Why is this one called The Ice Cream Episode? You’ll have to listen to the whole thing to find out.

Right-click here to download this episode.
FULL TRANSCRIPT NOW AVAILABLE BELOW!

Introduction
In this episode I decided I’d give myself a challenge: could I just talk non-stop for 45 minutes without planning anything in advance, and keep it interesting? You can decide for yourself if I was successful or not.

I don’t actually teach you anything in this episode, but if you’re a good learner of English you’ll just use this as a chance to listen to 45 minutes of natural authentic English from a native speaker. You might be able to just pick up some expressions, notice features of pronunciation or just enjoy listening to me ramble on about things like Blackberrys Vs iPhones or the way robots always turn evil in movies. I hope it’s useful and/or interesting for you!

Good learners of English try to notice blocks of language. These blocks of language can be certain grammatical structures, phrases, vocabulary or just sentences which contain new words or complex structures. When you notice these bits of language, you can analyse them yourself. What kind of grammar is being used? What does this tell you about your own understanding of how the language works? What exactly do the expressions mean? How can you use them yourself? How would you use the language to talk about your own life or experience?

Here’s a challenge: In this podcast I want you to try to notice some ‘blocks of language’. When you find one you like, just write it as a comment on the bottom of the episode. If lots of people write a block of language from the podcast as a comment it will help other people to pick up vocabulary and expressions. I’ve given you some from the first 10 minutes or so already. You can read them below. Please add some more by writing comments with the language blocks you have heard.

Also, you’ll have to listen to the whole thing to find out why it is called The Ice Cream Episode.

Cheers!

Luke

P.S. A VERY HELPFUL LISTENER HAS WRITTEN A FULL TRANSCRIPT FOR THIS EPISODE. IT MUST HAVE TAKEN A LONG TIME TO WRITE IT. NOW YOU CAN READ IT HERE:

THE ICE CREAM EPISODE – FULL TRANSCRIPT

You’re listening to Luke’s English Podcast. For more information visit teacherluke .podomatic.com

