864. A Winter Ramble ❄️ Learn English with LEP
01:24:08 Share

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what Big Wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you.

That's right. 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 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details.

When it comes to weight loss, no two people are the same. That's why Noom builds personalized plans based on your unique psychology and biology. Take Brittany. After years of unsustainable diets, Noom helped her lose 20 pounds and keep it off. I was definitely in a yo-yo cycle for years of just losing weight, gaining weight, and it was exhausting. And Stephanie. She's a former D1 athlete who knew she couldn't out-train her diet, and she lost 38 pounds.

My relationship to food before Noom was never consistent. And Evan, he can't stand salads, but he still lost 50 pounds with Noom. I never really was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. Even through the pickiness, Noom taught me that building better habits builds a healthier lifestyle. I'm not doing this to get to a number. I'm doing this to feel better.

Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com. Real Noom users compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. You're listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to my podcast. How are you today? Hope you're all...

Hope you're all right. Why was that difficult to say? Maybe it's because it's the morning for me. And you know, when you've just sort of recently woken up, it's the beginning of the day. You haven't really, well, I haven't really done a lot of talking. And so probably I'm not warmed up, including all my mouth muscles and stuff like that. Probably by the end of this episode, I'll be fully warmed up. But at this moment, I'm a bit

what's the word for it? Sort of a bit cold. I am actually cold as well because it's freezing today here. But anyway, hello. I hope you're all doing okay. That's what I was trying to say before. But, you know, actors have to warm up their, you know, they have to warm up their mouths and everything. You know, actors have to warm up singers. They do all these vocal warmups, you know, like, I don't know what they all are.

um you know unique you new york and all that sort of those sorts of things i should probably do that i should probably do a full vocal warm-up in fact i should probably do a full body warm-up before i start recording episodes of this podcast but um no that's not that's not the way i do it i just kind of um press record and get started and and warm up as we go so hello yes um

Here is another rambling episode, as promised in the last one. So in the last episode, which was episode number 863, I said that the next episode, which is now this one,

would be a rambling episode. So that's what this is. Does that make sense? Is that clear? I hope so. So anyway, here's a rambling episode, which I promised I would do last time. Why did I promise I'd do a rambling episode? Well, it's because the last episode was all fully written out in advance, right? So I pre, you know, I prepared that one by writing everything out in advance. And then I just essentially wrote

um, read out what I'd written down, uh, before. Okay. Um, and that's got its advantages. Of course, it means that there's a, a PDF and a transcript for you to follow. Uh, but also I know that a lot of my listeners actually prefer the episodes where I just talk spontaneously without any kind of script and you can kind of tell the difference. You can hear the difference. Um,

Because, you know, I've said this before. I've said everything before on this podcast, I think, after over 850 episodes. I've probably repeated myself a hundred times. In fact, I've even said that before. So it's like inception this now. I'm just repetition inside repetition. But, you know, repetition is the mother of learning, isn't it? Something like that. Where was I? Oh, God, I've lost my train of thought. Oh, that's it. Some of my listeners definitely prefer repetition.

Or tell me that they can hear the difference between episodes where I'm reading from a script and episodes where I have no script and I'm kind of speaking spontaneously, making it up as I go along. Can you hear a difference? I think it's important to listen to both things, right? To listen to...

maybe scripted English, because then you can read the script and follow along if you want, or check the script again later. But it's also really important to, I think, tune your ear to the sounds of spontaneous spoken English. And so that's kind of what I'm doing here. So yes, in this episode, I'd like to let you listen to some unplanned and spontaneous speaking. This is a rambling episode, which means that there's no

specific agenda for this podcast. You know, I haven't decided that there's a particular topic I'd like to talk about in advance. So really, this is just...

It's just me kind of saying my thoughts out loud. It's a sort of stream of consciousness, really. I love doing these rambling episodes because really it's just a chance for me to let loose and kind of go with the flow and just try to verbalize my thoughts and try to keep everything...

coherent and just keep talking all the way through. That's the joy and the fun part for me is that it's an exercise in self-expression, but also hopefully you enjoy kind of joining me and following my words, hanging out with me and kind of going with the flow with me too.

So, in this episode, I'm just going to chat to you about this and that, okay? I don't know how long this will be, to be honest. I've no idea. We'll see. We'll see how long this goes on for. And, you know, when I feel like it's the right moment to finish, I'll do so. So, I don't know how long this will be. It might be an hour. It might be more. But, you know, you are welcome to just join me for as long as you like. It's completely up to you. I've got a few ideas of things I'd like to talk about.

So, you know, I just want to kind of tell you what's been going on. I want to talk to you about the holiday period because I didn't do that in the last episode. You know, I was away for a couple of weeks, you know, like most of us were, I think, celebrating like the Christmas holidays. I mean, you know, not everyone, of course, celebrates Christmas, but certainly for me and my family, you

and that's a thing we do and living in France and also the UK, we have time off at Christmas time. So that's kind of what I've been doing or what I was doing for the last couple of weeks. So I want to just sort of talk to you about that stuff. And when I'm away from the podcast, when I'm not kind of regularly doing episodes, if I take two or three weeks off, I have to say that

A lot of stuff builds up inside me. I mean, having done this podcast now,

every week for about 15 years, it's a deeply ingrained habit really. And if I don't record, if I don't speak on the podcast, then it kind of builds up and up and up inside me. And, you know, like my brain's going, um, you know, we need to get this stuff out. Um, and so, uh, these rambling episodes allow me to do that. So I'm going to talk about, you know, some of the things that kind of just came into my brain during this time. Um, I've got, um,

I've got a YouTube channel I'd like to recommend and talk about, a couple of podcasts as well that I can recommend and talk about. Maybe talk about some recent films. I did that, I think, in the last Rambling episode. Did I? I don't remember. But recently I did talk about films I'd seen and I got some nice responses to that saying that people enjoy it when I talk about films. So I'll go into kind of film review mode as well a little bit.

And stuff like that. Okay. All right. It's cold. It's really cold here at the moment. It's the beginning of January and we've suddenly got this cold snap.

So that's like a short period of cold weather and it actually snowed yesterday and it was quite nice to wake up this morning with a thin layer of snow on the rooftops outside our window. It's quite nice really. I actually like cold weather. I prefer cold weather to the really hot weather that we...

often get in the summer these days. And of course, with the climate the way it is these days, the summers are hotter and hotter, and the winters are milder and milder. And it's rare, really, to get any kind of snowfall

in this part of the world. I live in Paris, in France. I'm from England. And I remember when I was a kid, we used to get quite a lot of snow. We'd get snow every year. We'd be outside playing in the snow, making snowmen, having snowball fights and stuff like that. But it seems these days, getting proper snowfall is actually quite rare. Whereas the summer months, like July, August,

And last year, September 2, they're often marked by extremely high temperatures, like record-breaking temperatures. Every year, it gets hotter. And it's really obvious. I mean, it's...

We all know what's going on. It's terrifying, really. But anyway, the summer months can be so uncomfortable. But winter, I like it when it's really cold. It's not that cold here compared to some countries where you get incredibly low temperatures, minus 30 and stuff like that. Here in France, in this part of France, it's rarely freezing.

