Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds.
Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise
prices due to inflation.
They said yes.
And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those owners to your contracts, they
said, what the f**k are you talking about?
You insane Hollywood s**t.
So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month.
Give it a try at MintMobile.com slash switch.
$45 up front for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited
time.
You're listening to Luke's English podcast.
For more information, visit teacheluke.co.uk.
Hello there, this is Luke.
Hello.
Just before the beginning of this episode, just before we start properly, I just wanted
to let you know about a free online workshop, which I'm giving on Zoom on Thursday the
18th of April 2024.
Okay, I'm doing an online workshop on Zoom.
It's completely free.
Thursday the 18th of April at 10am UK time.
That's 10 o'clock in the morning.
Greenwich Mean Time GMT UK time.
It's 30 minutes long.
And I'll be talking about how to learn vocabulary, okay, and giving my top tips for vocabulary
acquisition.
And my talk is going to be part of an online event, which is called the Advanced English
Summit, okay.
The Advanced English Summit is a free series of online workshops led by 10 different teachers
over three days.
Everybody is welcome to attend.
And that means you, let me just read from the website page for this event.
You'll find a link for this in the description.
So the Advanced English Summit is for you if you want to get to advanced English level
fast.
In three days, you'll get help from expert teachers so that you can increase your English
vocabulary, speak more fluently, develop your English grammar and writing, understand
spoken English more easily and succeed in English exams.
The best part is completely free.
So it takes place from Wednesday the 17th of April to Friday the 19th of April.
You'll get tips and strategies from 10 English teachers, podcasters and coaches, including
some people that you may know.
For example, Bri A.C. from into the story, Ben Gill from to the point English with Ben.
Where Whitmel is the organizer of the event, I'll be there of course doing my talk.
Craig Wheeling from English podcast and plenty of other people too.
Okay.
And if you want to join, you just need to reserve your space.
Okay.
And what you do is just enter your email address on this page and you'll be sent the details
by Claire.
Okay.
The link is in the description.
Just follow the link to the landing page.
You can enter your email address and Claire will send you the details.
Okay.
My presentation is called How to Really Learn Vocabulary and Not Just Stair at Wordlists.
And mine is happening, as I've said, Thursday the 18th of April, 10 AM UK time, that's 11
AM Central European time.
I will let you work out the time difference wherever you are.
Obviously for some of you that will be in the middle of the night, I'm sorry.
But all the talks are going to be recorded and you'll be able to watch them later.
Okay.
So again, just go to that website.
The link is in the description.
Enter your email address and you'll be sent the details by Claire.
And that's it.
Okay.
So now let's start this episode properly and here we go.
And we are recording.
Hello.
Welcome back to Luke's English podcast.
This is episode number 876.
And this is a rambling episode which means that well, I'm just going to be rambling about
lots of stuff.
And the episode does have a title.
The title of the episode is Thoughts and Comments on Recent Episodes, forward slash a Spring
Equinox Rumble.
Thoughts and comments on recent episodes.
Yeah, I really thought long and hard about the episode title this time.
I thought, what's the most click baity title I can come up with?
It's the most compelling and intriguing title like I can come up with.
And in the end, I just went for the most basic and descriptive one Thoughts and Comments
on Recent Episodes, which is pretty much what you're going to get in the episode.
I'll be giving my thoughts and comments on recent episodes of this podcast.
Okay.
It's there's also a second title for the episode, which is a Spring Equinox Rumble.
And every now and then I do these rambling episodes where I just kind of like, I don't
know, just sort of like talking a fairly stream of consciousness way about this and that.
I do actually have a focus for this one.
And that is, as we know, to talk about Thoughts and Comments on Recent Episodes.
But I thought I'd add the other part, a Spring Equinox Rumble, because normally I kind
of normally these sorts of episodes are done, I don't know, I do them maybe once every
a couple of months or something like that.
So it's like a winter rumble, a summer rumble, a spring rumble.
This one a Spring Equinox Rumble.
I just like the word equinox.
I think that's why I put it in there.
I just love the word equinox.
But I mean, it does put the episode into a sort of moment in time because as I'm recording
this, it's the beginning of April.
So we had the Spring Equinox just a couple of weeks ago.
And that means it's now Spring.
It's Springtime.
Spring has sprung.
And it would be nice if someone could inform the weather.
If someone could just tell the weather.
Like, excuse me.
Yeah, it's Springtime now.
Okay.
Just let the clouds, let the sky know that it should actually be Springtime.
So I think really the weather that we're having at the moment is fairly typical for Spring
in this part of the world.
It's kind of sunshine and showers.
So clouds that drop all their rain and then move on, then you get a bit of sunshine.
And then the clouds come back a bit more rain.
At the moment it's gray, it's overcast.
Who knows?
The sun might break through any moment.
Or there might be a sudden downpour of rain.
Obviously, incredibly important information for all of you listening.
In fact, all exciting details listeners.
It has just started to pour with rain.
How exciting.
There you go.
It's too loud.
Actual weather, so in effect, on Luke's English podcast there.
So there you go.
I just wanted to paint a picture.
The Spring Equinox, this is when the days and the nights become exactly the same length.
So in the winter, the nights are longer than the days.
And then we get to a point where it's exactly the same length.
So the days and nights are the same length of time.
And that's the Spring Equinox.
And after that point, the days get longer than the nights.
And you enter this wonderful period of summer, which you can hear happening outside my window.
Right, that's the sound of summertime.
Apparently, at the end of this week, it's going to be 27 degrees, 27 degrees at the beginning
of April, which is weird and disturbing.
So anyway, Spring Equinox ramble, the clocks went forwards.
The clocks went forwards.
Because we changed the clocks.
In some parts of the world, we changed the clocks.
It's called daylight saving time.
Because we want to save the daylight.
Quick, save as much daylight as we can possibly get.
Because during the winter months, we've just been starved of daylight.
And then at the beginning of April, we all emerge into the world blinking into the light.
Ah, the sun.
You know, and we have daylight saving, which basically means that the clocks go forwards,
so that we get more sunlight in the evening.
We can just enjoy a bit more sunlight in our day that way.
And it put just that one hour of difference.
And what happens is, so that the clocks changed at the weekend.
And I can guarantee that all across, well, everywhere the clocks changed,
but certainly in the UK, where the clocks changed as well,
we have daylight saving in the UK and lots of other places.
But I can guarantee that in the UK, the conversations went like this.
Also, the clocks changed tonight, don't they?
The clocks changed tonight.
Oh yeah, really?
So do they go forwards or back?
Forward or back?
Forward or back?
Well, wait a minute.
It's a fall back and spring forward.
So they go forwards.
The clocks go forwards.
Does that mean?
Wait, does that mean we lose an hour of sleep or we gain an hour of sleep?
Which one is it?
Oh, God, the tension.
And you're just working out, oh no, that means we're going to lose an hour of sleep.
No, no.
There's the only advantage of going into winter time is that in October,
at some point, the clocks go back and we get an extra hour in bed.
But no, this time of year, you lose the hour.
And that single hour, losing that single hour, has confused my family completely.
Literally, every morning, since the clocks changed, I've been, I've been getting up,
right?
Because I get up and I'm like, right, I've got to get everyone's got to get up,
I've got to get the kids to school.
You know, I sort of stress out.
And everyone else, mainly my wife and daughter, because our son is nine months old and
he's just like, it doesn't take much to wake him up.
But my daughter and my wife, they're just like completely fast asleep, completely dead
to the world.
They're like, wake up, wake up for God's sake, wake up.
Come on.
And they're like, wake up.
What's the matter with you?
Sort of buckets of cold water, splash.
That's a little bit of an exaggeration.
But anyway, it's difficult to get them to wake up in the morning.
Anyway, so I'm fine, thanks for asking and I hope you're doing fine too.
And I'm, this is a rambling episode, as I said.
And one of the things that I do in these rambling episodes is I give myself certain rules,
okay?
And the rule for this one is, there's only really one rule and that is that I'm not
allowed to start again, okay?
Once I've started, I have to keep going.
And so that's what's happening, right?
And so no, I'm not allowed to stop and start again, which does happen sometimes when I
record this podcast, I kind of start talking and then I say something stupid or something
like that or I don't finish a sentence properly.
And I kind of go, oh, never mind, let's start it all over again.
But not today, I'm trying to impose this rule on myself to just keep going and make it
work because I don't want to lose any time.
Okay, I've been preparing a PDF for this episode, which I will start reading from soon.
And while preparing the PDF, I was looking for some images, right?
So I wanted to have an image like a logo or some kind of podcast image to go at the top
of the PDF, which would serve as a visual logo for this particular episode, which as I've
said is called Thoughts and Comments on Recent Episodes.
Subtitle, a Spring Equinox Rambl.
So I asked Microsoft co-pilot, which is a form of generative AI, right?
It's like chat GPT.
You've got chat GPT. You've also got other AI chat bots that you can use, including Microsoft
co-pilot, which I've been playing around with.
I understand that co-pilot actually uses chat GPT as its kind of base software somehow.
Anyway, so it's kind of like still using chat GPT.
It's chat GPT for.
So I've been using, I've been playing around with Microsoft co-pilot and it makes images
as well, which is quite cool.
You can ask it to make images.
It's just in your prompt, you just say, can you make an image of blah, blah, blah,
right?
Obviously, you don't write blah, blah, blah, unless you want it to make an image of
blah, blah, blah, but obviously you'd have to write.
Can you create an image of a beautiful sunset or something like that?
And it'll do it for you.
So I thought, maybe I can get co-pilot to make an image for this episode, which I can
put at the top of the PDF.
And that's what I've been trying to do.
And so let me just share, let me share what happened when I asked it to make an image for
this episode.
OK, now, video viewers, I'll show you the images that it came up with.
Audio listeners, you won't be able to see the images, but I will put the images on the
website page for this episode and on the PDF.
So if you really want to see those images, you can find them.
Just click the link in the description of your podcasting app.
Otherwise, you can just let me paint a picture with words.
So my first prompt was, can you create an image for an episode of Luke's English podcast
called, episode 876, thoughts and comments on recent episodes?
In the episode, Luke is responding to comments from his podcast listeners and co-pilot said,
OK, yeah, I'll try to create that.
The first thing is with these AI generated images, they're often quite brilliant.
It's stunning what it can do.
The illustrations it comes up with are often really impressive.
They look like they've done by a person.
But then when you take a closer look, they're often weird little details, strange, slightly
disturbing details, and it often slips into the realm of some sort of weird hallucinatory
nightmare quite quickly.
It's strange.
AI generated imagery is really, really weird, especially if you spend any time looking at
it closely.
So the first thing it came up with was a picture of, I suppose, me.
It's by the way, whenever AI, whenever I ask some AI to make an image of me, can you make
an image of Luke from Luke's English podcast recording an episode?
It always shows me as being a bit ginger, which I'd not show how I feel about that.
Does that mean I'm ginger?
