You're listening to Luke's English Podcast.
For more information, visit teachaluke.co.uk.
Hello listeners and welcome back to Luke's English Podcast.
This is my show for learners of English all around the world.
Are you a learner of English?
Are you around the world?
If the answer to those two questions is yes and yes, then...
Welcome, this show is for you.
This is here.
My podcast is here to help you get more listening into your life, which I think is a very important part of developing good, all-round English skills.
You've got to listen to lots of English.
On the podcast today, I am talking to Emma Jacoby.
Emma is an English teacher and online content creator for English learners like me.
Many of you will be aware of her.
Most of you will be aware of her.
In terms of online sort of content creator, English teacher people, she is definitely one of the most recognisable, one of the most famous, one of the most popular people.
If you've ever been on YouTube and looked for videos for learners of English, then you must have come across Emma's content.
Emma from MmEnglish.
MmEnglish is her channel.
MmEnglish at the moment has...
I've just checked, it's got 6.26 million subscribers, which is a lot, isn't it?
6.26, 6,260,000 subscribers on YouTube, right?
That's massive, isn't it?
So yes, this is one of the biggest and most well-established YouTube channels for English learners.
But a while ago she actually decided to stop uploading to mmmEnglish and focus her attention on another project.
So that can't have been an easy decision to make.
At the time she made that decision, she had about 5 million subscribers and she took the decision to step away from her channel and start a brand new other project, also for English learners.
But that's not an easy decision to make.
When you've got 5 million subscribers, It's very difficult to just sort of step away from that.
But she did it and she has chosen to focus on her other project, which is called Hey Lady.
This is an online community for women looking for a supportive space in which they can develop their English fluency and confidence.
So that's Hey Lady.
Now in this episode, you can hear me in conversation with Emma, and I invite you to listen in on our conversation, follow along with us and perhaps notice bits of English that that you can pick up along the way.
There's a full transcript for this episode so you can read what you're hearing, if you want to do that.
You'll find a link for the transcript in the episode description, wherever you are listening to this or watching this.
If you are watching this on YouTube, subtitles are available so you can switch them on if you want to.
Now, this is the first time that I'd ever met Emma, and it was lovely to talk to her.
She's very nice, very friendly, person to chat with.
Here's a quick overview of what you're going to hear, right?
This is just to help you follow along with the conversation.
So I talk about the fact, we talk about the fact that she's from Australia living in Perth.
Perth is an interesting city in Australia.
It's because it's way over on the other side of the country, miles away from the other major cities in Australia.
So what's life like all the way over there in Western Australia.
What is Emma's origin story as an online YouTube sensation?
So how did she get started as a teacher?
How and why did she start doing YouTube videos?
And what is the actual reason that her channel is called mmmEnglish?
What was it like when her channel blew up?
Which is an expression that just means when her channel became... very popular and successful.
Her channel didn't actually explode, thankfully.
But what was it like when her channel blew up like the way it did?
There are a few comments about the rise of AI artificial intelligence and how it might affect English learners and also content creators.
This is a big subject that we're all coming to terms with.
And then we have some fun stuff where I ask Emma about some Things I found on her website, including what song she loves to sing in the shower, her twin phobias of speaking in public which is surprising for someone who's got an audience of more than six million people.
But she has a phobia of public speaking and also her other phobia, which is leeches.
Right, leeches.
These are slimy things that...
I don't know quite what they are.
Are they worms?
I could find out.
OK, come on.
What are leeches?
It's obviously very important.
OK, according to Wikipedia, leeches are segmented parasitic or predatory worms.
Basically, they're like black, slimy worms that live in water.
And if you go in the water, they attach themselves to you and suck your blood.
And for some reason, Emma is terrified of these things.
I can't imagine why.
So we talk about that.
We talk about her old car, which is a vintage Lexus from the 1990s, which has a special emotional connection for her and a sort of nostalgic connection for me.
So anyway...
That's enough for this introduction.
Without any further ado, let's get started.
Let's meet Emma from mmmEnglish and Hey Lady.
Here we go.
You are in Western Australia.
You're near Perth, Fremantle.
That's the town.
Yes.
It's the first settlement on the coast of Western Australia.
Uh, time zone is the same as Singapore um, on the west coast, so I'm actually closer to Indonesia than I am to Melbourne or Sydney.
Wow, my god, Australia is just so huge.
And what's interesting for me about Perth is that yeah, it's so far away from like the rest of the country because like, most of the people live on the other side of the country, so that must make it sort of Yeah, I don't think it's 100 factual to say this, but lots of people say that Perth is the most isolated city in the world.
It is furthest from any other capital city, bar maybe one or two exceptions.
And that can be really frustrating, I think, especially if you grew up here and trying to get anywhere else is such a big chore.
But it is a beautiful part of the world and i'm not from here originally, i'm from melbourne but um, i ended up here about 10 years ago and i just haven't been able to extract myself from the amazing lifestyle, the beautiful weather, beautiful beaches, lots of incredible natural places to explore.
So yeah, i love it here.
Well yes yeah, you're selling it quite well.
I can't see a reason why you'd want to leave with all those things, Apart from the cost and the time involved in getting out of here.
Right.
Of course.
Yes.
So I think probably most people will know you from your content on YouTube.
Let me just close the window.
Someone's like pulling a wheelie bin through the courtyard downstairs, which is always great.
Perfect for a podcast.
It's not an episode of my podcast unless there is the sound of at least one person doing something outside drilling hammering, pulling a wheelie bin.
Anyway.
So most people, I think, will know you from your YouTube channel and also, these days, your online community.
Hey, Lady.
So I'm going to now ask you the obvious sort of question about how you started and your background, before we probably move on to talk about all sorts of other things.
So yeah, what's your background?
How did you end up starting a YouTube channel?
Which I think is about 10 years ago.
You said to me just now, it's about 10 years ago that you first started.
You actually just brought me up.
I think it's quite literally English's birthday either today of the day recording or a couple of days ago.
Firstly, thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
I love listening to your episodes and I love the conversational nature of them.
It's just really refreshing to have the chance to jump on and chat.