But at the moment, the temperature is around about zero, a little bit less, maybe a little bit more. But it's knocking around the zero level. It's really not that cold, but it's colder than it normally is. And I don't mind as long as the sun shines. You know, if it's cold and fresh...

And the sun shines, that's just the best. I love that kind of weather because you can wrap up warm, you just get a couple of layers on, nice coat, put a scarf on and it's lovely and fresh and I like that. I've got a cup of tea, excuse me, I'm gonna drink. I'm actually drinking my tea from a paper cup

which is almost criminal, I think. I should be drinking it from a proper cup, right? But no, it's a paper cup today. I think that's purely out of laziness because I do have several mugs here, right? I've got a couple of mugs on my desk, but they needed to be cleaned. And basically, I just couldn't be bothered to stand up, first of all, go out of my room, walk down the corridor with these mugs and

wash them up in the sink and then bring them back down. I'd have to unlock the door of the sink room. It's a bit fiddly. And it's just one of those days where I just really couldn't be bothered to do anything really, which is fine. I'm giving myself license to be lazy today because I'm tired. I've been

Why? Why am I tired? Well, I know we had a holiday, but it was kind of a tiring holiday because of children, really. I mean, you know, we've got two kids. They're absolutely wonderful. We love them. They're so adorable and cute. But also, as you may know, if you've got kids or have experienced, you know, looking after them, it's pretty exhausting. The youngest one, my son, who some of you met in the last episode because he did make an appearance recently.

podcast listeners, you might have heard him breathing and making a few noises. If you watch the video version, you could see the top of his head. You had to stick around in that episode until about an hour and 15 minutes into the episode before he made an appearance. So he's six months old. And during the holidays...

in England and then the week after that in France and then into the following week. I mean, his sleeping has been disturbed. I don't know what it was. I think it was just the change in routine from being at home and the daily routine at home to going to England, travelling and then being in a different house, a different environment with lots of other people around.

Lots of excitement. And I think it sort of triggered maybe a growth spurt in him. A growth spurt. That's where he... I think he just grew a lot in that time. He's definitely grown.

recently. You can see almost like sometimes you see him at the end of the day and like, wow, you're like bigger than you were at the beginning of the day, just a little bit. And his hair is growing out. And I think he's teething, which means his teeth are starting to push through and all sorts of other little changes, which have sort of upset the balance of his routine. And so what happened was that at night, especially, he would wake up

Like every three hours on average. He's like a little Swiss clock because he feeds pretty much every three hours. He has been feeding every three hours. We're introducing a slightly different feeding routine now from this point because he's six months old. So we're going to introduce more like fruits, vegetables, cereals, even like meat and stuff like that into his diet. Previously, he was mostly just drinking milk.

But anyway, every three hours he would wake up hungry. I mean, he's a hungry lad. And so that, you know, you'd have to wake up, you'd wake up, get up, prepare the bottle, feed him. And I've, I guess the last three weeks have been every night like that of me or my wife holding him in the night with a bottle in his mouth, falling asleep while feeding him. And there've been some moments where I've been sitting there on the bed and

feeding him his milk from a bottle and I've realised that I've kind of fallen asleep because it's like three or four in the morning and I wake up realising I'm just pressing the bottle into his face. He's like, I'm finished, get off. And I'm pressing the bottle into his face, the poor little lad. But he's very good, he doesn't complain about things too much.

But having said that, after feeding him, it has been taking him quite a long time to get back to sleep. And so that means that I have to hold him in my arms and bounce up and down on a yoga ball or walk around the living room holding him in my arms. And that's...

With those conditions in my arms or in the arms of my wife, warm, comfortable with a pacifier or dummy in his mouth and his teddy bear with him in a sleeping bag, then he falls asleep. He falls asleep quite quickly, in fact, usually.

But then what happens is, so imagine the situation. I've just fed him, falling asleep on the end of the bed. And then I have to get up and walk around the living room with him. So I'm walking around the living room in the middle of the night and look down and he's looking up at me. His eyes are wide open like saucers.

And he's staring back up at me. I just see these two eyes looking out of the darkness up at me. Um, and you know, I have to kind of keep moving and walking around and, uh, um, and yeah, the yoga ball trick works quite well. So I've been sitting on a yoga ball watching YouTube with the, with the brightness dimmed right down on my computer with a pair of Bluetooth headphones on watching YouTube. Um,

at four o'clock in the morning, bouncing up and down on a yoga ball until my son actually falls asleep and his eyes close, his breathing starts to slow down. And the key factor for me in judging whether he's ready to go back into bed is if his arm drops down. So his arm will be holding onto his teddy bear

He kind of holds onto his teddy bear. Sometimes his hand comes up and grabs my beard. He sort of seems to, stroking my beard helps him to fall asleep. I don't know why, but his hand will come up and sort of grab onto my beard or it'll be stroking his teddy bear. And then after a certain period of, you know, after a while, the hand just drops down limp.

on his side and that's the sign which tells me that he's ready to go to bed or at least he should be ready to go to bed at that point. So I'm like, okay, the hand has dropped down. He's definitely asleep now. It's time to put him back into bed. So I'll creep back into the bedroom, put him down in his cot and as literally the moment that his head touches the mattress, bing, the eyes come back on. He stares back up at me and his arms start flapping around.

And often he'll just, a big grin will appear on his face like that. So eyes open, arms start flapping, big smile on his face. Like, no, no, no, no. I want to, I want to stay. I want to continue hanging out with you. I'm like, oh mate, really? Can I, I really just need to sleep. And so that often happens. I mean, like recently I've been up,

Maybe two hours each night doing things like that. So I'm a bit tired. That's why I'm giving myself license to be lazy and not go and wash up these cups. Instead, use a plastic cup, even though this is probably a crime, isn't it? Certainly in England, you can't drink tea out of a paper cup. Well, I am today, okay? There are no rules today, okay?

What about you guys? Did you have a good New Year period? What did you do? Were you out celebrating, partying, fireworks and stuff? Or are you more of the kind of stay-at-home type of person? I am definitely these days more of a stay-at-home person at New Year's Eve. There have been many New Year's Eves when I've felt obliged to go out.

and go to some nightclub or some party somewhere, and you get home in the early hours of the morning and spend the rest of the next day recovering. Or you go out into the centre of the city to a club and you...

