⭐ Feature: To Pull Some Strings / The Great Iditarod
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As you probably can tell, many of my recent episodes have been about incredible people, from Cornelius Vanderbilt, who revolutionized the transportation industry in the U.S., to George Ferris, who created the Ferris wheel. Recently, we also talked about Diana Nyad, who swam from Cuba to Florida. I love a good story. And today, you'll hear a great one.

This episode was part of season two, and it's about the expression to pull some strings and the Great Iditarod, a dog sledding race across Alaska. There's a fascinating backstory, and I hope you enjoy learning all about it.

You're smart. You know that every topic related to animals is somewhat controversial. So listen to the end and then form your own opinion. What do you think about the Great Iditarod? Let me know. In any case, I hope you enjoy this two-part episode. I won the Iditarod and we brought home a check for $50,400 and a new Dodge pickup. I then promptly turned around, uh,

and wrote a check for $57,000 for a container of dog food, 21 tons. To field a seriously competitive team, you're looking at about a quarter million bucks a year. We don't have the luxury of not doing something that might bring in a couple grand, you know? So we're doing whatever we can to make ends meet. You know, racing is the one thing that I don't really try to make money doing. There are other races besides the Iditarod where you could pick up five or 10 grand here or there, but our focus is winning the Iditarod.

Hi, everybody. My name is Shauna, and this is the American English Podcast. My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States. Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting. Let's do it. Hello. Welcome back.

How about that intro from Vice Sports? You're probably wondering if you heard it correctly. Did that guy say he wrote a check for $57,000 and spent it on dog food? Yep, you heard correctly.

Today, you'll learn about a dog sled race called the Great Iditarod, which takes place in Alaska at the beginning of March every year. It's commonly referred to as the last great race, and for good reason. The course is almost 1,000 miles long, and it can take between 8 to 15 days to complete.

Also, Alaska is the northernmost state in the United States, so the days out there can be dark, ice cold, and lonely. It's common to say that knowledge is power. Knowing about dog sledding and the great Iditarod might not make you feel so powerful, but wow, you will feel cooler knowing about it.

Before we get to the topic of the day, though, we're going to go through a joke, an expression, and some pronunciation exercises. Let's begin with the joke. Are you ready? What did the hunter say when the polar bear ate his sled dog? Any ideas? Well, doggone. I love this. Do you get it?

Let me explain. There's wordplay in the hunter's answer. He said, well, doggone. Quite literally, his dog is gone. I mean, after all, a polar bear ate it. It was devoured. The dog is no longer in the owner's presence. Well, doggone.

Doggone, written as one word, is an exclamation, an interjection, that's similar to dang it, darn, shoot, oh no, or damn. It's old-fashioned, though, so it's kind of a goofy or funny way to express frustration or surprise. I can imagine my grandpa saying this, you ate that last piece of chocolate? Well, doggone.

This joke is funny because of the two meanings of doggone. The dog was literally gone, and the owner was probably surprised or angered by the situation. Well, doggone. Let's hear it one more time. What did the hunter say when the polar bear ate his sled dog? Well, doggone. Speaking of dog sledding, I thought of an expression for today that'll fit right into it, and that's to pull some strings.

Let's go ahead and learn the meaning of the individual words first. So according to Oxford languages, to pull is a verb and it means to exert force on something or someone in order to move it toward oneself. For example, the father pulled his children in a wagon. Some is an unspecified amount or number of something, but more than one.

Can you buy some boxes of cereal when you're at the grocery store? And strings. A string is material consisting of threads of cotton, hemp, or other material twisted together to form a thin line. The man put new strings on his guitar.

To pull some strings means to use one's influence to achieve something. You might use an advantage that you have, such as a friend or a family connection, in order to help you get ahead or get what you want. In a situation, you might ask them to pull some strings for you, or you may be able to pull some strings to help someone else.

The expression itself, to pull some strings, dates back to the 1800s, when puppetry was a common art form. A puppet is a type of doll that can be manipulated so that it moves and appears lifelike.

One type of puppet is called a marionette, and it's controlled by strings and a puppeteer. When a puppeteer pulls some strings, he or she is able to move the arms, hands, legs, or other body parts of the marionette in different ways so that it appears moving to an audience.

To bring this back to the expression, imagine yourself as that puppeteer and you are pulling some strings to get an intended result. Let's go through some more examples to hear how we would use this. Example number one. Imagine that a new restaurant has opened up and it's the talk of the town. In other words, everyone is talking about it. You want a reservation, but it's booked out for months.

On your own, there's nothing you can do. However, your aunt has a friend that knows the owner, so you ask her if she could pull some strings to get you a table. In other words, you want to see if your aunt can use her connection and her influence to give you an advantage. You want her to pull some strings for you. Example number two. This is a personal example.

My dad is an electrician, and he's often hired to work for very wealthy people in Napa and the San Francisco Bay Area.

