937. A Birthday Ramble / The Spinning Wheel of Random Questions
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Hello and welcome back to my podcast. How are you doing today? I hope you're doing fine. So here we are. We've started. The English is flowing. The words are happening. They're all going in. You're listening to them. And if you keep going, if you listen for the whole episode, then it could be thousands, thousands of words that will have entered your brain via my mouth and the internet and then the

the headphones or speakers that you're using and then into your brain through your ears. You understand the process, don't you? Of course you do. But anyway, stick with me for as long as you like or as long as you can. And yes, you will find that thousands of English words, phrases and sentences will have gone into your head by the time you stop listening. And that is bound to be good for your English. This is the idea.

A lot of those words will stick, right? A lot of them will stick. A lot of them will stay there. And this is how you keep English. This is part of how you keep English a living thing, a going concern with you.

Obviously, you've got to practice speaking it, using it too, but a basic base level. Yes, you've got to feed on the English as much as you can. And that's kind of what this podcast is all about. This is here to help you get English into your life. Listening, the spoken word, spoken English.

Yeah, okay. Hi, thanks for choosing my podcast today. And I'm feeling good today. It's a good day for me because it's my birthday today. Yay! If I had one of those party blower things, you know those things that, you know exactly what I mean, when it's your birthday, you're going to blow into this plastic tube, which has got a bit of rolled up paper attached to the end of it.

Actually, I don't really know what that is called, that thing. We have party poppers. Party poppers, those are the things that go pop. They've got a little bit of explosive in them? No. Gunpowder? No. It's stuff that goes bang. You pull a little string and it goes bang and lots of confetti comes out at the end. Bang. A party popper. But is that a party tooter? A party blower? A party horn? Anyway...

You know, it's got a bit of rolled up, a tube of rolled up paper attached to the end of this little plastic horn and you blow into it. And oh, it's so fun. I mean, just so much fun.

roll of paper unravels and it kind of sticks out and then it makes a noise like that. Just so much fun. Hilarious stuff, really. I mean, who came up with that idea? Just what a crazy guy or girl, whoever it was, who came up with that idea. Just crazy. I mean...

They're like thinking, I'm going to change the world with this invention because birthday parties previously have been so boring and unhappy. But with this new thing, everyone's going to have so much fun. But I don't have one. If I had one, I would blow one right now because that's what you do, isn't it? It's one of the things you do when it's your birthday. The other things you do include getting a year older.

and and i don't know like trying to trying to stay happy um but i've been having a nice day because i know what you're thinking at this point well you may be thinking a few things most humans do at any given time as you may have noticed lots of different thoughts going on in your head but one of those things might be at this moment luke uh happy birthday uh thank you very much that's very nice of you to say that thanks thanks for being so nice and polite and wishing me a happy birthday um

And you also might be thinking, Luca, you're having a nice day today, which would be the other nice thing that you could say when it's someone's birthday. Oh, it's your birthday. Happy birthday. Are you having a nice day? Yes, actually, I am having a lovely day. It's the afternoon right now. This morning I was teaching and, you know, had some nice lessons, you know, at school, lovely students.

and the sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. I mean, it's for me perfect weather. Blue sky, a few little bits of cloud in the sky just to keep things interesting. And the temperature is a lovely, pleasant, something like 20 degrees, which is exactly the right kind of thing. The air is fresh. It's May. It's the end of May. The birds are singing. It doesn't get much better than that in terms of weather for me. And sometimes that's all you need, isn't it? Really, you just need

just the right conditions to give yourself a chance. And on the way home, I took a bike and cruised through the streets of Paris to get back to my podcasting room here, had some lunch, and here I am. And I'm attempting to stay positive and happy. I'm determined to have a nice day on my birthday. And so I am sort of defending the day, as it were,

you know, making sure that I don't have a bad day. Because on some days you've got to do that, right? You've got to defend the day against the things that could come in and put you in a bad mood or, you know, ruin your day. So I'm trying to keep things at a distance in terms of stuff like internet distractions, comments on social media that might

irritate me or trigger me or something like that. I'm trying to keep all of this at a distance today, maintaining this nice, peaceful birthday space that I'm

that I've created for myself here in order to just try and have a nice day today, please. And it's going very well so far. And here I am recording a podcast, which is one of the things I like to do. I needed to do one today anyway, but it's a pleasure to be able to do a podcast on my birthday, a birthday podcast.

So that's nice. You might be thinking, Luke, what have you been doing? Although I have just literally just told you that. So maybe maybe you. Yeah, it's something you could ask. Are you having a nice day? What have you been doing? Have you had any presents? It's another question that you ask people on their birthday. Did you get any presents? My wife says that she'll be giving me presents later this evening. So that's exciting, isn't it?

Uh, my daughter gave me a little envelope with some stuff in it that she prepared, um, including some pieces of paper with lovely drawings with, what was it? It said, I love you, daddy. Just lovely stuff like that. I'm not going to share all of that with you, but just lovely stuff from my daughter, which was nice. My son is still, um, one year old, one year old. He's not two yet. So he doesn't really understand the concept of birthdays. Um,

But, you know, he was very cute this morning. Very cute. He didn't try and smack me around the face or bite my shoulder or anything. So that was nice. So another thing you might be thinking is, Luke, how old are you? Which is which is I'm not sure that's an appropriate question, really. It's a bit direct, isn't it?

depending on the relationship you have with the person you're talking to. But it's not normal on someone's birthday to just come straight out with that question and say, how old are you? Unless, I mean, actually, it depends, doesn't it? I think probably when you're a little kid, that is normal, right? That's a normal question. So it's like someone's seventh or eighth birthday. It looks like that. You would say, oh, it's your birthday. Oh, that's fantastic. How old are you? You're seven years old. Oh, wow.

Maybe when someone is really old, like when they're really, really old, you can ask them as well, because that's sort of impressive. How old are you? I'm 99 years old. 99 years old. Wow. That is a that is fantastic. That is amazing. But then in the middle, probably starting, maybe even starting in your 20s and going up until the age when it's.

unavoidably sort of impressive how old you are. Like, wow, you've survived that long. You know, in the middle, it just seems, I don't know why it seems inappropriate to ask people how old they are. I personally don't mind. I'm fine with it. But some people don't really like that. But I will tell you how old I am. But I won't do it now. I'm going to reveal my age at the end of the episode. You see? So I'm going to dangle that

And I'm going to dangle that all the way over at the end of the episode. I will officially give you my age reveal at the end of the episode. Now, some of you are thinking, it's all right, Luke. We, A, some of us know how old you are anyway, because we know, because we know that we've got a file on you, Luke. We've been keeping tabs on you in the agency here, in the office. We've got a file on you, Luke. So we know how old you are.

Uh, or maybe you're thinking, sorry, I don't, don't care to be honest, Luke, can you just teach me some English for free? Um, yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, regardless, I will reveal my age at the end of the episode. So if you really are that interested, you could skip forward until the end, skip the rest of the English.

the English words that I was talking about before. You could just skip over that. If you're, if you suddenly have, um, you know, re prioritized your life where you think, right, I was listening to Luke's English podcast because I want to get all those words. I want to hear all the words, but actually wait a minute. No, no, no, no. What's more important is that I find out how old this person is. Um, I'll let you know at the end of the episode, this, which is very exciting, isn't it? But, um,

How old do you think I am? Maybe this is probably a terribly bad idea, but you could leave your comments. You can leave your guess in the comments section. How old do you think I am? That's probably a really bad idea, isn't it? That is just opening the door to all sorts of stuff. But anyway, if you wanted to do that, you could, I mean, if you want. But anyway, hello, this is a rambling episode. And if you are one of those listeners who just likes to

Who just likes it when I kind of go off script and chat spontaneously about stuff, about anything like little anecdotes from my life or just things that are on my mind or whatever, then this episode is basically made up only of moments like that. So if that sounds good to you,

This is for you. Stick around. Join me for the whole episode. And I promise, I promise to speak English to you the entire time. I would speak French to you, but I don't know. I don't know if anyone would really want to listen to that. So, no, I will speak English to you the entire time. And there's someone going, oh, please speak French. No, je parle pas français on this podcast.

Maybe one day when I feel ready, but that is not today. That's not to say that I don't speak French. I do. I speak French in my life. Je parle français ici. Je parle français là-bas. I speak here. I speak there. Je parle partout, but not on the podcast anyway.