You party the night away and then it's a total nightmare trying to get home because there are no taxis and everyone's out in the streets. It's just total chaos. No, not anymore. No thanks. I prefer to be indoors, comfortable, safe, warm and cosy and even preferably in bed before the stroke of midnight. And so this year, yeah, my wife and I spent New Year's Eve on the sofa having a well-earned

relaxing evening on the sofa. I suppose this means we're getting old. It must be. But, you know, it happens to everyone and that's fine. It doesn't matter. You know, you don't have to go out and do something crazy on New Year's Eve. In fact, it's lovely to just stay in and have a nice, cosy time. Oh, yeah. So this weekend, though, so my life is not completely dull and boring. You know, I'm not a completely old, boring person.

old man because um at the weekend I did go out and performed a comedy show now okay so listeners hello why did I just say that why did I just say listeners hello I don't know um

So the comedy show, what was that? So my friend Paul Taylor, who many of you will know from this podcast because he's a regular guest, Paul from Amber and Paul. And yes, the next episode of this podcast is an Amber and Paul episode. I keep hinting at that episode telling you, oh, I've got another Amber and Paul episode coming. It's coming next week, I promise. OK, no more messing around. You're going to get Amber and Paul action. Two episodes back to back. That's the plan. But so Paul did a show.

at a venue called The Zenith. Now, Paul Taylor, he's a stand-up comedian. I'm a stand-up comedian too. But Paul, about 10 years ago, if you've been a long-term listener to this podcast for over 10 years, then you'll know the entire story that

But so Paul's from basically from England, like me. He's a bit younger than me, but we met each other in Paris doing stand-up comedy. And we did shows. We did the same shows together with some of my other friends that you might know, including Amber, Sarah Donnelly, Fred Iango. Who else? Plenty of other people, too. And Sebastian Marx and others. And so Paul and I both sort of met each other doing comedy in these kind of like

fairly low-level comedy shows that, to be fair, I'm still doing. I'm still doing these smaller English comedy shows in Paris. But Paul, at one point, decided, right, I'm going to try and do this as my career. I'm going to try and make a career out of doing stand-up. Because the thing about Paul is that he's bilingual. He speaks French and English, like, really, really well.

And he's able to do stand-up comedy in both languages. And living in Paris, obviously, that's great. That's a great advantage. Because obviously there's a stand-up comedy scene in French. But also there is a stand-up comedy scene in English as well, actually. And so Paul was able to do both of those things. And it was going well for him. And at some point he decided he would give up his job. He'd quit his job. And he had a good job at Apple.

And he decided to give up that job in order to pursue stand-up as a career. And he really went for it. It's very impressive the way in which he applied himself to doing that, to doing that challenge. And it really paid off for him. And he just went from success to success and succeeded.

He created a one-man show, his first one-man show, and toured that around France and the French-speaking world. He got on TV, had a TV show, which was on television in France. It also was a big hit on YouTube, a really well-made TV show with just short episodes where he kind of makes fun of French culture in a very knowing way, you know, and the French audiences loved it.

And so he had his TV show and several other shows with Canal Plus, the TV station here in France. A second bilingual show.

He created a second bilingual show and toured that around France and the French speaking world. And then a third bilingual show where it's literally in French and English. So he'll speak for five minutes or so on stage in English, doing his comedy in English, and then he'll switch to French and he'll be doing it in French. Really, really successful and really good concept as well. So huge success in stand up in France. And well done, Paul.

And every now and then I get to perform at his shows. So he might have either, he might do a kind of a kind of Paul Taylor and Friends show where he invites a few of his friends to do maybe 15 minutes each. So Paul will open the show and he'll be the host and then he'll introduce different comedians and there might be four or five comedians on the show. So he might invite me to do that and

Basically, with Paul, I've been able to perform to really big audiences that I wouldn't normally have been able to perform in front of, because I haven't decided to pursue stand-up comedy as my main job. You know, instead, I've tried to pursue this podcast as my main job, and I've been spending most of my time and energy on doing this, frankly, whereas Paul focused on stand-up. So, yeah, I've been able to do that.

So with Paul, I've been able to do these big shows, either being a guest in one of his... In French, they call them a plateau, which is like a showcase of a number of different comedians, or opening for him, where I would do maybe five or ten minutes at the beginning to kind of warm up the audience before Paul did his one-man show. And then this weekend, right?

You heard me talking about it, didn't you? You may have heard me talking about it at the beginning of a recent episode. And I'm probably going to repeat some of this stuff again at the beginning of the next episode, just to provide a bit of context, because we talk about some of these things. So at the weekend, Paul did his final bilingual show because he's decided to give himself another challenge, which is to try and do monolingual shows. And that means he's going to try and make it, he's going to try and

succeed in stand-up in English. And that means stand-up in the UK, in the USA, focusing exclusively on the English-speaking market. He'll also do shows in French. So he's either going to be performing only in French or only in English. And by focusing on only in English, then he's aiming himself at the kind of well-established English-speaking comedy world. And

and all the things that it involves. You think of people like Ricky Gervais and Bill Burr and all those famous comedians. So that's the kind of world he's aiming himself at, I think. So anyway, this was the final bilingual show for Paul, and he chose this huge venue called the Zenith.

in Paris and it's a concert venue. It's a place where musicians come and do big concerts. And I've seen, I think I saw Beck perform at the Zenith. I actually saw Johnny Halliday at the Zenith. My wife, you know, obviously before Johnny Halliday died, my wife bought us tickets to see him perform. That was kind of extraordinary. And I've seen other bands and artists there. The place is,

holds about four and a half thousand people, right? So Paul did his show in this venue and he sold out the venue. It was full. Every seat was, every ticket was bought.

And he asked me to open for him, along with his friend Rolly from Montreal, performing in French, in Quebecois, like the Canadian dialect of French. So I was the first performer doing 10 minutes. So I basically, I got to perform in front of

4,200 people on Saturday evening. 4,200 people. Now, some of you listening to this might have been in the audience, in which case, hello. I hope you enjoyed the show. In fact, I know a couple of my listeners were there for sure. There might be more. If you were there, let me know, right, in the comments section. 4,500 people. Now, just imagine that, listeners, right?

Now, I know that on this podcast, I actually talk to a lot more than that, right? The number of people listening to these podcasts is definitely much higher than that.

And in some cases, it's in the millions, which is mind-blowing. But when you've got that number of people all there in the same room at the same time, that's amazing. And just to give you an idea, so it was a wide room. So rather than it being one long room, it was a wide room that went all the way around sort of nearly 180 degrees. It was probably less than that, but all the way around. So a big wide room.

sea of people from left to right and also quite far, you know, went quite far back in the room as well. But the room was divided into sections, you know, and there was like aisles between each section where people can walk up and down and around the back. So these kind of sections, a bit like at a football stadium or something.

And I, at the beginning of the show, before anyone had come in, you know, we were doing the sound tests and stuff. And I was on stage having a look at the room, you know, sort of mentally preparing myself. And I looked at one section and I counted the number of seats in that section. And it was about 300 seats, 350 seats in that one single section. And there must have been, well, over 10 of these sections in the room.

And just that one little section was like more than I was like 10 times the number of people I normally perform in front of, because normally I'm doing small shows, you know, 30 people or something like that in a, in a room, uh, above of, of, above a bar or in a cave, you know, in a basement room or something, um, in Paris. And so just that one section was like, this is 10 times the number of people I normally perform in front of, but then there's

12 of these sections in the whole room. It was really mind-blowing. Now you might be thinking, Luke, were you nervous? A little bit, but you know what? I wasn't really that nervous. I think the main reason for that is because the main reason I wasn't really nervous...

The main reason I wasn't really nervous is because I just knew what I was going to do. I'd prepared myself. I knew the material I was going to do on the stage. I knew it quite well and I've done it lots of times before. And so, you know, that meant that I was actually really looking forward to it.

And it is just fun. You know, I went into it thinking to myself, I'm just going to enjoy this. This is just going to be maybe even a once in a lifetime opportunity. I mean, who knows? I mean, you know, of course, hopefully I'll get opportunities to do bigger and, you know, other shows which are similar size or bigger in the future. Right. But who knows? You know, maybe that's the biggest audience I'll ever perform to in one room.

