Kanzi the bonobo is considered the most advanced example of primate communication in captivity. He uses a lexigram board with hundreds of symbols to form simple phrases, understands over 3,000 spoken English words, and can comprehend syntax without gestures. He can also perform tasks like putting food in a microwave and has demonstrated creative language use, such as referring to kale as 'slow lettuce.'
Kanzi learned language through observation, similar to how human children acquire language. His ability to combine symbols to convey new meanings and understand syntax mirrors early forms of human linguistic creativity. This suggests a fundamental language system in his brain, allowing him to decode and generate new sentences.
Kanzi's attempts to teach his skills to other bonobos, including his sister and son, indicate that he not only understands the skills he has acquired but also grasps the concept of teaching. This highlights his advanced cognitive abilities and awareness, as well as his desire to communicate with others of his species.
George Orwell's '1984' is a dystopian novel that warns against totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and the manipulation of truth. It explores the consequences of a repressive regime that controls society through fear, propaganda, and the elimination of critical thought, symbolized by the concept of 'Newspeak,' a language designed to limit freedom of expression.
In '1984,' 'Newspeak' is a language created by the totalitarian regime to diminish vocabulary and eliminate concepts like freedom and rebellion. By reducing language, the government limits people's ability to think critically or express dissent. Orwell uses this to illustrate how controlling language can control thought, making it harder for individuals to resist oppression.
Both Kanzi's language abilities and Orwell's '1984' highlight the power of language in shaping thought and understanding. Kanzi demonstrates how access to language enables complex communication and creativity, while '1984' shows how restricting language can suppress critical thinking and freedom. Together, they underscore the importance of language in defining sentience and autonomy.
The speaker argues that language is essential for understanding and articulating emotions and experiences. Having the right words to describe feelings or situations allows individuals to process and compartmentalize them, leading to greater emotional intelligence and critical thinking. This is why the speaker values expanding vocabulary and communication skills.
The speaker struggles with guilt when spending money on herself, often justifying purchases as rare treats. She spent $400 at Sephora on makeup and skincare, which she initially felt guilty about but later rationalized as a Christmas gift to herself. This reflects her broader belief that she shouldn't indulge in luxuries until her family is financially secure.
The speaker had a two-year feud with her English literature teacher, who she describes as dismissive and cruel. The conflict began when the teacher refused to accommodate the speaker's personal struggles and escalated when the teacher publicly humiliated her. Despite being pressured to apologize, the speaker refused, leading to her being removed from the teacher's class.
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New season tonight at 8, 7 central on MTV. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Pretty Lonesome. I have so much for you this week.
If you watched last week's episode, I was basically just Googling a bunch of shit and I got really into Googling this monkey called Coco. I promise this isn't going to be the whole episode. I actually have loads for you. But like, this feels the most pressing to me, okay? Because I got into Googling this monkey called
Coco, who I had studied briefly during my linguistics degree. If you didn't watch the episode, brief synopsis for you. Okay, TLDR. I learned that off chat GPT. Coco was this monkey. They taught her sign language. She was like pretty good at speaking it. She ended up begging for a cat. She had a cat for years and then the cat got hit by a fucking car and died. It was devastating. I love Coco very deeply. She died though. Of old age, she lived a pretty good life from what I understand. Anyway, after that episode, I got really into
to monkey language again and I was just like obsessively googling it. I've started taking my ADHD medication again which means I have a zest for life again and now in my spare time rather than sitting and staring at a wall in despair I actually have time and the fucks to give to like google stuff that I'm curious about. So I was going kind of crazy googling monkeys right and I learned about Kanzi. I never heard about her before. Kanzi the bonobo all right. She is thought of to be the most
And I promise, again, I'm going to talk about other stuff in this episode. I'm also wondering, does my makeup look good? Be honest, because I have a fancy dinner tonight and I did my makeup for it and obviously for this podcast, but mostly for the dinner. I usually wouldn't get like this made up. In the viewfinder right now, I'm kind of shocked. I'm like, wow, looks phenomenal if I do say so myself. But then I'm worried that when I blow this footage up onto my big computer screen, I'm going to be like,
oh my fucking god and maybe it doesn't look as good because I did do it in the dark and I used like all new products because I went to Sephora and I spent so much money which by the way is like the first time I've ever done that I and this is one of the things I was going to talk about in this episode because it got me thinking the fact that I don't do that because I spent four
$400 at Sephora, which, by the way, I bought like four things. So I don't know how that fucking happened. I bought my, okay, it was a few more than four things. But like, I did not buy that. I did not, it did not feel like I should have spent $400, the things that I came out of Sephora with. It was like a couple of foundations, a primer, some skincare. To be fair, it was the skincare that was expensive, I know. But like, I hate spending my money. So every time that I do spend money, I have to really like validate it to myself over and over. Like I
I obsess over it. And I was trying to validate the Sephora purchase to myself and I was going around in circles in my head and the one thing I kept saying was like, you never spend money on yourself so it's fine. And then that made me kind of sad because I was like, I actually don't ever spend money on myself. Like, I don't buy myself like fancy things. I don't ever buy makeup. My thinking is until everyone in my family is safe for life, I should not ever buy myself anything nice. And I...
