914. A Midwinter Ramble ❄️ Luke’s English Podcast
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Hello listeners and welcome to this end of year rambling episode on Luke's English Podcast. Season's greetings, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I recorded most of this episode that you're going to hear now a few days ago and I'm just coming back to it now a few days later to add this introduction and a few other little bits. In this episode you can hear me rambling a

about these things. So some good wishes from me to you for the seasonal holiday period at Christmas time. Some news and updates about the podcast, including some comments about recent episodes, some responses from listeners to recent episodes, and what you can expect from this podcast over the next few weeks.

I'm going to tell you a couple of anecdotes about seeing Paul McCartney live in concert recently, visiting London and also playing a concert myself at the British Ambassador's residence in Paris.

in a big fancy room. There's going to be a section of this episode later with about 14 jokes and their explanations, so some joke dissection later in the episode. And also at the end there will be a vocabulary review with various bits of vocabulary from the episode summarised and explained briefly and

And there'll also be a vocabulary quiz, which you can get on the PDF. So check the description for this episode for a PDF with jokes, uh,

I'm with the jokes that I'll be reading out, some of those listener comments, and a vocabulary list for your reference, and also a vocabulary quiz so you can sort of check that you've learned and understood a lot of the words that I'll be explaining later. So all of that rambling is going to start in just a moment. But first, I would like to make a request to you right at the start of the episode here. I'd like to make a request for your help.

with an upcoming episode, episode number 916, which will be the first episode of 2025. I would like some help from you with this one. So in January, I always like to do an episode...

With advice about learning English and how my podcast can help, this is important, I think, to establish the aims of the podcast in the new year and to give listeners, including new listeners, plenty of good advice for learning English in 2025 to start the year in a good, positive way. And so that will be the theme of episode 16.

916, the first episode of 2025. That's going to be the theme, but I want your help this time. I want your input for this one. So this is my request from me to you. Please write to me. Send me your comments, messages, emails. Okay. And I've got two questions for you. You can reply to both of them or just one of them. It's up to you. So

So my first question is this. How has your English improved with this podcast? In what ways has your English got better by listening to this podcast? OK, so any descriptions, any comments are welcome.

So you could write anything, really, but here are a few ideas, plus anything else that occurs to you. So you could talk about maybe how your vocabulary has expanded generally, or specific words and phrases which stick in your mind. So how has your vocab improved?

How about your listening skills? How have they improved? And if you could even tell me your IELTS scores, that would be great because people do email me. I mention IELTS scores because people do mention that when they write to me sometimes. Quite regularly, I get emails from people saying, I've been listening to your podcast for all this time and I recently took an IELTS test and look at my listening score.

And it might even be the case that they took an IELTS test at one point and then

listened to my podcast a lot and then took IELTS again and their listening score definitely improved. So if you could even mention something like that, that would really be great. Um, you could talk about maybe if you feel more confident when listening or speaking in English, um, how your approach to learning English has, uh, been helped. Have you got any ideas from me or from any of my guests which work for you? Um,

you could maybe mention how English phrases or English grammar seem to come to your mind more easily when you're speaking or writing, which is again, something that people have mentioned in the past. Um,

Maybe talk about how your awareness of English pronunciation has improved as a result of listening to this regularly, or how your accent or pronunciation in English have been affected. So, do you feel like your spoken English has been affected by listening to this a lot? And generally, have you learned anything else? Not just about English, but have you learned anything else about the world, even beyond English, from the podcast? Or...

You know, how has this podcast benefited you in any other ways? Now, I'm assuming that it has helped. Obviously, I'm assuming that it has helped in at least some way. Maybe it's just kept you entertained or maybe it's helped you fall asleep at night. I don't know. But you can write any comments about how it's basically benefited you. And the second question is,

Can you give any recommendations for how to improve your English with this podcast? So I'm looking for any tips, any advice, any recommendations, even little tips.

Can you think of any specific things that you have done or that you do which you feel have a positive impact on your English, especially in relation to the podcast? I mean, you don't it doesn't have to be connected to the podcast, I suppose. You could talk about any of your other habits which you think are useful. But especially if it's, you know, since the episode is going to be about how the podcast can help you with your English, any specific tips that relate to

directly to listening to this podcast or indeed any other podcast would be useful. Now, you don't need to give a fully detailed learning method or some fully realised system of learning. You don't need to go that far. You can if you want.

But just any little habits, any specific ways of thinking, any mindset tips or any other things that you can do which help your English. And you can think about vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, speaking, listening, reading, writing, any of those areas. Any little things that you've done that you feel have had a benefit, you know, a good impact on your English. So I'm looking forward...

to sharing your ideas with my listeners and I'm looking for, yes, useful information to share with everybody. And so this could be your chance to contribute to the podcast and share your knowledge. And it could also be a way for you to show your appreciation for this podcast, which I hope that you've been enjoying and finding useful for...

for however long you've been listening to it, either as a long-term listener or a relatively new listener. So yes, please do share your experiences of learning English with this podcast so that others can perhaps pick up some ideas or inspiration from you. Now, you could write to me anonymously if you prefer, or you can give your name so that I can read it out.

And you can, how do you get in touch with me? Well, you can comment on YouTube. If you're watching this on YouTube, you could just simply leave a comment under this episode. You could leave a comment on my website, teacherluke.co.uk. Ideally, under the episode, on the episode page for this episode, rather than just on the front page of my website. But you could leave a comment on my website. You can comment on this episode on Spotify.com.

Or you could just send me an email at LukeTeacher at Hotmail.com. Luke, L-U-K-E, because that's my name. It's not Luke's as well. That's not my name. Some people write to me and they say, Dear Luke's.

Literally, Dear, L-U-K-E apostrophe S, because they look at the title of my podcast and it's Luke's English Podcast. That's not my name. Hello, my name's Podcast, Luke's Podcast. Nice to meet you. No, it's possessive, isn't it? L-U-K-E apostrophe S, that's a possessive. Anyway, so Luke, L-U-K-E, teacher at hotmail.com.

I don't really use Facebook or X or Instagram at the moment, so it's probably best not to use those social media platforms to get in touch with me. So basically, YouTube, website, Spotify or email. If you're thinking of writing to me, don't feel pressure to write something perfect, okay? Just any tips or advice or comments are welcome.

Any small bits of info. Don't worry about errors as well. I will correct your messages before I read them out. So if you're concerned about that, don't worry. I'll sort of correct any little errors. Plus, any funny anecdotes. I'm always looking for little funny comments, funny stories, funny anecdotes about your experiences of listening to this podcast. Any of those things are welcome too.

So, thank you for your comments. By the way, this year, thank you so much for your comments. I've had so many comments this year. I don't know how many. I can't count the number of comments I've had this year, but it's been a lot, and that's wonderful. So, if you have commented, emailed, messaged me in any way, thank you very much. Engaging with the podcast by writing comments is one of the ways that you help to keep the podcast alive, in fact.

and visible on various platforms. Reviews as well, reviews on Apple Podcasts also really help to promote the show on the Apple platform, which is really important for a podcast. So if you were thinking about like, I don't know, offering me a Christmas present this year, simply a good positive review

if you think I deserve it, of course, on Apple Podcasts or any other platform would really help. Anyway, so, right, that was my request from me to you for your comments about how you feel your English has improved with my show and any tips, advice, or even anecdotes about learning English that you can share.

Okay, I'll remind you of this again later in the episode, but please bear it in mind as we move through the rest of the episode. Anyway, now that I've given my request, let me go back to the recording that I did on Monday of this week. So I'm going to now stop my rambling here so that I can go back and start rambling again. Okay, all right, here we go. And...

We're recording. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. How are you doing out there in podcast land today? I hope you're doing fine. Now, I think that I am publishing this episode on Christmas Eve. I say, I think I'm publishing this episode on Christmas Eve. It makes me sound like I don't know what I'm doing. Like, when am I publishing this? I don't even know. The plan is to publish this on Christmas Eve. So if all has gone according to plan, then I'm going to be publishing this on Christmas Eve.

then this episode will have been made available to you on Christmas Eve. And you might be listening to this during the Christmas season, in which case I'd like to and love to wish you a very Merry Christmas. So let me do that.

Merry Christmas, everybody, and also Happy New Year, season's greetings, and I hope that you're having a genuinely lovely time this Christmas, even if you don't celebrate Christmas, even if you don't even recognise it as a thing to be celebrated. Even if that's the case, then I just hope that you're having a lovely, lovely time. Even if you're listening to this at a different time completely, which some people do, some people no doubt will be coming to this episode later,

At a completely different time of year, because you're catching up on the back catalogue of episodes, and this is the next one. I think it's episode 914, and it's like, I don't know, June or something. And you're like, alright, I'll listen to the next episode then. 914, the next one I haven't heard. And, oh, it's a Christmas episode, but never mind. Yeah, everyone's welcome. It doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter what you believe, what you think, what you look like.

Doesn't matter what colour your hair is or even what time of year it is, you are welcome to join in the seasonal fun here on Luke's English Podcast at Christmastime, recorded and published around Christmastime. And so, yeah, it's December and a lot of podcasts, the sort of wisdom in the world of podcasting is that

December is a very quiet time, actually, for podcasts. And a lot of podcasters actually decide to kind of give their podcast a break during the Christmas holiday season in particular.

The reasons are probably obvious, right? That a lot of people who normally would be listening to your show at this time of year are busy doing other things, getting ready for Christmas, celebrating with their family or generally just away from their normal routines. And as a result, they don't listen to podcasts as much as they normally would. So for people like me, podcasters, we look at our numbers, our listening statistics,

And we noticed that there is a distinct dip in December, a distinct dip in December, a distinct December dip, in fact. And it's known as the December dip in podcasting circles. And so you can understand why a lot of podcasters choose not to publish stuff at this time of year, because they kind of think, well, people are busy doing other things. They don't really have time for podcasts. So we'll just take a break and

That's to give the audience a break, and also because they think, "Well, this isn't the prime time for my listeners." Obviously, they're focusing on other things. Also, a lot of podcasters decide, "Right, well, I'll have a break then as well at this time, because I need a break too. I've got all that stuff to think about. I've got other things to deal with, like family stuff, planning holidays, buying gifts, and cooking turkeys, and all the stuff that people normally do."

It seems to be the sort of normal thing to take a bit of a break at Christmas. But... And that's probably what I should be doing as well, to be honest. I should probably give you a break and give myself a break. Everyone should have a break. Um...

But no, that's not what I'm doing. Nope. For some reason, I just can't stop doing this. I'm compelled to make episodes all the time. And even when, for example, I probably should be doing Christmas shopping and getting myself organized and ready for Christmas, here I am sitting here talking to you because I feel like I have to do an episode, at least an episode every week. You know, I was thinking about this. I was thinking I should probably take a week off, but...

Actually, I want to do it. It is the right time to do a rambling episode. And so I'll do a rambling episode for Christmas. It's a tradition. I always do some sort of Christmas ramble. And so it's hard to shake these traditions. Also, I feel that there are sort of just I feel like it's important to do on this podcast to do fairly regular rambling episodes just to kind of

to touch base with you, right? To coin a phrase, just to touch base with you. That's one of those sort of idioms that people use at work a lot in business meetings. Just wanted to call a meeting just to touch base with you. But it's still quite an important idea, I think. I use these episodes like this to touch base with my audience. And that means just kind of, what does that mean to touch base? I suppose it means to

Just check in with people. I mean, just talk about certain important foundational things. What does that mean? Touching base. The base is like the foundation upon which you build everything. This is your base, right? A bit like when you make a cake, you have a cake base and if it's a cheesecake or something, you add the other ingredients and layers of the cake on top of the base, right?