Or just computers think I'm ginger?
I don't know.
But I suppose I am a bit, I've talked about this before.
I do have the ginger gene, which is more obvious when I have a full beard because you can see
the ginger in my beard.
So anyway, it always shows me as being ginger.
But the first image was a picture of a man sitting on a bench in the middle of a street
with a zebra crossing in front of him, a bit like the crossing from the Abbey Road Beatles
album cover.
And with headphones on, maybe recording an episode of a podcast, although there's no microphone.
But the weird thing is, well, it's obviously in New York, right?
It seems to be sitting in the middle of the street in Manhattan.
There are a couple of yellow taxis in the background and skyscrapers, including what
looks like the Empire State Building.
But then when you actually look at the details, you can see there's all these people lying
around on the floor and there's a crowd of people in the background.
It looks like almost like a crowd of rioters or zombies or something in the background.
And lots of people lying down on the floor, like kind of bodies on the floor.
And when you look carefully at the bodies, you realize that they are very strange.
It's like all these weird body parts, which are all sort of like fused together.
So there's a person on the floor here in front of a car.
And you look and it's like, okay, so there's a body here.
This is a torso with two arms.
But then instead of there being a head where there should be a head, there's what looks
like another arm coming out.
And then, and they're just lying on the floor, like what happened to this person or whatever
this is?
And then next to it, it's like the person's leg seems to join up with like part of another
person's torso.
And then you look at the other people and they've got weird kind of nightmarish, garbled
faces.
And what's going on in this picture?
It's extremely creepy.
And in the sky there are what look like a few airplanes flying.
But one of them is like a cross between a bird and an airplane.
Another one is an airplane.
And then there's like a weird sort of disembodied robot eye.
Oh, it's all very strange.
What's going on in that picture?
And another one was a bit better.
It shows someone who sort of looks like a cartoon version of me sitting in a pod room with
a microphone and headphones on, thinking carefully about recording an episode.
He's got his hands, he's got his face in his hands, sort of he's holding his resting
his chin on his hands.
And his beard is very full.
So the internet still clearly thinks that I copilot at least thinks that I'm still bearded,
a still a bearded podcaster.
He's sitting there with a pair of glasses on, which I don't wear glasses.
And then a speech bubble coming out of his head that says 8, 7, 6 thoughts on recent
episodes.
But when you look carefully at the word thoughts, it's spelled very weirdly.
It's T double H. And those two Hs are joined together.
T double H, O U G H T S S.
And it's like, T T T T T S on recent episodes.
And there's a weird, freaky sort of, I don't know what that is, sort of teddy bear thing
in the background.
And a weird, is that a camera or a microphone behind me?
And the thing is the expression on my face is, I don't look happy.
I look very serious and concerned.
So I didn't like that one.
I didn't think that was quite right almost, but not quite there.
And then the next one is even weirder.
So it's another stylized illustration.
And I look very concerned in this one.
I've got a very deeply concerned expression on my face.
And then all these speech bubbles coming out of my head, but it's all nonsense.
Like there's 8, 6, 7 question mark, question mark.
And then other words, which are not really words, they're just shaped that look like letters
that doesn't mean anything.
It looks like some sort of strange sort of foreign language or something.
And then there's next to me on the table, there's this weird sort of metallic, what is
that?
A coffee maker?
I mean, it's a kind of cross between a microphone and a coffee machine.
What's going on?
I don't know, so I couldn't use that.
I like his clothes though.
He's wearing a nice sort of leather jacket with sheepskin collars.
And then there's sort of denim shirt, but he does look very serious.
Doesn't look like me, really.
And then the next one is a little bit better.
I look happier.
The headphones have got a union jack on them.
The sweatshirt that I'm wearing has what looks like an American flag, which isn't quite
right.
And then again, there's lots of speech bubbles around my head, but the speech bubbles
are written in a weird, garbled language again, except for one, which says, thoi-guts
and comments on recent episodes.
Again, weird spelling.
I mean, I could go on.
I asked it to, I said, could you make it more British?
And it came up with a few others.
Another one of a cartoon version of me, but I just look really sad.
And that's, I mean, is that what Microsoft co-pilot, is that what Microsoft thinks is British?
It's like, okay, make it more British.
Okay, we'll just make something kind of the same, just more sad, because the British people
are sad, aren't they?
Because it rains all the time.
Another one of me looking, I suppose it's, that's not bad.
I'm sitting in a chair.
I look quite handsome in this picture, more handsome than I do in real life.
And then behind me is what looks like a Twitter comment or something.
But it's certainly not more British.
And then on the shelf behind me, there's like this weird thing.
What is that?
A cross between a toaster and a speaker with smoke coming out of it.
I don't know what's going on.
It's a weird nightmarriage world.
And then another picture, it's me, a kind of version of me with my elbows on a desk and
my chin in my hands again, and a microphone on the table.
That's good.
And in the background, there are some, there are some mountains.
So for some reason, there's a mountain view in the background.
And then you got the, the, the world, a world map made up of people's faces.
But when you look at the people's faces, they're all weird and twisted and ugly.
And it's again, we've gone into a weird nightmare.
And they've, they're speech bubbles coming out of them and with, and they're all speaking
weird, non-existent, garbled languages.
And one of the speech bubbles is just a picture of a weird old man's face for no reason.
It's just a nightmare.
Another one, but this time there's a tear coming from my eye.
Why am I sad on the internet?
Why does British mean sad?
I don't know.
Oh God.
It just goes on.
Another one I look fairly happy, but all the, all the languages are weird again and, uh,
dear.
And I wrote to it.
I said, make a fun logo for a rambling episode.
Make a fun logo for a rambling episode of Luke's English podcast.
And it came up with something a lot more fun.
But the spelling is weird.
So Luke's English podcast, Luke's is spelled L-U-K apostrophe S, which is just wrong.
It's a picture of me as a cowboy with a hamburger and a cup of coffee.
Like what?
And then another one, Lux English pod post.
Oh dear.
What is going on with these logos?
Why have I got weird cowboy hats on?
It's so strange.
And then I said, okay, create an image of someone rambling through the countryside of
podcast comments.
I thought rambling also means walking in the countryside.
So I thought that could be good.
Sort of rambling through the countryside.
But the countryside is made up of listeners comments.
So I asked Copilot to do that.
And it did some quite good things here where there's a, in this case, the person walking
through the countryside is a female.
And she's got three, three arms inexplicably.
Um, that's odd.
So girl walking through the countryside with lots of weird psychedelic comments in weird,
made up languages.
But her face is strange.
She's got no eyes in her face.
It's just all smooth skin where her eyes should be.
Why so weird?
And then another one, but it's like a kind of, um, it's like the person walking through
the countryside has taken magic mushrooms.
And it's all a bit intense.
And there's a big massive microphone rising up in the sky.
And again, another one where all these speech bubbles are all coming out from some place
in the distance.
And I guess the person who's supposed to be me is actually Indian or looks kind of Indian
in this picture, which is, um, which is interesting.
Um, and I said, can you make all the comments in English and make the person look like Luke
from Luke's English podcast, include a microphone too.
And it did that.
And it started getting somewhere now, right?
There's an image now of me, what should be me again, with a hat on for some reason.
And I'm a bit more blonde in this picture than I am in real life, rambling through the
countryside, walking along a country lane towards what looks like downtown Abbey or something.
Right?
It looks like the English countryside with a beautiful sunrise or sunset and birds in
the distance and a cornfield.
And these weird, spiky bushes that look more like sea creatures.
And I'm holding a stick, you know, a walking stick, but on the top of the stick, there's
a microphone.
That one's not bad.
I think of all of the, of all the images it's come up with.
I think that's probably the better one, the best one.
Um, another one where I seem to be dressed as a cowboy.
I've got a cowboy hat and a long kind of overcoat.
And at more speech bubbles, but none of them make sense.
And you know, stuff like that, it just gets weird.
So, oh yeah.
And then, uh, okay, I'm still going on about this because I'm kind of fascinated and slightly
obsessed with what AI can do.
Um, lastly, um, Copilot actually suggested that I could include some British wildlife
in the picture, like squirrels or foxes.
So I said, okay, do that.
And it came up with a picture of, um, a picture of someone who I suppose looks, well,
kind of in a sort of English-ish looking person with a microphone, standing in the countryside,
podcasting, um, with an audience of squirrels and foxes or what looks like a cross between
a fox and a squirrel.
And there's some other creature, some other non-descript, weird kind of mutant koala thing.
And it's, and the speech bubble says all English comments, just all English comments.
And then another one, almost photorealistic image of, of someone who could maybe be me,
but with glasses and an audience of a squirrel and a fox and another squirrel and a styling.
And then a speech bubble, but the speech bubble is just garbled nonsense.
And so on and so forth.
So anyway, there you go.
I just really needed to share that with you.
I think it's time to actually get into the PDF now.
But you'll find a PDF, a link to this PDF on the page for this episode on my website.
You'll also find a link to the PDF in the show notes of this episode wherever you are
listening to it.
So you can open the PDF and just see the stuff I'm going to be reading from.
And so all of that stuff I just did, that maybe 20 minutes of nonsense, is all pre-PDF stuff.
I'm going to start reading from the PDF now.
So here we go.
Five, four, three, two, one, here we go.
So episode eight, seven, six, thoughts and comments on recent episodes, a spring equinox
ramble.
Hello listeners.
Is it okay to say hello after 20 minutes?
I don't know.
I make the rules.
So yes, it is.
I've just decided it's fine.
So hello listeners, welcome to this new episode in which I'm going to ramble for a while in
English, of course.
It'd be weird if I rambleed in basically any other language on this English podcast in
Welsh or something.
It would be cool, but I can't do that.
And no one wants me to maybe someone should do a Welsh podcast.
Anyway, maybe they have.
I think they have BBC Wales, I think, does a Welsh podcast.
Anyway, I'm going to ramble for a while in English, mostly about recent episodes,
including comments from listeners and my responses to them.
At some points during the episode, I'll be reading from notes I wrote earlier, and at
other times I'll be speaking spontaneously.
You'll be able to find these notes and transcriptions on the page for this episode on my website,
or in the show notes.
The aim in this episode is to give some thoughts and reflections on recent episodes and respond
to some listener comments, maybe from you.
That's you, maybe.
I'll also let you know the latest from LEP Premium, including a little heads up for premium
subscribers about what I've published recently and what's coming up over the next few months.
So this is all going to be fairly self-absorbed stuff where my podcast eats itself a bit.
Okay, a podcast in which I talk about my podcast.
But I suppose, since you're all listeners to this podcast, and I'm the one who makes this
podcast, it is in fact,
this podcast which we all have in common.
And so it seems natural for me to make an episode about it, because we're all on the same
page, and we're all invested in the same subject matter of the episode.
Right?
Right.
Okay?
Okay.
Everyone understand?
No.
But that's okay.
We're going to keep going.
Yes.
All right.
