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You're listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information, visit teacheluk.co.uk.
Hello listeners, welcome to this new episode of Luke's English podcast. Here we are. It's the end of 2023.
I'm publishing this episode. I think sometime between Christmas and New Year.
So that's, I guess, when most people will be listening to it. A lot of people will be listening to
this maybe at the beginning of 2024. But we are recording this episode in the middle of December,
2023. And I say that. I give that specific time because, well, this is the 2023 world news quiz.
And Stephen Devon-Chenzi is here. He's going to quiz me on the events of this year.
So, yes, the world news quiz. We did this last year. We're going to do it again. Hello, Stephen. Hi.
Hi, Luke. Thanks for having me. I can't believe it's been a year since the last time we did this.
What a quick year. Wow.
I know. It's crazy, isn't it? Time flies so fast.
So, yeah, so just remind everyone who you are and why you're doing the news quiz.
I suppose the reason that I'm doing the news quiz is because I live my life in the news all the time.
I am Stephen Devon-Chenzi. If you don't know me, I'm the main host of the Simple English News Daily podcast,
which is a seven minute podcast released every day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
on all the best podcast platforms. And, yeah, we just tell the news,
which from everywhere in the world in seven minutes, in a simplified English.
So, kind of an intermediate level of English so that everybody can understand.
Okay. Right. So, you've been kind of keeping up to date with the news this year.
And you've prepared how many questions for me? 20.
20 questions. Okay. And this is going to go pretty much in chronological order.
It's more like in chronological order. Yeah. There are some things which are that don't really make sense to be in chronological order.
But generally, yeah.
Okay. Now, just again, a bit of context or maybe a caveat from me in order to explain,
maybe I'm just covering myself in case I don't get any of these questions wrong.
Let me just explain to everyone sort of my relationship with the news. Okay.
So, first of all, I don't we don't have a television in our home.
Not just because we're like hipsters. Yeah, we don't have a TV.
You know, not because of that. It's just we can't really find a good place to put it.
And we don't watch that much television anyway. And you know, if we watch stuff,
we watch it on our devices, our computers, we've got a projector.
Anyway, we don't have the TV on all the time. So, I don't get to watch the news.
Either the BBC News or the French News because I live in Paris.
So, I'm not watching the news every day. But I do get, you know, I do get email newsletters from the week,
which is a sort of a digest of the week's news.
And, you know, I'm on social media and sort of get some news from there.
If that's a reliable place to get the news, I'm not sure.
And hopefully I'm just, you know, just keep my eyes open and ears open and just sort of try to be aware of what's going on in the world.
And yeah, just the internet really isn't it, I suppose.
I'm just kind of like absorb what's going on just through many different sources.
So, there you go. I'm not like constantly keeping up with the news, not as much as you, Stephen.
So, we'll see. We'll see just like how much I am aware of what's going on.
And listeners, obviously, you can try and compete with me.
Okay, do you know the answers to these questions? Can you get them right?
And we will try to make sure that the questions are clear.
And I'll leave a little bit of time. Maybe I'll sort of, let's say, sort of speak my thoughts, you know,
try and explain my thinking process before just giving the answer.
So, we'll try and make the questions clear.
Give you a bit of time. Let you into my thought process.
Give the answer and make sure the answer is clear as well before we move on to the next question.
I think we should probably get started, Stephen. Right?
Yeah, sounds good. First of all, I think that even though you may be,
I'm not reading a newspaper every day or listening to the news every day or watching TV,
you should still be able to get quite a few of these just from Orson Moses,
from whatever you do in your daily routine.
Yeah.
And, yeah, also, yes, if anybody wants to play along and try and beat Luke,
which, you know, you might be able to do, then get a pen and a paper or something,
get something to write down. There you go. Luke's got his ready.
I've got my pad, which is, which is got tea stains all over it.
And I've got a biro, so we're good to go.
Yeah, that's it. And maybe, maybe before, before you say what your answer is, Luke,
maybe we could make sure there's 30 seconds or something so that everybody can,
can decide what their answer is so that they can know. Yeah.
I think I'll find a way to kind of ramble about the question.
Yeah. Before giving my answer, you know, because I can't just leave silence.
You know, this is a podcast. You can't just, I suppose I could leave silence,
but still, I think there are a lot of people just be like, no, can you just keep a lot of other people?
They won't be thinking that much. 30 seconds.
Do you think my audience thinks for 30 seconds?
Actually, I don't think that 30 seconds will be necessary.
That was just an arbitrary amount of time that I just came up with there.
The amount of time that you ramble should be enough.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It'll be plenty. Right. Anyway, so let's get started.
Here we go, then. All right, Stephen. So I'm going to hand over to you now.
You are now the quiz master.
I am news quiz 2023. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome. Welcome. Let's see news quiz 2023.
Here we go, Luke. Question number one.
We're starting all the way back on the eighth of January 2023.
OK. There was a riot in one country's Congress buildings in a very similar way
to what happened in the United States in 2021.
Some supporters of the president who lost the election, but his fans didn't believe it,
or said the election was rigged, stormed the Congress buildings.
And after that, over 1,400 people were arrested.
So what country did that happen in that's going to be number one?
What country did fans of the former president riot in the Congress buildings
on the eighth of January?
The eighth of January. So this is like two years after almost the exact same thing happened in the United States.
Right. But this is a different place.