Hello, you’re listening to Luke’s English podcast. This is a podcast and it’s made by someone called Luke.
That’s me and you’re listening to it and it’s about English. So, that’s why I said that you’re listening to Luke’s English podcast. I expect you’re listening to it. That’s normally what you do with a podcast. You kind of listen to it, you maybe… you would download it as well, you might have uploaded it onto your iPhone or iPad or other mp3 device. There are plenty of other mp3 devices out there. It’s not just Apple products despite what you might have
led…been led to believe. There’s lots of them, you’ve got like ones made by Sony and Panasonic and other Japanese companies. Not to mention all of the other companies from different places on the world. Right now in this episode I’ve kind of set myself a stupid random challenge and that is, I’m going to see if I can just keep talking for about forty five minutes. I haven’t planned anything. I haven’t written anything down. I’ve got no preparation at all. I’m just going to see if I can just ramble on about not very much for at least forty five minutes. Now, if you are a regular listener of this podcast you’ll know that at the beginning of each episode there’s often about ten minutes of me just sort of talking and in a slightly self indulgent way, just talking about stuff for about ten minutes before you actually get to the real content. Now, if you don’t like that part of the podcast, if you think that’s boring and you kind of skip through it then you’re probably not going to enjoy this one because I haven’t written any vocabulary notes. I’ve got no phrasal verbs, I’ve got no idioms or anything. I’ve got no useful expressions written down which I’m going to teach you. I’m just going to keep talking. Why am I doing this? I don’t know, I’ve just actually just decided to do it this evening and maybe it’s because I just like the sound of my voice. That could be it. You know, yeah maybe that’s it! Because it would be sad if that’s the only reason I’m doing it because if I like, if I just like the sound of my own voice that means I’m a bit egotistical, but maybe that’s the reason. I don’t know.
Another reason is that I want to do a podcast tonight but I just can’t really be bothered to prepare something because when I do one of these usually, I kind of sit down. I have to think of lots of ideas and I choose a topic or choose an idea and I think, right, I wanna do a podcast about that. And then I have to plan it and prepare it. So, if I have chosen that subject let’s say for example ‘The human body’ right? The human body, that’s actually an idea I had on the bus today. So, I… the human body, that would be an interesting idea for an episode. So what I would then do is think… okay, the human body is the subject, so what am I going to do? Body parts? Parts of the body? I could do that. I could teach you all of the different body parts but actually that’s not really
very useful, not very easy when it’s just audio because really the best way of teaching you different parts of the body would be to kind of show you the different parts of the body on a picture or something like that. I can’t really do that with an audio podcast like this. So I thought, hey, I know, I could do a sort of maybe the verbs, different verbs that you use when describing what different parts of your body do. You know? That would be brilliant wouldn’t it? That would be a really good, really useful podcast.
Well sorry, no, that’s not what you’re going to get with this one. You just going to get lots of random nonsense that’s err, probably doesn’t really help you. Unless of course you think ‘Well just listening to someone who’s just talking constantly like this without really planning anything. Just really naturally, sort of, speaking.’ I don’t know, maybe that isn’t really natural when you have to just talk for forty five minutes. Not very often. But anyway, maybe just listening to someone, just trying to create some continuous, like, discourse, you know just producing a continuous flow of spoken discourse. That might be for some, somehow useful. Maybe if you’re one of those clever
learners of English, you will be able to just sort of pick up bits of vocabulary or pick up expressions that I use to kind of construct this continuous flow of speech and you know if you’re clever as a learner of English you’ll be able to notice little bits of language that I’m using to give structure to what I’m saying to link things and so on. That’s what good learners of English do, right? You kind of notice bits of language and pick them up and start using them yourselves. So really, I suppose in this episode I’m leaving it up to you. It’s up to you to do the kind of language work. I’m just presenting you with forty five minutes of kind of natural British English and it’s up to you to start noticing structures, noticing bits of language and picking them up, right?
So consider this to be a sample of forty five minutes sample of unbroken spoken English, which you can just analyze as much as you like. I’m not going to do any of that, analysis work tonight, just because you know, I don’t wanna sit there for two or three hours this evening, writing down expressions and writing down examples and definitions and then recording it and then uploading it. It could take me kind of four hours or something, to do it. You know, I’ve got stuff to do this evening you know. I’ve got to do my laundry, I’ve got to do. I’ve go to cook for myself and eat, you know. I have to eat, you know, like at least three times a day and I need to drink water, You know.
Those are basic things that I have to do just to survive. I don’t necessarily have lots of time to sit down and prepare and record a podcast. I imagine… I expect that some people who are listening to this will going to be really bored and frustrated with this podcast. Just because there is no real content. It’s just me talking in a very self indulgent way but who cares? Right?