honestly like I don't even think that's a guilt complex that needs to be diminished like I think that's actually fucking valid but I was like tweaking over $400 at Sephora and then I had to convince myself it's a Christmas present to myself and also I'm only going to be young and hot for so long and I should splash out on some foundation and moisturizer while I'm here you know what I mean anyway in my research in my in my in my fucking Adderall field
research. I came across Kanzi the bonobo and I didn't know that Kanzi the bonobo ever existed. I don't know how she got past me or he he uh got past me in my linguistics degree but he did and I have to tell you about him and I promise I won't yap about this for too long if you don't care but I promise I'm gonna make it interesting please just give me a sec give me a sec if you're thinking about clicking off the podcast don't you fucking dare. Kanzi the bonobo is perhaps the most advanced example of primate communication in captivity.
He was taught to use a fucking lexagram board, which is basically, think of like a Ouija board. It's like, it's a board with symbols which represent words. Pretty simple, right? He used hundreds of symbols. He combined the symbols to form simple phrases to express desires and observations. And he had a comprehension of spoken English commands without gestures. Not also a hand movement, just the gesture. He physically could understand. Now, I need you guys to just please take a look at Kanzi.
I feel like this is a famous image. Maybe you guys know about Kanzi and maybe I'm actually the idiot. I don't know. So here's my fact file on Kanzi. He can respond to more than 3,000 spoken English words. So I could speak to Kanzi for more than 3,000 words and he will know what the fuck I'm talking about. If this monkey had vocal folds in the way that humans do, if he had a larynx the way humans do,
He would be able to speak. That is his issue is he doesn't have a fucking voice box properly. And there's all this science into like why humans develop the voice box and that's probably why we spoke blah blah blah blah. He can perform tasks if you ask him to. An example would be to put something in the microwave. Kanzi can do it. For example, a human would understand put the mac and cheese in the microwave, right? You'd know that means put the mac and cheese in the microwave.
But if I said to you "Mac and cheese in the microwave, put" you'd be like "Excuse you?" And maybe you would know what it means but it's confusing. If you think that like an animal only understands what you're saying because there's certain words like "dog knows what sit is" because it's one word, that's kind of just like a memory repetition thing. But to understand fucking syntax is kind of insane.
Like really quite crazy because it means you have a fundamental language system in your brain that is actively working to decode what someone has said to you. And it's not just, it's not just like almost an
knee-jerk response to like, you know, monkey hears fear call and it knows there's danger. I might have to go back to school because it turns out this stuff makes me happy. Who would have thought? He has the ability to convey new meanings, which if you remember in my last podcast episode, I was talking about how most animals don't have creative language. They can only do a certain set of things with a certain limited set of meanings. And the main idea of language is that you can use it to express something and use it
to express things freely, like you have a working program in your head that allows you to understand and thus make new sentences. Kanzi can fucking do that, alright? He can combine symbols to convey new meanings, such as referring to unfamiliar food as "slow lettuce" for kale. Also, queen. So fucking true. Slow lettuce. Probably because it takes him longer to eat because kale's chewier. This queen, ugh. Or using descriptive combinations. Tool use.