And listeners, do you know? Well, it was another controversial president.
And again, quite a close election, I understand, where the incumbent president was voted out
and a new one came in. And the incumbent president in this particular case was also quite a sort of,
should we say, controversial character, a bit like Donald Trump was, and still is.
So I think I know the answer. It's very interesting that it happens in such a similar way.
You know, that's fascinating. I think it's Brazil.
It is Brazil. Well, one.
I've got one of these bells.
Yeah, I've got a dinger.
No. Shall I do that every time I get one right?
Yeah, good. Do we have an eh, eh, eh, eh, as well? Just thinking you get any wrong.
I can do the sound of it. I could just do the sound effect if I get one wrong.
But that, this, that means I got it right. So, yeah, it was both Bolsonaro was the president who was voted out and replaced by Lula who made a comeback.
See, you do know about the news. Look, I can tell already from question one. Well done.
Yeah, yeah. That's supposed to. Yeah. It's, it was remarkably similar to what happened in the United States two years before, even down to the supporters saying that it, eh, there was fraud, but not really being able to provide much in the way of evidence.
And, eh, then, yeah, storming the Congress buildings, probably the main difference with this one was that, eh, although with the United States, Trump was right there, you know,
and he was really encouraging his people to go and march to the Congress and things like that. In this case, Bolsonaro actually wasn't even in the country. He was on holiday for his final days as president in the United States.
So there's a bit of a difference. But other than that, very, very similar. And nothing has really come from it in the end, other than a bunch of people being arrested. So there you go.
Okay, okay.
Question two. Yes. Okay, question two.
Sad one here. Don't worry if you're thinking, oh, I don't know about all of these newsy questions. There are some lighter, more cultural and pop quiz type questions later on.
Question two. On the 6th of February, two extremely powerful earthquakes hit Turkey, causing the worst natural disaster in Turkey's modern history, which other country was also massively affected by those same earthquakes.
Yeah, so I guess the epicenter of these earthquakes and all the aftershocks and stuff happened on the Turkish on the Turkish site in Turkey, but quite close to the border of another country.
And that other country also had a lot of, you know, impact from from the earthquake. Yeah, horrendous horrific events events just awful.
And listeners, do you know which other country it was? I actually did an episode about this. I talked about it. So I don't always do, I don't always do news events, but then sometimes I do this, this one was Syria.
Ding. Yes. Another one right listeners.
Well, two out of two. Two out of two. You're flying. Well done. That is absolutely right. Yeah, it was, it was most of the damage.
And most of the damage was on the Turkish side, but there was still quite a lot on the Syrian side as well. And that was the worst disaster in Turkey's modern history.
So for hundreds of years.
Yeah, horrendous, absolutely horrendous in so many ways.
Absolutely. Yeah. And of course, I didn't want to make all of my questions about all of these natural disasters, which have been going on around the world.
There was also a terrible one in Morocco. There's been terrible floods in Libya and the east of Africa and India and quite a few other places as well. Those ones don't get a question, but I thought I just mentioned them right now as well.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's quite tricky isn't it doing the news? I mean, you would know this. It's quite difficult to know, especially when your your episodes are seven minutes long.
And you choose which stories to to to prioritize. And it's it become it can be especially with the way that the media is criticized these days and is accused of having bias and all these sorts of things.
It's very hard. I know because my dad worked for many years as a broadcast journalist in the news. And I know that it's difficult to decide which is the top story, which is the second story you've got half a half an hour news show on television.
And how do you devote time to different things and you can't you know you can't do absolutely everything and you always end up having to make choices and those choices.
Yeah, sort of seem to show a certain ideological point of view, but you can't really escape it.
This is the story of my life, you know, I mean, I'm making my seven minute episodes almost every day. And really the last thing that I do before I record is generally having to cut something out because I find it difficult to get it down to.
To seven minutes, which is why sometimes actually it goes over a bit. But yeah, it's it's really it's really, really difficult. I mean, really you want to include everything and there's so many important things that happening and also you want to include something light something maybe something random and funny, which happened, which could be interesting as well.
So yeah, it is a problem and also trying to get in good news is also something which is is really important and I always want to try to do.
But it's difficult to find the time for that, especially because good things good things that happen generally happen don't happen on a single day.
They happen like slowly over a long period of time.
And you know, like the finding a cure for a disease or something, it's not just that one day you've got it. It's it's a slow process. So yeah, I want to find the time to include those things.
But yeah, it's it's difficult, as you say.
Yes, shall we question number three.
Yes.
Which country now has over one in ten people?
Over 80 years old and extra clue. It is also the country with the highest average age.
So we're talking about a country with a aging population, which is an issue in many countries around the world.
What with the you know, with the increases in life expectancy because of generally speaking quality of life has improved health care has improved meds and you know, all those many things that mean that humans are living longer.
And this has many repercussions in so many ways.
So which the question is which country in which country is one in ten.
Yeah, I'll say it again. So yeah, in one country now.
And just for people who are getting very, very technical, this excludes micro states like monaco or something. It's not a tiny country.
Right.
Which country now has over one in ten people over the age of 80.
And just as an extra clue, it is also the country which has the highest average age.
It's okay. Okay. I think I know. I'm going to make an educated guess here.
I'm going to go for a country which I think is famous for having a lot of old people or a country where people often live to a very old age.