I don't know, really. I don't know. Maybe, you know, some of you are thinking, but Luke, you should be more ambitious. You've got all these followers and listeners around the world and stuff. You could do these big shows. Yeah, maybe. But anyway.

Going into this show, I thought I'm just going to enjoy this because also I kind of feel like I've got nothing to lose, really. So I'm just going to simply enjoy the opportunity and just really enjoy this moment. And it was it was so fun and great. And so there you are. That was an experience. So you go out and, you know, you can't really you can't really get a sense of it's just a sea of heads.

You look out into the audience and you do see individuals, but you try not to focus your attention on individuals. It's more like you just sort of project yourself to the room. Also, the microphone, the speakers that your voice is being broadcast from are absolutely vast. And so your voice booms out into the room.

It's extraordinary really, and you hear your voice coming back, you know, sort of bouncing back to you from the room. It's really incredible, and just talking at normal volume. "Hi everyone, nice to be here."

just normal volume, that is broadcast really loud in the room. "Hi everyone, nice to be here!" Everyone can hear every single thing you say. Everyone can see you and you've got this huge stage and it so encourages you to perform so much bigger. You end up becoming a more physical comedian. You know, there's every physical gesture becomes exaggerated, your facial expressions become exaggerated.

Really great experience. It's like those the 10 minutes went by so quickly. It very intense. It was like a very intense Each moment was sort of really intense. Anyway, that was good fun I don't know if there's gonna be a video of that there might be one day Maybe you'll need to check Paul's YouTube channel, but there might be video of some of that's that show just check out Paul Taylor on YouTube and

This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelpHELP.com.

That's right. 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 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Talking of YouTube, yeah, so I said before I wanted to recommend a YouTube channel for you. And that channel is called GeoWizard.com.

Have you heard of GeoWizard? Do you know about this YouTube channel? So, yeah, while I've been bouncing my baby son up and down in the middle of the night on the top of a yoga ball, right, I sit on the yoga ball with him in my arms and sort of bounce up and down, and the bouncing movement helps him to fall asleep. His sister was exactly the same. So what have I been watching while bouncing around on a yoga ball? Well, recently I've just been

pretty much only watching videos from GeoWizard. And I'd like to tell you about GeoWizard and his videos, because I think that, I mean, I think probably if you like this podcast, and if you kind of, if you're on the same wavelength as me, then you'll probably really like his videos.

And, yeah, I've been really enjoying them, so I just wanted to recommend them to you. So Geowizard, G-E-O-W-I-Z-A-R-D. Some of you will know him already because he's actually really, really popular these days. He's kind of blown up. His popularity really blew up over the last few years.

So, okay, so GeoWizard, he's a guy from the Midlands, right? His name is Tom Davies. He's a YouTuber from the Midlands, right? The Midlands, that's the middle of England, right? And I'm from the Midlands too. I'm sort of from the Midlands and West London.

Spent the first 10 years of my life living in Ealing in West London. And then we moved to the border of Solihull and Warwickshire. So the countryside in the West Midlands, which is just near Birmingham. And so GeoWizard is from, he's not from exactly where I'm from, but he's not far away. A bit further north and west to where I'm from.

but certainly in the Midlands, in the Birmingham area. And that's kind of one of the things I like about him is I love listening to his Birmingham accent. He's got a Brummie accent. And...

I just love the Brummie accent because it reminds me of all the people I used to know, a lot of the people I went to school with, a lot of the people I went to sixth form college with, people I worked with in pubs and stuff when I was growing up. And so, you know, I've got a lot of affection for that accent. And his accent is, you know, it's just a classic sort of Brummie accent. And actually, in the UK, I'm going to talk about accents a little bit now.

In the UK we have, as you may know, a wide variety of accents.

And actually, we love the diversity of accents we have in the UK. It's like something that people in Britain are actually very interested in and proud of. Anyway, Tom Davies, right? So he's from Birmingham and he's got this really... He's from near Birmingham and he's got this really great Birmingham accent that I just really love. And it kind of... I don't know, maybe part of what I enjoy about his videos is a sense of kind of... Is it nostalgia? Or it feeds into that feeling of...

Maybe missing my home country and his videos allow me to enjoy sort of keeping in touch with British culture or something. I don't know. So what does he do? Right. What does he do? He's he's a sort of youngish guy. Well, that's from my perspective. He's about I think he's in his early 30s these days.

And so the first thing that he did on YouTube was to play a game called GeoGuessr. And he videos himself playing GeoGuessr. And he is absolutely brilliant at GeoGuessr. It's really amazing and very entertaining to watch him play GeoGuessr. So what is GeoGuessr?

GeoGuessr, some of you might know about it. You can just Google it, GeoGuessr, G-E-O-G-U-E-S-S-R, GeoGuessr. It's a game which kind of uses Google Maps as its engine, right? So it's based on Google Maps. And essentially what GeoGuessr does is it places you somewhere in the world using Google Street View.

Right, that's that version of Google where you can look at a map on Google Maps and there's a little orange man in the bottom right-hand corner. You can kind of drag that orange man somewhere onto the map and drop him on the map and it takes you to a actual, like a 360-degree photograph, totally immersive photograph of that spot.

and you can move up and down the street, you can scroll around and look and zoom in on things. That's Google Street View. You must have played with it. I'm sure that you know about it. So GeoGuessr uses Google Street View and turns it into a game. So yeah, essentially what happens is you start the game and GeoGuessr drops you somewhere randomly in the world

You just arrive on a street. It could be a road in the middle of nowhere. It could be a road in a town or something like that. It could be anywhere in the world. And you have to put a pin in the map where you think you are.

Okay, and it's really interesting because it really forces you to be extremely observant about what you can see. So you can scroll left, you can scroll right, you can look up, you can look down, you can move along streets, move around, move away from the place where you've been dropped and explore and come back.

In some versions of the game, you can do that. In other versions of the game, you can't even leave that spot. You can only scroll around and zoom in and zoom out. You know, there's like different challenges, different versions of the game. But yeah, you look around and using everything you can see, you have to decide where you are. And so the clues are things like...

If you're outside in nature, you have to look at the kind of vegetation or the landscape and decide where that might be. You know, you can work out if you're in the northern or southern hemisphere, I think by the position of the sun in the sky or something. I've never been able to do that.

And you use other clues. You look at the architecture of the buildings you can see. You look at the types of cars you can see. You look at, you know, just every single little clue available to you. There are also little signs. Sometimes you see road signs or signs on the side of a business or other things like that, which allow you to work out where you are. And it's really good fun to play. It's a really, really great fun game.

And it's really good for just sort of... If you've got that sense of curiosity about the world and you like to visit different parts of the world and get a sense of what they are and the unique aspects of each place, then it's a fun game to play. And so GeoWizard, Tom Davies, this YouTuber, he plays GeoGuessr on his channel. And it's just really, really great to watch him playing the game because he's so good at it. He's so...

He's so clever at it. Now, admittedly, he probably plays the game for hours and hours and then takes the best bits and shows them to you on YouTube. But I mean, even those best bits are like, there's no way I could ever do what he does. And he's also a great commentator as well. So this is so much more than just this game, right? His channel. It's so much more than that.