If you’re that kind of person, just, you know stop listening really. But if on the other hand you’re one of these fabulous learners of English who’s able to just tune in mentally to some, you know spoken English you might be able to pick up some really useful things and just generally practice your listening. I mean, it’s probably… it could be a good idea.
Okay, right. So, what might I talk about?
Well, You know I’m just going to basically ramble stupid stuff, you know for forty five minutes like I’ve said just to see if I can do it. It’s just a challenge really. It’s just a personal challenge. Can I just keep talking without stopping for forty five minutes? And hopefully keep it interesting. It could be difficult, particularly the kind of ‘keeping it in interesting’ bit. I think that might be a bit of a challenge.
I think I could probably keep talking for ages but whether or not it would be interesting, that’s another question.
We will see. We will see at the end. You can decide whether it was interesting or not. I imagine, if you just decide to stop listening you’ll think: Oh no, that wasn’t interesting. That was just stupid and you know a waste of time, waste of effort but you know, maybe not.
I kind of… I’m kind of repeating myself here. I expect that would be a general theme of this episode. Me, just making the same points over and over and over again.
So yeah, I think that in almost every episode of Luke’s English podcast, almost every episode, I teach you something. There’s usually some vocabulary or something like that. So you know, you can just go back over those old ones. And there’s loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of language you can get from that.
This one is not one of those episodes. It’s just a kind of rambling stream of consciousness let’s say. No preparation at all. So it’s just, you know, it’s just as it’s occurs to me, as it were.
Now what I might do is when I’ve finished doing all this talking, I might listen back to it again and just write down some expressions that I’ve used and then just put them on the podcast. And that way you can kind of read the expressions, look at them, think about how they’re used, listen to me using them and that will help you to kind of pick them up and so on.
Yeah, so let’s see. Sitting here on my desk, I recently bought a desk for my living room and it’s revolutionized this room because now finally I actually have a place where I can sit like a civilized person. I’m not just sitting on the sofa like some kind of coach potato. I’ve actually got a desk where I can sit up right and it’s good for my back you know, because sitting on a sofa recording a podcast or sitting on the sofa whenever I use the computer, I’m always like hunched over you know with my back bent, It’s like a very uncomfortable position and I get pains in my neck, you know I get like aches and pains in my spine from sitting in uncomfortable positions using the computer. So finally I thought, right, that’s enough! I’ve had enough of all this leaning over.
I’m going to get a desk. So I bought a tiny little desk from Argos.
Now Argos is one of those shops like a high street shop but it’s very clever really, Argos, because you go in there and instead of seeing all the stuff on the selves and having to walk around the shop.
Instead they’ve just got a massive catalog. Yeah right and it’s like the bible, really! I mean, if you’re in to shopping, then the Argos catalog is basically the bible for some, for a materialistic person and you can just flick through the bible and they’ve got everything in this catalogue. Just everything!
Well, you know within reason, not absolutely everything and I mean they haven’t got for example an eight legged pink flying elephant. You know I don’t think so.
I mean, I haven’t checked the index for an eight legged pink flying elephant recently. They might have started doing that. I don’t know. But they don’t have absolutely everything. They’ve just got pretty much everything you need for your life. So if you’re going to go camping, you’re going to get all your camping equipment, if you’re going to go to University, you can get all your dictionaries and your pens and paper and stuff like that. If you play computer games you can get PlayStation 3 and all the latest games and controllers and stuff. You get the idea, don’t you? I think you can get pretty much everything there including furniture. So I thought, right. I’ll just go to Argos. Let’s keep it simple. I don’t want some complicated drawn out shopping experience where I have to walk
around the, you know lots of floors on the department store somewhere trying to find the perfect desk. I don’t have time. I can’t be bothered to do that. So instead I have just realized actually that, when I’m recording this, there might be people outside because I live in a block of flats there might be people outside waiting for the lift who can hear me speaking because I do speak quite loud when I’m recording this. And they are probably listening to me thinking: ‘God, the guy who lives in this flat is a real weirdo, just talking to himself.
Maybe this is very strange behavior, I don’t know. Maybe this means I’m a bit crazy. Who cares? I don’t really care what other people think that much, to be honest. So screw them. I don’t care about them. Anyway ,where was I? I was talking about the Argos experience. So I thought , keep it simple. I’m just going to go to Argos and get like a really cheap desk. This desk here it cost me about thirty pounds. Thirty pounds is cheap. So I had to build it myself. You know, you have… Again one of the clever things about Argos is they’ve just kind of give you the furniture but it’s in a pack and you have to take it home and build it yourself. I guess that’s one of the reasons why it’s cheaper. If it was already made then it would be more expensive, right?
