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323. David Bowie (Part 1)

This episode is all about the life and work of David Bowie, the English musician who died just a couple of days ago. In the episode you’ll hear me talk about the cultural significance of Bowie as an artist, why he is such a legend of British music, and what his music means to me personally. I hope you can use this episode as a way to learn more about British culture. Almost 100% of the episode is transcribed below.

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David Bowie was an English singer, songwriter, record producer, painter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, and was considered by people around the world as a cultural innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. I am a big David Bowie fan, and in this podcast my aim is to explain to you the appeal and significance of David Bowie as a cultural icon. I’ve had a few messages from listeners over the last couple of days asking me to talk about this subject, and I am very happy to be able to do that on my podcast.

This subject is significant to me personally, and I expect to many of you too, but also it’s a very significant to British culture in general, and I think it’s important to teach you about British culture or English language culture on Luke’s English Podcast, as well as to teach you the language itself, because ultimately, it’s all part of the same thing. The language exists within the culture, or perhaps the culture exists within the language – they are intertwined together in complex ways. So, to learn the language like a native I think it helps to know about the culture of that language too, so you can start thinking in the same way that native users of that language think too. Also, if you ever talk to native speakers of English you need to know the cultural references. For example, at the moment and no doubt for a long time afterwards, people will be talking about David Bowie, his music, his art and its significance. Would you be able to hold down a conversation about Bowie? Hopefully this episode will help you do that.

David Bowie changed our culture, not just in Britain but also around the world. How did he do it? What did he do that was so significant? Why is his death such a big deal? What was his appeal? What do most people know about David Bowie? What did he do during his life? What were the messages he communicated through his art? Why will he be considered one of the greatest artists of our time?

There are so many questions to answer. I don’t have the answers to all of them. Some questions will go unanswered. But there are always more questions than answers, aren’t there?

I think the world still doesn’t fully understand what Bowie was doing or what it was all about – or at least we can’t easily put it into words, but those people who value his work certainly feel a powerful emotional connection to David Bowie and his work. He was an artist, and I suppose part of the work of an artist is to express ideas and feelings in other ways – not using words alone, but using anything else as a way of conveying a message or feeling. David Bowie definitely did that. Not only was he a musician, but he was an artist, maybe one of the greatest artists of our time, and he used everything he could in order to communicate with us – music primarily, but also video, theatre, mime, the internet (he was an early adopter), the media and even his own body, his fame, his image and ultimately his identity itself. He even used his own death as a way of communicating his art to the world.

David Bowie’s whole life turned out to be a work of art itself, and as an artist he used his life to tell a captivating, mysterious and complex story.

Here are the main questions I’m going to try and talk about
Who is* David Bowie? (*was ?)
Why is he significant?
Why is Bowie significant to me personally?

I have to say that this is a really difficult episode for me to do because there’s just so much to cover, and I want to do justice to the subject. I don’t think I can say everything I want to say about Bowie in this episode. I would love you to just listen to his music with an open mind. Listen to the beats, the grooves, the moods and let your imagination do the rest. he was also a great speaker in interviews – he was articulate, charming and very funny too. I’m not going to play you any interview footage or any of his music (except perhaps for a couple of seconds per song) on this podcast. But what I have done is collect some videos and other links for you on the page for this episode and I strongly recommend that you check them out. There are other documentaries, interviews, podcast episodes and music that are really really great and will give you loads more perspective on the subject. So go to the page for this episode and just dive in. Please do watch and listen to Bowie in his own words, and in the words of other people who have talked about him too.

I’ve been a fan of Bowie almost all my life. I grew up with his music and it has been with me at various important emotional moments for me.

When did I first hear Bowie’s music?
In the car as a child.
Night time.
Space Oddity.
The song is fascinating – it tells the story of an astronaut on a space mission. He goes out alone into space and loses touch with the earth. The astronaut is afraid, and it is scary – the idea of being so alone, drifting into the void of space, but also it is full of the wonder of the universe – seeing the earth from a distance, and wondering what it’s all about. The song is deep – as deep as the film 2001 A Space Odyssey, which was a direct influence on Bowie.
Looking back on it now, that car was like a spaceship floating through the dark with my Dad at the controls, the lights of suburban London street lamps passing overhead.
The song is like a metaphor for his career somehow.
The astronaut is Bowie the artist, and the spaceship is his work – the different characters he portrayed and inhabited, the multimedia structure around him that he built during his career – like a cocoon, which he has now departed.
Now, after his death, we have just the cocoon, the spacecraft. His life’s work is left with us.
I’m not sure what I’m saying here. And I’m sounding a bit pretentious I expect.
What I mean is that the image of a man in spaceship travelling through space is a bit like a metaphor for the work of the artist going on a journey. I can’t explain it. IN fact, I don’t quite understand it fully. It’s just beyond my understanding, just out of reach, somewhere in space.
That’s space oddity.

Then, later, at other times in my life, I had other moments with David Bowie’s music.
I gave a Bowie album to my Dad for his birthday in 1987. I remember the front cover of the album. I was 10. Bowie was Blue. It felt important that I was giving the record to my Dad. I think my Mum bought it, and I gave it to him.

Then when I was a teenager I started exploring my parents record collection. I discovered a lot of old music, but it was new to me. In our house the record player and the vinyl records were in the corner of the living room. I remember spending quite a lot of time in that corner, with the headphones on, exploring the music while my family were doing other things.

There was an album called “Changes – One Bowie”, which was a greatest hits compilation. I think it was released in the mid 70s and it had songs from his whole career up to that point. It was music from his psychedelic period, his hippy-in-a-dress period, the Ziggy Stardust period and the thin white duke period. These are all different incarnations of Bowie’s rock star identity.

The album cover to “ChangesOneBowie” – the compilation LP that I found in my parents’ record collection.

There was a photo of Bowie on the front of the album – it was a black and white pic and he looked like a Hollywood star from the classic Hollywood period of the 1930s or 40s. I couldn’t quite date the photo. Normally I’m good at predicting the period in which the picture was taken, or predicting when a record was recorded by listening to it, but this photograph just looked completely timeless. I couldn’t work out when it was taken.

The photo could come from any time and that was pretty fascinating. Also, he just seemed so cool and handsome and I thought – how could I be like him? How can I take some of that style and confidence and attractiveness and apply it to my own life. He seemed to be above everything, but not in a bad way – not in an arrogant way. I thought, how could any girl resist this guy? And that was very exciting for me – because I definitely fancied girls but I just wasn’t confident enough. I had no clue about how to talk to girls, let alone get them to fancy me. What Bowie showed me about that is that you shouldn’t fake it – just be confident, express yourself, let your natural style come out and don’t show any fear and you’ll attract girls. In fact, what was really attractive about Bowie is that he didn’t do things for egotistical reasons – the guy in the photo was distant – he wasn’t looking at the camera, he wasn’t begging for your attention, he was looking off into the middle distance somewhere. His mind was elsewhere. He was occupied by his work and by big ideas. I think Bowie’s enthusiasm and commitment to his work made him as attractive as his looks. But it was his looks too. He was the complete package.