So I will be speaking English to you in the episode, rambling about this and that. I do have a theme for the episode, and the theme is no theme. That's the theme, that there is no theme. But I do, actually, I do have a concept for the episode. I do have a concept which is basically another random question generator. I did one of those a while ago, just random questions. And that was an interesting one because I ended up talking about some

There were some nice anecdotes that came out of that that I didn't expect to be talking about, including that story about cleaning out a kitchen of a Chinese restaurant when I was a teenager and the stuff that I had to clean. Do you remember that? Anyway...

So, a random question generator, the spinning wheel of random questions, that's the concept. And I will come to that in a moment. But first, I need to do some housekeeping on the podcast, some general podcast admin, which is normal in a rambling episode. So, some housekeeping on the podcast. First of all, water. Yes, I'm trying to make this a tradition to drink water in 30-minute intervals while I'm doing the podcast.

in order to, first of all, make sure I stay hydrated, but also to satisfy those people who are concerned about my intake of H2O. I do get those comments occasionally, so that's fair. That's a fair concern.

And so, in order to deal with that particular concern, I'm going to make sure I drink water every 30 seconds. 30 seconds? No, 30 minutes. So, I'm setting a 30-minute timer. So, I have to remember to drink some water, but also, I wanted to deal with some comments about the way that I drink water on the podcast because some people have opinions. So,

Some people have opinions about this, and I thought that I would deal with some of those. So here are a couple of comments that I received recently about my drinking of water on the podcast. One of them, and I'm...

I don't mean to name and shame, so I'm going to just keep these sort of anonymous, basically. But the one person wrote to me, this is actually quite funny. One person said, don't drink like this, take pauses. Because what I've been doing is drinking directly from a big bottle of water. And some people don't like that. This person is being a bit humorous about it, I suppose. Don't drink like this, Luke, take pauses. Referring to the way that I glug, glug, glug the water directly from the bottle.

Which is, yeah, fair enough. I suppose I shouldn't be doing that. Is that unhealthy? I was told it's unhealthy. I checked it out. I didn't actually receive, get any meaningful results from my internet searches about why that's healthy, unhealthy, but maybe it is unhealthy. But don't drink like this. Take pauses. I found that to be funny because...

You know, I just thought, what shall I do? Shall I set another timer while I'm drinking to remind me not to drink? So I set one timer to remind me to drink, and then while I'm drinking, I have to set another timer to remind me to take pauses while I'm drinking. Yeah, hilarious. But thanks for that comment. And this one, here's another comment I got. It said this, Luke, your bottle of water is ugly.

You want a beautiful one, perhaps glass base or metal base. I love your stops for water, but I hate your plastic bottle, no matter how big it's. That would be no matter how big it is. Okay, I understand the intentions behind the message are good, right? I think the intentions are good, which is, first of all, I don't like the way your water bottle looks, Luke. Just got to be very frank with you. It's ugly, Luke. Your water bottle is ugly.

And, I don't know, your podcast is beautiful, but your water bottle is ugly. You want a beautiful one. Perhaps glass-based or metal-based. I love your stops for water. And I love your kidneys. I care for your kidneys. But I hate your plastic bottle. No matter how big it is. The intentions are good. You want me to get a different bottle. You want it to look nice on the podcast. You like the fact I stop for water.

The only thing about this is that when I read this, my first impression was like I'd been slapped in the face twice. Once by the word ugly and once by the word hate. Now, maybe I'm sensitive or maybe that's just a normal human reaction to that kind of language. And as an English teacher, it is my job. No, it is my duty to be sensitive to these sorts of things. So I wanted to just what's the word for it?

rephrase this so instead of saying your bottle of water is ugly so instead of using a directly fairly strong negative adjective which was in you know my poor plastic bottle of water has been insulted I mean I get it it's not the most attractive thing is it a generic plastic water bottle it's not that attractive but instead of using the word ugly you could

change the negative adjective to a more positive adjective with negative grammar. So instead of saying your bottle of water is ugly, you could say your bottle of water is not very attractive. Now that is essentially saying the same thing, but it's slightly nicer. It's a slightly more, what's the word for it, diplomatic way of putting it. And this is, I hope, quite a good lesson for anyone that, you know,

changing it hedging your language slightly is important because you want the other the person receiving your message to receive it in the best possible way you don't want to give them a sort of slap in the face in any way so luke your bottle of water uh isn't very attractive or luke i love it when you stop for water but i think you could get a bottle which is a bit more attractive than that you want a beautiful one

Maybe, why don't you get a beautiful one? Perhaps glass-based or metal-based. I actually used to have a metal water flask with a Luke's English Podcast logo on it, but I've lost it. I'm assuming that someone has stolen it, because of course you would, right? I mean, it must be very valuable, an official piece of LEP merchandise like that. I'm sure someone saw it and just thought, oh, I'll have that. I'll sell it on eBay for millions of...

of euros. No, I think I just lost it. So I did have a metal one. But no, it's a good point. I love your stops of water, but I hate your plastic bottle. So that would be, I love your stops for water, but I'm not very keen. I'm not very keen on your plastic bottle. Now, I'm still going to get the message, but I'm just going to feel a bit better, right? My good day, my nice birthday is going to be maintained if you just make those little changes.

Luke, I love the way you stop for water breaks, but your bottle could be a bit more attractive. Why don't you choose a glass one or metal one? Right. I love your stops for water, but I'm not very keen on that. Those plastic bottles, no matter how big they are.

Fair enough. OK, I'm going to have to sort that out today. I'm drinking from a mug. Ah, this is a good solution, isn't it? Instead of lifting up this plastic bottle and disgusting people on the Internet, I'm going to drink in a much more civilized way from a mug. And it's not just any mug. It is a Luke's English podcast mug. Oh, yeah. Lovely H2O.

Tastes so much better from a Luke's English podcast mug. It really does. It just tastes so fresh, so revitalizing. Give yourself a chance, listeners. Drink your water and stay hydrated using a Luke's English podcast mug. And these mugs are excellent because not only can they hold water, which is perhaps the best liquid in the world.

not only can they be used to hold water, you can also hold other drinks in here. For example, tea, coffee, both of those hot drinks are perfect. And the thing about a Luke's English Podcast mug, similar to other mugs that you could also buy, is that there's a handle on the side. And if the drink is very hot...

This handle really helps to sort of insulate your fingers from the heat of the drink. So you don't burn your fingers. It's amazing engineering. It really is. Luke's English podcast mugs available in the LEP merch store. Teacherluke.co.uk slash merch. Get yours today, folks. Oh, yeah. A little ad break there for myself.

I get the point though, whoever it was who wrote that, I got the point, I just didn't like the way the point was being made to me, but I will endeavour to use a different receptacle for my water in future. And that includes all the other possible drinks I could drink. I'll try and make sure I drink in a more attractive and aesthetically pleasing way because I care about your feelings as well as my kidneys.

This one as well. I got this one, another one as well, which was this. This was on episode, what was it, 932? Can I eat my cat? Quite a controversial episode. Sorry if I offended anybody with the content of that episode. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. Some people got really upset about that episode. They were disgusted by it. Like this comment. This one was so far the most disgusting episode that you've ever done.

Plus, every time you drink water, it sounds disgusting and unpleasant. But the most important thing is that I still love you. I just write the things that I think. Probably I'm wrong, but it is what it is. I like your attitude. I kind of like your attitude where you're just like, I just write stuff. I just write whatever I'm thinking in the moment. I don't really think it through. If I have a thought and the keyboard's in front of me, I just write it down. Maybe I'm wrong, but...

It is what it is. That's how I roll. As you blow the dust from your fingers. Yeah, that can I eat my cat was a bit of a disgusting one because there was all there was like some questions right from Google that people have asked and I attempted to answer them. And there was quite a lot of stuff about bodily functions.

Yeah, so I'm sorry if I offended anyone. But then having said that, like quite a lot of people really liked the episode and I had lots of comments from people saying it was like the funniest episode they've heard for a long time. I met a student today. In fact, I met one of my students today who said to me, oh, I listened to your podcast.

I listened to the one and I was laughing. I was laughing so much. And I was like, Hmm, which episode was it? She said it was, can I eat my cat? And I was like, Oh great. I'm so glad you enjoyed it because some people were offended. And she said, yeah, I thought so, but not me. I really liked it. So, you know, what can you do? But I don't mean to offend people. It just sort of happens sometimes. Um,

Anyway, every time you drink water, it sounds disgusting and unpleasant. All right. Sorry. I'll attempt to drink water in a much more pleasing way for you in the future. And that's what I'll do for you as well as giving you all these episodes free, free of charge as well as that.