So you go in, you choose the thing you want from the catalog, you mark it down on a piece of paper, you take that to the cash register, and there is usually a person, you know there is a person on the cash register . Usually some sort of miserable person like sales assistant who all day, they just stand there at this counter, just taking money from people. And it must be so boring. I mean, I did work in a shop actually for a year doing just that, just after University. I didn’t know what to do. So I just worked in a shop for a year. I mean I just stood there and I became like a robot. It’s like ‘Hello, next customer please, hello Sir, did you find anything you’re looking for? Thank you, that’s £9.99, please. Thank you. Would you like the receipt in the bag? Thanks very much. Next customer please!’
You know this kind of thing just THAT for nine hours a day, everyday for a year starts to root your brain.
So, understandably that people who serve you… Oops, I just pulled the headphones out. Oh dear, it’s all going wrong. I have some technical difficulties. Okay dear okay, I’m be back in business.
So the people who work in these places they are not exactly the most sort of motivated, enthusiastic people in the world. So they take your money, they give you a piece of paper and they say something like, “please go to collection point 3B, it should be ready in about fifteen minutes! Thank you. Next costumer please.” And so you go to collection point 3B and it’s all a bit mysterious, like a bit of a mysterious process that you have to go through.. You kind of stand there with a code number and you go up to the counter and you say:’ “I’m 3B’ This is connection point 3B. I’m costumer 3N709. I think you have a package for me”. And hopefully then they will find the package in the store room and bring it out for you. There actually is a so strange pleasure, a strange joy in being given your purchase in a box over a counter. It feels
like a sort of secret transaction. Like you’re some kind of a secret agent. You kind of give them a code number and they give you a kind of brown box and you don’t even need to say anything to each other. You just take the box and disappear. I mean, it’s pretty cool, pretty fun. You know in its own unique way and that’s it.
So I got this desk, and that’s cool isn’t it? Yeah, that is brilliant, really.
On my desk here, I’ve got my phone. It’s a Blackberry. Now, recently I got this Blackberry. I used to be an iPhone user. Now, we all know how brilliant the iPhone is. It’s amazing. Oh God, have you checked my new iPhone ? Oh, it’s so good. I didn’t realize how great it was. You know, it’s absolutely fantastic ! That’s what people say. It’s like the iPhone conversation, which everyone has to have at some point. You’ve probably had the iPhone conversation yourself. That’s the one where you kind of see a friend of yours who has recently got an iPhone and they say: ‘Oh, it’s brilliant, oh, I absolutely love it, you know, it’s just intuitive. It really is, the design of it, it’s so intuitive!’
It IS brilliant and very intuitive and user friendly. It also happens to be extremely expensive, the iPhone. I mean, God, they… Apple are clever. They make brilliant technology and then they charge you an absolute fortune for the privilege to use it. So I thought: ‘Right, I’ve had enough of this!’ I can’t effort to use the iPhone anymore. I’m going to downgrade and I’m going to go for a Blackberry. So I got this Blackberry bold and it’s you know what? It’s absolutely fine. When I first started using it, to be honest, I was a bit shocked. I thought, hold on a minute. What are these buttons? These are actual, physical buttons that I have to press on the front of the phone. What’s that??? And you know, that was like going back, sort of, of five or six years. Actually having to press down buttons with my finger. That’s like wasting energy. Pressing buttons. I don’t wanna press buttons. I
wanna touch smooth glass and have it respond. I wanna feel like I’m living in the future when I’m using a telephone but then I thought, actually no, despite having to physically press down buttons, this Blackberry thing is not that bad? It’s alright. It does basically what an iPhone will do. And it’s fine. And I love it now. I’m… as much as you could love a phone. I mean it’s a pretty weird relationship that we have with our mobile phone. Isn’t it? I mean, say twenty years ago, fifteen years ago no one had mobile phones and now… nowadays there’s like these essential things that we have to have in our lives you know, and if you lose it, it’s like game over. Isn’t it?
It’s a total disaster, if you lose your mobile. Actually when I stopped using my iPhone, when I moved to the Blackberry, it took me about a week to get used to using the Blackberry. Right? And in that week like particularly the first day when I realized that the Blackberry wasn’t quite as perfect as the iPhone, then I kind of thought… you know, I was actually emotionally upset. You know losing the iPhone was a bit like you know losing a pet. You know like if you have a dog that you love and the dog dies. You actually feel upset, you feel like crying, you know because you have lost this thing that you loved so much. That’s a bit how I felt when I stopped using the iPhone. I felt like I had lost something important, deeply important to my soul. And I felt like
crying you know. I was upset, I was depressed, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was unhappy as a result of losing this iPhone which is crazy you know. It’s totally mad, it’s just a piece of technology that we… that provides just the basic function which is the ability to basically just message you friends. You can do it on any old phone. It doesn’t have to be an iPhone. I think it’s… I think we’re really kind of… we have really been really suckered by technology. Particularly the high end technology like the iPad. I mean the iPad is fantastic but it is a luxury. It really is. It is an absolute luxury. No one really needs an iPad. That’s just a luxury and the same goes for the Amazon Kindle which is that thing, that looks a bit like an iPad but it just lets you read books and you can store like a hundred books on it. The Kindle… now, no one really needs that do they? I