Similarly, if you're building something, you have a base and then you build stuff on top of it. So touching base is kind of like talking about the fundamental basic level stuff, right?

And in terms of business situations, if your boss says, can we just have five minutes? Just want to touch base with you. That means they want to talk about the basic things that you are doing. Maybe talk about how your current project is going and just establish that everything on a basic level is going okay. So I want to touch base with you in these rambling episodes just to kind of

How do I put this? First of all, it allows me to perhaps look back on recent episodes and kind of take stock of where I am, where we are in the episode, in our episode list, in the kind of flow of episodes. To take stock means...

take account of or count the number of things you have. See where you are. See what you've got right now. So one of the things is I want to have a little look back at some of the recent episodes. I don't need to spend a lot of time doing that. But also, I want to perhaps talk about what is going to come over the next few weeks. And always at this time of year, whenever there's a holiday time, I always kind of say, oh, I might not be able to do episodes for a while because I'm going to be busy with holiday stuff.

So anyway, anyway, touching base. In fact, well, let me do that now. Let me just talk about what's going on right now in podcast land in Lepland. So this, I think, is episode 914. And before this, we had a short story episode, which was called The Snowman, a kind of mysterious story about a creepy snowman. Have you heard that?

That was the previous episode. Now, actually, when I'm recording this, it's Monday, the 16th of December when I'm recording this. And the snowman episode is due to be published tomorrow. So I've got no idea what people think of that. Normally, the story episodes go down quite well. Normally, they're quite well received. People seem to like them. But who knows? Maybe everyone's going to absolutely hate the snowman. I hated that snowman. Stupid snowman.

standing outside a cabin why didn't he go off and do something else you know i hate snowmen what you know why why is it always why is it always men why don't we have snow women they're they're so sexist i had no idea what kind of scandal outrage or offense is going to be created by that episode just like everyone's going to be oh god the snowman why wasn't it a snow woman

And maybe the podcast has been cancelled. Maybe Luke's English podcast has been cancelled by everybody because they're just like, we've had enough of this patriarchal nonsense. I don't know. Maybe the Lepsters are all fighting with each other. It's like, don't be ridiculous. You'd be overreacting. Everyone's too woke. No, we're not. It's just like, you need to wake up.

Maybe everyone's arguing with each other. I've got no idea. Or what's much more likely than those dramatic scenarios is that I publish the episode tomorrow, the 17th of December. And because it's Christmas time, not many people listen to it.

Not many people comment and it just kind of passes people by and it doesn't really get much attention. That's a lot more likely.

Hello, this is Luke from the future again, just dropping in here to add something. I'm just interrupting at this point just to add something about the snowman. And I'll be interrupting myself during this episode like this a few times, actually. So I just wanted to add this. So it's now it's now Friday, which is a few days after I recorded this episode, which was Monday.

And the snowman episode was published a few days ago as well. That was Tuesday. So I recorded this, most of this episode on the Monday, published the snowman on Tuesday, took him for a drink on Wednesday. We were making love by Thursday. No, wait a minute. No, no, no. That's Craig David, isn't it? That's seven days by Craig David. I met a girl on Monday, took her for a drink on Tuesday.

Anyway, sorry. So I recorded this on Monday, published The Snowman on Tuesday. Right. And now I'm recording this interruption bit on Friday. OK, so I can report that thankfully the episode, The Snowman episode seems to be going down well with everyone.

There's a phrase I keep using. If something goes down well, it means that it's kind of well received by an audience. So, for example, the episode went down really well means that people really liked the episode. Your presentation went down really well with the committee means that the committee really liked your presentation. That joke didn't go down very well. Try not to make jokes like that in the future. Meaning people, you know, you told a joke in a meeting or something and people were like, what?

The joke wasn't very well received. It didn't go down very well. Anyway, so I'm happy to report that the snowman episode appears to be going down very well with everyone. And so far, there has been no massive outrage or shock or anything in particular. I mean, there wouldn't have been anyway, right?

In terms of the episode's performance, after just three days, the episode seems to be getting typical download numbers in the audio version, which is normal. Normally, audio episodes get a similar number of downloads, listens.

Okay, and on YouTube, the episode is currently ranked number one for views in comparison to my recent episodes. So that means that the episode is currently outperforming my last 10 episodes in terms of how many people have watched it. So it's the top episode of the last 10 episodes on YouTube, which is nice. So that's good.

So, yes, I will be doing more short story episodes regularly on the podcast in the future. I know they are popular and I enjoy doing them. It's great to sink your teeth into a good story.

on the podcast. I enjoy reading them out and doing a little bit of acting sometimes. And they're also a rich source of English language teaching. So it's always nice to get stuck into some vocab explanations and bits of language teaching as well. And the stories provide a really good context in

in which to explore bits of language. Comments, there have been various comments from listeners in response to the snowman, speculating on what happened. Who was the mysterious snowman?

So various responses, including some funny ones. Let me share some of the ideas that have been suggested by listeners. So in terms of speculation about the mystery of the snowman, one person suggested that perhaps this snowman was being built by a family member or friend of the writer who chose to...

scare the writer, to terrify this writer in order to help him overcome his writer's block. So it was some sort of plan by a family member. Like, you know, Dave is going to stay in the cabin in the forest because he's got this writer's block and he's going to go there to try and get away from it all and maybe get over his writer's block. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and sleep in a tent in the forest

Yeah, sub-zero temperatures. But it's all right. This is how much I care about Dave. I'm willing to freeze to death at night just for this. And in the night, what I'm going to do is I'm going to build a scary snowman in the middle of the night and throw snowballs at his window. This is how much I care about Dave. And it's going to shock him out of his writer's block. So that's the idea. And it apparently worked because...

He ended up writing this story to huge international acclaim, of course. So that's one theory. Some people believe the snowman was alive, like my daughter did. Some people thought the snowman was alive or haunted or I don't know what. Some people thought the snowman was like a living snowman and maybe he was just lonely. He just wanted to play. He just was looking for someone to play with.

He wanted to just play with the writer and apparently standing outside the cabin in a very creepy way was the best approach for doing this. Poor snowman. Maybe he didn't realise how frightening that was. Standing, staring at the window in the dead of night and chucking snowballs at the window. He's like, I just want to play. You know, maybe that's what it was. I suppose...

Throwing snowballs could be the only way for a snowman to communicate with someone, right? I mean, I expect they don't have email or SMS, do they, snowmen? Snowpeople? The people of the snow. They haven't developed sophisticated means of communication. They still communicate by snowball. So the snowball is the only way to get in touch. Ice MS, Ice MS, if you like. SMS, Ice MS, Ice MS.

Yeah, ice is kind of like snowball text messaging. Ice MS. Okay, that's a really bad joke. But it certainly brings new meaning to the expression sliding into your DMs, doesn't it? Sliding, because it's made of snow.

But anyway, I guess snowmen have no internet connection or in fact, no winter net connection. No winter net connection. Yeah, there were some jokes. Did you notice terrible jokes? Yes. Ice MS, not SMS sliding into your DMs. It's an expression that people use meaning to like

Go from a public interaction on social media to a private one in your direct messages. Sliding into your DMs. It's kind of a slightly sleazy thing to do. Just slide in. I just thought I'd slide into your DMs and start maybe flirting with you. Anyway, but I guess snowmen have no internet connection. No winter net. No internet. No internet. No winter net.

Okay, I'll move on. So a couple of people suggested that perhaps this scary snowman was being built by the owner of the Airbnb where the writer was staying. Whoever owned that cabin, maybe they used it as an Airbnb, right? Renting it out to guests. So maybe this snowman was built by the owner of the Airbnb because maybe they double booked the cabin.

And this was just their way of getting him to leave early so they could let the new guests in and then just make double the amount of money that they would normally make. Interesting technique for an Airbnb host, I think. Some people mentioned that maybe the writer just imagined it all and that maybe exhaustion and stress were causing him to experience paranoid delusions about

which is the kind of thing that can happen if you are burning the candle at both ends, if you're burnt out.

And if you're burning the candle at both ends, which is, by the way, an idiom which means that you're working very hard, but maybe you're partying very hard as well, and you're not getting any rest in the middle. So, you know, basically work and play a lot, but not rest enough. That's burning the candle at both ends. Imagine a candle, and you burn both ends of the candle, then obviously that candle is going to melt very quickly and disappear.

So that's burning the candle at both ends. If you're burning the candle at both ends and you're getting exhausted, you could end up in an exhausted, burnt-out state where you start to get paranoid delusions or something. So that's maybe what happened. He's escaped to this cabin in order to try and nurse himself back to health, but he's so burnt out that he's suffering from awful delusions that there's a creepy snowman outside his window.

Another person said that the story reminded them of another story called The Snowman. This one by an author called Raymond Briggs. I don't know if you know that story, The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. That is a story for children and it's a lovely one. We had it at home when I was a child. We had the book and there's also a film version of it with an interesting introduction by David Bowie.

Anyway, so there's a kid's story called The Snowman. It's a very beautiful sort of graphic novel, comic book. We've got that story for my kids as well. My daughter loves it. Do you know that story, The Snowman, by Raymond Briggs? Basically, to give you a summary of the story, there's a boy. He wakes up one morning, and he looks out the window, and it's snowing. There's snow everywhere. So he's delighted. He rushes outside. You know, he puts his...

all his winter coat on and his scarf and gloves and stuff. He rushes outside. He seems to be an only child, meaning he doesn't have any brothers or sisters, but he rushes out and he builds himself this wonderful snowman and he kind of uses some rocks for his eyes and mouth and stuff and puts a hat on it and a scarf and there's this wonderful snowman. He's so happy with it. And that night he's kind of going to bed and

He looks out the window one last time and the snowman is still standing there facing away from the house. This particular snowman was facing away from the house. And then in the middle of the night, the boy wakes up because he's excited. It's Christmas time and it's been snowing and he's excited about it all. He wakes up in the middle of the night and sort of looks out the window at the snowman.

and the snowman is still there facing away. And then amazingly, the snowman suddenly turns round and looks at him. So the snowman comes alive. So the boy is on his own in the house, his parents are asleep. The snowman outside comes alive and it wanders over and he invites the snowman inside and they play together. It's very sweet. They play together and

And the boy sort of introduces the snowman to all the things that humans have in their lives. So he shows them the kitchen and all the food in the fridge and all the stuff like the hot water in the tap, which the snowman has to be careful of because he doesn't want to melt. There's the freezer.

A big freezer full of frozen food. I think the snowman lies down in the freezer and has a nice little relaxing moment lying down in the freezer. And they play games in his bedroom and they try not to wake up the parents and stuff. And so the boy shows him his world. And then the snowman says, right, and now it's my turn. I'm going to show you my world. And he takes him outside and they start running down the garden covered in snow. And suddenly they take off and start flying.

And it's a very magical, beautiful moment. They're flying over all the gardens and houses and flying off. And they fly all the way out of the country, over the sea, over the North Sea, all the way up to the North Pole. And there they land and they join this party where there are all these other snow people.

all dancing and there's father christmas there and everything and the boy meets father christmas he has a wonderful time and then then they realize that the sun is about to come up so the snowman quickly flies the boy all the way home and just as the sun is is rising the boy gets inside the snowman goes back to his position standing in front of the house um and the boy goes to bed and you know goes to sleep and then when he wakes up the sun is the sun is up the sun is shining

And he's obviously excited to see his snowman again. And he rushes out, he gets his boots on and stuff, and he rushes outside. And spoiler alert, the snowman has melted. And all that's left is like this melted pile of snow and a few, like the hat and scarf and a few lumps of coal and stuff. It's kind of sad, but sort of beautiful as well. So this listener suggested that maybe...

