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Welcome to easystoriesinenglish. The podcast that will take your English from okay to good and
from good to great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today's episode is a conversation
about blasphemy and what I've been up to recently. Get the transcripts at easystoriesinenglish.com,
slash blasphemy. BLASPHEMY. So as you can hear, my voice is a bit croaky today. So I'm going to keep
it probably quite short and also relaxed energy. I don't want to do too much. I'm trying something
new with today's episode for a conversational episode. I decided it makes sense to record it sitting
at my desk and then I can put the video on YouTube. Normally when I record, I record in my bedroom
where the sound is better, but it's a bit awkward for recording video. If I do it here, the sound
is a bit worse, but we have this nice background. I can sit and talk to the camera and then I can
put it on YouTube. So as I'm saying this, I don't know whether the transcript will be on the website
or whether you'll just go to the YouTube video and see the subtitles. I haven't decided yet.
Before with the conversational episodes, I was doing the transcripts as bonus content and I decided
to change that because it just seems like a very small thing to give away for people who are
paying for easy stories in English premium. So I'm experimenting with some other things for easy
stories in English premium. So don't worry, you will get some nice things if you're supporting me there.
And I'm going to give everyone the transcripts for the conversational episodes. So that's exciting.
Last week, well, I guess when this episode comes out, it will be over a week ago. So recently,
I did a live stream and it was the first live stream I'd done for about two years. So it was quite
exciting. It was lovely to see lots of familiar names in the chats. It was a very fun time. I answered
questions, we chatted and I improvised a story using people's ideas. So I mentioned at the beginning
of this episode that I was going to talk about blasphemy. If you don't know what blasphemy is,
it's when you say something that shows a lack of respect to God. Now I want to sincerely
apologize to all of my Islamic listeners, to all of my Muslim listeners, in one of the recent podcast
episodes, The Holy Cat. There was a phrase in it originally that blasphemed against Allah.
So I got many comments and emails from listeners asking me to remove that phrase. So I took some
time to reflect and to talk to some listeners and to figure out the best thing to do. And in the end,
I did decide to remove that phrase, which you probably didn't notice unless you went back and
listened again. I really want to thank specifically Ness Reen, who I corresponded with via email,
who was very helpful in explaining to me why this was particularly offensive. It's very interesting
for me because as a Christian, blasphemy is considered offensive, I suppose, but the opinions on blasphemy
vary hugely. I would say for most Christians nowadays, they don't take blasphemy too seriously,
and it's only quite conservative fundamental Christians who tend to really worry about blaspheming.
But clearly in Islam, blasphemy is a much more serious issue, and I fully appreciate why
people were offended. And it's very interesting because when I adapt stories, you know, I rewrite
them, I add some details, I change some details, and it's very easy as a storyteller to say,
oh well, I'm taking stories from this culture and I'm presenting them to the world. The story in
this case was a Palestinian folktale, but obviously when I adapted it, I westernised it in a way
that I wasn't aware of, right? I changed the context in a way that was simply not represented in
the original. You know, it's very difficult when you have a platform of any kind. I'm very
thankful for all the people who listen to the podcast, but of course, I still do have a responsibility,
and I think I've been very lucky so far that I really haven't had any issues like this before.
In some ways, it was a bit of a wake-up call, like, oh, okay, you know, Ariel, you do make mistakes
sometimes, and that's something we need to be aware of. And I didn't want to react immediately.
I wanted to take the time to really make that decision by myself and understand why it was important.
And yeah, I'm really glad I did that, and I again thank all my listeners who messaged me
for giving your opinions and your feedback. So thank you. So in general, April has been a very
active month for me. It's not a coincidence. I'm sounding quite horse. I've been doing a lot
this month after Easter, which was a very emotional experience for me. I was very involved in all of
the church services during Easter. After Easter, I had a real revival of energy, you know, just like
Jesus Christ rose from the grave, and I've been much more focused on work recently. I've kind of
had a mindset shift in seeing myself as a professional and working harder to present myself professionally
when it comes to the podcast and my teaching and my performance work. It's funny, when you treat
yourself as a professional, when you ask for the respect that you deserve, then you feel better
about yourself. What a surprise. But I had been feeling frustration with my teaching for a long
time, and I realized that it was because I was not seeing myself as a professional, and part of
that was I wasn't charging enough money. I don't think so. Yes, my prices have gone up for teaching,
but also it's given me a completely new wave of enthusiasm and care, and now I'm much more engaged
and putting in much more effort with my teaching because they feel like I'm being respected
as a professional, as someone who brings something very unique to teaching. I've also been having
more of a serious go at YouTube and trying to grow the channel on YouTube because I have over
16,000 subscribers on YouTube, but I don't get very many views on videos. It's very hard for me to
even get a thousand views on a YouTube video now. And to be honest, it's probably because I
pissed off, I annoyed the YouTube algorithm by uploading lots of podcast episodes at once with no
moving video. So I'm kind of trying new things with YouTube. I'm experimenting. I'm putting more
effort into my content. I'm doing things like this, and I'm trying to find a way to convert the
podcast to a YouTube setting that makes it worth watching and also makes the YouTube algorithm happy.
I might try, you know, recording me during the episodes. I don't know. It's very difficult because
if I make the process of recording a new episode too complicated, it's going to make it harder for
me to do it. And then it's going to take more time and energy. But at the same time recently,
I've really been focusing on just doing my work slowly with care and attention, like a professional.
And it's been very gratifying. It's made me feel really good. So I'll see. Apart from work, I've also
been going to some shows. Yesterday, I had a friend visit London who I haven't actually seen in about
eight years. She's from Croatia. I know her through Esperanto. So it was really, really nice to catch
up again. And my parents are visiting this weekend, although as you watch this, that was a few days ago.
But yeah, so very busy. It's my birthday soon. My birthday is on the 5th of May. So I'm very excited.
I'm going to go and do karaoke with my friends. I also have a collaboration coming up very soon
with Alistair from English Learning for Curious Mines. You might remember that I did some work with
Alistair before. We did an episode swap where I put one of my episodes on his podcast and he put
one of his episodes on my podcast. I took part in pioneers of the continuum, which was a short
series with voices from lots of ESL podcasters. And I'm not going to spoil what me and Alistair
have done this time, but it's really exciting. It's something completely new. And I think it'll
be really fun. I'm also being interviewed on his podcast. So I will let you know when that is out.
But I think it's going to be a great interview. And the project we're doing on my podcast,
like I said, is very interesting. So yes, so look out for that collaboration with English Learning
for Curious Mines in the next few weeks. Anyway, I'm going to stop there. I'm going to wrap up because
I need to rest my voice and I'm teaching later today. But thank you so much for listening. And
thank you for watching. If you're here on the YouTube transcript, do come and check out the YouTube,
like the video, subscribe, because then YouTube algorithm will like me more. And right now,
we're not the best of friends. And if you want to go to the next live stream, I really do recommend
signing up to my email newsletter, because then you'll get notifications when I'm about to start
streaming. You can probably hear that very loud motorbike. Sorry about that. That's why I don't
like recording in this room. Yeah, so go to easystoriesinenglish.com slash email to join the email
newsletter. So thank you again for watching and or listening. And I'll see you soon.
Are you ready to take your English from great to amazing? Then you should take classes with
me. In my online lessons, we'll work through the problems that are holding you back and write
personalize stories that will have you laughing your little boots off. To book a class,
go to calendley.com slash aerial good body. And to find out more, go to easystoriesinenglish.com slash
classes. See you soon, future student.
