Welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from OK to
Good and from Good to Great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today's episode is the 200th
episode of Easy Stories in English, so I'm going to talk about that and give a general life update.
The transcript for this episode is available to members of Easy Stories in English Premium,
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find the transcript for this episode. So, happy new year. Well, I guess we've already had one
episode this year or two. I don't remember, but this is the first episode I'm actually recording
in the new year and I'm cutting it pretty close. When we say we're cutting something close,
it means you're doing something just before the deadline. So, I'm recording this episode the day
before it comes out. So, I'm really cutting it close. Normally, I don't cut it close with my
recording. Normally, I record in advance. But, I've been catatonic for the last week or so. I've
talked about this a bit in the past. Catatonia is a health problem I have sometimes where I get really
tired and can't move or talk easily. So, obviously, it's not great for recording podcast episodes.
I also have a bit of a cold. You probably can't hear it, but if I sound a bit scratchy or
hoarse today, hoarse is when you talk like this. If my voice sounds not 100% today, that's why.
So, this is officially the 200th episode of Easy Stories in English. And I have been doing the
podcast for just over five years. Whoa! So, I decided to combine both these milestones into one
episode. A milestone is an important moment or achievement. In the past, people used to put
stones in the ground every mile. So, a mile is a measurement we use for distance, a lot of countries.
Most countries now use kilometers, but in the UK, we still use miles. And in the past, people would
put milestones every mile to mark the distance. So, we use the word milestone to talk about an
important moment or achievement in your life. I turned 30 last year. That's a milestone. And
hitting five years and 200 episodes of Easy Stories in English is absolutely a wonderful milestone,
which I am going to celebrate, unlike turning 30. Just joking. So, Easy Stories in English
started on the 1st of January 2019 with the episode Doggho and Kitty Do Their Laundry.
And it sounded like this. Doggho and Kitty Do Their Laundry.
Once there was a dog and a cat. The dog was called Doggho. He had long, thick hair.
The cat was called Kitty. She had soft, thin hair. Doggho and Kitty lived together in a small house.
Few! I've changed a lot, my voice, my manner of presentation, everything has changed.
My main takeaway from listening to that, my main conclusion, is I sounded really nasal.
Where you speak daisily, you don't let air out through your nose. This is a nasal voice.
And I spoke much more nazily than than I do now. Of course, as I say this, I do have a cold,
so I probably sound a bit more nasal than normal, but still, I think my performance style,
my diction, the way I say the words, has all improved massively. And hopefully,
the stories have improved as well, although I know that the Doggho and Kitty stories are very
popular with you all, so I think I started off on quite a good note. I started off in a good place.
So, I wasn't really sure what to do to celebrate the 200th episode. I thought about different things,
but I wasn't really organised to prepare any big celebrations, so we're going to celebrate
everyone's favourite way, which is by talking about statistics. Woo! So, since I started the podcast,
there have been 68 beginner episodes, 69 pre intermediate episodes, 46 intermediate episodes,
and 15 advanced episodes. Now, if you are very good at maths, you will notice that those
numbers don't add up to 200. And I did the count several times, and I'm not sure where I went wrong.
The thing is, there are some episodes of the podcast I've released that don't officially count
towards the number 200, because it was an announcement or an episode from a different podcast
that I was showing to you all. And of course, there were bonus episodes I used to do on the Patreon,
and I didn't count those. But somehow still, those numbers don't add up to 200, so look,
the important thing is, it's a big number. Okay? We don't need to be precise. This isn't easy
mathematics in English, okay? So, in that slightly uncertain number of episodes, I have written almost
400,000 words of stories, which is about five novels. So, you know what? When I looked at that
calculation, I was really happy, because that essentially means I've written and performed five
novels worth of stories in five years, which is really good. I mean, one novel a year is a good
rate of writing for people who write novels, for novelists. So, that made me feel really good
about myself. I've recorded almost 90 hours, 90 hours of podcast. Don't listen to it all at once.