I think it's amazing.
So where did it all start?
It was, in fact, about 10 years ago. in Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam.
I was living and teaching overseas and gosh, I was only there for a year and I absolutely loved it there.
I think you know, when you look back on moments in life where you like, there's little periods of time where you just think gosh, I had it so good.
Like, and I probably didn't even realize it, but I was having so much fun and having some amazing experiences living in a completely different culture.
Being amongst the energy and the vibe in Ho Chi Minh City is incredible.
It's probably unlike any other city certainly that I've lived in, where there's just this intensity of all the time.
It always feels like everyone's kind of got two or three or four different things on the go.
And you know, if they're doing their job, then they're also building this on the side, or they're volunteering here or contributing to something else or collaborating with people.
And it's just got this amazing energy that I, gosh, I miss it.
I miss it a lot.
So back then I was teaching at a traditional language school.
For any of your Vietnamese listeners, I was in District 5 at ILA and had an amazing team of English teachers from all parts of the world, South Africa, the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand.
It was lots of fun.
And I was teaching this one particular class, an adult class, in the evenings, maybe a Tuesday evening.
And it was from 7pm until 9pm.
Dinner time, basically, right?
Dinner time, but also, like the amazing students who were showing up to this class, had been at work all day.
All day and maybe grabbed a quick bite to eat and then came to class for another two hours.
And they would be sitting in this classroom, which was designed completely for children.
So it had those little flip desk chair things that you know.
The space that you get to write on is about the size of a piece of paper.
Yeah.
And you know colourful stuff all on the walls and everything you know.
I was always just feeling like gosh.
This is just the most depressing place to be trying to feel inspired by a language that you have to learn.
You know this language that's going to unlock opportunities and you know, maybe with work, maybe studying abroad maybe, you know, even just working in tourism or hospitality and all of these amazing opportunities that come with learning a language like English.
I was racking my brain, thinking how am I going to try and introduce something interesting and real to this very typical classroom environment?
I went and bought the most ridiculous little handycam thing.
And I started just taking it around with me.
If I went out to a restaurant and I'd describe the food that I ordered or maybe I ordered takeaway and I'd do the same thing or I'd be chatting with some friends and I had my partner sort of record it.
And for no real reason other than I wanted to give my students a good sense of what English is like outside of this classroom.
And, you know, they were super, super busy.
And I wanted to give it to them in a way that they could just explore and watch and learn a little bit from what goes on in everyday English conversations.
And, you know, at this time, I didn't even really know what YouTube was.
I just knew I could put a video there and share it.
And so I did.
And I didn't pay much attention to it.
I had a class, a couple of classes of about 10 students in each, and uh, meant for these videos to be for them.
But you know, as the story goes, I checked back a few months later and then realized that, hang on, there's about 10000 people have seen these videos.
Like that's really interesting um, and sort of grew from there.
I
I think it took me about six months to even learn that you could turn on something like ad revenue and and you know that there was that whole other side to YouTube.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, that's how it, how it started.
And the reason why I chose an interesting name for the channel was an impact.
I've already mentioned it.
It's it, you know has always been focused, or it started out being very focused, on food and, And for me, I absolutely love food.
It's one of the things that I love traveling for to experience different cuisines and, you know, interpretations of different types of foods.
And I've always found that it is the most incredible connector as well.
Doesn't matter if you don't speak a lot of a language, but you can certainly connect over food and the experience of being around a table together and eating.
And that was where I sort of started the concept for the channel.
I'm just going to focus on bringing people together around food.
So if you go and look at some of those very, very early, early videos, I'm doing all sorts of things.
I'm making things in my kitchen, you know, cooking food and teaching around that.
Yeah, that's great.
And that's why it's called English.
Because it's like, this is delicious.
Yes.
Right.
Okay, great.
It is a kind of a very lovely name and original as well.
Certainly original, yeah.
Yeah.
And at the beginning it was mmm space English, but I heard you just a few moments ago calling it Minglish, I think.
It's kind of like contracted.
Contracted, yes, or a reduction, whatever.
I do think that...
One of the funniest things and it still happens today is that people who are reaching out to me usually just kind of spam emails.
But I always know it's a spam when they have written, hi, mm.
Right.
Yeah.
I get that as well.
People write to me and they say, hi, Luke's.
Like Luke apostrophe S. That's my first.
That's my full first name, including the apostrophe S. Yeah.
Okay.
And then so the channel grew and grew.
And we're just talking about English because obviously more recently you've you've moved on to a whole other project, which we'll talk about in a bit, but you're just talking about the story of your channel.
It kind of grew and grew and it's now, what is it?
Over 6 million subscribers.
Is this, is this right at the moment?
Yeah, it is.
Yeah.
Wow.
Amazing.
So how does it, how does it feel then?
To go from oh, I'm just going to stick these videos up for my students to.
Oh okay, some people are.
Oh, about 10000 people have watched this.
Oh, I'll do a bit more.
To 6 million subscribers.
I mean, what does that feel like to when you hit, for example, a million and then 2 million and then 3 and 4?
How does it feel?
Because most people don't experience that.
No, it's kind of a wild feeling.
Like I said-
I really didn't go into YouTube.
I think these days people start YouTube channels with a real intent.
There's a reason and maybe an outcome that they're trying to achieve.
I had none of that.
I don't even really know what provoked me to start uploading videos.
It must have just been that little kind of, I want to share something with my class.
And then...
I have to admit I was a little bit taken aback initially at how many eyeballs were watching me around the world somewhere, and certainly without that being the plan.
And so initially my reaction was like, oh, I don't know.
I don't know how I feel about this.
But then quickly, okay.
Well, clearly people are interested in watching, seeing this type of uh lesson or content, or they're curious to learn more.
And so whenever I could, I would be uploading, you know, a new video.
And certainly from the point of zero to 500000 is like exactly as you're describing, like a big, like what is going on.
Um, And then I think by about that time I was getting a little more savvy about what I was actually creating, even if it was unknowingly at first, but then starting to realize what the opportunities are connected to building an audience.
I don't come from a marketing background or anything like that.
