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Steve:    Hi Tom.

Tom:    Hi Steve.

Steve:    I feel particularly happy today, because I have my brother Tom visiting from Toronto; near Toronto.

He just came in; I picked him up at the airport.

He’s at our house now and it’s an opportunity for me to do some podcasts with Tom.

I thought we maybe would begin with…I mean Tom, you and I have been around for more than half a century.

Tom:    You might want to speak for yourself, but the answer is yes.

Steve:    We’re in our second-half century here.

Tom:    Yes.

Steve:    In fact, we’re old.

Tom:    We are absolutely old.

You know when you get a little note from CPP…

Steve:    CPP?

Tom:    …CPP being the…

Steve:    Government Pension.

Tom:    …Canadian Pension Plan, folks in Ottawa the capital city, that you are now going to become a senior citizen, you know you’re old.

Steve:    Right. Now, of course, we were born in the same place.

Tom:    We were; to the same parents even.

Steve:    To the same parents in Sweden back however many years ago.

Tom:    A bunch.

Steve:    A bunch. Then we moved to Montreal…

Tom:    Yes, we did.

Steve:    …when we were respectively five and six years old.

Tom:    That’s correct.

Steve:    Yeah. We lived there in their somewhat harsh climate.

Tom:    Yes, very, very wintery and very, very hot summers, absolutely.

Steve:    Right. Lots of black flies and mosquitoes in the summer…

Tom:    Oh, for sure.

Steve:    …and a language we didn’t know; two languages we didn’t know.

Tom:    Two languages we didn’t know.

Steve:    But, somehow, we survived.

Tom, of course, you live in Toronto.

One of your recent activities and you’ve been, just by way of background, involved largely in sort of engineering and technical-type of activities, related sales activities…

Tom:    Yes.

Steve:    …this kind of thing.

But now, more recently, you have been involved in teaching at some community colleges.

Tom:    Right.

Having run my own company for many years and having consulted with these companies, I have gone from sales consulting to strictly teaching and training consulting.

So what I do, just to sum it up quickly, is I teach at several community colleges in sales and in communications, I teach at a Chinese college and also do small business consulting and I’m on the seminar circuit.

Steve:    Now, one of your areas of interest, now latterly in your career…

Tom:    Yes.

Steve:    …is this whole issue of communications and how important, you know, not only what you…communication is a two-way street.

Like it’s what you say and how much attention you pay to what other people are saying, so give us a little bit of a sense of the kinds of things you talk about.

Tom:    If we’re talking about communication skills, at the beginning when I first looked into it, I did think there was much difference between speaking and communicating.

Today I recognize there’s a world of difference; many people speak, but few communicate.

If you understand the beauty of communicating then you…I get people to change the way they think, their mindset.

I get them to think about the person that they’re talking to and recognizing that communications is made up of three things: words, tone and body language and many people are shocked that words only constitute seven percent.

So we communicate in images and we do it very poorly through use of words.

Steve:    Now it’s difficult, obviously, communications…I mean writing is communication.

Here we are podcasting, which is a communication.

There’s, obviously, no body language involved; I mean there is, but people can’t see our body language, so, I mean words are nevertheless pretty important.

Tom:    They are important and I will take a little issue with the fact that there are…in strictly audio there is body language and I can detect body language on the phone, for example.

It is there, the tone and just the breathing, the delay.

The delivery of the conversation is, in fact, in itself body language and it is important.

People tend to think of themselves and dump to others without thinking, how are they going to receive it and what’s the relationship I have and that is the difference between communicating and not communicating.

Steve:    So when you’re communicating you try to put yourself in the other person’s position?

Tom:    Essentially, yes.

There are filters that people have towards you and you, in turn, have filters towards them, depending upon your relationship.

How you establish that relationship is important and all conversations should have some sort of emotion attached to it if it’s to be effective and it is up to you the speaker to control that emotion.

Steve:    Well, when you say that you control, you can only control yourself.

I mean it starts to sound pretty manipulative if you’re going to control the other person.

Maybe the other person has taken the same communications course and is trying to control you?

Tom:    Well, and again, it is the inter-relationship between the speaker and the listener as to what emotions are being elicited because you are…in fact, every time you communicate you are selling yourself and selling yourself means they will buy into what you say if the right emotions are raised.

Steve:    You know that’s very interesting because, as people know here, language learning is one of my passions and interests and I very much believe that success in language learning depends on emotions.

Very often people describe language learning as an activity that’s localized in the left-part of your brain, which is the rational part of your brain and I have always felt that that was not the case.

That if I was connected emotionally with the narrator of an audio book, if I liked the person’s voice, if I liked the story, if I had favorable feelings towards the language or towards someone who spoke the language, all of these kinds of emotional attachments are tremendously important in my ability to learn the language.

Recently I have read that, in fact, language learning and a number of tasks in the brain cannot be sort of compartmentalized, that it’s done in this part of the brain or that part of the brain.

That, in fact, sort of gangs of neurons form across different sections of the brain and that these then help to develop, you know, whatever capability it is that is being developed in the brain.

So emotion, on many levels, definitely.

Tom:    Absolutely.

Most of us when we either communicate, we are, in fact, unbeknownst to many of us, selling ourselves.

The way people buy into our ideas, our opinions and the importance and give the topic or the text, the content of what we’re saying value is if they buy into it and the only way they buy into it is if there’s a very positive emotional attachment to the information we’re imparting.

Steve:    Now people listening to this so far might get the impression that you’re a very serious person and me too, which, I guess, we are about certain things.

Tom:    Yes, what we’re passionate about.

Steve:    That’s right, but it’s also very good to introduce a bit of levity.

Tom:    Absolutely.

Steve:    You told me a joke just earlier at lunch here and I wonder if you would like to share that joke with whoever is listening?

Tom:    I’d love to do that.

This gentleman has his wife come to him and say, listen, if I die will you remarry?

And he says, yes sweetie, of course I will.

Would your new wife live in this house?

Yeah, I would tend to think so.

And would she, perhaps, sleep in our bed, my bed and so on?

Yeah, I think so, yeah, definitely.

Would she drive my car?

Oh yeah, for sure.

And would she use my golf clubs as well?

No, no, no, no, she’s left-handed.

Steve:    Yeah.

It’s very useful, actually, isn’t it, if you’re giving a presentation sometimes to relax people by telling a joke?

Tom:    When I teach at college and when I give seminars I always am very interactive with my audience.

The way I break the ice, both as a salesman, as a deliverer of sermons and when I teach, is I use a lot of humor.

It definitely helps people to relax; it reduces the stress they might have.

It also reduces the filters they have when they’re wondering who you are, what is your importance to me and why should I listen to you and, as a result, it enhances the relationship and whatever information you’re imparting.

So humor is definitely the way to do it, the other is, of course, the raising of the emotion.

Steve:    You know it’s interesting, I read some while ago about the old Greek and Roman traditions of rhetoric.

Their approach, which I think is very good and I try to use it, is that you first have to get people to like you and, second, establish your credibility.

Tom:    Trust.

Steve:    Then you tell a story and they had a whole series of things and then you end up with the emotional appeal at the every end, so that was how they structured it.

So that this whole business of…and then…they sort of recommend that if you’re starting to speak it’s not a bad thing to fumble over the microphone or to spill your glass or to do anything like this, which makes you more likable in their eyes, or to recognize someone in the audience or anything of this nature.

Then, of course, the second thing, once you’ve got them to maybe like you, is to establish your credentials and your credibility.

Tom:    It makes you very relatable if you are seen as or perceived as not greater than they are, the listener.

Interesting enough, the one thing that I want to also mention is that it is important for people to realize and take some of the pressure off if they realize that it is up to the speaker to insure that the listener understands.

It is the responsibility of the speaker to insure that the listener understands and not vice-versa.

We are in the image business, we don’t think in words we think in images.

You know a picture is not worth a thousand words, in my mind it’s worth more like five to ten thousand words.

How are you painting that picture and what is the emotion that comes with that picture.

Steve:    Okay.

I mean I take the approach on language learning that the responsibility is with the learner and, yet, while I say that I know that a teacher can have a tremendous impact by the fact that if the teacher is able to stimulate the learner, if the teacher is able to encourage the learner, if the teacher is able to create positive emotions with the learner, then the learner will take off and do it.

And I don’t know whether there’s a parallel there with what you’re doing.

Tom:    There absolutely is a parallel.

I often teach that skill is equal to…here’s a formula for you: skill is equal to knowledge plus practice.

It is the teacher’s responsibility to impart the knowledge and it is the student’s responsibility to take that knowledge and practice with it, so there, I think, is the very slight discern between the responsibility of the student listener and that of the teacher.

Steve:    Now my view with the language learning is that the knowledge is in the language itself and that the teacher’s role is more one of a guide and stimulator-person to provide feedback.

This is quite different from where you are teaching a specific skill where you have some specific experience that you can share and that you can impart to your listeners; whereas, here we’re talking about a language which if I’m teaching English, I didn’t create English, I didn’t experience English, English is there and I can help people figure out how they can better observe it, better imitate it, you know, better internalize it, but that’s something they’re going to have to do.

Tom:    No question about it.

If you’re talking language, which is a skill, the knowledge is the language itself; I totally agree with you.

Therefore, it takes the responsibility totally off the teacher, the language learner…sorry, the language teacher and focuses pretty well all of it on the student when it comes to the technique of practice.

The teach can, in this case, communicate the best ways to learn that skill, the techniques of practice.

Steve:    Right.

Tom:    The practice is still 100% wholly-owned by the language learner.

Steve:    Yeah.

You know I approached the library here locally and I said, you know, can I come by and give a talk on how to learn languages?

I have learned quite a few languages, so that’s an experience that I have.

I mean you have an experience with sales, with communication and sales, I have this experience.

The experience that I have is how to go about learning languages and, of course, not surprisingly, the library said, no, we wouldn’t be interested in that because our people they just want to learn languages.

They want to learn English — like they have a lot of immigrants there – so if you come by here and teach English they’d be interested, but if you come by and teach how to learn they’re not interested.

So, I found this…I’m used to this.

So, in other words, to them how you learn the language is a given; you have a teacher teaching at people.

If you can come here and teach these people English that’d be great, but to come here and show them how to learn?

How to take advantage of…  They live in Vancouver, they’re surrounded by English.

Television, radio, newspapers, Internet, to show them how…audio books, library, all the resources that they have and most of these immigrants are frustrated, they aren’t improving in their English.

And the librarian or the head of their programs there felt that having me come by, someone who speaks 10 languages, who has learned a lot of languages…and, of course, this is even before we get to the point that oh, you’ve got LingQ and you’re trying to promote something that’s for profit and all this other stuff, well before that…the idea that I would come and try to explain to them how they can be more effective at learning languages, they were not interested.

Tom:    That shows me that they understand the skill of a language, but they don’t understand the difference between knowledge and practice.

They were focusing on knowledge — that you were to teach them English — as opposed to you teaching them the skill of learning the language and that is where they don’t understand.

I’m not surprised, because someone who’s not a linguist doesn’t understand the distinct or the succinct difference between the knowledge of the language and the teaching of the practice of learning the language.

Steve:    Okay, we’ve ranted a bit here.

We’re going to do a few more of these and take advantage of your visit.

Tom:    Good.

Steve:    Thank you very much.

Tom:    My pleasure.

Steve:    With that we end our first little podcast.

Tom:    Thanks very much Steve.

Steve:    Okay, bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Mark:    Hello and welcome to the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Mark here with Steve.

Hi Steve.

Steve:    Hi Mark.

Mark:    I’m trying to remember who asked us to talk about this topic, but we were asked to talk about the world financial crisis; I guess it’s very timely.

Steve:    I think it’s a good idea to talk about things that are topical of interest.

So, again, one of our themes is if you can listen to or read content that’s of interest to you you’re going to learn a lot better than if the content is of no interest.

So what can we say?

Today the U.S.

Congress voted down the most recent Bush proposal for a bailout, a massive injection of government financing to bail out the financial sector.

I gather that there’s a lot of feeling out there that the clever people on Wall Street who created this mess should pay for it themselves somehow, but I guess the problem is that if the government doesn’t bail out some of these financial institutions that there isn’t enough money around to keep our financial system going and that could cause a major economic recession.

Mark:    And I guess not just an economic recession in the States, but it’s a global issue.

Even today we saw after that announcement that a number of European banks had to be rescued by their own governments, bought out or propped up.

I don’t know exactly what happened there, but they had the same problem that they’ve been having in the States where the government in the States…either the government or with the help of government other companies have stepped in and taken over and propped up failing investment banks.

Steve:    But I think the underlying…people say, how could this happen?

I think the underlying problem is a five-letter word called “greed”, g-r-e-e-d “greed”.

Mark:    Yes.

Steve:    People like to perhaps make out that this is an American problem, but there were lots of foreign banks who knew exactly what was going on.

Even foreign investors; I heard that the Norwegian Pension Fund and I know there were pension funds here in Canada who bought what they should have realized were very risky, you know, credit instruments simply because they had a high yield.

Mark:    Well, I think because it’s probably harder and harder to find high-yielding safe investments given the low interest rate environment that we’ve had for a long time.

Obviously, I think it’s a situation where those investment bankers are sort of far enough removed from the original lender, the guys who actually loans the money to essentially the people that can’t pay, the unworthy customers, but then all those subprime loans get bundled together and sold off to one guy who then sells them off to another guy.

By the time they get to the investment banker he probably thinks that somehow it’s been turned from something that’s really kind of risky into something not risky by the time it gets to him and, obviously, at some point they didn’t do their research.

Steve:    Well that’s the point.

Mark:    And they just kind of…it’s almost like I’ll hold my nose and everybody says it’s not risky, so maybe it’s not risky.

Okay, I’m fine.

Steve:    But therefore they didn’t do their job.

Mark:    Absolutely.

Steve:    So there’s no excuse.

But if we go right back to the beginning, the first step in all of this — and I think there has been a desire in the United States even going back to the Clinton years – is to make, you know, home ownership more accessible to people who don’t have a lot of money.

And so, again, I haven’t…we did a bit of research on this, but I don’t know when this all started.

But, insofar as the subprime loan is concerned, what the practice was was that people who would not normally qualify for a housing loan were given a housing loan.

What’s more, even people who would qualify for a housing loan, I’ve heard from personal experience, they were encouraged to borrow more than the value of their house.

So they were given what was called “adjustable rate mortgages” so that they would only pay one or two percent for the first two years and then they would have to pay the full interest rate in subsequent years.

And so here you have them being encouraged to borrow more than they need.

They can’t even afford to pay for their house let alone something more than what their house is worth.

But, of course, in the United States we’ve had a period of ever-increasing housing prices; from the year 2000 to the year 2006 housing prices rose by 80%.

So they would be told by the lender, you know, don’t be a fool.

This is easy money.

You can borrow more.

You can borrow it at these low interest rates.

The value of your house will go up so you’ll be able to pay for it.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    And so that’s kind of where it started.

Mark:    And from the lender’s perspective, well, even if these people can’t make their payments I’ll still have the house.

The house will increase in value.

My capital should be safe.

Which is fine as long as prices keep going up, but, obviously, as we’ve seen in the States in the last two years, prices have come off significantly and so people are left owing more money than their houses are worth, at which point they walk away.

So that’s, obviously, one of the problems, but I guess a bigger problem is these products, whatever they’re called, the subprime investment…

Steve:    Well, I don’t remember the…

Mark:    I don’t know the official term for the package that they promote to the investment bankers, but all of a sudden people realize that these aren’t worth very much and they have to write them off at a certain rate.

For that reason…I can’t remember exactly why, but because they’re not worth much, they can’t sell them and then it affects their balance sheet and their stock price.

Steve:    Well that’s right.

The two things that I’ve been able to identify is, one, this derivative and I think that’s a word that’s come up a lot is “derivative”.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    These are very sophisticated sort of instruments of financing where you can bet on a hedge.

It’s all about hoping that the worst doesn’t happen.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    And so this one instrument is called a “Credit Default Swap” derivative, a CDS.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    And I don’t fully understand it, but it seems to be that if you have a bunch of loans and you go to an investor and you say, here, you can pay me X amount of money and you will earn all these premiums and everything is going to be fine.

However, if some of my loans default then you have to cover me.

And so as long as there’s only a few loans that default…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    I presume the return on those is quite high so that the banks are happy.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    But when you start getting a decline in the housing market and we go back to the guy we talked about who can’t even afford to buy a house and has now taken on 20% more loan than his house is worth at a subsidized interest rate and all of a sudden has to pay the interest rate and he defaults and more and more of them default.

So all of a sudden we don’t just have one or two loans defaulting, we’ve got lots of loans defaulting.

And for some reason that I don’t fully understand this Credit Default Swap has greatly sort of exacerbated the problem.

Warren Buffett…

Mark:    The Credit Default, is that not just a name for that type of investment product?

Like in the case that we’re discussing it was the subprime mortgages.

That’s a type of whatever you called it…

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    Credit…whatever it was.

Steve:    The Credit Default Swap is a derivative.

Mark:    It’s a derivative, but the subprime loans is one type of Credit Default Swap.

Like if you had credit card…

Steve:    The subprime loan, per se, is not a Credit Default Swap.

Mark:    No, but that’s…

Steve:    It gets packaged into this range of loans…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …which an investor bets…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …that a high percentage of them are not going to default and he’ll walk away with the interest.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So it’s a very speculative thing.

Mark:    All I’m saying is that this Credit Default Swap product will focus on real estate, well, mortgages…

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    …or there’ll be one that deals with credit card debt or some other kind of debt and so investors buy these hoping, as you say, nothing bad will happen.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    But I guess the tipping point was when housing prices started to decline significantly.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    So all of this stuff was predicated on the belief that the housing prices will always go up.

Steve:    Things can always improve or can only improve.

Mark:    Can only improve.

Steve:    But it’s interesting that Warren Buffett, who’s one of the richest men in the world and who made all his own money by simply being smart…

Mark:    …in investments.