And the average episode length is around 25 minutes. But that's enough about me. Now, here's a
fun statistic about all of you. My five biggest countries in terms of listeners are, in order from
biggest to smallest, Turkey, Germany, China, Poland and Vietnam. So, Merhaba, Hallu, Datachau,
Chesh, and Tau. Now, those five countries still only make up 39% of my audience. You're all
very international. So, I'm quite privileged. I feel very lucky to have such a diverse audience.
But given that Turkey is my biggest country, I keep thinking I should do some kind of easy
stories in English, goes to Istanbul, some kind of Turkey trip. I don't know. I could also visit
Germany, Italy, Poland. What do you think? I've talked about this idea before and I almost don't
want to mention it here because I feel like then there's an expectation that I'm actually going
to organize it. The thing is, organizing a big event in a different country where I potentially
don't speak the language is stressful and scary. So, if any of you have ideas on how to do one of
these events, maybe you can provide support in setting it up. If any of you, I don't know,
happen to own a convention center or something like that in Istanbul, please let me know.
Okay, in the five years of doing the podcast, I've also made YouTube videos, I've done live streams,
and I published a collection of short stories from the podcast. Actually, I published four collections.
They're just all the same stories, but in different levels. I'm very proud of my books. And
apparently, all of you are as well because the books have sold very consistently since I released
them in 2021. So, thank you so much. And if you have bought one of the easy stories in English books
as a physical book, please do email me a picture of you holding it because it makes me so happy.
Someone sent me a picture of the book with their baby because they read the stories to their
baby and that made me very happy. You can email me at aerialat easystoriesinenglish.com.
So, thank you all for an amazing five years and here's to the next five.
Five more years. Five more years. Okay, so what's been going on in my life? Well, mostly a lot of
stress, but also some good things. So, I moved to London in December 2023. And if you've been following
me for a long time, I think I've talked about this. I have wanted to move to London for a long time.
One, I think it's a beautiful city with loads of interesting culture. Two, I have a lot of friends
here. And three, it's really just a great place for me to network artistically.
Networking is when you meet people who work in your field and you make connections and maybe work
with other people. And I felt very limited living in Devon in the countryside. There weren't any
local people I could really work with in terms of language teaching and performance in the way I
wanted to do it. Now, of course, I do a podcast so I can reach out and network with people online.
But I'm trying to do more stuff in person because I enjoy it a lot. And I think also because I do
all this stuff, basically in my bedroom by myself, it's really easy to get stuck in patterns and not
think very creatively and not be very original. So I'm always looking for ways to expand my creative
practice to explore new ideas, to work with people. And I have to say, I was a bit worried before I
moved that maybe this networking wouldn't work out. But I've already done my first performance. Yay!
A few weeks ago, I performed Queer Tales for Queer Folks. Queer means like LGBT+. So this was an
improvisational storytelling night in, wait for it, a sauna. What? So a sauna is a traditional finish
bath, I guess. They're like these wooden huts that they heat really, really hot. And you sit in
the sauna until you get really hot and you sweat a lot. And then if you're very brave, you can go
out of the sauna and dive into a cold pool of water. This is called a plunge pool because you plunge
into the cold water. And there is a lovely little community sauna here in London called Swahit
sauna, where I did queer storytelling. That's right, I stood in the sauna and told stories and tried
not to melt. So I know statistically the majority of you listening are not in London, you don't
live in London and it's probably quite expensive to visit London. But I will be doing Queer Tales
for Queer Folks at Swahit sauna every month. So if you are in London or you're thinking of making
a trip to London, follow me on Instagram at Ariel Goodbody to find out when the next one is.
And in fact, unless anything changes, the next Swahit sauna queer storytelling performance,
gig fun party time, woo thing, will be on the 23rd of February. So if you are going to come and
you're a podcast listener, please do message me because it would be so cool to have you there.