I will drink my water in a much more respectful manner. But if you could also maybe moderate your language a little bit. And I'm just saying this for you. Just for you. I know that you just write the things that you think. But maybe just think twice before you write. Because I don't want you to upset anyone or hurt anyone's feelings. Right? Not if it's, you know, unnecessary. Right?

Um, and then I've got another one from Ren Learn Spanish. Hi, Luke. Thank you so much for drinking water. This is a comment from one of my kidneys. I'm a huge fan of you drinking water. Please drink more and give your kidneys a chance. I'm crazy about you drinking water. Thanks, you. Thank you.

um, Ren. Oh, okay, Ren. Well, in that case, cheers. Let me drink some more water. Slurp, he said, slurping in a disgusting and unpleasant manner. Okay, I'll drink really quietly away from the mic. I'll mute the microphone on the podcast, which is like the opposite of what I'm supposed to do. I will mute the microphone. A little moment of silence for water drinking.

Oh, I made a noise. I'm sorry. I swallowed. Anyway, moving on. A few other bits of podcast admin, all right? Luke's English Podcast Premium on Supercast. LEP Premium is now on Supercast. It moved from Acast to Supercast last month. It works better now on Supercast. You should check it out. LEP.Supercast.com or TeacherLuke.co.uk slash premium. You can add the show to Spotify now, which is new. You couldn't do that before.

So if you're a Spotify listener, you can add premium episodes to Spotify and listen there if you sign up. Recent episodes, I've done a bunch of recent episodes about English expressions that come from Shakespeare. Episode 933 was all about English expressions from Shakespeare, but I only covered like three expressions in that one, but I've continued the series and

And there are a few other episodes continuing to teach you expressions from Shakespeare with little extracts from Shakespeare's plays, breaking down the language and commenting on how these expressions are really normal parts of modern English today. So you could check those out. That's P68, the P68 series.

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essentially allows me to keep doing this as a going concern, right? So check out LEP Premium if you'd like to be a stakeholder in Luke's English podcast, teacherluke.co.uk slash premium. Merch, merchandise. I mentioned the mug before, but I've got some new merch in my stores and I've come up with a new t-shirt design. And the new t-shirt design is a skeleton with headphones on. Yes, skeleton with headphones on.

It's the new design. So I've gone for a sort of like a kind of a Japanese design or kind of sort of like a skateboard graphic, Japanese artwork, minimalist kind of graffiti type thing of a skeleton at a computer with headphones on.

Listening to Luke's English podcast. Yes. So if you are a skeleton with headphones on, then you could get the skeleton T-shirt available in a variety of colours and styles in both of my merch stores. I've got two. I've got Tee Public and Red Bubble. And you could just check to see which one has better shipping costs to wherever you live. OK. And yeah, the...

The skeleton with headphones is now available in a variety of t-shirt styles, including the premium t-shirt, which is a higher quality cotton. And I like this design. I've ordered one for myself. So anyway, you can check it out at teacherluke.co.uk slash merch. All right, a bit of promo for myself there.

Okay, here are some thoughts on the most recent content. Thank you so much for lovely comments on recent episodes, especially the ones with guests. It's always very nice when I get nice comments about my guests. There's been, there was Siobhan, Alistair, Zdenek, Sarah, my parents are recent guests.

about the recent AI one with Alistair from last week about using AI, for example, ChatGPT, but others for improving your English. One thing, one comment was about pronunciation. There was a couple of people discussing whether or not ChatGPT can be a good way to practice your pronunciation. Now, actually, I think that ChatGPT might not be the best way for working on your pronunciation. This is perhaps a slight weak point at the moment. Um,

These language models, they still work best for written English because as far as I can understand, something like ChatGPT probably converts your spoken English. So when it hears you through the microphone, it converts that into written English. It sort of uses speech-to-text software to convert what you're saying into written English and then it analyses that.

These language models at the moment generally deal with written English and that's how they analyze and process languages, the written form. So it's not necessarily that great at analyzing these specific sounds you're making. And as a result, I think it's not that great for pronunciation practice yet. You know, giving you feedback on your accent and things like that.

It tends to focus on the grammatical accuracy or certain vocab you're using. It can also help you with the general tone of what you're saying. For example, if you write comments that come across as potentially a bit rude and you want to be more diplomatic, if you want to be, then you could use ChatGPT to help you work on that sort of thing.

But generally, it can be great for practicing your speaking as we talked about in the last episode. Here is a little tip for you, right? And I'm talking about ChatGPT now. This might work with other similar software. But when you open up ChatGPT, click the logo in the bottom right of the chat box.

You know, the little chat box. Click the logo in the bottom right because that opens up speaking mode and you can just talk to ChatGPT through the microphone on your computer or your phone. You can choose different voices or even attitudes for it to have. The one I choose is a kind of male voice from England. He's got a London accent, a bit like the guy from the Headspace app, if you're familiar. He's like, you know, hi, how are you doing? How can I help you today? My name's like, I'm...

He hasn't actually got a name as far as I can tell. Oh, my name's Bill and I'm a down to earth, no nonsense English guy. I'm here to help you. What can I do for you? He sounds a bit like that, right? If you push it a bit further, it's Jason Statham. But no, this guy's Bill. How are you doing today? He sounds like that. So what you do is you set it up with a prompt like this. You say to it,

Hi, Bill, whatever your name is. I'd like to practice my English. Can you ask me questions as if we're in an interview situation? Ask me about my background, what I do, how I ended up doing it, my career and my plans for the future. Ask me questions like that. After a few minutes, can you give me some feedback on my English and correct some errors I'm making? And Bill or whatever his name is goes, sure, let's get started right away. And they say something like, so tell me about...

I don't know, something like, so what are you working on at the moment? Or something like that. And then you say, well, I'm making an episode of my podcast at the moment and blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, you just start and you speak and you listen to

the AI when it talks to you and answer its questions. And then after a certain amount of time, it will give you some feedback and it'll tell you some things like maybe some grammatical corrections or vocab or whatever. And one cool thing about this is that when you close the speaking mode, when you click on the X and close it,

It'll show you the whole conversation you just had. It'll all be transcribed for you with all the corrections written out and everything. And that is really useful because it can be a really good idea to review the written feedback that it gives you.

and even check the scripts of the things that you've said and then correct them again. So the AI corrected it, you listened to its corrections, but you can, as a little revision or practice exercise, go back to the script, look at what you said and correct it yourself.

and then check the feedback from ChatGPT or whatever, and see if your corrections were correct. So then you can correct your corrections, if you know what I mean. But that is quite a good little practice exercise. It's a way of doing some mini language practice. And then also, you can copy-paste anything from there into some kind of English learning document, like some sort of diary or something. You know, if you've got a document of your English practice, you could copy-paste any corrections or any...

things or suggestions or useful bits of language or anything into your diary and review it later or just come back to that particular chat in chat gpt if you want to review what happened in your little speaking sessions that can be a good idea if you have headphones on and you've got the app on your phone you can close your phone put it in your pocket and keep chatting as if it's a phone call

You know, that can be a good thing to do. And the free version of ChatGPT has a limited time for these voice calls. I think it's about five minutes, which actually can be quite a good amount of time. If you do one every day, you can just do five minutes, you know, until the time runs out.

That would be fine. I have had comments from some people, and we all know about the sort of more critical side of opinion on things like this. And I think it's totally fair, you know, saying, you know, don't give your money to these tech companies. You should prioritize humans. You know, you should prioritize human teachers or human contact in any form. Give your money to a teacher, right?

And that's a very fair thing to say. You know, that is a very, very fair thing to say. I think there is a, you know, our lives are full of these moral decisions that we have to make all the time. And I think that that's a fair point. So, yeah.

You could always find ways to find teachers. There's various different websites online that allow you to find one-to-one teachers or conversation partners and make sure that the actual people, normal humans, receive your money instead of necessarily paying these tech companies to access their very, very...

addictive and what's the word for it? Their software, which finds its way right into the heart of our lives in this very kind of clever way. Yeah, we do have to

I think about all of these things all the time. There are other things I could talk about. There are other specific AI apps designed to help you practice your English. I haven't tested them yet. You know, there are ones that focus on spoken English. Haven't looked at them yet. When I get a chance to look at them, I might make an episode about them. That's something I can do.

In terms of content coming up on the podcast in the next few weeks, I have more stories in the pipeline. So don't worry if you're waiting for one. Every now and then I'll do an episode that's not a story. And someone in the comment section writes, please do a story episode, which is another way of saying, I don't like this. Do something else, you know.