Steve:    And who, by the way, was turned down by the Harvard Business School and he calls that a turning point in his life.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    He went to Columbia instead, but he identified like four or five years ago that all of these derivates and particularly these Credit Default Swaps, he called them “weapons of financial destruction.”

Mark:    Mass destruction.

Steve:    He said there would be very severe consequences and he stayed completely away from them.

He is now busy buying financial institutions because there is the point of view that, in fact, things are not as bad as they are presented and there are some accounting regulations that force the banks to put a value on some of their assets, which is perhaps today’s market value, but which doesn’t reflect the real potential value of those and so he’s betting that he can select those banks that are okay.

Mark:    And insurance companies because the insurance companies were big into this stuff too.

Steve:    Right.

And one of his quotes, which I think is really neat, is he says “Life is like a snowball.

If you want to grow the important thing is to find wet snow and a really long hill.”  In other words, you accumulate your wealth gradually.

There is no sudden, strike it rich, high return, no risk.

There is no high return with no risk.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So he prefers to find wet snow and a really long hill.

Find good companies, invest in them and stay there.

Mark:    Exactly.

Steve:    Whereas I think a lot of these fancy financial instruments that people were speculating on is more like a snowball that falls over a cliff and you hope there’s a soft landing down there, you know.

Mark:    Yeah, no, it’s certainly a problem that’s affecting global financial markets and the global economy.

Well, I mean depending on who you listen to or who you hear speak it’s either, hopefully, going to fix itself soon or could go on for quite a while and continue to get worse.

You know the stock markets today took a big tumble after that announcement in the U.S.

Congress where they did not pass that rescue package.

I mean who knows; maybe something else will come along.

Steve:    My guess is that they will pass a package.

Mark:    I’m sure they will, yeah.

Steve:    I think too, I’m always one…perhaps I’m a bit optimistic by nature, but I think some of the good that will come from this is that I think there has been far too much speculative activity in the United States.

Even a homebuyer, an individual, who buys a home that he can’t afford and takes a loan on that he can’t repay because the interest is low and because he hopes the house is going to go up in value, he’s a speculator.

Mark:    Absolutely.

Steve:    He’s just a speculator throughout the whole package.

I think the United States has been addicted to credit; individuals who are heavily in debt through their credit card.

Of course, people push products at them and push financing at them and these people are speculators.

I think what has to happen is, hopefully, people will step back and say, everyone has to try to live within their means.

You don’t need a bigger house have a smaller house, ride a bicycle.

You know you can live your life quite happily without having all these goodies.

Mark:    I think it’s also important to mention that it’s not just the United States…

Steve:    No.

Mark:    …that’s been living beyond their means. Certainly here in Canada it would be similar.

Steve:    Similar and in Britain.

Mark:    And in Britain and I don’t know about Europe or Asia, but I mean once real estate prices start coming off here and they will, then we’re going to see similar problems here, I have to believe.

You know a few years ago, you know, I can’t remember who said it, but the quote was something like when your barber is talking about investing in something that’s the time to get out.

Steve:    Yeah.

Mark:    I know here people were buying second homes, investment properties; have been buying, you know, for the last five-six years as investments.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    Like everybody.

Not just a few people, but everybody’s talking about trying to buy a second home…

Steve:    Flip a home.

Mark:    …flip a home, buy a condo downtown.

I mean I don’t know this for a fact, but, anecdotally, apparently a lot of the apartments downtown in downtown Vancouver are owned by either absentee owner, speculative, second apartments.

They’re vacant, you can’t rent, all those kinds of things.

I mean it can’t go on forever.

Steve:    No.

But, you know, to put all of this in perspective, the reason I mention the United States is because they are such a huge market.

So that by them being addicted to credit and addicted to buying things — we in Canada too, but we’re 10% of the United States — this has spawned tremendous wealth in other places like the Middle East for oil, like China and other countries that produce consumer products that the Americans want.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So these countries now end up hanging onto these dollars and hoping that the addicted American consumer will continue buying these things so that they can continue running their factories.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    But the positive side is that there is a lot of wealth in the world.

There is a lot of wealth in China, in India, in Taiwan and now increasingly in places like Brazil and Russia.

There is a lot of wealth and we have had a lot of technological innovation, a lot of new products.

In many ways I think…like the Internet has brought tremendous benefit to a lot of people; education, entertainment, access to information, ability to communicate with friends and so forth.

Mark:    Most importantly language learning.

Steve:    And language learning on LingQ.

Hey, absolutely, absolutely.

So I’m positive about the world in general and I think the world has become closer-knit.

If people will only learn to speak each other’s languages using LingQ they’ll like each other better and at the same time they’ve got to stop this speculative, greedy, type of behavior.

Mark:    Well and I think…I agree with you, I think they’ll pass some kind of bill in the States.

But, I guess from another perspective, I guess a lot of people are thinking maybe let everything crash and let all those people find themselves out of a job.

Maybe that will bring the financial system back stronger rather than to just prop it up and let those people continue to come up with new investment strategies.

Steve:    Well you know it’s so difficult.

It’s so difficult because you say, okay, the people who are deciding our fate are politicians and when you look at some of the motives here where the Republicans say they voted against it because the Democrats, in urging people to vote for the bill, accused the Republicans of having, you know, spoiled the economy, blah-blah-blah.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So they took this opportunity of this, supposedly, you know, very strategically-important vote as an opportunity to bash the other political party.

Mark:    Right, yeah.

Steve:    I mean I’m sure that the Republicans did the same back at them.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So the other thing is, of course, human beings are pretty imperfect creatures.

Mark:    Yup.

Steve:    We love to bash the politicians; they’re no better or worse than the rest of us.

Yeah, hopefully we can find a way, a practical way to resolve this.

And you say to yourself, okay, well if you don’t trust the politicians who are you going to trust the experts?

Well presumably the experts were running our financial system.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So, you know.

I have ranted long enough about experts in language teaching and how we feel that there’s a better way with LingQ.

So, hopefully, a combination of common sense and experts and fear will lead us towards…

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    We’ll know better in a week from now.

Mark:    Yeah we will, for sure; although, I think all of this stuff can continue on for quite a while.

Maybe we’ll be talking about it again in another few months.

Steve:    Well you know before you shut us down there Mark, the point is here you are… you and I have talked about this financial situation, we’re not experts, we don’t understand it very well…

Mark:    No.

Steve:    …but we were able to use some of the terminology. M;    Right.

Steve:    So that, hopefully, that helps people in their English language learning.

Mark:    Exactly.

Steve:    We look forward to hearing more requests for subjects that we can talk about.

Mark:    That was Maryann, by the way, who asked for that.

Steve:    Thank you Maryann.

Mark:    Thanks Maryann for your feedback.

And anyone else out there, if you’d like to hear more about a specific subject just let us know; come onto LingQ and post it on the EnglishLingQ Forum.

Okay, we’ll talk to you later.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Mark:     Hi everyone, it’s Mark Kaufmann here again.

Steve:    And Steve.

Mark:    We are back with another installment of the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Steve has something that he wants to get off his chest today.

Steve:    Well yeah.

Yeah, I mean I always have something I want to get off my chest.

But I want to talk a little bit today about what I would call “creative disorder” a “creative mess” or how being too orderly and organized and having lots of rules can, in fact, be quite sterile for certain applications.

Mark:    Right.

The example that we were just discussing was Wikipedia and I think is one of the best examples of this where in the past, in terms of encyclopedias or reference information, you had to resort to paper, hardcopy, volume after volume of real encyclopedias (the Encyclopedia Britannica or whatever it was) and, obviously, (A) aren’t very portable, (B) they’re not easy to search through, (C) that information by the very nature of those books is not necessarily going to be very up-to-date.

Steve:    But it’s worse than that Mark.

It’s worse than that because what they’re saying is Encyclopedia Britannica will go and find the so-called leading expert or a leading expert from some leading university and he’ll write some very learned article, which will only reflect his own knowledge, experience, prejudice and so forth and so on…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …but he is a qualified expert.

But on Wikipedia they have all kinds of people commenting and revising and changing…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …and so you have something that is often shorter, more up-to-date.

Because a number of people are jumping in there and making comments and editing and so forth and so on it ends up being pretty good and nowadays I go to Wikipedia.

Mark:    For sure and most people do.

I mean, as you said, number one, it’s going to be more up-to-date.

Encyclopedias, even if you have a recently published set, were written years ago; the information is, at best, years old.

Maybe it doesn’t matter for a lot of things, but it does matter for many things as well.

So, number one, the ability to have up-to-date information is much, much better on Wikipedia and then, as you say, you get a more balanced perspective on most things; you get, at least, input from more than one source.

I know a lot of the learned sources and, of course, the encyclopedia producers would argue otherwise.

But the fact of the matter is that the information, for the most part, is probably better.

Steve:    It serves the purpose for most people.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    It serves the purpose.

And, you know, we’re talking about this insofar as LingQ is concerned.

We encourage people to create content for us in different languages and we can’t be editing and correcting and making sure that everything meets some kind of a standard.

Ultimately, the learners will tell us what’s not good and we just remove it but, in a sense, the more we try to control things the less good the product is.

That’s the Web 2.0 environment, it’s a little less organized, but by having a lot of people commenting and occasionally arguing — there’s nothing wrong with the odd little argument — hopefully, people can argue from the point of view that they have to respect the other person.

They don’t have to agree with them, but they have to respect them and respect their right to present their position; otherwise, you end up with this sort of everything has to be totally orderly, which presumes that there’s one correct point of view and you’re not allowed to argue.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So, no, I think that there’s a lot in this whole…I mean that’s how the whole Internet thing evolved.

People who try to control things, I think they lose out.

Mark:    Well there are all kinds of examples of companies that had very restrictive sort of rules on what could or could not be done being outdistanced by competitors who had a more open environment and accepted contributions from even non-employees and, you know, the whole open-source situation in software development where by providing core components freely the companies that created them are able to reap the benefits that are developed by others using the original product, which then strengthens the company that created it in the first place.

Steve:    Well and even, again, getting back to LingQ, I mean some people who create content for us they say well, what if someone steals my content?

Well, so what if they steal your content.

I mean you get paid based on usage and someone else might distribute your content somewhere.

People find out about LingQ, they come to LingQ, more people use your content and so on and, as you were saying, in the end it may not be possible to control the ownership of different kinds of content.

Mark:    I have to believe that’s another example of trying to nail down, of trying to protect, the rights of the copyright holders and that battle is being fought mostly right now in the music space where, obviously, mp3 files are shared a lot.

I mean I’m sure there are more “shared” (in quotes) music files than purchased music files and so for a long time the music (whatever you call them) promoters/producers of music were trying to sell copyright-protected or DRM… whatever that means, I can’t remember; whatever that stands for…at any rate, DRM-protected mp3 files, which then can only be played on one mp3 player or two mp3 players.

They’re restricted; usage is restricted of those files.

Eventually, those files don’t work for the guy who bought them, which is not a great way to treat your customer.

Plus, on top of that, the free version is always readily available.

So, before too long, I just don’t see why people are going to continue paying for something that’s inferior because you can’t trade it with your friend, you can’t play it on three players and you have to pay and over here there’s a free version that’s completely free.

In fact, what’s happening now is a lot of the music producers are removing this protection and allowing the songs to be sold DRM free because, in the long run, I guess they figure they’re better off.

I don’t now how well this worked, but some bands released albums freely on the Internet and asked people for donations.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    I don’t know if that worked or not.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    I’m not a big fan of the donation model, but I think, in the long run, those songs are going to end up being more of a promotional vehicle to attract people to concerts where you have to pay.

Here’s the guy performing, you have to pay.

Steve:    I mean the whole thing is that the production and distribution costs of the music have gone down so dramatically that the economic parameters have changed…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …or are changing.

Mark:    Exactly.

Steve:    We’re, of course, encountering this with LingQ and then if we get back to the encyclopedia model.

I mean, theoretically, Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, had this great name “Britannica”.

Like it’s almost run by the government…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …and it’s got leading experts and whatever.

I sold Encyclopedia Britannica as a 17-year-old in Montreal and the sales of that was the schlockiest, you know, door-to-door, trick salesman thing I’d ever come across; I was amazed.

I mean our lines, as I’ve often said, my opening line when I rang someone’s doorbell was to say “If I gave you a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica free of charge would you be interested?”  That was my opener.

And so some people would be gullible enough to let me in their home and then I’d start into my sales presentation and then I’d tell them how much it cost.

I’d say “You know, for less than a package of cigarettes, you know, every day…”  They’d say “Well I thought it was free?”  Then I was supposed to say “Well you have to understand, we can’t possibly give it to you for free.”  Normally that would have me out the door in a hurry.

But, I mean the cost, you know, in those days it would sell for like $480 and I made $200 per sale…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …if I sold any.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    Like there were encyclopedia salesmen who were making a tremendous amount of money.

So, on the one hand, it’s presented as this great authoritative, you know, source.

Encyclopedia Britannica, no school can be without it, no home can be without it.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    On the other hand it was sold on some kind of a pyramid, schlocko sales system.

It’s very expensive to distribute, very expensive to produce, so Wikipedia.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    I mean it’s there. It’s totally inexpensive to produce…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …totally inexpensive to distribute. And so it’s a…

Mark:    And more wide-ranging.

Steve:    And available.

Mark:    I mean the encyclopedia can’t possibly have as much stuff as is in Wikipedia because it’s limited by the number of volumes they can crank out.

In Wikipedia there are pages on everything in umpteen languages constantly updated.

Steve:    But there could be material there that’s not very good.

I mean somebody’s going to get on there…I mean if the Georgians are fighting the Ossetians some Ossetian is going to put up there that all the Georgians are pigs and the Georgians will do the same, but that will get, you know, cleaned up pretty quickly.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So, yeah, you’ll occasionally come to a page that’s not very good, but most of the stuff there is pretty good.

I think that’s got to be our model with LingQ.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Some people get very concerned that we aren’t policing this or aren’t policing that.

We can’t.

Mark:    No.

Steve:    We’re far better off to get lots of people…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    And, you know, it fundamentally gets back to the same approach as we had that we share and many of us at LingQ share in terms of language learning.

You have to be able to deal with uncertainty; you have to be able to deal with mistakes.

You’re going to learn better if you don’t try to nail everything down.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    You’re going to learn this term, you’re going to learn this rule and study it and the first half of the year we’re going to work on…  I get on these Russian sites where people are learning Russian, these sites and they spend the first six months on verbs of motion.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    And then the next six months they’re going to do, you know, cases.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Well just because you work at them for the first six months doesn’t mean you’re going to learn them in the first six months.

Mark:    No.

Steve:    It’s all part of this term “fuzzy logic”; it’s not linear.

Mark:    Well, plus, if you’re studying motion verbs I guess that’s all you’re doing then for Russian.

Because if you then try to study or read anything or listen to anything while you’re studying only motion verbs, presumably, there’s going to be other words in there besides motion verbs.

Steve:    Well exactly.

Mark:    And then what are you supposed to do?

Steve:    Exactly and this comes up all the time.

Because I do look at grammar books and I want to see how they present grammar.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    And it’s impossible.

If you say okay, chapter one, we’re going to do pronouns.

You’re not going to have any verbs?

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    How can you have a pronoun without a verb?

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    You’re not going to have any tenses?

You end up with stuff that gets introduced out of order.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    But you focus on “We really only want you to learn this.”  So all the other stuff you hear forget about it and just focus on this.

Mark:    Ignore, yeah.

Steve:    It doesn’t work that way.

Mark:    No.

Steve:    So what did I say?

“Creative disorder.”  Not in terms of a mental disorder, but “creative anarchy”.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    I think we have the means now where anarchy can be quite creative in certain circumstance.

I mean you can’t build an airplane based on anarchy.

There has to be certain standards or the plane will crash.

Mark:    Right.

However, there are all kinds of examples of websites that have made at least a portion of their site or code or software available for outsiders to play with; to build extensions for, to integrate with their own products or whatever, which only ends up enhancing the original product.

Steve:    Well didn’t we…

Mark:    I mean we have to, eventually, try and do that ourselves here.

Steve:    Well didn’t we take advantage of some work that Alejandro had done in Mexico on our image cropper?

Mark:    I’m not exactly sure where that came from.

Steve:    He showed us some work that he had done and we took it a little further.

Mark:    Yeah. That wasn’t quite what I was getting at.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    Like I was getting at opening up our sites.

Like an API interface with our site, so that people could build extensions that interacted with our site.

Alejandro had a component that I think he had done or worked on that we were able to use in our image cropper, but that’s something different.

Steve:    Oh, okay.

Yeah, so I think that, you know, the new world we’re heading towards is more creative because there are, perhaps, fewer rules, more opportunities for people to contribute and that’s what this whole…that’s the Web 2.0 environment.

Mark:    Absolutely.

Steve:    There’s going to be some friction at times, there’s going to be disagreements.

There’s going to be some pieces here and there maybe where there are some mistakes or problems and we just live with it and move on.

Mark:    Right.

And people will figure out, you know, in terms of at least content on our site, what it makes sense to produce, what it doesn’t make sense to produce.

Some things are easier for some people; other things are easier for others.

For instance, some people like to record podcasts and have good sound quality; other people have bad sound quality, but then they can do other things like transcribe.

Steve:    Or they can even write things.

Mark:    So people have to find their own way and I guess, fundamentally, the more people we have doing stuff and interacting the quicker we will build up our content and our community and the more likely people will figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Steve:    Well, you know it reminds me, when I approached the American (What do they call it?)

Society for Applied Linguistics and asked them to look at LingQ.

And, you know, after six months and much prodding they finally said “Well, we found there was no overarching pedagogical theory.”  Or something like that that supported what you are doing.

And, of course, I hadn’t presented it to umpteen conferences and published papers cross-referencing other people and stuff.

Well yeah, but so what, you know?

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.

I mean I was on the…

Mark:    Well the point is that whatever their doing also maybe works maybe doesn’t.

In fact, it doesn’t work for most people because conventional language teaching, in fact, doesn’t work for most people.

Steve:    That’s right.

Mark:    But, yes, it’s been cross-referenced and studied to death.