Now back to the stressful things. I also went through two breakups recently. I basically went
through two breakups while also moving to London, which I don't recommend because it was a lot
of stress. 2023 was a difficult year. It was one long term relationship that ended and one short
term relationship that ended. So I'm adjusting, I'm getting used to being single again. And I have to
say, being single after a few years of living with your partner feels weird, especially because
there was COVID and then I lived with my partner. And now I'm suddenly single. It's a very different
feeling. It's taking me a while to get used to it. But at the same time, it's quite nice to have
that kind of mental space to myself. It's really nice to have my bedroom that I can just retreat to
and it's just my space and I can decorate it exactly how I want. I've been reading a lot,
going for walks around London. I've been studying Mandarin a lot, which is really great because I
finally have kind of reached lower intermediate level in Mandarin. And I feel like I was kind of at
beginner level Chinese for like 12 years. So I'm glad I finally improved or rather, I'm glad I
finally put in the work to improve. And I have even been on a few dates. That's right. I'm on
the market as they say. If you don't know that expression, we say, I'm on the market to mean I'm
single and I'm open to dating people. I'm open to relationships. So there I was about to say,
if you're interested, but no, professional private, let's keep them separate. Yeah, I'm sure you're
all very lovely, but this is not a dating podcast. Well, maybe it should be, maybe we should do,
you know, those, I mean, I'm kind of too young to have actually experienced this, but you know,
in the past, they used to do those dating services where you would record a video. And then they
would send the video on like VHS tapes, like video tapes to people. So people would pay, they would
wait to receive these video tapes of introduction videos. And then they would decide who they wanted
to go on a date with based on their videos. Maybe I should do the podcast version of that, like podcast
dating. I'm not going to do this, by the way, this is don't, don't get any ideas, okay.
Well, I'm really, I'm really in a good mood today. I didn't sleep very long. I went to bed really
late. And sometimes I find if I sleep quite badly or I don't sleep a long time, I just get
really silly the next day. So you're welcome. Another exciting thing I'm doing is I'm organizing
a teaching conference with a few of my friends. So this is specifically a conference for people
who teach using comprehensible input. And if you're like, there we go, what's comprehensible input?
Go back and listen to the episode how to learn a language where I explain all of the theory.
There are lots of lovely teaching conferences about comprehensible input language teaching in America.
There are a few in Europe. I went to one in France earlier this year. But so far, there are none
in the UK. So me and my friends decided to fix that. So our conference is called C-I-Sleepover.
C-I meaning comprehensible input. Sleepover is when you stare a friend's house and sleep there
because it's a very relaxed informal event. And we're going to all be staying at my friends' family
home more or less. So that's why we're calling it C-I-Sleepover. It will take place from the 11th
to the 14th of April. And it's going to be an unconference. So an unconference is like a conference.
But it doesn't have a timetable. It doesn't have a schedule when you show up. And on the first day,
all of the participants work together to design the schedule. So it's a very like anarchist,
unorganised, creative, free way of making a conference. So again, I know most of you are learning
languages rather than teaching languages. But I do know I have some teachers out there. If you're
a teacher, go, woo, woo, obviously I can't hear you going, woo, woo, but please, if you are a teacher
and you are listening to this, please go, woo, woo, to show your love. Sorry. I don't know what's
happening today. Anyway, if you are a teacher and you want to come to the conference or you just
want to find out more information, go to comprehensively.uk. That's comprehensively.uk.
So it's been five years and 200 episodes. What are my goals moving forward for easy stories in
English? First of all, I'm not a huge goals person. I'm not one of those people who comes up with
goals every year and works really hard and checks in on their goals every few months. I just don't
think it works for me, but my main goal has been this year to be better at answering emails.