He can make and use tools. Okay, well we kind of knew that monkeys could do that, not gonna lie. He can start fires too, apparently. Kanzi attempted to teach his skills to other bonobos, including his youngest sister and son. Which means he understands not just the skills that he acquired, but how he understands teaching as a concept. Also, how fucking wild of an experience on this earth. You are born as a bonobo, okay? And then...
randomly you are just chosen out of all the bonobos alive you are going to learn human language and now you are alone the only fucking monkey in your whole fucking species knowing the english language and you just pop out a kid one day well he doesn't his girl does all right he has a child and he's like i am sentient and i can't fucking tell anyone so he tries to teach the kid like please talk to me oh my god if you talk about like being captive that is
Terrible. They made the monkey sentient and then they gave him no one to talk to. Of course he tried to teach his kid. He's like, "Please fucking talk to me. I need to talk to you about the fact that we're in a cage right now." Because he was probably so fucking aware of the fact that he was in a cage.
Oh my god, it's so scary. We need to stop worrying about AI and worry about Kanzi. Just kidding, I trust Kanzi. What's interesting to me is obviously they are wild animals and they have instinct. You can't override instinct. You really can't. Humans obviously can and should. Are we going to expect that of a chimpanzee? But what I wonder is when you rear a monkey around humans in such close proximity, right, you would assume that they kind of make connections that
the human should not be harmed or is not in any any danger to them right but ultimately they're still going to have like instincts but I wonder when you teach a monkey language and it starts to understand concepts and probably starts thinking because mind you we could all get into discussion right now about 1984 if you haven't read 1984 let me get like the information up on 1984
19, we've got to do a book club on fucking 1984. Craziest thing about America and the UK to me, sorry, going a bit off topic right now, but like we have obviously got different literature growing up because Americans read American literature and British people, like British kids, read English literature. Like we read literature from English writers and you guys read literature from American writers. And a lot of our classes are the same. Maths, science, it's all the same. A lot of geography, a lot of history. Although history is actually pretty like, at least in like...
lower years it's definitely like specific to the country that you're learning it in at least in the uk it was like we learned british history and then like if you took it as like an a level or like a gcse you would probably learn like more i don't know because i didn't personally take it but like i would assume but literature is so different so all the books that i read at school and all the books that the people that i grew up with read at school no one in america has read any of them so i guess probably no one in america
gets to read 1984 at school was george orwell british yes he was a british sas journalist novelist okay so potentially a lot of the viewers of this podcast since a lot of you guys are american won't have read 1984 so let me give it let me give you the rundown so
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1984 is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on the 8th of June 1949, so it's written about the future, right? It centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society.
He was a staunch believer in democratic socialism and a member of the anti-Stanlitz left. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated. If you didn't read this book, one of the things that I personally found the most interesting about it was they had this concept of "newspeak".
And essentially, okay, let me give you actually a rundown of the book. Hold on. If you haven't read it, you should because it's more relevant than ever right now. Essentially is set in a time in the future from the time of writing where the government is totalitarianist. I can never say that word. They have surveillance absolutely everywhere. And I believe this is where Big Brother started because the kind of catchphrase of the book is Big Brother is watching you.
No one really knows who Big Brother is. A dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the party's thought police. So essentially, it's a world where the government completely controls everyone and they do this through mass surveillance. So you are always watched. You're watched in your house, through the television. There's cameras in the walls and everyone has to work for the government in order to keep people complacent, essentially, and get them to obey them. They constantly
can't trust anyone and if you even speak to your neighbor and sort of disagree with the essentially just regime um you can't even say to your neighbor for example like don't you think this is all a bit crazy don't you not like that the government is watching you uh because they will turn you in and it's a sense it's it's a fear-based culture based on mass surveillance one of the ways in which they control people's minds is they essentially create this thing called newspeak
and they remove concepts from the language. Newspeak follows most rules of the English grammar, yet as a language characterized by a continually diminishing vocabulary, complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. Let me get you some vocabulary words. One basic example I could give you is "ungood."
instead of bad. It was interesting because I remember at university there was, we did this little study and it was on, I can't remember where this language was from, but it was from a language where they had more words for different colours and the people who spoke this language had the ability to notice differences in colours that people from, for example, the UK who spoke English as their first language primarily couldn't.