I asked my Mum what she thought of Bowie and she said she just found him weird and a bit creepy. I was a bit disappointed, but I was still convinced that Bowie was the essence of coolness. What I saw in that picture was a lot of what is appealing about Bowie. His good looks and cool style, but also his class, his elegance, mystery and weirdness.
Let me describe the album cover.
You see his face and shoulders. He’s looking to our left, into the distance. It’s a black and white photo. His hair is quite short and is combed back with a slight parting on the side. His finger is resting on his bottom lip as if he’s thinking of something.
After a while I noticed that his eyes were different. The pupil of his left eye in the photo is dilated wide, but the other pupil is normal. I wondered if that was an effect added to the photo, to perhaps hint at the fact that he was high on something. It wasn’t obvious, but it was fascinating. Later I learned that Bowie had 2 different eyes – it looked like they had different colours, and the pupil of one was always larger than the pupil of the other. Apparently he had an accident or a fight over a girl when he was fourteen and got punched. The punch caused damage to a muscle in his eye, and since then one of the eyes always looked different to the other. It was another part of Bowie’s allure – there was just something different about his face.

In the photo he’s thin and has ridiculously high cheekbones and chiseled features, like a Hollywood movie star from the 1940s.
He had classical good looks, but there was something else about him – the lines on his face, the shape of his nose – there was something otherworldly and alien about him, like he might have come from outer space.

Also he has femininity in his features, and I think there’s nothing wrong with being in touch with your feminine side.
His ambiguous gender wasn’t the main thing I liked about him, but for many other teenagers throughout the years – teenagers who struggled with their gender identity, David Bowie was someone who gave them self-esteem and confidence. He showed that if you felt confused about your gender, that it was nothing to be ashamed of and that it didn’t matter, and that you could be whoever you wanted to be, and do it with pride. As a rock star, David Bowie was a huge ego boost to so many fans, and for many reasons. For me Bowie was just cool, confident and he made really great music. His confidence and his style commanded respect.
I grew up a bit when I looked at that album cover.

Then I listened to the record. I took the vinyl out of the sleeve and put it on the record player, with the headphones on. My parents had an old pair of 70s headphones. They were really good quality ones.

The first track was called Changes, released in 1971. There was a scratch on the record and it used to jump quite a lot during the introduction to the song. For years, I only heard the scratched version. The song would skip from the intro to the first verse, and then to the chorus quite quickly. It still sounded good to my ears.

It had a piano riff, chunky sounding drums and a good baseline. It sounded amazing in the headphones. Bowie sang words like
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
Changes

As a 15 or 16-year-old I was quite aware that I was going through changes of my own and at the time I was feeling for the first time that I was actually having more complicated feelings than just “I want to play football” or “Star Wars is cool”. Listening to this song, even though I didn’t completely understand the lyrics, I felt that I was suddenly part of something much larger and deeper, and it felt really cool. What it meant to me at the time was that we go through changes in our lives and we don’t always know why, but they’re significant and meaningful and we should be prepared for them, and others should let us change and we shouldn’t try to hold each other back or tell each other what to do – that we should have respect for each other’s complex worlds. I didn’t really understand it all, but it meant a lot – I just felt it.

Also, as I learned more about David Bowie’s music I knew that he was something of a changeling himself. He went through many image changes during his career, especially in the 70s, and that was and still is fascinating to me. How could someone become all these different people – and still hang onto himself? What was identity all about?

Here’s a ‘brief’ history of David Bowie.
South London in 1947. His real name was David Jones. Another performer had the name Davy Jones so he changed his name. He tried a few others, including Tom Jones and David Cassidy, before sticking with David Bowie. Good judgement. He chose Bowie because it was the name of an American knife and he liked the symbolism of that. The knife.
Grew up in postwar UK – the same generation as the Beatles and so many other great artists of his generation.
The main theme of his childhood seems to be – boredom and dullness. Living in suburbia was dull and everything looked the same. It seems to me, looking back on that period in the 1950s that life was in black and white. Just boring and quiet. The older generation just wanted peace and quiet after the hell of world war 2.
Like his peers he got hooked on American rock and roll and R&B but also plenty of other forms of music. This new music which he heard on the radio must have brought some colour into his life.
America was the place that seemed to be really exciting and interesting.
He got involved in the London music scene but never really found his style or confidence.
There was a boom in youth culture associated with music and fashion. This was the mid-late sixties.
Drugs and psychedelia were involved, amphetamines for energy and probably LSD for its mind expanding qualities.

Bowie recorded Space Oddity and it was released and became a hit, eventually, particularly as it coincided with the NASA moon landing in 1969. Some people thought of Space Oddity as a novelty song – just a funny story about an astronaut going into space. But it was deeper, more meaningful than that. Space Oddity is now a timeless classic that is not just about an astronaut. It’s an existential comment about the human condition. But it’s also a great little pop song that you can hum along to and which gets stuck in your head.

Despite some success with that song he still felt unsure of himself as a performer, and searched for ways to bring new dimensions and confidence to his performance art.

He started taking risks with his performances and was influenced by avant-garde artists and various forms of theatre, like clowning, mime and Japanese kabuki. He brought those influences into his rock and roll shows.
He collaborated with a guitarist called Mick Ronson who perhaps deserves more recognition than he gets. He’s the one who played those amazing riffs on a lot of Bowie’s glam rock classics like Rebel Rebel and Ziggy Stardust.

Bowie also came out as gay/bisexual during that period, but it’s not clear to all of us if he really was gay or if it was all part of some kind of provocative and experimental performance both on and off stage.

Nevertheless, he attracted devoted and passionate fans who loved his daring style and his outrageous performances. Being a David Bowie fan was a statement of liberty and freedom. He made it ok, and maybe even cool, to be androgynous.

Also, his music at the time just kicked arse. His band made really raunchy and catchy glam rock. It was heavy, fast, funky, romantic and glamorous. The confidence and mystery that he exuded on stage was like a gift to his fans, who were empowered by having him as a role model.

He first became really huge as a star when he created the character of Ziggy Stardust in around 1972.
Up until that point Bowie had not really found his feet as a performer. Apparently, when performing as himself he felt shy. It’s hard to imagine, but apparently it’s true. He didn’t really enjoy performing as David Bowie, because he just felt a bit awkward.