You know, I was teaching and sort of creating this learning space online without really knowing where I was going with it.
But you know, in Ho Chi Minh City I was surrounded by lots of interesting entrepreneurs and other people who started sort of putting some ideas into my head.
Like you know, you could make a course or you could do something you know to earn some income and actually even start to travel and move around and still be earning income without being in a physical place.
And from there, I had quite a kind of nomadic existence at the time.
I was traveling quite a bit.
And so each of those videos are filmed in different locations.
I was traveling around with all of my filming equipment and my lighting and making do.
But I think with each experience you build a little more confidence and a little more experience resilience, and you start trying different things.
I would say that one of the first things that really pushed me outside of my comfort zone was doing a live video.
And I think I did that to celebrate my 500th thousandth subscriber actually, and i was so nervous i got into a huge coughing fit in the middle of my life.
This is torturous.
I'm never doing this again.
Um yeah, you know, each time you're kind of adding a little string to your bow right of right, trying something new, or it maybe training someone to help you, or to sort of help you produce a little bit more efficiently, and you know step-by-step, suddenly you go from 500000 to 6 million and you blink and and it's gone.
Right.
Yeah.
It's step-by-step.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
And just consistency and being able to carry on, continue making new things all the time.
I mean, YouTube is demanding in that sense.
And I suppose podcasting too.
But YouTube is a slightly different beast in the sense that you know it's sort of like subject to, I feel like more algorithms, and you've got to try and make sure that you continue to upload content so that the platform itself continues to show you to its users and things like that.
So yeah, but if you're able to keep the rhythm going and keep producing content, episodes on a regular basis, like you did and, you know, keep improving and so on then uh, you know that's that's the way to do it, i guess.
Um, but uh, there are difficult things with the sorry, i was going to say there are difficult things on youtube, like weird things.
I mean, for us, we are making content for learners of english and, in my experience, i guess it's the same for you.
Most people are incredibly lovely.
Most of our, our viewers, our listeners, our learners are absolutely Lovely, right.
But do you ever get any kind of weird comments, or is it?
I mean, is there a sort of difficult side to being exposed to lots of comments from people like that?
I don't want to ask you to share anything particularly unpleasant, but I suppose I'm just sort of, like you know, talking about what it's really like for a YouTuber to being a public figure and kind of putting yourself out there.
Does it ever make you feel bad in any way?
Do you know, there is an element of... I want to start by saying you are absolutely right.
I think we are fortunate in our space because we are in the online learning space generally.
All of our viewers are supportive, grateful and you know gosh, it is an incredible feeling as a creator to read those you know positive comments.
You know supporting you, being grateful for what you're contributing.
And like on the flip side to that, there are comments, or you know people who are sort of making observations or saying things that are really out of context or unnecessary, not really contributing to anything relevant right,
And I think for a long time I was really affected by that.
Like you say, you can have 100 beautiful comments and it will be the one thing annoying person who is not there to actually consume your content, but they're there to say something like you have a big pimple on your face, or this is boring, or something like that that sticks with you and it's so frustrating.
You can tell yourself and remind yourself again and again, and again of just the overwhelming majority of people who are showing up in support of you, but it is always those nasty little comments that you think there's no need for that and they're the ones that stick.
Yeah, it's true, but it's another thing you have to learn, another thing that you slowly learn through experience, of just being able to filter those those things out when you think to yourself well okay, you're not contributing anything and in fact, maybe that your comment, your negative comment, tells us more about you, the commenter, than it does about anything else really, you know.
So yeah, you have to learn to kind of filter those things out like that.
I always think that about.
It took me a little while to learn that strategy, but it's one that you just touched on, which is, you know, you don't know anything about that person who is writing that negative comment or that irrelevant comment, but you can sort of position yourself from that place of I don't know anything about you.
I don't know what is happening in your life.
I don't know what has made you feel like that is something that you need to say, but there must be something that you are angry about or upset about or disappointed about that.
You are randomly taking that out on me.
And that shifting of position has always really, really helped me to just go all right, You've got your own thing going on.
You've got your own set of problems and that's fine.
I'm not going to take them on board, but I've always found that helpful.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, this is, this is it's not just the life of someone who's got a big YouTube channel, but really anyone.
These days we all have to kind of we're all exposed to sort of a lot of comments on YouTube or just just being on the in the online space, and can be a bit tricky in that way.
So it's something we all have to deal with having to filter out these things that can be quite difficult.
So then, as I understand it, more recently, you have actually stopped uploading to mmmEnglish.
Is this right?
And you're focusing on something else now.
Tell us about your other project and your decision to actually stop mmmEnglish, which must have been a big decision.
Because when you've got 6 million subscribers, there's that pull.
You feel that obligation, or at least you feel like, I've got this platform.
I can't possibly just let it go.
That must have been terrifying, actually.
Sense of obligation, sense of responsibility.
I think I sat with that decision for at least six months, thinking about it very seriously and trying to make that decision, but I really had got to a point where, uh and I think a lot of creators, they talk about this moment um of reaching a point of burnout, reaching a point where it felt like I was creating content out of necessity to sort of feed the beast, feed the machine and um, it started to feel really ingenuine or it didn't feel like I was showing up in the way that I wanted to.
And then it became a really frustrating, forced sort of experience.
And I didn't really love the content that I was putting out.
I didn't love the person that I was, particularly to friends and family and everyone else around me in my life, who I was, you know, foregoing all of those relationships in order to keep, you know, juggling all of my professional obligations.
And at the time I had been growing Hey Lady in sort of parallel for a few years and we had really started deeply investing in Hey Lady as a platform that needed to exist in the world.
And maybe I'll talk a little bit about what Hey Lady is and how that came about in a moment.
But I had these two kind of competing interests and essentially was the CEO of two companies, right?
And both were... absorbing my time, my energy, my focus.
And I got to a point where I started had a few health issues.
You know that came out of being really stressed and overworked.
And that was ultimately the trigger that I guess forced me to make a call.
And it was to choose one or the other.
And when I decided that it was going to be English that I hit pause on.
It allowed me to just channel my energy and my focus into Hey Lady.