could not see, like they could not fucking comprehend that those were two different blues and they couldn't consistently pick out a difference between the colors. The people who spoke the language where those were two different colors with two different names knew the difference and could consistently pick it out. And I remember making some kind of link between the two at the time of like, that's so interesting because it does show that if you remove people's ability to speak and to think and to put words to things, they literally lose the ability
to conceptualize them. And it's so interesting because if you think about it from George Orwell, then people lost the ability to think of something as bad. It was just un-good. And I'm pretty sure that there was such a thing as an un-woman, which was like a woman who couldn't give birth. There was three classes of people too. There was the government, which was like the top 2%. Then there was the like upper working class, which was the people who would survey. And then there was the proletariats, which were the poor. And they were not
surveyed in the same way they kind of still lived like free people. And I'm gonna be so fucking honest with you right now when I actually tell you as much as I've just preached this book to you, I never fucking finished it because I was a very, very, very, very bad student at school. Yeah, I'll be so blatant, I never fucking finished that book. But from what I remember or the message that I...
drew from it was the main character like the protagonist he's one of the upper working class the people that kind of work in the surveyed buildings and with the government or for the government he
goes out into the working class world and he i think it's illegal for him to do that i think he sneaks out i think he finds some people to stay with and he realizes once he gets out there that the government is two percent of the population versus the working class which is supposedly at least 90 percent of the population right and he realizes that if only they would become conscious of essentially class conscious they would be able to overthrow the government
because there's so many of them. And it always stuck in
in my mind of that was the first time in my life obviously now it's different because um i don't know that anyone could overthrow an enormous military but obviously this is written in different times and it's a book but like it just kind of made me aware of the fact that like there is so much importance in understanding where you are in society relative to your government essentially because his whole thing from what i fucking remember from the book i barely read was if we would ban the
together none of this would be a fucking problem and everyone is going to continue suffering because everyone thinks that the other person is the enemy. I think that the people who work for the government believed that the working class were like these kind of outcasts. I think that the people who were the working class thought that the people who work for the government were crazy. It was like a whole thing. You should read the book. So should I apparently.
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♪
That ties back to Kansi the bonobo because like in humans, when you're not given the words to conceptualize something, sometimes the brain physically can't. And that's why speech is really important and very powerful. And that's why, like I was talking about with fucking Amanda Montal on my guest episode a couple of weeks back, where she was talking about the language use of cult leaders and how it's so powerful. It almost is weird that it sounds juvenile of like, oh yeah, language is so important when you really think about it.
Your entire fucking brain works off of the vocabulary that you are given. And it can be really hard to come up with words for concepts that aren't common. Like, I don't know if that's like a unique experience for me. I find life a lot easier when there is a succinct word that I can put to a feeling. In the Amanda Montel episode, I...
learn about the ends justify the means and she was basically saying that sometimes when people are creating something that turns into something quite cultish they will overstep their own
morals. Because they think that that one breach of that one moral is not as big of a deal when you think about how the ends of overstepping that one little moral justify the means. And she gave the analogy of someone in Los Angeles who's a little actor and are they going to network and fuck that one person over? Yeah, because it's just one person and the means
to the end. I mean, the end is a massive house and a fucking Oscar. So of course, fucking one person over to get ahead and to get that networking link that you needed. It's not such a big deal when you're, the means are so small and the ends are so great. Okay, I can just fuck one person over a little bit or I can just kind of be this person that I don't love right now. I don't love this version of myself. I don't fully agree with it because...
The end goal is so much bigger. I'm gonna be an Oscar-nominated actor, I'm gonna have a fucking Nobel Peace Prize, whatever it is, whatever the person's big goal is. Anyway, all this to say, I find it interesting that Kanzi the Bonobo, now having the ability to understand words acoustically, 3,000 words he understands acoustically, not in symbols, he can't speak but he can play things in his head.