So he invented a character, and played him during the performances.
Ziggy Stardust was just a character – like a character in a movie or a play, and Bowie was the actor.
People still refer to Bowie as Ziggy, like it was his nickname. It wasn’t a nickname for Bowie, it was an alter-ego. Ziggy disappeared in the mid 70s.

Becoming Ziggy allowed Bowie to really let go of himself and become a rock god, and his performances as Ziggy were really extravagant, involving big costume changes, make up and all sorts of rude and lewd acts on stage.

Apparently Bowie was Ziggy not only on stage, but also off the stage, in public appearances, interviews and so on.
So, David Bowie was really an actor playing the part of an outrageous rock star. That’s interesting for me because Bowie’s acting performance was not just confined to the stage, it bled out into every aspect of his public life. His fame was his medium. He used that medium, fame, very well, to convey his art to us, even with his death.

It’s as Ziggy Stardust that Bowie became really well-known all over the UK and then in the USA, where he was embraced as a big star by the rock music scene.

Apparently Bowie’s main influences for Ziggy Stardust were on one hand NY based musicians Lou Reed & Iggy Pop, but also mime artists, Japanese kabuki theatre performers. Bowie loved the way Lou Reed managed to combine avant-garde art with pop and rock music. He loved the outrageousness and energy of Iggy Pop and the mystery and magic of the kabuki theatre tradition. All of it combined to create something extraordinary in Ziggy Stardust. These incredibly theatrical live shows, with stomping fast rock music and avant-garde lyrics. He released an album called Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It’s now a classic.

Part of Bowie’s genius was always that he could take very weird and abstract art and bring it to a wide audience via good old-fashioned rock and roll, and pop music. That’s the genius of pop. A pop song is so short, and so simple. Just 3 minutes with a couple of verses, a chorus and a bridge section. Played on the radio for mass appeal, full of catchy melodies and instant appeal. Bowie, like all the other great pop stars, used this medium to deliver some very powerful and clever ideas. Bowie’s pop songs were not just disposable trash. They had deep hidden meanings that are hard to comprehend, but which really stand up under scrutiny. He wasn’t just lucky either, like some artists who make one or maybe two hit records in their career. Bowie had hit songs throughout his career, and his greatest hits albums that you can buy now stretch over 2 or sometimes 3 CD collections. He knew what he was doing and his music is pure pop art.

He was a mainstream pop act, but he was also a radical avant gardist. Using pop to deliver abstract ideas right into people’s every day lives. Usually abstract art is to be found in galleries, and let’s face it, not enough ‘ordinary’ people see it. Through his records and videos and other projects, Bowie brought that stuff right to hearts and minds of a massive audience. IN that way, he’s way more of a successful artist than so many others. People would play his songs on the radio. He appeared on Top of the Pops on BBC1 – a very mainstream show, and he brought into the homes of normal people some of the craziest and most over the top concept art, simultaneously fascinating and frightening the nation. He sang a song called “Star Man” on BBC TV, dressed in a bright green costume, with his hair dyed bright red. Starman seems to be about an alien who wants to come to earth but is frightened of how the humans will receive him. It seemed to many that Bowie was the alien.

What did Ziggy Stardust look like?

I remember watching a movie about a Ziggy Stardust live concert, with my brother…

Ziggy was Bowie’s way to celebrate rock and roll, and comment on all its conventions. Again, he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t just aiming to get as many fans as possible. He wanted his fans to really think about what was going on in the live show, in music and in life in general. He really encouraged his audience to use their own intelligence and to interpret his work in their own way. I feel a great amount of respect from the artist when I listen to the music and watch his performances. I don’t feel like he’s patronising me or being arrogant. I just feel like he’s doing the performance, but that some part of him is completely conscious of what he’s doing objectively and that he has no ego.

Apparently, according to the things I’ve heard and read about him, Bowie was a really nice and down to earth person. In interviews he was always very intelligent, articulate, sweet and funny. Apparently he was also quite a private man. The characters he played in his songs are really different to the character of the artist himself.

Bowie made a few albums using the Ziggy Stardust persona, and toured America, and moved there I think. He recorded a couple of albums as Ziggy, but the character did change bit by bit, with a slightly different look emerging over time. He released a couple of albums with the Ziggy Stardust persona I believe. These are absolute bona fide rock classics. I’m talking about albums like Diamond Dogs.

I think by the mid 70s his life was moving extremely quickly and that’s evident in his music and his image. He went through so many different changes during that period and produced some wildly inventive yet accessible music. Eventually he killed off Ziggy (you can see video footage of him announcing it during a live concert – the audience seem devastated! He says, this is our last live concert, ever – and you hear gasps from people in the audience.
But he didn’t quit of course, he just came back with a new image, a new character.
Aladdin Sane.
He looked a bit like Ziggy, but he was darker and even more mysterious.

Then within just a year or two, Bowie changed again. Ziggy Stardust, then Aladdin Sane, and then a character was eventually called The Thin White Duke. He wore sharp suits and had his hair combed back. He used to walk around with a cane, and sometimes wore a hat. He was extremely debonair and suave looking, yet very thin and bony. Again, his combination of handsomeness, androgyny and alien weirdness gave him an allure and a charisma like nobody else.

At that time he was influenced by the soul and funk musicians of New York in the mid seventies. I can’t really explain all the influences and details of his different clothing choices. Essentially, he had his own style – and it influenced a lot of fashion that followed him. I think he had a huge influence on the styles of the 1980s. A lot of what musicians and fashion designers did the 1980s, Bowie had already done in the 70s. Bowie basically created the 1980s.

I think the Thin White Duke is my favourite Bowie period, although I love all of his changes. He was called that because he was thin (due to his lifestyle), he was white! (obviously – but this was more evident because of the fact that he had started playing soul and funk music, which were associated with a black audience – so compared to many of the black artists in his band and black people in his audiences he looked really white. And he was very pale anyway during that period, so I think he was pretty much the whitest dude on the planet, but playing what was considered to be black music.

And the music is the main thing I like about Bowie during this period. I generally love funk and soul music from the 70s, regardless of who is playing it – whether they’re black or white doesn’t matter much to me, in fact I prefer to have my music in with the full colour spectrum please – black, white, and everything in between – purple, brown, yellow, green, pink – if it’s a colour, I want it in my music! No black and white music please. So, Bowie’s funk period is really great. My favourite album from that time is Young Americans. It’s got tracks like “Young Americans” and “Fame” on it – deeply groovy, tough and yet smooth soulful dance tracks. He collaborated with John Lennon on Fame. Imagine that! A funky dance classic, with John Lennon of the Beatles.

