

But...

Yeah.

So sorry.

But anyway, it was great to have you in the audience of that show.

Thank you for coming.

Let me now play you that bit of material about the names of the Fast and Furious films.

Here we go.

So I was looking at the titles of the Fast and Furious films.

OK, this is I'm going to finish with this.

All right.

I'm not going to keep talking about the Fast and Furious for nine hours.

OK.

But I won't.

So I'll just briefly go through the titles of the 10 films.

The first one is obviously The Fast and the Furious, episode one, 2001.

The second film was called Too Fast, Too Furious.

This title was written by their parents.

Slow down.

Calm down.

Too fast.

Too furious.

Stop.

Put that down.

Get out of the car.

No, you can't drive.

You're five years old.

Second one.

The third one is the Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift.

Suddenly they ended up in Tokyo.

What happened?

We drove too fast.

We lost control.

We flew over the Pacific Ocean.

We ended up in Tokyo.

We drifted all the way across.

The fourth one is called Fast and Furious. franchise had been established.

Just fast and furious.

No, yeah, just ditch the unnecessary words.

Keep it simple.

Fast and furious.

Just carry on.

We're cruising here.

No need for smaller words to get in the way.

The fifth one, Fast Five.

Fast Five, it was called.

Because they just forgot to be furious.

It's just Fast Five.

It sounds like a kid's book, doesn't it?

The Fast Five.

Yay, solving mysteries, the Fast Five did it again.

Yeah, they forgot to be furious, Fast Five.

Number six is called Fast and Furious Six.

They remember.

They remember to be furious.

They're like, well, we're furious.

Okay.

Fast and furious.

Go places quickly and angrily.

The seventh one, 2015, is called Furious 7.

Which, as far as I can tell, is just some people standing there, absolutely livid.

I don't know what happened, they lost their driving license.

Just fucking furious.

You two, yes, and me, and me, and me, and me, and me, that's seven.

And then number eight is the fate of the furious.

The fate of the furious, high blood pressure.

That is the face.

If you maintain that level of fury for those many years, then you know just reduce, you know cut out the butter and salt.

It's basically my advice in that case.

Number nine is called F9, which is not as fast as F1.

Okay.

And number 10, the one we've got in the cinemas now is called Fast X Fury, and collaborated to make one final film.

That's all my time, ladies and gents.

Okay, I hope you enjoyed that.

Right, that's it.

I think it's time for me to stop doing this now.

I don't mean the podcast, like, in general.

I just mean this particular episode.

I'm going to stop doing this now and then just rest and relax and maybe have a little nap in order to absorb some of that sleep which I can then use later.

Not that that's how the human body works, but anyway.

Thank you very much for listening to Luke's English Podcast.

I'm Luke, obviously.

I did...

Why did I say that?

I don't know.

After over an hour and a half of listening to this, and maybe many other hours of other episodes, you probably have worked out my name by now.

But can you spell it, though?

That's the point.

L-U-K-E.

Anyway, thanks for listening to the podcast.

Yeah, that's it.

Lovely to talk to you.

I hope it's been lovely to sit or stand or lie down and listen to me.

And I'll speak to you again on the podcast soon.

And maybe the next episode will be recorded.

Maybe the next episode will be a chance for me, and possibly my wife too, and maybe even our daughter, to talk about the arrival of our second child.

And oh, there's that one question which i'm sure someone out there has been wondering, if you're still listening but how does your daughter feel about this, about having a brother arriving?

She's fine with it.

As far as i can tell, she's she.

She says that she is looking forward to it and she, she likes to kind of um, talk to the baby.

She talks to the baby in my wife's uh, uh belly, you know she does talk to her, talk to the baby and uh, i think she's excited about it.

Sometimes she says that she's nervous, which i think is a healthy thing that she, she is able to talk about her feelings quite openly.

She says i'm a bit nervous and we say why are you nervous?

And she says i'm gonna, i'm gonna be jealous.

So she thinks she might be jealous of a baby.

And then we say to her, yeah, but it's all right.

You know, the baby's going to love you.

The baby's going to love having an older sister like you.

And you can see that she's excited about the prospect.

I think she's looking forward to it too.

Hopefully she's going to be a good older sister.

But generally, we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for watching.

I'll speak to you on the podcast soon.

It'll be two months later. for me, but probably about one week for you.

Such is the magic of podcasting.

All right then.

Cheers, everybody.

Speak to you next time.

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

Bye.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Oh, really?

You don't know what that is?

And I don't know what this is.

This is Luke's English Podcast.

Can't touch this.

This is a masterpiece of the English language.

Alrighty then.

Just think of the accolades it's received over the years.

Wait a minute.

Who are you?

I'm Luke Skywalker.

I'm here to rescue you.

And I am a Jedi, like my father before me.

Really?

Yes.

I want to get into it, man.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Luke's English podcast.

And this is Britain at its best.

Oh, you lucky people.

If you enjoyed this episode of Luke's English Podcast, consider signing up for Luke's English Podcast Premium.

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[Rambling Reflections: Family Life, Comedy, and the Creative Process]-[842. A Pre-Baby Summertime Ramble ☀️👶]

📋 Summary

The Philosophy of Spontaneous Podcasting

Life on the Brink: Preparing for a New Family Member

A Glimpse into Bilingual Childhood

Cultural Critiques: From Marvel to Stand-Up Comedy

Podcast Admin and Community Integrity

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Rambling Reflections: Family Life, Comedy, and the Creative Process]-[842. A Pre-Baby Summertime Ramble ☀️👶]

📋 Summary

The Philosophy of Spontaneous Podcasting

Life on the Brink: Preparing for a New Family Member

A Glimpse into Bilingual Childhood

Cultural Critiques: From Marvel to Stand-Up Comedy

Podcast Admin and Community Integrity

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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