I wouldn't say he's friends with his clients per se, but he's been able to pull some strings because of the connections he has. Once back in 2016, when Lucas and I were looking for a wedding venue, my dad was able to talk to the owner of a very expensive barn in the vineyards and rent it at a fraction of the price.

Without my dad, we definitely wouldn't have gotten that venue for our wedding. He pulled some strings for us. Example number three. Let's imagine that you just bought an insanely cheap flight ticket online and will be flying to the United States next week.

After a few hours of excitement, you realize there's a problem, a big problem. Your passport is going to expire and there's no way you'll be able to get it renewed before your flight leaves. In a hurry, you decide to reach out to everyone you know on Instagram and Facebook and

just to see if anyone knows anyone who could pull some strings. In other words, you want to see if someone can exert their influence to help you get your passport renewed quicker. I hope that makes sense. Let's go through some pronunciation exercises. We'll start with the statement, we asked him to pull some strings. Repeat after me. We asked. We asked him.

We asked him to pull. We asked him to pull some strings. I really like this example because you can really hear how the ed ending in asked changes depending on what follows. Here we have, we asked him. When I say this fast, it sounds like we asked him. We asked him. We asked him to pull some strings.

This is very common when T sounding endings are next to an H sound or a vowel. The H in most circumstances cannot be heard. We ask dim, we ask dim, ask dim. Let's move on to the conjugation. Repeat after me. I pulled some strings. You pulled some strings. She pulled some strings. He pulled some strings.

It pulled some strings. We pulled some strings. They pulled some strings. Still getting around to that fix on your car? You got this. On eBay, you'll find millions of parts guaranteed to fit. Doesn't matter if it's a major engine repair or your first time swapping your windshield wipers.

eBay has that part you need ready to click perfectly into place for changes big and small. Loud or quiet, find all the parts you need at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. But you already know that. eBay. Things. People. Love. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. That's it for the pronunciation section. Let's move on to today's fun fact.

Today, we'll be talking about the Great Iditarod, which is the largest annual sporting event in Alaska. Did you know that Alaska makes up 17.5% of the United States?

Almost one-fifth of the United States is Alaska, and yet only about 750,000 people live there. That's 1.28 people per square mile. Today, the only city with over 100,000 residents is Anchorage. Other residents are dispersed in little communities within the state.

Small towns heavily rely on their neighboring communities for goods, supplies, and services. It's a matter of survival. And over the past century, Alaskans have figured out how to utilize air, land, and sea to thrive.

But before the widespread use of airplanes in the 1920s and before the invention of snowmobiles in the 60s, dog sleds were the most common form of transportation in rural Alaska. A sled is a type of vehicle that can be used to move people or goods on snowy or icy surfaces. In dog sledding, dogs wear harnesses and are connected to a sled, which they pull.

The musher, who is the individual, the human, who stands on the sled, is the driver. Today, dog sledding is not only a common sport in Alaska, it's also common in Canada, Greenland, Russia, Norway, and other Arctic countries around the world. So where did dog sledding begin?

According to National Geographic, many archaeologists believe that dogs have been used to haul people and material goods across the Arctic for thousands of years. In Ust-Poloui, Siberia, archaeologists have excavated 2,000-year-old relics of dogs wearing harnesses, next to dog bones with similar bone structure to Siberian huskies.

It's believed that the Inuits, or the natives of northern Alaska, originally crossbred various breeds of dogs with wolves in order to create the famous Alaskan Malamute. Their thick fur, padded feet, and stamina were thought ideal for long-distance travel. When Siberian Huskies were introduced to Alaska in the early 1900s, they quickly became the racing dog.

This is where the story gets interesting. In the 1920s, diphtheria, an infectious disease, swept through the United States and killed between 13,000 to 15,000 people, many of them children. In January of 1925, there was an outbreak of diphtheria in Nome, Alaska, which at the time was the most populous city in the Northeast.

When local doctors ran out of antitoxin to treat patients and prevent the spread of the disease, they cried for help. But who was going to help them? During the winter, the nearest port was surrounded by ice. Steamships couldn't enter. Pilots and airplanes were not readily accessible.

The only way to get to Nome before the outbreak killed off a good number of its residents was by taking the Iditarod Trail on dog sled. The Iditarod Trail stretches a total of 938 miles across the center of Alaska.

Over a period of five and a half days, 20 mushers and 150 dogs relayed across Alaska to bring a 20-pound container of serum to the town of Nome.

One dog sled team would run approximately 30 miles, stop, pass off the container, and then the next team would continue. Temperatures plummeted to sub-zero, and at times, wind chills dropped to negative 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Many mushers got frostbite and hypothermia. Some dogs died due to the conditions.

But by the 127th hour, after 674 miles traversed, the last team crossed the finish line. The mission was complete, the serum was delivered, and the city was saved from a potential epidemic.