And I think many of the oldest people at the record breaking, oldest people in the world come from this place.
And it's I think it's a place where I've spent time as well.
Is it Japan? It is Japan. Well done. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Did you feel.
Another one right? Did you feel particularly young on your trips to Japan?
Well, because the average age there was like, it was higher than was older than me.
Yeah, I felt pretty young. Yeah. I mean, I was in my mid 20s.
So yeah, certainly by today's standards, I was very young. A whipper snapper.
I know that when I go to Holland or you know, or like Sweden or something, I feel short.
And then you know, if you're in Japan, you feel tall. So maybe you could be sitting there.
I felt tall and young. It's all in here.
What was that? Yeah. It's interesting that why is it that Japan, Japanese people seem to live such a long time.
What's all that about I wonder? Yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe a combination of good healthcare, diet, maybe is quite good.
But funnily enough, normally what's second or third is Italy.
When you really think about the difference between the culture of Japan and Italy,
they seem really very, very different to each other. But they are often the top of the of the age, average age list.
So I don't know what they're doing, but they're doing something right.
What is the common denominator? It's good food. That must be it.
Yeah, good food, but really quite different food. I mean, you know, in Italy, it's actually over my shoulder.
It's olive oil and tomato and pasta and rice and things like that. But then in Japan, I don't know, it's completely different.
Japan is very interesting because on one hand, Japanese diets can be extremely healthy and balanced.
And then on the other hand, there are some Japanese diets which are like so unhealthy.
Like a lot of people in Japan, actually, I think live very stressful and unhealthy lives.
They work incredibly hard. They don't have many holidays, like company workers.
And a lot of stress. A lot of people have sort of like stress-related problems.
And the diet can be pretty fatty and salty, you know, that some of those classic Japanese foods like ramen or whatever it is.
It's just absolutely delicious, isn't it?
I could eat it every day.
But you shouldn't because that wouldn't be very healthy.
So obviously these really old Japanese people are not eating ramen very often.
I reckon there must be a section of the population that is living a very healthy, stress-free life.
And those people are pulling up the average age of the entire country somehow.
There must be people living on mountain tops in Japan just sort of like meditating and walking around very slowly
and eating lots of seaweed and soy bean-derived food basically.
The vegetarian sort of Buddhist Japanese diet, I think that's probably the supreme mega-healthy diet.
And they helped to balance out all the people who are just drinking loads of beer and whiskey and eating ramen and fried food.
Italy's got some of the same, I suppose.
That portion of the population that's drinking loads of beer and eating loads of pizza and bolinés every day.
And then you've got the people living in the little villages to see efficient raw vegetables.
And they're keeping that age up as well.
Could be.
There's a very unscientific analysis that we've just done there.
Total speculation.
Total speculation.
Yeah, no research done at all.
We're just guessing.
But you know, listen, if you know, if we have any sort of nutritional experts out there who've done international studies explaining why certain countries have a higher life expectancy, then let us know the results of your findings.
Absolutely.
Okay, question four.
Also in February in India, the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, was forced to apologise after he asked a small boy to do what on stage.
Yeah, this was a bit weird, wasn't it?
It was this is not.
This was my cringiest moment of 2023.
The one that's maybe go, oh, what is he doing?
So the question again is basically the Dalai Lama and this happened in India, right?
So the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama in India got into trouble.
He was criticised because he asked a child to do something.
I mean, already the question sounds so dodgy.
There's a cultural element to this as well, I understand.
So a lot of people were shocked and sort of disturbed by what he did.
But I think maybe there's a cultural element to this where in some cultures, maybe this is sort of a normal thing.
I don't know, really.
But there must be some sort of cultural clash here, I don't know.
But so, listen, do you know what the Dalai Lama did?
Did you see the video of that?
It was a bit odd. I don't know where I stand on it really except that it was awkward.
So what did he ask this boy to do?
It was to suck his tongue.
Yeah, it's absolutely right.
Wow, well done.
He's another one right.
I've got to say, I underestimated you.
I didn't think that you'd get to 4 out of 4.
That's really very impressive.
I think your questions and I think you've got nice questions.
I think that I don't know somehow you managed to, maybe you also read the weak.co.uk.
So we're reading the same news.
Yeah, no, that was the strangest, I mean, there was lots of strange things about that moment.
But it was being watched by thousands and thousands of people.
It was in a live place on a stage.
And this boy had gone up to take, I think it was like an award or something.
And then, yeah, the Dalai Lama said, okay, now suck my tongue.
And the boy just looked a bit awkward.
And everybody in the audience, you could see that everybody found it very strange and just went,
what should we be thinking about this?
What's going on?
Is the Dalai Lama about to get cancelled?
Is that what's going to happen?
Is it possible to cancel the Dalai Lama?
Yeah.
You know, can you me too, the Dalai Lama?
Is it now him?
Like, you know, is he the next person who's going to get cancelled?
I didn't expect that.
I haven't heard much from him in the last 10 months.
So maybe he has been cancelled.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't even really know what being cancelled means, in fact.
I mean, he's been de-platformed.
I don't know if he's got a YouTube channel or something.
It was certainly weird.
And I think it's probably affected his image around the world where people now,
they think of the Dalai Lama, they don't just think of those nice books of meditations
and wise advice that we have on our bookshelves.
And not only that, so many other things that he's associated with.
I don't mean to be glib about all the things that the Dalai Lama represents and so on.