You know, I understand why people write that. Please do a story episode, which is kind of like if you come into my classroom and I'm teaching something and you put your hand up and I say yes and you say, can we just can we do something else? It's a bit like saying this is crap. I don't do this. I want something different. Might be might be a bit rude. Let's OK. It is a bit rude to do that, isn't it? Feels like it. Maybe I'm just being oversensitive. Maybe I'm a sensitive snowflake.

I don't know. I don't know. But yes, story episodes are coming. I've got some really, really nice stories coming up. Actually, I think I've got some really good story content coming. So rest assured, more are coming. And there are kind of like two types of story episode that I do on the podcast. There are the really short stories.

or quite short stories where I can do the story and then get into every single sentence and analyze all the vocab. And then there are longer short stories where they're a bit too long for me to analyze everything, but instead you just get to enjoy a story and I pause sometimes to explain what's going on. So I've got both types coming. So yes, you'll just have to hold on. I've also got a walk and talk episode video

with an accompanying audio double episode, and it's in London this time. So I've got a Walk & Talk episode in London coming soon. The next episode, next week's episode, the plan is that it will be a Film Club episode. I haven't done a Film Club episode for a long time, but I used to do them a lot. Long-term listeners might remember the Film Club episodes where I just sort of talk about a particular film for the whole episode.

And the next one, it's a Film Club episode about Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Do you know that? You know, Monty Python's Flying Circus, British comedy group from the 60s, 70s, 80s. One of their films, it's considered to be one of the greatest comedy films of all time. And in fact, often voted as one of the most popular British films of all time. Monty Python's Life of Brian. Now, I have no idea actually how the episode will be received today.

First of all, it's quite a niche appeal thing, you know, a film, an old classic comedy film, British comedy film. It's not necessarily the sort of thing that everyone today is crying out for, an episode about that. So it's kind of a potentially limited appeal, but it's exactly the sort of thing I used to do a lot on this podcast and episodes like that.

conversations about old British comedy films and things. That sort of thing, episodes like that are exactly what this podcast was built on. And so it is exactly the sort of thing I always used to do. And so I must, you know, I must, I must have been doing something right in those days in order to get the podcast to where it is today. So I'll be going back into that kind of thing in next week's episode. So it's a bit niche appeal. The other thing I'm,

I'm slightly concerned about with the episode is that it's, it deals with some controversial subject matter. And so naturally I'm slightly concerned about how, what the response will be to that. But then at the same time, you know, uh, you can't please all the people all the time, as we know, we'll just see. But anyway, I love the film. I think it's fantastic.

absolutely hilarious and very clever and brilliant and I've wanted to do an episode about it for a long time I've done lots of episodes about other Monty Python stuff in the past and so it was just time to do this particular film and anyway

Listen to the episode when it comes out next week. There's an introduction at the beginning. In the introduction, I say, this film has been a bit controversial in the past. Some people have found the themes of the film to be offensive. And I say, if you think there's any chance that you will be offended...

by the content of what we're talking about, then don't let that happen, okay? You don't have to let that happen. You could always just skip it, listen to one of the other episodes. There are so many old episodes that you might not have heard before. You don't have to listen to that episode if you think that it's going to annoy you or upset you because there's like a religious theme to it.

I don't mean to offend people. That's not what I'm trying to do. So if you think that that might not be your cup of tea, then, you know, don't listen to it. Listen to something else. And, you know, you don't have to then you don't feel forced to listen to it and then write to me and tell me how offended you've been or whatever. You know, it's just just not necessary.

Anyway, listen to it when it comes out, listen to the introduction and decide for yourself. But I know that a lot of the maybe long term listeners or listeners who love that sort of thing, I think you'll really enjoy the episode. I enjoyed doing it.

Yes. All right. Finally, after 40 something minutes, we get to the concept part of the episode. So that was the podcast admin. But it's my birthday, right? You know, forgive me for rambling. This is a rambling episode after all. But finally, we get to the spinning wheel of random questions. OK, so basically what I've got here is I've got a list of random questions on

uh by the way i didn't mention this there's a transcript for the entire episode available uh on the pdf so if you at any point if you're thinking but i want to be able to see the words you're saying luke i'm a bit like chat gpt luke i need to analyze written language uh you can just get the oh oh that's my water break uh alert

You can get the PDF and you can see every single word written down for you. So that, you know, you could go back in and look at that, you know, scan through it, read from it, whatever you want to do. So there's a transcript available. Anyway, the spinning wheel of random questions. I've got a list of random questions which are designed to generate some spontaneous, reflective and hopefully quite amusing rambling.

The questions are about a mix of things, including some about past memories, some about lifestyle choices, some silly hypothetical situations and a few gentle philosophical musings. It's all supposed to help me create a lighthearted, chatty rambling episode and we'll see what kinds of things I end up talking about. So just relax with me again and enjoy some rambling, some more rambling on my birthday.

Did I tell you it was my birthday? I've put all of these questions that I've come up with into an online randomizer that is the spinning wheel from wheelofnames.com. Let me just drink some water.

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So discover how TeamViewer can make work, work better, wherever it happens. Learn more at teamviewer.com/workbetter. Yes, I put all the questions into a randomizer. The randomizer is called wheel of names. It's a spinning wheel and you can input different things into each section of the wheel. You spin the wheel, wheel stops and that is the question, right?

You can put anything into any part of the wheel. Names, if you want to randomly choose names. Like, you know, you've had a baby and you don't know what to call it. Just put some names in the wheel of names and spin it. Or in this case, I've got loads of questions. Put them into the wheel, spin the wheel, answer the question that comes up, okay? Um...

So I just want to keep this spontaneous, see what kind of English emerges. I'll point out and explain some vocabulary as I go. Maybe we'll see. But generally, this can just be a fun listening exercise for you. As I said, full transcript in the show notes. Feel free to use these questions yourself, by the way, for some speaking practice. You might find that these specific questions are designed specifically for me personally.

because some of them refer to my podcast or where I live, for example. But feel free to adapt them as you see fit. And yeah, to generate the questions, I did initially use ChatGPT and ChatGPT seems to know me quite well now, which is both helpful and a bit disturbing.

And it gave me quite a long list of questions. I had a quick look at them, cut out some of the ones I didn't want to use, and put the rest into the wheel of names, and we'll see what comes up. So this is going to be spontaneous. Let's go. Let's have a look at wheel of names then. Okay, so here is the...

Here's the wheel of names. If you're looking at the video version, you'll see a lovely picture of a Luke's English podcast mug in the middle, just to remind you that they are available. That photograph was taken quite a long time ago. I have to say thank you to Philip from Amigos Inglés. That is the channel for Spanish people learning English. It's a YouTube channel and a website, Amigos Inglés.

And they are a very charming couple who do funny, energetic videos for learning English. Check them out. And Philip is the one who took that photo and he sent it to me. Thank you, Philip. After all these years, I'm still using that photo. Right, let's click this and see what happens.

Do you ever accidentally go into teacher mode during normal conversations? Do you ever accidentally go into teacher mode during normal conversations? So I guess this question means, do I ever just sort of like become a teacher when I'm having just a normal conversation? Well, yeah, sort of. I'm afraid so. I think I do. I mean, I've been a teacher for 20 something, 25 years or whatever now.

And so, yeah, naturally I do slip into teacher mode and maybe maybe I'm stuck in it permanently now. But also, you know, because my wife is French, sometimes I do have to help her with her English. So she'll just be we'll be talking about something and I'll just kind of like even without realizing I'll correct her. She says something like, I don't know, what would it be?

She just gets the word stress wrong on a word. And I'll just like repeat the word straight back to her with the right stress. And she kind of also automatically just kind of like repeats it again. I know how lucky, how lucky she is to have the opportunity to be married to me. Yeah.

Or not. Maybe that's really annoying. I can imagine that would be annoying. Talking of being annoying, I mean, I have annoyed my brother before with what he described as me being a teacher. So we used to live together in London and we used to annoy each other quite a lot. And there were times when he accused me in moments of anger and irritation. He said things like, will you stop being a teacher? Stop being a teacher all the time.

which used to really annoy me, you know, because he was unemployed. And so I'm like, you want me to stop being a teacher? Can you start being something? You know, it's all good for you complaining that I'm being a teacher, but could you maybe just be something else? And if you can't be something, maybe clean the kitchen. And then his reaction to that would be that I'm being annoying because I'm telling him what to do.