He can probably hear commands in his head. He can probably visualize commands in his head. He can probably visualize symbols from his lexaboard, whatever the fuck that was called, in his head. And so he probably was creating all kinds of sentient thoughts up in his little head. And he was completely, is, he's still alive, completely alone in that. Can't see the bonobo if you're fucking out there. I will, I will speak to you. I mean, someone's obviously already speaking to him quite a lot. ♪
That was my long-winded fucking point, is that I think it's possible to diminish a human's ability to think creatively and critically based off the language that you make available to them and the concepts you limit by your language use. I think that's why cults become a thing, or I think it's one of the ways in which they become a thing, and I think it's one of the things that
TikTok specifically and the internet in general has facilitated in a positive way. There are so many words I know now that I did not know before, so many terms, so many fucking buzzwords, and I know people make fun of buzzwords. The more language you can obtain to describe and understand your situations, the better. Like I would say I'm a pretty emotionally intelligent person. I think I've been a critical thinker about emotions specifically since a very young age.
and still I struggled for years I couldn't figure certain things out and then one person would walk up to me and describe the problem I was having in one swift fucking sentence because they figured it out and then suddenly that thing was put to rest for me because oh that's what it is and now I can say it in one sentence rather than describing it in every type of nuance every time I'm trying to figure it
out. Now I know what it is, now I can compartmentalize it, now I understand it, I can put it away. And look, maybe I'm wrong, I'm not an expert on any of this, this is all me theorizing, but in my personal experience, the more language access that I have to describe things that I see, things that I feel, the more sentient I become. The more I understand, the broader my understanding of the world. Language is everything. I can know that something is a fact,
But until I have the language to describe the fact, I don't really understand it and it's just more of a feeling than a thought. I think that makes any fucking sense and that's honestly why I enjoy doing this podcast so much because when I get the comments and someone's like "oh my god this bitch put what I'm feeling into words or what I've always felt into words" that's all I'm trying to fucking do because I read this novel halfway through when I was 16 and it traumatized me and so now I'm just like "guys guess what I have some thoughts."
I think language is so important. I think communication is so important because what I'm doing on these podcasts is essentially giving, hopefully, someone occasionally some language to put to their feeling and then they understand it and then they feel heard and then they can move on to the next thing and you become more intelligent. Does anyone know what the fuck I'm talking about? I hope so. My point is with Kanzi the Bonobo, he must have genuinely become, I think monkeys are obviously fucking sentient anyway, but there is a difference between having a soul and being a live creature that's
thinks and feels and being a live creature who thinks and feels and can analyze that. Because really how much analysis can you do if there is no way for you to put any explanation to any of it? You can understand cause and effect, you can understand feeling,
But you can't get much further unless you have a way to communicate with yourself. Beyond that, right? Tell me if you disagree. Unless I'm missing something. But can you get much further if you genuinely can never articulate it to yourself? Can't see the bone of a can. And I'm very worried for him. Oh my god, imagine just being locked in.
locked inside a monkey brain, but like you're kind of a person. You just like, God did not give you the ability to ever convey that and no one thinks that you can because you're a monkey and also you're in a cage. And what if they're all like this? Oh my God, it's so scary. Another thing about Kanzi that made him unique, I'm never going to shut the fuck up, unlike other apes who learned language through intensive training,
Kansi learned by observation, similar to how human children acquire language. Kansi's use of symbols in novel ways resembles early forms of human linguistic creativity, which reminds me of another fun linguistic fact that I know: deaf babies babble in sign language. How fucking cute is that?
Oh, Google says, what was George Orwell trying to warn us about? His novel warns against the rise of authoritarian figures who charm and beguile us into exchanging our freedoms for the easier life of letting the government take over. Does that sound familiar to anybody?
I do fear that I've given an inaccurate synopsis of the book, granted that I didn't fucking read it. Um, I wish I did. I was so lazy at school. I was so fucking lazy. What was the other thing I was reading? The Handmaid's Tale? Never fucking finished that. In fact, I don't think I got past page 30. What a great show. I honestly had to stop watching it because it was so...