And I certainly have not completely given up on the idea of English.
I think what it is, is an incredible resource.
It's like a body of work of mine that exists on the internet that students are continually accessing and watching and learning from and enjoying.
And I think to your point before.
You were talking about how YouTube can be a place that really sort of saps a lot of energy and time.
But to that end, perhaps much like your podcast, it has also been a continual source of joy and revenue and opportunity throughout that time as well.
And so, whilst I have stopped producing new content on there for now, there are still new subscribers.
There are people finding out about that content and coming back to that content regularly.
And that brings me a lot of joy as well, because it's still out there and still able to be experienced and enjoyed by lots of students all around the world.
And that's a wonderful thing.
I'm super, super proud of that segue to Hey Lady because yeah, it was a huge decision and transition.
Almost you know by the time.
I think I had about five and a half million subscribers around that time.
It's an identity.
You know who I was, was very much connected to English and the students that I showed up for and the content that I created.
And so extracting myself from that was really challenging.
And also the sort of regular routine of producing content and, you know, collaborating with my team to get that content out there.
But Switching to Hey Lady was certainly.
I still think it's one of the best decisions that I've made personally, because it's just allowed me to really channel my focus and my energy into what we're building there.
And Hey Lady is an online platform.
It's a community that connects women around the world who are learning English.
And in particular, women who are intermediate level, upper intermediate level, up to advanced.
And the reason for that is the whole focus on the Hey Lady platform is about gaining speaking experience and connecting with people who you can practice with regularly.
It's a really core belief behind Hey Lady.
And one of the reasons why I started Hey that community initially and then started building a whole technology platform to allow those interactions to happen online.
A really core belief behind what we do.
There is that you know from an intermediate level of English.
You really, if you stay focused on learning vocabulary acquisition and focusing on grammar and constantly telling yourself that you are not yet ready to speak, you are not good enough.
You are not able to have an interesting conversation with other people.
The longer and longer that that gets delayed, the more difficult it is to start, you know.
So, Hey Lady, is really about creating a space for women to to speak English regularly, to gain experience in real conversations and to start making that transition from all of the knowledge that you know our students have been acquiring over the years, to be able to produce and access that knowledge during conversations and communicate.
So Hey Lady is really about just making regular practice really simple.
Yeah, great.
I mean, uh, you know, well done.
Congratulations on setting it up and everything.
And you say you've actually created, um uh, a platform where people can actually talk to each other.
So there's a lot of technical stuff involved in setting up something like that.
Um, so yeah, that's very impressive.
And, you know, looking at your website, it's all like looks, looks fantastic.
And so, yeah, that's no small thing.
So well done for making that work and everything.
That's, that's really cool.
Um, And it's Hey Lady.
So what people can I guess if they just Google?
Well, if they Google Hey Lady, they might find songs with the name Hey Lady.
I don't know.
How do they find it?
Yes, they can find our website at heylady.io.
We also have a YouTube channel with a much smaller YouTube channel.
But, you know, if they're curious to have a look, via YouTube.
But certainly if you Google search Hey lady speaking community, English speaking community, you'll find it for sure.
Right.
Okay, cool.
So another topic for me to ask you about.
So, as a content creator, English teacher in the world today, you know doing your best to help learners of English around the world.
Now we have this other thing, which is artificial intelligence, right?
That's big subject that lots of people are talking about.
For example, I go on YouTube these days and I see a lot of content and I see a lot of AI generated content.
People might not realise it's AI.
There's so much of it.
There's more and more and it's getting more and more sophisticated.
How do you feel about the rise of AI in our world?
What do you think is going to be the impact of it?
How has it affected What do you do?
Do you use AI?
I'm throwing millions of questions at you all at the same time.
I'll just let you pick one.
It's really exciting and challenging and scary all at the same time.
Like from a content creating perspective.
I find it really overwhelming because there's almost an you know.
In the past, the question that you would always get asked is like how do you keep coming up with different ideas to keep producing content about?
And it's like that question's irrelevant now because you don't necessarily have to.
You can get inspiration or ideas and kind of spitball different options with you know, ChatGPT or Claude, or whatever it is that you're using.
And that's incredible.
I think for language learners it's super exciting as well, because even just in the last 12 months, there have just been an explosion of different options or, you know, different ways of accessing information.
And I think that probably a general comment, but certainly when it comes to language learning, that can also be a negative thing.
Like with too much information and too many options, you can feel very overwhelmed and sort of get stuck about what is it that I'm supposed to be doing.
What's the right thing?
What's the best way to go?
I am a huge, huge advocate for the importance of just real human interaction.
And the thing that worries me or concerns me most about all of these you know amazing tools and this technology that is kind of coming online and becoming so accessible is really like how do we we've got to force ourselves into situations where we're actually interacting with real people in contexts where things are unpredictable and we are probably going to end up feeling a little awkward and a little stuck or kind of lose our words or sort of say the wrong thing and feel a bit embarrassed about it.
But these are all the moments where that we need to experience in order to overcome those challenges and to learn how to deal with that unpredictability and that nuance.
And that's the part that I, that at the moment I'm really trying to grapple with a little bit.
It's certainly, you know, where our focus at Hey Lady is around connection with real people.
And the joy of being part of real conversations messy beautiful, empowering kind of discussions that you just don't get.
That experience you know when you are speaking with a computer or you know
Mm-hmm, sharing something deep and personal, or even learning how to navigate someone who doesn't give you all the right answers or constantly giving you praise.
But in the real world you kind of get people who look at you a bit funny or disagree with what you've said.
And that's a really, really important thing to experience as you are learning to speak in a second language.
So that's the part that worries me.
Yeah because yeah, ai for learners of english gives everyone so many amazing options, you know, like the fact that you can you can switch on the voice mode in chat gpt now and have a pretty good conversation, and that is wonderful because obviously it gives you speaking practice and it's quite realistic, but also because it's a safe space, because you can feel totally safe, because you know that it's just AI.
It's not judging you.
Sometimes I practice my French with ChatGPT and it does make you feel very comfortable because you think like I can just switch it off anytime I want.