So thoughts and reflections on recent episodes and listener comments.
So this is going to include some comments on the things I've done in episodes recently.
The methods I'm using, my rationale for doing the things I do, as well as the general
attitude and approach that you can have as a listener.
So when I publish episodes, I see all the comments come in on the various platforms.
Right?
It's like a train station, and the comments are the trains, and the platforms are the platforms.
Right?
So to be clear, by platforms, I mean different sites, different apps, streaming platforms,
like YouTube, Spotify, my website, my email inbox.
Right?
So those are the platforms where the comments are coming in, like trains in a train station
sort of.
Well, it's not really.
They're not nothing like trains.
Are there comments aren't really like trains?
The only similarities that they arrive on different platforms.
That's it.
So comments and messages come in via those platforms I mentioned earlier, and I read
them, right? So they just pop up on my phone.
I go into, for example, my YouTube studio app and just have a look at the comments and
see what's going on.
And comments and messages come in via those platforms, and I read them in spare moments
during my day, like when I'm in the queue at the supermarket.
And I should be thinking about whether I have enough dairy products in my shopping basket
and how to ensure that my family and I consume at least five portions of fruit and vegetables
a day.
So when I should be thinking about those things often, I'm just like, hmm, look at the
comments.
Most comments come from YouTube these days, mainly because the platform really makes it
easy to leave comments.
The comments section is just right there, isn't it?
And it's a big part of the YouTube experience, isn't it?
And this is where you go.
Yes, yes, it is Luke.
So whenever, by the way, whenever anyone says, isn't it like that to you, you have to go,
oh, yeah, yeah, it is, yeah.
Okay?
Right, so that's clear, isn't it?
You go, yes, yes, Luke, yes, it's very clear.
Good.
All right.
All right.
So the comments section is a big part of the YouTube experience, isn't it?
Yes, yes, Luke, it is, yes.
In fact, if you are currently on YouTube watching this, then go ahead and leave a comment
right now.
Right.
Why not?
Just go into the comments section.
It's right there, isn't it?
Yeah, it is, yeah.
So it's right there.
So just go in and leave a comment.
You could tell us who you are and how many portions of fruit or vegetables you've eaten
so far today and what they were.
Okay?
For example, hello, I'm Luke.
My name's Luke and I've eaten two portions of fruit so far today, half a banana and half
an apple.
All right.
Now, does that actually count as two portions or is that just one portion, half an apple
and half a banana?
Is that two portions of fruit and veg?
Is that not veg?
All right.
Is that two portions of fruit, half a banana, half an apple or is that just one portion
of fruit?
I don't know, but again, that's another thing you could, you could, you know, comment
on.
So what's your name and how many portions of fruit slash veg have you eaten today and
what was it?
So I had half a banana and half an apple.
I also ate some bread earlier as well.
Does bread count as a vegetable?
It doesn't does it.
It doesn't.
So anyway, half a banana, half an apple.
There you go.
What about you?
And if you're not on YouTube, then you can leave a comment, well, where else can you
where can you leave a comment if you're listening to the audio version?
You can go to my website.
Just click the link in the description for the episode page and at the bottom there is
a section where you can write comments using the Discuss comments plugin.
You don't need to have an account with that comments plugin, discuss.
You can just leave a comment as a guest if you want, as a ninja.
So you can do that or I think on Spotify, you can leave comments now.
So anyway, most comment come, come, come, come, come, come.
Hmm, good.
So most comments come from YouTube these days.
So listen as a more ninja ish because there isn't always an easily accessible comment section
available, although you can leave comments on Spotify now.
And my website is always there for your comments.
Don't forget about my website.
It gets lonely.
And then we see a picture of a computer looking lonely, which I asked Microsoft co-pilot to
generate.
And you might be thinking, okay, that's, that's pretty good.
Co-pilot did a good job on that image, Luke.
And actually again, if you have a closer look, there seems to be weird bits of broken keyboard
on the desk.
There's an Apple Mac computer with a keyboard and a mouse and a nice cup of coffee and is
that an Apple?
I don't know what kind of fruit that is.
And a mouse, I mean, the computer mouse, not, not the animal.
And a sad looking little fluffy character and a sort of plant and then bits of broken
keyboard.
So I don't know what's going on.
Anyway, I read all the comments that I get for better or worse.
Usually better.
The majority of comments are fab and everyone's cool.
But then some comments are not and people can be weird.
But anyway, the less said about that, the better probably.
So comments come in and naturally I want to respond to these comments, right?
Comments come in naturally I want to respond to them.
Imagine, right?
Imagine you put some work into something like, for example, a podcast in which you say
loads of things and you put your heart into it, you know, you're blood, your blood
sweat and tears and you know, you take a piece of your soul and put it into the form
of a podcast.
You say loads of things and then you publish it and then other humans actually respond.
It feels like a dialogue and I often want to respond to the responses to certain things
especially, right?
If it's something I feel I want to say, like I want to clarify something that someone
has misunderstood or just show my appreciation for the comment or even to defend myself
or something, right?
To defend myself.
Like, for example, no, I'm not growing a beard.
It grows itself because people write that, oh, you're growing a beard.
I'm not growing a beard.
Beard, you can't grow a beard.
A beard just grows itself.
Right.
What do you think I'm doing?
Taking a beard, putting it in a plant pot at night and giving it water and little drops
of beard fertilizer and putting it out in the sun, growing, no, that's not how it works.
It just grows itself.
You are aware of how hair works, aren't you?
So, you know, that sort of thing.
But I can't do that, I can't reply because I'd end up spending all my time doing that.
And obviously, I have to try to manage my time carefully.
Life is short and time waits for no man or woman.
So I have to be wise about how I spend that time.
I'm only human.
And I have basic obligations and needs to attend to.
Not least my basic bodily functions.
Followed by my other responsibilities such as family and work.
And yes, I do wash my hands in between those different responsibilities.
So there's a little glimpse into my priorities.
Bodily functions first, then family, then work.
In an episode like this, I can try to somehow gather together all the things that sort of
fly through my mind in those in between moments.
When I have a look at comments or when my brain is digesting the comments I've read,
or when I wake up in a cold sweat with something profoundly important on the tip of my tongue,
and then promptly go back to sleep and forget all about it.
I can do episodes like this to try to consolidate all those thoughts and then sail the things
I want to get off my chest if I can.
Then I can move on more comfortably to new things.
So I'm going to talk about the MBTI personality test episode, the birthday party story episode,
the walk and talking Paris episode, and the AP on his island episode and respond to some
of the main points made by listeners about those episodes.
Okay.
All right.
And at this point, I would like to give voice to someone out there who's going, you talk
a lot, don't you?
You do a lot of talking.
Yes, I do.
Yeah, that's the idea.
You see, that's the idea of this podcast is it's talking, you know, it's listening to
English being spoken.
It wouldn't be any good if I was just like, right, okay, I'm just going to be silent for
a bit.
I wouldn't want there to be too much talking.
So I'll just...
Mm-hmm.
Sorry, I'm trying not to do too much talking because some people sometimes say that I talk
too much.
So...
Okay.
Oh, talk again.
All right.
Oh, I need to just give a very brief mention of Luke's English podcast premium.
Okay.
I'm going to say this stuff really fast now.
Okay.
And that's another thing that people sometimes say to me.
They say, well, the people either write to me, you speak too fast, can you slow down?
And then other people say to me, Luke, I can understand every single word that you say.
Could you...
Do you really speak like a normal human being?
Because I can understand everything you're saying, but then other people can't understand
them.
Do you change the way you speak for the podcast?
Not really.
I think that's just how I speak now.
I think I've just...
I've just kind of...
What...
How can I say?
I can't say anything apparently.
Struggle anyway.
Sometimes.
How can I answer that question?
I think having been an English teacher for over 20 years, I've developed a sort of
clear communication style, at least in the way that I...
At least in my voice.
Obviously in an episode like this, I'm rambling all over the place and going from one stupid
subject to another and making funny comments and being silly and, you know, just following
whatever I want to talk about, which obviously is...
Goes against a lot of the wisdom that you would get from, for example, a communication
expert, someone who is giving professional advice on giving a professional presentation.
They would say, don't ramble, try and keep it really short and simple, which is very
good advice.
So in terms of the way that I speak, the speed that I speak at, the pronunciation and
all the rest of it, I do try to be clear, right?
And I develop this style from speaking to, first of all, groups of adults for hours and
hours, right, as a teacher, and also the fact that those adults are learners of English.
Now for the podcast, I try to speak naturally, but clearly, okay?
So that means that I'm not...
Not grading my language like the way I would grade my language, grade my English for a group
of sort of pre-intermediate or elementary learners.
In those situations, I'm much more controlled and speak a lot more clearly.
I still try to present an authentic version of English, which is in which a lot of the
words are linked up together.
Okay, I want people always to be able to hear a fluid, natural form of English, but I
think I do speak quite clearly.
So I'm still using connected speech, but it's really hard to...
It's actually hard to put my finger on this question because it's almost second nature
to me now.
But anyway, I think I try to communicate clearly.
And I also think about the...
I'm always very conscious of the actual words I'm using.
And I do try to put things in a way that learners of English can understand.
This is maybe one of the reasons why my episodes end up being quite long, is because I take
ideas that could easily be expressed...
If I was talking to native speakers of English, I might take my ideas and bundle them up more
and express them in a more bundled up way.
But what I do on my podcast is often I take my ideas and I take them, separate them out
from each other and put them end on end so that I'm really just trying to say one thing
at a time.
Okay, I think I lost coherence there.
But speaking speed, yes, I try to speak clearly.
I don't know how I ended up talking about this.
But yes, that's it.
So people write comments and they say, you speak too quickly, which I understand.
But I do...
I am trying to pitch the show at an intermediate and above level.
Okay, people ask me about that as well.
What's the level of the podcast?
Really the level of this podcast.
For anyone who can follow or most of what I'm saying.
If you can keep listening and you don't give up, then the podcast is for you.
Now for some people, that will be more challenging than others.
But I have never decided, right, this is going to be a podcast for B2 students.
I've just decided I'm going to speak in a fairly natural way and try to present English
to people who are trying to learn it.
And it's for people who are able to follow most of what I'm saying.
Anyway, I'm getting all confused.
Look, see what's happening.
Normally at this point I might decide I'm going to start again, but I'm not going to
do that.
I'm going to keep going forwards.
So people ask me to slow down, which I don't want to do.
And then other people ask me if I'm speaking more slowly than I normally would.
And the answer is not really.
But what I'm going to do now is read through some stuff about Luke's English podcast premium,
but I'm going to make a genuine effort to speak quickly.
So this is going to be a challenging section, possibly.
Here we go.
So I'm going to speak quickly, but hopefully quite clearly as well, enunciating the different
sounds, but it's all going to be quick.
By the way, you can control the speed.
Did you know that?
In the settings, either on YouTube or in your podcast app, you've got a playback speed.