And I will say so far as I'm recording this, I've done really well. I've checked emails
more than half of the days in January, which for me is very good. So if you've written emails to
me in the past and I haven't replied or I replied like six months later, hopefully I should be better
now. So please don't be scared. Please do send me emails if you want to talk to me. I can't promise
to reply quickly, but I do want to reply. Although it's annoying because I was doing really well and
then I had catatonia this past week. I was ill. So because of that, I couldn't check my emails. So
now I have lots to get through. But you know what? It's gonna work. It's gonna be okay. Another goal
I have is to try and do one of these conversational episodes once a month. So that means there would be
three episodes a month instead of two episodes a month, two story episodes and one conversational
episode. Now to be honest, this episode almost didn't happen. I was doing really badly with the
catatonia and I was thinking, am I actually going to be able to record this episode? So this goal
is already looking quite difficult. But you know what? If I even do like a few extra episodes this
year or I do like six in the year instead of 12, I will still consider that a huge achievement.
I also hope these episodes are useful for all of you. I wanted to do something different for
intermediate and advanced learners. I think for intermediate and advanced level, sometimes conversation
is more useful and maybe more interesting than stories. And at the same time, I wanted to do
something for my premium listeners, but I didn't want to leave out everyone else, which is why I decided
to do conversational episodes for everyone. But the transcripts are just for premium learners. Anyway,
do let me know what you think. Send me an email at aerial at easystoriesinenglish.com. My third
sort of goal for this year is to focus mainly on beginner level episodes. As you heard in the
statistics earlier, there's like a mostly even splits between beginner and pre intermediate
episodes. But the beginner episodes are usually the most popular ones. So I'm trying to focus
on them this year. I think I've also got better at writing beginner episodes. I'll be honest,
in the past, some of my beginner episodes were quite difficult. I think I put too much language
in them. So I think I've got better at really simplifying them to make them very accessible.
But I hope fully still interesting to people who are at a higher level. I do want to reiterate
here, I want to states clearly here that even if you are intermediate or advanced level,
it's still really useful to read and listen to beginner level things because you understand them
really well. So you're able to focus more on the language and really noticing and deepening
some of the aspects of grammar and vocabulary. So it is really useful to do that. Not that I need
to tell you all that because based on the statistics, you love the beginner episodes. So yay.
I'm also working on another book. I did a survey on the podcast a few years ago and the one thing
most of you said you wanted more of was more books. And for some reason, I didn't focus on that.
I mean to be fair, I did have to have a huge health break from the podcast, but I'm kind of
annoyed at myself that I didn't start writing a new book earlier. I've just finished recently
the first draft of the book. So when you write a book or an essay, you do several drafts. A draft
is like a version. And the first draft is usually very rough. You're just getting the ideas out.
And then usually it's like maybe draft five to 20 where it starts being really good and polished.
Although I say that I honestly, I don't do loads of drafts. I think maybe this is going to be three
to five drafts this book. And then it's just making small changes. Now last time, I published a
collection of stories, but this time, this is just one story. It's a longer story. And it's a bit
different from what I've done before. This is aimed at like a one complete beginner level.
It's basically a book designed for less confident readers. So it starts off with really limited
vocabulary and grammar. It starts off very simple and then very gradually increases in difficulty.
I think in the first draft, there's only like 700 unique words in the whole story. And then those
700 words just get repeated in different contexts. That maybe sounds boring, but the whole reason
I'm doing this is I'm trying to make it really easy for beginners, really comfortable, but also fun
and interesting. I think even if you listen to the podcast a lot, but maybe you're just not very
confident with reading or you feel like you're slow with reading, this will be a really useful
book for you. I also know that some of you are trying to teach English to your children,
or maybe you just have friends and family who have zero level of English. They really are
complete beginners. And this would be a great present for them. So you know what? I'm just going
to tell you the working title of the book to keep you interested. When we have a working title for
something, it means this is probably going to be the title of the final product, but it may change.
The working title is the ghost, the bird and the bear. That probably sounds very strange. And to be
honest, it's quite a strange story, but I'm happy with it. I, you know, it's different from anything
I've done before, but I think it should be good. And I think you'll like it as well.
Okay, I now want to talk about something that is not happy, it's not fun, but I feel like I have
to talk about it. And that's the war against Palestine. I always find it weird talking about
political topics on the podcast, because this isn't a political podcast, right? Well, it's easy
to say that, but I truly believe that everything is political. We can't avoid politics in our life.