I don't feel like I'm trapped in a room with a one-to-one teacher who's judging me.
You can feel very awkward in that situation and that's bad for your learning of a language.
In that sense, something like ChatGPT or other ones is so great.
But then there's the danger that people yes, just use that too much and they, as you've just said, lose the experience of being in front of another person and having to cope with social anxiety or just the moments when things are a bit weird.
It's really important to develop the communication skills to handle those sorts of situations.
So yeah yeah it's, it's tricky um, we have to know when not to use it, as much as we know as much as when we should use it.
Doctors are constantly telling you to eat everything in moderation, and it's the same thing you know when it comes to ai.
There are so many amazing benefits um, particularly in acquisition.
I think it's incredible now, all of the tools that we have to learn vocabulary, review grammar and practice and get corrections and things like that.
But it can't be the only solution.
It can't be the only way that you get to speak quietly, alone with someone who's not judging you and, you know, trying to get everything out there.
It's like there has to be that point where, or those opportunities to engage with the real world outside.
And with everything being so easily accessible, I feel like we've got to constantly be reminding ourselves of that, you know, just like we've got to have less screen time and less, you know, watching news and all sorts of stuff.
It's like you've got to consciously decide I need to make space for connecting with people for real.
Yeah.
Really good point.
Um Okay, so while I was preparing to talk to you today for this episode, I was having a look at your website and you've got a kind of is it a frequently asked question?
No, it can't be frequently asked questions.
It's like get to know Emma.
Here's some things about Emma that you might not know.
It's certainly not frequently asked questions.
No, I just realised that.
No, it's not, because some of the questions that you've included there are quite specific funny things.
And I had a look at the questions and I thought, okay, these are great.
I feel like there's a lot more I could ask you about.
So I'm going to move towards some slightly more random things now, after we've talked about the YouTube success and AI and stuff like that.
You've had a look at that page actually, because I don't know how many people out there know the page that you've been looking at.
But at some point, I did answer some random questions about myself and put it on the website.
Yeah, so it's on English.com.
And where is it then?
Fan page.
And then fun facts about Emma.
There's various fun facts about you.
And then, yeah, there are these questions.
So you've got things like, what's your favorite TV series?
What's your favorite song to sing in the shower?
What is your favorite song to sing in the shower, by the way?
Oh, it's not just in the shower.
It's also my karaoke song.
It's Carly Simon, You're So Vain.
Yeah, good choice.
Well, all of my favorite songs.
They're all the ones that my parents listened to as I was growing up.
And so there's lots of classics there on my karaoke list.
Yeah.
I'm not going to ask you to sing it now. but I wonder if my listeners will remember it.
You're so vain.
You probably think this song is about you.
I know I'm very familiar with the song, not just because I've heard it so many times on the radio and stuff, but it's in one of those English teaching course books.
I can't remember which one it is.
It's like cutting edge pre-intermediate or something like cutting edge intermediate in the teacher's resource pack.
You know they have pages where there's a song and there's some of the lyrics and then questions, and you know you learn English with it basically.
So whenever I've done a song in class, you you know you obviously always end up listening to it over and over again in the classroom.
So and then you're studying the lyrics, and the lyrics for you're so vain are actually pretty interesting, because it's it goes.
You're so vain.
You probably think this song is about you, which is pretty cool.
What, what's the, what's the song about?
Do you think?
Well, Do you know?
There's a lot of sort of conjecture about who Carly Simon is actually singing about.
It sounds a lot like a former lover or boyfriend or something like that.
And I think that it's one of the.
I don't know if anyone can help me to answer this question for real, but I've never actually certainly found an answer there.
I've read her biography.
There's still lots of like doubt around it, but there's a few people that swirl around like it could be Mick Jagger or David Bowie or some of the people that she was kind of going out with at one point in time.
I always like to think it's Mick Jagger because they've both got very expressive mouths.
They've both got big lips and mouths and I just feel like they should be together.
Yeah.
Carly Simon and Mick Jagger.
Yeah.
It seems to be a match made in heaven, doesn't it?
I heard that she was singing about Warren Beatty.
That might be him.
He's the other guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But also it's, it's certainly someone who's quite arrogant.
It's a man who's kind of arrogant and vain, who obviously loves himself a lot.
And it talks about how she sees him stepping into a party and he checks himself out in the mirror.
And he, he is something like you.
You look like you just stepped onto a yacht and yeah, or something, he's wearing a scarf apricot.
I don't know if you pronounce that in british english but, but i always thought that was so interesting.
Apricot rather than apricot, we say here.
Yeah, she sings apricot, not apricot in the song, but i guess that's an example.
I don't know if that's just like a american english pronunciation of it.
I don't know about that actually, or maybe it's just a case of in songs they break the rules.
You know, it's poetic to make it work, but it is an interesting song because and it's the the sort of ironic lyrics.
You're so vain.
You probably think this song is about you.
And what I read was that Warren Beatty really did think the song was about him, which kind of tells you something.
Yeah.
He obviously is quite vain and it's interesting.
He recognized himself in the lyrics.
Like, yeah.
Oh, arrogant guy who loves himself.
That's me, isn't it?
So, um, but very interesting song.
So I don't know.
Have you ever met a guy like that?
I don't tend to hang around with people who sort of have that air about them where they think they're very like the center of attention.
They take photos of themselves at the gym.
Like they're just not my kind of guy.
So I, no, not really, not really.
And if I have across them, I just keep my distance.
I completely understand.
Another question you've got on your website is, do you have a fear of anything?
You wrote two things.
The first thing is you said, I'm petrified of leeches.
The second thing is speaking in front of an audience on stage.
I think everyone can probably relate to the thing about speaking in front of an audience on stage.
I might come back to it in a moment.
The first thing is you're petrified of leeches.
Sorry to make you talk about this.
I don't know how you feel about it.
What are leeches?
What's so terrifying about them?
I guess they're a little... Did they count as an insect?
They're not, are they?
No, I don't think so.
It's probably like a mollusk or something, isn't it?
Yeah.
Something like that, a kind of a worm.
Yeah, something that attaches itself to you and sucks your blood.