And if the podcast is too fast for you, you can slow the playback speed down and everything
will be a little slower.
Or if you want to make it all quicker, you can make the playback speed faster.
This is up to you.
So this is going to be a bit like going to 1.5 speed.
OK?
So a brief mention of LEP premium.
First, before I come on to those recent episodes, allow me to talk for a few minutes about recent
premium offerings and also upcoming premium episodes.
Non-premium listeners at this point, you have two options, probably more.
Option number one, just feel bad for not being a premium subscriber.
And we could now play some sad music at this point.
We need some sad music.
Here's some sad music for those non-premium subscribers.
People's feeling very sad, non-premium people.
I know some of you can't sign up.
It's just the state of the world today, isn't it?
Some things are just not available to everyone.
I know.
So let's just spare a thought for those people who aren't premium subscribers for whatever
reason.
It's all right guys, it's going to be OK.
It's going to be all right.
Anyway, so that's the first reason that you might not be a premium listener.
Well, that's the first thing that you can do if you're a non-premium listener that you
just feel bad, but not for long, hopefully.
Second thing is you just go ahead and sign up and find out what you've been missing out
on all this time.
How do you do that Luke?
You're wondering, well, just go to teacherlook.co.uk slash premium info to get all of the premium
info.
So I'm now talking to premium subscribers and that includes the ones who've signed up
to LEP Premium on ACAST Plus and who've added LEP Premium to their podcast app of choice,
not Spotify, and actually listen to the episodes if that is you.
Nice one.
Now there's also a load of people who've signed up to LEP Premium who don't actually
listen to the content.
If that is you, I want to say, hello, what's going on?
Why aren't you listening to the premium episodes?
Is it perhaps because you don't really know how to get them?
You don't know where they are and how it works?
I think some people have been baffled by the process.
That just means confused, by the way.
But it's quite simple really.
When you sign up, you get a new subscription to Luke's English podcast, which includes
all the premium episodes as well as the normal ones.
But you have to add your new premium subscription to a podcast app on your phone, not Spotify.
Just sign into your ACAST Plus account and then you can manage your subscription and add
the shows to a podcast app, not Spotify.
Most people use Apple podcasts.
I recommend Pocketcasts, which is free on both iOS and Android, Android full stop.
Pocketcasts lets you make a playlist of favorited episodes and also has a search function which
lets you search for premium episodes.
They're all marked with a P, starting with P01 all the way up to the most recent one,
which is P58.
Most of those are in multiple parts.
Let's just take a break.
Take a break from speaking too quickly.
Everyone okay?
Yeah?
You're all right.
It's okay.
I'm doing it on purpose.
I'm doing it on purpose.
It's okay so that I don't spend too long talking about LEP premium here, but I have to
talk about LEP premium sometimes because this is the way that I get the message through,
you see?
Okay, you ready?
We're going to start speaking quickly again.
Okay, here we go.
Deep breath.
When you've added your new premium subscription to your podcast app of choice, not Spotify,
you can find the links for PDFs and video versions in the show notes of each episode.
Find into your Acast Plus account at teacherlook.co.uk slash account.
If you have any issues, try contacting support at acast.com.
Recent premium episodes, P57 and P58, premium subscribers.
Hello, I'll keep this brief.
Did you notice the vocabulary episode I did about the conversation with Lindsay that I
did a few weeks ago that was episode 868?
Did you notice the premium vocab episode I did in response to that episode?
In episode 868, Lindsay and I talked about social issues, economics, politics and how
things in the USA and UK have changed over the last few years and decades.
I went through the conversation and made a big list of vocabulary.
And in P57, I broke it all down, clarified and explained it in one epic monologue which
I recorded in my living room while a tiny fly kept trying to land on my head.
You can find it in your episode list if you are a premium subscriber.
This is P57 available in the list just after episode 868.
I also uploaded a two-part story episode for premium listeners a few weeks ago.
This is P58, part 1 and 2, plepsters.
You'll find it in your list just after episode 872.
It's a retelling of a classic fairy tale but done with a lot of tongue-in cheek humour.
You can listen to me read the story.
I explain the vocabulary as usual and then there's a special focus on pronunciation because
the story is full of rhyming words.
So there's a lot of practice with vowel sounds and also the usual listen and repeat practice
with the story.
That's P58, part 1 and 2.
Okay?
So that's P57 and P58 available now for premium listeners.
As always, there are PDFs for each episode and also video versions.
If you want to sign up to LEP Premium, just go to what is it?
Teachalook.co.uk slash premium info for more premium info.
There's nearly 200 premium episodes now.
You can access them all if you're a plepster and it costs about the same as a nice coffee
from you to me once a month.
In some countries, let's have the sad music again.
In some countries you can't sign up because there are sanctions in place.
That's actually serious, so no sad music.
In some countries you can't sign up because there are sanctions in place that affect your
banks and credit cards, then I'm afraid there's nothing I can do to help you there.
You'll just have to take it up with your country's president.
Good luck with that.
So in the pipeline for LEP Premium, language reviews for the MBTI personality test episode,
the Walk and Talk Paris episode and the AP on his island episodes.
Episodes.
Okay?
So there's going to be language reviews for all of those.
I have vocabulary lists for all of them and I plan to go through them and use my particular
set of teaching skills to remind you of the words and phrases you heard.
This is a tried and tested system of repetition reviewing clarification, giving examples and
giving you memory tests and chances to practice with the language.
Support from premium episodes can make a huge difference to your ability to pick up
use and remember English with my podcast Long Term Forever.
Let me say that again with reverb, Long Term Forever.
Forever.
Is that good enough reverb?
So I'm trying to add reverb to make it sounds more impressive.
How about this?
Forever.
Forever.
It's vaguely, how about this one?
Forever.
Ever.
Okay.
Okay.
Right.
We get the message.
So thoughts and comments on recent episodes then.
So we finally got there.
I can now go back to normal speed.
Okay.
Everyone all right?
You were getting used to that, weren't you?
I predict that you were getting used to listening to me speak at sort of a super fast speed.
But as I said, you can always control the playback speed by using the playback speed controls
in your podcast app of choice or YouTube.
So let me now give some thoughts and comments on recent episodes.
So let me now, as promised earlier, give some thoughts in response to recent episodes.
I just said that.
And some general listener reactions to will start with episode 872, which was called
the birthday party learning with a short story.
As usual, this was a popular episode as these short story episodes usually are.
I understand why stories are a compelling and vivid way to learn a language.
I'll write very positive and encouraging things in response to these episodes.
And I think they work very well.
I particularly enjoy reading out stories, performing them with my voice.
And generally the more acting I get to do, the happier I am.
Also, I really enjoy going through the vocabulary and explaining it and finding ways to help
you understand the language.
This is my bread and butter as an English teacher explaining language.
So I'll continue to do short story episodes as long as I can find appropriate stories
to share.
What's interesting about the response to this one, the response to this particular story,
is the way different people had different interpretations of the events of the story,
which again is another great thing about literature.
It's also true for films that different people can have different interpretations.
And by the way, I just poured myself a cup of water while saying that.
And I'm very happy because I didn't spill any of the water anywhere.
I managed a multitask.
I recorded a podcast and poured myself a drink at the same time.
And I'm doing this because when was it?
In one of the long episodes I did recently, someone wrote a comment saying,
have a drink of water for goodness sake.
I don't think it was that wording, exactly.
It was like, give your kidneys a chance and drink some water, man.
It's like, all right, I know.
I know that I have to stay hydrated.
I've got water.
I've always got loads of drinking water on the floor here next to me.
It might not be obvious, but I'm not just like never drinking water.
So just to prove it, look, I'm now going to drink some water out of a mug that says
London Podcast Festival on the front.
Cool fact, a crocodile can't stick out its tongue.
Also, you can get health insurance for a month or just under a year in some states.
United Healthcare Short-term Insurance Plans, underwritten by Golden Rule Insurance Company,
offer flexible budget-friendly coverage for you.
Learn more at UH1.com.
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Lovely water, it really is the best drink, isn't it?
It's the best liquid.
I think, pretty confident in saying that, I think water is the best liquid.
I know you're thinking what, even better than beer, better than tea, what other liquids
are better than water, really?
A milk?
What would we do without milk?
I don't know.
Leave your comments in the comments section, folks.
What's the best liquid?
I'd love to know what your thoughts are.
What do you think is the best liquid and why?
Don't forget to smash that like button as well.
Or splash that like button, maybe.
So people have different interpretations of the story, and this is a cool thing about
literature that the reader can have their own interpretation of what they're reading.
It's the same with films that the viewer, each different person takes a different interpretation
of the things they've seen.
Different people take different interpretations.
This is interesting.
So I think this was particularly, this was a particularly well-written story, the birthday
party.
Shall I read it to you again?
I'm going to read it to you again.
Let me read it to you again.
Can I do this?
Can I flip and do this?
It's not going to take long because it's really a short story.
It's only 300 words or something.
So just as a reminder, here it is again, the birthday party by Catherine Brush, slightly
faster version.
They were a couple in their late 30s and they looked unmistakably married.
They sat on the bonquette opposite us in a little narrow restaurant having dinner.
The man had a round, self-satisfied face with glasses on it, the woman was fadingly pretty
in a big hat.
There was nothing conspicuous about them, nothing particularly noticeable.
Until the end of their meal, when it suddenly became obvious that this was an occasion.
In fact, it was the husband's birthday and the wife had planned a little surprise for
him.
It arrived in the form of a small but glossy birthday cake with one pink candle burning
in the centre.
The head waiter brought it in and placed it before the husband and meanwhile the violin
and piano orchestra played happy birthday to you.
To him.
And the wife beamed with shy pride over her little surprise and such few people as they
were in the restaurant tried to help out with the pattering of a plow.
It became clear at once that help was needed because the husband was not pleased.
Instead he was hotly embarrassed and indignant at his wife for embarrassing him.
You looked at him and you saw this and you thought, oh now don't be like that.
But he was like that.
And as soon as the little cake had been deposited on the table and the orchestra had finished
the birthday piece and the general attention had shifted from the man and the woman, I
saw him say something to her under his breath, some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind.
I couldn't bear to look at the woman then so I stared at my plate and waited for quite
a long time.
Not long enough though, she was still crying when I finally glanced over there again.
Everything quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly all to herself under the gay, big brim of
her best hat.
Okay, so I think this was a particularly well written story by Catherine Brush.
1946 I think it is.
So particularly well written because the writer was very economical with language, just
giving us enough details to make it vivid but also not telling us how we should be feeling
or giving us too much specific information about the two people she was describing.
Although having said that, I think she does indicate how we should feel about the two
characters, she does a bit.
She just said what she saw quite plainly and let us try to put it all together.
What's definitely clear is that there's a strong emotional kick to the story when we suddenly
realize that something is deeply wrong between these two people and we get a brief but
very profound glimpse into their world.
So I'm now going to add different interpretations of the birthday party story.