I remember one particular occasion because he never did the washing up or at least he didn't do it as much as I wanted him to do it. So from his point of view, I was probably annoying and controlling, you know, and like a teacher. But from my point of view, he was annoying because he was messy and he didn't do the washing up when it was his turn to do it. And I remember...

trying to tell him how to do it you know because i was i uh i'm quite good at doing the washing up which makes me seem like a really annoying uh twerp um but i thought i was quite good at doing the washing up and i thought he did it in a really inefficient way where he'd kind of like take ages like put some music on and it would become like a two hour sort of like a

like a whole two hour experience where there's music going. He said, maybe having a bit of toast on the side, he's got a beer going maybe. And the washing up just takes forever. Um, and I was like saying, why don't you do this? Why don't you grab all of the cutlery that you've washed and hold it in one hand. And in the other hand, you have the tea towel and you, you can quickly dry them and slam them into the, into the cutlery drawer like that. It's much quicker. And he's like, can you stop being a teacher? Um,

So yeah, I do accidentally slip into teacher mode during normal conversations and it's either helpful or just really annoying. So sorry. Sorry for that, James. I think he forgave me. I hope so. Next question. Spin the wheel. Okay. Okay. Have you ever tried to reinvent yourself and how did it go? Have you ever tried to reinvent yourself? So...

to reinvent yourself this would be like where i don't know so if i'm a teacher i mean i'm a tefl teacher english is a foreign language and i think to myself i'm fed up with being a tefl teacher i want to become a sort of i want to become an entrepreneur i want to become a techpreneur an entrepreneur in the tech industry i'm going to become a i'm going to become a uh

An exciting, risk-taking tech entrepreneur. And I'm going to work in the city and I'm going to wear a... I'm going to wear like a kind of sharp suit and I'm going to reinvent myself as some kind of businessman. That would be to reinvent yourself, to change...

who you are, to become a different person. So no, I've never tried to reinvent myself really. I mean, there was a time when I tried to grow up and I tried to go from being a sort of a student who was a bit of a waste of space, playing a lot of computer games and not really applying myself to life in the way I needed to. So I tried to go from that to someone a bit more capable, a bit more of a responsible, capable adult,

in my 20s, I tried to kind of reinvent myself in that way.

where I decided that I would get rid of, like, you know, I'd clean out my room at my parents' house, where I was living again after university, when I didn't have a proper job and I was living at my parents' house. And I was back in my room where I'd lived as a teenager and it was still decorated as it was when I was a teenager with all these movie and music posters on every inch of the wallpaper in the room and all this stuff in there.

and all my music cassettes and all these things which I felt were kind of like holding me back, holding me down and keeping me in that state of arrested development, meaning I wasn't growing up, wasn't developing. And I thought, right, this all got to go. Everything must go. And on one sort of

momentous afternoon. I pulled all the posters down, pulled everything down. And even a lot of cassettes, I threw them all in a bin bag and chucked them away, which I regret now because a lot of those cassettes were really great mixtapes, but I threw them away. I had to, I had to kind of get rid of all that baggage from my teenage years in order to kind of grow up a bit and

You know, so yeah, I don't know if I really reinvented myself, but I've had to change at times. What about you? Remember, you can try and answer these questions, right? Just try to answer them out loud. You'll find all the questions on the PDF. Next question. Here we go. Spin the wheel. It's exciting. Oh, what would your autobiography be called if it had to be named after a common English phrase?

What would my autobiography be called if it had to be named after a common English phrase? This is difficult because I think a lot of the best names for an autobiography for someone like me have already been taken. So there's, I would call it mind your language, right? Which would

potentially be quite good. I don't know if that's a good name for an autobiography, but mind your language is quite a nice expression. But that's already been taken. There was a TV series in England in the 70s or 80s about an English teacher teaching a group of

People from around the world and they're all like really, really obvious stereotypes of different countries. It's kind of like borderline racist by today's standards, but also quite funny. But that's mind your language. So I couldn't call it that. The David Crystal, um, the David Crystal memoir, um, is called just a phrase I'm going through, which I think is a really good title. I've got it up here somewhere. This is it. David Crystal's book, uh,

Just a phrase I'm going through my life in language, which is his his like autobiography. And that's a really clever little play on words, because we do say it's just a phase I'm going through. If you're going through a phase, it means you're going through a period in your life. I covered this expression in Luke's English podcast premium not long ago. So premium listeners, you're thinking, yeah, Luke, we know, we know, we know you've already taught us this.

Just a phrase I'm going through. A phase, if you go through a phase, it means you go through a certain period in your life. For example, I was going through a difficult phase, right, at that time in my life. I was going through a difficult period. We go through different phases in our life, right? But a phrase, you see, a phrase like in English sentences...

David Crystal is a linguist and this is exactly what he does. He goes through phrases and analyzes them, right? Because he's a linguist. So that's a clever name for a memoir, just a phrase I'm going through, My Life in Language by David Crystal. Interesting book, by the way, worth a read. So I don't know what I would call it, to be honest. I might, you know, I can't use the word rambling enough.

Can I? Because Adam Buxton's book is called Ramble Book. So I couldn't use that. So I don't know. Oh, I don't know. This is terrible. I have to think of an answer. Don't stop me now. No, that's terrible. What would your autobiography be called if it had to be named after a common English phrase? All right. Well, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what I'll do. Let me just...

Let me have a quick flick through the Oxford Idioms Dictionary, available from All Good Bookshops, not sponsored by Oxford. And let's just have a little, I'll just have a random look. Well, let's look for the word, maybe the word talk. Talk would be good. Teach, teach, teach, teach an old dog new tricks. No.

Talk we want. Tail talk. Talk. All talk and no action. That doesn't sound great, does it? All talk and no action. That just means someone who talks a lot but never actually do anything. I certainly talk a lot, but hopefully I actually do things as well in my life. To be the talk of the town. The talk of the town.

That could be good. That sounds like a good idea for like a TV series. Talk of the Town with Luke Thompson. And I'd go to different towns and talk to people who live there. That could be quite good. You can talk. Ah, that's pretty good. You can talk or look who's talking. That's it. I'd call it Luke Who's Talking.

"Huh? Come on! Look who's talking!" is what we say when you kind of criticize someone. For example, someone says, oh I don't know, someone criticizes you, like someone is drinking their tea and slurping from their cup, and they say to you, "Oh, I don't like the way you eat. It's disgusting." And meanwhile they're slurping their tea and you go, "It's disgusting!" You can talk or you can say, "Look who's talking!"

Right? Anyway, I could call it Luke who's talking. There you go. That was hard work, wasn't it? Next question. Okay, what is a food you loved as a kid but can't stand now? What's a food you loved as a kid but can't stand now? All right. I don't know. I'm trying to think of a food that I used to love, which I don't love now. Normally, it's the other way around. Normally, it's food that you didn't like before, but now you like. For example, I didn't used to like mushrooms, but...

nowadays I love mushrooms but something I used to like as a kid but I don't like now probably I would say McDonald's basically like McDonald's when I was a child the idea of McDonald's was just the most amazing thing yeah we could go to McDonald's oh and I used to get so excited about the prospect of going to McDonald's and you know like the whole the environment of it I remember I

All the different seating areas and the shapes of the seats and the colour of it all was so attractive to me. As a child, it feels like certain things just catch your eye and are just appealing to you as a child. It's sort of...

It's quite weird, really. Certain colours, certain designs of things, certain environments are just really appealing as a child. And also, certain environments have the opposite impression of you as a child, right? For example, if I remember as a kid going to the supermarket...

You just go to a supermarket or a shopping centre or something. You kind of scan the area looking for the stuff that's for kids. And you kind of go into that kid vision mode, scanning the area, scanning the area. And you see stuff that's like multicoloured, looks like it could be made of plastic. And you go, bam, that's the stuff for me. And you make a beeline for it. And sure enough, that is the section with all the toys there.

or comics or something. And that's where you, that's what you make as your base for the 20 minutes that your mum is doing the shopping or whatever. Right. And so McDonald's was a bit like that for me as a kid, that something about the design of the place was just appealing, you know, not to mention the food and the way the food was presented in these polystyrene boxes. You would, the burger would be given to you in a polystyrene box. And there was something very

about opening up the box and there was the burger and then you'd, in the lid of the box, you would put your fries in there, slide the fries into the lid of the box and you could like pour your own drink. Ah, yeah, that was great.