And even that's controversial too, of course.
But so I'm sure that this has affected his image in a way that no one expected.
Because normally, if there's any controversy around the Dalai Lama,
it's because of the relationship with China and the politics and so on.
But then he asks a boy to suck his tongue.
He's like, what?
Yeah.
And he also said the way he asked the boys quite important,
because he didn't say, there you go, there's your reward.
Now suck my tongue.
No.
It wasn't like that.
It was more like having a life of home, or you were a kid.
A bit like the way you might sort of like, I don't know, tickle a child or something,
to make him laugh.
But he was like, hey, hey, look suck my tongue.
Yeah.
Well, well, well, what?
I mean, pull my finger.
That's borderline, but that's kind of okay.
Yeah.
Pull my finger.
Does everyone know what pull my finger is out there in podcast land?
Do you know what pull my finger is?
Steven?
Is it where you make rude noise after somebody pulls your finger?
Yeah, if you've got a fart in your underpants, ready to go.
Yeah.
And you've got one like sort of lined up and you say, hey, pull my finger.
And someone pulls your finger and you let the fart go.
Yeah, it's very childish and completely inappropriate for someone in the position of the dhala
alarmer.
But I mean, I think suck my tongue is even worse.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's just a pretty awkward situation to put a little boy in as well, really, isn't it?
Yeah, he didn't actually suck his tongue.
No, he just looked a bit like, what do you want me to do?
Which is exactly the way that anybody should react to that really.
And then just kind of moved away slowly if I remember correctly.
And then the whole world was just like, wait, what?
What did what that just hold on a minute?
Say what's going on?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, hopefully you can claw back his reputation somewhere.
Question five is a lot closer to home for you, Luke.
Okay.
Question five, in March, there were huge protests in March against the government, I've written
March twice, excuse me, in March, there were huge protests in France against the government's
plan to raise the retirement age by two years.
President Macron, President Macron signed the new law in April anyway.
What is the new state pension age in France?
Is it?
I've got some options here, but you look like you're about to say...
Give me the option, please.
Okay.
Is it 62, 64, 66 or 68?
So there you go.
So the new pension age, so there was this, all of these protests because France was going
to raise its pension age by two years.
And it was done anyway.
President Macron signed the new law in April.
What is the new pension age in France?
62, 64, 66 or 68?
Yes, so surely everyone saw the images on the news of people burning cars in the street
and fighting with the police.
Just a normal name in Paris, right?
Just another day in Paris.
It would be news if like, news from Paris, everything's fine, no one's fighting.
It would be a headline.
No, it doesn't happen that much.
I don't know what sort of turn this into a cliche of life in France.
It's very interesting, public protest here.
It's definitely a part of the culture.
And if the government tries to do something, people take to the streets
and they show that they are not happy with it, which is kind of cool in a way.
I mean, it's inconvenient when you're trying to bring your child to a birthday party
on the other side of town.
It's certainly inconvenient when there's a huge riot happening between you and the birthday party.
And there are vans and vans and vans at full of police officers and roadblocks and tear gas.
Right?
Being fired.
I've got some friends who have an apartment that overlooks a large square.
The big junction in it, which is a place that one of the places
where those protests or demonstrations end up,
normally they go on a march through the streets carrying their banners
and they stop in a certain big place.
And that's often where the trouble begins and the police come in
and they end up with the big, and often the police's approach is just to fire tear gas from a distance.
Anyway, so their apartment overlooks one of these places
and they've got like a young boy and they had the window open.
Tear gas came into their apartment.
Their boy got tear gas in his own home.
Anyway, but they stand up for their rights,
whereas in the UK, the government does something similar
and we just go home and drink a cup of tea and have a bit of a winj about it.
So in a way, I respect the fact that people take matters into their own hands and show the government who's boss.
But anyway, the age of retirement or the pension age,
this is the age at which you can technically retire and start receiving your pension.
That's money from the government that you've been paying tax during your working life
and then when you get to a certain age, you can stop and get some money as a pension.
In most countries, it's like 65 at least, I would say,
but France, no, no, it's lower than that.
So the new age, the new age of retirement,
if it's been raised by two years,
Macron decided to do it anyway,
despite the fact that people were burning cars.
That's President Macron.
So it can't be too 62,
because I'm pretty sure the pension age was not 60 at the beginning of the year.
But maybe it was.
I actually don't really know, which is bad, consider a live here.
And one day I will be 60 and then, you know, and I'll have to keep working.
60, 60, 60, 64.
I, amazingly enough, I don't actually know off the top of my head what the pension age is.
But, you know, maybe that's because I'm in my 40s.
But when I'm getting to my late 50s, I probably will know, you know,
it'll be a lot more important to me.
So I'm going to say that the new age of the new pension age is 64.
I just can't believe that it was 60 previously,
but it's definitely possible.
This is France after all.
I think it was probably 62 at the beginning of the year,
which is low by most people's standards anyway.
And it went up to 64,
which is still below the pension age of the UK.
But the French still, you know, had a big, the French still got very upset about it.
And meanwhile, in the UK, people are drinking their tea, looking at France going,
what's all the fuss about?
Why are they smashing things?
What's going on?
So, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the president's going to rage the age of retirement.
Oh, God, really?
That sounds tough.
What's he going to raise it to?
Like 70?
Something like that?