Okay, different interpretations.
Okay.
So some people like me felt sympathy for the woman, assuming that her husband is selfish
and self-important and her sweet gesture was met with an unnecessarily harsh and cruel
response and that she's a victim here.
So right, so I'm going through the what most, I'm going through the main responses or
main different interpretations that people had.
So some people felt basically the same as me that the husband is really not very nice
and he's really cruel and mean and the wife is being subjected to his nasty treatment.
Right, for example, Olga-T-E7KD two weeks ago said, Hi Luke, great story and sad at the
same time.
I love it and open for different interpretations.
I think your interpretation is close to this, is close to what the narrator was trying
to say.
Okay, this sentence is a kind of evidence.
You looked at him and you saw this and you thought, Oh, don't be like that, but he was
like that.
So the writer with that line seems to be suggesting that the man is the one who's at
fault here.
Basically, says Olga, I agree with your point of view.
From my understanding, from my understanding, the story portrayed a typical
couple.
Okay, the story portrayed a typical couple where the man is always more important than
the woman.
That was Olga's interpretation and she said, unfortunately, it happens in many marriages.
Then another comment from Wilson Tavarez and I've added a few corrections into this
one.
I hope Wilson doesn't mind.
So it goes like this, this is a sad story about a couple that probably were living a long
and harsh time together, which ultimately damaged and destroyed their romantic and lovely
affair.
I'm actually going to make changes while I'm reading this.
The poor wife trying to recover the best moments of their life together, plans to give her
husband a very special birthday party surprise.
The poor wife trying to recover the best moments of their life together, planned to give her
husband a very special birthday surprise that could bring back these good feelings that
she had felt for him, you have feelings for someone.
But the surprise turned out to be a big disaster and disappointment broke her heart deeply,
making her cry tears of blood with herself said Wilson.
Tears of blood, that sounds a bit extreme.
Maybe you say that in your language, I don't know.
Do you say that in some languages to cry tears of blood?
In English we don't say that, it's not a common phrase to use in English and it sounds
like, wow, it sounds really kind of extreme, like something from a horror film.
So instead we just say it turned out to be a big disaster and disappointment broke her
heart deeply, making her cry tears of sorrow.
The writer, who was watching this scene in front of the couple, captured and described
perfectly all their emotions, body and body language, making us feel profound sorrow,
making us feel profound sorrow.
Okay, or profoundly sorry for the wife's feelings.
Wilson says, I'm sorry for my poor English, I would like to thank you very much for your
teachings.
You're welcome.
So basically, yeah, Wilson more or less agrees with the way I read the story, with the way
I interpreted the story.
Vivian Ayaka said, if my husband did something like that to me, I wouldn't show anything
at that moment, but surely my face would show how angry I was and when we were on our
own, I would definitely say something to him.
Okay, so Vivian would not take that kind of treatment.
So other people decided that in fact the wife was at fault here and that after more than
10 years of marriage, she should know her husband well enough not to organize her surprise
for him.
And therefore, this is all her fault and that even she deserves to be treated the way
she was treated.
So who go, K said, hey, I'm a bit surprised about the fact that the wife decided to make
this kind of surprise.
If it's a married couple, they should know each other pretty well and she should have
guessed the guy wouldn't have appreciated this kind of surprise.
Maybe they don't know well that maybe they don't know each other well anymore.
Maybe they don't know each other that well anymore or they've changed over time anyway.
Thanks for the story and the explanation.
Good episode has always cheesed.
Yeah, cheers.
So yeah, that's the point there that surely if she's been married to this guy for however
many years it is, they looked unmistakably married so they've probably been married for
a while that she would know that he doesn't like that kind of treatment.
But maybe not, I mean we don't know, do we?
Maybe he used to like that kind of thing.
Maybe he used to be sort of much, maybe things used to be much sweeter between them and
she's trying to recapture those moments but he these days maybe he's kind of changed
and who knows really?
Who knows?
Vishnesvethlana says, if I were here I wouldn't be happy either.
I don't like personal things being demonstrated in front of others, strangers particularly.
And if a woman is unaware what her husband likes and dislikes after years of marriage,
she's kind of not very clever.
Why show it to people around?
Why make yourself look so stupid and unhappy being surrounded by strangers?
What did she expect the reaction from her husband to be?
Yeah, I don't know.
Maybe but still in my opinion the husband doesn't have to react like that.
And why is he so self-important that just a nice little cake and a birthday song making
feel so small?
And is it really necessary to be so vindictive and cruel to his wife for trying to do something
sweet?
I think the writer reflects this when she writes that line.
You saw this and you thought, oh don't be like that but he was like that.
Another comment, this one from the website.
This is my first time here.
I really enjoyed your way of teaching.
Time went by fast.
It felt like 15 minutes rather than 42.
The husband seemed embarrassed maybe.
Personally I feel this way when my husband does something in public.
I don't like having other people's attention.
I prefer to have this kind of celebration in private but of course I wouldn't hurt my
husband this way.
Thanks teacher for this lovely story.
Maybe there's more going on here than we realize which is possible.
Maybe the wife is actually the cruel one somehow.
Although the writer gives no indication of it as far as I can tell.
I think that if we come to this conclusion that the wife is, she's the one who's out
fault and that the husband is just being reasonable.
If we come to that conclusion it's because I think we're probably adding something of
our own to the story and perhaps projecting ideas onto it but who knows.
I mean like I said before, that's the thing.
Everyone's free to work to interpret the story as they see.
But here are some more possibilities.
One suggestion is that the pink candle, the single pink candle is significant and represents
something.
One or two listeners speculated that perhaps the man is actually gay and this is the wife's
way of telling him that she knows this which would be again an interesting way of doing
that.
Is that what that means?
A single pink candle?
I mean pink, the pink color can represent homosexuality, right?
Sometimes but not always.
I don't know, it's possible I suppose.
Another listener said, is there any chance that the author wanted to imply that the husband
was gay as the word gay was used though by a different meaning, though with a different
meaning?
The word gay was used in this story, it was the gay big brim of her best hat.
But I don't think this is a way to suggest that the husband is gay.
I think that the word gay had an entirely different meaning in the 1940s.
So as I mentioned in the episode, and this is worth stating again because a couple of
people commented on this about the meaning of the word gay.
So gay used to mean happy carefree, right?
And that's how the word was used in the story.
In this case, her hat was kind of a gay hat.
It was like a happy carefree hat, a fun hat that she would like to wear on special occasions.
These days the word gay has changed and it's now quite a long time ago, for a fray
just really the word gay has meant homosexual and it was taken from that meaning of
like being carefree and happy and now only means homosexual really.
You might find the word gay, but it's often used in old stories or old-fashioned English
and it doesn't really mean happy anymore or at least it's not usually used in that way.
Most of the time it's used to mean homosexual, right?
So I don't know.
I don't think there's a subtext that the husband is gay but again, who knows?
It's possible.
There's more interpretations.
Here's a website comment from Olaf.
Not Olaf from Frozen, as far as I know, but could be, who knows?
The birthday story was really great and gorgeous how you interpreted it, although your interpretation
is absolutely wrong, smiley face.
I hope you don't mind my saying so.
I don't mind because you put a smiley face, you see.
Did it ever occur to you that the man wasn't the mean one, but the wife?
Here is what I think happened on this special day.
Because there was a pink candle on the cake, just one conclusion seems to be logical.
The wife is pregnant and she wanted to announce it to her husband on his birthday in that
very restaurant.
So she placed one pink candle on the cake and told the head waiter to bring it to the
table.
So Sherlock Holmes here, I mean, sorry, Olaf has decided that this is the only possible
interpretation or logical interpretation of what's happening.
It's possible, Olaf, it's possible.
I don't know if this is the only logical assumption here, but anyway, it goes on.
Everything would be fine if it wasn't for the circumstances that her husband wasn't
barren and not be able to become children.
So Olaf means everything would have been fine.
Everything would have been fine if it wasn't for the circumstances.
If it wasn't for the fact that her husband, if it wasn't for the fact that the husband
is infertile and can't have children, so he knew instantly that his wife must be pregnant
from another man.
And that's the reason why the evening was messed up.
So she's pregnant.
According to Olaf, she tells the husband with the pink candle, maybe this means it's
a girl, right?
And the husband, he knows that he's infertile, but he hadn't told the wife, but she's pregnant,
so he knows that she's been sleeping with someone else.
Interesting creative interpretation Olaf and Olaf continued, Luke, I hope you don't
mind this little bit of fun.
I just wanted to thank you for the great work you do and combine it or try to do so with
my own interpretation of the story.
Yeah, that's fine.
See you soon from Lapsterland, Lapsterland.
Best wishes from Germany, Olaf.
And then a response from Pierre in response to what Olaf said.
Pierre said, I don't think it has anything to do with the colour of the candle.
It's usually the responsibility of the restaurant choosing the candle, right?
I read Olaf's comment and I think it doesn't hold water.
A pink candle on the cake supposed to announce the arrival of a little girl.
Well, in the 1940s, the invention of ultrasound had not yet been discovered, and the only
way to know the sex of the baby was to wait nine months.
So I think he would have had time to notice his wife's pregnancy.
At the point, Pierre, ultrasound, they wouldn't have known the sex of the baby.
So I did judge the behaviour of the husband, which I shouldn't have done.
We don't know the history of that couple, but hey, I followed the bias of the writer
with all the clues she left us against the husband.
Ha-ha, I release myself from all responsibility.
So interesting interpretations.
What's definite, I think, is that this marriage has problems and it would require a lot of
patience, generosity, compromise and understanding to rescue it.
Another comment from another user.
This episode shows how different women's and men's worlds are and how much work should
be done to accept and understand each other's perceptions of this world.
We can see that they are too different.
They are far too different.
They are much too different.
Let's say far too different.
They are just too different.
Not too much different, but they are too different.
These two haven't managed the apology, acceptance and understanding necessary for their happiness
and probably true love.
Another comment from Nico.
I couldn't imagine myself in that kind of situation, but you're right.
A lot of married couples feel alone because they can't express how they feel with their
partner.
Nico said, this story was heartbreaking.
All of us have either seen or experienced something like this.
Apart from good listening practice, it's also a great writing model too.
And then, I think this is the last one.
One listener was reminded of a real experience that was very similar.
So Sue-op 3xB.
The story reminds me of a situation many years ago when we spent two nights in a B&B in
Dartmoor.
That's a bed and breakfast, a place where you stay the night.
You get a bed and you get breakfast.
That's why it's called a bed and breakfast or a B&B.
So the story reminds me of a situation many years ago when we spent two nights in a B&B
in Dartmoor on a small farm in the middle of nowhere.
The hosts were a couple in their 40s, a shy wife and a grumpy husband.
And while we were having breakfast, we heard the husband reprimand his wife.
To tell her off, saying, I was just asking you a sensible question.
And we heard the wife crying quietly.
It was embarrassing for us and certainly for her.