Maybe the snowman in my snowman story was the same snowman as from the Raymond Briggs story. So it's that same snowman. He's come back to reunite with his old friend who has now grown up.

But the writer doesn't remember. Now, that's kind of unlikely. If you... Even when you're like 10 years old or something, if you built a snowman once as a child and then the snowman came alive and you brought it into your house and stuff and then...

It flew through the air and carried you all the way to the North Pole where you met loads of other snow people and Father Christmas. And then when you came back, the snowman had melted. You know, maybe it was just a dream. Maybe it was just a dream.

But you would remember that, right? You would remember. Like you would, if that was you and in the middle of the night you look out the window, oh, a snowman. I wonder what that's doing there. You wouldn't think, my snowman friend, he came back. That surely would be what would happen. But anyway, perhaps the snowman has mistaken this guy for someone else. Maybe the snowman is still looking for his friend and he keeps trying to find his friend. And this writer wasn't the boy all grown up.

But anyway, I thought that was quite a sweet idea that maybe the Raymond Briggs snowman is still out there looking for his old friend. Maybe that's what it is. He's just like throwing snowballs. Like, is it you? Could it be you? I'm trying to find my old friend. That's quite a sweet idea. Anyway, so I just wanted to interrupt here just to let you know some comments and stuff about the snowman episode, which seems to be popular. I'll be back again soon.

I'll be back again to interrupt the episode a little bit later. But now let the rambling continue. Anyway, there's the snowman, which hopefully you've had a chance to listen to. And what else? What else have we had recently? There's no real need for me to look back. I suppose there's not much point looking back, is there?

We had the Bits and Bobs 3, Funny English Signs Parts 1 and 2, which went down really well. Didn't really get picked up by the YouTube algorithm, but never mind that. I think the episodes were well received because of all the comments I got. People had nice responses to them saying that they made them laugh. There's the scary episode about the threat of AI to human civilization, which is just mind-boggling.

Bits and Bobs Part 2, the rambling episode about catching a cold and travelling with children, which was a sample from Luke's English Podcast Premium. The PDF for that, by the way. Some people asked, where's the PDF? That was only available for premium people. Then there was the Telltale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe, and other stuff. So that's where we are. That's what I've published recently.

But what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks? So you've got this episode, which is just great, isn't it? I mean, it's already going really well, this one. I think it's just excellent. What else? On Wednesday, so that's the day after tomorrow, I'm going to speak to Stephen Devinchenzi, and we're going to do a world quiz.

And I've got no idea what questions he's going to ask me. And I'm looking forward to it, even though those world quizzes are always tinged with a certain sense of doubt as well. Not doubt over whether I'll get the questions right or wrong, but doubt over just that slight sense of concern that here I am talking about world news events. And then there's that pressure to kind of take up certain causes and

to be the mouthpiece for those people, those people suffering at the hands of injustice in various kinds. And there's so much of that going on in the world. It just feels weird that... Can I talk about the world? Can I talk about sort of... Can I answer quiz questions about what's happened in the world this year on my podcast without feeling guilty for...

Not talking about the really serious human rights abuses that are going on. Anyway, but hopefully it'll be a fun quiz. It'll be a fun world quiz. I don't know what the questions will be. Anyway, I'm going to talk to Stephen the day after tomorrow and then hastily put together the episode and put that up before the end of the year. So that'll be kind of a bonus midweek thing. It'll probably arrive...

on Friday, I suppose, between Christmas and the new year. You'll get that world quiz episode. And then also I'm hoping, it's going to be a busy week, I'm hoping to record another Sherlock Holmes story, which I'll be able to upload and publish in the new year, just after New Year's Day.

But it depends if I have time. And if I do that, then that will have to be recorded on Friday and edited and stuff and then scheduled to be published in January. But I don't know if there'll be time because the school holidays begin very soon. So the kids will, you know, my daughter will be out of school. My son will be out of school.

daycare, and then I won't be able to do any podcasting work. So it depends how much stuff I manage to get done this week. And if I get all the stuff done that I hope to get done, as well as my Christmas shopping, then you will have a couple of other episodes before we continue in January with the sort of episode I normally do, which is a kind of welcome back to the podcast episode.

It's 2025. Let's do a new year episode. So, you know, despite the fact that normally podcasts reduce their content in December, and that seems to be the wise, shrewd thing to do in terms of podcasting strategy, actually this month,

You'll get tons of episodes. You're going to get even more than normal, especially if you're a premium subscriber. Hello, premium subscribers. Hi. Hello. Just before I say hello to the premium subscribers specifically, I just want to interrupt this episode again for a second time. So this is me from the future from Friday.

So I was just talking there about what you can expect over the next few weeks on Luke's English Podcast. And I have to say that things have changed a little bit. And as you heard me say, I was hoping to record that Sherlock Holmes episode, which would be published somewhere around New Year's Eve. By the way, I've said Christmas Eve. That's the 24th of December. Christmas Day. That's the 25th. New Year's Eve. 31st of January. New Year's Day. 1st of January. 31st of January.

New Year's Eve, 31st of December, and New Year's Day, the 1st of January. So you heard me say that I was hoping to upload a Sherlock Holmes story on New Year's Eve, I think. But I'm afraid things have changed, and I ran out of time this week, and I wasn't able to record the Sherlock Holmes story, unfortunately. Very sorry. But I will be doing it, and you will get it in January. So let me just kind of clarify. So the news quiz, the world news quiz...

with Stephen from Send7 Podcast will be the last episode of the year and it'll arrive later this week. And then the first episode of 2025 will be my traditional welcome back to the podcast. Here are some tips for learning with Luke's English Podcast in 2025 with your comments included, if indeed anyone sends them to me, which of course you will. So that will be the next one as well, the first one of the year.

for all those people who choose to turn over a new leaf in 2025 and make New Year's resolutions.

and turn to podcasts for learners of English. And then the next episode after that should be another Sherlock Holmes story. So it's going to be put back into January. So 914, that's this episode. 915 is the World News Quiz 2024, which I actually recorded with Stephen. It's quite epic. It's about two hours long, but it's, you know, it covers lots of

you know, interesting subjects. And you can see if you will be able to beat me in the quiz. Episode 915 will be Learning English with Luke's English Podcast in 2025. That's the first episode of the year. And then the one after that, 917, will be the Sherlock Holmes story, If All Goes According to Plan. I also have an episode recorded with my daughter. We sat down and recorded...

about 45 minutes worth of stuff together. So there's an episode with her coming up, which I think is a really nice one. It will be nice to have her back on the podcast again after how long? At least a year. You can see how...

she's changed you know in that time and how her English has become even more sophisticated she's six years old by the way and other episodes with a few other guests there's at least one walk and talk episode more stories more jokes more funny English errors and plenty more okay so I just wanted to add that update all right so let's get back to the episode here we go

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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. Hello, premium subscribers. How are you doing? I'm talking to the premium subscribers now. Hello there. Now, most of you, if you're premium subscribers, hello, everyone. By the way, everyone else, you can still listen to this. You're still welcome to listen to me, even though I'm talking to the premium subscribers who are all over here.

Everyone else, you can still listen to this, okay? That's fine. Just have a drink of tea or coffee or something. I'll talk to everyone again in just a second. But anyway, premium subscribers, right? Hello, all of you. By the way, some of you, some of you premium subscribers, you're subscribed to the premium show and everything like that. That's fantastic. Thanks for supporting the podcast. But I think some of you, you're not listening to the episodes.

And I think that maybe the reason for that is because you don't know how to do it. You don't know how to listen. Am I right? Am I right in thinking that some of you have paid for... You're paying for premium stuff, but you don't know how to listen to the episodes? And you're like, uh...

It's very simple. Just sign into your account. When you signed up, you created an account at acast.com. You received an email. You should have got an email welcoming you into the process. But if you kind of read the email quickly or you missed it or it went into your spam or something like that, you need to go into your ACAST account. Okay. So just to sign in, it's teacherluke.co.uk slash account. Okay.

Teacher Luke dot co dot UK slash account. That'll take you to the place to sign into your ACAST account. And if you want, you can, you know, create a new password if you can't remember what your password was. And then when you're in, then you can. The best thing to do.

is to click listen in podcast app. We've heard him say this before. He said this lots of times before. Why don't they understand? I don't know. I don't know why they... I don't know. There's something missing. People miss that email or something that people just don't realise. But they've heard it so many times. Why don't... I don't know. I don't know why they're not...

Anyway, sorry. So, you got it? Teacherluke.co.uk slash account. Sign into your Acast account if you're a premium subscriber, right? And then click listen in podcast app and follow the steps to add the subscription to an app, a podcast app on your phone, right? Because this is how 99% of people subscribe.

listen to podcasts. They do it using an app on their phone. And that's why the whole Acast Plus system is designed to be used on a phone. You can use it on your computer. You could add LEP Premium to YouTube music. And even if you don't have YouTube Premium or anything, you can still use YouTube music to listen to LEP Premium. Right. If you need more information...

If you need more information, what, go to teacherluke.co.uk slash premium info? Yes, teacherluke.co. You know this already. Yes, because you say it about a million times every year. Okay, teacherluke.co.uk slash premium info. That's where you get all the info, you see?

And teachaluke.co.uk slash account. That's where you can sign into your ACAST Plus account, where you can manage your subscription to Luke's English Podcast Premium, including add the episodes to a podcast app on your phone. Okay, now if you've done that, and you're just a happy premium subscriber, then I just wanted to let you know that

Just wanted to give you a heads up that you've got a new premium series available now, P65, parts one to four. It is available now, and you'll find it between episode 912 and 913 in your premium podcast list. Okay, there it is, P65, parts one to four.

It's called From the Bookshelf. And I did what I did before. I did it again, randomly chose some books from my bookshelf, read out a few pages from them, and then used them as the basis for some rambling and for some teaching. And then parts...

Two and three are a vocab review, detailed vocab review, where I go through more examples in the usual way. And there's all the different memory exercises and vocab quizzes that you can use on the PDFs for those parts. And then part four is pronunciation. I put all the vocab...

25 vocab items which I picked out of part one and then reviewed in parts two and three. All those vocab items are dealt with in a story in part four. And I read out the story to you and then let you repeat the story line by line after me to practice actually saying the vocabulary in context. And then you get another couple of bonus stories at the end of the episode as well. OK, so that's P65.

parts one to four, available for premium subscribers now. You will find it in your list. If you've added LEP Premium to a podcast app on your phone, you'll find the episodes in the list between 912 and 913. Okay. Has he stopped talking about LEP Premium now? Yes, that's it. I've now stopped talking about LEP Premium. But you're still talking about it. No, no, no, that's it now. That's it. Okay, so, yes, listeners and listeners,

Premium subscribers, sorry, you're going to get more episodes this month than you normally would, even though I probably shouldn't be doing that because there'll be some people who just miss those episodes completely because it's December and they're busy unwrapping presents or wrapping presents or cooking turkey or eating turkey or doing all of those other things like that. Okay. Actually, personally, me personally, as a podcast listener,

I actually really like it when my favorite podcasters release Christmas episodes, when they release new content at Christmas. I actually really love that because that's one of my favorite things is listening to my favorite podcast episodes or listening to my favorite podcasts.

At Christmastime, when there's a spare moment, when busyness, when crazy stuff with the family calms down and you get a spare moment. For example, if I'm in the kitchen at the end of the day after we've had dinner and I'm doing some washing up, if I'm washing up pots and pans.