Steve:    And they have their different fads at different moments.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Right now there’s a fad called “Multiple Intelligences and Differential Instruction.”  You know, of course, they’re probably running seminars all over the country on this thing and it will have no impact on the success of teaching languages in class.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    None, zero.

Mark:    None, yeah.

Steve:    The bigger impact is from, probably, the quality of the teacher — in terms of how encouraging and enthusiastic the teach can be — and if the classrooms are willing to move people towards a system where they are able to read and listen to things that they like and not have to follow some structure that’s imposed on them by the teacher accompanied by tests and all the usual stuff.

So long live creative anarchy in our schools!

We need anarchy in our schools.

Mark:    You heard it here first.

Steve:    Alright.

Mark:    We’ll talk to you next time.

Steve:    Anarchy at LingQ!

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

LingQ team member Shelby chats with Elle about her time spent working in Ecuador and Chile in today’s episode. What does she miss, what were some of the culture shocks she experienced and what advice does she have for anyone hoping to visit South America?

Elle: Hi everyone and welcome to episode four of the EnglishLingQ podcast with me Elle…

and today I’m joined by LingQ team member, Shelby.

Hi, Shelby.

Shelby: Hi Elle.

So to call out the elephant in the room, you changed your name?

Elle: I did.

Yes.

Um, I’m going to start going by my middle name, Elizabeth or Elle for short.

So yeah, anyone who’s been watching, please, don’t be confused if I suddenly start using a different name, but yeah, it’s 2020.

Why not?

Why not?

Shelby: yeah, it’s a perfect time for it.

I love, um, I love it.

I think people had a hard time pronouncing, um, Jahrine anyway.

So maybe it will be a little bit easier for some of us.

Elle: I think.

So.

Yeah “jureen”.

Was the, uh, the pronunciation.

It’s a Canadian thing I think.

And it’s a weird name anyway, so, but Elle is easier that’s for sure.

Yeah.

Shelby: Well, we like you, whatever your name is.

Elle: Thank you.

Thank you.

So, um, so Shelby I thought it would be interesting to talk with you about your experiences in.

Ecuador and Chile today, because I don’t know anything about them.

I knew, I know that you speak Spanish amazingly well.

And, um, so I mean, I don’t speak Spanish myself to know, but listening to you, you sound amazing.

You ran, you ran the, um, a live stream with Steve, the Spanish live stream.

Very cool.

Um, so yeah, tell us about it.

So what, why it was Ecuador first, right?

And then Chile, you lived in both.

Okay.

So, so why Ecuador?

Shelby: Yeah.

Good question.

Um, it comes up a lot.

I, um, had a goal ever since I was in high school, probably around ages, 16, 17 to live in South America one day.

And, you know, after graduating, I thought, um, it would be really cool to live in a big city too, because I’m from Portland, Oregon, which has become more well-known since I was born.

But, um, it’s still a small city.

It’s not really what you think of as like city living.

Um, so I wanted to live in a big city at some point in my life.

And, um, a few years ago I saw this window of opportunity open up where I could start working remotely.

And so I thought like, Ooh, like I could now go live in South America as I’ve always wanted to do.

And, um, I thought, why not kind of combine the two goals?

Like I’ll go live in a big city in South America.

So, um, South America is a huge place.

I didn’t know at all where I wanted to go.

So I kind of established what the most important aspects of the location would be for me.

And I put them in a spreadsheet and I just started researching, uh, all those biggest cities and, uh, in South America and trying to optimize for those factors.

So they were more or less, um, you know, quality of life and cost of living, access to nature and hiking, um, you know, a good place to work remotely.

So, you know, like easy internet access and stuff like that.

Um, and relative safety too.

Um, cause I was, you know, uh, 23 and going to move to South America by myself.

So, you know, mom wants to make sure this…

Elle: oh, I bet.

Shelby: … it’s well researched.

It’s going to be safe.

So anyway, um, Quito, Ecuador, the capital of Ecuador, um, came out mostly on top and pretty much all of those aspects.

So I decided to move to Quito, which it didn’t turn out to be as safe as I thought it was going to be.

But I had a really great community.

Um, I joined like an ex-pats in Quito Facebook group, which was very active, very well, you know, uh, moderated, I would say.

Um, and you know, there was a uh, I got a lot of great, um, resources and advice and insights, um, about like what to do and which areas to avoid and stuff like that.

So, you know, I was fine the whole time that I was there, but, um, it was not the best quality of life, only due to the higher crime rate.

Um, and so like, it was not advisable to basically walk on the street after sunset and the sun sets at 6:00 PM every day in Ecuador, because it’s on the equator.

That’s where it gets its name, actually, fun fact.

So, yeah, but aside from that, like, it was absolutely there and all of the other areas, I mean, Quito is situated between, um, two giant rows of, um, just staggering mountains.

So it’s only like a couple of kilometers wide and 28 kilometers long.

So no matter where you are in the city, you look to your left, look to your right

and you’re seeing these gorgeous lush green mountains.

Um, and you know, at night they’re just all lit up with all the different, um, lights from restaurants and houses on them.

So it’s truly beautiful and amazing hiking of course.

Elle: Oh, nice.

Oh yeah.

I guess so with those mountains and how, how long were you in Ecuador?

In Quito, right?

Shelby: Yeah, I was only there for three months.

Elle: Oh, okay.

Wow.

And that was, you left because of the safety issue mainly.

Um, would you say?

Shelby: Well, the that was

why I was open to pivot and go someplace else afterwards.

I wasn’t ready to go home.

Um, but it was that an opportunity opened up at the company I was working at.

Um, which is a vacation rental management platform.

And, um, it’s an international company.

Um, we have, or the company had a few offices in Chile, one in Santiago and then one at the coast at Valparaíso.

And so, yeah, it was a great leadership opportunity opened up down in Santiago.

And so my manager reached out and said, Hey, are you like open to,

to going to Chile?

And I said, yeah, you know, sign me up for that.

Elle: Great.

And did you know Spanish then before, because I know it’s a big part of high school in the States, generally speaking, Spanish class.

Did you know any Spanish before you moved?

Shelby: Yeah.

Um, so I took Spanish in high school and I was actually lucky enough to start in eighth grade, but I was still in middle school and yeah, Spanish is definitely a, um, It’s like the main language that people will learn.

I would say, you know, learn in quotes because most people don’t get the opportunity to really learn it for whatever reason.

Usually it’s that, um, you know, I find that there are not the best like teachers, um, and like all around.

And of course students also find that it’s challenging and because it’s hard, they, um, they don’t like it and they, they tend to give up.

So I just was really into it.

And I was always really fortunate to get super solid teachers, um, for all five years.

So from eighth grade through my senior year in high school, like.

Studied it really enjoyed it.

Um, and I had done an immersion program in Costa Rica for a few weeks, one summer, and that really helped as well.

So I had gained like, um, conversational fluency by the time I graduated high school.

Elle: Oh, that’s great.

And Kind of unusual.

I feel like… Did any of your friends do the same?

Where you in…was everyone speaking Spanish or French or whatever?

Shelby: No, no.

I don’t

think any of my friends that I was friends with outside of school,

um, Like developed fluency or anything close to it.

I was actually always helping them with their Spanish homework, but friends.

I, I, Oh yeah.

But you know, I, I was charging of course.

Elle: Good.

Shelby: Um, but no I had, um, friends that I met through Spanish class and of course, so like there was the group of us that were prevailing seen as nerds

I’m sure that was, that was the only thing I was good at though.

I wasn’t like good at other classes.

Elle: I’m sure  that’s not  true, but that’s a very cool thing to be good at.

It’s very cool.

It’s amazing actually.

Yeah.

I don’t know anyone who just from taking classes in high school came out conversational.

Like we study Welsh at school where I’m from in Wales and French.

No one I know, came out, speaking Welsh or French, so…

Shelby: oh, really?

And how, how well, thank you.

Um, I mean, it was like, I had great teachers.

I don’t think I hadn’t had those teachers.

I would have, um, succeeded.

Um, but how many years of Welsh and French do you take in school in Wales?

Elle: Welsh, I mean, what taught from primary school or elementary school, but just bits and pieces, you know, nothing really, um, intense.

And then in high school, uh, from the beginning of high school, which is age 11 in the UK.

Um, but uh, yeah, some teachers not very inspiring or just good teachers in general.

I definitely didn’t have good Welsh teachers.

It was a bit of a mess, honestly, our Welsh education in my high school.

And French, just a couple of years and I hated it.

And now I’m learning French because I’m doing it in a way that I enjoy, not those teachers weren’t, weren’t very nice.

So, you’re so right.

I mean, it really, really does.

I mean, you can have a passion for something, of course, but it really helps when you have an inspiring and motivating and friendly teacher, so…

Shelby: Absolutely.

Elle: For sure.

Um, so then three months in Ecuador, then you moved to Santiago in Chile.

Yeah.

And so tell me about that.

Chile, Chile, Chile?

Shelby: Yeah Chile.

Yeah.

Um, there’s a, there’d be a lot, um, to cover like my experience there was really, um, you know, it was overshadowed by the work that I was doing there because it was a really big job.

Um, And I mean, it was my first time working in leadership and like a big semi-big company.

And, um, it was, it was a mess, honestly, in the beginning.

Um, I, because it was exacerbated by the fact that I had just moved to a new country too.

So like moving to a new country by yourself is a pretty challenging endeavor and then, you know, taking on

um, a really autonomous leadership role, um, following previously kind of negligent leadership.

So I was like cleaning up a really big mess.

Um, and on top of that, um, you know, while I had gained that conversational fluency in high school that had been, I don’t know, um, six years prior and, um, it was Mexican Spanish and,

like, yes, it’s the same language spoken throughout most of South America.

Um, you know, with the exception of, um, Brazil and, um, Guyana and some of those other countries on the other side of Brazil.

Um, but for the most part, I mean, it’s, it’s Castilian Spanish.

However, in Chile, I mean, anyone who has spoken to a Chilean and is already Spanish speaking, knows

it’s a very distinct dialect and there are different dialects within Chile too, but, um, they speak incredibly fast.

Um, they, they, um, like cut syllables out of words.

Um, they also aspirate their Ss.

So instead of saying “mas”‘ they’re going to say “ma”, and so you don’t like hear that, that sound that you’re used to hearing.

And they also have like over a thousand words that are only used in Chile, but it’s interesting cause this slang is just like pervasive, like everyone in every different, um, you know, um, social class and different generation are using these slang words and they’re so common.

Um, like the, the one that like, when I finally had that, like, Oh, we’re not in Kansas anymore

toto moment, um, was like a few weeks in.

I had been looking for Mexican food because I, as an American, I eat a lot of Mexican food and I couldn’t find any, and one day I was in a taxi or an Uber and the driver told me “Spanish”, which I understood as “there’s a lot of tacos in the street.”

So, um, I said tacos, where?

Like street tacos?

And then he goes, Oh, no, sorry, sorry.

That’s our slang “taco” is how we say traffic and Chile.

There’s no tacos.

And I’m like, that’s like a double bummer.

Elle: How Disappointing.

Shelby: It was a big disappointment.

I mean, Mexico is very far away from Chile.

Anyone needs to look at a map if they think there are anywhere close to each other.

So, you know, that was a lot of, it was a lot of fumbling in the beginning and actually like for the first eight months or so, I would say I had a really hard time holding a, an extensive conversation with any Chilean.

Um, but I met some great friends and they really helped me.

Um, you know, stay sane and, you know, and acclimate too like, I, um, felt safe speaking to them in Spanish.

Um, because of course it’s, it can be really like demoralizing to just not know the right word and stumble.

And then people think you’re stupid and you know that you’re not stupid, but

they have no way of knowing that because you can’t articulate yourself, so, you know, humbling experience for sure.

Elle: Yeah.

And in terms of, uh, safety then, do you felt safer in Santiago than you did in Quito?

Shelby: Yeah, much safer.

Um, you know, safe safety is always relative.

Um, but yeah, I would say Santiago was much safer and you could walk on the street after it gets dark.

Um, you know, of course always have your wits about you, but, um, the Metro, um, is a great system of transportation and then I could easily, you know, get off and walk several blocks.

So then in

Elle: terms of culture shock, so the language, I guess, Was a bit shocking for you to realize that you had to, I guess, not learn a whole new language, but you know, learn a lot of slang and the different ways of speaking.

Was there anything else that you can think of that jumps out as surprising or took some getting used to in Chile?

Oh, yeah.

Shelby: A lot, you know, it’s interesting because, um, I’ve been to like some kind of obscure countries, um, and Chile out of any place I’ve been is the most similar to the US and a lot of ways, like even Santiago, it looks kind of like Los Angeles.

Um, it feels kind of like New York when you’re walking on the street, because there’s just like so many people and it’s like a metropolis, um, And it’s developed.

Um, and you know, every place takes credit cards.

Um, whereas in Quito, in Ecuador, like not every place is going to take credit cards.

And in fact, like they are going to really want you to have like exact change cause they don’t always have change.

Um, so small things like that that make you feel like, Oh, I’m really in a different place right now.

You didn’t have that in Chile, but, out of any place I’ve ever been.

I had the strongest culture shock in Chile.

Could have been because I was also working there.

And so I felt like culture shock from, um, the way my coworkers interacted with me.

But, um, like the big thing was the food.

Um, they eat a pretty, um, I would say like a not incredibly variable diet.

And again, coming from the States and also coming from Portland, Oregon.

Um, if anyone’s like read a blog about Portland or visited, you probably know it’s like a big food city and there’s just…

you just get like a wide range of food.

So, you know, you’re going to have the Mexican food, of course, um, a lot of different foods from Asia, um, you know, um, Thai food and, um, you know, lots of sushi and different, um, Japanese foods, Korean, Chinese food.

I mean, there’s just so much, um, You got very little of that in Santiago and Chile.

And they mostly just eat like the core elements of the diet are, um, different kinds of meat, like ham and stuff like that.

Um, cheese, and also not like sharp cheese, but more like just kind of more bland cheese, I would say.

And, um, bread, like really good bread.

I learned that Chile is number two in the world for bread per capita.

And right after Germany.

Okay.

yeah.

I met some Germans and Sheila who were like, yeah, like good breads here, but not like at home.

Um, but yeah, I mean, it’s amazing and delicious food.

They also make, they grow some excellent, um, avacadoes there, but, um, I was vegan and gluten free when I arrived and made it really hard.

To, to adapt.

And I mean, I, I, I changed my diet, um, but I just found it hard to find, you know, good vegan options and like spicy food too.

Um, I find that like, of course I’m generalizing.

There are certainly people who are exceptions, but the typical Chilean diet is like, you eat a lot of, um, rice, meat.

Um, if you eat cheesy, like really bland, almost like flavorless cheese, I would say.

And you don’t like spicy foods.

Um, even like an onion, it might be considered really spicy.

And I feel like I’m throwing a lot of shade, but like, I, I talked to my friends in Chile about this all the time.

Like you guys like.

Need to expand your horizons when it comes to cuisine.

And so, you know, I’m just, I like really spicy food.

So I just struggled with that.

Elle: That’s so sad when you gluten-free for health reasons or just, just doing it..

Shelby: Not because like I am have celiac or I’m gluten intolerant, but for health reasons, and that I found, I find that I like.

Um, think better and have better energy when I stay away from gluten.

I mean, I’m, I’m not strictly gluten free.

I just kind of like, I try to avoid it and I don’t make it like a main element of my diet.

Elle: Okay.

So you did try some of the bread?

Okay, good.

That’s good.

That’s good.

I was going to say I love bread.

Okay.

You can’t beat like really good bread and really, full fat creamy butter is just…

Shelby: oh yeah.

Elle: Simple as good, but, so, okay.

That was going to make me sad if you couldn’t have any of that bread.

Shelby: Oh no, it’s great.

Like, I, I feel bad, you know, for anyone who, who can’t actually indulge and try it.

Cause it’s, it’s amazing.

They’re the main bread, um, that you’re going to have to try if you ever go to Chile is marraqueta.

And it’s sold everywhere.

It’s like freshly baked every day.

Like even at the grocery store, as they sell the freshly baked stuff.

And you walk by like any cafe and it’s just, the smell is wafting out and you’re like, I need that right now.

Elle: Best smell ever.

Baking bread.

Good.

Okay.

Good.

Um, so you were, uh, working in an office then in Santiago.

Or, you were working remotely?

Oh, okay.

So you were able to interact with other Chileans or was it in an office of people from all over the world?

Or a bit of both.

Shelby: It was a lot of Chileans, but yeah.

Um, we had people from all over the world.

Um, I was really, really fortunate.

Um, the team that I, um, had the pleasure of managing there, um, was the customer experience department.

And they were especially like a melting pot.

We had a lot of Brazilians on that team.

Um, a girl from Venezuela, um, a girl from France.

And I mean, we actually, we expanded the team and ended up bringing more and more immigrants onboard.

Um, yeah, a lot of Chileans.

And then Brazilians, I would say, would be the next largest population we had.

Elle: And is it, so Brazilians then they’re speaking Spanish?

And because it’s not, as, it’s not, they’re not super interchangeable, right?

Like you don’t just know Spanish if you speak Portuguese and vice-versa or?

Shelby: Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, you don’t know.

I mean, you, you do have to learn the languages individually, but there they are so similar and I mean, I can.

I can understand.

Um, I can read a decent amount of, um, Portuguese, um, and over time, as I listened to the Brazilians, like speaking with each other, and I got to know like their personalities and I was reading the context of the situation, like I was starting to understand a small amount of what they said.

Um, but yeah, they ha they had to learn the languages separately.

And, um, the team that I managed, they, um, were all trilingual.

So they all had to speak, um, at least English and Spanish and another language just for the requirements of that role.

Um, and some of them spoke four languages.

I mean, they’re super impressive.

Elle: Wow, I’m so jealous of that.

So…

Shelby: Yeah, it was, I felt very mediocre.

Elle: Well, yeah, just the two languages.

What an idiot.

And you’re on your way to three now cause you’re learning French.