And as it sucks your blood it expands and gets bigger and it's sort of rising around as it's sucking your blood.
And it's a very visual thing to see.
And you can't – unless you've got salt or a flame – you can't pull it off, because their heads get stuck, or or I don't know, probably not.
But I made you describe this thing that you hate.
Sorry.
I have no problem with it until there's one in my vicinity.
Right.
But and there's only been a couple of times in my life where I've had a leech latch onto me and really start drawing blood but it's just the way that they move, the fact that they're sucking so much blood out of you um, i've always just been weeded out by them.
Yeah, i mean, i've never encountered a leech.
I think they're not really a car, i don't think they're a particularly common.
Usually i'm like hot damp places like rainforests probably not, you know, in paris or in the uk.
Um No, it's.
You know, if you're in some rainforest and you end up in the water, you might come out and you find these black, slimy things on you.
Yeah, it's not the kind of thing that happens in Paris all that often.
It's not what Paris is known for, is it?
And it's like, oh, going to Paris.
Oh, yes.
The, you know, the Arc de Triomphe, the Tour Eiffel, Croissant, you know, in a cafe.
But watch out for the leeches.
Yeah.
And the unfriendly wakers.
Yeah.
Back in the 18th century I'm pretty sure they were one of the main methods for healing people if they were sick or unwell.
They probably found a few in Paris back then.
Doctors I don't know when yeah, maybe the 19th, 18th centuries.
Doctors loved leeches and they decided that the whole medical community was convinced that leeches were-.
Yeah, what's wrong with you?
You got a headache?
Oh, just stick a few leeches on your head.
You'll be fine.
What's the matter with you?
Back problems?
Here you go.
Here's a jar full of leeches.
Got to call and stick a leech on.
Yeah, it's like, go to the doctor.
Oh, really?
They're just going to give me leeches again.
Yeah, that's a bit weird, isn't it?
How random that they thought leeches.
I think it was something to do with the fact that maybe leeches when they Sorry to keep talking about leeches.
We're going to move on in a second that when they are doing what they do, when they suck your blood, they apparently add something as well, which thins the blood.
That was the theory, wasn't it?
And doctors were like, right, this is clearly the key to all health problems.
But we've since realized that's not the case.
I do appreciate all of those people who went through such horrible means of trying to overcome illness on our behalf so that now we don't have to do that yeah yeah and there have been some very weird and terrible things in the past as well that you know thank goodness we don't really do anymore i think like trepanning do you know what trepanning is that's basically when i don't know when this is i think this is a long time ago we're talking about maybe like the stone age or or the bronze age or something maybe even more recently maybe the middle ages um Trapanning is basically when people believe that if you had a headache or a sickness, something like that in your head, that you had a spirit, an evil spirit that was stuck inside your head.
And the way to cure you would be to release the spirit.
How?
By actually breaking a hole in the top of someone's skull.
Yeah, literally knocking a hole in your skull so that the spirit could be released.
Wow.
The skulls have been found with holes in them and they've worked out that that was actually a medical practice to just knock a hole in your head.
It must have been perceived at the time to work.
It must have been a pretty bad headache, right?
If having a hole knocked in your head was better than having the headache.
But yeah, thank goodness we don't live in those days.
Yeah.
Talking of moving on, let me move on to another question.
Oh, you actually said your other fear was speaking in front of an audience on stage, which does kind of make me think.
How does that not translate?
Does that not kind of transfer to making content online?
Do you not get stage fright?
Yeah, I always get this question.
And absolutely, they are opposite ends of the spectrum, for me, at least.
Because when I'm filming...
I'm in my studio.
I'm often on my own and I am completely in control of that situation.
There's something about having a whole bunch of actual eyeballs kind of on you in the heat of the moment where you can't you know, when you're filming and you're recording you can mess up what you're saying and then just cut it out.
So there's no consequence whatsoever.
All of those like ridiculous moments where, like I've tripped over my light and it's fallen over and crashed on me during during filming.
I can edit that out.
No one needs to see that, but you can't get away from that on stage.
And I think that's the the one thing that just still sticks.
You know, and I think most people can relate to that,
Yeah.
I always think it's a really good kind of counter experience to speaking in your second language, because you've got to put yourself into that situation so that you can, with each time, get a little more experience, push that comfort zone a little bit further, prove to yourself that you know you've got this.
It's okay.
It's actually a lot of it's in your head what you're worried about.
It's not reality or it's not likely to happen.
So you know, i always keep that in mind.
Every time i get the opportunity to speak on a stage, my instinct is to say no, but every time i get the chance to, i'll say yes.
Just for experience yeah, and exactly.
It's great to do that more and more and until one day you realize that you actually really enjoy it, and then that's, that's great.
Then you kind of turn a corner.
Um, haven't got to that corner yet, but I do.
I do feel, like you know, that fear is never going to leave.
It's always going to be sitting with you, but it's it's more about having certainty or proof that you can manage whatever that situation kind of brings up.
Um, I don't feel well, certainly for me.
I don't feel like I will ever be in a situation where I'm not fearful in that moment.
But certainly when you can pull back on fear, you can increase enjoyment for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you kind of learn to do it your own way as well.
If you kind of like realize that, oh okay, so I can kind of do this in a slightly different way if I want, or I can just be myself.
And you realize that that can actually work well. then you feel you've got a bit more room to move.
A lot of the time, it's very restricting.
You feel like, I'm in front of all these people.
I have to do it a certain way.
I can't step outside this certain restricted way I'm supposed to do this.
But you can start to own it a bit more with more experience as you be yourself.
OK, I've got another question for you, which is actually one of your own questions from your website.
So the question is, what does your ideal day involve?
And you wrote, no emails or internet, a good book and sunshine.
So my question for you is, how often do you actually manage to have a day like that?
As soon as you started reading that out, I knew that this was going to be your question.
And honestly, I can't remember when I had one of those days.
The only time when I can really extract myself from my business, my work.
You know friends and family on social networks or whatever.
Everything is so intertwined now and you know everything is online.
Everything is at your computer or on your phone or on your tablet, and you can take it anywhere, right.
