Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, if you are listening to this episode when it comes out on September 9th, then it is the anniversary of California becoming a state.
If you don't know, I am from the United States and I am specifically from California.
I have lived in Southern California for my entire life and I love my home state.
Of course, I think it's special, I think it's the greatest state of all.
So on today's episode, I want to celebrate the statehood of California.
I want to give some love to my state, I want to talk about some general information about California, what makes it unique and special because of course I think it's unique and special.
And I wanted to share with you some things that you could do if you decide to come and visit the state.
So if you're interested, if you want to learn more about California and improve your English vocabulary and listening comprehension, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Now before we begin, I just want to remind you to look in the description of this podcast episode and all of our previous podcast episodes so you can find a vocabulary list of the words and phrases that I use in that episode.
That way you can take these words and phrases, start studying them and then start using them in conversation yourself.
Some general information about California.
California is the official name for the state, but you'll also see a very common nickname.
Now states in the United States tend to have a nickname or have a little slogan that they call themselves.
And in California, the name that we have here is the Golden State, the Golden State.
So if you come and visit California, you'll see this on advertisements, you'll see this on slogans, you'll see that California is the Golden State.
And the reason it's called that is because there was a gold rush in the state.
Now if you don't know what a gold rush is, a gold rush was when gold was found in a particular location and then people came to that location quickly as fast as they could to try to find gold and to try to make money.
They tried to hurry to get to that location.
Because of that, because they're rushing to try to find gold, it's called a gold rush.
Now California's gold rush happened because there was gold that was found in 1848.
So it was found in 1848, but at the time, that was 175 years ago, it took time for news to travel, for people to find out about the gold.
So the massive influx of people, the migration of people into California, the actual gold rush took place in 1849.
Thousands of people came from across the United States and really across the world to try to find gold and to get rich quick, as you would say, to find gold and become wealthy very quickly.
This really changed how the territory developed.
This mass amount of people who came in during this year, they were called 49ers because the year was 1849.
And because the population of this area grew so fast and grew so much, California actually got its statehood the following year of 1850.
It wouldn't have become a state so fast if it wasn't for this gold rush and all of these 49ers coming into the area.
So because of that, we really got our statehood and that gold rush, those 49ers, are very important to the history of the state.
If you know anything about American football, about the American Football League that's played here in the United States, you might know that there is a team that is in San Francisco, and their name is the 49ers.
They're called that, of course, in honor of this gold rush, in honor of the people who came to what is now California in 1849.
And so that's why they're called the San Francisco 49ers.
Now, some general information about the state, California is large.
It has a large population.
It was very underdeveloped at the time when these 49ers came in in 1849, but it is no longer like that.
There is a lot of people who live in California.
There's almost 40 million people who call the state home.
And because of that, it is the state in the United States with the largest population.
So we are the largest state by population.
And we're the third largest when it comes to actual size.
Alaska and Texas both have more territory.
They're both larger geographically in terms of the size and the landmass of the state.
But we're third when it comes to that, and number one when it comes to population.
The reason why California has such a high population has to do in part because of the weather.
You might have heard that it never rains in California, and there's even songs about how it never rains in California.
But that's not entirely true.
It does rain here, but just not that often.
There's a lot of sunshine here, I will say, where I live.
It rains for maybe a few days, a month, for a few months out of the year.
But most days are sunny.
Most days have sunshine.
And the weather in general, especially in the winter, is very mild.
Where I am, I live about an hour to an hour and a half outside of Los Angeles.
And I've seen it snow twice in my entire life.
So snow is very uncommon in most of the places, unless you're in the mountains of California.
If you're not in a mountain, if you're in a valley somewhere, usually it doesn't snow.
If you're not at a really high elevation, usually it doesn't snow.
Most of the days are full of sunshine.
And if you live along the coast, the weather is just beautiful all year round.
If you're along the California coast, you really have this gorgeous weather.
And it's just nice all year round.
There's some places that are along the coast that don't have air conditioning because traditionally they never needed air conditioning.
Tended to just be beautiful even during the summer.
That's changing somewhat with climate change.
There are places now that get hot.
There are sometimes where we have heat waves where even on the coast it gets really hot.
But in general, California is just known for this gorgeous sunshine and beautiful weather all year round.
Because there's so many people, because the weather is so gorgeous and so many people live here, one of the disadvantages about living in California is that it is really expensive.
It has one of the highest cost of living in the country.
New York and Hawaii usually have higher costs of living.
But California is usually third when there's a ranking of the most expensive states to live in.
Of course, New York has New York City, which is the most expensive city in all of the United States.
Hawaii is expensive because it is a chain of islands.
And usually living in an island is more expensive.
There's limited land and limited supplies.
Everything has to kind of get shipped in.
But with California, there's just so many people.
And the cost of housing is really, really expensive.