How’s that going?

Shelby: Yeah.

Working on it.

Oh, it’s, it’s a lot of fun.

Um, I mean I found LingQ at the beginning of this year, 2020, and I, I read a testimonial about it and I was like, Oh my gosh, like I have to,

to try this and I got into it and was starting with the mini stories.

And I found that I was actually like retaining a lot of what I was reading, which was so weird.

Um, and…

Elle: surprising.

Yeah.

Right.

Shelby: Yeah.

It’s not intuitive compared to how I’ve learned in the past.

Um, cause I’ve used Duolingo before.

Um, and of course I’ve had the classes, but this was like a full-on kind of immersive experience.

Um, And then I went, like when I got into, um, you know, learning through music and importing music videos to learn that way it became, I mean, it went from like, you know, here to like off the charts in terms of fun.

And I actually crave it, you know, like at the end of the night, even if I’m tired and like, I didn’t get to it that day.

I’m like, I want to actually, um, study on, on LingQ right now.

So…

Elle: excellent.

Shelby: I’ve never had an experience like that before.

Elle: That’s great.

That’s a great place.

It shouldn’t be a chore, you know, we’re taught, well, maybe not you because you enjoyed studying Spanish in school, but for a lot of people, you know, Oh, studying is a choice.

Even if you enjoy the subject, sometimes, you know, you’d like, yeah, just get through this content.

But yeah, when it doesn’t feel like, like a chore, like, uh, task you have to get through in the day.

It’s, uh, it’s a whole different thing, you know, you go at your own pace and do whatever you want.

It doesn’t matter.

No, one’s going to be testing you at the end of it.

It’s just for you.

Yeah, that’s cool.

For sure.

Shelby: Yeah, absolutely.

Elle: So how long were you in Chile? Chile.

Shelby: Uh Perfect.

I was there for 14 months.

Elle: Oh, nice.

Okay.

And what, uh, What would you say you miss the most about the place the country?

Shelby: Um, at this point, I would say what I miss the most are all the friendships that I made there.

Um, people through work, um, as well as some people outside of work too.

Um, I have some of my best friends still down there and the, you know, the people that I worked with, especially some of them, um, who I became really close with and um, really mentored them and got to see like them, you know, get promoted and grow a lot through the company.

It’s, um, it’s hard to not work with them anymore.

Um, you know, LingQ stole my heart.

I said, I have to go work at this other company now.

But also, you know, just on a friendship level, um, I miss hanging out with them, but of course we’ve got, you know, WhatsApp and, uh, can stay in touch that way.

And it’s a blessing to be able to maintain friendships from long distance.

You know?

Elle: Do you think any plans, I mean, when the world goes back to normal, whatever that is, any plans to, uh, visit in the future?

Shelby: Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, and actually I went back, um, like I moved home in the beginning of, or like in the first quarter of 2019.

Um, and then I went back actually in January of this year, so that was still through work, but I got to see my friends a lot down there too.

So, um, I would like to be able to visit for sure.

And I would love like to go other places as well.

And so a lot of the friends that I have are big travelers as well.

So I said, let’s meet someplace else next time.

Elle: Oh Yeah, that’s a really good idea.

That’s good.

Um, and do you have any advice I was like to ask at the end, um, because I’ve never, I’ve never been to South America or central America actually, so, and I’d like to it just, I just.

You know, I grew up in the UK.

I’s really far, but now I’m closeer, so it makes sense.

So, um, I will definitely one day.

And what advice do you have?

Uh, I know it’s a huge place and you were in, um, Ecuador and, uh, Chile, but, uh, do you have any advice for people thinking of visiting or even going to live in one of those countries?

Shelby: Yeah.

Um, well, I mean, if you like spicy food, like be prepared that you’re not gonna find a lot of it.

So like bring, like have a backup plan, you know.

Elle: Bring those spices  with you.

Shelby: Bottle of Sriracha or something.

Um, and I mean, definitely do your research before you go, just like before you go anywhere.

Um, You want to be prepared for, you know, how to pay for things, how to get around.

Like, don’t, don’t expect to be able to like go to an ATM and make a withdrawal anywhere that you go.

Um, and that’s general travel advice, of course.

Um, but that little bit of research really goes a long way.

And I would say also, like, see if you can find, um, Facebook groups, um, or there’s so many other different platforms you can go on these days, you could use like meetup.

Um, and I think it’s called like couch surfing, like all these different platforms you can use to kind of network with people, um, before you get there and ask them for advice.

Um, but yeah, I mean, I would just say like, you know, be open-minded because the people and South America and the various countries within it, um, and central America, like they

um, they’re, they have a different culture and there’s something there’s something unique to experience in every culture that you visit and if you expect them to be just like you, but they speak a different language.

Um, you know, that’s probably not true, but you will find that you have so much more in commo

than you perceived before going there.

So like try to actually get to know the people at the every day level and sure.

Like do the touristy stuff.

If, if you want to, like, that’s always fun, but to try to actually interact and get to know people, um, on the day to day level, because you’re going to experience a whole different level of that culture and be able to appreciate it a lot more.

Elle: That’s good advice.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much, Shelby.

That was really interesting for me to find out as a, with us also working, not in the same place, it’s really nice to get to know a bit more about Eve as well.

So, yeah.

Shelby: Yeah.

Likewise.

Thank you.

And, and what about, what about Elle?

Um, what’s one of the, I mean, what, what’s one of the most recent or most favorite countries that you visited?

Elle: Wow.

Oh, most recent.

I haven’t been anywhere in a really long time actually.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t even back… I’m from Wales in the UK.

I haven’t been back in a couple of years, so I think I always have to say Japan just because I lived there for three years.

And yeah, like, like you mentioned with getting to know the people, you know,ereras intimately as, as you can, as a foreigner  in a country, um, was just amazing.

The people there are just so wonderful, friendly, and warm and just the place is just so steeped in tradition and history.

An it’s beautiful.

And I love it and I miss it all the time.

I really, really want to go back sometime soon, but I think my son is two and a half now.

So I think when he’s around, you know, at an age, he could really enjoy it.

So maybe, maybe like 10, I think is the youngest, you know, before age 10, I think maybe just want to be playing and not going to sightseeing or whatever.

So we’ll see what kind of kid he is anyway, but yeah, definitely need to get back.

That’s a long way off, actually that’s seven and a half years from now.

Shelby: I know

Elle: We’ll see if we get there sooner, but…

Shelby: You’ve got to fit in some, some other trips before then for sure.

Maybe not as far.

Elle: Yeah, well, I’ve never been to Portland and Vancouver is so close to Portland, so that’s definitely on my list.

So, and Marc, uh, my husband is from Vancouver.

I don’t know if he’s been to Portland either, which is crazy really where he grew up in Vancouver.

But have you been to Vancouver?

Shelby: Yeah, I visited, but I mean, it was a really short, was that the only time?

I think I’ve only been once.

It was actually for my birthday a few years ago.

Um, but you know, it was like a two to three day trip and there’s so much to see there.

Um, but I remember days in July and so I like just, I had, I mean, it’s just beautiful, perfect weather.

And I went with my best friends and, uh, we had such a great time.

I thought the whole vibe of the city, um, was perfect and I thought I could see myself living there one day.

Elle: I hear it’s kind of similar to the vibe in Portland. Is that, would you say?

Shelby: I think so.

I mean, definitely like you have the West coast cities.

I mean, I don’t even count LA, but like starting in like San Francisco and then Portland and Seattle, um, you know, like the, the trio, the Pacific Northwest trio in the States, but Vancouver, I think is like the best of all of them, because it it’s similar, you know, but it’s also.

It’s in Canada, first of all, which is just a great country.

And it’s, um, it’s so much more international.

Like I was gonna say it feels more international, but it actually is more international.

You hear multiple different languages being spoken.

Um, I mean, I went to a lot of touristy places, so maybe that was a reason for it.

Um, but being able to hear like Cantonese and French, and I heard a lot of Spanish too, um, and English, like all the same place that you, you don’t get so much of that in Portland.

Elle: Oh, okay.

No, that is, that is accurate for Vancouver, for sure.

It’s very multicultural.

Yeah.

I think it’s, I think it’s…we’re also 50% of the countries are a city in North America with the highest, um, Asian population.

I think we’re around 50% in Vancouver too.

And yeah, I’m just thinking of my street.

So we have like Persian, Chinese, Japanese, like, and there’s a whole area in Vancouver, a lot of East Indian.

Yeah.

It’s really, it’s really cool.

I do love that about Vancouver, for sure.

So, yeah.

Shelby: Yeah.

Well, it’s important to get exposed to those other cultures.

Elle: I think

so yeah.

And it’s just like, yeah, it’s important for sure.

And just so lucky, you know, like to, to have that richness of, um, of culture around is nice.

So yeah.

Shelby: Definitely

Elle: you will have to come visit because, uh, we would love to meet you in person one day.

The, those of us who were in the Vancouver office, not all of us, but those of us who are would love to have you up.

Shelby: Thank you, likewise. Yeah.

As soon as, uh, as soon as your country starts letting us back in.

Yeah.

Elle: Such a weird time.

I hope there’s hope on the horizon.

People are being vaccinated now.

Finally, it’s finally, I mean, it’s amazing.

Took them so long!

Shelby: I know it took long enough, right?

I’m ready to start traveling again, guys.

Let’s get the show on the road.

Yes, I would, I would love to come up and stay for a longer stay and be able to meet my awesome coworkers in person that live in Vancouver.

Elle: Excellent.

Well…

Shelby: we’ll make it happen.

Elle: We will, we will looking forward to it.

Well, thank you so much, Shelby.

And I will chat to you again at some point for the podcast, if that’s okay.

We’ll think of some other interesting topics.

Shelby: Great.

Yeah, I would love to.

It’s always great chatting with you, Elle.

Um, and, and thanks so much for the questions.

Appreciate it.

Elle: Thank you.

Bye

bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Steve:    Hi Mark.

Mark:    Hi Steve.

Steve:    You know I have something I want to talk about today; because you know how I am, I get excited about things for a while.

Mark:    You certainly do.

Steve:    Yes and right now I’m very excited about this Russian website that I’ve found called Echo Moskvi (Echoes of Moscow).

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    And the reason I’m excited about it is that it is such a phenomenal resource for a Russian learner like me, but also if I were a Russian person.

I think it’s largely directed at people living outside Russia; although, they have a lot of people listening to their radio station and television station within Russia.

Because I mean when they open up the phone lines they get calls from all over the country right away.

But the kinds of things that they do are so interesting.

It’s, basically, a news and information station far superior to the CBC, for example.

Mark:    The CBC being the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    But is it, in fact, a large broadcaster in Russia?

Steve:    I think so.

Mark:    Or is it sort of a niche broadcaster?

Steve:    Well, I don’t know.

But one of our members at LingQ told me that Gazprom, which is a big gas and banking company in Russia, is a major shareholder.

I think they have hundreds of thousands of people who listen.

For example, there was a recent unfortunate plane crash in Russia around the Town of Perm and they said we want people to phone us from Perm and people phoned from Perm.

So, I mean, they have a lot of listeners for that to happen.

Mark:    You think they only have a couple thousand listeners?

I mean if that’s…

Steve:    Seven hundred thousand I think he said; I can’t remember.

Mark:    Oh that’s quite a lot.

Steve:    It’s getting up there.

I mean there’s a lot of…I don’t know.

At any rate, the kinds of things that they do…I want to describe what they do and how wonderful this is as a model for a variety of things.

First of all, every morning I go there and they will have both the audio and the text of a large number of the programs that they ran the day before.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    So I can download both and it’s not in a PDF format that I can’t copy and paste or whatever.

It’s free, just download it.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Okay?

They have news programs; they discuss the events of the day.

A lot of it is simply discussions with interesting guests, important guests.

I mean they will have…they had…I’m just thinking.

You know, they had the American Ambassador on there.

They have Ministers on there (Russian Ministers).

They have experts in their field.

Garry Kasparov was on there, for example, who’s a very famous dissident.

And they talk about politics, they talk about history, they talk about cooking, they talk about travel, they talk about the stock market.

It’s a tremendous…and history, you know, and they’ll talk.

I want to get to one of the interesting things that they did.

They said…

Mark:    But I guess that…I mean in terms of…I mean you’re obviously quite excited about it.

But you’re suggesting that what makes it so unique is, obviously, the fact that there are transcripts too, so that for the language learner you can learn from everything they have on their site.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    I mean from what you’re describing, yeah, it sounds like a typical broadcaster that you’d find in any country.

I mean I don’t know what they talk about specifically, but talking about the news, talking about sports, talking about business, talking about whatever, what makes this site unique, at least from a language-learner’s perspective, is that the transcripts are available for everything.

Steve:    I know.

I mean if this were available for Portuguese, for Italian, for German; I mean it’s tremendous.

Mark:    It’s much more…it is nice.

Like even as I’m studying French now, it’s nice to go and read the newspaper in French.

I end up maybe not importing articles into LingQ as often as I would if they had the sound, but they are more interesting;  current events.

I mean it’s more interesting to read about stuff that I would read about in English and here I am reading about it in the language I’m learning.

And, unfortunately, I can’t find, I haven’t found and maybe someone out there might know of a site where I could find things that you talk about (news, current events, sports, business) in French with transcript that I could import into LingQ.

I mean that would be great.

Steve:    See, it’s great, because if I read it in LingQ, I mean you really do focus on the language more when you’re reading in LingQ on the screen then when you’re just reading a book.

Because your previously-saved words are highlighted, so you get this real focus on this text and then you go away and you listen to it once or twice and it’s wonderful, but there’s more to that about Echo Moskvi.

Even if you weren’t a language learner they do some very interesting things.

For example, whenever they have a discussion on an issue, let’s say it has to do with peacekeepers in Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia.

So they’ll discuss and they might have two people on with two different points of view on whether they should have international peacekeepers or Russian peacekeepers or Russian troops in those breakaway provinces and then they’ll have a vote.

People will phone in while they’re having the discussion and then oh 65% think they should be international peacekeepers and 35% think they should be Russian peacekeepers, so they’re always doing things to engage their audience.

Another interesting thing along the same lines…

Mark:    I mean I think that’s something that’s probably done; like it’s fairly standard stuff to do those kinds of things.

Steve:    No doubt, no doubt, but I don’t have it on radio stations here.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Another thing that they do, one of their series is to talk about famous personalities and they bring in experts on history to talk about famous personalities.

One of the things they’ve done is that they’ve said for each letter we want people to recommend a person and then we will go and do the research or bring in an expert so we can talk about that person.

And so then people say…like when I happened to be listening it was the letter “R”, which in Russian to us is the letter “P”, but to the Russians it’s the letter “R”.

So then they would have Rocmoninov and Radek (who was a famous revolutionary; he got zapped by Stalin) and whatever his name was, the General, Roskovski and stuff and so then people vote on who they want and then they end up with three names.

Out of all the people that were put forward with the letter “R” they end up with three people then they do a program about this person.

They have very interesting discussions.

I was listening to a discussion about Garibaldi, they did one on Abe Lincoln and they talk about their history and their life and stuff like that and it’s all done in a very interesting way.

Cooking, travel, you know name it, so I’m just saying it’s very high-quality.

And they have advertising.

This is not like the CBC where you and I are the…  First of all, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has advertising and on top of that you and I the taxpayer have to pay for it.

Mark:    Does the radio station have advertising?

Steve:    No, maybe the radio doesn’t have advertising.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    But the advertising doesn’t bother me.

Mark:    No, well, what bothers me is the programming on the CBC.

Steve:    Anyway.

So, I was saying, they had a very interesting discussion on this Echo Moskvi which I mention on my blog, which is, you know, what is the role of a teacher?

They quoted Bismarck as saying that the Franco-Prussian War was won by the Prussian education system because they inculcated whatever Prussian ideology, you know, into their children so that they were then able to dominate on the field of war.

Of course, Russia right now is going through this process of revising their history books and we’ve seen this in Japan where they’re revising history books, so the whole issue of what people teach in school becomes a pretty important issue.

How can we get it so that teachers are not able to push their agenda, whether it’s their own personal agenda, their own political agenda, the political agenda of the state?

You know, is it possible to have an education system — where things like history and sociology and even things relating to the environment — where we can prevent teachers from imposing their own political values on the kids or religious values for that matter?

Mark:    Yeah, I mean I was going to say, whether it’s…I mean, obviously, in Muslim countries, fundamentally, or religious countries where the education system is run by religious people they get educated in a certain way.

Here it’s a little bit different, but it’s a certain group of people that control the education here and the kids get (for want of a better word) brainwashed in another way.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    And, yeah, whether it’s religious or ideologically motivated like it is here, it shouldn’t be possible for a certain group to sort of control people’s thinking.

Steve:    There should be an obligation to present at least two other points of view on any issue.

Mark:    I mean the fact of the matter is everybody has their own beliefs or opinions on different issues and it’s fine for them to express them, but not to inculcate kids or people with their opinions.

I mean teach people how to think, don’t teach them what to think.

Steve:    Right.

I think the best way to help people learn how to think and make judgments is to expose them to a variety of points of view.

It doesn’t even have to be equal exposure.

Mark:    No.

Steve:    It’s not obvious that because the teacher has the floor for, you know, most of the time that, therefore, having others come to the classroom and present a different perspective…that might be all it takes to make the kids realize that there are other perspectives out there.

I mean you mentioned Muslim countries and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

I mean the stuff they teach about the West, that the Crusades were the worst thing that ever happened.

The fact that the Muslims conquered between the Arab conquest and the Turkish conquest…there was an ongoing period of Muslim conquest, but that’s all fine and dandy.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    But they rather poorly organized an undoubtedly quite brutal period of the Christian Crusades.

It was a minor incident in that long history of all kinds of people beating up on all kinds of people.

Mark:    I mean you can always choose to dwell on any event that occurred in the past and I mean to, basically, blame your misfortune on someone else.

I mean I think that’s probably fairly standard behavior.