I loved that, and I used to think it was so delicious. But these days, I would only go to McDonald's if there's no other choice. And when I eat it, I'm like, oh, God, look at that burger. It's grey. A burger shouldn't be grey. What is that? Is that even... I don't even know what that is. Well, better eat it. And you feel a bit dirty afterwards. So there you go. McDonald's is a food I loved as a kid, but I can't really stand now. Happy now? You got the answer? Next.

What animal would you ride into battle if you had to lead a charge of English learners? Okay, so I imagine we're in some sort of battle and I'm in charge of an army of English learners. Yes, what are we doing battle? Who are we battling against? Learners of other languages. There's like a huge army of people learning Spanish.

and like a big army of people learning Arabic, and another army of people learning Chinese. These are the big languages of the world. And we're all riding into battle, the battle of the four languages, English, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic, and French as well, why not? The battle of the five armies, the five languages.

And we're all riding into battle against each other into some horrendous melee, completely unnecessary, a completely unnecessary battle. Meanwhile, chat GPT and other AI-generated chatbots are watching the battle and rubbing their hands. But anyway, what animal would I ride into battle? I think I'd have to ride an elephant,

For two reasons. The first reason, for its strategic advantage, because obviously, you know, who's going to mess with you if you're riding an elephant? So there's simply the fact that it's an extremely powerful beast that could trample all my enemies underfoot and whack them with their trunk, stab them with the tusks,

very effective, but also because of the symbolic value of the elephant, because the elephant, you know, elephants never forget, do they? So my learners would never forget, you know, these are my learners of English never going to forget the vocab that they've learned because they're being led by me on an elephant. And that is how English is going to end up being triumphant. I don't know if it is. Who knows? Will English still be

an international, the international language in 20, 30, 40, 50 years. God knows. God knows what the world's going to be like in those days. It'll just be, we'll all be speaking in bleeps and we'll just be speaking in code to each other. We'll just go up to each other. No, when AI has taken over and AI has decided, no, no, no, no, this, the human language is rubbish. This is the way to communicate in 2070.

Much more sophisticated. Anyway, moving on. How many more are we going to do here? How long have I been going? An hour. An hour and five minutes or something. Okay. Next question. What's your morning routine on a day when you feel truly relaxed? What's your morning routine on a day when you feel truly relaxed? That's quite a nice question to think about.

On a day when I feel truly relaxed, if I could just make up any day, and we're going to go into pure fantasy land at this point. A day when I feel truly relaxed, I wake up, you know, I've had at least two hours sleep longer than normal. So I've had a reasonable lie-in, but I haven't had such a long lie-in that I feel guilty about it. Because that's the thing about having a lie-in, isn't it? That's a lie-in. That's where you lie in your bed.

after you've woken up initially, you stay in bed. It's a lie-in, right? Not a lie-in and not involved. I mean, I wouldn't have a lie-in for breakfast. It's too big. What? Anyway, you know, when you have a lie-in, sometimes if your lie-in goes on too long, you do get that creeping sense of guilt. Do you? Maybe you don't. Maybe you're fine.

Maybe it's just me. You're like, why would you feel guilty about that? I don't know, because I'm English. Maybe that's it. I don't know. But I get that creeping sense of guilt of like, oh, I've stayed in bed too long. I'm wasting the day. I should be up. I should be doing things with the day. Yeah.

So I wouldn't want my lie-in to go on too long, but I'd like enough of a lie-in to make me feel like I've rested, because normally I'm far from that. Normally, you know, 6 o'clock, 6.30, my little son wakes up and I really need another couple of hours sleep, but I don't get it. You know, I've got to feed him his milk.

And then hope and pray that he will fall asleep again. But often he doesn't like that's it. Six 30. That's it. He's up and he wants to play. And so I have to drag myself out of bed or my wife does.

And, yeah, so anyway, so the kids would just sleep a couple of extra hours. We'd all get to have a couple of extra hours of sleep and then some delicious breakfast of fresh baguette, fresh bread, maybe a cooked breakfast. That would be nice. Like some eggs and bacon, maybe some slices of perfect avocado, maybe.

Because avocados are not always perfect, are they? Sometimes you buy one and you're like, that looks great. Bring it home. It's all weird inside. What happened to the avocado? So my avocado would be perfect and lovely cups of tea to start the day.

And then maybe spend a little bit of time on the carpet in the living room, playing with the kids. And the kids, of course, would be perfectly well behaved and just absolutely adorable. The sun is shining. It's a warm but cool day. Warm day with a little cool breeze coming through the window. That cool breeze is important. That sounds nice. That would be a nice morning routine.

I think that'll do. I wouldn't want to set any other expectations. That's probably all I should ask for. Right, moving on. Next question. What are we going to get this time? Okay, next question. You find a hidden trapdoor in your flat. Do you open it? Ooh. So a hidden trapdoor. A trapdoor is normally a door in the floor, right?

So it might be a door in the floor, like maybe a square section of the floor, and there are a couple of hinges and a little hook handle, and you open it and this door opens and there's a whole other room or some sort of storage place underneath the floor that you didn't realise was there. So maybe, let's say, I'm doing something in the apartment, we've decided to change the carpet.

let's say, and we rip up the carpet in, let's say, the kid's bedroom. And wait a minute, what's this? There's a trapdoor here. Huh? So a hidden trapdoor. Do I open it? Yes, of course. Absolutely. The prospect of gaining any more space, any more storage space in our tiny, minuscule shoebox of a Parisian apartment, any extra storage space, space,

Any extra storage space, I'm going for it. Now, sure, okay, sure, this might be a trapdoor to some sort of evil dimension. Or maybe there are skeletons in there. I don't know why there would be skeletons in there or, like, I don't know, what, spiders or something. Why would there be? Or maybe it's, yeah, the portal to another, an evil universe.

But it's unlikely, isn't it? But why would there be a trapdoor in the floor? Secret trapdoor? I don't know. I'm definitely opening it. Again, because storage space is so important. So I don't know. What do you think would be in there? Maybe imagine if you find some, like, several old suitcases and you're like, oh, look, several old suitcases. You open them up and there is millions of pounds of cash inside.

And maybe there's a skeleton in there as well. Why not? There's a skeleton in there and he's got his arms wrapped around the suitcase or a skeleton in there. And he's like, his arms are up like that because he's been trying to get out. And you think, what happened here? I don't know. Don't tell anyone. What should we do with the skeleton? I don't know. I'll tell you what you would do with a skeleton, right? You would attach it to a metal thing, a metal pole, right?

and just hang it like that and sell it to a doctor. There, sorted, and we keep the money. Not only do we get the money, we get more money because we sell the skeleton as well. Put some headphones on him, take a few photos, you know, convert them into posters for podcast listeners, and Bob's your uncle. What am I talking about? I don't know. It's a stupid rambling episode. What are you going to do? What would you do? If you found a hidden trapdoor in your flat, would you open it?

What could be inside? There used to be a kids TV show when my brother and I were growing up. We absolutely loved it. It was called The Trap Door. And it was this kind of fantasy, creepy fantasy TV show about a kind of blue creature called Burke. And Burke was the servant of a horrible monster that lived in a castle. You never saw this monster. You just heard his voice. He would go, Burke!

feed me like that

And Burke would run around and trying to keep his master happy. And there was a trapdoor in the middle of this dungeon where he lived. And he would always, every episode, he'd have to open the trapdoor. But whenever he opened it, something weird and horrible would come out of the trapdoor. And he would spend the rest of the episode trying to deal with whatever problem it was. Like some creature that was trying to eat him or some ghosts or something like that. So...

Certainly made for a good TV show. So I think I would set up a camera first to capture the moment and then I'd open the trap door. And then it would, you know, it could end up being a really good found footage horror film or something like that, at the very least. Right, moving on. Moving on to more important things. You wake up and you're the king of a tiny island nation. What is your first law?

Okay, wake up the king of a tiny island nation. My first law is, well, I've dealt with this before, free ice cream. Free ice cream for every citizen of this tiny island nation. So it's a tiny island nation. It's not like everyone's tiny. It's not like tiny little people. I'm assuming it's just a small island. Let's say there's what?

What would be a good number of people living on the island? Let's say there's about 5,000 people. Because anything less than that is going to be awkward, isn't it? If you're stuck on the island with them. Less than 5,000 people is going to get a bit awkward because you're just going to see the same people again and again.

You want a few more people, especially if there's interbreeding going on, right? If there's families, people having children, you want there to be a larger number of people to increase the gene pool because otherwise fairly quickly as your island nation progresses through the generations, the potential is that the gene pool is going to be very limited, which is not a very good recipe for sort of a healthy population

healthy race of people, is it? You know, you want a bit more diversity in there. So I'd want more than, let's say, about 5,000 people. I've got no idea what I'm talking about, really. I'm just trying to define what a tiny island nation is. But let's say free ice cream for everyone.