And we were glad to leave the scene.
Okay.
So anyway, interesting interpretations about the birthday party story.
And I'm glad everyone enjoyed the episode and learnt English from it.
Let's move on to talk about episode 873, which was called Luke Takes the MBTI Personality
Test.
Okay.
So the aim in this episode was to go through this popular personality test.
Read out each question, give my answer and discuss the validity of the test.
And in the process, highlight some of the descriptive language we use for describing personality
traits, behaviour and ways of thinking.
It was a way to teach you English related to psychology in what I hope was an interesting
and personal way.
Actually, I pretty much said what I had to say about this during the episode itself.
So I don't have that many other things to say about the test.
But here is just one comment which gives a pretty balanced view and seems to incorporate
some of the various opinions I got from listeners.
A lot of people essentially said that although the MBTI test is not really valid as a predictor
of behaviour, I might even give it inaccurate readings of someone's personality, it can
still be an enjoyable way to talk about and consider your own personality and behaviour.
Also, quite a lot of people wrote comments defending the test and actually trying to tell
me that I'd done it wrong by thinking about it too much.
I don't know if I mean, I don't know how that's true.
If you think about the answers too much or don't think about them at all, what's the
right approach?
Anyway, this is the comment that arrived on the website, I think, from Osha.
Hi Luke, this was an interesting episode.
I think that the 16 personalities website is very commercialised, but there are other
free MBTI-Yong tests such as similarminds.com which must have existed for two decades, where
I took the test a long time ago.
If I retake those tests or other tests such as the one on 16 personalities, I always get
the same result, ENFP, but I'm almost 50-50 on the extra version, introversion scale,
52-48 I guess.
My husband is an INTJ and we found this out maybe 15 years ago and it's helped us understand
each other as we're so different, yet complement each other, especially after having learned
about our differences.
I've added this, I said, if you look more carefully at the results that you get from that
test, including the specific percentages of your score in each category, it can be more
revealing of your character, I suppose, and maybe taking the test again and again will
eventually result in an average or medium score, like eventually you'll settle into a more
consistent overall score, which I suppose could be close to your real character-ish, although
maybe I'm being a bit kind to the test here, a more unforgiving critic would say the test
is just hogwash and that's that.
But anyway, this comment thinks that there's some value still, because for her it has brought
some value to her relationship and has allowed her and her husband to understand each other
a bit more, and fair enough.
She said, I disagree that it's like astrology because the ENFP description doesn't describe
my husband at all and the INTJ description doesn't describe me.
So she's saying that if you switched those descriptions, they don't describe each other.
Okay, so it's not like every single description is completely universal and just made from
Barnum statements. In fact, this isn't the case, like in the case of this couple.
Yet it gets more interesting when reading about Young's functions, which these types
are based on, I think.
My response here a little bit, I said, I wonder if this was tested in properly controlled
conditions, you would feel the same, because confirmation bias could definitely be involved
here.
For example, I think maybe this listener has decided that her profile does suit her because
she knows it's the one that she was given.
But if, and when she looks at her husband's profile, the confirmation bias is kicking
in because those statements, which are often quite vague, allow for confirmation bias to
confirm what she already thinks, which is that my husband's profile does not match me
and my profile does not match my husband. But if we did that, if there was some way of
doing that in controlled conditions where she got her husband's profile, being told
it was her profile, she might have had a different opinion.
You see what I mean?
It's very difficult to extract that subjective sense of confirmation bias from this situation.
Even though you're going, I look at my husband's profile and it doesn't suit me, but you
might not be in a position to actually make that judgment.
You know what I mean?
Because that's not an objective way of doing it.
But anyway, it doesn't really matter.
And I appreciate this comment that was written here.
The comment continues, yet I do agree that it is simplistic and that there is more to
people than these 16 types.
The seven bad types you described in the beginning of your episode aren't really personalities
as much as personality disorders, like sociopath, narcissist and so on.
And then I've added, but you have to agree there is a certain amount of flattery going
on in these descriptions to say that, for example, to say that someone is unparalleled
at managing people, that's just hyperbole.
So the commenter is saying the negative characteristics that you mentioned are more like personality
disorders.
But really the point, the reason why I included those negative descriptions was to say there
are no negative descriptions at all in the test.
All the results are flattering and positive and make everyone feel good.
And that's part of the way the test functions.
It sort of makes you feel good about the results.
Makes you feel like you're getting a sense of objective understanding about yourself.
But really, it might just be telling you things you feel you want to know.
And no one is going to disagree with descriptions that flatter you.
Like for example, a description that says that you are unparalleled at managing people.
Unparalleled means that you have no equal.
No one is as good as you at managing people.
You are better than everyone.
That's what that means.
And that's just hyperbole.
Hyperbole just means exaggeration and often exaggeration for a certain effect.
It's impossible for one of those 16 personality types to be better at managing people than
everyone else.
Because there's going to be loads of those, loads of people who are going to be receiving
the same comment.
Loads of people will be told that they are the best at managing people.
So that's hyperbolic language.
But people might not think that.
They might not think to question it because when you're told that, that you're told that
you're great at managing people, you're less likely to reject it.
You're more likely to accept it.
Especially if it confirms what you already believe about yourself, which is actually the
way in which you reply responded to the test anyway.
There's going to be someone saying, Luke after your throat.
Look after your throat.
I will.
Don't worry.
I'm going to have to stop soon.
I think I'll continue this tomorrow or something.
Been going for an hour and 20 minutes.
It's okay.
I think we can get this one done in about an hour and 45 minutes I reckon.
But I'm going to have to go soon.
Can I?
Okay.
Let's keep going.
I'll see how much more I can do.
Maybe I can finish off the episode before I've got to go and pick up my son from day
care.
The comment continues, I think MBTI can be an okay tool for understanding yourself and
your partner.
I don't think it should be used in the workplace.
I also don't think people should be boxed into the types.
And I do think we change.
Even though I still type as an ENFP in my late 30s, I feel far more introverted than
I did in my youth.
I need a lot of time to myself when I feel energized by spending time alone.
Yet compared to my super introverted INTJ husband, I need to interact more with the world
around me.
As long as it's seen as an interesting and fun tool, I don't think there's anything
wrong with the MBTI young personality type in Ventree.
And I do feel it's a bit unfair to compare it to astrology, which is complete nonsense
to me.
And I've written, yeah, fair enough.
The comment still continues, that being said, I enjoyed this episode.
And I hope you will do the big five tests sometime as well.
And that was a comment from Hannah from Norway, who is half English apparently.
So thank you so much, Hannah, for your comments.
Congratulations for being half English.
Obviously, that's joking there.
No one should be congratulated for being a certain nationality today.
I don't think so.
But anyways, it's nice to know that I've got someone who's half English.
How are you half English, Hannah?
Is that like on your dad's side, on your mum's side?
Or is your or are your parents also half English?
If they're both half English each, then that makes you half English as well, doesn't
it?
So your dad English and your mum, Norwegian, what's going on there?
Have you grown up in Norway?
Have you ever, you know, have you just, were you born in Norway and grown up there?
How much time have you spent in England?
Does your English speaking parents speak English to you?
It's always interesting to meet someone in that situation, like my kids, for example.
I mean, it's always interesting to meet my kids.
But I mean, it's always interesting to meet someone who's in the same situation as my kids.
You know what I mean?
I think you do.
Anyway, thank you, Hannah, for your thoughtful and measured response to my episode.
I appreciate that very much.
It's always nice to get a thoughtful and measured response to my episodes.
Thoughtful and measured comments are always welcome.
Whereas thoughtless and careless and even bad faith comments are almost never welcome.
So there.
Anyway, I was talking about the MBT personality test episode and I think I can move on now.
But I am preparing a premium episode about vocabulary from that.
And in that episode, I'll also give some more comments, including a message from Jackie.
That's Jackie.
Not that's not Jackie.
That's not Jackie Chan, who I did mention on the podcast recently if you actually got
to the end of that episode and I described the dream I had where I became Jackie Chan's
English teacher and it was sort of exciting and also quite stressful, especially the bit
where he started fighting people with big bits of bamboo inexplicably.
It was a dream.
And I was wondering if Jackie himself might get in touch or one of his family members.
I haven't heard anything from any members of Jackie Chan's family.
But then again, my podcast is blocked in China, which I guess includes Hong Kong.
If that is where Jackie Chan's family lives, I don't know.
Anyway, I got a comment from Jackie, who's a long-term listener.
Jackie was the person whose comment I read out at the beginning of the episode, the MBT
I episode.
She's the one who asked me to do the test.
So she heard the episode and replied on my website, which was nice.
You can hear that in the print.
Yes.
You can hear that in the premium episode, plus get a nice reminder of a lot of the useful
vocabulary that was involved in the episode.
So that's going to be a premium episode coming soon.
As I fill my cup with some more water here, must stay hydrated at all times.
So I'm drinking from this London podcast festival mug, which I got from the London podcast
festival.
I was invited to take part.
Have I told you about this?
I was invited to take part in the London podcast festival last year, the year before.
And I was invited to be a guest on a panel, right?
To be like a speaker on a guest speaker as part of a panel with a presenter.
And I was there with another podcaster who were there to talk about monetising your podcast.
I was thinking, wow, I'm going to be a guest speaker on a panel at the London podcast
festival.
This is exciting.
I prepared myself and got ready.
They paid for my Eurostar, the company that was paying for me to do this.
Pay for my Eurostar trip and a hotel and everything I stayed overnight in a Pullman hotel, Kings
Cross London.
Went to the London podcast festival, very excited and stuff and met all the other people, met
the organisers, met the other guests and the presenter and stuff.
It was great.
And they were like, right, okay, it's time now.
We went out into the stage area where all the seats were.
There were five people in the audience.
Five people in the audience.
What happened?
I don't know what went wrong.
I think it was still in the tail end of Covid.
Maybe that was something to do with it.
I don't know what it was.
Five people in the audience.
One of those people was the boyfriend of the presenter.
So four sort of real audience members.
We did the thing.
We talked, we did the whole thing.
It was good.
It was great.
In fact, he should have been there.
I mean, you didn't know.
You didn't know it was there and anyway, you live on the other side of the world probably.
But at the end, the presenter was like, right, do we have any questions from the audience?
From all four people, one person sitting here and then loads a space.
Another person over there, loads another one over there.
It was so weird.
Do you have any questions that presenter asked and just no one put their hand up?
Nothing.
No question.
It was quite kind of, what's the word for it?
It was a bit farcical, but it was still nice.
I still really enjoyed being here and being part of it and meeting the other people.
Anyway, so that's where I got this London podcast festival mug.
I think I'm one of the only, well, there are other events that were apparently much more
well attended than that one.
I don't mean to talk down the London Podcast Festival.
It's a wonderful thing, run by wonderful people and they do look at the branding on the
mug.
You can't see it, audio listeners, but it says London Podcast Festival in nice bold font
on a lovely blue background.