No, no, no, no, 64.
Wait a minute.
That's less than hours.
You know, we didn't understand that.
So, I think it's 64, is my answer.
Yeah, you're absolutely right, Luke.
I've got another one.
Five out of five.
I can't believe.
Five out of five.
This is good.
Wow, look at that.
And you are absolutely right as well.
So, it is 64 now, which is still lower than all of the rest of Western Europe.
In Italy, it's 67.
In Holland, it's 68.
In Germany, Spain and the UK,
it is slowly increasing up to 67.
So, yeah, at 64, it's still significantly lower than all of the rest of Western Europe.
So, yeah, as you say, it's, it was, it, that, that was how people in England were feeling when they were seeing all of these riots and things going on in Paris.
And yeah, you're right.
Everybody was drinking their cup of tea and saying, oh, wow.
They, they really care about this over there.
Don't they?
Maybe, maybe we should as well.
But so.
I can kind of understand both sides of the argument in a way.
I understand that like if the government is basically saying you have to work, you know, this many more years in your life.
And this affects particularly certain, certain people in certain jobs, you know.
People who are exhausted, you know, completely exhausted by the time they get to retirement age.
And then they, like, suddenly realise they've got to work a few more years.
So I sort of understand the fact that people want to, you know, prevent the government from just making these executive decisions without like due process, you know, without, without putting it through to a vote and everything like that.
But then on the other hand, I kind of think, well, you know, we've just said that the whole world is getting older and we're all living longer and we are healthier later in our lives.
Like when you're like like 60 years old today compared to 60 years old 50 years ago as a completely different thing, you know, people are able to do things at 60 now that they certainly couldn't on average before.
So to an extent, it's kind of reasonable with that in mind who raise the age of retirement.
But then again, you know, there's probably still people who don't have that kind of, that, that improved quality of life, you know, people who live in relative poverty or whatever or people who are poor or whatever, you know, they might not be getting all the full benefits that the average population is getting.
So complicated, very complicated issues, just like most things are.
Yeah, no, I agree with that analysis completely. Don't think I have anything to add, yeah.
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Okay. So question six. I think you might get this one as well. I'm afraid Luke, you're doing too well. But in April, one country passed another country to be recognized as the country with the most people.
What is today the most populous country in the world? That's populous. Listen, it's not popular. Although, you know, we're not making any statements about the popularity of countries. I wonder which country is the most popular country?
Like if you did a quiz for if you did a survey of every single person in the world, like what's your favorite country? They're just going to choose their own country, aren't they?
So maybe this country is going to be the same country then. Yeah, it is there. The most populous will also be the most popular because all the people in that country will vote for their own country.
So the question was just to recap that you said that previously it was another country was the most populous. And that's been overtaken.
It's in India is now the most populous nation on earth.
That is correct. Yeah. Yeah, give yourself a. There you go. And I was about to congratulate India for that. But I mean, I don't know if it's something you can.
I don't know if in India is like, yes, we're the most populous country. I don't know if they're like, really pleased with that. Or whether they're just kind of thinking, oh my god, we're the most popular country. Wow, what we're going to do about this. Because that's a challenge, isn't it?
There's a challenge, especially because actually India is very densely populated as well. I mean, it's got some rural areas where there are not that many people, but it's also just got lots of really big cities with loads of people in it.
So both China and India now have more than 1.4 billion people. But India is going up faster and China is leveled off. It's not really going up or down at the moment.
And India is incredibly densely populated. So this is one way to think about it in Europe out of all of the relatively big countries, the UK is the most densely populated country.
But India, even though it's 20 times bigger in population than the UK, it's more densely populated than the UK. So there are more people living just everywhere in India. It's a very, very densely populated country.
I've spent quite a bit of time in India and you can feel it. You can feel like everywhere you go, there are just loads and loads of people. But I love India. It's a fantastic place and I recommend to anybody to go if you get a chance.
It's a fascinating place to visit, isn't it? Yeah. And just everything that you do ends up being an adventure. I'm just going to take a train to this town. You're not just going to take a train. You're going to go on a crazy train adventure.
You're going to end up sitting on the steps of the train with your feet dangling over the edge while people climb out onto the roof of the train with toothbrushes in their mouths.
I'm just slaps on the floor of the train and now this is the how they start their day. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, actually just amazing.
I was once on a journey relatively sure, only like two or three hours or something and it was so crowded that I was standing in the doorway of the train, which of course is open because train doors don't close in India for some reason.
So I was in the doorway, which sounds quite dangerous, right? Like more or less quite dangerous. But despite the fact that I was in the doorway, there were, I would say maybe 20 people that were more outside than I was at that moment.
But being in the doorway, I was still relatively inside compared to all of the other people. You were cosily, yeah, prosely installed inside the train protected.
Yeah, more outside than I was. Yeah, and actually, they were like, what sort of stuck to the outside of the train holding on. They were holding onto the bars.
Yeah, holding onto the bars, holding onto the doorway, holding on in any way, which is the kind of thing that you think like, yeah, I could get somebody doing that for five minutes, but not for hours.
But they did, they just do it for hours, you know, and every time the train stops at a station, maybe they go off, you know, take a bit of a rest.
And then they just get back on again in the same position, you know, so they're going for hours holding on to the outside of the train.
It's dangerous for sure. I definitely don't recommend that people do this in the rest of the world.