END OF PART 1

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

Here are lots of David Bowie Links and Videos.
Just take your pick and dive in.

Space Oddity studio version with lyrics

Space Oddity live on TV in 1969
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFhKM8AW1Js

Ziggy Stardust sings Starman on BBC Top of the Pops in 1972

David Bowie announces the end of Ziggy Stardust on stage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-G1Uy0OkCw

Aladdin Sane

Bowie interviewed by Dick Cavett in 1974, clearly under the influence of cocaine

Thin White Duke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shnrnqx_wsY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4_0bVgIRjg

Bowie in Berlin
Guardian article http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/13/david-bowie-berlin-years-heroes-just-a-gigolo

Fascinating interview from 1979

Bowie in 1983 criticises MTV for not playing black music

Bowie talks about acting and touring in 1983
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqiTgApODBk

Nile Rogers describes meeting David Bowie

Bowie – “The Interview Years”

Bowie & Comedy – Ricky Gervais described meeting Bowie

Phil Cornwell on Stella Street (skip to 5:00 for the David Bowie impression)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIot-vgqJBA

Documentaries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRiTngOAQps

Adam Buxton’s Audio Bowie Documentary
This is my favourite Bowie tribute.
https://archive.org/details/AdamBuxtonOnDavidBowie31stMarch2013
YouTube version here but with the songs removed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpCrIZamdQE&spfreload=10

The new tracks – Blackstar (the creepy video I watched on Monday morning while eating corn flakes) and Lazarus

Adam & Joe talk about Bowie and do some impressions
If you watch just one of the videos in this list, please watch this one. Adam & Joe obviously love Bowie very much, and their impressions and improvisations are a lot of fun.

317. The Lying Game 2: The Rematch (Part 1) with Amber & Paul

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Welcome to LEP. I hope you’re well, I hope you’re fine. This episode of the podcast is a rematch of the lying game with Amber, Paul and me. Check below for show notes and other links.

[DOWNLOAD]
A couple of announcements before we go further.
Thanks for your photos for the LEP photo competition. This is a chance for you to send in your photos for a chance to win some LEP merchandise including mugs, t-shirts and bags. You can still send your photos to podcastcomp@gmail.com, until 15 January 2016. Your photo should show the environment in which you listen to LEP. Feel free to get creative. The only rule is that there has to be some evidence that you’re listening. E.g. a headphone in the photo somewhere. The idea is for us all to see the different situations that people are in while they listen. Once all the photos have been sent in I’ll display them in a mural on the website and you can pick the one you like the most.

Please do take my business English survey.
Just go to the menu and you’ll find it under the contacts button.

A note on subscribing by email.
On the right under the logo you’ll see a field that says SUBSCRIBE BY EMAIL. Put your email address in and click subscribe. Then check your inbox to confirm the subscription. Then you’ll receive an email every time I publish a new episode, and you’ll get direct access to the page for the episode, with all the show notes, videos, transcripts and other stuff.

Thanks also for different comments I’ve had recently. It’s awesome to hear from you all. You now have the option to send me voice messages. There’s a button on the side. Click it, get your mic ready and send me a message. It could be a comment or a question. I’ll receive it in my inbox and I might play it in an episode of the podcast, especially if you ask a good question.

OK, so now let’s get down to business.

This episode is called “The Rematch”.

It’s one of those episodes that involves a competitive game between Amber, Paul and me. In the last one of these, called The Lying Game, this happened:
The scores were level between Luke and Paul.
Even stevens.
They then played a tie-breaker.
Luke told a story about the tooth fairy.
Paul talked about burning down his house.
Luke identified it.

Since then, it has come to light that I may have cheated. I swear that I didn’t, but some clever listeners noted that a story Paul told in The Lying Game was one he’d already told on the podcast before. So, I admit that a rematch is necessary, and here it is. This is The Lying Game 2: The Rematch.

Do you remember the rules of The Lying Game? They go like this:
One person says a statement, it can be true or a lie. Then the others ask lots of questions to investigate the story. Then they decide if they think it’s a lie or the truth, justifying their responses. Then the truth is revealed. If a competitor gets it right, they get a point. If a competitor gets it wrong a point is awarded to the storyteller.

So, this is the rematch. We’re going to play another round of The Lying Game. Listen carefully to the stories and the questions and try to predict if they are lies or the truth.

Also, listen all the way to the end of the second episode to hear about a new interactive version of the lying game that we plan to play next time, and that will involve your input. We’ll tell you about that at the end of part 2.

At the beginning of this episode you’ll hear us chatting a bit about our recent news including a couple of stories about doing comedy shows, Amber shares something about an interesting podcast she listened to, and Paul tells a story about how a girl lost one of her teeth on stage during a comedy performance recently. After our little ramble chat we then get properly into the lying game, which will continue in part 2 of this episode.

So, yes I am glad to say that Amber and Paul are on another episode of the podcast, so let’s get started, here we go.

*Jingle*

Round 1: Statements
Luke: I once hit a teacher when I was at school.
Paul: I nearly died in a car accident.
Amber: (story in part 2)

Scores at the end of part 1:

Luke – 1 / 0 /
Paul – 0 / 2 /
Amber – 1 / 0 /

Paul is winning as we end the episode.

Listen to part 2 to find out what happens next.

309. The Lying Game (Part 2) with Amber & Paul

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Welcome back to the second part of this double episode. In part 1 you heard me playing a speaking game with Paul & Amber. Go back to part 1 for the details of the game, including the rules. Part 1 ended on a cliffhanger, with the scores even at 2-2-2. Even stevens! Listen to this episode to find out more. TEACHERS: At the end there’s a 15 minute section in which I explain exactly how to use this game in your English classes. You can download a simple .pdf worksheet (below) which you can use in your classes (just tell your students about LEP, or send me a little donation). Listen until the end of the episode to get my full instructions on how to use this awesome game to teach your students grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary and speaking skills in a really awesome way.

[DOWNLOAD]
The Lying Game Part 2

Amber: I used to be a performer at The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Prince Charles Cinema in Soho.

Tie-break round:
Luke: I used to be afraid of the tooth fairy.
Paul: I almost set fire to my parents’ house as a kid.