And the word podcast in the middle has got a sort of wave form across the middle of it,
like an audio wave.
Very nice.
Anyway, let me talk about episode 874, which was called Walk and Talk Paris.
So, this was the first of what should become a series of episodes in which I walk around
in my current home city of Paris and talk about a specific topic.
In this episode, the topic was Paris itself because, of course, Paris is a fantastic place
that people are very interested in and it's on my doorstep, so I should definitely take
advantage of that.
Also I've been influenced by Geowizard, the YouTuber, and his outdoor adventures, and
I've noticed that there is something very compelling about following someone's first-person
perspective videos.
It's like a computer game or something, you know, seeing everything that they're seeing
and tracking their movement through a certain environment.
Right?
I noticed that from Geowizard, but there are other channels that do the same thing.
So I bought an action camera and a wireless microphone.
And I'll tell you the name of the camera in a moment because some people have asked
me, I'll tell you the name of the camera, all that information is coming.
Bought an action camera and a wireless microphone and recorded an outdoor episode, not the first
walk and talk episode I've done, but basically the first I've done with a camera.
And it has proved to be a popular episode, particularly on YouTube, which I suppose
is not a surprise when you think about it, because it's very visual.
Here's a summary of the main things people have said in response to this.
So one comment, which when I prepared the PDF, this was the top rated comment, it said
it was like shocked emoji, heart-eye emoji, recording podcast outside, what a beautiful
idea.
I would say probably recording a podcast outside, what a beautiful idea.
Hmm, nice.
Other responses were basically along these lines and I'm sort of paraphrasing the most
kind of common responses.
So people said like, this is great, please do more.
And I will, I will do more, not all the time, just occasionally and when possible, but
I will be doing more outside stuff.
Next comment or type of comment was this, Luke, you don't need to be shy or self-conscious.
You don't need to be shy or self-conscious.
Shall I say that again?
You don't need to be shy or self-conscious.
Self-conscious is a word I used so much.
If you're self-conscious, it means you're suddenly aware of yourself.
A bit like when you stand up in front of a group of people and you are aware that they're
all looking at you and suddenly you become aware of yourself, you start to feel embarrassed
or uncomfortable.
That's self-conscious.
Another phrase is self-confident, which is like the opposite of self-conscious sort of.
If you're self-confident, then you feel confident in yourself.
If you're self-conscious, you become very self-aware, but in a negative way, where you
feel awkward, you feel uncomfortable.
It's like you're outside yourself looking at yourself and it's not a very comfortable
feeling.
You're not in a flow state.
You're not in a kind of relaxed flow state if you're self-conscious.
You're blocked by your sense of self-awareness.
Self-conscious is a negative thing, it's like being embarrassed, awkward, shy.
It's synonymous with those things.
Self-aware is a good thing.
We encourage people to be self-aware so that you're aware of the way you're acting,
the things you're saying, the impact you're having on other people.
Being self-aware is about being enlightened.
That self-aware, which is positive, self-conscious, is a negative feeling.
I talked a lot about being self-conscious while filming on my self-outside, surrounded
by strangers walking next to me or standing near me.
Now really, I'm not overly shy.
I'm not really an overly shy person.
I can get shy, but I'm not particularly shy.
But there is something quite awkward about doing that, about walking around with a selfie
stick and a camera on the end.
It makes you seem very conspicuous.
If you've never tried it, you might not know how embarrassing it can be, even though
there is nothing wrong with it.
There's nothing wrong with doing that.
It's a free country and not a crime or anything.
I generally like to keep a low profile when I'm just walking around.
Anyway, for those people who are saying, this is ridiculous.
You don't need to be shy.
Well, all right, it's easier said than done.
Let me just put it that way.
You could try it.
If I'm walking around with a stick and a camera on the front, talking out loud like this,
people will look at you and it's weird.
It's like walking down the street without any clothes on.
It kind of feels like that.
It's like, why are you worried about walking down the street with no clothes on?
It's not a crime.
I'm actually might be a crime, actually, that.
Anyway, another thought that people had is this, how can someone who spends their time
on stage doing comedy, doing videos on YouTube, teaching classes of adults, how can that person
feel self-conscious or uncomfortable walking down the street, talking into a camera?
And if we take this further, even this is stupid look and absurd and what's the matter
with you?
This is silly.
One person wrote, I'll come onto that in a moment.
All right, I'll come onto that sentiment in a moment.
Another comment that people had was basically Paris is beautiful.
Yes, it is, especially in the areas that I showed you and especially when the weather
is nice like it was.
I'd like to show you some of the more realistic sides of the city too.
Maybe I can take you on a walk through Shattelay Station sometime.
Shattelay Léal or some areas which are less touristy, which I often find myself in.
Actually, Shattelay Léal outside in the street, that's a great area.
Very picturesque place with beautiful buildings.
But in the depths of Shattelay Station is a different story.
Maybe I'll take you down into the dungeons of Shattelay and we can get lost somewhere
between Line 7 and Line 14 or something.
Another comment or type of comment was, this is a great way to see the city.
Yes, it is and I should take advantage of all this stuff on my doorstep.
Other people said I'd love to see the same thing in different cities.
If I can, I will.
But I mean, it's rare that I go off on my own to other cities and have the time to do
that.
If I go to another city like I went to Rome recently, I was with my family and it's
not podcast time, that's family time.
But if I'm in London again and I'm on my own, if I get a weekend in London or something,
I'll definitely try to do a walk and talk in London for sure.
I'd love to do that.
Other places, other typical comments, the image quality is nice and smooth.
How do you walk like that?
So it's not really my walking, it's the camera.
It has very good image stabilization.
So image stabilization is kind of like software that's built into the camera that prevents
the image from being very jerky.
It makes everything really smooth and action cameras are very good at doing this.
They can handle movement and jiggling and jerking around and bumps and stuff and everything
becomes very, very smooth.
So it's the camera.
It has very good image stabilization.
So the bouncing of my footsteps is smooth and out and there's no jerking or sudden movements.
It's nice, isn't it?
Another comment or typical comment?
Luke, you walk very fast.
Well, yeah, I do actually, I do walk quite fast.
I still walk at London speed because there's, London speed is a kind of, it's a kind of
walking speed.
In London people walk really fast.
They sort of pace along because London's a big place and you know, you need to get from
A to B quite quickly.
So people pace along quite fast, much faster than they do in Paris.
People walk at a more leisurely speed in this city.
And I'm still on London mode, so I kind of walk around at London speed and I was actually
walking fairly slowly while filming actually at certain points.
But there are times when I can turn on the speed and I can walk across a road at London speed
or something like that.
So I find that I'm normally about twice as fast as the people around me in Paris who clearly
want to take it easy and just enjoy the journey and enjoy their lives.
On the other hand, I just can't stand walking slowly and prefer to, I prefer to pace along
at top speed.
So Luke, can you tell us what camera you're using?
Yes.
So are you ready?
You've got a pen and paper.
So the camera is an Insta360 Go3.
Insta, that's like INST like Instagram.
Insta360, that's the number 360.
So Insta360 Go3.
Insta360 Go3.
The one with the removable camera capsule.
It looks a bit like a GoPro camera but it's got several really good features.
One of them is that it's got a little flip screen that flips up so you can actually see
yourself when you're recording which is important because it means you know if you're in the
centre of the frame or whatever.
And the camera capsule, a bit with the lens on it, you can actually pop it out of the
body of the camera and then you can actually clip that to your shirt, you can attach it
to metal things and it's completely waterproof.
If you can dunk it into a glass of water and film if you want to get the water, if you
want to know what it's like to be a glass of water, you can find out you know people
clip them to the front of their skateboard and you get like a really good view of the
road.
It's very versatile and I used it to clip, I clipped it to the front of my shirt with a
little magnet pendant which allowed me to give you those first person perspective viewpoints.
And it's very convenient, you can just clip it and unclip it really easily, unlike with
a GoPro where you need a full harness, you clip it on you know or a head mount or something
like that.
This is really, really simple and very versatile.
The image stabilisation is fantastic, image quality is great, it's all good but battery
life is the only downside when the capsule is removed from the main body of the camera,
it lasts for about 40 minutes which is not very long in podcast land so I have to regularly
put the capsule back into the body of the camera in order to recharge it a bit because
when it does that the camera recharges the capsule.
So my recording time is limited which is not a bad thing I suppose because limitations
can be good but if you were wondering why I was regularly changing the viewpoints like
pointing it in front of me, pointing it at my face and so on, I was putting the camera
capsule back into the main body at regular intervals in order to charge it up a bit.
I also felt I should still be in the video talking to you and that's why I pointed it
at myself quite regularly.
But then again maybe you don't need to see my face, my distorted face, my face distorted
by the fish eye lens of the camera with my eyes squinting into the light and the wind
blowing my hair making me look scruffy.
Maybe you don't really need to see that, perhaps you would probably rather just see the
views I'm seeing.
Probably the best thing about it right was when I had the camera attached to me and you
could just see my viewpoint while I was walking along or cycling along.
So perhaps I'll get a harness so I can strap the whole camera to myself with the capsule
in the main camera body and then I won't worry about battery life so much and I can just
focus on capturing more POV shots.
More listener comments coming in a moment.
Now this episode, this walk and talk episode seems to have been a success relatively speaking.
But before I published it I was a bit anxious because I didn't know what people would think
and I was sure I would get comments from people who were quite preoccupied by my appearance.
You know, as I said the wind was blowing my hair around and the camera distorted my face
a bit.
I was sure I'd be getting a lot of comments that would irritate me while I was trying
to think about other things.
And you know, I know it's all a bit of a laugh but those comments do annoy me a bit, you
know.
I also thought that perhaps people would want something different from the episode, like
more of a tour guide experience with lots of historical facts about all the things on
my walk.
But that wasn't really the idea of the episode.
In fact, the episode got a way better response than I thought and that's great.
I will do no, I will do no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
I will do more but not all the time.
Like story episodes or amber and pole episodes, these walk and talk episodes will be a regular
feature but not all the time.
But it's good to know I have this option to record outside and to be mobile.
However, this episode type has its drawbacks which I'll mention in a moment.
Now one thing I always want to ensure when I make episodes is that they work equally
well as audio and video episodes.
They have to work in both formats.
You should be able to enjoy the audio version and video versions equally.
Naturally, I was a bit concerned that this wouldn't work so well for audio listeners
because I ended up referring to visual things.
Now when I've done outdoor episodes before, they've always been audio only and so I've
not known to paint a picture with words.
But when you know there's a camera capturing what you can see, you kind of subconsciously
start to think of things in visual terms rather than oral terms which probably affect
the way I talk about them.
So I was a bit concerned about that but actually I think it's okay.
I got enough responses from audio listeners who said that they enjoyed the episode and
I think it was much the same experience for them as it would be if I'd done it without
a camera running like I've done in the past.
And here's a little list of episodes, walk and talk episodes I've done in the past without
a camera.