I know it's going to ruin the economy of the country. It's like, Your Majesty, your first decree is free ice cream. Yes, free ice cream for every citizen. I want to show everyone that I am a generous, benevolent king. So, free ice cream. But, Your Majesty, do you realise what effect that will have on the economy? That the ice cream manufacturers will...

Well, many of them will be bankrupt. How many ice cream manufacturers do we have on the island? Well, there's only one, sir, the Royal Ice Cream Company. Well, fine. Well, how much do they need? Well, 5,000 people, free ice cream, five pounds per ice cream. Five pounds, that's a lot. Well, it's premium quality ice cream.

Five times five. How much is that? Five times five. £25,000. Sorry, it's going to break the bank. Don't worry. The bank of the island will pay for it. The royal coffers will pay. You've only got £20,000. Sorry, the island's going to go bankrupt. And then the island goes... Why do I feel like we've talked about this before? I'm sure I've been through this before. That...

The island goes bankrupt. Everyone runs out of money. After the ice cream's run out, all the money's run out. And then you get these factions on the island where people are surviving. And then they end up fighting against each other and you end up with a civil war on the island. The ice cream wars. Explosions go off and...

You know, everything goes horribly wrong. And then like decades later, some sailors, some explorers come and visit the island. Again, they just find a bunch of skeletons on the island. What went wrong here? It's one of the biggest mysteries of the world. We don't know what happened on Ice Cream Island. The Ice Cream Island mystery.

Hmm. That's what I would do. What about you? What would your first law be? Next question. Let's move things on. I'm going to keep going for another 10 minutes or so. Next question. If your podcast episodes became sentient, like if they got a mind of their own, they became independent, a bit like AI is probably going to do. It's probably going to become sentient in, well, probably in the next five or six minutes or something, isn't it?

If your podcast episodes became sentient, what sort of personalities would they have? God, I dread to think. I dread to think that. I think they would be good-natured. I think they'd be good-natured, quite generous, quite kind and patient people.

I don't know, they might go on a bit. Like, if you invited one of them to a party, you know, they'd probably outstay their welcome a little bit, wouldn't they? Should we, you know, we're going to have a party. Should we invite episode 933 to the party? It's like, yeah, and then, like, at midnight, episode 933, still going, still talking. Oh, did I tell you about the time I lived in Japan? It's like, oh, God, when's he going to leave? I'm exhausted. Yeah.

So I think they'll probably maybe be a bit socially inept, but kind-hearted. Yeah? Yeah. All right. Fine. There's no right or wrong answer to this, is there? Not really. Next question. What's something everyone seems to like, but you just don't get? What's something that everyone seems to like, but you just don't get? Coldplay, maybe? Coldplay.

Not that everyone likes them, because there's plenty of people who don't like them. I'm not going to say I hate them or anything. It's not really my cup of tea, which is perhaps not what you would expect from me. Coldplay, right, the band. Maybe you would expect me to be, I might seem to be the ideal candidate for a Coldplay fan. You might think, well, Luke, you're of the right age, kind of...

Yeah, you're of the right age, white, middle-class English guy. You should love Coldplay. I mean, you seem to be right bang in the middle of the demographic that would like them. But no, it's not really my cup of tea, Coldplay. I quite like the first two singles that they came up with, Yellow and Trouble. They're good. I like those.

But I don't know. I don't know what happened with them. Or maybe it's just me. It's not them. It's me, isn't it? But I find it to be just doesn't really do it for me. You know, I quite like them. They seem to be nice enough guys. I've got nothing against them. I just find the music to be a little on the bland side, maybe a little insipid, you

which seems to be very unfair of me, but I wish them all the best. I know it's not easy being a band in the music industry today, and I think what they've achieved is extremely impressive. It's amazing what they've achieved. It's not easy to do that. And they are still one of the most successful bands in the world, and there are not many bands left, are there? Have you noticed? What happened to all the bands today?

There used to be so many big successful bands everywhere. There's just almost none left. And Coldplay is one of them, so fair play to them. They've really done, you know, they've really been a huge success. But I don't really choose to listen to their music myself. Moving on. Next question. What would your wizard name be if you lived in the world of Harry Potter?

Huh. What would my wizard name be if I lived in the world of Harry Potter? If I lived in the world of Harry Potter? Well, Lucius. I think it's got to be Lucius. Lucius something. Lucius Podcastius. There you go. Next. I'm going to try and do quickfire now. What does your perfect afternoon look like with no responsibilities?

Oh, my perfect afternoon with no responsibilities. You mean my wife and children, you mean? Without them in the picture, what am I doing? Well, I do enjoy just getting on a bike and riding around Paris, especially if the weather's nice. A bit like this afternoon. To be honest, this is the afternoon I'm trying to have today. Just having a nice lunch somewhere, riding around on a bike in a carefree manner.

Without feeling the pressure of having to get to work on time, to be in a classroom, to start a lesson on time. There would be no social media irritations. And honestly, these days, maybe this makes me seem like a bit of an old fuddy-duddy or something, but these days, what is really pleasant...

is like that afternoon I spent a few years ago when I talked about it on the podcast where I sat in a square next to a fountain and read a nice old book of stories, HG Wells stories,

while the sun came through the trees and glistened off the slightly wet grass of the park because it had rained that morning. But the warm sunlight came in and dried up the ground and the birds were running around on the gravel in front of me and I sat there with my back warmed by the sun reading this wonderful book, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the sounds of the city around me.

That was a wonderful moment and that is just all I need really these days. In a way, I feel like all I need these days is to reduce the number of distractions, to take away the things that are vying for my attention all the time, to take a break from my phone and from my devices. I actually do find that if I can get those things away,

and just find some peaceful space that actually lots of nice, good feelings do come flooding back in. And I think that it's really important to try and take time to do those things, certainly for me anyway. I find I do end up getting locked into my phone. I sit there staring at my screen. I get all distracted and...

about the things that are going on in that world in their...

A lot of that stuff is taking my attention away from me, from myself, because a lot of the things that we have on our phone, a lot of the apps and stuff, they are designed to hold our attention because our attention is now a commodity which they can monetize. And so a lot of the stuff that we're doing on our phones is there to just stay here, just keep looking at this.

I'll reward you with little bits of dopamine or whatever. I'll reward you. Just stay here. Keep looking at the screen. In fact, they are tracking the way your eyes look at the screen. They know what you're looking at. They know what you're doing. And it's like a little bit of manipulation that's going on. I'm not sure it's that healthy for us. And so I found just sitting and reading a book.

is a wonderful feeling and your mind seems to, in mind anyway, seems to reward me for that, for not subjecting it to those sorts of manipulations that you get from all these apps and whatever. Again, I sound like I'm kind of old-fashioned saying these things, but I think it's just normal stuff really, isn't it? Normal, reasonable human behavior.

reactions. So yeah, my perfect afternoon, a bit like the afternoon I had today, maybe record a podcast. It would be nice to record a good episode of the podcast. One that I felt was fun. And that's a quite satisfying feeling. If I do an episode that I think is going to be good and I enjoy doing it and I feel like good things went into it, like funny moments or good ideas or particularly insightful moments, if that's possible. Um,

when I feel like I've done that, that can be a very satisfying feeling because you think, yeah, I've got something good there. I think they're going to enjoy that. That's a nice, satisfying feeling. So my perfect afternoon with no responsibilities, not too different to this afternoon, actually, fingers crossed, as long as people like this episode, then maybe this will be a good afternoon, a perfect afternoon. That might be a bit too much to expect, but certainly a good one. Okay, let's do two more.

Here we go. Spin the wheel. What's your most irrational daily habit? My most irrational daily habit. Well, going back to the phone is probably just like randomly picking up my phone without even thinking about it and going into some app to look at comments. That is pretty irrational. But also biting my fingernails. Why do I do that? I'm one of those. I don't bite my fingernails. I bite the skin on the edge of my fingernails. I kind of like

bite it in just a moment if I'm thinking about something else and I'll bite it off and you just think why that's a weird thing isn't it to do to sort of eat yourself eat parts of your own body for no reason there's no nutritional value to that it doesn't look good it doesn't feel good biting my

biting the corners of my fingers is a pretty irrational daily habit what about you do you have any irritating little habits like that do you pick your fingers bite your fingernails or other stuff like that it's hard to stop doing those things isn't it I feel like you my fingers always need something to do you know I need to be doing something I tap my fingers a lot as well I um because I like to play the drums but I don't always have a drum kit in front of me of course so I end up

tapping my fingers on things. I think I'm one of those people who needs to be doing something with his hands. Otherwise, I end up like, you know, picking up my fingers or something. That's my irrational daily habit. It could be worse, couldn't it? It could be a lot worse than that. Thankfully, it's not too bad. My particular habit's not too self-destructive or anything, only a little bit, just the corners of my fingers. What about you? Do you have any irrational daily habits, compulsive habits like that?