Final scores:
Luke – 2 / 0 / 1 / 2 / 1 Total = 6 points

Amber – 1 / 1 / 0 / x / x Total = 2 points

Paul – 0 / 2 / 1 / 0 / 0 Total = 3 points

Here’s an example of a Rocky Horror Picture Show Shadowcast (below)

For Teachers – How to use The Lying Game in class

Click here to download a .pdf worksheet to use in Class – The Lying Game Worksheet for Teachers by Luke Thompson teacherluke.co.uk

Listen to the last 15 minutes of this episode of LEP (The Lying Game Part 2) to hear me give detailed instructions on how to use the game in class, including details of the level, procedure, specific language and skills work you can do with students. I can get about 2 hours of class time out of this game, and it’s useful for teaching grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.

In fact, here are the last 15 minutes of the episode if you’d like to listen to them again or download for later. :) [DOWNLOAD]

308. The Lying Game (Part 1) with Amber & Paul

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Hello, welcome back to LEP. This episode is called the lying game, and it’s one of those ones in which I play a speaking game with my friends Amber and Paul. A transcript for the first 15-20 minutes is available here on the page for this episode. In the introduction you’ll hear me welcome new listeners, talk a bit about my speaking speed on the podcast, mention the importance of listening to native speakers of English (even if it’s a bit difficult to understand every word) and explain some of the content of the conversation you’ll hear between Amber, Paul and me. Then, the speaking game begins properly. I really hope you have as much fun listening to this as we did recording it, because we really enjoyed ourselves! In part 2 (coming soon) you’ll hear the conclusion of the game and I’ll explain how I use this activity with my students in my English classes.

[DOWNLOAD]
Introduction Transcript Starts Here (+ more information below)
Hello, welcome to LEP. This episode is called the lying game, and it’s one of those ones in which I play a speaking game with my friends Amber and Paul.

Before you listen to that, I’d like to just say a few things here at the beginning of the episode. Firstly, hello to all my regular listeners, the LEPsters as they are sometimes known. How are you all? I hope you’re fine and having a lovely day or night or evening or morning or whatever time of day it is. Thanks for recent comments on my website. It’s always nice to read your messages. Recently I did episodes about The Battle or Britain and Back To The Future, and I’m feeling a lot of love in the comments section – particularly from my Polish listeners because of things I said in episode 303, which is really great. It’s very motivating to read the positive things you have to say in response to my episodes. I do think about my podcast a lot, and I always hope that you’re enjoying it and finding it useful. So, your comments are valuable bits of encouragement. Thanks also to those of you who have never left a comment on my website in your life – you’re my ninja listeners, and I think there are a lot of you out there, choosing to remain silent in the shadows, but listening to everything.

Secondly, just in case you’re new to LEP, let me just quickly introduce myself. My name is Luke Thompson and I’m an English language teacher from England, which is in Britain, which is in the UK, which is in Europe, sort of. I’m originally from London (in the south-east) but I went to university in Liverpool (in the north-west) and I also spent many years growing up in Warwickshire which is near Birmingham, which is in the midlands, which is in England, which is in Britain, which is in Europe, which is on Earth… etc. OK, I’ve been teaching English for nearly 15 years, wow has it been that long? Time flies when you’re having fun, and I do enjoy my job. I’m DELTA qualified, and in my career I have taught English to adults and children from many different countries, at many different levels, at many different times of the day – morning, afternoon, evening and at night sometimes, in any season, in all weather conditions – rain, snow, hail, wind, lightning, and even during a couple of earthquakes. I’ve taught courses in general English, business English, academic English, English for exams, English for doctors, English for pharmacists, English for engineers, English for lawyers, English for HR, English for secretaries of state, English for journalists, English for unemployed people, English for retired people and English for people who haven’t chosen what to do with their lives yet. Basically, if you need English, I’m your man. If I was a superhero for English teaching, you could call me Englishman! Which is appropriate, because I am an English man. Haha, I’m just joking, I’m not a superhero, I’m just an ordinary humble man, well as you can hear from this introduction I may not be that humble, but I am a man – definitely, I checked this morning. I am proud to be an English teacher – a profession which includes many bright and brilliant people all around the world, who have either chosen this vocation, or just ended up doing it because they didn’t know what else to do with their lives. As well as being an English teacher, I’m also a stand-up comedian, and I’m a podcaster. I do a podcast for learners of English called Luke’s English Podcast. You should listen to it. It’s quite popular and I have lots of downloads these days. I’m happy to say that I have a lovely community of people around the world who regularly listen to my podcast episodes in order to improve their English, but also (hopefully) because they just enjoy listening to each episode I produce. Did I mention that the podcast has won a few awards? No. Ok, well, the podcast has won a few awards. Am I sounding a bit arrogant? I hope not. I don’t mean to sound full of myself, I really don’t – it’s just that sometimes I think I should try and sell myself on the podcast, just a little bit, to remind you who I am. I don’t mean to just go on about myself a lot because it’s a bit self-indulgent isn’t it? But I do think it’s important to convince you that listening to this is very good for your English, and that you should keep doing it. It’s not just me who says that, I also have lots of testimonies from listeners of my podcast who have commented on my website, saying some very positive and nice things indeed, like this one which arrived just a couple of days ago, from someone called “Teddy WS” who simply wrote “Thank God I find this page.” He sounds a bit desperate maybe, like he’s been walking through some kind of English teaching desert, and my website is like an oasis for him, where he can drink from this refreshing wellspring of natural English. It’s certainly a positive endorsement.

Thanks Teddy, that’s nice. Now, admittedly, Teddy did make a mistake in his comment – he wrote “Thank God I find this page” and it should be “Thank God I found this page” but to be fair, he has only just found the page, and he has been walking through a desert for days and days, and he probably hasn’t listened to many of the episodes yet. I expect if Teddy writes on the page again in a few months, after he’s listened to more episodes and refreshed himself, he won’t make a mistake like that. I certainly hope so. Teddy, if you’re listening – don’t feel bad about making that mistake – mistakes are an essential part of the learning experience. Just brush it off, carry on and try not to do it again. By the way Teddy, I’m looking forward to reading another comment from you on my site in the future.

The main philosophy of my podcast is to give learners of English the chance to listen to authentic British English as it is really spoken. Sometimes it’s just me talking, sometimes I have interviews and conversations with friends, family or other interesting people. I try to keep it real – meaning I try not to adapt my language level too much. I don’t want to talk to you in a very simple way because that’s not how people usually speak in the real world. I think I speak clearly on the podcast, but at a fairly normal speed. I believe, ultimately, that’s better for your English.

So, it’s better for your English in the long run, but in the short-term, you might find it difficult to understand every single word I say, or every single word my friends say. So, I often remind you, that if you don’t understand what I’m saying or if you get lost during conversations on the podcast – keep listening! Keep going! Don’t be put off when you lose the thread of the conversation. Persevere, don’t give up. In the long run, it will be better for your English. So don’t stop.