Besides that gas and gasoline that you put in your car is also pretty expensive in this state.
We have a lot of tax and regulation.
One of the nice parts about California is that it is known to be one of the greener states.
It's historically always taken environmental issues seriously, at least since the 1970s.
The air pollution in California used to be really, really horrible.
They've really cleaned that up.
They have a lot of initiatives on clean air.
And so there's a lot of taxes on gasoline.
But because of that, it means that the price of gas is really high, especially if you go to another state like Ohio or Texas, a different state that doesn't have the same tax policies.
There's a lot of tax in California on gas.
And so it's just really expensive to fill up your car and to drive anywhere, which is kind of hard too, because with the culture of California, it's a car culture.
I personally don't know anyone who uses public transportation in California.
That's not saying that people don't.
I don't live in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
I don't live in a major city.
And so the people I know don't use public transportation because we all kind of just live in a suburb.
If you live in a major city, LA or San Francisco, then maybe you do use public transportation, maybe it's a better option.
But where I am, it's not, I would say anywhere.
That's not one of the big three cities.
You don't use public transportation.
You use a car. People drive everywhere.
People use the freeways.
We have a lot of freeways.
We have a lot of roads.
People use those and are just in their own car.
Now, another reason that California is expensive is because the economy is just so good here.
Of course, we are part of the United States.
So we were part of the U .S.
economy, which is the number one economy in the world.
But if for some reason California decided to break away from the United States and become its own country, it would, depending on the day, depending on the year and what's happening with the global economy, it would either be the fifth or the sixth largest economy in the entire world.
I think right now it's the fifth.
But again, sometimes things change, sometimes it goes to sixth, but it's it's up there.
Right. Usually only China, Japan and Germany have larger economies.
California is usually right above India in terms of economic output.
The reason we have such a strong economy has to do with the things that we make in California, things that we're famous for, of course, probably the thing that we're most famous for, at least here in Southern California, is Hollywood.
California is at least traditionally where they film movies, where they film TV shows.
You have a lot of film production.
The reason that Hollywood developed where it did or why Hollywood is located in Southern California and kind of close to the coast is the reason I talked about earlier.
In the 1920s, California was chosen because of the beautiful weather, because of the mild weather during the winter.
That meant that people could film movies all year round.
You could be outside and you could film a movie in December and be fine.
There would be sun.
The weather wouldn't be too cold.
There wouldn't be snow.
So it was a great location in terms of weather.
It was also a great location because of the terrain.
You might not know this, but California has a very diverse landscape.
There is the coast where you can be right next to the Pacific Ocean and you can go to the beach, but pretty close to that, you can also go to the mountains or to the desert.
Like I said, I live about an hour, hour and a half away from Los Angeles, and where I'm located, I can be at the beach in about two hours.
I can drive an hour the opposite direction and be in the desert, or I could drive about an hour and a half and be up in the mountains.
Besides Hollywood, which is of course probably our most famous part of California, in terms of what we make here, another thing that we're really famous for is Silicon Valley.
So Hollywood is in Southern California.
Silicon Valley is up more in the north, around the San Francisco Bay Area.
Silicon Valley has to do with the chip from the element silicon.
Silicon, again, I'm a chemistry teacher, so this is something that I know at least.
Silicon is a conductor and it's found in a lot of computer parts, computer chips.
So that's where it gets its name really focusing on computers.
So Silicon Valley has a lot to do with technology and computers.
Some of the most famous companies that are based from Silicon Valley are Intel, Facebook, Google.
It's really famous for having this innovation and computer part to it.
Of course, that also is why California has such a high cost of living.
I know I say the area around Los Angeles is expensive, but if you want to move there into Silicon Valley area, it is crazy expensive.
You need to have an incredibly high income to really live comfortably up there.
And so that's another reason why California has that high cost of living, because that is a very rich, rich area.
Now, we've talked about Southern California with Hollywood, Northern California with Silicon Valley, but the part in the middle, which we call Central California or the Central Valley, actually has another important piece of California's economy, and that is agriculture.
Now, you might not think farming when you think of California.
I definitely don't when I think of my state.
I don't live anywhere near a farm, but it is a very, very important piece of California's economy.
California has that big part of the state, which is dedicated to agriculture.
And because of that, California gets called the world's salad bowl.
So usually when you have salad, it's in a bowl.
And the reason it gets called that is because California, since it's produced all over the world, there's a lot of produce that gets grown in that Central Valley.
There's lettuce, asparagus, broccoli, cucumbers, all of the stuff that you would put in a salad.
Almonds also, which maybe don't go always in a salad, but that gets grown there as well.
And these products get shipped over all across the world.
Following along that agricultural line, we're going to talk about the state flower.
And the state flower is the California poppy.
The California poppy is a gold colored flower, so it matches the whole golden state theme.
And it's a very pretty flower.