It's also basically his personality and his commentary. So you see his face in the corner of the screen. He's describing what he's doing. He welcomes you to the episode. He talks you through everything that he's doing. He kind of, you know, speaks his thoughts out loud, letting you into his thought process. And that's great. That's very entertaining stuff. But then GeoWizard started doing other things, right?

So he left his room, got away from the computer and actually went out into the world with a GoPro camera and started filming himself doing these adventure challenges.

And these are the ones that I really recommend. I think the first one he did, maybe the first most popular one he did, was the straight line mission across Wales. The mission across Wales. He decided that he wanted to be the first person to cross a country in a perfectly straight line. Okay? Cross a country in a perfectly straight line. He chose Wales as the country. That is his first country.

Several reasons. One of them is that he knows the country quite well. He lives in England and Wales is only a few hundred miles, maybe 100 or 200 miles away. It's not far. It's a place where there's a lot of natural beauty. The landscape is suitable for it. You can go from the Welsh coast

to the border with England without having to pass through a big city or a big motorway. And so there's lots of fields and hills and mountains and rivers and things and farmland. Also, the country's not too wide. I can't remember how wide it is, really, the lines that he chose to do. I can't remember the length of

Takes him three, maybe four days to do it.

And the straight line thing. So before he does the challenge, he works out using a map and using all sorts of different maps that show him the landscape, not just the plan of the country, but they show him the elevation of the land. He can use Google Street View to work out things like where there are roads and where there are fences and farms and houses that he has to deal with.

Doing all this research, he decides where his line will be, and he plots this line. It is a perfectly straight line between two points. The border with England is the start point, and then the Welsh coast is the end point. He picks a line which is doable. Now, the things he has to try to avoid or try to...

avoid as much as possible are farms especially and farmers are kind of like the things he worries about the most so he tries to avoid farms he tries to reduce the number of houses that he that are on the line because obviously if there's a house on the line what can you do you can't climb over the house and

So he has to find ways to avoid these big obstacles. Also, mountains with cliffs, like a huge vertical drop or a canyon or something like that. Rivers. Although he has to, frankly, he has to cross rivers. He has to climb over mountains. I mean, these are Welsh mountains, so they're not as big as, you know, other mountains you have in the world. But, you know, they're certainly...

Pretty challenging obstacles to get over. Rivers, mountains, many, many, many, many fences and hedgerows and forests and farms. So he has to go through farms. And to be honest, he's trespassing a lot of the time, which is I know it's you know, that's not really OK to walk on someone's private property.

But he's actually very respectful. You know, he really makes sure that he doesn't damage anything. And the only reason he's doing it is because he wants to complete the challenge, right? He's not there to steal sheep or vandalize or anything. He's simply there to cross a field as quickly as he possibly can. But it's incredibly entertaining. It really, really is. Because if you think about it, the challenge of doing that, I mean, it is incredibly tough.

So he's got a straight line, which he programs into a GPS system, a handheld GPS system, which shows him the line. And he holds that in his hand while he's walking. Now he's dressed in the right equipment. He's got walking boots. He actually wears army clothing, British army clothing, because it's the most suitable clothing for the job for several reasons. One is that the material is strong enough to deal with things like

walking through spiky hedges, walking through big patches of bramble. Bramble is that stuff that just grows wild. It's kind of very fast-growing plants that's covered in spikes.

He has to walk through all these bramble patches and other natural barriers. These army clothes are actually the best material that don't get ripped or damaged too easily, and that also keep him warm and protect him from the elements. He does the missions in winter, which is extra tough. Obviously, it's cold. He does it in winter because if he did it in summer, the brambles...

and the vegetation would be far too thick and overgrown for him to be able to get through. So, yeah, he wears the right kind of clothing. He has a backpack with a tent in the back and a few provisions. He also has to do certain things, like he has to visit the route in advance and stash things at certain points. So, for example, if there's a big body of water, he has to stash an inflatable canoe

So he hides an infatable canoe somewhere on the line. And so that when he gets to that, when he's actually doing the mission, he can get that canoe, inflate it and use it to cross this lake or this river or whatever it is to then continue along the line. And with the GPS in his hand, he knows exactly where the line is. He's able to follow it very closely, constantly looking at this GPS reader.

He's also got his girlfriend, who's now his wife, Verity, who is kind of like the most valuable player really for him in these challenges because she helps him out by, she's in a car or something, she'll come by, she'll drive and meet him on the line and maybe sort of

let him shelter in her car or something, or give him resources that he needs like, you know, food or, you know, other things. So she's there to sort of help him. And every time it's an amazing mission. It's an amazing adventure. Stuff happens that you don't expect. So just imagine what that would be like, right? What are the sort of obstacles you would have to deal with? And

the discipline that you'd need to stay on that line. No matter what, you know, whatever the landscape is, you've got to hold that line. Now there's a certain amount of deviation that's possible and he's got a system called the Platinum, Gold and Silver system. A platinum run is when you stick to the line within, I think it's about 20 metres. 20 metres? So he's allowed to deviate from the line 20 metres.

But he needs to try and reduce that because the closer he stays to the line, the better his score is at the end. And there's a score that you can get. So these straight line missions, these are kind of now a fairly established thing with their own rules and stuff. So the closer you stay to the line, the better your score is.

And, yeah, so you've got also a platinum run where you stay within 20 metres of the line, a gold run, which is, I think, 30 metres, and silver, which might be 40 metres. I might be wrong about that because 40 metres seems quite a lot.

But anyway, so he really does try to stick to the line. But if there is, like I said, a house or something, he can deviate. But every time he does deviate, he loses points. So he's got to be very strict about it. But it's incredibly difficult. I mean, even Wales, which is a relatively small country, it is really, really difficult. It really tests his physical fitness, his mental reserve. And it is a real survival challenge.

the different types of landscape he has to negotiate and get through, and just walking that distance. I mean, it's a long way, you know, and walking that distance is tough in itself. But doing it with... Like, the first mission that he does, he's really, frankly, unprepared. He doesn't bring enough food. He doesn't bring... He doesn't sort of prepare himself properly. And he gets into some, frankly, very dangerous situations.

crossing a river which has a really strong current. And in order to cross the river, he finds this broken down old bridge. And it looks like a very sketchy old bridge that could just break. And he climbs over it.

And he gets to the middle and you can see that on his GoPro footage, the torrent of water below him. And he kind of realizes halfway through, oh, my God, actually, if I fall in the water, I would probably die. So it's actually really gripping him.

to watch him negotiate all of these obstacles and the forests that he has to go through, thick pine forests where he's crawling under the branches. He's squeezing through these thick forests and things like that and climbing over mountains and climbing down or climbing up fairly dangerous rock faces and things like that.

So that's really exciting to see all those different challenges and stuff. But also, again, it's not just that. It's not just the survival challenge side of it, but also it's just the way he presents everything on his channel. He's brilliant at storytelling. He's got a real way with words. He's very articulate and great at telling the story of what he's doing.