terrible like it's so heart-wrenchingly terrible that i actually just had to stop myself um but we read the handmaid's tale at school also you guys don't know about the beef i had my fucking a-level english literature teacher i swear to god if i ever see this woman on the streets i will not make a public threat towards her on my podcast is what i will do but
just let it be known. I hate you to this day. And you know what? You know what always fucks me? I sometimes look back at my former years of, especially when I was a student at school and I'm like, okay, a lot of the things that I maybe did, I was probably wrong. You know, like some, I look back and I'm like, okay, in hindsight, I was being a little shit. Like I was a lot of the time I can, I can admit when I was wrong sometimes, but like,
When it comes to my fucking A-level English literature teacher, let me tell you about this bitch, okay? I had a friend in the year above me at school and she had had this teacher a year before me. And I remember going into my first year of A-levels. For Americans, A-levels is junior year of school. We just do this weird thing in the UK, we call them A-levels, but you're basically still at high school. And it's just like a different set of exams. It doesn't matter. Anyways, you go into like new classes for your A-levels. I think it's just like AP. So essentially AP literature, I think.
Fuck knows. So my friend was like, oh my god, if you get this teacher, I'm gonna be so jealous of you. Like, she's the best. She's become, like, a second mum to me. Like, I'm gonna be so jealous if you get her. And so I was so fucking excited because, lo and behold, I had the teacher. And I was like, oh my god, like, down for a motherly, sexy, young, kinda young anyways, English literature teacher. Like, that is every queer young girl's dream. So I was very excited. 🎵
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Pull up on the first day of school and I immediately was like, I don't know, I think that maybe you misjudged this teacher. She seems like a fucking bitch to me. I knew from the get go because, you know, when a teacher only addresses certain girls in the classroom, she was doing that. She may as well have been a PE teacher. And I was never one of those girls. Whenever you had a teacher who had some kind of fucking popularity complex, they hated me because I was not giving them any clout.
At school, I certainly was not cool or popular, so they didn't fuck with me and she was one of those. And I was like, what the actual fuck is wrong with my friend for thinking that this woman is cool? I don't know, I just didn't think much of it at first, but like I definitely didn't get a good first impression of her. But you know what? I like don't trust myself innately as a human being, so I was like, I'm probably wrong. Rock up to class and I had like a personal situation before me that week, that week of my life.
wasn't a good week I remember it vividly I'm not going to indulge you but it was bad and I went to her and I was like miss I'm so sorry I have had this personal situation go down I'm like crying by the way I'm like I've like my life is a little bit in flames right now and I've left my essay somewhere it can't be I'm not I can't really go into details about what was going on or where this essay was but just let it be known I could not return to the location of my essay that's all you need to know
and it was a handwritten one because I didn't have a laptop, which is actually crazy to think about. I don't know why the fuck I didn't have a laptop. I ended up getting one, but like at this point in my life, no laptop. So I was like, I literally can't go get my essay. And my school was not one of those schools to like give you iPads or give you laptops. So I literally just had nothing. I had paper. I was like,
It's like the olden fucking days. Holy shit. I don't know why I didn't have a laptop. Probably my bad. Probably broke it. But like, didn't have a laptop. And she looked at me and she was like, I'm not your mother, so it doesn't really concern me. What's happened in your personal life? I need your essay. Oh.
Mind you, I told her why I couldn't get the essay. I told her where the essay was. And she should have looked at me and gone, oh my god, are you okay? What do you mean? But no, nothing. Just, I'm not your mum. And I was like, I didn't fucking say you were, you old bitch. Excuse me. Excuse me. That was rude.
Long story short, that started a two-year feud between me and this wench woman, okay? It got to the point where I was failing her class because I never wanted to go because me and her just like from that point on, I remember the next time I handed an essay to her, she crossed out like three lines of my essay and rather than writing any feedback, she wrote the words irrelevant.
And I was like, I beg your fucking pardon. I thought your whole job was to teach me. But now all I know is it's irrelevant. Nothing like what would be relevant, not any suggestions, not come see me, not like maybe Google this, just irrelevant. And I was like, what is actually fucking wrong with you? So that pissed me off. And then it just got worse and worse and worse.
And worse. And then one day, I asked her to meet with me after class. And I was like, I need you to go through this essay with me. Like, can I come and see you after class? She had, like, office hours. She said, yeah. I could go see her after class. So, the...
school day comes to an end, right? And my class ran like maybe two minutes over and then I had to walk across the school to get to her classroom. So I rock up maybe five to ten minutes after the bell rings. Not like offensively late, just like an understandable amount late. I don't know. It's not even my fucking...