Even here, whether it’s capitalism…

Steve:    …globalization…

Mark:    …or whatever it is that, you know, I guess the teachers are blaming their lot on, really, as you say, it just shouldn’t be part of education.

Education should be a process where the kids are exposed to many different points of view, the world, what’s happening and the kids can form their own opinions about things.

Steve:    I think, particularly where there has been a war, you should almost be obliged when you’re studying history (of course, kids get so little history anyway) but you should be obliged to read articles from the former enemy and see how their history books describe the events.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    I mean even here in Canada the take on, for example, the Battle of Quebec and the Conquest, the British Conquest of Quebec.

I mean I am sure that the textbooks in Quebec present that in an entirely different light.

Mark:    Yeah, for sure.

Steve:    And the whole struggle for, you know, the French language versus the English language, the perspective will be completely different.

Why wouldn’t we in our schools make sure that both perspectives are presented?

Mark:    But there are not always two perspectives; I guess there can be many different perspectives.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    I don’t know how you insure that that happens.

I do think that the more different players you have involved in education the more likely you are to have an even playing field.

Like right now the education here is essentially controlled by the Teachers Union and this central organization controls all the schools.

Steve:    And a lot of bureaucrats.

Mark:    And a lot of bureaucrats and all the teachers are educated in the same place and they all think the same.

I shouldn’t say all, but a majority think the same way and along the Union Party line and it’s unfortunate.

It hurts the kids as well as the teachers, in fact.

Whereas I think if there was more competition in education I think (A) educators would be more innovative and you wouldn’t be able to get away with grinding your ax, so to speak.

Steve:    But, you know, in this regard, I get back to Echo Moskvi; they have so many interesting discussions.

If there was this vast library of discussions on an issue…pick an issue.

Let’s go with Canada, Quebec, you know, the French-English rights, whatever and if you had a discussion between…you could have one in French and one in English, but you would talk about this issue.

You’d have two people or three people defending different points of view and you would also have a transcript.

So this is your assignment, you’re to listen to this and you’re to read it and you’re to come in to discuss it.

These discussions on Echo Moskvi, they’re like 40-50 minutes long; we’re not talking about a five-minute interview.

These are one-hour programs minus advertising, so it’s a 50-minute program.

So here’s your assignment, go listen to this.

So they don’t get all the dates and the facts, but at least they’re stimulated.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    They hear three different perspectives presented and hopefully then they would come back to class and, you know, well who was right?

Well, I don’t know, I need to learn a little bit more about this.

I think that’s the strength of the Internet, then they could go and research this rather than having everything built around a textbook.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Because most kids are too lazy to go…

Mark:    For sure.

Steve:    I mean you’re lucky if they read the textbook, so maybe that’s the problem.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    They won’t go to the website.

Mark:    No.

Steve:    I don’t know, we can theorize.

The practical issue is most kids just want to get through their class.

Mark:    Well yeah.

Steve:    So…

Mark:    That’s the reality.

Steve:    Right.

Mark:    But, at the same time, it probably could be presented…I mean they should try and present more than one side and they tend to not do that I don’t think.

Steve:    Yeah and this is where Echo Moskvi has done a great job.

I mean in education itself, mind you, there is a fair amount of controversy.

We’re rambling a little bit here, but people talk about phonics versus whole-word learning to read.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Phonics is you learn the individual pronunciation of the letters and whole-word means you’re learning from interesting content.

Like I don’t see the contradiction, surely you need to do both.

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    Surely you need to know what the letters mean and surely you need to have interesting content.

So this, apparently, has been a great flaming controversy in the whole literacy field.

I don’t understand what the disagreement is about, do you?

Mark:    Well, I mean, you know, my opinion on most of the work shopping that goes on as it relates to at least primary school education…I mean reading to me is sitting down with a kid and here, read and I’ll help you.

And we keep reading and, eventually, maybe using LingQ you could listen too, but read.

Just read, the more you read the better you’ll get.

Steve:    Mind you, easier said than done if the kids aren’t motivated to read, but then you’ve got to find stuff that they are interested in reading.

Mark:    Yeah you do, yup.

Steve:    They want to read about sports, let them read about sports.

Mark:    Yeah.

Steve:    Anyway…  Well, we started out with this discussion of Echo Moskvi.

I still think…to me it’s my university, it’s my school.

Echo Moskvi beats any Russian program in any university…

Mark:    Right.

Steve:    …because they talk about famous people.

They talk about Tolstoy or they talk…a very interesting one on the return of these Russian bells that were originally hanging in the St.

Daniels Monastery in Moscow.

Stalin and his gang basically, you know, burned all this for scrap back in the ‘30s.

An American philanthropist bought these bells, took them back to the U.S.

and donated them to Harvard.

And then there was a great drive in Russia to raise money to get them back and they cast some other bells which, presumably, sounded the same and they were able to do this deal with Harvard.

So through that you get a discussion of the history and what this means to the Russians and, you know, the sort of renewal of the Orthodox Church in Russia, this happening and stuff like that.

I mean Echo Moskvi is, to me…you know I get excited about things.

Mark:    Yes.

Steve:    But it is far better, more interesting, more alive than any university Russian program, especially when it’s combined with LingQ so that I can save the words and learn the words and so forth and so on.

Have I convinced you of that yet?

Mark:    You have.

Steve:    Alright.

Mark:    I’m going to go start studying Russian.

Steve:    Alright.

If anyone out there knows of any similar site in any other language, please let us know because we would love to let our members know so they can use it for other languages.

Alright then, thank you.

Mark:    Bye-bye.

Steve:    Bye.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Mark: Hello everyone, welcome back to EnglishLingQ for another action-packed installment.

I’m joined by Steve.

Steve: Hi Mark, hi everyone.

Mark: Today we thought we would talk about the U.S.

election with the Barack Obama phenomenon and this latest scandal involving…what’s her name again, the Vice President?

Steve: Sarah Palin.

Mark: Sarah Palin, yeah.

Steve: But, you know, I was listening to…because now I’m doing a lot of listening to this Russian website, Echo Moskvy, and they have very interesting interviews with people.

They’ve been talking a fair amount about the American election as well and the one point made by one of the Russian commentators was that…and someone that has lived in the States for a long time, his name was Pausner.

He’s actually quite well-known; he was on American television a lot in the ‘80s as sort of a spokesman for the Evil Empire.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But he said he would not have believed 10 years ago that a person who was identified as Black…I mean granted, Barack Obama is half Black half White.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Why is he White?

Why is he Black?

I don’t know…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: …but he’s identified as Black.

Okay, so someone who is identified as Black could be a serious contender, even the favorite right now, to become the President of the United States.

Ten years ago he would not have believed that that was possible.

So whatever else happens, I think that is a very significant thing in terms of the, you know, attitudes of Americans.

Mark: Right.

Steve: That a significant number, perhaps half, are prepared to vote for a person…in fact, the question that he is Black or is not Black, I don’t even know that it’s a factor.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Or if it is a factor it’s probably a positive factor in the sense that it’s an opportunity to make a statement of who we are as a society, as an American society.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: So, yeah.

And I watched the American Democratic Convention and he is a phenomenal speaker.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: There is no question about it.

Mark: I must say I’ve never actually seen him speak.

I’ve heard that, of course, and I should try and…I’m sure it’s on YouTube.

His speech at the Democratic Convention would be on YouTube.

Steve: I’m not sure you’d sit there for however long it was (30 minutes) to listen to it.

Mark: No, probably not.

Steve: But, you know, we were eating dinner, so we put it on and watched it while eating dinner.

Mark: Okay.

Steve: I mean he makes a lot of politician-type statements.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So he’s part politician part preacher.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so he’ll say things like, you know, “What am I going to do?

I’m going to get rid of inefficient programs.”  You know, I’d like to see the politician who says, “I’m going to spend money on inefficient programs.”

Mark: Right.

Steve: So he’s going to get rid of inefficient programs, so there’s not a lot there that you can really grab onto, but…

Mark: Right.

Steve: He also did spend a fair amount of time bashing corporations.

You know, he’s going to steal from the big, bad, corporations and give to the people kind of thing, so…

Mark: Which, I guess, is a message that sells well…

Steve: Well sure.

Mark: …to a lot of the voters, but in actual fact the corporations pay for most things.

Steve: Right.

Mark: So it’s just kind of childish and it hurts…this whole negative portrayal of business is just bad in general for the economy.

Like the business is what keeps the economy, the standard of living; that’s what pays for everything.

Steve: Everyone seems to be able to do this with impunity.

Politicians can knock the corporations, except when they’re trying to attract them to their state or to their town.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But the worst are the movie makers.

I mean they will just make a movie with some plot; some evil corporation is poisoning half the town in order to sell more of this product and stuff.

Anyway, we’re off the track, the subject here, but the biggest event recently has been the Republicans who chose Sarah Palin an unknown mother of five, Governor of Alaska, who two years ago was the Mayor of a town of 9,000 people and before that organized children’s hockey games.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So she’s had a rather meteoric rise.

Mark: That’s for sure.

Steve: And, of course, the latest event is she as a mother of five and she represents sort of wholesome America, family values, she preaches family values and low and behold her 17 year old daughter is pregnant.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So, what do you think, is that going to affect the election or her candidacy?

Mark: Well, you know, I think in this day and age probably that wouldn’t necessarily have that big an affect, except that’s part of the reason they chose her was to appeal to the Religious Right in the States or the segment of the Republican voters who are religious and so they probably won’t look very favorably upon that.

But they were quite happy when she was chosen because up until that point I guess they didn’t support McCain very strongly because he isn’t from that sort of conservative religious group.

But, probably…I mean they’re saying she’s going to have the baby and marry the father and so on.

And these things do happen probably with the same frequency to the Religious Right as they do to the rest of the population.

So I think the fact that it’s probably a problem that happens in all segments of society and that they’re not trying to hide from it I think in the long run probably will help them more than hurt them.

I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.

Steve: I think so.

And I, in fact, suspect that there is a higher incidence of teen pregnancies amongst the religious conservatives.

It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …because the people who are not religiously conservative are more likely to have abortions.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And I suspect that the degree of sexual activity is probably just as high across all these different groups.

Mark: Probably.

And I don’t know if they’re…I guess they’re not anti birth control that’s the Catholics that are against birth control.

Steve: Right.

Mark: So maybe that…I don’t know, I was thinking maybe that the Religious Right would be anti birth control but, in fact, that’s probably not the case.

Steve: Well, I mean time will tell.

The other comment has been that McCain as a 72 year old; one of the considerations is that he won’t survive his term.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I mean that’s a bit unfair…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: …and ageist prejudice, but he is 72.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: And so then how would people, you know, look upon this inexperienced 44 year old mother of five with no real…well I guess she has experience as a Governor.

Mark: Right.

Steve: …how that would play out.

Mark: I must say that this whole…the emphasis or the reference made to experience in politics, I must say, I don’t see why that necessarily need be that important.

I mean neither of the candidates has been President before, so they’re new to the job.

And I think, more than anything, either they’re good organizers, they’re well organized, they have principles, they have things they believe in or they’re not capable of governing.

I mean I think either they’re going to be able to do the job or not.

I don’t see experience as being that important, especially since you can surround yourself with people that have been there.

Steve: True enough.

But it’s one thing to make decisions…now granted, she’s Governor of Alaska and Barack Obama is what?

He’s a Senator from Illinois or something, so I mean he’s had some experience in the ins and outs of politics.

Joseph Biden has been a politician for 35 years, how relevant is that politicking experience?

I don’t know.

Joseph Biden has been on a number of international committees, he has interacted with people from different countries, he has discussed issues that affect world affairs, American national security, all of those kinds of things, which have not been part of Sarah Palin’s…you know, things that she worries about or considers.

And so a lot of those issues are not that simple.

There are many layers of complexity…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …different national groups with different self interests, national interests, different strategic implications and stuff and someone who has spent years thinking about these things in all their complexity may be in a better position to make decisions than someone who has a much more limited background.

Mark: I guess maybe.

But, then again, if you’re open to what advisors are telling you and you listen with an open mind I don’t see why necessarily that should be the case.

I’m not convinced either way.

Steve: Well I’m trying to think of some examples.

I think, yeah, Reagan had been a politician for a while, so had Johnson; before he became President he was Vice President.

Mark: I mean I can think of lots of people that were politicians for a long time that may have made lots of bad decisions, so I don’t see that as being a guarantee of anything.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I think more than anything is whether or not that person’s a good person.

Whether or not that person…

Steve: So you see it as different from running a corporation, for example.

You wouldn’t hire someone to be president of a corporation just because they’re a nice person?

Mark: Yeah, no, no, that’s true.

And I’m not saying it’s just that they have to be a nice person, I mean they have to be capable.

They have to be capable of making the right decision.

If you’re capable of making the right decision then if you’re provided with the right information you should be able to make the right decision.

Whereas there are many politicians that have been at it a long time that make the wrong decision, at least from the voter’s perspective.

Maybe not from the perspective of being reelected, but…

Steve: Mind you, the other thing too is I don’t fully understand the American system, but I guess you can have Presidents that are hands-on and Presidents that are not or Vice Presidents who are hands-on and who are not.

I mean in Canada we have a system where our Head of State is the Queen, who is not hands-on on anything…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …through her representative the Governor General, who really doesn’t make any decisions, but represents something.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So you wonder if someone like Sarah Palin suddenly found herself as the President…yeah, she would be supported by a lot of advisors, I would think.

Mark: I mean I would imagine.

I mean when’s the last time the Vice President took over from the President?

Steve: Lyndon Johnson that I can remember…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve:…that wasn’t elected.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Like he initially took over after the assignation of John Kennedy.

Mark: Right.

Steve: There have been Vice Presidents…Gerald Ford I think was a Vice President who then ran…

Mark: …as President.

Steve: So…

Mark: Yeah, I mean I guess that’s an issue.

Steve: I mean you almost could ask yourself, maybe people who, you know, become Vice Presidents or are selected as potential Vice Presidents, running mates, should at least be potentially credible candidates in their own right and Joseph Biden did try to become the Democratic candidate.

Mark: Right.

Steve: He was extremely unsuccessful.

Mark: Yeah, which isn’t a great recommendation.

Steve: Well it isn’t a great recommendation and, what’s more, I saw two YouTube references to things that he said about Obama.

One was he said, “The Presidency…”  Like he said, “Obama has no experience and the Presidency is not something that you learn on the job.”  That was point number one.

Like, Joseph Biden, “I have a lot of experience, Obama has none.”

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Which, I guess, is a fair enough thing to say, you know, in a primary election.

Then the second thing he said was something to the affect of, “What’s so great about Obama?

He’s just about the first well-spoken, clean-cut, African-American to come along.”  Or something like that.

That was very disparaging of African-Americans.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And you’d have to think that that was…I mean it’s hard to say whether it was taken out of…it’s easy to say well it was taken out of context, this, that and the other,  but he was looking for things to say to knock Barack Obama because he was competing against Barack Obama.

But that comment, I think, strayed a little bit outside the range of what’s acceptable.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I don’t know.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean I don’t know.

I don’t know, we’ll see the…

Steve: My personal impression is of the four…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: …Biden, Obama, Palin and McCain, the one that makes the least favorable impression on me is Biden.

He’s the guy with the most experience and he comes across as a typical…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I don’t want to use the word “sleazy”…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …but you’d know what I was talking about.

Mark: But you just did.

Steve: I just did, yes.

Don’t accuse me of calling him sleazy.

I wouldn’t use that word to describe him…

Mark: Of course not.

Steve: …even if I wanted to.

But, no, to my mind he’s the least appealing.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I have some sympathy for Obama.

I’m a little bit concerned about some of the things he says, I see him more of a religious preacher.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And…

Mark: He doesn’t seem to have any sort of concrete principles that he stands for.

Steve: Well or to the extent that he does have them they seem to be very much, you know, we’ll take away from the big, bad, corporations.

Mark: Right.

Steve: I mean he has a bit of that kind of (irresponsible in my view) agenda.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But he tries to present himself as someone who will reach out to different people and he did select Biden who is not of that ilk.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So I think Obama could do the job.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I don’t like Biden.

McCain, I haven’t heard him enough.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But Palin, I was actually quite impressed with her, so.

But I’m not an American, I don’t vote them there.

Mark: No.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens.

Steve: Indeed.

I mean the whole world is following this thing.

Mark: Yeah.

Well I was amazed to see like in Berlin 200,000 people went out to see Obama speak.

Wow.

You wouldn’t get 200,000 people out here to see anybody speak…

Steve: No.

Mark:  …I don’t think.

Steve: Oh, with all the hype, I think Obama could draw a crowd.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I mean Bill Clinton draws a big crowd.

Obama has that kind of a…he’s been built up as a rock star now.

Mark: Yeah, he has.

Steve: So, yeah, you’d attract a big crowd I think anywhere.

What we need to do, we need to contact Barack Obama.

We need to put him on LingQ and we get him fluent in four or five languages and I think he could have quite a following all over the world.

Does that sound like a good plan?

Mark: That’s a good idea.

Steve: Alright.

Mark: I’ll try and put in a call…

Steve: Alright.

Mark:    …after we get done here.

Steve: Okay.

Mark: With that I think we’ll sign off, so until next time…

Steve: Okay and we look forward to your comments.

You know what we should have just before we go here?

I’ve been listening to all these discussions on this Russian radio station…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: …and they have people calling in.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So that’s really good.

You know we can be having our discussion and somebody calls in and says, “Oh, I like, you know, whoever and stuff.”  But we can’t do that.

Mark: No.

Steve: But you can send us your comments.

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve: Okay.

Mark: Bye-bye.

Steve: Bye for now.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Mark: Well, here we are.

Steve: Hi Mark.

Mark: Hi Steve, another EnglishLingQ Podcast.

We’re enjoying the summer; although, today is not as nice as it has been.

But, I guess, obviously, one of the global phenomenon’s this summer is the Olympics in Beijing.

Steve: Yup.

Mark: And, of course, that’s one thing about the…why is it “Bei-jing” now?

Steve: I know that’s one of your pet peeves.