It's a combination of voiceover of him describing what he was doing, you know, him describing it later at home with voiceover and him talking about it while he's doing it and him taking the GoPro and talking to the GoPro, showing you different things. Sometimes the GoPro is on his head so you can see exactly what he sees. Sometimes he holds it and shows himself, um,

So he's brilliant. He's brilliant. Even when nothing seems to happen or he gets stuck in a certain situation, his ability to describe things and to narrate what he's doing makes everything really, really, really entertaining and interesting. He's got a great sense of humour. He's a kind of very witty English guy.

Again, as I said, the West Midlands accent, there's a sense of adventure. You get to enjoy the nature, you know, the landscape, the Welsh countryside is absolutely beautiful. So he's done one in, he did Wales four times because, I mean, spoiler alert, he fails the first three times. But it's so entertaining to watch him fail. And it really is.

So there's four straight line mission series in Wales. There's one in Scotland, which is also really entertaining. There's one in Norway, too. He also does these other missions, too, like crossing Birmingham from one side to the other without using any roads. OK, so he's

kind of climbing over fences and going through places that people don't normally go through. He's exploring the underground tunnels in Birmingham because Birmingham is this old industrial city and it's full of these ancient, well not ancient, but these like Victorian era canal systems and underground tunnels and things. So he's really kind of like exploring these unseen parts of the city. It's a fascinating way to look at

the city. And it's disgusting as well because he kind of comes across various disgusting things in these city missions.

It's very charming. You get to explore beautiful countryside, fascinating urban areas. There's great music as well. He's a musician too, and he composes his own music for these episodes. It's 16-bit music. So that's the sort of music that you might have heard in a Sega Genesis computer game or a Super Nintendo computer game.

You know that kind of old-fashioned retro computer game music? So he's got an album of about 12 of these songs, instrumental songs composed with 16-bit music software. But they're really good. They're very catchy little melodies. And that also adds into...

the enjoyment, and it gives everything a sort of computer game-y kind of feeling. And it does feel like a computer game. When you're watching his point of view, him climbing over fences, him crawling through tunnels, him kind of squeezing through forests, him trying to climb through horrible, prickly, spiky hedges, and also farmers. I mentioned farmers before, but I didn't really explain. Farmers are often his...

his biggest fear. There's kind of stealth involved, like in a computer game where there's always a stealth element where you have to sneak through certain situations. There's stealth involved too because farmers can be really dangerous to his missions. If a farmer catches him, because farmers can sometimes be very unfriendly and they can be very angry with you if you're on their land.

And they can grab you, either call the police, have you ejected from the field or something. And so if a farmer catches him, that's the end of the mission because they would take him far away from his line. So farmers are kind of like the thing he's most afraid of. So there are some really great moments where he's kind of like sneaking past farms. And he has a few encounters with farmers, including one particularly interesting.

exciting one where he's a farmer is actually chasing him on a quad bike and he's like managing to climb over hedges and fences, um, giving himself, you know, more, more room. Whereas the farmer's got to go around through a gate and stuff like that. And the farmer's like so angry with him and the, and Tom is apologizing. I'm really sorry. I'm on a, I'm trying to break a world record. I'm sorry. Come here. Um, very, very good. So that's, um,

I fully recommend the GeoWizard YouTube channel. And you know what? You know what? Let's actually have a little look at... Let's have a look at one of his videos. I just want to give you a sample. I'm going to play maybe the first couple of minutes of one of his videos now. Now, this might get flagged up on YouTube because I'm going to play someone else's content. So this actually might get flagged up. In fact, GeoWizard might get...

He might know that I've played a section of his video, and if he doesn't like that, then I will remove it without hesitation. I won't be bothered by that at all. I would completely understand. But hopefully he won't mind because I'm giving him a big sort of promotion here. Not that he needs it. I mean, he's got like...

million plus subscribers now and a lot of his straight line videos will get millions of views and stuff so he's already like super popular um but if he doesn't want me to play this on my show then i'll gladly take it down okay

Actually, I sent Tom, the host of the channel, I sent him an email inviting him to be on the show because I'd love to talk to him about his missions and sort of ask him to tell the stories of some of the things that happened to him. I did send him an email. I haven't had a reply. I sent that a couple of months ago. I haven't had a reply, which, to be honest, I completely understand because I imagine he's getting confused.

tons and tons of emails and correspondence all the time. I mean, I sort of know a bit what it's like to be, you know, a YouTuber or podcaster who has a large following, a large-ish following. I sort of know what that's like. You get so many emails and a lot of emails which are from like companies, like automatic emails, so much sort of business-related spam content

comes into your inbox, it's really hard to filter out the sort of opportunistic

companies that are emailing you because they um i guess they're using some automated system to track which youtube channels are getting a lot of traction at the moment and that means that their automated systems pick up on those and then send out automatic emails or there's someone in an office keeping track of certain youtube channels and sending out like um

pre-written, copy-pasted emails to all these channels with the hope that they would be... You know, a lot of them are really not interesting offers. You get a lot of correspondence that is not genuine or a lot of correspondence from people that...

is genuine too, people inviting you onto things. But it's really hard to keep up with your email inbox. You know, when you've got over a million subscribers and you're trending at the moment, it's very hard to keep on top of all the emails and messages you get. So I totally understand, you know, if Tom hasn't replied to me because he must be getting so much correspondence at the moment. And who knows, maybe he's just

Far too busy trying to cross a country in a straight line or edit together all the footage afterwards But any maybe I'll get in touch with him again, but you know, we'll see but in any case Let's have a look at one of his his videos just to give you a little flavor. Okay? All right. Let's have a look at that. Just look at geo wizard the channel and

We will look at the mission across Wales. So if we look at his playlists, you can see all the different sort of series that he's done. Birmingham, no roads. That's where he's crossing Birmingham without using any roads. The mission across Wales, number four. How not to travel America. I've been enjoying that. It's a kind of adventurous travel series where his friend Greg and him...

travel from Boston to Miami, but without really any plans. There's all sorts of funny adventures and encounters with interesting people. It's really good. Let's find the Mission Across Wales number one. Here it is. Okay, so we're going to watch the opening minutes of the first part of his first Mission Across Wales episode, which has been viewed 4.4 million times. One other thing before we start this is that

Most of his videos have got subtitles, either YouTube subtitles or he puts subtitles on the screen. And the subtitles are mostly for the moments when he's out in the fields. So a lot of it's subtitled, which is another good thing for you, I guess. All right, let's have a look. How do you do?

Tom Davis here, long time lover of mischief and adventure. In the winter of 2018, I thought I'd attempt something that as far as I know had never been done before. Walk across an entire country in a straight line.

Am I mad? To pull this off, I'd need to find a country in which it was physically possible to walk across in a straight line. One that wasn't too wide and one with the right balance of remoteness and human activity. That country was right on my doorstep. Wales.

Starting at the English border just south of Oswestry, I would make my way west before eventually winding up here at the Maldach Estuary at Penmine Pool. Along the way there'd be barbed wire fences, hedgerows,

farmers, rivers, mountains, forests, gorges, lakes, marshes, people's back gardens and much more. The weather was going to be shit and over the course of the next few days I'm going through! I was going to go slightly mad. Oops, sorry. You're watching the Straight Line Mission across Wales. MUSIC

Right, so that's just the first one. And, you know, he goes across a river, he has to swim across a river and all sorts of stuff. It's really good. You'll have to just take my word for it. Let's just back up and listen to some of that again. I want to point out some little features of his accent, right? Let's just try and notice certain features of his accent, which, by the way, I love, right? I love all the different accents.