"Problem, my class didn't end on time." I rock up, she looks me dead in my face and says, "I'm gonna be honest, Madeline, I despise you for wasting my time." She used the word despise. At this point, I was so done with this fucking bitch that I literally turned around, I stared at her, I turned around, I walked out the classroom and I, because I'm actually a pussy, I bawled my eyes out and I walked out of English block. And like, this is so fucking funny, if anyone listens that went to my secondary school,
she doesn't work there anymore so this is all safe for me to say. I know for a fact that she actually got let go of, which is hilarious to me. But like, she doesn't work there anymore so this is safe. But like, I walked out of English block, right? And now I'm just actually addressing the people who go to my fucking secondary school. I walked out of English block and I was going back to the sixth form centre and then there was a teacher coming towards me and my best friend going the opposite way. I ran up to my best friend and I literally couldn't
sobbed into her arms. Unfortunately, the teacher was walking past, right? And he was like, girls, what's going on? And I was like, I'm getting so into this story. I apologize. As if it wasn't like five fucking years ago. I turned to him and I was like, I'm sorry. Like, I just had this really bad meeting. Like sobbing, like baby sobbing. And he was like, okay, well, I need to know what happened. And now I'm fucked.
because now I'm gonna snitch on my teacher. I think I told him like a little bit of what had happened and I was not trying to get anyone in trouble. Like I was not trying to get her in trouble. I was just bawling my eyes out and he asked me what was wrong. So I fucking told him. Okay, is that a crime? No. Anyway, he ends up sending out an
angry email to my head of year and my head of English and then that trickled all the way down the chain and someone cc'd in my teacher my English teacher the one that said she despised me she wrote back mind you I'm on all the emails at this point I don't know why she emailed back and I remember seeing it and it was like I am
so deeply offended by the lies that have been spread by this student. I would never in a million years say that I despised a student. Now this pissed me off. I wasn't even trying to snitch on her. I didn't even want anyone to know that this had happened. I was just genuinely crying and like was crying to my friend upset and got caught. And she was like, I can't believe she would spread lies. Bitch, I didn't even fucking tell anyone.
Kinda. I was never gonna tell on you. I was just sad. And then they had to call an intervention with my head of year, head of English, pastoral care. That's like the emotional support person. And the teacher in question. And we sat in this room. All of us. And they told me I had to apologize to her for lying about what she had said to me. And I stared all of them in the face. And I was like, I...
blatantly I'm not fucking apologizing like I do not care there's no threat you can get you can't kick me out of school for this I'm not apologizing to her do you know what the solution was by the end of the meeting I was no longer going to attend her classes what kind of solution is that
Why don't you fire her for being a fucking bitch, actually? I'm not saying sorry. I was like, I have no interest in being here. I have no interest in you apologizing to me or me apologizing to you. I just want you to actually leave me the fuck alone. Sorry, I really am getting passionate about this because it pissed me off to this day. I'm like, why did she lie? I guess she did get caught red-handed. She kind of had to lie. Like, she can't just be like, yeah, I did say I despised her. And then she had to like double down and be like, yeah, she has to apologize.
me. So I kind of get where she's coming from. Actually, she was just trying to save her job, but like, I don't care. I don't care. She should have been like, we don't need an intervention. I don't want her to apologize. Like, I'll forgive her. She could have been like, no, it's okay. It's not that deep to me. Like, I'll forgive her for lying. No, the bitch was like, yeah, let's have a five person meeting about this. Get a life. She wore pasta necklaces. That's all I remember about her other than the fact that she was a raging cunt.
And it checks out. Why are you wearing fucking pasta on your neck? You freak. Anyway, she was the one that taught me The Handmaid's Tale. And so to this day, to this day, I don't know what the fuck happens in The Handmaid's Tale. I watched some of the Netflix series, but like I said, I had to turn it off because it was genuinely destroying me. It was so, so hard to watch and it was so fucking tense. I can't really watch things with a lot of tension because I end up getting like an upset stomach.
And what was the point in any of this? Why did I start talking about my English teacher? Oh, I think I just wanted to air my dirty laundry. For fun, I guess. Ugh, hate her. Hate her, hate her, hate her. She was so mean. For what, too?