So it's really hard to... extract yourself from those moments.
And so for me, I don't have a whole lot of self-discipline.
So it usually takes me being completely outside of internet range.
That's when I have those days.
So that would have been April.
Now that I've said that I can track that back to April when I was on the far north coast of Western Australia camping and far from any phone reception.
And it was bliss.
Yeah.
In Australia, you'd have proper wilderness areas, right?
The far north coast of Western Australia.
What's it like up there?
Northwest.
It's very dry.
Well, at that time of year, it's very dry.
The earth is red.
The sea is a brilliant turquoise blue.
Along much of the coastline.
Those two things just meet.
So there's this stark contrast between brilliant blue water and red earth, and it's hot and dry but stunningly beautiful as well.
This part of the coast has one of the most pristine reefs so you can go snorkelling and turtles and whale sharks and humpback whales and orcas and yeah, everything in abundance.
That sounds incredible and and you camp up there, do you?
Yeah, it's really remote, so you know you sort of perched on the side of a cliff, jumping into the water and swimming around with turtles and amazing fish and stingrays and everything.
It's cool, That's incredible.
Are you not kind of scared of all of the dangerous wildlife, snakes and spiders?
Because everything wants to kill you in Australia, doesn't it?
Yeah.
I think it's like, you know, it's like Vegemite.
If you're born with it, you don't worry about it so much.
It's always been there.
Vegemite listeners, do you know what Vegemite is, everybody?
Actually...
A friend of mine went to Australia a while ago and he brought me back a little souvenir.
I'm showing it to Emma for the non-video viewers.
He brought me this fridge magnet, which is a Vegemite fridge magnet.
Vegemite, listeners, is essentially the Australian equivalent of Marmite from the UK.
It's more or less the same thing.
I think it doesn't sound great when you describe it.
It's a kind of It's a yeast extract listeners, which doesn't sound great, but maybe I can sell it to you better if I say that it's a very, very rich source of vitamin B12.
In fact, it's basically 100% vitamin B, as far as I can tell, right?
It's a sort of a spread.
It's a sort of a savoury spread that you might put on it.
Good description.
Yeah.
Yeah, you put it on a toasted cheese sandwich or all sorts of other things and it adds a lot of flavour.
You don't put loads of it on, just put a bit on and it just can add an extra bit of flavour.
You can use it in cooking and stuff like that.
That's when people fall down with Vegemite.
They sort of layer it on like peanut butter and that's atrocious.
That's not the way to do it.
You don't just stick a spoon in.
You wouldn't do that with mustard.
It's a similar kind of thing.
You just use it sparingly.
But Vegemite is absolutely a sort of... What's the word for it?
It's sort of an icon of Australian culture.
And you said... I can't remember what you said.
It's like Vegemite if you're born with it.
So as a native-born Australian...
You grew up with Vegemite, so you've kind of got used to it.
You like it a lot.
And similarly the wildlife, the spiders and snakes.
If you were born with that, then it doesn't bother you so much.
Yeah, well, you've never sort of had any reason to fear it because it's always been there.
And I think, yeah, being born into something is –
Like I'm sure everyone who's listening can think of something in their own cuisine that people from other parts of the world they try it and they think oh, this is interesting.
So there's always things you know that are really common, that you've never questioned, that everyone eats and everyone enjoys, until someone from outside kind of comes in and goes.
What is that?
I'm curious to see now in the comments under this video if anyone's like adding their version of Vegemite, whatever it is for them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Listeners viewers, what is the food in your country that perhaps people from other places just don't understand?
Like for example, in Japan, I can give an example in Japan, it's natto, which is fermented soybeans.
Yeah, that's kind of stretchy and stringy.
Stringy and stretchy.
So it's like these beans and they're all rotting.
And so all this kind of stringy, stretchy stuff, sticky stuff is all over them.
But a lot of Japanese people just eat that as a staple part of their diet.
But it's a famous thing.
Other people are like, what?
This stuff is disgusting.
But it's totally normal in Japan.
Pretty much all English food, as far as I can tell, probably fits into this category.
Yeah, that's not true.
Blood sausage, maybe Scottish, Scottish food oh haggis, haggis in Scotland, yeah yeah.
Yeah, in France, I mean it might be there's a.
There's stuff called andouillette which is a kind of sausage, but it's made from the I don't know.
It's made from parts of the pig that personally I would never go near, you know, and so it's a very pungent sort of sausage, and So that's maybe an example of that.
Can I ask you one more question, Emma?
Yes.
It's from your website again.
Okay.
Because I need to know more.
I need to know more.
I love the answer to this question.
And when I read this, I was like, wow.
So I need to ask you more about this.
So the question is, what car do you drive?
And your answer is a 1995 Lexus.
And not just any Lexus, the LS400. um can i so if i can just explain why i was uh impressed by that the lexus ls400 i think is a sort of iconic car and i don't know how would you describe it uh well firstly my dad is going to be very very happy to hear you referring to to that car in that way it It was his car and when he passed away, I inherited it.
I refer to it by a couple of names.
So for descriptive purposes, it's a gangster car.
It's like a sedan.
It's pretty low.
It's like ultimate, ultimate top of the range but from 95.
So, you know, in this car there's still like – ashtrays in the back.
There's like a little remote control which at the time would have been super cool to like control the radio from the back of the car.
But yeah.
Sorry, does it not have like leather, or maybe even fake leather, upholstery and even a padded steering wheel?
Am I imagining this?
It's got like a kind of a.
The steering wheel was like that wooden trim like faux wood sort of interior.
Not fake leather, but real leather.
Real leather.
Oh, I do apologize.
It's a Lexus, of course.
It's not a Toyota.
No, but Toyota and Lexus are.
They're the same company and the reason why I have have this car is because my dad was obsessed with this car and this particular model.
And he spent my entire childhood working, uh, at Toyota.
And so he was constantly going back and forward to Japan and um, you know, for business trips and things like that.
And so uh, you know he had this.
He bought it secondhand but um, loved it like a child and wouldn't let anyone else drive it.
So yeah, it's the reason why I had it and I need to explain why I don't anymore.