But yeah, there's too many people that want to take the train in India compared to the amount of space that is so there you go. Amazing. Yeah.
Okay, right question seven. We're going to Africa now. In Africa, which country has been in a state of civil war since April when the army started to fight with a major paramilitary group?
Whoa, serious stuff. African country in a state of civil war, the army have been fighting with a major paramilitary group.
So when we say a paramilitary group, this is a military. So a group of soldiers in an army, but it's not the state army. Is that what a paramilitary means?
Yeah, so essentially a paramilitary group is a group, which is effectively armed the same as an army. So they've got lots of guns and lots of, you know, artillery and helicopters, maybe planes loads of things, but they are not the official army of the country.
And in most countries, they are illegal. And in this country, there was one of these groups that was very, very powerful and it was it allied with the army.
So it was working alongside the army. And then in April, they broke their relations and started fighting each other to take control of the country. And since April, that's continued until now.
Okay, which country is this then? Okay, listen, is do you know, do you know what it is? I don't know why I've got a country in mind, but I might be completely wrong.
Is it Sudan?
It is Sudan. Well done. Well done.
I'm happy for Sudan, right? Let me just make that clear, but I'm happy I got that question right, but I'm very impressive. I really do not think that we would get up to six out of six. But we have well done.
Yeah, neither did I. This is good. Can I maintain this level of form throughout the entire quiz? Listeners, you will find out in due course. Is anyone else on six on six?
Seven out of seven actually that seven out of seven. Seven out of seven. Yeah, this is unprecedented. Yeah, well, it's only we've only done this quiz twice. So that's not difficult to have that level of.
I don't know what I got last time. I think you got like maybe 16 or something like that of 20, 16 out of 20.
I really I didn't think that you were going to get that one and I didn't think that you were going to get. I thought maybe you might have fumbled the pension age one, you know, 62, 64, 66.
Maybe I shouldn't have given you options for that one. I wasn't sure that you get the Dalai Lama one either. So yeah, you're doing very well.
Doing fine. So I'm more well informed than I first thought.
And if anybody was thinking that they were really hoping to beat Luke, well, I've not made it very easy for you because he's got them all right. So.
You don't underestimate me. Listeners, OK, underestimate me at your peril. I'm going to get the next question wrong. You're going to see that now.
Question eight. In April, Ghana became the first country in the world to approve a vaccine for what disease?
Oh, first country in the world to approve a vaccine for what disease Ghana right now I listeners. I do not know the answer. Let me just say that straight up. I don't know. I'm going to have to guess.
Ghana. All right. First country in the world to approve a vaccine for what disease?
Oh gosh. Now this it must be a new disease. I suppose I suppose it's a new disease right because I mean, we know it's not COVID right.
I was obviously because so many vaccines already that were developed. It wasn't Ghana that was the first in that case.
So maybe it's a new disease. I don't know which new disease it could be. I mean, I'm just thinking like what new diseases were there this this year. There was monkey pox wasn't there right listeners.
Do you remember that one horrible name? What a horrible name for a disease. Empox is was kind of how it's also known, which is slightly more palatable as a name.
But also the disease was in a very nice either the symptoms looked pretty nasty. Anyway, so I don't know. I don't actually know where the monkey pox virus came from.
I don't know if it would be inappropriate of me to say that it would came from Ghana. Why why am I assuming it came from Ghana? Could it come from anywhere.
But this is just a it was trending virus this year, not you know, not only in the way that it was spreading like virally, but it sort of people were talking about it a lot and sharing pictures and stuff.
I'm going to say, MPox monkey pox.
That is not the right answer. I'm afraid. I told you I told you I get one wrong now. I knew it.
And that was that that's a bravado that you had after seven out seven which stopped you from getting eight away.
But not bad answer though because yeah, I've monkey pox it was in Africa. And actually I haven't heard anything about that for quite a few months.
So hopefully that's dissipated.
But no, in fact, even though it was a smart idea to try and go for a new disease, it's not a new disease which which this vaccine has been approved for.
It is malaria.
Oh wow, really?
Yeah, yeah. So malaria vaccines have been in the process of being developed or people have been trying to develop malaria vaccines for decades for absolutely decades.
Because it's been one of the biggest killers of people for decades.
And what something positive to say in general is that the amount of people that die from malaria has actually been coming down, down and down and down throughout the past 50 years, which is good.
And that's always been from different kinds of treatment and bed nets, which are very, very important.
So this year, the WHO, the World Health Organization approved two vaccines. Now they're not 100% effective.
I think one of them, I think the one that Garner approved, which was the first one.
It's only about 40% effective or something like that, which doesn't sound like.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it's very significant when you when you consider how many lives that this could save and telling people all the time after you have the vaccine.
That doesn't mean you can, you know, sleep out in the open and not try to stop getting bitten by mosquitoes and things like that.
But yeah, it was in April. Garner was the first country to approve that vaccine.
And a few other people have, excuse me, a few other countries have approved it since then.
And more recently, just last month, another one came out, which is probably more effective.
And the reason that it's been so difficult to produce a malaria vaccine is because malaria is a parasite.
It's a very different disease to other diseases, which vaccines are normally made for.
And the process in which it travels between people is more complicated.
It's a mosquito, which leaves a bit of this parasite in you, which then takes a while to come out in a person.
And then another mosquito would bite you and pick that up and then pass it on to somebody else.