In the kitchen, everyone else is in the living room. Kids are asleep. Everyone else is in the living room, kind of like half asleep, watching some movie or something or reading their books that they've been given or something like that. It's quite nice if I'm doing some washing up to put the headphones on and listen to the Christmas episode of my favorite podcast. Or maybe like that night in bed when you're cozily wrapped up in bed. It's quite nice to listen to a bit of

a podcast episode by my favorite podcaster at Christmastime. So if that's you and that's what you're doing here, if you're joining me during a quiet moment during the Christmas break and it's quite nice to be listening to this at Christmastime, then great. I'm glad that I uploaded this.

I'm glad that I didn't take a break during December and that we can still do this. It's not very Christmassy in my podcasting room. Remember, there's a video version for this episode on YouTube. Audio listeners, you're not missing that much. It's just me. There isn't more English in the video version. It's the same amount of English

But anyway, if you're looking at the video version, you can see I haven't made a lot of effort to make this room festive. It's exactly like last year. I didn't really do much to make the room festive then either. There's just literally one candle. I've lit one candle, which is on the shelf behind me, one red candle on its own up there. That's it. And it's so grey and dark at the moment in mid-December. It's so grey in...

It's like 4 p.m. on a Monday afternoon in mid-December. So dark and so grey that I can't actually have any of the lights on in this room. If I put a light on behind me or something, it completely ruins the camera settings or something because the camera can't deal with the fact that the room is brighter than...

Anyway, it's complicated to explain, but I have to have the lights low so that any light that I get from the window in front of me doesn't get overwhelmed by other lights in this room.

Mm-hmm. So that's why it seems to be very dark and not very festive in this room. It's just like this is the only way I can do this without the video ending up looking really bad. But anyway, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, everybody. So what did I want to talk to you about? So I've got all that stuff. I've talked about upcoming episodes, stuff that you're going to have, the December dip. What else?

I went to see Paul McCartney in concert a couple of weeks ago. Finally, I got to see Paul on stage doing his thing. And my wife and I went to the La Défense Arena, which is like a big sort of arena in the Paris area. And yeah, we went to see the Paul McCartney show and it was fantastic. It was great, I have to say. It was really great. And

You know, just seeing Paul up there on stage, you know, doing his thing. And he's, it's incredible. He is 80, what, 82, 83 years old now. And it's amazing that someone of that advanced age still has the energy to put on a good show, a professional show for over two hours. And he's on tour. So he's doing, he's traveling around the world. He's in, obviously in Europe at the moment.

doing these shows and that's exhausting. I mean, for me to just be out on a Wednesday evening just sitting watching him, I'm tired the next day, you know?

I just have to take a train for like 25 minutes to get to the venue. And then I sit down and just watch him for a couple of hours and then take another train home. And the next day I'm like, oh, a bit tired. I was out last night, you know, and he's 82 or 83. And he's actually out on the stage, just actually doing the show. And he seems to be fine. He kind of he breezes through the show.

You know, he's very cool and very relaxed on stage. And I was watching him in front of however many people it was. How many people were there in that stadium? I can't remember. Tens of thousands of people, right? It's a big place, a big room, massive audience, you know, big stadium show. And he's up on the stage. And I was thinking, it's just like a casual Wednesday evening for him.

And it did have that feeling. I felt like it was amazing. Although there were how many people? I don't know. 10,000, something like that. Maybe more. I have no idea. Loads. Even though it was like a football stadium full of people, it felt like we were all just sort of joining him in his living room, talking.

having a nice Wednesday evening with Paul in his living room, but oh you turn around there's like 10 20,000 other people there and

But this is the kind of atmosphere that he's able to generate. He's warm. He's relaxed. He's friendly. He's very likable. He's extremely likable as a presence. And then, of course, there are the songs. Every single song is outstanding. You know, the guy's been playing music professionally for something like 60 years. He'd be writing music. He's written some of the most iconic, well-known songs.

songs ever and he's got an extensive library of songs to draw from he could have done double he could have probably done four hours um of of music now he had he has that many well-known popular songs

But it was just hit after hit after hit. Stuff from the Beatles years. There was stuff from the solo years. Stuff from his time with Wings. The guy has had an incredible career. He kind of got to the top...

the topmost of the popper most twice, once with the Beatles and then started again and did it again with another band with a whole other generation of fans, people who only liked him for, for, uh, his songs with wings and weren't even really aware of the Beatles stuff until later. Um, so absolutely amazing. I mean, you know, you know that he's kind of maybe to an extent he's going through the motions, uh,

Which means that you know that he does it the same every single night. And he's been doing it the same every single night for a few years. Where he sort of tells the same stories. He gives you the same anecdotes, the same little jokes at different stages. And it's kind of like he's kind of going through the motions, just doing the things that he always does. And perhaps he's slightly on autopilot, just a little bit.

But, you know, I'm willing to forgive him for that because as a professional performer, you can't necessarily do something completely spontaneous and new every single night. You work hard to produce your show, to arrange it, to put it together, and then you do it and you do it every night and it's good every single time and the audience love it. And when you're 82, 83 years old, you can't necessarily...

do something brand new, fresh and exciting and different every single time, right? At his age, you've got to conserve your energy and you've got to kind of manage your time and you've got to be really organized in order to maintain your stamina. But it's impressive. It's really impressive that he has the energy and the lucidity, the clarity of mind and also the ability to continue playing his instrument. He's up there singing and

Admittedly, his voice is not as strong as it used to be, but he still hits the notes. I think they're clever in the way that they manage the sound. And they sort of his voice is supported by the backing vocals from the other members of the band. And I think it's the drummer himself.

who is singing some of the same melody lines as Paul and sort of supporting Paul's voice from behind. So I think they probably mix some of the drummer's vocals into Paul's vocals to sort of give him a bit of a lift and to support him, which is very cleverly done. You know, they manage the sound mix really, really well. So Paul's voice lacks the power that it used to have, which is understandable at that age.

he's able to hit the notes. He's not out of key or anything. And so, you know, that's impressive. But also the way he plays the bass while he's singing, he's still playing all of those bass lines. And you can take it from me that a lot of those bass lines are pretty complex things to do. Like this one track in particular, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,

And to be honest, I think it's only in the show in order to show off how good he is at playing the bass and singing at the same time. Because the bass line is great and complicated. And he sings the song and plays the bass at the same time. And I've got a feeling that half the reason, at least half the reason that song is in the show is because he wants everyone to see it.

how good he is. Like, look at this, you know, I can still do this. I can play. Isn't this, it's a really neat baseline, isn't it? You know, and look at me, I'm 80, 83 years old. And you can tell from his body language, he's playing the song and he's quite pleased with himself with the baseline because he keeps kind of looking down at the guitar. Maybe fair enough. Maybe he needs to look at it, look at the guitar to keep an eye on where his fingers are.

But also, I get the impression he's looking down at the guitar at the bass while he's playing this bass line as if to say, wow, this is a really great bass line, isn't it? But again, I forgive him for those little things that he does because it's Paul, you know. And so, yeah, that was a great experience. And I mean, I could ramble some more about that, but I think that's probably enough. In terms of music, I am...

Music and comedy, right? So, you know that I do stand-up, but I haven't done stand-up really since the summer.

Some of you who've been listening for a few months now, you'll remember that in the summer I was talking about doing a stand-up show with my friend Charles here in Paris. And I was sort of advertising it on the show, promoting it and saying that I'd be doing a live podcast recording afterwards. I did the live podcast recording that was published earlier this year. Which episode was that? LEP Live, it was called. LEP Live. Where is that?

Episode 894 LEP live in Paris live podcast recording. That's the podcast I did in the room after the stand up show. And that episode just I mean, on YouTube just was like the the least popular episode on YouTube in in terms of numbers. Like it seemed that people just didn't notice that one.

Or they're like, oh, Luke doing a live podcast in Paris now, not interested. Out of all of the episodes I've published in the last couple of months, that was one of the least interesting.

interesting, it seems, for my audience, which surprised me. I thought that people would be more interested in listening to me doing a live podcast in front of an audience. But again, this is one of those things where my perception perhaps is influenced by my expectations. For me, that was a big deal, doing something in front of an audience, recording a show in front of an audience. Admittedly, a fairly small audience. And admittedly, I wasn't very prepared because I wanted to keep it spontaneous.

But for me, I was thinking, this is great. And after I'd recorded it, I thought that went really well. Can't wait to publish this. Can't wait to see what people think. Published it and just, you know, not a huge response, really. Certainly not as much as I would get for...

Even just the average rambling episode or an amber and Paul episode or a story episode of particular So a bit disappointing that people didn't respond to a live podcast recording More enthusiastically than they did but I mean, what do I know? again, it's probably just my my it's probably that difference between the expectation and and what actually happened and

And that it's actually fine, you know, probably nothing to worry about or be bothered by. But anyway, stand up. So I haven't done stand up since since the summer. In fact, since that gig, I haven't really done it because there were the summer holidays and I just kind of lost the habit and haven't been up on stage. But also that's because I've been focusing on playing music and I'm in a band at the moment.

And we play at the British Embassy. So it's with some guys who work at the British Embassy. And it's kind of a social committee project at the Embassy that we do a live band and that we do shows in the Embassy, in the bar. But also this year for Christmas, we're doing the British Ambassadors Christmas Party, which is a big party at the British Ambassadors residence in Paris.

So, hmm, you know, Ferrera Rocher, where you're really spoiling us at the ambassador's party.

At the ambassador's reception, the guests, you know that advert, I've talked about it lots of times before. Have you ever seen that advert for those chocolates, Ferrero Rocher? Mr. Ambassador, with these Ferrero Rocher, you're really spoiling us. Delicieux. So we're going to be at the ambassador's party playing our songs in front of over 100 people. So we've been practicing, practicing, practicing.

And we're doing a list of songs that hopefully people will enjoy, including stuff like we're doing Get Lucky, Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers, you know, Get Lucky. And we've been practicing that and stuff. And we're doing that on Wednesday at the party. And so that's Wednesday, the 18th of December. And guess who is going to be a guest at the embassy tonight?

on Tuesday the 17th, tomorrow. Who is going to be visiting the British Embassy and the Ambassador's residence tomorrow? And we're playing get lucky at the party the next night. Who is it? Who's going to be visiting? Are you thinking, is it going to be King Charles? No, he visited recently, but it's not him. Is it Prince William? No, he was there recently. Is it Donald Trump? No, he was there last week, but it's not Donald Trump.

And you're thinking, is it Mick Jagger, Luke? No, Mick Jagger was there for the party during the Olympics opening ceremony. It's not Mick Jagger. Who is it? Well, it's Pharrell Williams. Pharrell Williams is going to be at the embassy tomorrow. And literally the next day, we are going to be playing his song, Get Lucky, at the party. And we're just thinking, oh, God, it would be awesome if he was there at the party tomorrow.

And he would jump up on stage and sing along with us. But no, he's not going to be there on the 18th. He's going to be on the 17th. So we missed him by one day. So you could say we got unlucky, in fact. We got unlucky with that one. If he'd just come the day after, then maybe we would have been able to play Get Lucky with Pharrell Williams himself. That would have been good, wouldn't it? Imagine that. We came up with a name for the band. We've called ourselves the Diplomats Band.

which is pretty good, I think. We're quite happy with that. You know, it's kind of pretty solid as a name for a band, The Diplomats, especially since, you know, it's at the embassy and the other guys in the band work at the embassy in a sort of diplomatic capacity.

We were thinking of maybe calling ourselves the Ambassadors, but the Diplomats is what we've gone for. Also, one other possible idea for a band name, we could have called ourselves the Ferrero Rockers, you know, after that Ferrero Rocher advert that takes place in some Ambassadors residence. But no, the Diplomats. Yeah.

