Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 931, Solving a Mystery.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 931.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue between Jane and Hercule about solving a mystery when someone has committed a crime, perhaps even murder.
Let's get started.
I'm not really into mysteries.
I prefer action movies.
Listen, the movie gives you plenty of clues and the detective follows hunch after hunch, lead after lead.
But the movie is full of red herrings.
Everybody seems to have an alibi, and the witnesses aren't reliable.
I don't know.
It seems kind of confusing to me.
I don't really want to use my brain when I'm watching a movie.
But that's the fun part of it.
The true identity of the victim is a mystery.
The suspects all have skeletons in their closets, and the detective isn't what he seems.
Yeah well, And just when you think you're getting to the bottom of it, the rug gets pulled out from under you.
It keeps you guessing until the very end.
Hey, where are you going?
I'm going to find an action movie where all my brain has to do is handle the sensory overload.
Jane begins our dialogue by saying to Hercule, you have to watch this movie.
It's so good.
Jane is watching a movie she really likes and wants Hercule to watch it with her.
Hercule says, I'm really not into mysteries.
When we say we're into something or we're not into something, that means we're interested in it or we're not interested in it.
Hercule says he's not interested in mysteries.
A mystery is usually a story about some crime.
Typically, someone is murdered, someone is killed.
That's a mystery.
Jane says, but this is a really good whodunit.
A whodunit W-H-O-D-U-N-I-T.
One word is a story.
It could be a movie or a television show or a novel about a murder that keeps people guessing.
The story has a lot of different things going on, a lot of different people who could have done it, who could have committed the murder.
Whodunit, although it's used as a single word as a noun, obviously comes from the three words whodun and it.
You're trying to figure out in this story who is the murderer.
Hercule says, I prefer action movies.
Jane says, listen, meaning pay attention to me.
The movie gives you plenty of clues.
And the detective follows hunch after hunch, lead after lead.
A clue, C-L-U-E, is some piece of information that gives you an idea about what happened.
In this case, it gives you an idea about who the murderer is, who is the person who committed the crime.
Jane says this movie gives you plenty of clues, meaning the movie indicates to you different pieces of information that, if you put them all together, will help you figure out who the murderer is.
Most mystery stories have someone in the story who solves the crime, that is, who figures out who committed the crime, in this case, the murderer.
That person is called the detective.
The detective is the person it could be a police officer or anyone who figures out who committed the crime.
The detective is usually the hero of the story.
For example, Agatha Christie, one of the great mystery writers of the 20th century, had two very famous detectives about which she wrote several stories Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple Miss Marple, as she was called in the books.
Interestingly enough, our dialogue is between a Jane and a Hercule, but no relation to the Agatha Christie characters.
Jane says the detective in this movie follows hunch after hunch, lead after lead.
A hunch, H-U-N-C-H, is a guess.
It's a guess about, in this case, who committed the crime.
A lead, L-E-A-D, is the same as a clue.
It's information that will help you figure out who committed the murder.
The detective then follows hunch after hunch meaning the detective makes some guesses in order to try to figure out who committed the crime.
Jane says the movie is full of...
Red herrings.
A red herring.
H-E-R-R-I-N-G is a distraction, something that isn't important but that distracts you from focusing on what is important.
A red herring is any piece of information or any event in the novel that looks important but it turns out it really isn't important.
Jane says everybody seems to have an alibi and the witnesses aren't reliable.
An alibi, A-L-I-B-I says means an excuse for where you were or an explanation for where you were during the time of the murder.
If the murder took place at 10 a.m. and you were at the grocery store at 10 a.m., that's your alibi.
That's the explanation of where you were when the crime took place.
Witnesses are people who see what happens or hear what happens.
In this case, in this movie, everybody has an alibi and the witnesses aren't reliable, meaning you can't believe what they say.
Hercule, however, still doesn't really want to watch the movie.
He says, I don't know.
It seems kind of confusing to me.
I don't really want to use my brain when I'm watching a movie.
Hercule is saying he doesn't want to think when he's watching a movie.
He just wants to be entertained.
That's why he likes action movies, movies with lots of car chases and violence.
Jane says, but that's the fun part of it.
That's why it's interesting to watch a mystery movie.
The true identity of the victim is a mystery.
The victim, V-I-C-T-I-M, is the person against whom the crime was committed.
In this case, the person who was perhaps murdered.
The identity is the name of the person, who the person really is.
In this story, in this movie, the true identity of the victim is also a mystery.
In other words, we don't actually know the name of the person who was killed.
In addition, Jane says the suspects all have skeletons in their closets and the detective isn't what he seems.
So this is a very complicated mystery indeed.
In addition to not knowing who was actually murdered or the name of the person who was actually murdered, the suspects all have skeletons in their closet.
A suspect.
S-U-S-P-E-C-T is a person who might have committed the crime, who the detective thinks might be guilty, who might be the one who did it.
Jane says the suspects all have skeletons in their closet.
The expression to have skeletons S-K-E-L-E-T-O-N-S in your closet means to have secrets about yourself, secrets about your past.
That could be very embarrassing.
Skeletons in your closet are things that you don't want anyone to know about.
Things that you have done wrong in your past.
The word skeleton refers to the bones in the human body.
A skeleton is what is left after someone dies.
The body eventually decomposes.
It eventually is changed so that all there is left are the bones.
The idea here is that if you kill someone and you hide them in your closet, someone may go into your closet and eventually discover their bones.
Once again, it's just an expression used to say that you have some bad things that you have done in your past.
Jane says, the detective also isn't what he seems, meaning the detective may himself have some secrets.
Hercule says, yeah, well, and Jane continues trying to get Hercule to watch this movie.
She says and just when you think you're getting to the bottom of it, just when you think you're understanding what happened, The expression The rug gets pulled out from under you means that there's a sudden change in the story or something happens that is completely unexpected, that you didn't realize was going to happen.
Jane says, When we say something keeps you guessing, we mean you don't know.
You don't know the answer.
In this case, you don't know the answer until the end of the movie.
Jane then says Hercule says I'm going to find an action movie where all my brain has to do is handle the sensory overload.
Sensory S-E-N-S-O-R-Y refers to your senses what you can see, what you can hear, what you can taste, what you can smell and what you can touch.
Overload, O-V-E-R-L-O-A-D, is when you have too much of something.
So sensory overload is when you have too much noise or too much sound, too much of whatever it is that it's causing you some confusion, because you just are getting too much information, if you will.
That's what happens in an action movie sometimes.
There's so much going on that it's sensory overload.
Hercule is saying here he doesn't want to think.
He doesn't want his brain to have to think as it would if he were to watch the mystery movie that Jane is watching.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
You have to watch this movie.
It's so good.
I'm not really into mysteries.
But this is a really good whodunit.
I prefer action movies.
Listen, the movie gives you plenty of clues and the detective follows hunch after hunch, lead after lead.
But the movie is full of red herrings.
Everybody seems to have an alibi, and the witnesses aren't reliable.
I don't know.
It seems kind of confusing to me.
I don't really want to use my brain when I'm watching a movie.
But that's the fun part of it.
The true identity of the victim is a mystery.
The suspects all have skeletons in their closets, and the detective isn't what he seems.
Yeah well, And just when you think you're getting to the bottom of it, the rug gets pulled out from under you.
It keeps you guessing until the very end.
Hey, where are you going?
I'm going to find an action movie where all my brain has to do is handle the sensory overload.
It's no mystery who wrote this episode.
It's our very own English detective, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2013 by the Center for Educational Development.