mean I’m not fair enough like, oh yeah, you can store hundred books in it but who ever needs to carry around a hundred books? Maybe if you’re a student and you need like to carry books around , so that you can study from those books but I don’t reckon any students who have got Amazon Kindles have got all of these study materials on my Kindle. No, of course they haven’t. What most Kindle users do, they fill the Kindle up with a bunch of books that they feel like they should read and probably loads of books they have already read. I bet half of people who have got Kindles, they get the Kindle and they think:’ Right, I would better put some books on it and then they just fill it up with books that they have already read. What’s the point of that? It’s stupid! You only need one book at a time and anyway, if;ve you got a Kindle, if you’ve got a book that you’re reading you can kind of do anything with it.
One of the fun things about having a book is that you can kind of bend it in your hands. I quite like it when I finish a book, the book is like really sort of soiled. It’s almost like it’s been… it’s go on… like an adventure with me, that book and it doesn’t look the same as when it was new. I mean, it’s an absolute pleasure getting a new book. It’s like perfect, it’s been untouched by human hand almost. It’s clean, it smells beautiful, there’s nothing like the smell of a new book. It’s just, it’s fantastic. Maybe I’m kind… maybe I’ve got like a wired fetish about the way new books smell but I know, I’m not the only one. I’m sure that there are hundreds of you out there who love that smell of a new book. You know, you open the book. Hm, the smell of the clean pages, the fresh print on those pages is a fantastic thing. Then you start reading it and you’re reading it in lots of different positions, on the bus, on the train. You kind of carry it. It maybe gets a bit wet in the rain or you might spill coffee on it. I’ve actually killed insects with books before. I’ve been like sitting there, reading and there is a fly or mosquito buzzing around me . And the book is the perfect way to kill it, you know and just bang, just get it with the book and then there’s that dead insect in the pages somewhere,too. I think I’ve actually bled onto books as well in the past, so I’d spilled blood all sorts of bodily fluid. I’ve sneezed on books before and it all contributes to the sort of character of that book when you’ve finished with it. I like the idea that when you’re half way through a book… the bits of the pages that you’ve read are a little bit stained with… you know, just the marks from your fingers.
You can see it on the side of the book.. It’s like slightly… the pages have a little stain on the ones that you’ve read and the ones you haven’t read are fresh. They haven’t been touched yet. I quite like that. The fact that the book gets slightly damaged and develops a character, a physical character as you read it and it gets creased and folded and so on. I like that about having a book is like a physical relationship you have with it. Yeah, physical relationship you have with the book. Not that kind of a physical relationship, no, but you know what I mean.
But with a Kindle it’s just like a plastic thing that you have to be really careful with because if you spend like a hundred fifty pounds on this thing, you can’t drop it, you can’t fold it. If you do, it’s going to break and then that’s it. Hundred and fifty pounds down the toilet. So, and I hate this idea of taking an Amazon Kindle to the beach or an iPad to the beach. That’s like the worst thing you can do with a bit of high technology is Introduce it to some sand or maybe some salty water. Forget about it! It’s a ridiculous idea but we all know that introducing sand to a book you know, when you got a book on a beach it’s just again just giving it that extra bit of physical character that it’s been in contact with sand or wind or something. It’s brilliant. There’s nothing like having a real good book with you on holiday and the book kind of changes as you read it on that holiday. Yeah, we all know that’s true. So the Kindle and the iPad for me they’re luxuries. I’m not saying, I don’t want an iPad. I would love an iPad. Don’t get me wrong. I would absolutely love one but I know that it’s a luxury. Something I don’t really need. I mean just give me a pad, just give me a normal pad. I’ve got a brain, I’ve got an imagination, I’ve got fingers, I can easily get a pen. There’s a pan here in fact. I’ve got a pen with me now. Just give me a normal pad with paper on it and a pen and my imagination. I’ll come up with some entertaining stuff for myself if I have to. I mean the human race survived for thousands of years without iPads. I think we’re probably alright without them in the future. It’s a luxury but you know, I would love one to be honest. I think they’re amazing.
I wonder what’s going to happen actually … what is going to happen with the future of technology. The iPad is just like the first step in a new direction, really. And that new direction is that we can just sort of have the Internet with us at all times. And now you can use the iPad to do things like … you see people walking through the streets of London with their iPad. You know we used to see tourists with maps. You know like folding maps, walking around with the map in front of them. And now they have just got this iPad and it’s like a SAT NAV. You know, Satellite navigation. They can just walk around the town with the iPad in their hands and it tells them where to go and what to do. And it won’t be long, I guarantee, it wont be long before Google map becomes super advanced because if you have played around with Google maps you know, that you also have Google street view and Google street view is amazing because you can go on to Google map and if you click on the right button you can actually be transported onto the street that you’re looking at. So you can go to New York you can go to Manhattan on Google maps and you can walk down the street. It’s incredible. And you can see pictures, you can zoom in and zoom out and you can walk down almost every street in like major cities like New York or London or Paris and Tokyo. It’s absolutely amazing. And as well as that interesting places like restaurants or Museums or Historical places of interest are actually highlighted on the screen, on the pictures. So you can kind of click on that picture and they’ll give you information about that place. Maybe it’s a