What I find, you are annoyed because we are forced to call it “Bei-jing” whereas in other languages they continue calling it what they always called it.

Mark: Right.

Steve: “Peka” or “Peking” or whatever we call it, but what really annoys me is when they call it “Bei-jing”.

Why?

I mean “j” is pronounced “ja” in English.

It’s “Beijing” in Chinese, why do they call it “Bei-jing”?

Mark: It’s someone trying to be even more politically correct.

Steve: You know why it is in Canada to English speaking Canadians?

A foreign language must be pronounced like French.

Mark: Right, that’s part of it.

Steve: That’s part of it, so “Beijing” is “Bei-jing”.

Mark: The thing about it is…I don’t mind calling it Beijing; it makes no difference to me.

What is annoying about it is that it seems like every time we turn around someone is telling English speakers you can’t do that we have to do this to be more sensitive to these people and we have to do that to be more sensitive to those people.

Well why?

There are so many different cities in the world that are called different things in different languages, why do we English speakers all of a sudden have to start pronouncing them like the original?

Steve: Nor do we call Rome “Roma”.

Mark: Exactly, or “Milano” or “Pari”.

I mean it’s just…no, we don’t.

Steve: Anyway…

Mark: It’s just silly.

Steve: I agree, it’s silly and, in fact, I understand that in Bombay, now known as “Mumbai”…

Mark: There’s another one.

Steve: …the locals still call it Bombay.

Mark: Of course.

Are you going to change the name of a place?

I mean however the name evolved that’s the name.

Steve: Anyway, let’s get back to the Olympics where, in the case of Canada, everyone was moaning the fact, bemoaning the fact, moaning over the fact, that Canada had so few medals.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And then our first Gold Medal…maybe, I don’t remember if it was the first one, one of the first…was a very interesting story because it’s a female wrestler.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Now, first of all, we don’t think of female wrestlers.

Mark: Right.

Steve: It’s not something we would normally put our daughters into.

Mark: No.

Steve: And then I watched her when she got into the final and she is so quick and so clever; I was very impressed.

And then it turns out that she’s from Hazelton, which is a town way up north in B.C.

where, I don’t know, there’s lots of unemployment and there’s also quite a large first nations like native community there.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But as in a lot of those communities that to the outsider might seem somewhat dysfunctional, actually, those communities are very tight-knit.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so that community raised a lot of money.

First of all, they had a wrestling program at the high school started by a teacher and what’s interesting is the influence that one person can have.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So he started this wrestling program; he got even girls involved.

Of course, a lot of people were against the idea of having girls involved in wrestling.

They developed a real elite program of people from Hazelton, this town, 500-800 people.

Mark: A nothing town.

Steve: A nothing town buried in the mountains, like nowhere, way up north.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: And so this girl, whose parents were refugees, refugees from Vietnam, came to Canada, started a new life.

I think the father worked as a carpenter and then started some business up there.

She went to the University of Calgary and she was involved in wrestling.

And, obviously, she has a talent and she’s done well, but it’s just an amazing story.

I mean we talk about…Canadians always think that other countries spend a lot more money on their athletes; we don’t know that.

Mark: Right.

Steve: If we see some weightlifter from Turkmenistan or something, maybe he got his whole village to pay for him; we don’t know.

We always think we would do better if we spent more money, but money can’t replace, obviously, the talent that this girl had.

And then the way the whole community…well, the program at the school and the way the community got behind it.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So I think that’s a real interesting story; interesting story.

Then I think we won some medals in rowing, so now we’ve already got like seven medals.

Some of the other countries that have money that don’t do well include…like Sweden has, I think, three medals.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Switzerland has two or something, you know, so there are countries that don’t seem to make that a priority.

Mark: But those countries have much fewer people than we do too.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: I mean based on population we should…

Steve: …we should probably do better.

Mark: And, probably, I mean I think it maybe depends on the sport.

I would imagine that rowing might be fairly expensive as a sport.

Steve: Yeah, but there are a lot of countries that can afford it.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: All the countries in Europe and Japan, they can all afford to have a rowing team.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

Steve: So I think there there’s probably a tradition.

I think Canada has always been strong in rowing, so there’s a tradition there, so there are people around.

But, certainly, the success…I mean China, I mean some of their athletes, their divers and their gymnasts are just phenomenal.

Mark: Gymnasts, I mean yeah, yeah and they’ve always been strong in sports.

Steve: And they’ve always been strong.

Mark: Yeah, the Russians as well.

Steve: Well the Russians too and there’s lots of medals in gymnastics.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: In swimming there are lots of medals.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: And, of course, Phelps, you know, that’s amazing.

Mark: I mean that’s unbelievable.

Steve: And the other thing amazing is the Jamaicans (for such a small country) dominated.

Mark: Well the 100 meter guy, I mean he’s not even trying, he’s flying.

That guy’s unbelievable.

Steve: I know.

Mark: The rest of the guys aren’t even close.

Steve: Well, but even the girl who won the…the Jamaicans went one, two and three in the 100 meter dash.

Mark: For the women?

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: I didn’t see the women’s.

Steve: And the girl who won it, I mean she was just flying.

But, apparently, in Jamaica, you know, there’s quite a tradition.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Donovan Bailey, who was a Canadian Gold Medalist, originally emigrated from Jamaica when he was 14 and, therefore, is kind of a…now he’s a Canadian icon, but he’s originally from Jamaica.

He said that’s the sport down there.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Track and sprinting.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: So, I mean the Ethiopians dominate in the distance races, so countries have their traditions.

Mark: Right.

But having said that, I mean usually in those races it’s quite close, like they’re talking about split seconds either way.

But that Usain Bolt in the 100 meter, he wasn’t even trying.

He was gliding, like floating at the end; he was so far ahead of everybody.

Steve: You think he can go faster?

Mark: Oh yeah.

Like he kind of stopped before the finish line and started celebrating.

Steve: Really?

Mark: Oh yeah.

Like it wasn’t even close; it was not even close.

Steve: Really? I didn’t see his race you know.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I don’t know what I was doing that day.

Mark: To me, from the 100 meter races that I’ve seen in the past, I mean he was just so far ahead.

He certainly wasn’t fighting to the last second to get over the line.

Like the commentators were all saying, you know, he should have stayed with it.

Steve: Right.

Mark: He would have broken the world record by more.

Steve: Right.

Mark: He started celebrating before he crossed the finish line.

Steve: Well…

Mark: Anyway, we’ll get to see him in the 200 meter final as well…

Steve: Oh yeah.

Mark: …which is his better event, apparently.

But yeah, no, that guy was amazing.

Obviously, Phelps, that’s amazing.

I mean not just amazing that…okay, he’s amazing because he won six, I guess, or five…

Steve: Eight.

Mark: …on his own…

Steve: Right, oh.

Mark: …and then there were two or three team.

Steve: Right.

Mark: But the fact that the team also won.

I mean for all those factors to fall into place.

Steve: And not by much, necessarily.

Mark: Did you see the one — the butterfly — where he basically was behind the Croatian guy or Serbian or whatever the guy was and, basically, overtook him right at the last split second?

He won by a 100th of a second or something; like it was unbelievable.

Steve: That was the butterfly segment?

Mark: The butterfly, yeah.

Steve: Well he did…Phelps did the butterfly segment.

Mark: No, no, no, it was like the 100 meter butterfly.

Steve: Oh, where he raced on his own.

Mark: He raced on his own.

Steve: Oh.

Mark: And I can’t remember whether he was Serbian or Croatian or whatever he was, he was one of those two, he was in the lead the whole way.

Steve: Really?

Mark: And with about five meters to go, he kind of reached out for the wall when he probably should have taken another stroke.

And just as he was gliding in — he was ahead all the way to the end — Phelps came from behind, took an extra stroke with his extra-long arms and just managed to get a finger in ahead of that guy; it was unbelievable.

Steve: Oh well.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: And, of course, I mean everyone is commenting on how well-organized the games have been.

Some comment about the situation where they had some girl (I didn’t see this) singing whatever song it was and singing it very well, but they felt that her teeth were too crooked, so they substituted another girl, you know, to lip sync.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: You know, synchronizing her lips.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so this was criticized and some people say well, you know, they do that in the movies too.

Well yeah, that’s okay, but that’s not the same.

Mark: No.

Steve: Very often they’ll say, you know, sung by so and so.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: So that was kind of unnecessary.

Mark: Right.

You do have these kinds of things go on.

Like sometimes when they have outdoor concerts or shows at half-time and they have a performer out there they aren’t, in fact, singing live.

They’re playing the audio and they’re lip syncing on stage, for whatever reason.

And then it comes out later and people make a big fuss about it, so I mean it does occur.

I seem to remember there was some kind of a rock group that lip synched all their videos and then finally it came out.

I mean I guess it does happen.

Steve: But yeah, I’m sure it happens.

But it’s just that here when you have a little girl…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …singing so well, that everyone sort of “Wow!

Look at her, she’s tremendous!” and yet that’s not the girl.

Mark: I know that’s a bit…that’s not quite right.

Steve: Yeah.

You know another interesting thing, interesting on the subject of the Olympics, was the Spanish basketball team, which had a picture taken with them all pushing their eyes back.

You know, more sort of oriental-eyes type of thing and this created quite a controversy and some people said that this was racist and stuff like that.

There wasn’t much criticism in China; no one was particularly perturbed by it.

There were a lot of sort of politically-correct people in North America or elsewhere, in Europe, who said this was terrible and stuff.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But, I must say, whatever!

If the Chinese basketball team puts on either afro wigs…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …or blond wigs to pretend they’re either Black or Swedish…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …I mean I don’t see why that’s such a bad thing.

Mark: Right.

I mean people get so sensitive about it.

Yeah, I mean I don’t think that…I mean I guess they thought it was funny.

I don’t really think it was funny.

Steve: I can’t see why they would do it.

Mark: I don’t see why they would do it either.

Steve: No.

Mark: I don’t know, it’s like a strange thing to do.

Steve: Well, it’s like here we are in China.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Okay?

Here we are in China; people have almond eyes in China or however you want or slanted eyes as it’s sometimes said.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Obviously, the word “almond” eyes is considered a nicer term than “slanted” eyes or whatever.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But, yeah, people can say, you know, long noses or whatever, curly hair…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah, I think it’s what you put into it.

Anyway, that was a rather childish thing to do.

It doesn’t make the Spanish basketball team look very clever, but still.

Mark: It just makes me think…like I don’t think…like that would never happen here.

Steve: Never?

Mark: Never, because I think…probably because we see Asians all the time here.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Presumably in Spain, maybe they don’t have many Asians.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I don’t know.

Steve: I think Asians probably are more of a rarity.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Whereas here in Vancouver where it’s 40% Asian it’s not a big deal.

Mark: No.

Steve: But, I mean in…

Mark: I was surprised, like they did that? Really?

Steve: That’s kind of childish.

Mark: It’s just that I was surprised to hear that.

Steve: But I mean it’s just in a mood of playfulness; people are hamming around.

There’s an expression, “hamming around”, “hamming it up” and the picture is being taken and so they did this thing.

Mark: Absolutely. In general, I think people are far too sensitive about all that kind of stuff.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I mean it doesn’t bother me.

It’s just…people just take themselves too seriously.

Steve: Right.

Well, I mean you take, for example, I speak Cantonese and in Cantonese the most common word to refer to a European is guailo.

Now guailo, strictly speaking, means like ghost person…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …or devil or something like that.

I mean that’s just their standard term.

Mark: Right.

Steve: It’s the most commonly-used term.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: And, of course, they’ll say “Oh, that’s not…,” you know, “There’s no intent…” or whatever.

But when you really think about it, it’s not a very nice term.

Mark: No.

Steve: It’s not.

Mark: And when they say “Oh, there’s no intent”, that’s exactly the same with all the terms that we use to describe people.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Most of the time, most of the people using them, there’s no harm or intended harm at all, so… Unfortunately, here we’re not allowed to, we’re much too sensitive.

Steve: Well, it also has to do with the history of how these different terms were used.

And if the terms were used in a very sort of, you know, by people who are obviously very racist and if there’s a history like in the case of Black people are being lynched…

Mark: Right.

Steve: I mean there’s a pretty grim history of persecution of Blacks in the southern part of the United States, for example.

But today, to carry on and, typically, the people protesting about the Spanish basketball team are not people in China who thought, oh… Either they thought they were stupid or they thought it was insignificant.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But it’s the Canadian-Chinese activist society…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …most of whom are quite content to say “guailo” all the time when they’re referring to Westerners or Canadians, but who want to be so sensitive about any opportunity to find a slight, you know?

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: So yeah, I agree with you, the world would be a better place if we learned to take it easy a bit.

But a lot of these things are…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: I guess it depends on how people are or, you know, react to them.

Mark: People are conditioned now to react, “Oh, it’s just horrible!” Well, it isn’t really.

I mean they’re just words and people just have to take it easy a little bit.

Steve: Yup.

Mark: But, anyway, getting back to the Olympics.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, I mean it’s great, it happens once every four years.

I’m trying to think of any other notable…

Steve: Well, you know one thing that I thought was interesting was the Mayor, not the Mayor the Premiere, like the Prime Minister of British Columbia our Province, was in Beijing at our expense, the taxpayer’s expense, “swanning around” as we call it here, you know.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And he had a press conference to announce something that was of no significance to anyone but, of course, the Chinese press was there.

And the Chinese press are very miffed — there’s a word “miffed”, “annoyed” – that the Western press has been so critical of many of the arrangements leading up to the Games, about the Torch Parade and stuff like this and the Western press was complaining about pollution and one thing or another.

So the Chinese reporters started grilling our Premiere, “What are you going to do about the East Hastings?” There’s an area of Vancouver, which is very rundown and where drug addicts gather.

It is extremely unpleasant to go there and they said, “What are you going to do about this?

Are you going to clean it up for the Olympics?” Because Vancouver has the Olympics in 2010, the Winter Olympics and, apparently, he says, “Oh yeah, we’ll have it cleaned up.” What a stupid thing for a politician to say.

He hasn’t got it cleaned up yet…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …what makes him think he’s going to have it cleaned up in two years?

So, anyway, I got a chuckle out of that…

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: …what politicians will say.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Unfortunately, politicians…I don’t want to get into that.

Mark: No, no.

Steve: Maybe other countries have better politicians than we do, but I doubt it.

Mark: I doubt it. I think it’s their occupation.

Steve: Hey, but somebody’s got to do that job, right?

Mark: Yeah, that’s right.

Steve: So we have to be…

Mark: Part of it is that who wants to be a politician?

Steve: Well that’s right.

Mark: Yeah, no.

Steve: But, we are going to have the Winter Olympic Games here, which is no where near what the Summer Olympic Games is.

Mark: No. We like the Winter Olympics better because there’s less competition for our athletes.

Steve: Right, that’s right.

Mark: We have some definite advantages there.

Steve: Well I’ll bet you the Chinese will prepare for that.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Steve: They have a lot of people who live in a very cold climate, so… But yeah, Europe is a main competition.

Mark: Well and there’s lots of countries that the climate thing needn’t necessarily be that important.

Like the Russians, obviously, do very well at the Olympics.

Steve: The Norwegians.

Mark: Summer Olympics I mean.

Steve: Oh, in the summer, yeah, the Russians.

Mark: Summer. The Russians do well in the winter and summer.

Steve: Right.

Mark: The Japanese have a lot of medals.

Steve: Right.

Mark: You know, summer and winter.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: They do well in both.

Steve: They haven’t always.

Mark: Oh no?

Steve: I think they did really well this time.

Normally they’ve done well in the gymnastics, but this year they did very well in swimming.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: And they seem to be everywhere.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: Every event you found a Japanese person was in the, you know, competition or in the finals and stuff.

Mark: Yeah, they’ve done a lot.

Steve: And the Koreans.

Mark: Koreans are doing well, I know.

Steve: The Koreans did well and the Italians and the French did well.

Mark: Italians and French, yeah.

English actually do quite well too.

Someone on the radio as I was driving in was saying, “We should be able to be close to the British.” I guess population-wise they probably have about twice as many people as we do…

Steve: Yeah, they do.

Mark: …but they certainly have more than twice as many medals.

Steve: Right.

But they have, perhaps, more of a tradition in certain fields, maybe in track and field.

They certainly had a stronger swimming program.

You know swimming is a big one.

There are lots of medals in swimming…

Mark: So many medals to be had.

Steve: …and climate is no factor.

Mark: No.

Steve: So it’s how good your program is.

Mark: Exactly.

Steve: How early you can start them swimming and so forth.

Mark: Yeah.

Well apparently that Phelps guy from age 11 has swum like every day, every day, all day, all year.

Anyway, I guess that’s probably a good place to end it.

Steve: Okay.

Mark: We’ll talk to you all again another time.

Steve: Okay.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Steve: Here I am this morning with my son, Eric, who is visiting from London where he has been living for, I guess…Eric, how many years have you been living in London?

Eric: About 15 now.

Steve: And you started out…you went there to go to…where did you go to school there?

Eric: Well, I went over there to do my Master’s Degree at the London School of Economics, otherwise known as LSE.

Steve: How many years did you study there?

Eric: I did a year Master’s Degree and then four years Ph.D., so five in total.

Steve: And then, I guess because you graduated from a British university, you had more job offers from British universities than from say Canadian or North American universities?

Eric: Well, I didn’t really have a lot of job offers, I actually had to apply because there are a lot of Ph.D.s and very few jobs.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: It’s easier to get a job in the U.K.

because very few hiring committees will fly you over from the U.K.

to North America for an interview.

So I had about 50 applications, 10 interviews, before I got my first job.

Steve: Ten interviews.

You know it’s interesting, a lot of people, of course, learn English because they want a better job or we have some people who are immigrants who are looking to get even their first job or at least a job that corresponds to their educational background and they don’t have enough English and so forth.

I guess it is very important to have a good letter applying for a job, isn’t it?

Eric: Yeah, it’s important to have a good letter and, also, just as importantly to present well on the day.

Steve: Right.

So what are some of the things that helped you, you think, when you met with your potential employers?