I was so non-threatening to her. And the thing about teachers with a popularity complex is like, what is actually wrong with you? Like school didn't work out for you or maybe it did. I can never figure out if teachers who only like the popular kids either had a great school experience and they just want it back or no one liked them at school. I'm like, it's one of the two. But why it was
always the sport teachers like PE teachers so that makes me think they were popular at school and they just want to relive it my PE teacher fucking hated me and you know what I did I would just call out sick of PE every week but I'm not telling you how I would do it because it was genuinely fucking disgusting the things I would do it was kind of funny but actually if I say on the internet people are going to be like that is fucking disgusting so I'm not going to tell you
Because the shame that I did not have at secondary school was astonishing. Like, you would rather tell people that than do PE. Kind of iconic, actually. I wish I still had the balls I had at 13. But yeah, I had this one PE teacher. She was a fucking bitch as well. Hated her. I remember one time we were playing field hockey and I was, I'm not inclined towards sport.
I am the least coordinated person probably in the fucking world. I literally can't. And like, I was the person to run away from the ball because I just, it scared me. Like, I just don't enjoy it. There's nothing that entices me about having a fucking hockey ball thrown at my face at 8am while I'm shivering in a skort because they never made us a winter PE uniform. What the fuck? At my school, they had us in skorts year round in the UK. It gets so fucking cold. It would be frozen. You'd be seeing your breath.
in like
the morning frost playing field hockey and because I was not inclined towards movement or sport in general I would never warm up at no point during the PE class would I ever warm up so I would just genuinely stand there and nearly die and like they we would try and wear like hoodies and coats and stuff and they would tell us to take them off and then the whole time the fucking PE teacher would be stood in the middle middle of the field in full sweatpants full coat full scarf fucking hand warmer hot water bottle cup of coffee what the fuck I am 13 years old
My knees are bigger than my butt and I am about to get hyper fucking thermia. And also this bitch is about to knock my teeth out with a fucking hockey ball. Anyway, to finish off my story, I remember one time I was stood in the hockey field, frail and terrified, and they were calling teams and they were picking. So she had all three of the popular girls, of course, head of the teams, and they were picking three teams or something. Maybe there was more, maybe there was less. I don't know, but they were picking teams. None of them liked me, duh.
and they were calling, calling, calling, calling, and guess who's left last? Guess who no one wants on their team? This bitch. And so I'm stood there by myself, my whole class looking at me, wondering, oh, is anyone going to pick her? That's fucking awkward. The teacher has to step in and say, girls, one of you has to pick her. And I stood there, and I waited, and guess what? They all looked at each other, and they all loudly said,
fucking complained in front of me saying, we don't want her on our team. She's fucking useless. And I had to stand there and take it and say, you know what, miss? It's actually fucking fair enough because they hit the hockey ball in my direction and I scream and I duck. And I'm sorry because I'm not trying to be...
I can't play sport. I just genuinely have no fucking interest in any of this. And I can't fake it for the life of me. And I'm cold. And I want to go home. And I'm so scared. And my fucking teacher stood there and out loud, rather than trying to lessen the pain for me and be like, all right, and you're going to go on, you know, her team, rather than making it quick and painless, she looked at the girls and she said, one of you has
has to pick her, which only lengthened the silence whilst they all exchanged glances of
well it's not gonna be me and i just had to stand there and wait until the teacher put me on a team and then the girl loudly moaned i remember it like it was fucking yesterday and i will never forgive you for that i remember you very well although she actually became kind of nice yeah that was my school experience i don't know why the fuck i'm talking about this i have three minutes left on my sd card and i need to shut the fuck up and go inside because i have a dinner tonight and i need to go get my friend i love you guys so much i'll see you soon i hope you have a great week great
great day great night if you're going to bed good night love you if you're going to work have a good day if you are i don't know going to school i don't know sucks to start like i don't have to go to school anymore so all right love you
Hi guys, it's Madeline Argy and I'm so excited that Pretty Lonesome has officially joined the SiriusXM family. If you want to hear new episodes ad-free, subscribe to the SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts to start your free trial today.
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