And as I said before, I'm particularly affectionate towards a Midlands accent.

because, as I said, all the kids at school where I grew up all spoke with this kind of accent. I used to speak with an accent like that sometimes at one point. These days, since I've moved away from that area, I've lost the accent a bit. But every now and then when I sort of go back, when I go back to where I used to live, it kind of comes out a bit more. Anyway, let's have a listen to his accent and I'll try and point out certain things.

How do you do? Tom Davis here, long-time lover of mischief and adventure. Long time, so not long time, but long time. So that oi sound instead of an i sound. So in time, in a Birmingham accent, it's going to sound like time as well. Now there's vowel sounds, but there's also like intonation as well a lot of the time.

You know, someone speaking in a Birmingham accent, the intonation is like going to be a bit different to how you might be used to. Longtime lover of mischief and adventure. In the winter of 2018, I thought I'd attempt something that as far as I know... As far as I know... No, it's not as strong as that. Far as I know... I... I... Not I, but I... As far as I know...

Had never been done before. Walk across an entire country. Walk across an entire country. Walk across an entire country. An entire country. In a straight line. In a straight line. Not a straight line, but line. To pull this off, I'd need to find a country in which it was physically possible to walk across in a straight line. One that wasn't too wide.

One that wasn't too wide. Not wide, but wide. One that wasn't too wide. And one with the right balance of remoteness. And one with the right balance of remoteness. And human activity. Human activity. All right. I mean...

I think I'll probably stop now, but I highly recommend Tom Davies. His channel is called GeoWizard, and you should start with the Mission Across Wales series. Basically, you can just join him on this really cool adventure, enjoy the Welsh countryside, enjoy his commentary and his storytelling, and then, if you like that, get into all his other videos as well. But the other straight-line missions in Wales, in Scotland...

in Norway, the city missions I talked about across Birmingham and across the industrial black country. What else? The adventure mission through Europe, which is called How Not to Travel Europe. Some really funny moments in that. And then How Not to Travel America.

And more recently he did one which is called, I think it's 10 pounds in my pocket or something. And the idea there is he leaves his house, he's got 10 pounds in his pocket, that's it. He just walks north and he walks off into the countryside north with just 10 pounds in his pocket. And he's got a backpack with a sleeping bag in it.

And the idea, the spirit of that is just that he's going to have adventures and just have encounters with people who are going to help him and, you know, explore the countryside and just go off the beaten path and see what happens. It's a really cool way of exploring England and.

And I highly recommend it. So there you go, Geo Wizard. I think it's probably time for me to stop. I said before that I would talk about some films that I've enjoyed recently. I don't really have time to go into the full details. But basically, last time I talked about films was with Kara Leopold. We talked about various films then. But previously, in a rambling episode, I talked about some films I'd seen as well, including The Witch...

Who's the director of that? Robert Eggers. So I talked about watching this film called The Witch, directed by Robert Eggers, which is a horror film, a really creepy, atmospheric horror film, which I really enjoyed. And listeners wrote to me saying,

to recommend some of his other films. And I did watch The Northman, which I also thought was really good. I mean, really well directed, full of atmosphere, full of scary sort of evil dark magic and stuff. The storyline, I have to say, was a little bit sort of

I wouldn't say... I don't know if generic is the right word, but the sort of thing that we've seen a lot of times before, like the hero's journey, you know, the boy who...

grows up with a desire to get revenge for the death of his father. And he goes through various different trials and ultimately tries to kill the man who killed his father. It's a fairly standard sort of hero's journey. But it's done in a really good way with some very atmospheric and creepy moments. So I'd recommend The Northman. Very violent, though. I mean, it's extremely violent.

So if that's not your cup of tea, then avoid it. I also mentioned I'd seen, what was it called? Hereditary by Adi Aster, the director of a very disturbing film about a family who are kind of plagued by demonic forces. And actually very good. Not the kind of normal popcorn movie horror films like...

insidious and stuff which are I think not that original really but Hereditary was clever and very disturbing and he made so so he made another film called Midsommar

Which is also fascinating and disturbing. So if you like disturbing horror films, check that out. It's basically about a girl who is in a relationship with a guy. And the relationship's not very strong, really. And I think the guy would probably like to break up with her. So it's essentially a breakup movie. A movie about a couple that breaks up. But it's set within the context of this trip that they make to, I think it's Sweden. Northern Sweden.

for a Midsummer Festival. They think they're just going to observe this interesting Midsummer Festival. Some of the people that she goes with, with her boyfriend, are students who are writing projects about Midsummer Festivals.

And they go innocently sort of expecting just to observe some interesting old traditional customs. What they don't realise is that they've walked into a kind of pagan cult. And a cult which believes in the things that the pagans believed in, including ritual sacrifice. And so within the context of this cult,

disturbing pagan cult which might actually be involved in very, very dark ritualistic

sacrifices, her and her boyfriend split up. I'm not selling it very well. I'm not selling the film very well. But it's good and disturbing. If you like kind of disturbing psychological horror films, then I recommend it. But it is pretty disturbing stuff. And it definitely made me think of a British film called The Wicker Man, which...

was released in the 70s and I watched that again. And The Wicker Man is similar, very, very similar film, but it's set in Scotland.

It's got Christopher Lee in it. It's about a policeman who goes to an island, a Scottish island, to investigate the disappearance of a girl. He gets caught up, again, it's very similar, he gets caught up in the rituals of this pagan cult. He slowly realises that there is a pagan cult operating on the island. The whole community is all part of this cult.

which he slowly uncovers the fact that they are involved in ritualistic sacrifices. Now, what's interesting is that the police officer is a Christian. He's like a churchgoer, and he fully believes in Christianity. He's a

a church-going Christian. And so he meets this pagan cult. So it's interesting, the sort of two ideologies that clash. But the way the film is constructed and the way it sort of winds its way to its conclusion, it's very disturbing and powerful and memorable. So there you go. Three films that, if you like this kind of stuff, there was the...

The Northman. And I haven't seen The Lighthouse by Robert Eggers. I haven't seen that. So that's another film I need to see. But The Northman, Midsommar and The Wicker Man as well. And finally, one other film which I haven't seen, but I really, really, really want to see is Godzilla Minus One.

because I'm a big fan of Godzilla. I loved the most recent Japanese Godzilla films. So I like the Japanese Godzilla films. I'm not so keen on the American produced ones, the ones with the American involvement. I find American Godzilla films, Godzilla is not the same. He's just like a big dinosaur. And also he is kind of, in the American made Godzilla films, Godzilla's sort of anthropomorphized a bit too much.