Next question. I'm going to set a little two minute timer here just to remind me to stop in two minutes. OK, so this is the last little section of this episode. If someone looked inside your fridge right now, what assumptions would they make about you? If someone looked inside my fridge, what assumptions would they make about you? They would probably assume that I love dairy.

Because for some reason there's a lot of dairy, a lot of dairy products in our fridge. Sorry for the vegans listening. And I got a comment about this as well. Random comment when I was talking about putting milk in my tea. And someone said, oh, you wouldn't put milk in your tea if you knew what the poor cows had to go through. Which is sort of like, it's difficult, isn't it, in your daily life to...

When you know that there are bad things in the world, even just like your everyday actions that you don't even think about, you're contributing to the suffering of something or someone somewhere. Even by doing nothing, even by just attempting to have a nice birthday and just having a nice day, by not doing something, you're also contributing to a lot of the bad things in the world.

Anyway, how did I get onto that? You'd look into my fridge and you might assume that I don't care about the well-being of animals because there's quite a lot of milk in there. Milk, yogurt. See, the thing is that my wife, my kids, and I, we all eat different types of yogurt. So we've all got our own different types of yogurt in the fridge. There's milk for my tea. And then, of course, there's cheese because I live in France. And, you know, you don't have to eat cheese here. I know even some French people who don't like cheese. Can you believe it?

Yes, that person, there are people like that who do exist. Non-cheese-eating French people. I know, it's crazy. I don't know what other assumptions you'd make about me based on what you could see in the fridge. You'd have to look in my fridge, I think. I don't know if you'll ever get the chance to do that. This is the last question. Have you ever invented an English word that should exist?

I think I have, you know, I think there have been lots of times on this podcast where I've accidentally said a word that doesn't exist. Like I've kind of mixed up two words. I just can't think of an example at this moment in time of, you know, when I've made up a word that doesn't exist. You know what I mean? If you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, it's just normal, isn't it? When people talk, they sometimes trip over their words and say things that might be a combination of two other words or you kind of

You slip up and you say something that doesn't actually exist. I've done that loads of times and it's ended up with some funny moments, but I can't for the life of me think of any examples of that. So I would say maybe I would have to invent, let's say I can invent a word now, let's call it podcrastination. And podcrastination for me would be the phenomenon of

compulsively making podcast episodes when I should be doing something else in my life. So making podcast episodes when I should be focusing on more serious life related things like maybe applying for French citizenship.

I should be doing that. I should be working on my French citizenship application, including passing the French language test and all the other steps you have to take to get a French passport, which is something I must do. And it would be dual citizenship, by the way. I'd keep my British passport. I'd also get a French one, an EU one, because it would just be safe there.

and a good idea for me to have a French passport living in France with a French family. You never know. You never know what's going to happen, especially in the current climate. Maybe one day a new government will come into France and they will look at me and they'll say, you're not French. You can fuck off, mate. They might say that they might. And I'm serious. This, this sort of thing is happening more and more in the world. You know, it's, it's terrible. Um,

Anyway, so, yeah, podcrastination, doing episodes of this podcast when I should be probably working on other serious things in my life. Yes. I'm going to do one more because that felt negative. I'm going to try and end on something a bit more fun. OK, well, this is a very ridiculous question to end with. Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?

Right. Would you rather fight a hundred duck sized horses or one horse sized duck? This is a classic would you rather question. Right. This this question. This is fairly common. Silly. Would you rather question that's come up in lots of would you rather games over the years in various contexts? Not just me, but lots of people anyway. Right.

100 duck-sized horses. So these are 100 horses, but they're the size of ducks. So they're quite small, like maybe the size of chickens. So 100 of them, little tiny horses. Or one huge duck, which is the size of a horse.

Which, to me, sounds a bit like an Apiornis from Apiornis Island, that story that I, in fact, read when I was sitting in that park having a lovely afternoon a couple of years ago, and then I told the story on the podcast earlier.

One duck that's the size of a horse would be a terrifying thing. And I think if it was a one-to-one fight between me and that massive duck, then the duck is definitely going to win. Because all it needs to do is peck me in the head once, and I'm dead, aren't I, really? Or flap its wings and, you know, it just can peck me and grab me with its beak and it'll pull my head off. So there's no way I could win. But I think I could probably take 100...

duck-sized horses. But it depends on the conditions. Like, what are the conditions? If I... Would I be able to run faster than a horse that's the size of a duck? Maybe. But I think if I could run and maybe get them in a narrow space, so like run down a narrow alleyway so they can't surround me and run away and then as they come towards me I'd sort of like kick them all

and then run away and then kick a few more and then keep running, I think I'd have a chance. But I mean, obviously, I would rather not, you know, I would rather not have to fight any of these creatures. But if I've got no choice and I have to, then I would choose to fight 100 Duggar.

duck-sized horses and I'd run down some narrow corridor and get them all in one spot and just kick as many of them as I could and then run away before they got to climb all over me or something. What would a hundred duck-sized horses do? They'd climb all on top of me and all kick me all at the same time. I think that would be devastating. So I'd have to keep on the move and take them out one by one.

What a dreadful thought. What an absolutely dreadful thought. What a dreadful way to end this episode. But luckily, it hasn't actually happened. It's all just...

in the imagination. So no animal lovers need to worry about it because no animals were harmed. We can just continue with the love of animals in our hearts and minds and live the rest of our lives with a clean conscience, knowing that no animals were harmed in the making of this podcast episode, as far as I'm aware.

All right. Hey, listeners, you're still there, are you? You're still there? You're still with me? Are you still alive? You are. Excellent. Well done. You made it through to the end of the episode. I am very proud of you. And it's been fun. I've enjoyed the episode. Thank you for spending my birthday with me. And yeah, I said at the beginning that I would...

my age at the end of the episode, so I'm willing to do that. So I was born in 1977, the same year as Star Wars. So I am as old as Star Wars. And some of you are thinking, well, that's really old, isn't it? So I'm 48 years old. 48 years old today. And like some people, you know, you get different attitudes about birthdays and ages and

And I'm not one of those people. Maybe I'm just lucky because I'm... I don't know, maybe it's different for men or something because... I don't know, whatever, whatever. I'm not one of those people who gets, like, upset about getting older, really. I mean, don't get upset about my age increasing. Getting older is obviously a different thing in itself. But the number doesn't really bother me as such. And, yeah, the fact that I'm getting older, like, you know...

Some people get upset about when it's their birthday. And they're like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm 48 years old. But...

For me, I always think, what's the alternative? The only other alternative to you being 48 is you being dead, right? I mean, that's it. It's either you're 48 years... You make it to 48 years old or you don't, you know? So, essentially, I'm very happy to have made it this far. I think that's the best way to think about it. I'm so happy to have made it this far. And 48 is...

relatively young. I mean, I'm talking like, you know, someone who's 80 might say they're happy to have made it this far, but any year you should be glad that you've made it, you know? So what do you think? Is that, is that, is that young or old? Well, it's middle-aged, isn't it? I'm a middle-aged man now, but I wonder if that's a surprise that you thought I was a lot older or younger. Normally when people hear my voice, when people hear my voice, they've listened to my voice for, for a long time and they've never seen me.

Often people seem to be surprised when they see me because they expect me to look different. They expect me often. They expect me to be larger. They expect me to be, uh, maybe larger, maybe fatter and older than I am. And then when they actually see me, they're actually, they're kind of surprised. So my, I seem to have an old fat voice. Um,

Yeah. All right. Thanks for spending my birthday with me, listeners. Bye.

Oh, someone's calling me. All right. Thanks for spending my birthday with me, listeners. It's been lovely. And leave your comments in the comment section. Don't forget, you can get the PDF transcript for the whole episode. That could be useful for you. I will speak to you in the next episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one and that you enjoy all my episodes. That is the idea and that you learn from them. Speak to you next time. But for now, it's time to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.

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