Eric: Well, it’s always said that you can get to the interview…getting into the interview stage is determined by your application, a paper, on paper, but on the day it’s anybody’s job.

Steve: Right.

Eric: So, four or five people, it’s just how you perform on the day, so you have to be clear; you have to have a structure to your presentation.

And, I think…there are different tips in the interview stage, so you’re supposed to do things like if someone asks you a question you’re supposed to answer, but look around the room so you make eye contact with everybody on the panel so they feel part of it; tips like that.

Steve: Were there some other tips that you can share with us?

Eric: Well, you’re supposed to sound very definite, so say things like “I will do that” or “I have done this”, “I will definitely do this”, statements that make you sound firm and definite rather than hesitant.

Steve: Right.

Eric: And then there are things like you’re supposed to…if someone…if interviewers ask you questions if you can, you’re supposed to say things like “That’s a very good question.” Butter them up a bit.

Steve: Any other bits of advice?

Eric: Well… So you kind of want to come across as not too arrogant either.

You want to be confident, but not too arrogant and sort of a likeable person.

So you kind of want to convey that as much as you can within the interview settings.

Steve: You know I always come back to this, you know I did a little bit of reading on old Roman and Greek rhetoric.

I actually listened to an audio book in Swedish on the subject, which got me interested.

But they always said, that if you’re in any kind of a public-speaking situation or even an interview, the first two things you have to do is (A) get the listeners to like you and (B) establish your credibility.

So that’s why people will often fumble at the microphone or recognize someone or say something nice if they’re visiting about the town that they’re visiting and make people a little sympathetic to you.

Eric: Right.

Steve: And, also then, of course, you have to establish your credibility which, I guess, again in terms of a job interview, it’s one thing to butter them up, but you also have to establish the credibility that you have the skills that you claim to have.

Eric: Yeah. Well, yeah, that’s right, you kind of have to present clearly so they know you’ll teach well to a class.

Steve: Right.

Eric: Yeah, but there are all these other things too, like if you show that you’ve sort of read up on the department and what its strong points are and trying…

Steve: Right.

Eric: You know, our university, we’re an evening-teaching university, so if you can say how great mature students are who learn in the evening and that you know about that, that goes down quite well.

Steve: Right.

Eric: It’s surprising that sort of thing actually makes some difference.

Steve: But, then again, that would be…all of these things are true for any job interview, whether it be, in your case it’s a university, but somebody who’s applying for some other job, again, they do say they do say you should read up on the company and know something about the company and have something nice to say about the company.

Eric: Yeah. Oh yeah, no, that’s right.

Steve: So then you taught, first of all, at the university.

Where was your first job?

Eric: I taught at the University of Southampton, which is on the south coast of England.

It’s a pretty good university and it was a full-time post, whereas most of what I was applying for were sort of one-year, two-year jobs which were much less attractive, so I was kind of lucky that I didn’t get those other jobs.

In hindsight, the best job was kind of the last one that I applied for and got, so I was lucky.

Steve: And so then you where there and then when did you move to the University of London?

Eric: I was there in 1999 and then in 2003 I moved to University of London.

Steve: And now you are…and, of course, you have…tell us about your family.

Eric: Yeah, I have two children.

Well, my wife Fran, two children, a daughter aged five, Alana, and a son, Stewart, who’s aged eight.

Steve: And now you have a one-year…it’s not really a sabbatical, what exactly is happening?

Eric: No.

It is a visiting research fellowship for a year at something called the Belfer Center for International Politics, which is located within the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Steve: And so you now are on your way there.

You’re staying with us for a few weeks and then you’re visiting with Fran’s family in Toronto or friends.

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: And then you will show up in Boston.

Eric: Yeah.

Well, we’re going to be in Ontario mainly in sort of the lake country for a while and then we’re going to drive directly down to Boston.

And then, yeah, so that’s pretty well it.

Steve: And what sorts of activities then will you be involved in at this Center?

Eric: Well at the Center there are about 10 or 11 different programs analyzing different aspects of international politics.

So I think there’s something on conflicts within states, which is mainly ethnic conflicts, there’s stuff on the environment and politics, I think there’s stuff on foreign policy and then maybe on oil and politics.

And then there is our section, which is on religion and international politics and within that…that project received an external grant from a foundation of about $800,000 U.S.

or thereabouts and that made possible a series of these fellowships, of which I’m probably the only one who is an established academic.

The others would be post-doctoral, that is, they’ve got their Ph.D.s, but they have yet to have a full-time tenure-track position at a university.

So there would be mainly…I think there are about nine or ten of these post docs and most of the topics will be about Islam and politics, for obvious reasons.

Steve: But only Islam or will you be looking at other religions and politics as well?

Eric: Oh yeah, no, we will be looking at other religions.

It’s just that most of the fellows will be focused on Islam, but yeah, the theme will cover all of the major religions, particularly the monotheistic religions.

Steve: And, of course, you have spent a lot of time in an area where Islam is not a consideration and that is Northern Ireland.

And there, I’m not sure it is religion or what it is there.

Is it religion, I mean Catholics and Protestants, or is it communities that are struggling for a bigger part of the turf there or what’s…?

Eric: Yeah, I mean there are different ways in which religion is used in conflict situations.

I think in Northern Ireland religion itself is not currently a big driver of the conflict, it’s mainly a conflict between two ethnic groups.

The name Protestant and Catholic are really more symbols rather than descriptions of people’s faith, because a lot of so-called Protestants don’t attend church and similarly now a lot of Catholics don’t attend church.

The conflict is really not about theology, it’s about two different groups with their own separate myths of descent and so religion is just a symbol really.

It’s the same as former Yugoslavia, you know, you had Serbs who are nominally Orthodox, Croats or Catholic and Bosnians who are Muslim.

Actually, none of those groups were that motivated by religion, but they do have their ethnic boundaries which are marked out by religion.

Steve: It’s interesting too when we say ethnic, in fact, from sort of a genetic marker, DNA marker, point of view there’s not that much difference between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland or even in the Balkans between the Bosnians and the Croats and the Serbs and they speak the same language, essentially, give or take.

Eric: Right, yes, yeah.

Steve: And yet they have very strong senses of their own ethnic identity and ethnic boundaries and who’s one of them and who isn’t.

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: And religion is a big part of that.

Even though, as you say, the theology is not it’s very much a marker for them.

Eric: Yeah, it’s the way you tell your group apart from their group, because they don’t look different, the languages are not different, so the only real way you can tell…one of the strongest symbols is religion.

Steve: What was the story about the Sikh in Northern Ireland?

Eric: Oh yeah.

Well there’s a joke about a Hindu goes to Northern Ireland and he stopped on a housing estate in a poor area.

They ask him in their Ulster accent, “What religion are you?” (I’ll do my accent here.)

And he says, “I am a Hindu.” They say, “Are you a Protestant Hindu or a Catholic Hindu?” The joke being that they want to, obviously, find out if you’re Protestant or Catholic and they don’t care if you’re Hindu or not.

Steve: Okay.

So you’ll be doing this work and your family is going to be there with you.

So you had to rent out your place in London and you had to rent a place in Boston and it’s going to be, I guess, quite an experience for the family.

Eric: Oh yeah.

I mean it was a huge effort, a lot of planning, to make this move.

I mean a colleague of mine in my department said, “Yeah, I’d love that.

I know which part of that year that I’d like and that’s the sort of being at Harvard, but it’s the rest of it; I just don’t know where I’d start.” In terms of, you know, you have to rent your own house, rent a place long distance without seeing it; arrange schooling for the kids; you’ve got to ship certain things, take certain things, so it’s quite a big logistical exercise; cancel all your bills and renew them elsewhere.

So it’s a big move but, yeah, I think it’s worth it.

Steve: And then a year later you have to do it again.

Eric: Yeah, it will be slightly easier coming back, but going is quite tricky.

It was hard to rent our place because the property market has gone flat in London, flatter anyway, so it was hard to rent the place.

We only rented it I think a week before we were due to leave, so that was getting a bit hairy.

Steve: And do you think your kids both of whom…now they have Canadian parents, but they speak with a British accent.

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: And how long do you think it will be before they speak with an American accent?

Eric: Well, Stewart, who’s the older boy, tends to change his accent very quickly, so.

I mean we went on holiday to Spain and most of the boys his age there were from Liverpool, Manchester, places in northern England where they have a different accent from southern England around London.

He was speaking like them within a matter of days, so I expect he’ll be changing his accent within, certainly, a matter of weeks to sound like a Bostonian.

Steve: And just to finish out now, this whole issue then of religion which, as you point out, in many cases is more a matter of identity.

I think that’s even true with the Muslim religion to some extent.

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: It’s not so much a matter of theology as a matter of identity.

We’ve had all kinds of political activity or even military activity driven by ideology.

Now we have the rise of identity politics and splintered into smaller and smaller groups.

We see what’s happening now in those tragic events in the Caucasus and you throw religion in there and that’s just another.

And then you’ve got the traditional old, you know, super-power politics, strategic interests, between states.

It wasn’t so long ago that Francis Fukuyama wrote a book called The End of History.

Eric: Fukuyama, yeah.

Steve: I think we’re getting history back in spades, no?

Eric: Yeah, I think that’s true.

I think, though, the end of the Cold War has, you know, reduced super-power rivalry quite a bit to the extent that communism and capitalism are no longer really an issue.

So Fukuyama thought that because these ideologies were gone, the super-power rivalry was gone, that we would see an end to that conflict; however, I think into that vacuum has come religion, partly religion, as an ordering principle of international conflict, so you have Islam against the West, for example, in some areas.

Steve: But to what to extent?

Is it Islam or is it just sort of, you know, a lingering, anti-colonial, anti-western, resentment which takes different forms in different countries?

I mean we see it in China, we see it in Africa, no doubt.

And then at the other end of the spectrum you have these very specific ethnic conflicts like the one in the Caucasus right now where you have the Abkhazians and the Ossetians and the Georgians and God knows what other groups there are there that are all trying to stake out their turf.

And you’ve got larger powers like Russia trying to take advantage of this and the Americans playing their games with getting Georgia into NATO and stuff like that.

So, yeah, Islam is one factor, but it’s only one of many in the cocktail.

Eric: That’s true, that’s true.

I guess, mainly, if you look at the Middle East, for example, or Pakistan or some of these other countries in the Muslim world what you see though is a shift so, whereas, Pan-Arabism or non-allying socialism of the Nasser variety or Ba’ath.

Steve: Right.

Eric: The Saddam Hussein variety was the driving force.

Yes, it was just as anti-West, but those kinds of ideologies have crumbled and are being challenged by Islamism.

So now if you look at Palestinian nationalism it’s driven largely by a Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

So it’s Islamist and it’s talking about Palestinians as sort of the crusaders for Islam, carrying on a jihad for Islam, to protect the holy places.

And all that sort of rhetoric is much more religious and you see the suicide bombers are also buying into more of this Islamist rhetoric.

You could certainly say that religion is playing a role in Israel- Palestine, even though the conflict has been there since 1948.

So religion has added something to those ethnic conflicts; although, not everywhere, so the Caucasus is not an issue.

Steve: I mean it’s interesting, I think the Abkhazians are Islamic; I don’t think it’s an issue there.

It seems to be used by the Chechnians, certainly now we see the Uighurs in China are appealing to Islam as their sort of cry for support or solidarity from the vast Islamic community rather than just putting it in terms of their Uighur ethnic group trying to have a separate existence from the Chinese group, so they’re using religion more and more.

So, yeah, I guess the world is a complicated place.

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: And you’re going to be doing research to see how religion impacts on politics.

And I think at that maybe we should end our discussion today and, hopefully, we can have another one.

Eric: Okay.

Steve: Thank you very much.

Eric: Thanks a lot.

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Steve: Here, today, I’m very lucky because I have my two sons here.

Eric is visiting from London and, of course, Mark lives in Vancouver, but he happens to be at our house this evening.

So there’s the three of us and what are we going to talk about?

First of all, should we talk about our crab adventure?

Eric: Sure.

Steve: Alright.

Well, no, we won’t, let’s talk a little bit about what you do.

Eric, what do you do, tell us?

Eric: Well, I’m an academic, which means I teach at university.

I teach Politics with a lot of History mixed in.

I do, also, a fair bit of research on issues pertaining to demography, religion and politics, amongst others.

Steve: Mark, what do you think of your brother being an academic?

Mark: Well, you know, I’ve never actually seen him teaching his classes, but sounds like a lot of hogwash to me.

Steve: Now “hogwash” is a very important term which people should learn.

It means nonsense; would that be a fair term?

Mark: I think that’s a pretty good approximation.

Certainly they, at their university, find lots of things to talk about, but whether, in fact, it’s of any great benefit…that’s still up in the air.

Steve: Eric, would you have any comments to come back with on that?

Eric: Let’s just say that he wouldn’t get in the door.

I know he went to the esteemed Ivy League University known as Yale, but I also know that he spent most of his time in courses like football skills and tapping for credits.

Steve: Mark, have you got a comeback to that?

Mark: Well, I mean, of course those courses don’t exist at Yale, but I think we’re skirting the main issue, which is we have yet to figure out what it is exactly that you do.

Steve: However, you have to admit Mark that one of the bright spots is that because Eric is a professor in England we’re not paying for it.

Eric, tell us a little bit about what exactly your academic activities involve and would you think that your students benefit tremendously from the opportunity to hear you, you know, elucidate certain fundamental concepts of life to them?

Eric: Well I’ve heard my students describe my lectures as an epiphany in their lives.

I would say no one who comes through my lectures comes out the other side unchanged in some fundamental, positive way.

So let’s just say that, you know, those of you out there who have a desire to be enlightened, Birkbeck College, University of London, Department of Politics and Sociology.

Steve: Now I understand Eric, if we can come back to you right away here, that you are a bit of an expert on Northern Ireland.

I have even seen a video of you interviewed on British television and I think one of the major things that you have achieved is that you have developed a bit of an Ulster accent.

Is this significant?

This is an important part of your research?

Eric: Well, absolutely, and before I do get into my Ulster accent I would urge all of you to go out immediately and purchase my book entitled simply: The Orange Order: A Contemporary Northern Irish History.

Now to the peace process in Northern Ireland.

That’s my Ulster accent for ya’.

But, well, what happened really was a concerted campaign by the republican movement born in the tradition of, the physical-force tradition, blood-soaked tradition, attempting to subvert British democracy in the North and the Unionist population resisting this assault on our civil liberties.

Anyway, that’s…you get the picture.

Steve: We get the picture.

Okay, that’s good.

But, again, getting back to Eric, since we don’t always have the opportunity to talk to him and, perhaps, in a little more serious vein, a lot of your work has to do with the impact of demographics on changes in our society.

I believe that one of your articles was actually featured in Newsweek magazine and can you give us…is it possible…I just suddenly spring this on you, but to give us a bit of a sense of the kind of work that you’re doing right now?

Eric: Yeah.

The argument is, basically, that even if some people leave organized religion, because religious people have more children than nonreligious people, they can more than make up for that loss to seculars.

And so, over time, you would have increasing religiosity, as I think we’re going to see in Europe through demography, so that means immigration and also religious people having higher fertility and the same thing happens in other parts of the world like Israel, United States and the Muslim world.

Part of this whole argument is that far from seeing the end of religion, which was prophesied by many writers in the last couple hundred years, actually, we may see a resurgence of religion, especially fundamentalist religion.

Steve: So what you’re saying is that amongst call it the intellectual class there’s a certain disaffection from religion, science-based if you want.

We’ve had some books published recently by people like Richard Dawkins and others and, of course, for certain kinds of people this confirms their call it secular beliefs.

But the reality in terms of demographics is that the religious people, who are not at all persuaded by these arguments, are increasing faster than the secular people and that’s true in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam.

I don’t know about Buddhism or Hinduism, but it’s fairly wide-spread.

Eric: Well that’s right.

Because, if you think about it, all religions encourage people to have children, encourage the women to stay at home rather than go out to work and discourage contraception and abortion, so it makes sense.

And, also, they’re more family-oriented and long-term oriented, so they’re less individualistic.

So it makes sense that they would be…if they’re able to retain their children to any degree they will expand, so that’s the argument really and that’s sort of what I’m researching.

Steve: Well when you say retain you mean, in other words, keep them as believers.

Eric: Yes, yeah.

Steve: Right.

And I know I’ve been at presentations that you’ve made and you don’t attempt or you don’t want to make any value judgments on all of this, you just want to explain the trends that are happening out there.

Is that correct?

Eric: Yeah.

I mean, of course, you know, for secular people it could be quite scary, but my only job is to sort of look at the trends and try and draw conclusions from that, so, yeah.

Steve: Now, Mark, from our perspective here in Canada enjoying nature here, today we went out and checked our crab traps; in fact, Eric and I, we put out a crab trap.

We rowed all the way out there to do that, rowed back in in our little rowboat, went out again and found that the crabs…there was one crab that was too small and our bait, which was our fish scraps, was gone; we had to row back in, put out more fish scraps.

We went out again today and the buoy, the crab trap, the line, everything was gone.

That’s reality for us.

So getting back to Vancouver reality, Mark, could we get some learned comments from you on what you heard from your esteemed and, you know…

Eric: …eminent…

Steve: …eminent scholar brother?

Would you like to bring us back to earth here?

Mark: Well, I first want to start with the fishing, crabbing story, crabbing expedition that you just described.

It’s probably worth mentioning that shall we call it the “skill level” (in quotes) of the crabbers was probably on the low end.

Steve: Basic?

Mark: Ah, nonexistent and that certainly played a big part in the lack of success of the crabbing expedition.

When I arrived here for dinner this evening I was led to believe that perhaps the Coast Guard or some such organization had made off with your trap, but I think the more likely explanation is that the line was floating and got cut by a passing boat.

At any rate, the net result is the same, no buoy, no line, no crab trap, no crabs.

I can’t say that I’m surprised, but, you know, I’m sure that you’ve all come away from this experience…

Eric: Point of information, point of information…

Mark: …much wiser.