It's great to be playing the drums again regularly, and I'm playing a lot, and we're really getting into it, and that's great. So no comedy, but plenty of music. What else? Oh, yeah, other upcoming content on the podcast. Walk and Talk. God, it's dark in this room. It is so dark. I'm actually going to have to put a light on. I've got one of these. Again, audio listeners, you don't need to worry about these details. But I've got one of these kind of like...

You know, these lights. It's not a ring light, but it's a similar thing. It's a light you can put on behind the camera and it kind of helps to light up your videos. And this particular one I've got has got a setting on it which gives a nice warm light and the setting is called candle, which means that it does kind of flicker slightly. You know, like the way the light from a candle flickers? So it's on candle setting, which means that the light might kind of flicker slightly.

That's just because... There you go, it's flickering now. That's just because the... I found that that's the best colour light that I can get from this. I mean, it does other colours as well. There's kind of a bright white, but that's a little bit too bright. And then there's all these other colours, like green and stuff, but that's obviously terrible. So the candle effect is what I'm going for. All right.

Hello, it's time for me to interrupt the episode again. How are you doing, everyone? How's the episode going for you? Is it all right? Yeah? I hope so. I'm making it much longer with these interruptions. Plus, there's going to be a vocab review at the end, of course, which I shall have to try and do really quickly.

But anyway, stick around for that so you can see which bits of vocab, which words and phrases I'll actually be summarising for you. Because surely you've noticed little things that I've been saying during the episode, little phrases and expressions and words and idioms and things. But I'll explain a lot of those things at the end. Anyway, I wanted to interrupt here because, as you know, it's now Friday and I actually...

I'm going through this again, recorded the episode on Monday. It's now Friday. And on Wednesday, that's when we did the concert at the Ambassadors party. And I just wanted to kind of describe how that was. Yeah, unfortunately, Pharrell Williams wasn't there. So although we did get lucky in the sense that we played the song, we didn't get lucky there.

because Farrell wasn't there. So we did get lucky and we didn't get lucky, both at the same time, if that's possible, which it is. Anyway, I just wanted to describe what it was like. So the Ambassadors Party, yes, it took place at the Ambassadors Residence. So this is the British ambassador to France who lives at this very fancy building

in a very posh part of Paris next door to the embassy and it's this wonderful old building full of history, a very historic location. The building itself was built in 1720 and is typically grand and beautiful with high ceilings

All sorts of valuable paintings, some works of modern art in there as well. Crystal chandeliers, a long beautiful garden, several ballrooms, a throne. There's a throne there, presumably in case the king visits and he needs to sit down. They actually have a throne there.

and more, right? So this is where the queen stayed when she visited Paris and now the king. It's where the heads of state from countries around the world are welcomed. The building used to be the home of Napoleon Bonaparte's sister and was later the home of the Duke of Wellington when the building was sold to the British government in the 19th century.

All sorts of people from history have visited the place. But surely the pinnacle of all of this, the most significant moment in the building's history, was when my band played our concert there on Wednesday evening. And actually, it was good. It went well. Yes, we went down well, you could say.

And we did, you know, a range of cover versions. That means songs written by someone else, written by other people. So we did Get Lucky. We did loads of things. Let me just very quickly mention the songs that we played. It's kind of a fairly eclectic mix of stuff. The ones that worked the best, the ones that generally work the best are

in a situation like that at a party where you've got all these people including basically all the staff at the embassy and all the staff who work at the ambassador's residence plus their wives, girlfriends and friends and stuff. So we had quite a lot of people there.

And the ones that work are the ones that everyone knows and also the ones that people can dance to. So Get Lucky by Daft Punk, Kavinsky Night Call, Psycho Killer by Talking Heads, which we also did Lady by Mojo, if you remember that one. Learn to Fly, The Foo Fighters, Help, The Beatles, There She Goes by The Lars, Rebel Rebel by David Bowie, Song 2 by Blur,

Come Together, Beatles, The Joker by Steve Miller Band, Every Breath You Take by The Police, Slade, Merry Christmas Everyone, 500 Miles by The Proclaimers, Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash, Dakota by Stereophonics and Friday I'm In Love by The Cure. So that was an overview of the songs we did and

It went great. It was really good. So the scene, yeah. I mean, when you enter the building, when you... I talked before about Ferrero Rocher, right? Which are these little chocolates. And I've talked about this on the podcast before. You know, I don't know if you know the reference. Some of you do because you've got the commercial, the TV commercial on the TV station.

You're at the right age where you remember seeing those commercials But they used to advertise Ferrero Rocher in this funny cheesy advert where it was a scene at an ambassador's reception in some fancy ambassadors residence somewhere in the world and the ambassador at the ambassador's reception the guests are always treated to the finest You know the finest things

And there are butlers holding silver trays piled up with Ferrero Rocher chocolates. And you see people taking them and, you know, there's a glamorous woman who comes up to the ambassador and says, Monsieur Ambassador, with these Ferrero Rocher, you really are spoiling us. And there's like kind of a posh guy who eats one and he goes, you know, magnifique or something like that. Yeah.

So I was joking about that. But actually, on Wednesday, when you arrived in the building and you were greeted, they actually had silver platters with Ferrero Rochers on them.

which was obviously a joke, but that was a really great touch. I thought that was really nice. And of course, I was able to say, oh, with these forever in Russia, you're really spoiling us. And yeah, just really cool to take part in that. And people were dancing and that was great. And the music sounded good. And the ambassador herself,

The ambassador herself was actually the one who kind of really got the party going by dancing with her husband on the dance floor. She was really into it. She is great. She's she's a really good host. So that was a really good, fun experience. So I just wanted to share that with you.

You're welcome. Now, let's get back to the episode recorded on Monday. Here we go. So, yeah, I was going to talk about walk and talk episodes. So every now and then someone says to me, can you do another walk and talk episode, Luke? And I'm assuming that you know what walk and talk episodes are. I did a couple of them this year.

Yeah, I've got a couple of Walk & Talk episodes in the pipeline. The first one is Walk & Talk London. And that's when I was in London, actually, again, in the summer, in July. And I walked around London. I did a kind of super fast walking tour of London on a Saturday afternoon, which was incredibly busy with tourists. Yeah.

And I walked along the South Bank near the London Eye, walked over Westminster Bridge, past Big Ben, down Whitehall, past Downing Street, through Trafalgar Square, up through Piccadilly Circus, I think into Covent Garden. And then I took an underground train to Marleybone Station. And so that's about an hour's worth. And I...

I just haven't edited it all together. It takes quite a long time to edit those together because there's quite a lot of footage and audio that need to be

combined, and then I've got to edit it all together. So that's something that I'm working on. But you will get a Walk & Talk episode in London coming fairly soon. And then of course, if you remember, there's the Medieval Museum episode, which I've been working on since... Well, I haven't been working on it. That's the thing. I recorded it when? In May, I think it was.

I went to a medieval museum with Amber and Paul and Paul's brother, who is a professional footballer, by the way. Um, he used to play for Bournemouth football club. I'm not sure who he's with these days. Um,

And we walked around the museum and Amber told us lots of really interesting things about the different medieval artifacts that can be found there. And I videoed it and there were four microphones all picking up, you know, recording the four of us independently. And it is an absolute nightmare to edit. And I spent quite a long time editing just the first 10 minutes of it and then just kind of left it alone. And I haven't had the...

courage to go back and continue editing it. So that's something I need to go back to and finish putting together. I don't know how I'm going to deal with it because two of the microphones cut out after about 60 minutes. So there's about half an hour at the end of the episode where only two of the microphones are working. I don't know how I'm going to manage it. But again, I've got my work cut out for me there. I've got to put those episodes together.

and sort that out. But yeah, Medieval Museum Walk & Talk with Amber and Paul and Paul's brother Kyle. Also coming relatively soon, as soon as I get my act together and sort that out. I wrote some notes down here for things I was going to talk about in this episode. But yeah, Walk & Talk in London should be good. The only problem with that is that... So I put the camera on my T-shirt. I kind of attached it to myself.

And it wasn't perfectly straight. So it's like an action cam, like a GoPro. It's an Insta360 action camera. And the problem with it was that it wasn't perfectly straight. It's slightly wonky, slightly lopsided. So the horizon isn't perfectly straight. It's kind of at a bit of an angle.

Which is another reason why I haven't been working on it, because I looked at the raw footage and I was like, ah, God, that's going to be annoying. I need to try and fix that. So I suppose what I'll have to do is turn the footage to make it straight, but then I'll need to zoom in a little bit to cut out the edges better.

dodgy diagonal edges of the frame. So I don't know how it's going to turn out. But anyway, I've got my work cut out. But it was great to be able to walk around in London and do a walk and talk episode in London. I just love visiting London, as I've always done. Obviously, I used to live there. But it's so great to go back sometimes. And two weekends ago, I was in London at a reunion at the old school I used to work in.

playing with the old band that I used to play drums for there. We had a reunion Christmas party. That was nice. But I also got to spend a couple of days in London, especially mostly one day on my own, on foot in London with just a backpack. And it was just wonderful. I just had a great time, even though it was quite difficult.

even though there was a storm, there was like high wind and rain. I just love being on foot, walking around the streets of London. I just find it so energizing. And in the morning, I had a delicious fry up. That's a full English breakfast. I had

bacon and sausage and toast and beans and egg and a big cup of tea and it was just like oh this is what i've been missing and it just fueled me up for a great day of walking around different parts of london some of the some of my favorite areas of the city the kind of areas north of oxford street so that's like fitzrovia and bloomsbury those kinds of areas i love that part of town

And I spent some time at the British Library, which is just next to St. Pancras Station, near King's Cross Station on the Euston Road. The British Library is a really great place to go because, first of all, it's completely free to go in.

And obviously, it's a library, which is wonderful. But I think it's one of the biggest collections of books in the world. And they have loads of really old books. And the way they've organized it is fantastic. They've got this central sort of section, which is full of these old leather-bound books, all in a kind of huge case behind glass. And then around that, you've got the

you know, the areas where you can walk and sit and stuff.

And there's an area on the first floor with lots of desks and seating spaces. And it's for students to go and work. And there are lots of study spaces in the library. And there's free Wi-Fi there and stuff. And so whenever I'm in London on my own and I need a place to just sit and do some work, which is normally what I do, I'll bring my laptop with me when I do a trip to London.

Normally, I'll go to London to see my brother, spend time with him, or I go to London on my way up to see my parents, often with my kids, but sometimes not. Sometimes with my wife and kids, sometimes just me. When I'm on my own and I want to find a place to work, the British Library is a great place to go because of this wonderful modern building.

full of atmosphere because you're in the presence of all these, you know, thousands of old books and lots of students there studying. And I find myself a little spot to sit down and I sit and work for ages. And the library is just, it's just a really great place. I recommend it. I recommend going there. There's

They've got a good bookshop. They've got, you know, all sorts of interesting things to enjoy and also just a good place to sit and do some work if you're looking for a place to do some work. And I thought, right, I'll tell you what, I think I'll end this episode by just sharing a few library-based jokes. Will I end here? Some library jokes. Actually, I've got some comments as well. That reminds me. I've got some comments, um,

from listeners on some recent episodes, especially the Funny English Signs episodes. So I'll tell you what, I'll end with those comments. But before that, library jokes. And so this, I was inspired to do this just because I enjoyed being at the British Library so much. And also the rest of my trip in London when I had lunch in the pub and, you know, enjoyed some beer from the bar and

with my lunch and just, oh, it's just amazing. Anyway, library jokes. All right, library jokes inspired by my trip to the British Library. Here we go. I've got about 14 library jokes. And as well, there was that library joke from Kate Billington a few years ago, if you remember that one. And she presented it as a joke that works in any language. Do you remember the joke? She actually translated

translated it into Chinese successfully as well. It was quite impressive. But the joke, Kate Billington's library joke was this. A man goes into a library and he goes up to the counter and he says, hello, I'd like fish and chips, please. And the librarian says, sorry, no, this is a library. And the man goes, oh, sorry, I'll have the fish and chips, please. All right. No need to explain that, is there? But that's a good joke that works in any language.