If you want to pay close attention to every single word, and study those words, you can. Many of my episodes have transcripts, or at least some notes which you can read. You can then study the words and phrases I’m using and improve your English that way. Or, you can simply relax and listen to the episodes wherever you are in the world – just find a comfortable place, or even an uncomfortable place – it doesn’t matter that much, but comfortable is better, just put your headphones in, or turn your speakers on, and just listen for fun. It should be enjoyable to listen to English. It doesn’t have to be a boring study exercise. So, I invite you to just relax, kick off your shoes, make a cup of tea, listen to my episodes, and enjoy doing it. :)

This episode is entitled The Lying Game. The title of the episode has absolutely no connection to the things I’ve just said to you in the opening minutes of this introduction.

No, the reason this episode is called The Lying Game, is because in a few moments you’re going to listen to my friends and me playing a speaking game which involves either lying or telling the truth. It’s just a fun guessing game that involves some lying. So that’s why this episode has that title.

So let me tell you what you can expect from this 2-part episode of LEP.

What’s The Lying Game? This is a speaking activity I play with my students in my English language classes. In this episode you’ll hear me playing this game with my friends Amber and Paul, who are native speakers of English.

In a few minutes the episode is going to start (we haven’t started yet, this is still the introduction). I just wanted to say right now, that this was a very fun conversation for Amber, Paul and me. We really enjoyed talking and playing the game. I hope you enjoy it too. The thing is, we got pretty excited during the game and so we speak pretty quickly and sometimes we speak over each other. That might make it difficult for you to understand everything that’s being said. Still, like I said a few moments ago – keep listening anyway, even if you don’t understand everything. OK, I think I’ve made my point about that now!

The recording begins mid conversation. Let me just tell you a few things to help you understand what we’re saying, right from the beginning.

You’ll hear me say to Paul, “Do you really think I change the way I speak?” This is because Paul thought I sometimes change my voice when I’m recording the podcast. Like, I have a podcast voice that comes on when I start recording. We agree that it’s quite normal as a way of catching the attention of the audience from the beginning, or “pulling people in” as Paul says.

Just a couple of other things that will help you understand the beginning of the conversation:

Paul starts whispering subliminal messages into his microphone. This is because just the other day he was on a “film shoot” and he did that to the sound man – he whispered into the microphone and only the sound man could hear him. Just for fun.

I make a (lame) joke about something Amber says about it being a grey day. I thought she said ‘grade A’, referring to the sofa she was sitting on. A grade A sofa would be a top quality sofa. My sofa on the other hand is not that good, so it’s more likely to be a grade B or grade C sofa.

Then we make a few references to things you won’t know about, like my stand up routine, and a joke I made earlier about Philips lightbulbs, you know the technology company called “Philips”. Watch out for that. We found is hilarious. You might be confused by it. Let me know.

Then I realise that we’re having too much fun, and that could be annoying, like my favourite film critic Mark Kermode says that comedy is hard work. If people say they had fun making a comedy you’ll know it’s not funny.

It looks like they had a lot of fun making it which is always a recipe for disaster, when it comes to comedy. Because most really funny comedies are not fun to make – On reviewing Mortdecai 23 Jan 2015 show

So I hope that is not the case for this episode.

So, after that Mark Kermode reference, we settle down a bit, the conversation continues, we talk a bit about lying, and we start playing the game.

OK, I’m now going to stop explaining everything before it’s happened, and just let you listen to the episode. So, here we go!

Intro 2 (This is the second introduction which I say at the beginning of the conversation with Amber & Paul!)
Sometimes I play a fluency speaking game with my students, which involves telling lies. I call it The Lying Game. It’s an imaginative title. It’s just a fun game to practice giving information, and forming questions. I’ve been using it in class for years and it’s always a pretty popular exercise. This time on the podcast I thought I’d play the game with some native speakers. When you listen you can focus on noticing these things: question forms, how people describe events in the past (tenses and pronunciation of ed endings), how people describe present habits (verb forms and adverbs – not just present simple tense) and also the intonation that we use when asking questions in a suspicious, open or challenging way.

With me I have Paul Taylor & Amber Minogue.

How are you?
Do you think you’re good liars? Are you gullible?
Do you ever lie in your life?
Is it wrong to lie? Is it ever ok?
Are you ready to play the game?

Rules

Tell us something – it could be something that happened in the past, a habit, someone you’ve met – anything about you that we don’t already know. Try to make it interesting – partly ridiculous, partly believable.
We will then interrogate you about it, asking you all sorts of questions to investigate your statement. You can expand on it. This is the hilarious bit where we’re not sure if you’re lying or not. Ha ha ha.
Then, when we’ve run out of questions we will say if we think you’re lying or telling the truth, justifying why we think so.
Then, reveal if you were lying or not. It’ll be dramatic and entertaining.
Points: For everyone who guesses wrong, you get two points. Every person who guesses correctly gets 1 point.
Everyone has a go, and at the end we count the scores to see not only who is the best liar, but also who is the most gullible or untrusting person. If you’re gullible, you won’t score much. If you’re too trusting, you won’t score much either. If you’re a bad liar you won’t score much, if you don’t appear trustworthy you won’t score well either. So, the winner of this game will be some kind of psychopath, basically. Or, the winner will be a good liar and good at detecting lies too.

Luke, Paul and Amber’s Statements from the Game

Luke: I once met Dave Grohl (drummer from Nirvana, singer in Foo Fighters) at a buddhist temple in Japan.

Paul: I once spent Valentine’s Day with Elijah Wood and John Hurt.

End of part 1! You can hear Amber’s turn in the next episode, where you will find out what happens and who wins the game in the end! (exciting)

Scores at the end of part 1
At this stage, the scores are like this:

Luke – 2 / 0 Total = 2 points

Amber – 1 / 1 Total = 2 points

Paul – 0 / 2 Total = 2 points

So it’s even stevens!

Listen to part 2 (coming soon) in order to hear Amber’s story, and to see who wins.

The photo of Dave Grohl that I took on my J-Phone:

:) Thanks for listening!

The Invention of Lying – Film by Ricky Gervais

303. The Battle of Britain

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This year marks the 75th anniversary of The Battle of Britain, and since this is such a pivotal moment in British history, I thought it would be appropriate to cover it in some way in an episode of this podcast. Also, I was asked recently by a listener in the comments section of my website to talk about the story of the Battle of Britain, specifically the role of one particular group of Polish pilots known as Squadron #303. So, here it is – the story of one of the most important moments in modern British history – The Battle of Britain, and the contribution made by a small group of pilots from Poland.