And what's happening in Palestine is extremely political and extremely important to talk about.
Also, I am a Christian. I've become much more connected with God in the last few years. And I
truly believe that it's my duty as a Christian. It's the work I have to do to fight for justice.
Jesus didn't die so that Palestinian children could be murdered. So it's also interesting because
I've never seen this much attention on Palestine and Israel. I was very ignorant about it in the
past, but about 10 years ago, I started following the situation quite a bit on social media. I learned
a lot. I saw a lot of the horrible things that were going on. In some ways, it's been amazing
to see that people care so much. And there are so many marches going on to see public anger at
something that for so many years was silent or avoided and was a really uncomfortable topic
for so many people. Of course, it's still an uncomfortable topic for many people. It's also weird
because when I talked about the Black Lives Matter movement on here a few years ago,
I gave an explanation of the situation because there was a good chance that maybe outside of America,
some of you had just not really heard of it, but with this situation, you've heard of it, right?
Like we know what's happening. And of course, as I'm recording this, there's just been the case
that the South African government has brought to the international court of justice. And the
conclusion of that case has been very unsatisfying. So I'm going to state my position. I'm going to
say my opinion very clearly. The State of Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian
people. Genocide, G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E, is when people try to systematically kill or destroy another
group, whether it be a racial group or an ethnic group or some other marginalized group.
In the past, I could have argued about this topic a lot, but it's clear from the court case
with South Africa and the international court of justice that it's genocide, right? Like it's been
shown in an international court. But then at the same time, the ruling from the international
court of justice, what they said was kind of unclear. They said, oh, well, they're acting like it's
genocide, which they shouldn't do. They should stop doing it. But of course, if you follow any of
what's happening on social media, you know that the Israeli government has bombed every single
hospital in Palestine. They have destroyed every single hospital in Palestine. They have dug up graves.
They have destroyed people's houses. They have destroyed historical sites. So it's not a case of,
oh, they need to stop or we'll get angry. It's a case of if you don't stop them now, it's already
too late. It already was too late several months ago. Often in the past, when people have talked
about this situation, they wanted to make it about two sides. You know, it's the Israel-Palestine
conflict and trying to kind of make it equal. But there are no two sides here. There is one
incredibly powerful side that is supported by the American government, by the British government
that buys weapons from these countries. That is fighting another side which is incredibly weak,
which has been weakened and attacked and destroyed for decades. I'll be honest, I also don't
really know what to tell you because you probably know all this, right? And if you completely disagree
with me, I'm sorry. I was thinking of staying silent about this, but like I said, I think
ethically I do have to talk about this situation because I have a platform. I have people who listen
to me and like I said, I truly believe it is my duty as a Christian to do so. Obviously, I encourage
you to do research into organizations you can donate to. I encourage you to look after yourself.
It can be very painful to see some of the images and stories and videos of what's happening
in Palestine. Don't suffer just because you think you have to see those things, you know,
you know, you suffering and watching lots of horrible videos isn't going to change the situation.
But if you want a good source of news in English about this situation, there's a really good YouTube
channel called Democracy Now that does very good news coverage in English about this topic and
many other topics. And I don't know, it might be useful. Obviously, this podcast is about learning
English. So it kind of links to that topic to any listeners I have who are in Palestine,
who are from Palestine, who have family in Palestine, to my Muslim listeners.
Just know that I'm praying for you. I'm sending you the love that I can, whatever that means.
And from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Oh, okay. It's a very serious note to end the podcast on. It's a very serious place to
end the podcast on. But like I said, everything is political, especially teaching the English language.
There's a reason the English language is spoken in so many parts of the world. There's a
reason English is the international language. And that's because of the history of colonialism
and violence and what's going on in Palestine is just a continuation of those trends.
Anyway, if you would like to give any comments about the podcast, if you want to say something
nice, if you have any questions and suggestions, please do email me at aerialat easystoriesinenglish.com.
Thank you all for your support. And yeah, I'm looking forward to five more years. See you soon.
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