And I don't think it requires any explanation, which is good. Some more library jokes. Let me fly through some of these quite quickly. By the way, you'll find these listed on the page for this episode on my website. Library jokes. OK, some of these are really stupid and terrible, but there are some good bits of English that you can learn from them. OK, so the first one is this. A man walks into a library and says, do you have any books on Pavlov's dog and Schrodinger's cat?

And the librarian says, it rings a bell, but I'm not sure if it's here or not. Do you have any books on Pavlov's dog and Schrodinger's cat? Pavlov's dog, I've explained this fairly recently on the podcast. Pavlov's dog was an experiment which by a psychologist or a doctor called Pavlov, who with his experiment proved something about conditioning.

And the experiment was basically this, that he fed a dog food, and every time he fed the dog food, he rang a bell. And then eventually... And so every time he fed the dog food, he would ring a bell, and the dog would salivate. Saliva would come out of its mouth because it was being given food every single time. And eventually, he stopped giving the dog food, but he would still ring the bell. And when he rung the bell, the dog would salivate. And it proved something about the way that...

Dogs, and also humans, can be conditioned, can be trained to have certain responses based on certain stimuli. It's a famous scientific test or scientific experiment. Pavlov's dog. And he rang a bell, you see.

Schrodinger's cat is, oh God, how do I explain Schrodinger's cat? Again, I've tried to explain this on the podcast before as well. Schrodinger's cat is something that, some theoretical mental exercise, which is supposed to prove something about, I don't know. All right, hold on. Let me try and

Okay. A few moments later. Okay, I've asked ChatGPT, can you explain Schrodinger's cat briefly? And it's taking its time thinking about that one. Very slowly responding. Yeah, a thought experiment.

That's what I was looking for. That's the expression I was looking for. Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment proposed by physicist Erwin Schrodinger to illustrate the strange nature of quantum mechanics, particularly the concept of super... God, ChatGPT is being very slow with this one.

Which makes me feel a little bit better because I was struggling to explain Schrodinger's cat too, but apparently ChatGPT is finding it hard work as well. It's like such a slow response. Normally ChatGPT is like, bang, yes, I'll do it. I'll do it. I've done it before you've even finished asking the question. It's like ChatGPT, could you be done it already? Not this time. It's taking its time.

Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment proposed by physicist Erwin Schrodinger to illustrate the strange nature of quantum mechanics, particularly the concept of superposition. OK, ready? The experiment. Imagine a cat placed in a sealed box with a radioactive atom that has a 50% chance of decaying in a given time to a Geiger counter to detect the decay of the radioactive atom.

And three, a vial of poison, like a little glass container of poison that will be released if the Geiger counter detects the decay. The key idea is this: if the box is closed, then we cannot know whether the radioactive atom has decayed or not. This means the cat is in a superposition

Come on, ChatGPT, it's just literally one word every few seconds. Apparently this is difficult for ChatGPT to do. Either that or maybe everyone else on the internet is asking ChatGPT to do other things. Like, ChatGPT, can you write my midterm essay, please? Or ChatGPT, can you tell me a stupid joke? Or ChatGPT, can you write all of my Christmas cards for me?

And ChatGPT is like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm trying to explain Schrodinger's cat over here. Just hold on a minute. Okay, so the key idea is if... So, right. Imagine a cat is placed in a box with a radioactive atom with a 50% chance of decaying in a certain time. And you're like, sorry, what? Yeah, just go with it. All right.

Also, a Geiger counter to detect the decay of the atom. And thirdly, a vial of poison that will be released if the Geiger counter detects the decay. And you're thinking, why did Schrodinger spend so much time fantasizing about killing a cat in a box? I don't know. But anyway, the key idea is this. If the box is closed, we cannot know whether the radioactive atom has decayed or not.

This means the cat is in a super position. It's not in a super position. It's in a really bad position, isn't it? There's nothing super about that. It's like the cat's like, this is not a super position. I'm stuck in a box with a radioactive...

um atom and a vial of poison please get me out of this box and give me some milk or something or a fish anyway so this means the cat is in a superposition it is both alive and dead at the same time from a quantum perspective when the box is opened observing the system forces it into one of the two possible states the cat is either definitely alive or definitely dead

Now, if this is going over your head, don't worry. It kind of goes over my head as well. Basically, a cat's in a box. Is it dead or not? We don't know. It's got a 50% chance of being dead, 50% chance of being alive. The only way you can find out is by opening the box. So the cat is, from a quantum perspective, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.

The purpose of this? What's the purpose of this? Well, according to Chad GPT, Schrödinger's cat is not about actual cats, but highlights how strange quantum mechanics is when applied to everyday objects. It was meant to question the idea that something could exist in multiple states, like alive and dead, until observed.

Fine. So a famous scientific experiment, in this case, a thought experiment. Don't worry, he didn't actually put the cat in a box. As far as we know, I mean, that's what he said to us, everyone. Edwin Schrodinger was like, right, imagine I put a cat in a box with a radioactive atom. Just imagine they'd like, did you actually do it? No, no, no, no, no. What? Of course I didn't. Just imagine that I did. Right.

A famous experiment. God, all this is a complicated explanation for a fairly bad joke. A man walks into a library and he says, do you have any books on Pavlov's dog and Schrodinger's cat? And the librarian says, well, it rings a bell, but I'm not sure if it's here or not. OK. Right. The others are slightly less interesting.

Complex. Second joke. Why are libraries the tallest buildings in the world? Why are libraries the tallest buildings in the world? Because they have so many stories. Right. Now, this is a joke on the fact that story is a homophone because one meaning of story, that's S-T-O-R-Y.

Right, or plural, S-T-O-R-I-E-S, stories. One meaning of stories, as you know, is like stories that you tell, you know, like narratives, like learn English with a short story, like The Snowman or whatever, Sherlock Holmes. These are stories, right?

But also stories, spell S-T-O-R-E-Y-S. This means levels of a building, floors of a building. It's a synonym for floors on a building. So this building has five floors. You could also say this building has five stories. So why are libraries the tallest buildings in the world? They're not actually the tallest buildings in the world. But anyway, why are libraries the tallest buildings in the world? Because they have so many stories.

Okay, moving on. Number three. Why did Dracula go to the library? Because he wanted to sink his teeth into a good book. Yeah, okay. So, why did Dracula go to the library? Because he wanted to sink his teeth into a good book. Now, Dracula doesn't bite books. He bites people. But anyway, you can learn an expression to sink your teeth into something. To sink your teeth. Like when you bite into something, you sink your teeth into it. So...

Like, happy Christmas. Oh, you bought me a book. Fantastic. Yeah, I thought, you know, I bought you a book that you could sink your teeth into. It means to really get into the book, to kind of really consume the book enthusiastically, to sink your teeth into something. I could give you an episode of the podcast for you to sink your teeth into. You sink your teeth into a good book. Why did Dracula go to the library? He wanted to sink his teeth into a good book. Okay. Fourth,

Why can't you go to the world's biggest library? Why can't you go to the world's biggest library? Because it's always overbooked. I suppose in one sense that means there are so many books in there that you can't actually go in because there are too many books. It's overbooked. But also, obviously, overbooked means that there are no tickets left. Yeah.

Five, why did the librarian fall down or why did the librarian fall over? Because he was in the non-friction section. He was in the non-friction section. So normally it would be the non-fiction section because you've got fiction books, books which are made up, they're not true stories. And then you've got the non-fiction section, which is where you find, you know, all of the factual content.

But this librarian fell over because he was in the non-friction section, meaning it was slippery. Friction is when something rubs against something. For example, I suppose if you're walking along a floor and there's a lot of friction between your shoes and the floor, then you won't slip, right? Because...

There's friction. But if you're in the non-friction section, which is not a real section in a library, but that's the non-fiction section. If you're in the non-friction section, presumably it would be quite slippery and you might fall over or fall down. This is why the librarian fell over because he was in the non-friction section. God explaining the jokes really doesn't. Does it help? It helps you understand them.

What's that phrase? Yes, explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You learn something from it, but the frog dies in the process. All these jokes are like dead frogs in a laboratory somewhere. But anyway, we're learning English. Seven. Why did the ghost keep coming back to the library? Why did the ghost keep coming back to the library? Because he went through his books too quickly.

I quite like that. To go through a book obviously is to go from the first page all the way through to the last page, meaning to read it. But a ghost would go through a book in the sense that ghosts pass through things because they don't have any bodies.

You know, why did there's a there's another joke. Why didn't the ghost go to the party? Because he had no body to go with. Anyway, why did the ghost keep coming back to the library? Because he went through his books too quickly. Eight. What did the librarian tell the person who checked out 100 books to check out a book is when you borrow a book, right? But they stamp it, put a stamp in it saying you have to return it by this date. So you check out the book.

Why did the librarian tell the per- sorry, what did the librarian tell the person who checked out a hundred books? Well, she said, don't overdo it. Don't overdo it. Oh God, that's not good. Don't overdo it, right? This is what you say to someone who's doing too much. Don't overdo it. Don't over- don't take out too many books. Don't read too- don't overdo it. Take it easy, but don't overdo it.

overdue. If a book is overdue, it means that it should have been returned previously, but you've still got it. Maybe like two, three days ago was the deadline for when the book had to be returned. That was the due date and you've still got the book. You haven't put the book back in the library. You haven't checked it back into the library. It's overdue. Don't overdue it. Don't

Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the abominable snowman. Bigfoot, that kind of big hairy guy who lives out in the forest, according to some Americans. Which probably means that it doesn't exist, right? Why is it always UFOs and Bigfoot and stuff? Why is that only Americans in the middle of the United States? Have you ever seen...

A map with red dots for UFO sightings in the world. All the red dots are in the United States. And there's a line, there's literally a line above the United States and in Canada, just like virtually nothing. Below, in Mexico, virtually nothing. But just America is just red dots everywhere. United States of America, I mean. Anyway, where does the library keep books about Bigfoot? In the large print section.

Large print, large footprint, print, footprint in the large print, print of a book, the letters. OK, number 10. Where does the library keep horror stories? Where does the library keep horror stories? Right behind you. Number 11. Librarians love a good joke. They always get the reference.

The reference, the reference of the book is the number of the book. That's the reference of the book. But to get a reference in a joke means to understand what the joke is about. Did you get it? You didn't get the reference. No. Okay. Let's see if you get the reference for this one. Number 12. Dystopian books are so 1984. Okay. Dystopian books. They're so 1984. So dystopian fiction is fiction set in the future, but in a kind of dark world.

pessimistic version of the future, often a future world which is kind of run by an autocrat

autocratic government or, you know, like those science fiction stories like The Terminator. That's a dystopian future where the human race is being hunted by robots or The Matrix where the humans are enslaved by artificial intelligence. 1984 is the classic dystopian future story about a society, about a kind of total collapse

totally autocratic society where everyone lives under total domination by the government. So it's the definitive dystopian book. And then saying, oh, that's so 1984, is the sort of thing you would say to mean that was trendy in 1984. You know, it's a bit like saying, oh, you know, podcasts, they're so 2016.

Podcasts are so 2016, meaning podcasts were trendy in 2016 and they're not really trendy anymore. Right. Dystopian dystopian books are so 1984. Uh huh. OK. Number 13, that book about anti-gravity is impossible to put down. That book about anti-gravity is impossible to put down. If so, if a book is impossible to put down, it means it's so interesting you can't stop reading it.