It's a more complicated system.
And so, but finally now it looks like malaria vaccines are a real thing.
So that's a and it should be an amazing thing for for humankind.
Yeah, incredible. Fascinating.
And also I wonder, like when, so a person has malaria, because they got bitten by a mosquito who had malaria.
Who is that the right word?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, it wouldn't be Steve. It would be Sharon, because all of the, they're all female, the mosquitoes that are biting people and leaving malaria.
I don't know, but they are.
So, so mosquitoes carry malaria. I just wondered, like do mosquitoes feel ill when they've got malaria too?
Are they like, all right, Sharon, how are you doing today?
Oh, to run us to a little bit under the weather today.
So maybe you got malaria anyway. Look, here's another human.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
Actually, I don't think that there's any symptoms in the mosquito itself.
I think they carry it without any problem.
Yeah, which makes sense because obviously from the little tiny little parasite, I think it's a single cell being, which is inside the,
I think they, it wouldn't make sense for them to be killing both of their hosts, the human and the mosquito.
Because otherwise, what's the, what's the, so if this single cell organism, the parasite, the malaria, right, it kills the human ultimately.
Yeah, I'm not always, why?
Yeah, it's, I don't, malaria doesn't always lead to death.
I can't tell you what percentage I don't remember.
But for a lot of people, it will just give them some horrible illness and then they will get better.
And some people have it throughout their life.
They, it comes and goes. I have a cousin actually who every now and then he has like a bout of malaria.
But it's more dangerous, it's one of these horrible diseases, which is more dangerous in children.
So in children under five, it's more likely to be deadly, which is even more reason for it to be these vaccines to be readily available.
So the vaccines at the moment are only being given to, I think it's babies.
I think it's in the first year of life or first two years or something that these vaccines are starting to be given.
Yeah, amazing. But anyway, in terms of my answer, I got it wrong. It wasn't M-pox.
That's malaria. It was malaria. Okay, you've got seven out of eight. There you go.
Okay. If you've been, if you've been waiting until now to possibly be a head of Luke, well, this is your moment.
You could be seven out of eight. Okay, question nine.
In Italy, in June, archaeologists in Pompeii said that they had found a wall painting, which had been covered since the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79, which showed typical food that people ate in the first century.
Which modern popular food did archaeologists say that they could see an early version of in that painting?
Modern popular food that they were eating just before Mount Vesuvius erupted all over them.
Yeah, I'm going to put a caveat. They say an early version of, so it wouldn't exactly be the same as how people are eating it today.
But they could see an early version of it.
It wasn't people sitting around a Korean barbecue with the chopsticks and the barbecue.
Oh, this is cool, isn't it? Would you like some more bulgogi? Unlikely. Well, it's probably going to be, it's Italy, right?
Yeah, you said. So it's going to be one of the great Italians. They're sitting around eating a pizza.
I reckon they've got a cardboard pizza box open on a table and they're just gathered round with bits, slices, triangular slices of pizza.
Maybe a few beers, cans of beer, a few Heineken's. No, it's peroni, right?
A few cans of peroni and sort of pizza in a box. That's my answer.
That's your answer. Yeah, you are absolutely right, Luke.
It's not really. It's pizza. Yeah, well done. It is more in a box though.
Believe it or not, there was no takeaway cardboard box there. There wasn't, it was a more rudimentary old-style pizza.
Essentially, it looks more like a what people today would call a focaccia, just the bread base without the toppings.
Or maybe it had some toppings, but it didn't really look like what a pizza would look like for us today.
But they said that it was probably that kind of thing which turned into a pizza later on.
And of course, have you been to Pompeii Luke? No. No, it's right next to Naples, Napoli, which is known as the birthplace of pizza.
So it makes sense that they would have been eating that in the same place.
I highly recommend going to both to Napoli and to Pompeii Luke because they are both fantastic, fantastic.
I'd love to. I'm going to eat pizza tonight. Yeah.
Definitely having pizza tonight. Steven, your name is Devon Chendy. Are you Italian?
So my family is from Gibraltar and about 200, 250 years ago, lots of Italians from Genoa,
traveled to Gibraltar to work in the ports and work in other things.
And they stayed there. So my ancestors came from Italy, but then they moved to Gibraltar
where they've lived for 200 years. And I've still got, I live in England now, but I've still got a lot of family in Gibraltar.
Really? Yeah. And if anybody doesn't know, everybody there speaks, well not everybody.
Most people speak Spanish, which is called Yanito, which is a mix of anitalucian Spanish with British English.
And yeah, that's the way that my dad always spoke to his brothers and sisters and things like that.
Really? So your dad actually was born there, right?
Yes, my dad was born in Gibraltar. And yeah, he only lived there for the first 20 years of his life before he came to England.
But still, every time he's on the phone or something, speaking to his brothers and sisters, he would start a sentence in English,
like the Terminada Line español, finish it in Spanish, that this kind of way of speaking like that, which was always very nice to hear.
And yeah, I've still got lots of family in Gibraltar. I go there normally once a year or something like that.
Yeah. Really? That's where Devon Chenti comes from.
Very interesting. Very interesting indeed. I've never been to Gibraltar. I'd like to go one day, meet your family.
Yeah, yeah. If you do go, ask me because I'll tell you all of the spots. I'll tell you where to get true or lost for breakfast and fish and chips for full lunch.