[DOWNLOAD]
The Battle of Britain is often cited as a proud moment in British history, particularly by nationalistic Brits who also believe that we shouldn’t let any immigrants into our country. Squadron 303 killed twice as many German fighters as any other squadron, and one pilot in particular became something of a flying legend, with a record number of kills. But the thing is, these heroes of the Battle of Britain weren’t actually British, they were foreigners, fighting in British made Hurricanes and Spitfires. Where did these brave and skilful pilots come from? Poland. So, this episode is not just a history lesson about Britain, but also a bit of a shout-out to my Polish listeners out there – I know there are quite a few of you. If you’re not Polish, then I hope you appreciate the telling of this story of danger, bravery and global warfare.

The Battle of Britain
First of all, this is Churchill speaking, before the battle of Britain begun.
*Churchill speech 1 – “Their finest hour”
So, what was the situation?
It was 7 September 1940.
Northern France was occupied by the Germans, and airfields everywhere were covered in bombers, loaded up and ready to begin bombing raids on strategic targets all over the UK. Hitler was about to take a bit crap all over Britain.
This was a year after Britain had declared war on Germany after Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and then Poland. It had been a pretty good year for Hitler. He’d basically marched across most of Western Europe and seized it, just like Napoleon and the Romans had done before. Hitler had a pretty effective strategy which we now call Blitzkrieg, or ‘lighting war’ which involved using planes to bomb the crap out of an area before sending in infantry and tank divisions to quickly mop up enemy troops. It was devastatingly effective as it took advantage of speed, mobilised mechanical heavy weapons, surprise and the general disorganisation of the enemy as a result of the air bombing. He used this approach to great effect in the invasion of Poland and then The Netherlands, Belgium, and France. In just one year Hitler’s troops were in control of large parts of mainland Europe.

British forces had been forced to evacuate the continent after effectively being chased away by the Germans. There was a big retreat and escape from France at Dunkirk. It was a military defeat for the Brits who ended up in a pretty desperate situation. The Nazis controlled the continent. The USA wasn’t in the war yet so we couldn’t rely on their full assistance. Britain was basically alone, cut off from the mainland, just separated from the enemy by a few miles of water, waiting to be attacked and invaded by the Germans. Not a good position to be in.

Perversely, this is often the moment that many Brits feel very nostalgic about. As I said, it’s often referred to as our finest hour. I think there may be something in the British consciousness that actually enjoyed the idea of being completely separated from the rest of the continent, as if it clarified the ‘us against them’ attitude of some people. This was perhaps our darkest hour. We faced total oblivion and invasion by the nazis. Certainly, thousands of Brits were going to be killed. Beloved properties and national monuments would be destroyed in the bombing, but for some Brits looking back on the Battle of Britain, this was a moment to be proud of, like it made us a great nation. I suppose the reason people say that is because it was a time when Britain showed some character and spirit. The whole country sort of pulled together and formed a united front. Churchill made his famous speech.
*Churchill Speech 2 – “We shall fight them on the beaches”

It was rousing stuff. Ultimately, Britain survived the invasion attempt. People feel proud of that.
But, it’s ironic that many of the people today who are still nostalgic for that moment are also the ones who preach a certain kind of politics – anti-immigration, nationalistic values, something approaching a kind of English or British fascism. They’re the ones who love that moment when Britain was alone, facing the invading hoards from the continent. It’s ironic because during that battle we were fighting against fascism. Now it seems that it’s the fascists at home who like to remember it.

Anyway, it looked pretty bleak for Britain.
Hitler decided that before attempting any kind of land invasion, he would attempt to thoroughly smash The UK from the sky. He planned to target industrial centres in the big cities, key points of infrastructure and even some national monuments and residential areas. The aim was to cripple the country, both physically and mentally. Ooh, scary stuff.

So, on 7 September 1940 the Luftwaffe were all ready and prepared to launch operation.

Britain at this moment was steadily making weapons from anything they could get their hands on. All heavy metals were being thrown into factories. All the money was being spent on defence and weapons. A lot of Brits felt the squeeze. Obviously it wasn’t as bad as in the occupied countries, I imagine. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I imagine having a bunch of nazis from another country marching around your home town making themselves comfortable was rather difficult to take. So the Poles, the Czechs, the Belgians, Dutch and French (well, most of them anyway) were no doubt having a pretty awful time too, not to mention any other nations that I haven’t mentioned. This was a world war of course – so if I don’t mention your country in this episode I am sorry. This is after all the Battle of Britain.

Anyway, Britain was preparing itself for a rather bad time. A lot of planes were being constructed, men were being trained to fly and fight in the air.

The Germans were feeling pretty good about themselves. Morale was high. They’d just walked all over Europe and felt on top of the world. They basically felt absolutely superior. Whipped up by the rhetoric of their charismatic (albeit completely insane) leader, they’d been led to believe that the world was theirs and this was the natural order of things. Wrong.

So, the nazis were pretty chuffed and probably couldn’t wait to have a go at Britain, this global superpower of the time.

This was the biggest aerial attack of World War 2 so far. At 5pm on 7 September the first wave of bombers reached their targets in London. Apparently the sound they made was pretty scary. A kind of low, depressing drone sound. Ominous.

It was a Saturday afternoon in London. When I think of Saturday afternoons back home I think of tea, sandwiches, football with my Dad. I don’t imagine death from above, or death from any direction for that matter. The planes targeted the industrial areas, but a lot of workers lived right next to them and their homes got bombed too.

But that was just the beginning. What followed was a rain of bombs that no other city had ever seen in history. 12 hours of bombing without a break, continuing through the night. A lot of people died, and others were convinced they would follow.

How did the pilots feel? According to interviews they just hoped that they’d hit their targets, but they knew that civilians were probably getting killed. Really, they were a bit cut off from what was happening on the ground. I expect they didn’t feel too proud of themselves.

For the British people, particularly Londoners I think this bombing created hopelessness in some, but also a gritty determination in others, as well as a visceral hatred of the germans.

The fires caused by the bombing lasted for 57 nights, and in fact these fires were more damaging than the bombing raid.

The Nazi strategy was to continue to bomb, terrorise and demoralise the nation. Hitler expected Britain to give up and surrender to Germany, so he could then turn his attention on the East. He knew that it would be unwise to attempt to invade Russia (correction: The USSR) while also fighting on the Western front. So victory in the west was a crucial part of his plan. He expected Britain to surrender. He underestimated us.

It became a battle of wills, embodied by two men – Hitler and Churchill. It was Churchill who rallied the British people. He inspired them to carry on. He echoed the sentiments of the nation, that they would never ever surrender.