Anti-gravity, I suppose, is some concept in physics, which means that if you try and put the book down, it'll float in the air because there's no gravity. So a book about anti-gravity is impossible to put down. See, it means two things at the same time. It's too interesting. You can't stop reading it. But literally, you can't put it down because of anti-gravity. Yeah. And number 14, a man goes into a library and asks for a book on cliffhangers.

By the way, a cliffhanger is a story that ends with a moment of suspense and you desperately want to know what happens next. It's normally in TV series where like the episode ends with a moment where the character is hanging from a cliff, hanging over, hanging off a ledge. And you think, oh, my God, are they going to fall off the cliff and die or are they going to survive? Yeah.

You know, it's like in some old, old episode of Batman or something when it used to be a TV show in the 1960s. The end of the episode, you'd see Batman and Robin hanging off a cliff. You know, will Batman and Robin, you know, fall from the cliff? Or will they be rescued? Find out in next week's episode of Batman. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Batman. That's a cliffhanger ending. That's cliffhangers, right?

A man goes into a library and asks for a book on cliffhangers and the librarian says, find out next week on Luke's English Podcast. No, the joke goes, a man goes into a library and asks for a book on cliffhangers and the librarian says, and then nothing because you have to wait and see.

Hello again. I'm just interrupting the episode for a fourth time because I realised there was a joke that I forgot. There was another librarian joke which I forgot to mention. And I, you know, I have to, I have to tell you this joke as well. So this final joke is this. Why can't librarians finish mystery books? Why can't librarians finish mystery books? It's because they keep reading between the lines.

Uh-huh. Okay, so I probably need to explain that one. Let me dissect the frog here. So to read between the lines is actually a nice...

idiom, a nice expression, which is related to communication, not just related to reading, but basically in understanding what people are saying or what people are writing. And if you read between the lines, it means that you look for or you discover a meaning that is not explicitly stated in the words, but that is implied, right?

OK, so for example, when you understand something that wasn't directly said or directly written, but you can understand another meaning that exists behind or between their words. I'll give you an example in a moment. But reading between the lines in a literal sense, we're talking about lines of text in a book.

Okay. And in a literal sense, reading between the lines means looking at the spaces between the lines and seeing or imagining another meaning which is hidden there. Okay. So it's about interpreting what people are saying and understanding what they really mean, even if they're not specifically saying it. That's reading between the lines. Okay.

In an idiomatic or metaphorical sense, this means just understanding what someone really means, even if they don't directly say it. Or understanding what is really going on, even if it wasn't specifically stated. So why can't librarians finish mystery books? Because they keep reading between the lines. So reading between the lines, meaning literally reading between the lines...

means you'd end up reading double right you then it would be twice as long it would take it a very it would take a very long time to read the book because you're because you not only are you reading the lines but you're also reading between the lines literally uh

This is quite a good joke because mystery books do require you to read between the lines, to kind of work out what's going on behind the scenes in order to solve the mystery. And I suppose that librarians are good readers, so they would be able to read between the lines. They would be able to kind of interpret what is being written and see the implied meanings behind.

So there you go. That's my explanation of the joke. I completely obliterated it, no doubt. I sucked all of the humour from it. But hopefully now you understand the expression, right? To read between the lines. Just to demonstrate that expression, here's an example from Oxford Dictionaries. Okay, it would be this. Reading between the lines, I think Claire needs money. So I spoke to Claire the other day and, you know, she's fine, but...

Reading between the lines, I think she needs money. She kept talking about how everything's really expensive and didn't say it specifically, but reading between the lines, I think she needs some money. Maybe we need to help her. Let me illustrate that further with a couple of dialogues.

So the first dialogue, this is Claire talking to her friend Ben. So by the way, Claire is just the name of the person given in that example in the Oxford Dictionary. Reading between the lines, I think Claire needs money. So let's explore this situation. Who is Claire? She's just a friend of ours, let's say. Claire is talking to her friend Ben.

See if you can read between the lines, see what's going on. So Claire says, hey, Ben, how are you? And Ben says, oh, I'm good, thanks. How about you? Oh, you know, just busy trying to juggle everything. Work's been a bit slow lately and, you know, the bills just keep piling up, don't they?

Yeah, that sounds pretty stressful. Yeah, it's not ideal. It's not ideal. I've been trying to cut back, you know, but everything's just so expensive these days. Even groceries feel like a luxury sometimes. Yeah, totally. Yeah, things are tight for a lot of people right now. Anyway, I don't want to complain. It's just one of those months, I guess.

So, I mean, she doesn't say it specifically, but kind of reading between the lines, you can see that Claire maybe needs a bit of help. Then later, Ben speaks to their mutual friend, Alice. So this is Ben talking to Alice about Claire. So Alice says, have you spoken to Claire recently? And Ben says, yeah, she called me last night. What did she say? Oh, she's just...

She's been really busy and she mentioned how expensive everything is these days. Anything else? No, not really. But reading between the lines, I think Claire needs money. She might need our help. What do you reckon? Yeah, she didn't say it outright, but the way she kept bringing up her bills and how her hours of work have been cut, it just seems pretty obvious. Maybe we can have a bit of a whip round.

To have a whip round is where you go round your friends and everyone puts a bit of money in, you know. OK, so that was the idiom to read between the lines and that last library joke. OK, that's the end of this interruption. I'll let you get back to Monday's rambling.

And here we go. Okay, God, that was worth it, wasn't it? What a great idea. But anyway, I said that there would be some comments from listeners. So let me kind of end the episode with these. So a couple of comments that I thought were worth sharing in response to the funny English signs episodes, episode 910 and 911. So the first one, remember the sign that says...

It was from a hotel in Acapulco, I think. The manager has personally passed all the water served here. Right? What they mean is the manager has personally checked all the water served here. But it sounds like the manager has personally just urinated all the water and as you're drinking it, if you read the sign, you would spit all the water out. What? And Lamar

commented this and said, ha ha ha, about the pass the water sign. Before you explained it, I thought that the manager had personally passed it to the customers as in serving glasses of water to them personally. So yeah, that would be good. So the manager has personally passed all the water served here. Here you go. Can I have some water? Here you are. Every single customer

The manager is there. Here you are. Let me just individually pass that to you personally. Here you go, everybody. There's your water. There you are. All the water has been personally passed by the manager. Just another interpretation of what that sign could have meant. And Ludwig, in response to Funny English Signs Part 2, said this. Hi, I'm Ludwig from Germany. I also have a funny memory of a sign called

I was working as an architect at the time, and we had to build a second emergency exit in an event hall that was used by English soldiers because of stricter rules. The German word for exit, so they needed to build a new emergency exit in this building that was used by English people, English soldiers. So the German word for exit is Ausgang, and the German word for emergency is not. Really? Really?

The German word for emergency is not. N-O-T. Apparently, according to Ludwig. So the word not ausgang was on the sign, meaning not. Huh? Because the German word for exit is ausgang and the German word for emergency is not. So it meant emergency exit, but it said not ausgang.

On the sign. Our English friends were very surprised that we'd built a second exit at great expense and then had a sign above it that said not exit. That would be confusing, wouldn't it? That would be confusing. So we just...

Yeah, we've installed a new exit on the door. It cost a lot of monies. The exit's ready now. Here you go. Not exit. Wait a minute. What? That would be confusing to write not exit on the door of an exit. That would definitely confuse you. What about this one from Funny English Science Part 2? Do you remember this? If this is your first visit to the USSR, you're welcome to it because we don't want it.

Meaning, if this is your first visit to the USSR, you're welcome. Or, welcome to the USSR, if this is your first visit. And Manuela wrote this and said, how about if it's my second visit to the USSR? Am I still welcome? That's a good point. If this is your first visit to the USSR, you're welcome. If it's your second visit to the USSR, get stuffed. What are you doing here? Why did you come back? Are you mad?

Or maybe it's just like, if this is your first visit to the USSR, you're welcome. If it's your second visit to the USSR, how did you get back? How did you get out of the country and then get back in again? And why did you come back? No one knows. Another one, Pasquale, Pascal, Pasquale, Pascal, in response to Funny English Signs Part 2.

Pascal said, looking forward to listening to the third episode about weird signs. I do have some more funny English signs, funny English errors episodes coming, by the way, and they'll be coming next year. By the way, there's another laundrette sign in Firenze, Italy, which is called Florence in English.

Right. Florence, you know, the city in Italy and the sign in the laundrette, you know, the place where you can wash your clothes. It says this. You can leave your clothes here and enjoy Florence. And Florence is also a female name. So like you can leave your clothes here and enjoy Florence. Does Florence work here then? Who's Florence? Again, poor Florence.

Poor Florence in this situation. If there is a girl called Florence who works there, like, just leave me alone. So poor Florence, unless, of course, she is fine with it, in which case I suppose it's an extra service at this slightly questionable laundrette. OK, that was we took an odd turn into the world of jokes and library jokes, oddly enough, in a Christmas episode. But why not? Maybe, maybe you're at a library this Christmas. I don't know.

Would that be a nice thing? It's not normally, is it, what you would do at Christmas. You don't normally go to a library. Normally you would be sort of almost obliged to spend time with your family and being merry and jolly and all that stuff, even though a lot of the time you don't really want to be.

You're forced to be happy. You will be happy and merry and jolly this Christmas because all the music says that you have to be. But maybe you're the sort of person who would much rather be in a library than...

In which case, I hope you enjoyed those library jokes. But for everyone else, I do wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year when it arrives. As I said, there'll be a couple of other episodes coming between now and the new year. The World Quiz one...

Yeah, we'll be arriving in a couple of days. And then if I can get my act together, then you'll get a Sherlock Holmes story, probably on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. And then there might be a pause while I recover. And then we'll be back in action with normal Luke's English podcast episodes again in 2025 after that. Okay. Thank you so much for listening to Luke's English podcast this year, everybody.

Thank you very much for being a stakeholder in Luke's English podcast. And I hope it's been really useful. I hope you've enjoyed spending time with me this year. And yeah, I hope that you've learned a lot of English along the way. Keep listening. Keep it up. It's all part of the process.

and leave a comment. I'd like to get your comments. Just, you know, wish me a happy Christmas. Tell me how the podcast has been for you this year. What are you doing this year at Christmas time? Are you in a library? Have you been anywhere near a library? If you've listened all the way up to the end of this episode, mention something about a library, if you can.

Something about a library in your comment. Okay, so that's a challenge for you. Can you mention a library somehow? Otherwise, you could just wish me a happy Christmas. That would be nice. And a merry new year. We never say merry new year. Merry Christmas. Happy new year. Okay, season's greetings and all the very best to you and yours. And I will speak to you again in the next episode. But for now, it's just time to say goodbye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Okay, that is not the end of the episode. Even though I have said bye, bye, bye, bye, bye in the usual way, that's not the end of the episode because I wanted to just interrupt for one final time. In a moment, I'm going to recap a lot of the vocab that came up in the episode. Just quickly recap it just to...

help you notice it, you know. Before I do that, I just want to remind you to send me your answers to the questions I asked at the beginning of the episode in order to help me prepare my first episode of 2025, which will be about how to learn English with Luke's English Podcast. So, those two questions. How has your English improved with this podcast? Can you give me any

ways in which the podcast has helped you with your English. If you could do that, that would be great. Second question, can you give any recommendations for how to improve your English with this podcast? So any little things that you've done, any specific things you do, maybe you just listen, right? Maybe you just listen, but maybe...

Maybe when you're listening, you're noticing things. Maybe you could comment here about the methods that I use, maybe the approach that I use for doing this. Maybe simply your method is just to listen carefully and just to be engaged with what I'm saying.