He seems to have sort of human body language and human attitudes. Like there's the Kong versus Godzilla series. And I've seen some clips from the most recent one of them, which looks pretty cool, you know, big monsters fighting. But it doesn't have the same edge I find that the Japanese Godzilla films have. Like in the clip I saw from Godzilla versus Kong, the most recent one, there's a bit where

They've had a fight and Godzilla kind of decides, OK, Kong, you're pretty strong. All right. You've earned my respect. I'm going to just walk away now. And Godzilla kind of turns away from Kong and sort of gives him the nod of respect. Almost. It's it's just I don't know. It's just too anthropomorphized. I mean, the characters have been made human. Anthropomorphization. Is that the word? Anthropomorphization.

It's not anthropomorph. Anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is basically when non-human things are given human characteristics. Like, for example, Mickey Mouse. That's anthropomorphism. He's a mouse, but he stands up on his legs and talks. He's got, you know, human behaviour.

That's anthropomorphism. So there's a little bit of anthropomorphism in those American Godzilla films. And of course, in the Japanese ones, like some of the comedy ones where Godzilla is clearly a man in a suit.

But what I would say is the true original spirit of Japanese Godzilla films, which is the first Godzilla film, which I think was made in the 1950s. And then they've returned, like the studio, is it Toho Studios, that makes Godzilla in Japan? They've returned to the original spirit of Godzilla, which is that he is this mysterious, mutated creature,

that arrives in Japan, he arrives from the sea and destroys everything that he comes close to. And we don't know his motivations. We think that he's been created because of nuclear testing or atomic testing in the oceans, probably by the Americans. Atomic bomb tests in the Pacific Ocean have

led to radiation leaking out and it's infected something some creature which has Mutated and turned into this monster which is continuing to mutate and it's it's full of rage and full of Radiact radioactive energy it's it's really mysterious and weird and it represents something

important, I think, in Japanese culture. Not just the radiation, right, and the nuclear stuff, and the effects that American nuclear action had,

But also, I think it goes even deeper than that, that in Japan they are subject to natural forces, this extremely destructive power of natural forces. And I have to say, at this point, I've got to say my thoughts go out to all the people who suffered from the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, on the east coast of Japan.

West coast of Japan a few weeks ago. And if anyone listening has been affected by that, then my thoughts go out to you. And I'm really sorry to hear and see what happened. But I guess it demonstrates what I'm saying about Japan, which is that they are this...

um these islands are they're subject to uh such powerful natural forces you know earthquakes tsunamis um tornadoes uh natural disasters and things and so that i think is deeply part of japanese culture to an extent um and so godzilla represents some of you know some of these things um and uh

And Shin Godzilla, the film before this most recent one, Godzilla Minus One, that came out a few years ago, I watched that with my brother and we were stunned by it because Godzilla is like a really creepy, weird thing. He's this worm, first of all, that appears in the ocean. No one knows where he's come from or what he is. He arrives in Tokyo and crawls inland and destroys everything.

that he crawls through the streets and crushes all these houses and buildings. People are running, screaming. It's like a tsunami. And the government don't know what to do. This is the interesting thing about Shin Godzilla. It's really about the bureaucracy and the fact that the inefficiency...

of the government and all of the bureaucracy, the layers of hierarchy and the sort of chain of command in the different government departments. There's like so many bureaucrats. It's important. It's impossible to

for the Prime Minister to make a quick decision because everyone's got to be consulted and there's this and this and this and there's all these different intergovernmental meetings. There's one big meeting and then the bureaucrats have to go off and have another meeting and there's another meeting inside that meeting and it takes forever for them to make a decision and an action plan about how to deal with...

this weird threat. Meanwhile, Godzilla is mutating. He turns from this worm with these weird eyes and these strange kind of gills on the side of his throat, which sort of spew out this weird kind of like blood into the streets.

It's really weird and he slowly mutates and rises up onto his back legs and it's like he's still suffering from the radiation poisoning, you know, he's still suffering the effects and it's changing and

mutating his body and he seems to be suffering and he screams in pain and he goes through all these different transformations until he gets to a certain point where his radioactive power sort of becomes activated.

And he does the atomic breath and his whole mouth opens up into four parts and a huge beam of atomic energy comes flying out and it blasts. It destroys everything it touches. And there's a beam that comes out of his tail and there are beams that come out of his back and they destroy everything. And the army are trying to destroy him and there's nothing they can do. He's completely impervious to all forms of attack, attack.

until they finally find a solution. But it's a sort of very temporary and perilous solution that they come up with. So anyway, I really enjoyed Shin Godzilla. I thought it was incredible. And so I really want to see the new Godzilla film, Godzilla Minus One, which is set in the aftermath of World War II.

So again, it kind of deals with a lot of those historical themes in Japan. So I'm very much interested in watching those in watching Godzilla minus one. It's not in the cinema here, so I have to wait until it comes on to the streaming platforms and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, in Japan they love Godzilla. I mean, I know. Did I ever tell you that I lived in Japan for a couple of years? I remember talking to my Japanese students about Godzilla and there's a tremendous amount of affection. So not only is his origin story is that he's this destructive force, but also he in later films, he does become a sort of protector of

against other monsters and things like that. And the Japanese love Godzilla and sort of, it's a very important part of Japanese culture and absolutely fascinating. But again, my thoughts go out to people who've been affected by the recent...

and tsunamis in Japan. I hope everyone's doing okay out there. I think it's time for me to stop. Thank you very much for listening to my podcast. I hope that you've managed to stay awake throughout this. Let me know if you are still conscious, right? If you've managed to listen all the way up until this point.

then just leave a comment saying that you're not a skeleton and that you're still breathing and fully conscious. Okay. Thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. It's been a

You know, a classic rambling episode. I will speak to you again soon. Next episode, Amber and Paul time. OK, so you can enjoy some fun conversation with them. But otherwise, leave a comment, leave a like, subscribe, subscribe to the podcast, leave a nice review, tell your friends about the show. And yes, premium subscribers. That's what I'm going to be working on now is the premium material content.

for the last episode, all that vocab that I highlighted in lurid green colour. Okay, so that's what I'm going to work on now. Thank you so much for listening. Speak to you again soon. But for now, it's time to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.

Let's talk about something that's not always top of mind, but still really important. Life insurance. Why? Because it offers financial protection for your loved ones and can help them pay for things like a mortgage, credit card debt. It can even help fund an education.

And guess what? Life insurance is probably a lot more affordable than you think. In fact, most people think life insurance is three times more expensive than it is. So with State Farm Life Insurance, you can protect your loved ones without breaking the bank. Not sure where to start? State Farm has over 19,000 local agents that can help you choose an option to fit your needs and budget. Get started today and contact a State Farm agent or go to statefarm.com.

Hi, this is Jonathan Fields, host of The Good Life Project, where each week I talk to listeners about investing in their future by increasing their own vitality. But when it comes to those financial goals, whether it be saving for a home renovation, growing your child's college fund, or travel, life can make it difficult to stay the course. By working with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. Having the bull at your back helps your whole financial life move with you. So when your plans change, Merrill's with you every step of the way.

Go to ml.com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of America company. What would you like the power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, registered broker-dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC.

If you enjoyed this episode of Luke's English Podcast, consider signing up for Luke's English Podcast Premium. You'll get regular premium episodes with stories, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation teaching from me and the usual moments of humour and fun. Plus, with your subscription, you will be directly supporting my work and making this whole podcast project possible.

For more information about Luke's English Podcast Premium, go to teacherluke.co.uk slash premium info.