restaurant review, the menu from that restaurant, the telephone number you can use to actually call the restaurant in order to book a table there. You can kind of like do everything on the Internet. I reckon that eventually Google street view will be live. It will actually be live. So won’t just be one picture well it will be rolling video. I mean I wonder if that’s possible with Satellites even now that you can just have like everything. You can look at everything from satellites using video and just see real time live what’s happening. I reckon it’s going to happen soon that you would be able to use Google to just observe many parts of the world just as they are happening
live. That’s going to be amazing but the other thing… And I saw a TV program about this once is there eventually … I mean we already carry around very high quality like high technology computers with us. These are our iPhones and stuff. Eventually they’ll become so good and so fast at processing that we’ll just be able to all sorts of things, just without any time delay at all. And if you can imagine, right, combining a pair of sun glasses with the screen on your iPhone and this is like an amazing iPhone, like the iPhone 19 or something , you know. Combining your sun glasses with… or maybe even contact lenses with your iPhone. So you’ll be able to
put your sun glasses on and then across whatever you’re looking at in the real world you’ve also got the Internet version of that. So you can look around the street and you’ll get little arrows, that will pop up in you vision on your sun glasses whenever you look at something. Suddenly you get a window from Wikipedia or something that’ll tell you information about it and all you need to do is like maybe you might to have a little pad on your hand and you just click the buttons and it’ll allow you to make telephone calls to that place or whatever. Find information about it. People will be walking down the street past you. You’ll be able to look at a person and immediately get access like to their Facebook profile, just by looking at them and then you could click on that person and add them as a friend or just find out various bits of information about them. I mean you can almost do this already using Bluetooth technology. You know, if you’ve got something like a Nintendo DS… a Nintendo 3DS handheld computer device ,then you can actually use Bluetooth to find people like… let’s say on the same bus as you who also have a Nintendo DS. And you can challenge them to a game of like Street Fighter 2 on the bus. And it’s just a random person you know and you can just have a game with them. This…Eventually all of this stuff is going to come together. So we’ll be able to just walk around and look at things and the Internet would be like you know stretched over everything like a Net and like an Internet. And then
you’ll just be able to… like you know use the directions that you get on Google maps. Instead you’ll just have like an arrow in front of you that you’ll be able to see on the screen on your sun glasses. The arrow would just point you in the right direction you know. If you wanna get to the pub like, you just use the arrow and it will point you where you’re going. It’s going to be
amazing. It’s basically the matrix. Eventually we won’t be able to tell the difference between the Internet and the real world. They’re going to combine and who knows eventually they might be able to implant some technology inside your head, that will connect with the electrical systems and nervous system in your brain and actually connect the Internet to your brain so that you’ll be able to feel or make decisions just by thinking about them. That’s going to be amazing. I mean they’ve already got technology which allows you to use your TV with your thoughts. So there’s something has being developed somewhere and it’s like a headset that you put on and it has a little camera I think that looks at your eyes and as you’re looking at the TV you could just think about changing the channel and the channel would change. Don’t ask me how they do it. I read about it today on the Internet. So it must be true. So it’s just one example of the sort of crazy stuff that’s going to happen. It will be the matrix, that’s eventually what’s going to happen and we’ll probably be able to do everything you know. Just travel around the world, visit people, actually have genuine experiences while we just sitting down on the sofa connected to the Internet. It’s quite a frightening thought in some ways but also quite amazing really. The frightening aspect to that is that when all this technology allows so many possibilities there’s the poss… there’s the threat that it’s going to be used for the wrong things, that it could be used to exploit people and that’s already happening with things like identity theft and so on. The people put there all of their personal information on to Facebook and I believe that anything you put on Facebook becomes the propriety of Facebook , I think. I’m not sure about that. I need to check it. So you know you can’t quote me on that but I think that if you’ve uploaded a video, photo onto Facebook then Facebook actually owns that video or that photo. It’s not yours. And they also own all your personal information which if unless you’ve like you’ve chosen the correct security settings, I think they can use that information. They can actually send it to people, they can sell it to marketing companies and so on. So there’s always that threat that your personal information will be used in a way that’s not necessarily good for you. So we have to be very very careful about the Internet and about the way in which it’s used and the content we put on to it. I actually worry about that quite a lot of myself because really I publish a hell of a lot of information about myself on the Internet particularly through this podcast because I sit here and I kind of talk about myself. I describe details, intimate personal details of my life. You know some of them, some of that stuff may be true , may not be true. A lot of the things I say actually are just for the benefit of the language learning that you’re doing but I worry, I think is someone going to be able to use