But I, I had it because it just, he passed away and it just reminded me of him driving around in it.
He had, you know, one of the earliest iPod, um, iPods plugged into the audio of the car.
And so it just constantly just played all of his favorite tracks.
And, going back to Carly Simon, like my childhood, just constantly playing, as I'm like, cruising around in this gangster car.
We also called it the saloon.
It was very comfortable ride.
And the real affectionate name was the cloud.
Cloud because it just you could hardly feel it going over any bumps or anything.
It was just amazing to drive.
Oh, that's wonderful.
How nice, how nice that it's got this connection to your dad.
Just from my side, again, I used to live in Japan and I saw these cars a lot.
So there are loads of these Lexuses, Lexi, I think.
I guess it might be Lexi.
Lexuses, loads of them, and they're kind of like very typical.
You described it as like a gangster car.
In a way that is true.
You know, in the same way that like a high-end Mercedes would be a gangster car, it's a similar kind of thing, but vintage from the 90s.
But yeah, I saw lots of these and it's like very typical kind of salary man's car or salary man dad's car.
My good friend in Japan, his dad, used to have one of these and sometimes he would borrow it and he'd pick me up and we'd drive around in it.
And also it is – another reason why it's iconic is because it features in the classic Capcom computer game, Street Fighter II.
Yeah, you mentioned that.
I am not a computer gamer at all, so this was news for me.
I need to hear it from you.
So I'm a bit more nerdy, obviously, than you are.
But Street Fighter II is not – that nerdy, really.
I think it's a classic arcade game.
I've heard of it, so it's definitely not that obscure.
Yeah.
It's a classic arcade game that I think is pretty much in popular culture.
It's a fighting game.
It's from Japan and it has these iconic characters who fight each other and throw fireballs at each other and things like that.
In one of the rounds of this game, there's a bonus round where there is a Lexus LS400s sitting there and you have to smash it to pieces by punching it, kicking it, throwing fireballs at it and so on.
You've got about 90 seconds to do as much damage to this car as you possibly can.
The more you destroy the car, the more points you get.
This image of this Lexus sitting there waiting to be punched and kicked is just an iconic image from computer games, and you actually owned one.
I think that's cool.
I thought – you know, like the – I don't know whether Salaryman Japan is like cool.
I imagine not.
I don't know.
I think there's something cool about it.
I honestly – I've never driven a better car, and I will never drive a better car.
It was incredible and I was very sad when – recently it died a slow death and then it got uh taken away.
So that was the end of the LS 400.
I guess I need to update my website.
No, you should keep that.
I like that.
Um, yeah, so it's, it's gone to car heaven now gone to the place where all cars eventually go.
Um, but yeah, so there's me imagining, you know, um, this car being punched and kicked.
You didn't, did you ever punch or kick the car?
No.
It sounds like you never had reason to do that.
No, I loved that car.
So there was no reason to.
Even when it died, I probably should have then.
This is my perfect opportunity to live out my Street Fighter 2 fantasy.
Yes.
Yeah, but I've never understood it.
Obviously in the computer game.
It's ridiculous because if you punched or kicked a car, definitely you would break your hand or foot, even if you are like an awesome character from this game and you've got super special powers.
Okay.
Well, thank you very much for answering those random questions at the end.
I'm glad I gave you such inspo from from that random page on my website.
You really dug out some, some good ones.
You can see where my priorities are really.
You know, i don't think i've had this much fun on a podcast before, so you could certainly help to to keep things entertaining.
I hope everyone's enjoyed listening me too.
I i i hope so too.
That's the idea Okay, Emma.
Well, great.
Really nice to talk to you.
Really nice to meet you and stuff and all the best and have a lovely rest of your day down there in Australia.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Well, I'm probably about to go and organise dinner, but you have a good rest of your day.
I will.
I will indeed.
Okay.
Nice one.
Awesome.
See you soon.
Well, that was nice.
Emma is lovely.
And it was very pleasant to meet her and chat to her.
So there we have it.
How was that for you, listeners?
What was it like?
I expect that you may well be one of her subscribers.
I mean out of the 626 million, which is probably even more now.
Now that this has been published, it's probably gone up since then.
You might be one of her subscribers.
You might be one of her subscribers.
Listening back to that, as I was kind of editing this together, just sort of listening back to that conversation.
I have to say I do feel a little bit awkward about some of the things I said about Emma's car.
Because she obviously has very sentimental associations with it.
Because it reminds her of her father, who is no longer with us, right?
So she was being quite sentimental about it and obviously has these strong emotional connections to it.
And then there's me talking about smashing it to pieces in a computer game.
So i hope that that wasn't inappropriate, but i think she was okay with it.
But anyway, i hope i wasn't too insensitive there.
But i think it's all right because emma's lovely and it was.
It was very pleasant to talk to her, as i said, and it was nice to actually meet her in person after being aware of a lot of her content on youtube.
So that's, it's a funny experience that when you've sort of got to know someone just through YouTube or something and then you actually talk to them in real life.
It was very weird.
It's like I'd stepped into an alternate reality, like I'd stepped into her YouTube channel.
Check out her online community, which is called Hey Lady.
It is supposed to be a safe, supportive place where women can practice English together.
She's chosen to make a women-only space.
So naturally, it's for the ladies.
But you can check it out heyladyio, if you're looking for a space where you can improve your English fluency and confidence in a supportive environment.
OK.
All right, everyone.
That's the end of this episode.
You can leave your comments in the comments section.
I'm always curious to see your responses and all the rest of it.
All right.
Good.
Thanks again to Emma.
And thanks again to you for being a wonderful listener who listens all the way to the end of my episodes.
Speak to you next time.
Hope everything's well out there in Lepland, wherever you are, whichever corner of Lepland you live in.
I will speak to you next time.
But otherwise, have a lovely morning, afternoon, evening or night.
And until we meet again, I will say goodbye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Strange ending.
Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.
And the usual moments of humour and fun.
Plus, with your subscription, you will be directly supporting my work and making this whole podcast project possible.
For more information about Luke's English Podcast Premium, go to teacherlukecouk slash premium info.