Eric: Point of information please, am I to take it from this that you have snared many crabs in your lifetime and, in fact, are a bit of a professional?

Steve: I can answer that question.

First of all, I will hear from Mark who has snared crabs when he had the…

Eric: One-inchers?

Steve: …help of his wife who not only knows about crabbing, but can grab them from the behind and avoid getting the pincers snapping at her fingers, which is a skill that I have not yet acquired; so Mark is skilled.

But we have caught a crab, but I think in retrospect that the crab that we ate and which was delicious was probably undersized.

Because what I’ve now discovered after our defeat in crabbing — I went to the Internet and I looked up the instructions for crabbing here locally — you’re not allowed to take females, you’re not allowed to take any crab that is under 165 millimeters in the width of the shell.

I thought it was six inches, but six inches is 150 millimeters so, in fact, it’s actually 165 millimeters.

What I also discovered was that you need a permit, which we don’t have, and you can only take males.

You can’t take females, so you can only take males that are larger than 165 millimeters.

I can’t say for sure that the crab that I ate the last time wasn’t a female smaller than that; we’re learning.

We could have ended up in jail, so yeah, we’re learning.

Mark: You realize this is being recorded.

Steve: Is it just me?

Eric: I know.

Mark: I hope the RCMP doesn’t get a hold or the Coast Guard.

Eric: Department of Fisheries.

Mark: Department of Fisheries…

Steve: That’s true.

Mark: …isn’t online studying English and…

Steve: I was only joking.

But, no, we’re going to do it again.

We’re going to get a proper buoy.

Apparently, you’re supposed to have a brightly-colored buoy.

You’re supposed to put your name and phone number on it, you’re supposed to have proper weights on your line so that they can’t be cut by passing motorboats, get a license, I’m even going to get some pincers, you know, some prongs or thongs so that I can grab the crab.

Mark: Tongs.

Steve: What?

Tongs…

Mark: A thong is something else.

Steve: …so I don’t have to grab it from behind, which is not something that I want to do.

Although, I gather that both your wife and your children are quite adept at grabbing the crab from behind and…

Mark: Yeah, they have no problems grabbing the crabs and rubbing their bellies and putting them to sleep.

Steve: So rubbing their bellies puts them to sleep?

Mark: Well, yeah, if you know what you’re doing.

I mean I certainly don’t do it myself, but my wife and kids do and that’s before my wife chops them in half with a hatchet.

Steve: Eric, any comments on this?

Eric: Well, it was my first experience crabbing.

Actually, I thought yesterday we had a nice juicy one, but apparently my brother Mark scuttled that and I’m not sure I forgive him yet because actually it looked plenty big enough.

Steve: Well we were very happy.

We rode out there with your son, Stewie, and we snared this one crab and he looked pretty big and mean to us.

Lo and behold, Mark shows up in his kayak – in my kayak, of course, but he comes in a kayak — and says no, no, no, we can’t have it.

We were very reluctant to throw that crab back in the water.

Eric: I think we would have thrown Mark back into the drink had it not been for a bit of goodwill.

Mark: Let us say there was grudging assent to put that crab back in the water.

But, you know, well, what’s right is right and, you know, there’s no point breaking the law.

Steve: Probably.

Mark: Just in case the fisheries are listening.

Eric: All I know is it will be a long time before we catch a crab again, since our crab equipment is at the bottom of Howe Sound.

Steve: Okay, I think we’ve covered a number of subjects from Ulster to crabbing and our reunion here.

I’m very happy to have my two sons visiting and the sun is setting and, of course, we’ve got the women doing the dishes; that’s pretty good.

Mark: Well, you know, everything is right in the world.

Steve: Except they’re coming in to get us, so bye for now.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Mark: Hi everyone.

Steve: Hi Mark.

Mark: Hi Steve, ready for another thrilling episode of EnglishLingQ?

Steve: Well yeah and I’m very grateful to Anna.

There are a few people who send us questions regularly, which is great.

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve: If I, you know, were learning a language and maybe I should do this on RussianLingQ is ask questions.

Then I get my questions answered and I can then record it and it helps me on things that are important to me.

What was important to Anna?

Mark: Anna wrote on the Forum and she, first of all, always talks about triads, but we’ll touch on that later.

But the three words that she has trouble with — and I assume she has trouble telling them apart or knowing when to use which one — and the three words were: “yell”, “scream” and “holler”.

Steve: Right. I guess you could throw “shout” in there too…

Mark: …for that matter.

Steve: “Cry out.”

Mark: “Shriek.”

Steve: “Shriek”, “scream.”

Mark: “Howl.”

Steve: Stop yelling at me.

Stop hollering at me.

Stop screaming.

Mark: Stop shrieking at me.

Steve: Stop shrieking. No, well “shriek” is a little different.

Mark: But it can be used.

Steve: Well yeah, but shriek suggests a very high-pitched.

Mark: That’s true.

Steve: Like a cat or a bird; whereas, yell and holler are the same.

Mark: Yell and holler, yeah.

Steve: If you’re playing golf and you’re far away and you said “Hey, George!”  They say “Stop yelling on the golf course” or “Don’t shout on the golf course.”

Mark: However, I would say that a holler is usually directed at someone.

Steve: Aha.

Mark: Whereas a yell does not necessarily direct it at someone, you could just be yelling.

Steve: Well you holler in pain, you yell in pain.

Mark: Yeah, that’s true.

Steve: You scream in pain.

Mark: Well I guess that’s true.

I would normally use holler though in the context where I was hollering at someone, like hollering to get their attention; whereas, yelling, I could just be yelling swear words at the guy.

I wouldn’t be hollering swear words at the guy, not that I would do that.

Steve: In the interest of avoiding splitting hairs, I would say that “yell”, “holler” and “shout” are as close to being the same as can be.

Mark: Yeah, that’s true.

Steve: Scream is getting closer to shriek.

Yell suggests that you’re in control.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Although you may not be.

Yell in pain, holler in pain, but scream suggests you’re either in extreme pain or you’re slightly, emotionally, not slightly, very upset.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Screaming implies some emotional or painful situation, less controlled, but they’re so very similar.

If those are the only words that she can’t tell apart in the English language…I mean I don’t see that the distinctions are that important.

Mark: No and they’re interchangeable.

Like people talk about give me a holler, as in give me a phone call.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Give me a shout.

Steve: Right.

Mark: I mean it’s the same.

Steve: We don’t say give me a scream though.

Mark: We don’t say give me a scream.

Steve: We don’t say give me a yell either.

Mark: No.

Steve: That’s interesting, yeah, so that’s a very interesting phrasal verb.

Give me a shout, give me a holler, give me a call, all mean the same thing.

It means give me a phone call.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So that’s a sort of very idiomatic use.

Give me a shriek, no.

It’s interesting you mentioned Anna too used the word “triad”, because it’s a group of three.

Again, “triad” has a very specific meaning in English.

It needn’t have that meaning, but the meaning it has assumed is…

Mark: …Chinese gangs, basically, Chinese triads, so here if you hear “triad” that is the meaning that is assumed.

So maybe in the future, Anna, call it something else, group of three, trio.

Steve: Trio is good enough.

A duo, a trio, is good enough, yeah.

You know it’s interesting with these phrasal verbs, they often come up amongst English learners and everyone is concerned about learning these phrasal verbs.

I, actually…because I’ve bought all kinds of books on grammar and the different things just to understand what it’s all about.

And so I have a dictionary here, The Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary: Over 5,000 Phrasal Verbs.

I think if I were an English learner I wouldn’t find this all that useful.

I bought a similar book for Russian.

It was a book which explained the, you know, words in Russian that have similar roots and I find that for a while I kept it by my toilet.

You know, a good place to read, but you can never remember anything.

You can never remember anything that you read from those things.

Mark: No, absolutely not.

Steve: You have to learn it from context.

So I open a page at random and it’s got here phrasal verb “activator”, a special feature that Longman gives you.

So they have “To put on formal or special clothes; to dress up.”  Okay, then it says “To tart yourself up.”  Like I would never use that.

Mark: No.

Steve: And it’s such a specific…first of all, only a “tart” is a prostitute.

So it suggests some…but it’s come to be…so if a woman is getting dressed up and she’s putting on makeup and whatever, making herself look nice, that jokingly we say to “tart” yourself up.

Mark: Right.

Steve: But, I mean I don’t think that’s necessary to learn.

I think it’s more useful if you come across that in your reading, so then you have a context.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And then if you relate it to a specific story, then it’s possible you’ll remember it.

But if you just read in the book “to tart yourself up”, you have no sense of the context.

Oh, this is one of the ways of saying “dress up”.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So I’m a guy, I’m 50 years old, I going to put a jacket on, I’m going to tart myself up.

People would look at you.

Mark: Absolutely.

Steve: But some of them are good, some of them are good, but as I always say, you kind of have to learn them from context.

Mark: I mean the point is with any of those books and I’ve bought them myself in some of the different languages that I’ve been learning and, yeah, as you say, when you talk about a dictionary the minute you look something up it sounds great.

Yeah, boy, that sounds really good.

You close the book, it’s gone.

Steve: Right.

Mark: Completely gone.

Steve: But, hopefully, here in this discussion we can create a bit of context, an episode, so that people’s episodic memory can kick in…

Mark: Exactly.

Steve: …and they can remember.

So here I have this page, for example, “keep”.

“Keep” is a great word in terms of different ways that it’s used.

It’s not obvious, like you “keep after”.

You “keep after” someone.

Do you like to keep after your kids to do their homework?

Mark: Right.

Steve: To keep after them.

But “keep away” is you want to keep someone away, “keep back”, “keep someone down”, “keep up” on something is to stay up-to-date.

Mark: Stay with it, yeah.

Steve: Stay with it.

So, now whether these things could be learned from the dictionary or not I don’t know.

I mean the ideal situation is like Anna’s situation where she’s come across words, presumably in different context, and she’s wondering if there’s a difference between “yell”, “scream” and “holler”, because she’s seen yell sometimes or scream sometimes or holler or shout.

And so yeah, if I’m learning another language and I see words that from the context seem to have similar meanings and I want to get a sense of, you know, is there a further refinement, a further distinction of meaning because I’ve only seen the word three times, the native speaker has seen the word a thousand times, they know what that distinction is, so it’s a good thing to ask.

So, you know, the ideal thing for us is not to read examples out of a dictionary, but to get some examples from people who are encountering these.

But on the subject of yell and holler, you were talking about an example when you were playing hockey in Italy?

Mark: Well, just the topic of conversation just reminded me of a coach that I had when I was playing hockey in Italy.

He was actually Slovenian and he was a little bit nutty.

He would just yell and he would yell in a combination of Italian-Slovenian with some English swear words mixed in and it would just be constant.

He would be barking at the referee, he’d be barking at us the players.

Anyway, that wasn’t one of my most enjoyable hockey seasons, but certainly the topic brings to mind this guy.

Steve: So you say that he was yelling at the referee, hollering at the referee, shouting at the referee, screaming at the referee or all of the above.

Mark: In fact, shrieking at the referee or at his own players.

Yeah, I would say he did all of those, yeah, and didn’t know that much about hockey, which was even worse.

In general, that brings to mind that guy; although, I mean I certainly had lots of hockey coaches that did a lot of yelling.

Steve: Asiago is a nice town too.

Mark: Oh, Asiago was very…

Steve: For those people who haven’t been to Italy it’s a lovely country, lovely food, lovely old cities and pleasant countryside.

Mark: The atmosphere is just kind of lighter, just kind of fun and, yeah, we had a great time in Asiago.

Steve: I remember once…I went several times and once the weather was fairly warm.

I don’t know if it was the spring or the autumn and I was there with Eric my older son, Mark’s older brother.

No, no, the first time Eric wasn’t there.

But I went jogging, I went jogging and I came back via the cemetery and unbeknownst to me at 5:00 o’clock every evening at the cemetery the loudspeakers blare out the national anthem.

So I was just running along…

Mark: Well they had had some big battle up there…

Steve: That’s what it was.

Mark: …between Italy and Austria, I can’t remember.

Steve: Well in the First World War.

Mark: First World War, yeah.

Steve: Well Italy would have fought on the same side as Austria.

Mark: Okay.

Steve: I’m trying to remember, weren’t they part of the axis fighting the Russians?

Mark: I guess they were.

Steve: I can’t remember.

Mark: Right. At any rate, there’s a big cemetery up there.

Steve: Or maybe it was before the War of Independence against the Austrians, I don’t know.

Mark: Maybe.

Steve: No, I guess they were fighting against the Austrians in the First World War.

Mark: Yeah, you know what, I can’t remember now.

Steve: I can’t remember my history anymore.

I think they were on the winning side that’s why they got Trieste, much to the annoyance of the Yugoslavs.

Not Trieste…yeah, Trieste and Fumane.

Anyway, so then all of a sudden this loudspeaker blares the national anthem and I liked it after a while.

I would like to go jogging and then, you know, jogging past the cemetery and then the national anthem comes on in this beautiful, hillside town.

Mark: Twice a day, I think.

It came on in the morning too didn’t it or was it just at night?

I can’t remember, but yeah.

Steve: But the other time we were there with Eric in the winter and we went cross-country skiing.

There was a tremendous trail, it’s about 30 kilometers long and then there are little stations, sort of alpine little huts that you can stop in to get away from the cold; although, when you’re cross-country skiing that’s not an issue, you’re pretty warm.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And they had water there and then we just…and there was a whole circuit.

I think…I can’t remember, it was 20 or 30 kilometers.

Mark: Wow.

Steve: But we did it, it was just phenomenal, really, really nice.

Mark: Yeah, no, I never got to do any of those activities I was always playing hockey there, but yeah, that does sound pretty neat.

I mean it was nice up there.

Steve: Oh, it’s beautiful.

I remember once we were, again, with Eric and with my wife, your mother, and we visited this town, it was Bressanone also known as Brixen, which is in the German-speaking part of Italy.

Mark: Right.

Steve: We had booked because we were coming down from Austria or somewhere, so we had booked a hotel on the Internet.

Yeah, they had Internet in those days, but it was an expensive hotel.

We got there and we kind of found it was…we don’t like staying in these hoity-toity hotels.

Mark: Right.

Steve: And so we drove in there and we got some dirty looks because we weren’t dressed, you know, quite the way we should be.

Mark: Oh, I see.

Steve: We got some dirty looks.

And so then we went for a walk in this old town, lovely, lovely, town and we found a hotel that was just as good for half the price.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So…no, I got it wrong.

We had checked into the hotel, we were dressed in somewhat grubby, not grubby, but ski clothes.

Mark: Right.

Steve: We went out for a walk and all the people there had their fancy clothes on, they’d been out shopping or, you know, whatever.

Mark: Which is what you do in Italy.

Steve: Yeah, they had their Loden coats…

Mark: Right.

Steve: …elegant and this, that.

We were staying at the hotel and this lady came in.

The manageress came to us and said “Are you staying here?”  Well, you know, like the assumption is we’re not.

Mark: Right.

Steve: So why are you loitering in my lobby?

And so anyway, my wife gave her some, appropriately, unfriendly comment and then we went out…

Mark: Your comment was “Not for long.”

Steve: That’s right, not for long.

So then we went out and found a cheaper hotel and we moved.

Mark: Right.

Steve: Yeah.

No, that was…we were kind of…I mean that’s pretty bad, assuming that you’re not staying here.

Like so what?

Like even if I’m not staying here I didn’t see a sign outside saying “No Bums Allowed” or “No Foreigners Allowed” or something, you know?

“Are you staying here?”

Mark: I know.

Steve: Anyway, that was Bressanone, but that whole area is just beautiful.

Remember when we had a flat tire in Bolzano?

Mark: Was it a flat tire?

Steve: One of the issues was a flat tire or the car…

Mark: The car wouldn’t start because there was a big blizzard and my car had no snow tires.

Steve: That’s what it was.

Mark: It was just a beater that I had there.

We had no snow tires, so we had to get chains, but it was over Christmas or New Year’s or everything was closed, I can’t remember.

That’s another story.

Steve: Do you remember the time we were in Bolzano having dinner?

Were you there with us?

Mark: And the Christmas tree lit the curtains on fire?

Steve: The Christmas tree caught fire.

Mark: Oh, the Christmas tree lit on fire.

Steve: The Christmas tree, because they had this lovely custom in German-speaking countries that they put candles on the Christmas tree.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: But the Christmas tree is inside this heated room for day after day, so it gets pretty dry.

Mark: Well yeah, I mean it’s impossible to keep a Christmas tree wet.

I mean when you have a live one you’re refilling it with water all the time and it doesn’t take long before its dried out.

Steve: So the tree caught fire, the curtains caught fire, the restaurant filled with smoke and we took off out of the restaurant as fast as we could get out.

Mark: That’s for sure.

Steve: Anyway.

Mark: Anyway, that’s…

Steve: It’s only a few of the many, but we didn’t holler, we didn’t shout and we didn’t scream.

Mark: No.

Steve: We just got out.

Mark: That’s right.

Steve: And I think we had some sparks of whatever on our coats. Did we?

Mark: Yeah we did, actually.

Steve: We did, yes.

Mark: The coats were kind of wrecked.

Steve: Yeah.

Mark: But I don’t think there was anything we could do about it and we couldn’t find…it was Christmas Eve.

Steve: Right.

Mark: We couldn’t find another place to eat.

I think we ended up going to a Chinese restaurant.

Steve: Which one can find in every single town in the world.

Mark: I know.

Steve: Is there a place in the world that has no Chinese restaurant?

Mark: I know.

Steve: Anyway.

Mark: Anyway.

Yeah, well with that we’ve reached the end.

That’s probably about the perfect length for someone’s commute.

Steve: Okay. We wandered a little bit on different subjects.

Mark: Yeah.

Steve: But we do really appreciate people telling us what words or phrases or even subjects they want us to talk about because it’s hard for us to know exactly what people are interested to hear about.

Mark: Exactly, so we’ll keep looking for your feedback and we’ll talk to you next time.

Steve: Okay.

Mark: Bye-bye.

Steve: Bye.