this for the wrong reasons. Well if they try and do that I will chase them. It will be like that Liam Neeson movie, I think it’s called TAKEN and if they try and do something, I will hunt them down and I will catch them and I will make them pay.
Okay, so if there’s anyone out there, who is listening, if anyone in the world is thinking:’ Ha, I think I’m going to use Luke’s information and steal his identity and steal his money.’
Well, don’t ! Alright because I’ll come after you, I’ll find you and I’ll get you. Alright you know what I’ll do… what I’ll do, so I’ll make you stand up, right and I’ll grab your underpants from behind. I’ll grab hold of your underpants and I’ll pull them really hard all the way over your head and that will hurt your private parts a lot, okay? So don’t do it ! ! !
Don’t mess with my identity. To be honest, it’s not really any point steeling my identity because why would you wanna be ME first of all? There’s not really much that you can get from me. I don’t really have any money. I’m not famous. You can’t really… anyway… enough about that. I don’t only give you any ideas but basically it would be a waste of time stealing my identity, I can tell you.
Yeah so, yeah technology, it’s amazing but it’s also quite frightening. Don’t you think?
I wonder, when you look at sort of the way technology is represented in movies. We don’t trust technology, do we, really? If we see the way that we deal with it in movies, I recently watched that film with Will Smith, I, ROBOT. I don’t know if it’s got a different name in your country but basically in the movie my quick plot synopsis of I, ROBOT is, Will Smith is a cop in the future, right. But he is not like a cop like all the others. He’s a kind of like a… to be honest he’s like a normal guy from now, from the present day. But he just happens to be in the future. He’s kind of normal. He wears a leather jacket, he wears like a beanie hat. He probably listens to like Hip Hop
from the 90s or something. You know he probably has lots of Public Enemy , and A Tribe Called Quest [Hip Hop groups from the 1990s] quotes in his head. He loves Hip Hop and Soul music. He probably listens to Bob Marley. That’s the kind of guy that he is in this movie and surrounding him are all these people from the future. And of course the future world that he lives in, is a kind of cold emotionless place where it’s incredibly efficient because everything is done by robots. But somehow it’s less human. It’s colder and more evil quite frankly because most of the people that he meets are probably evil, particularly the ones who works for big corporations because we know, don’t we, that big corporations are just evil.
Naturally evil. Just by definition, if it’s big and it’s corporate and it’s shiny and it’s not very human and yeah that kind of thing.
Then it’s evil, isn’t it? And also if it’s a robot and it’s very high technology, That’s also going to be evil too. Don’t ask me why, but it will be. And of course what we find is the Will Smith being this normal guy cop investigator, is investigating a murder. But it was a suicide actually. It turns out to be a murder and that’s right. It’s a murder at a robot factory and guess what? The robot is in the factory, they’re evil, that’s right. Why they’re evil? We don’t know. Why are robots in movies evil? No one really knows, but they are, aren’t they? Yeah because we should be frightened and scared of technology because we don’t really understand it. I mean most people don’t really understand technology. As far as I can tell, most of the IT specialists I meet, they don’t understand it either. Think about it. The last time you had a serious problem with your computer, did the IT guy really know what the problem was? He didn’t, really he didn’t! He sort of said, well I think it might be something to do with the server. What did that even mean? Nobody knows what’s going on. Technology, we’re probably a few years away from like ‘The Terminator’ or ‘The Matrix’ that that’s point in time where computers become so intelligent that they actually develop their own sense of survival and they think, oh right, okay, I’m a robot and I’m actually more intelligent than people. Now so obviously, what I have to do is become evil and kill all the people, kill all humans. Is that what’s going to happen? I don’t know but it could be. Why isn’t it that robots become good? You know the more intelligent they are, the more nice they are. That’s… Why doesn’t that happen in movies? Why don’t we get like robots who become super intelligent and say:’ Good morning Luke, would you like a cup of tea Luke?’ You know, that would be good. Wouldn’t it? If they realized that with all their super intelligence that basically all we want, all that’s good for the world is just cups of tea and cake and stuff. That’s the movie I wanna see. I wanna see a movie where Will Smith is in the future and he likes Bob Marley and he’s surrounded by high technology robots and they all just sort of do nice things for him. They kind of take his dog for a walk and they make him cups of tea and they clean his car. They just do nice things to each other. That would be … That’s good and that’s just as likely that happen as all the robots becoming evil. Isn’t it? Hm, maybe it’s not… maybe it’s not though because… Maybe what’s going to happen is that all this technology’s just going to make people more open to exploitation because we know from , don’t we … that from like history of the world. We don’t have a very good record of being nice to each other, do we? We don’t. Let’s face it. Maybe in the last few years we’ve been alright. But for hundreds or thousands of years people have been horrible to each other. They really have. Think of like slavery and stuff. You know like back in… when was it? Probably a few hundred years ago really. It’s, when started to travel around by ship and say, probably around the 17th century. That