It's a wildflower, so you'll see it across the state in the springtime.
I'm really not sure why it gets called the California poppy because it doesn't just grow in California, but it's the official state flower, so I guess that's why we call it that.
If you are interested in coming to visit the state and you are coming in the springtime, if we've had a really good rainfall in the winter, there is something that happens that's called a super bloom.
So a super bloom when a flower, when it blooms, that means when it really shows itself and becomes a full flower and opens.
And so a super bloom just means that it's a lot of flowers.
So you'll have a lot of wildflowers in some of the state parks and especially in the desert areas of the state, you get these really beautiful wildflower blooms.
And they're kind of famous because of course, with social media, people go on Instagram and take videos and take pictures of themselves and these meadows of wildflowers.
And it looks very beautiful and it is very pretty.
If you're interested in seeing that there are a number of locations across the state where you can go in and see these blooms.
Personally, I've never done it because I know there's a lot of people that go there and there's a lot of traffic, but it looks very pretty and you can see the California poppy.
One myth about the California poppy and something I've heard my entire life is that it is illegal to pick the California poppy because it's a state flower.
That's not true. There is absolutely no law in the state saying that you can't pick that flower.
You'll hear that from people, but that's not true.
What the law does say though is that you cannot pick flowers on federal or state land.
You can if it's a private property.
So let's say you go to someone's yard and they let you and they say, yes, it's okay.
You can take that flower then you can.
But if you're on federal land, so if you're on a state park or national park, you cannot do that and that would be a fine.
Now that doesn't just apply to the California poppy.
It applies to any tree or any flower.
So just be careful if you come for the Superval Bloom, don't try to take a super near with you.
Take a picture instead.
Don't try to take a flower.
Besides the state flower, we also have a state tree and the state trees are the giant sequoias and the redwoods in the center North part of the state.
There's an area called Big Sur and there's also the Sequoia National Park.
They're famous for having these giant trees.
Some of the oldest trees in the country and they're so tall and people take pictures with them to show how large these trees are.
They're very beautiful.
Again, that's an area I haven't gone to, but I really want to go see these redwoods before, you know, before I leave this planet, before I leave California, I want to go see those because it looks really amazing.
And again, there's a lot of pictures on the internet.
If you go on social media, I'm sure you'll see a lot of pictures of this area.
And it's one of those things that California is famous for because they only grow in this particular part of California.
They are endangered.
There have been wildfires in recent years that have damaged some of these trees.
I would recommend going and seeing them when you can if you can, because it is this natural wonder of this particular area, something that you'll only see in that particular area.
And, you know, you don't know what will happen to them in the future.
And the last thing we're going to talk about is the state flag, California state flag, I would say is one of the most famous state flags.
If you look at our flag, we actually have a star on our flag, which is an in honor of Texas, which is kind of funny because there's usually a little bit of a rivalry between Texas and California.
Usually Texans don't like Californians.
So there actually is a little bit of an honor to Texas on our flag.
And there's also a bear.
That bear is a California grizzly and that is the state animal.
So the symbol of California is the bear.
It's on our flag. It's our state animal.
And to me, it's a little bit ironic.
It's a little bit funny because there are no grizzly bears in the wild in California.
If you come to California to try to see those bears, you can see them in zoos, but you will never find one in the wild because they were hunted to extinction.
So to me, it's a little bit funny that we have the symbol and that we think of the grizzly bear when we see California.
But there are no wild bears.
There's been some talk about releasing them, but people think that might be dangerous.
People don't want those.
So for right now, it's just in the zoos and of course on the flag.
And if you come to Disneyland, Disneyland's California adventure has a grizzly bear in part of the park or not actually a real grizzly bear, but an image of a grizzly bear.
That's a big part of the park.
I hope you learned a little bit about California, my home state, and the state that I love so much.
I hope you learned a little bit about its history and why it became a state, about its landscapes and some of the things that you can do if you come and visit the state and why the California economy is always so strong.
I hope you also learned some new words and phrases to help you improve your English vocabulary.
And I hope you got some listening practice.
Reminder that if you can understand what I'm saying, you have a very high level of English, you have a very strong learning comprehension skill and you should be proud of that.
You can also look in the description of this podcast episode, find the words and phrases that I used so you can take any unknown words or phrases and start studying them and incorporating them into your own vocabulary.
If this podcast is helping you, if it's helping you learn English, please consider leaving a rating on whatever app you're listening to this podcast on.
That would really help us grow the show and find a larger audience.
You can also leave a comment if you are watching on YouTube.
Tell me what you thought about this episode.
If you want more episodes like this in the future, there's 50 states.
So we can talk about the other states as well.
And we can talk more about the things that you can do in California.
Because like I said, it's my favorite state.
It's my home state.
It's the state that I am so proud to be from and that I love so much.
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Until then, keep learning English.