Episodes 205 and 206 which were called Summer in London.
Now background noise is a bit of an issue and some listeners did say that they couldn't
really handle the background noise which I understand.
And so other walk and talk episodes also have quite a lot of background noise just to let
you know.
Anyway 205 and 206 Summer in London that's where I did a walk and talk through Central
London.
Episode 358 was called Fedela Music World Music Festival in Paris.
I walked around the streets of Paris during World Music Festival listening to music and
giving a commentary.
That was the night before the Brexit referendum or just a couple of days before the Brexit
referendum result came in.
Episode 753 was called Visiting the Louvre Museum with Amber and Paul.
Also did one called Hard Driving.
When was that?
That's when I drove a car through Paris and did a podcast at the same time.
I can't remember which number that is.
But 753 was the Louvre Museum visit with Amber and Paul.
759 was called Life is What Happens While You're Busy Making Other Plans.
That's where I walked around my district and went to the Laundrette.
7593 was called Rambling Through the Streets of Paris at Night on a Bike with a very special
guest.
Question mark.
That's the one with Jerry Seinfeld and that's where I took a bike to a comedy show and
ended up interviewing Jerry Seinfeld kind of.
They all seemed very popular but having said that, background noise.
Now one or two audio commenters said that they couldn't listen because of the noise which
is a big pity because I want to make sure the audio podcast is as good as possible.
I really don't want to alienate audio listeners because that is still the foundation of what
I do.
So I must make sure that those walk and talk episodes work both for audio and video
viewers.
That episode was about Paris so naturally I described things I could see but the original
idea is to talk about something completely different like various topics as I mentioned
in that episode while walking or riding a bike.
So it would just be me talking about something else but you can just see the things I'm seeing.
So on the video you'd be able to see my point of view but I wouldn't be talking about
the things in front of me and therefore it would still work as an audio episode.
In fact I could even record the audio and video separately and then put them together later.
For example I could just record myself going for a walk and then take that video footage
and then record myself doing a podcast in the pod room and put them together.
Or I could record various walks or rides around town with no microphone and then use them
for visuals on the top of audio only episodes like I just said.
But whatever I do there will always be some people who find an issue with it right.
I mean it's quite frustrating.
You can never find the perfect format.
The fact is though I will continue to try different things sometimes and will stay open
to experimentation as long as it's convenient and eventually I'll find a system that probably
works best even if it's not completely perfect.
Ideally I want the video and audio to match up but I don't want the audio podcast to suffer
in any way.
I want the audio still to make sense and again I call upon audio listeners to get in touch.
How was that episode for you just listening to the audio version?
And if you tell me how the background noise was, did it help or did it hinder the experience
and did you stop listening to the audio and skip to the video version which is another
thing I don't necessarily want people to do because I want to keep the audio podcast
very much alive.
I don't want everyone to abandon it and go to YouTube because it's a different thing.
So I always want to keep servicing my audio listeners as much as I can.
Other quick thoughts before we finish, safety, a number of people raise their concerns
about safety especially when riding the bike and I will wear a helmet the next time I use
a bike.
Riding in the streets on a bike is obviously a bit of a risk.
You heard Kate Billington describe a bicycle accident she had on the streets of Paris
on this podcast last year.
So a helmet yes I will wear a helmet next time.
Crossing the street.
A few people pointed out that I crossed the street in the wrong place or not a to crossing.
Now in Paris this is fine and normal.
You're allowed to cross the street wherever you want.
There is no law against J-walking.
J-walking is a crime in some places like in parts of the United States or Canada where
you're not allowed to cross the street between junctions.
You can only cross at a pedestrian crossing and if you cross anywhere else that's considered
a crime.
In Paris that is not the case.
There is no law against J-walking and the culture here in Paris is that people generally will
cross the street wherever they want.
In some cultures this is not the done thing and by the way did I mention that I used to
live in Japan.
I think I have mentioned that on the podcast maybe a billion times but in Japan it's as far
as I could tell it's not really the done thing and people will wait at the pedestrian crossing
and they'll wait until the green man comes on.
Even if there are no cars, clearly no cars and a completely empty street you'll still
have people ever and will still wait until the green man sells them they can cross.
But in Paris it's fine you know that there are pedestrian crossings with the green man
or red man and lights where cars in theory and bikes in theory stop for pedestrians.
There are also zebra crossings without lights.
Cars are supposed to stop at those zebra crossings but in my experience they generally ignore
them.
In fact they seem to work like speed pads in super mario car.
The zebra crossings for cars in Paris they like super mario car speed pads.
They actually make the cars go faster.
They use them to zoom speed up.
That's actually a joke.
That joke is copyright Alexander van Walsum from episode 391 by the way.
The point is that there are crossings with lights that the cars normally respect.
There are also zebra crossings on the ground without lights and the cars don't usually
respect them.
But in any case by law pedestrians in Paris have the right of way so cars are legally obliged
to stop for you wherever you are.
So basically if you're walking on foot in theory you can just stride out into the road
wherever and whenever you want.
Preferably while smoking a cigarette and wearing a trench coat looking as cool and
chic as possible.
And if a car beeps at you you can just ignore it or you can insult the driver in French.
Like Ila Pryorite.
Right.
Which means and the priority.
Ila Pryorite or you can simply say, Connard which is a French swear word.
And by the way I asked my wife that I texted her and I said.
In preparing an episode I'm talking about crossing the street.
In Paris what would you say if a car beeps you because you crossed the road in front of
them and she instantly replied with Ila Pryorite and or Connard.
Rude, Connard is a rude word.
It sort of means asshole.
Not literally.
It doesn't literally mean asshole.
It just means idiot but it's a rude word for that.
An insult.
Anyway.
Basically crossing the street when not utter crossing is fine as long as you're looking
both ways and paying attention and you're ready to defend yourself in French.
Other people said show us some other interesting places in Paris.
Yes, I will try to do that.
I should ask Amber to join me and then she can give us some real insights and history
as she is a registered tool guide in this city.
Do this with other people.
People said yes.
I see an idea especially with Amber or Oliver G who also knows quite a lot about the city
now.
Amber and Paul.
I saw them at the weekend and we both agree that we should do a walk and talk episode
soon so we'll try.
And then yes, a lot of people said look don't worry about feeling embarrassed and self-conscious.
So many people said this probably because I made quite a fuss about feeling awkward
walking around with a selfie stick and a camera pointing at my face.
I would just say that it's easier said than done in reality when you're actually in a
crowded area.
It does suddenly feel very obvious and quite attention grabbing to do that.
I've said all this stuff.
Use headphones.
Yes, I was holding my phone up to my head to pretend I was on the phone.
Some people thought that was ridiculous which I thought was a bit harsh.
But other people were saying use headphones or air pods and people will assume you're
on the phone.
No need to hold the phone to your ear.
Very good idea.
I do have my like Bluetooth headphones.
I could just put those in and people will probably assume I'm on the phone.
Yes, that's a good point.
I've done this trick before actually when doing audio episodes when walking in London
and Paris I had my like my iPhone headphones with the microphone and people thought I was
on the phone then.
But I'll remember to do it again.
The camera on the end of a selfie stick pointing at my face might give the game away though.
It might kind of ruin the facade but anyway.
It's alright.
A comment that I can't read very well because it's small but it goes like this.
Hi Luke, you're neither ridiculous nor awkward at all.
You're just amazing.
A seasoned teacher entertaining your audience with the best content ever and going all
out to help us thrive with our English.
Honestly, I shall say that you've hit the bulls eye with this episode.
I'm so grateful for everything you do.
Thank you so much Luke, you're such an inspiration.
Thanks for the guided tour by the way.
I like the song.
Well done.
Yeah, I sang a song at the end of the episode.
Glad you liked that Veronique.
Thank you so much for that comment.
That was a very nice of you.
Yeah, I think I'm going to finish with this because I've got to go.
But it was, this is maybe the final thing.
A few people said it's difficult to follow because of the background noise.
People were saying I couldn't listen to this because the noise was too distracting
and made me feel weird.
So yes, this affects some people more than others.
The sounds of cars driving past or other sort of atmospheric noises.
That does affect some people more than others.
And it's not always because of English.
Some people just get disorientated by atmospheric sounds, including the noises of the street,
cars, buses, pedestrians, etc.
So if that is you and it made you feel a bit dizzy or uncomfortable, then I'm sorry.
And I'm afraid these episodes might not be for you.
But that's okay because I'll only be doing them sometimes.
For other people, it's the opposite.
The atmospheric sounds create an immersive feeling of being in a real live situation.
And it all makes it more exciting and interesting to listen to.
And I would also, I'm going to stop looking at the PDF now.
I could keep reading as more stuff that I've written here, including comments about AP on
his island, which I'm not going to read out because there really weren't that many comments
yet because I only published AP on his island like a day and a half ago.
It's like less than 48 hours ago.
So I don't really have that many comments to share on that episode except that people
liked it.
Anyway, anyway, I'll be doing more walk and talk episodes.
It's always good to get your comments.
Obviously, I hope that you realize that I do read them.
I take them to heart.
And so please try to be thoughtful when you write your comments because it can affect
my day.
But never mind that.
Let's focus on the nice constructive and responsive comments that I've received.
It's always nice to hear from you and to kind of get a sense of how my episodes are being
received by my audience.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
Okay.
It became another long one.
I mean, I didn't set out to do it two hour episode today.
It just happened.
But that's all right as we've established before.
No time for a song or anything at this stage because I've got to pack up and get out and
pick up my son and do a bit of food shopping and stuff.
But all right.
Oh yeah.
I wanted to just mention a little heads up for future episodes.
Well, I like to keep it.
I like to keep it a secret really.
I don't like to give away.
I don't like to reveal exactly what's coming normally because I like to have the elements
of surprise.
I like the sense that you don't know exactly what you're going to get every time.
You know, Luke's English podcast is like a box of chocolates, isn't it?
You don't know what you're going to get except you know it's going to be chocolate.
So you kind of do know what you're going to get.
But anyway, shut up Forest Gump.
What are you doing here?
I don't know.
How did Forest Gump get stuck in here?
How did he get in this room?
I don't know.
But I've got more conversation episodes.
The conversation interview once sort of come in waves as people contact me and sort of
you know, try and make contact with me and arrange interviews and stuff.
They kind of come in waves.
So I get load of conversation episodes and get those done.
And then I get to do more solo episodes and get those done and stuff.
So more stuff is coming.
And I hope that you enjoy it.
And I hope that it keeps you entertained and helps you learn English.
That's basically the idea behind all of this.
Thank you so much for listening.
You can read the rest of the stuff on the PDF.
Okay.
I've had to stop reading now, but you'll be able to read the rest of it.
I'll include the other stuff that I haven't had time to actually say now, but you can
read it on the PDF.
Okay, link in the description.
All right.
I've got to go now.
Lovely to talk to you.
Speak to you again soon, but for now it's time to say goodbye.
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