You know, another bad stuff. Sure. Okay.
Okay. Right. Number nine, nice and short. Hang on a minute. What you've got, you got that one right?
So you are on eight out of nine. Okay. So it's number 10, excuse me. Eight out of nine.
Number 10 is what is the top selling film in the world in 2023? Oh, okay. This is this is up my street. Okay.
And by the way, just a we're talking here about box office tickets. So just from ticket sales everywhere in the world, what film was the top selling for 2023?
We're talking about cinema, right? This is not streaming. This is a film that was released in the cinema this year 2023 biggest box office cinema hit globally. That's right.
Okay. Well, it's between two films, right? Because this year in terms of films, we're all about pretty much two films, I think. Well, there are other obviously loads of other films have been released this year, including the Scorsese film and stuff.
But certainly in terms of summer movie going, it was all about two films and that was Oppenheimer, the Christopher Nolan film and the Barbie movie.
Right. So which one is it folks? Which one do you think won the battle of the cinemas? It's got to be the Barbie movie.
It is Barbie. Well done. 9 out of 10. 9. I'm doing well guys. Yeah. So that's what Luke in your analysis, although you are almost completely right.
And Barbie was number one. Oppenheimer in the world was actually number three. You're not going to get any points for this, but you know what was number two? I've got no idea at all, but it's probably something like the Mario movie, right?
Oh, look at that. You got it. It's a Mario time. It's Mario time. I don't get points, but I get the deal point.
I mean, we do get a thing. There you go. Well done. Okay. And actually it was pretty close to Barbie, surprisingly close.
The Mario film. Yeah. But it doesn't look like it's getting any Oscar's though. I found the Barbie film fascinating. Haven't seen it. So I shouldn't really comment. But what I find interesting about the Barbie movie is that it's Barbie.
It's incredible. Barbie is now a feminist icon. How did that happen? Barbie was never a feminist icon, right? But it is. You sort of is now, right?
I don't know. I'm not sure if many feminists would agree with that. I mean, maybe some word and some wouldn't.
Well, there are there are all sorts of different kinds of feminists now, right? I mean, they have been for ages. But I think to an extent, that's kind of what's what's happened, which I think is certainly a major success for is it Mattel, the company that produces Barbie.
Yeah. They they this was a huge marketing triumph for them. They turned this what was previously quite a sort of retrograde franchise, you get toy franchise, which had been criticized so much for the representation of women's bodies, you know, in girls toys and stuff like that.
And now since the film, it's just, you know, it's totally changed the image of Barbie, even though the body shape is not that different, you know, in the toys.
My daughter loves Barbie. She's five and a half years old. She loves Barbie. She wants more Barbies. And I kind of like really don't know what to think about it because I think, well, look at her legs. There are legs.
No human has legs like this. But then again, you know, I week when I don't know if you had an action man when you were a kid, I did.
And he had like, look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, yeah.
So there was the stretchy one as well, the stretchy toy, you know, the one that you can pull out and he's a.
Yeah, he's like, what is this telling our children? They grow up expecting to have super stretchy limbs. This is just unrealistic.
Yeah, yeah. But actually the marketing on the side of the Barbie film was absolutely incredible. You know, they got one of these like toy boxes to make it look like, well, you could stand inside the toy box to take a photo.
And I mean, they were in every cinema in the world, I think, which had the Barbie film on. So it meant that all around the world, they all there to do is make this cardboard, this massive cardboard box doesn't cost anything.
Ship it to these places and then all of a sudden you've got all of these people taking pictures of themselves in the box.
And it just makes other people want to go and see Barbie as well and fantastic marketing. Well done, well done marketing guys.
Yeah, yeah, they must be celebrating. We're so good at marketing. We're so good at marketing.
Okay, so this is the end of part one of this episode. But part two is already available.
So if you'd like to continue, just go ahead. You can check out part two right now. If you're subscribed to this in a podcast app, if you're listening in a podcast app, you'll see part two in your episode list right next to this one.
So just go ahead and listen to it. If you're watching on YouTube, you can find the link to part two in the episode description. Okay.
So how is this going for you? Are you able to keep up with this all? Are you counting your score as well? I'm on nine out of ten, which is, you know, not bad.
But, you know, I've got that malaria question wrong, right? The question about the malaria vaccine. So it's not a perfect score. But still nine out of ten is a decent score.
I'm feeling strong. I'm doing quite well. I wonder if I can beat my score from last year, which I think I can't remember. We can't really remember. But we think it was about 16. I think it's 16 out of 20. I've just decided it's 16 out of 20.
If you want to go back and listen to the 2022 world news quiz, just scroll back, you know, through the episode list until you get to the end of 2022. And it will be there. And you can find out for yourself.
What my score was. But let's say I got 16 out of 20. So that's that's kind of like my past mark. I'm hoping to, you know, beat that score. But what about you? How are you doing? If you're counting your score, let me know.
If you're beating me, right? If you're beating me, let me know in the comments. If you've got 10 out of 10, let me know. If you are amazed by my knowledge of world events.
Then leave a comment. If you're eating pizza for dinner this evening, then leave a comment. You know, just basically leave your thoughts in the comments section wherever it is that you're listening to this.
There are 10 more questions to go. So I will now let you continue by checking out part two, which is available now. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for watching. Speak to you in the next part. But for now, it's time to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk.
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