Across Alaska and the United States, the mushers and their dogs became celebrities. Balto, who was the dog who crossed the finish line, is now one of the most visited statues in Central Park in New York City. The story of man and dog versus the wilderness is a story often told.

The Serum Run, or Great Race of Mercy, which is the story just told, is often shared when talking about the development of the Great Iditarod Race. The Great Iditarod was created by a man named Joe Reddington and two school teachers back in 1973 to bring back dog sledding as a sport and commemorate the famous Serum Run to Nome.

Today, it's the largest annual sporting event in Alaska and is televised across the nation. There are two routes. The northern route is used on even years and the southern route on odd years. On the first Saturday every March, around 50 mushers and their teams of 12 to 16 dogs wait at the starting line in Anchorage for what's called a ceremonial beginning.

Crowds are packed in like sardines, waiting to see them off. Over the next 8 to 15 days, the dogs and their mushers make their way across Alaska, traveling through forests, rivers, and over mountains. From start to finish, the race is approximately 1,000 miles, so 1,609.34 kilometers.

The landscape is an obstacle. Apart from severe weather conditions like blizzards and lack of visibility, threats from animals may present themselves. In training in 2015, a musher by the name of Dallas Seavey and his dogs were attacked by a 2,000-pound moose.

He survived the attack and shot the moose, but his dog was paralyzed. In another instance, a woman named Susan Butcher came across a pregnant moose along the trail and was attacked. Two of her dogs died, but she survived. In the wilderness, there are also bison, grizzly bears, and polar bears.

It takes both mind and body, as well as guts, to endure the hardships of the race. Many runners will do three hours of running, three hours of resting, three hours of running, three hours of resting. And many will even run during the night. According to the official Iditarod website, the Husky's ideal temperature is zero degrees Fahrenheit. On the way to Nome, there are between 23 and 27 checkpoints.

depending on the year and which route is taken. At the checkpoints, mushers may stop to grab a bite to eat or get updates on weather conditions, while all sled dogs have mandatory health checks by on-site volunteer vets. Vets will evaluate the dog's health,

and look for signs of potential injury, dehydration, or any sign of the dog being physically or mentally unfit to continue. If a dog needs to be taken out of the race, they'll be immediately cared for by vets and then transported to the Eagle River Correctional Institute, where inmates take care of them until the race is over. That is, only the privileged prisoners.

You can probably imagine that an event like this causes controversy, especially among PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals organization. They say the sport is cruel and the treatment of dogs is inhumane.

Mushers, on the other hand, claim that the dogs are treated better than the average domestic dog. They get the best quality of food to remain in shape. They get to be outside in nature doing their favorite activity, which is running. And they're social dogs. All day, every day, they're surrounded by a team of other dogs to keep them company.

In recent years, a number of large organizations have withdrawn their sponsorship of the event because they don't want to be tied up in the controversial nature of it. In order to take part in the Iditarod, you first need to qualify in shorter races in order to prove yourself worthy of competing in the event.

According to Dallas Seavey, the champion of the Iditarod in 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2016, there are not many people who are, quote, tough enough or dumb enough, unquote, to enter such a challenge. But there are good rewards. In recent years, around $500,000 were distributed among all finishers.

In recent years, the winner took home around $51,000. Getting record times isn't necessarily the objective for all racers. For many, finishing is the goal. The race doesn't officially end until the last competitor crosses the finish line. In 1973, John Schultz spent over 32 days trying to make it to the finish line.

and succeeded. Currently, Mitch Seavey, the father of the famed Dallas Seavey, holds the record for the quickest Iditarod completed. Eight days, three hours, 40 minutes, and 13 seconds.

That's it for this episode. I hope that you enjoyed it. I asked my dad about what it's like living in Alaska during the Iditarod race, and he said, oh, it's huge. Every night, everyone goes home to see where the racers are along the path. And at checkpoints, everyone who lives in an area will go out to see the racers as they pass by.

He also said that mushers are like celebrities. What's funny is that on occasion, something that I did not mention, is that they have to bring snow to the starting points and the finishing points in order to have the ceremonial starts and the finishes, which is kind of funny. If you're interested in hearing more about the state of Alaska, it's appeared in some other episodes as well. In episode number 11, we talked about how Alaska was acquired,

In episode number 24, we talked about the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which occurred on the Prince William Sound in Alaska. In episode number 43, I talked to my dad about what it was like to go to school in Alaska, as well as live and work there. It was a wonderful conversation, so check those out if you're interested. That's it for today. Until next time, bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the American English Podcast. Remember, it's my goal here to not only help you improve your listening comprehension, but to show you how to speak like someone from the States. If you want to receive the full transcript for this episode, or you just want to support this podcast, make sure to sign up to premium content on AmericanEnglishPodcast.com. Thanks and hope to see you soon.