kind of time when the British Empire you know was growing, we were really bad. We did some really bad things around the world. The British Empire, I mean you know, we were very good at doing it but we did some horrible things to people. Can I just apologize actually? If you’re a listener to, for example, if you’re in… hum, I don’t know, in India or Africa or some part of the world where the British kind of colonized and basically sort of destroyed your culture or maybe even like just took people from your country and turn them into slaves. Can I just apologize for that? Because that’s terrible. Obviously, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t even like my
dad’s or my dad’s dad or my dad’s dad’s dad’s dad’s fault but somewhere down the line, people in this country did some pretty bad things to other people in other countries, just because we had more boats you know.. So sorry, sorry about that.
But just generally if you look at the past , you’ll see that people have done some pretty horrible things to each other and maybe that’s going to keep happening when technology allows people to take control over other people’s lives? Maybe we’ll just get another version of slavery again. I hope not !
I think it’s really really important that we have to be good to each other. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. We just have to be nice to each other. We have to try to understand each other and be compassionate and be nice Actually I’m quite pleased that we’ve reached, that I’ve reached this part of the podcast where the conclusion, I guess, to this rambling stream of consciousness is that please, please…
PLEASE can we be nice to each other? Can we try to understand each other a little bit more? Let’s avoid the conflict, let’s avoid the war and the fighting. Let’s try to make the world a better place for each other. Can we please can we just try understand each other? Don’t try and, don’t blow each other up. It’s stupid! Be nice to each other ! Fighting and blowing people up and trying to rule the world doesn’t work. The only way it’ll work is if you understand that we’re all in it together. We’re all on this earth together, we all share the space. Let’s just try and make it easy. Can we please? Good !
It’s… and I have to say these things because all over the world, all the time people are fighting and they’re fighting for ridiculous reasons. I’m not going to mention any specific cases but I think you know what I’m talking about. People are fighting over their beliefs. You know when people believe so strongly in like… I don’t know, like a specific God or something they believe in it so strongly that they’re willing to actually kill and kill people’s children as a result of how strongly they believe in their God. That’s wrong. There’s something deeply wrong about that. We know that all the real, like religions and things… They all preach PEACE ! So waging war in the name of religion is complete nonsense and ridiculous. So STOP doing that please ! ! ! That would be nice. Yeah okay.
Wow, I’ve ended up talking about war and politics and killing children again. God, this is not the first time, I’ve ended up talking about that either. Now, let’s talk about something else. maybe we could talk about Ice Cream. That would be a good idea. Wouldn’t it? Yeah, so, Ice Cream, right? God,I love Ice Cream ! Isn’t it great? Ice Cream is a good invention. I don’t know who invented it. Wasn’t it Italians? I think it might been Italians. I don’t know, if it was them, but they certainly do it well and Ice Cream is a good thing. Let’s have more Ice Cream in the world !
I know that it’s kind of bad for your health but come on. Come on, so what? You know everything is bad for your health isn’t it? I mean we all going to die in the end. We might as well enjoy a little bit of Ice Cream before we go. You know what I mean? And it has some many flavours. You get vanilla of course. That’s like the default flavour for Ice Cream. Isn’t it? I wonder if that was the first flavour. Was that the first flavour for Ice Cream? I don’t know but it’s certainly a good
flavour. It’s the most successful flavor, isn’t it? Vanilla! It’s like standard.. It’s like you know, in terms of… let’s say paper, white paper. It’s like the white paper of Ice Cream, isn’t it? Vanilla… And then of course you’ve got like chocolate and coffee and strawberry and raspberry and I mean the list goes on. I mean, I don’t know if you have ever been to Rome? In Italy but you should go because it’s beautiful. It’s a fantastic place. Go to Rome and check out some of the Ice Cream they’ve got there. It’s brilliant. They’ve got like all kinds of stuff. In some places you get Ice Cream for all sorts of crazy flavours like bubble gum flavored Ice Cream and stuff like that. So let’s stop killing each other, let’s just buy each other Ice Cream and make this world a much better place.
I’m happy that that’s the conclusion of this episode of Luke’s English podcast. It’s all about Ice Cream. So if you… I’m going to name this episode… I think, I’m going to call it ‘THE ICE CREAM
Episode and if you have listened all the way to the end then you’ll understand why it’s called the Ice Cream episode.
That’s it from Luke’s English podcast. Forty five minutes!
Thank you, bye,bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye….

SOME BLOCKS OF LANGUAGE FROM THIS EPISODE:

…despite what you might have been led to believe…
…not to mention all the other companies…
…I can’t really be bothered to prepare something…
…I’m leaving it up to you. It’s up to you to do the language work…
…I’m not sitting on a sofa like a couch potato…
…I’ve had enough of all this leaning over…
…let’s keep it simple…
…there’s a strange pleasure in being given your purchase in a box over the counter. It feels like a secret transaction…

Here’s the Argos website (so you know what I’m talking about!) http://www.argos.co.uk/

;)