So any comments on those things would be great so that I can share them in that new year episode so that new listeners can really kind of get some good solid advice and can hear some success stories maybe even, you know, even in a small way. It's all good. It all helps. Okay. So as I said before, you can just comment on this episode or send me an email at LukeTeacher at Hotmail.com.

Right, so let me go through a vocabulary list. Let me recap some bits of vocab that came up in the episode. I'll do this quickly. You can see these things listed on the PDF for this episode. And also you'll see on the PDF some sort of vocabulary quiz that you can use to just check your learning as well. So this episode of the podcast offers plenty of interesting vocabulary phrases that you can notice and pick up. Here are some of them. So the first one was to touch base with someone, right?

This means to check in with someone and just talk about the basic things that you're doing in your work at that moment. It's often used in a professional setting. I said...

To touch base means to just check in with people, to talk about certain important foundational things. For example, you might just say, I just wanted to touch base and see how the project is going. And with these rambling episodes, it gives me a chance to just touch base with you and see where we are with the podcast at this moment in time and just check in with you, see how your English is going and give you an idea of what we've been doing and what we will be doing in the next few episodes.

The second expression is to take stock of something, to take stock. Now, this expression means to assess a situation and see what you have. It's often used when evaluating resources or progress. So taking stock is kind of like counting the things you have or seeing what you have. In terms of resources...

This could be used by a company, for example, if you, I mean, I've given the example for this expression before, which is that I used to work in a music shop and every year we had to do a big stock check where we had to take stock of all of our stock. So the stock in this case was all of the DVDs and CDs and other products that we sold in the shop and we had to literally count them all.

so that the accounting department got solid figures for exactly how much stock we had in the shop. A really important part of running a business, you've got to know what you have in your stock, in your warehouse, you need to know what you have, so you can calculate the value of all of your assets. So you would take stock of what you have.

In terms of a podcast, I suppose, if I take stock of where we are, it just means, like I said before, just understanding where we are in this particular moment, what we've been doing recently, what we're going to be doing, just assessing and accounting for or seeing what we have and where we are. That's to take stock of something. What's going on? Where are we? What's happening? Let me just take stock for a moment.

The quote from earlier on, I said, to take stock means to take account or count the number of things you have to see where you are.

to see what you've got right now. For example, and here's an example, another example, after the storm, they took stock of the damage. So there's been a big storm and then you go outside and have a look at what's been damaged. Maybe the roof of your house has been damaged. You need to take stock of the damage, meaning have a look at what it is. Maybe count how much damage there is. At the end of the year, I like to take stock of where this podcast is at this point in time.

Third expression, to go down well with someone. I've mentioned this a few times. This describes something that is well-received or enjoyed by an audience. You can also say it didn't go down well or it went down badly, which is the opposite. The quote, normally the story episodes go down well. They're quite well-received by people. People seem to like them. For example, the new policy went down well with employees.

Or the songs went down really well at the party. Okay. By the way, you can, as I said before, you can check these things in the PDF. I think if you're watching the video version, this stuff is not on the screen, but you can just check the PDF and all this stuff is written there.

fourth expression is to go through the motions. So I was talking about Paul McCartney performing on stage and I was saying that maybe to an extent he is just going through the motions, meaning just kind of like doing the same thing that he always does and perhaps not putting as much passion or spontaneity into it. He's just kind of repeating the same things he always does, which would be a criticism to say that, that he's just going through the motions, meaning just kind of doing the routine things.

So going through the motions means to do something routinely, perhaps lacking enthusiasm and lacking spontaneity. So I said he's kind of going through the motions, just doing the things he always does. For example, I got the impression he was just going through the motions.

Another example would be after the death of his wife, he just went through the motions of living. This is kind of a sad example, but imagine a man who's lost his wife and for a year or two, he just goes through the motions, meaning just sort of repeats his normal routines, but there's no real joy or enthusiasm or much spark or spontaneity going on because he's suffering from grief. You know, for a couple of years, I was just going through the motions or on stage, you

he was just going through the motions. I didn't really feel like he was really fully engaged in what he was doing. I think to an extent, Paul probably does go through the motions a little bit on stage, but I forgive him for it because he's in his 80s and you can't do something brand new and spontaneous and super enthusiastic and passionate every single time. You've got to pace yourself in those situations. He was a bit spontaneous at times.

There was a point where he said, he was like, how are you doing tonight? And the audience was like, yeah, like that. You having a good time? Yeah. And I didn't mention actually earlier that the arena where we saw him, the La Défense Arena is a big place. It's, you know, well-designed place, but it wasn't designed for music concerts. It was designed for sporting events. And there was like Olympic swimming and stuff there in the summer.

But it's not designed for sporting events. And I've seen bands there before. I saw the Rolling Stones there a few years ago as well. It was exactly the same story. The sound quality is terrible in the arena, which was the worst thing about the concert. It was really disappointing that the sound was bad. It's a big, big place with a high ceiling.

And the sound bounces back and there's a lot of reverb and the real lack of clarity in the sound because it hasn't been acoustically treated in any way. There are other venues in the city which are better and probably smaller. And they have some level of acoustic treatment so that the sound doesn't bounce around too much. But the sound was not good.

Why am I saying that? I can't remember. I'm sure I had a purpose for saying that. Oh, that's it. So he was saying, how are you doing tonight? It was like, yeah, you're having a good time. Yeah. And he said and then he then he said, and isn't this a fantastic arena? And then silence. No one cheered for that because nobody likes that venue. It doesn't sound good. It's not a great venue. So people don't really care about it. There's no

No particular affection for that place. So isn't this and isn't this a great venue? Nothing. And he just went, all right, OK, cool, cool. All right, cool. And just carried on. It's quite good. He rolled with it pretty well. Number five, another expression to give someone a heads up. I just want to give you a heads up about what's coming on Luke's English podcast. So to give someone a heads up is to give someone advance notice or warning about something.

For example, I just wanted to let you know, just wanted to give you a heads up that you've got a new premium series available now. So if you give someone a heads up, it's like something that makes them put their head up. Like, huh, what is that? You know, just so that they are aware of something. Just to give you a heads up, you've got a new premium series which is available now. I don't know if you noticed it, but just a heads up, it's there. It's waiting for you right now.

Another example, I just wanted to give you a heads up that the meeting has been moved to tomorrow. So it's kind of like just to do something to give someone, to make someone notice or to maybe warn someone about something. Could be good, could be bad. Number six,

To sink your teeth into something, to sink your teeth into something. This describes engaging with something enthusiastically and with gusto. For example, to sink your teeth in a new episode of the podcast or sink your teeth into a good book because, you know, Dracula...

Went to the library because he wanted to sink his teeth into a good book. Or another example, I can't wait to sink my teeth into that new Stephen King novel. Often used with books, could be for other things. Number seven is to go through a book means to read a book from start to finish. Right. Go all the way through it. But a ghost would also go through a book, meaning pass through it.

To go through a book, obviously, is to go from the first page all the way through to the last page, meaning to read it. For example, I went through the book in one sitting. I loved that book. I went through it in one sitting. Number eight is to check out a book. So in libraries, you check in a book and check out a book. When you borrow it, you check it out, which doesn't mean just have a look at it, but literally take it to the librarian and they stamp it.

And then you can take it away. You check out the book, check the book out. And then when you return it, they stamp it again with that sound. They stamp the... No, it's normally just a small rubber stamp. They stamp the book. You check it back in.

Right. So check out and check in a book. Number nine was overdue. The book is overdue, meaning when the book has not been returned by the due date, it's considered to be overdue. The due date is when something is supposed to happen. Right.

Payment is due on the first of the month. The payment is supposed to happen on the first of the month. The baby is due at the beginning of July. The baby is supposed to be born at the beginning of July. The book was due to be returned to the library at this time, but it's late, so it's overdue. Number 10 is large print. Print refers to the text in the book.

Books printed with larger fonts. Large print to aid readability are called large print books. You could have the large print section. OK, where does the library book? Where does the library keep books about Bigfoot in the large print section? Yeah. Number 11, it's impossible to put down. If a book is impossible to put down, it means you can't stop reading it.

OK, this book about anti-gravity is impossible to put down. Number 12, a cliffhanger. This is a story that ends with a suspenseful moment, leaving the audience eager to know what happens next. And you'll find out next week on Luke's English podcast. There was a cliffhanger, a cliffhanger ending. Number 13, to ring a bell.

Rings a bell. You know, do you know Jane Simpson? The name rings a bell. I'm not sure. So if something rings a bell, it means it sounds familiar. Sounds like you know it, but you can't quite place it. Can't quite put your finger on it, but you certainly seems familiar. For example, well, the name rings a bell, but I can't remember where I met her. In this episode, I used...

uh i use this phrase in a joke about pavlov's dog which famously involved ringing a bell right when pavlov rung the bell the dog expected food and started salivating that famous experiment pavlov's dog um have you heard about pavlov's dog experiment not sure but it rings a bell um

Yeah, okay. Then there was also Schrödinger's cat as well. Schrödinger's cat is the famous thought experiment in quantum mechanics involving a hypothetical cat in a box with a device that has a 50% chance of killing it. The idea is that until the box is opened and observed, the cat is considered both alive and dead simultaneously. It's not about actual cats, but illustrates the concept of superposition in quantum mechanics. And you're going, yeah, I know. Um...

For example, do you have any books on Pavlov's dog and Schrodinger's cat? Well, we've got one. I think it rings a bell, but I'm not sure if it's here or not. It's ironic, though, isn't it, that the cat in the box, this cat in a box situation is supposed to illustrate something about superpositions in quantum mechanics, right? That's ironic because that cat is definitely not in a superposition. Let me just say that joke again.

It's in a terrible position, isn't it? It's not a super position at all. Stuck in a box with a radioactive atom and a vial of poison. Good thing this is just a thought experiment, isn't it? And it didn't actually happen. Although, again, you've got to wonder why Mr. Schrodinger spent so much time fantasizing about putting cats in very dangerous boxes. Bit weird, but that's quantum mechanics for you.

Isn't it? I suppose it's all a bit weird. Anyway, number 15 is stories. S-T-O-R-E-Y-S. This is the British English spelling of stories in a building. So in American English, they use the same spelling as stories in a book. S-T-O-R-I-E-S. But in British English, S-T-O-R-E-Y-S.

Okay. Sorry, everybody. You know, that's just the way we do it in Britain. We spell things the proper way and then we apologise for it. Sorry, everyone. So a five-storey building has five floors. Why are libraries the tallest buildings in the world? Because they have so many stories. Yes. Okay.

To read between the lines, there's that expression again. Idiom means to understand the implied or unstated meaning of something while requiring careful interpretation of subtle clues and context. For example, she didn't say it directly, but I could read between the lines and I knew that she was unhappy. All right. All right. Reading between the lines, I think Claire needs our help.

Hopefully, listeners, you have not needed to read between the lines in this episode that everything has been clearly stated for you, including that request for your comments and messages for the upcoming New Year episode that I'm going to do in January. OK, but that's the end of this episode properly now. That's it. We're done now. And I hope you enjoyed it. And I just want to miss you. I just want to rush it.

I'll start that again. I just want to wish you a Merry Christmas. Like Jose Feliciano. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. You know that song? Feliz Navidad. Feliz Navidad. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. He spends a lot of time in that song saying, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart. Just wish us a Merry Christmas already.

I know you want to. Just do it. If you want to do it, Jose, just do it. No one's stopping you.

So I want to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart. So Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart. I hope you enjoy the episode. Thank you for listening to Luke's English Podcast in 2024. I hope you enjoy the World News Quiz, which will be coming in a few days. And I'll speak to you then. All right. But for now, it's just time for me to say finally goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.

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