*Churchill Speech 3 – The Blitz*

Hitler didn’t expect Churchill to refuse to deal with him. This may have been a bit of a surprise. Britain was not going to be a walkover.

The German air force had already knocked out a lot of our warships in the English channel and planned to launch surprise air attacks on England, but England had a technological advantage: radar. This is now used in airports all over the world. It’s a kind of tracking device to monitor the skies. Radar was used as an early warning system, to let the RAF know if German bombers were on their way to England on missions. This allowed the RAF to scramble fighter planes into the skies in order to engage the German parties in combat. The Luftwaffe had no idea that radar even existed, so when RAF planes suddenly turned up to meet them in the skies it must have been a bit of a surprise. The fighting in the sky was essentially a duel of fighter pilots in single-man planes. Dog fights, one on one battles. Tracers from bullets flying through the sky. Chaos and destruction in the air.

It must have been incredibly frightening for the pilots. So many people were killed. Dogfights lasted seconds. It was a question of being aware of your surroundings and planning your attacks. If you had the right strategy you’d have the advantage and you’d find the enemy in a vulnerable position from which you could open fire and take out the plane. If your strategy was bad, you’d leave yourself open to attack.

The Germans were flying Messerschmitt 109s, the Brits in Hurricanes and Spitfires.

There were so many deaths during these fights that the pilots accepted that they would almost certainly die sooner or later. Everyone just expected to die. Imagine how that felt for these men. Living like that, in the knowledge that tomorrow or the next day, would be your last. What would that do to your mind? I’m sure it was the same for both sides. For the Germans there was the added fear that they would run out of petrol, or that they would be forced to crash land in enemy territory and then taken captive. The German pilots were forced by their superiors to always accompany the bombers, even if their smaller planes were running out of fuel. Sometimes these amounted to suicide missions for the fighter pilots who simply didn’t have enough fuel for the whole mission. Many pilots drowned as they had to bail out of their planes, landing in the English channel, miles away from the land.

Many wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends lost men who were close to their hearts, again on both sides.

Women didn’t all stay at home worrying though. In the RAF the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force were an integral part of the British defences. They worked in the operations room and helped to coordinate the fighters.

So, in the summer of 1940 the Germans failed to break the RAF. That’s when Hitler decided to launch the large scale bombing attacks on London and other locations, and that was the true beginning of the battle of Britain.

Like on 7 September, waves of German bombers came across the channel, and RAF planes took off to meet them, engaging them in mid-air. The German bombers were well armed with machine guns, and also flanked by fighter planes too, which engaged the RAF in more one-on-one dogfighting. There were a lot of bullets in the air. The German escorts managed to keep the RAF at bay, allowing the bombers to continue to London. Large parts of the city were reduced to rubble. To this day, it remains one of the characteristic things about the city – there are gaps in the old buildings in which more modern buildings have been constructed. It doesn’t have the consistency of a city like Paris, because large parts of the city were completely destroyed during the war and then re-built later. Of course it wasn’t just London. All the main industrial cities took a beating, particularly Coventry in the midlands which got absolutely smashed in a huge bombing raid. It’s very sad. It was a beautiful and proud city with a magnificent cathedral. That’s now gone and is replaced by more modern structures, but something essential was lost, and for years Coventry was like a ghost town for the people growing up there in the aftermath of the war.

Londoners had to hide from the bombing in cellars under houses, or in specially made bomb shelters, even in underground stations like Oval in South London.

Between September and November 1940 London was bombed over 300 times. Thousands of individual bombs were dropped. London’s children were evacuated, meaning they were sent away for their own protection. Most of them went north into the countryside, away from the industrial targets. That must have been a very emotional moment, having to say goodbye to children and parents. I expect many of the parents thought they’d never see their kids again. Some children were taken all the way to Canada from Liverpool, and many were killed when their ship was torpedoed by a German submarine.

Back in London, the RAF with their radar and the brilliant Spitfire fighter plane had something of an advantage in the air, although it was a very slight advantage. Goering the military commander did not achieve the results he’d hoped for and decided to carry out all his bombing raids on London at night. The skies were lit up with fire as London burned, and with the lack of accuracy in the dark many residential areas all around London were hit and many civilians were killed. Nevertheless, Londoners kept their morale and managed to carry on as normally as possible during the day. Clearing up bomb damage but also attempting to go about their daily business. This is one of the things that kept the Germans at bay. The spirit of the people of Britain. Perhaps that’s what makes people so proud and causes them to say that this was Britain’s finest hour.

But the normality of daily life came to a sudden stop at approximately 5pm every day when everyone got into bomb shelters and the raids began again. Even though many people managed to carry on, I’m sure that many of them were basically walking around like zombies, expecting it all to be over by the end of that day. Many of them were ready for surrender, but they didn’t.

*Audiobook recommendation – “The Battle of Britain: From the BBC Archives”

The bombing continued all the way into the next year, until May 1941. Hitler called off the attacks on Britain, choosing instead to focus his attention on the east and Russia (Correction: USSR). However, that proved to be a problem for him because it left him open in the West, and later when America joined the war, Britain became a vitally strategic position for the allies. It was from the south coast of England that the allies launched their major counter attack against the Nazis with a land invasion in Normandy, Northern France which ultimately led to allied forces getting all the way to Berlin. Despite being a hero to the Brits, Churchill didn’t emerge from WW2 completely clean. There were large scale bombing raids on Germany from Britain, including the destruction of Dresden and massive damage to Berlin, largely as a response to the attacks on British cities.

In the east the Nazis struggled through bitterly cold and tough conditions fighting against the Russians (I mean Soviets). Many many Russian (Soviet) lives were lost as well as Germans. Ultimately Hitler couldn’t sustain a war on two fronts. The size and resilience of the Russian army (Red Army) in the east proved too difficult for Hitler, but also his inability to crush the spirit of the Brits left him open on that side too. The Battle of Britain proved to be Hitler’s first major defeat and was a decisive moment in World War 2, representing a turning point in favour of the allies. Nazi soldiers didn’t put a foot on British soil. The invasion never happened.

But that’s not the end of the story, because I’d like to turn my attention to a particular squadron of pilots who made an extraordinary contribution to the Battle of Britain, a contribution that could have made all the difference. During the battle, Britain was hanging on by its fingernails. Every single day of combat, British resources were stretched to their absolute limit. Dozens of pilots and planes were lost every day over British skies. They couldn’t have carried on much longer. If Hitler had continued, he would probably have crushed the British spirit, but he didn’t and Britain managed to hold on just long enough to keep the Germans at bay.

Churchill called it Britain’s finest hour, and famously said that “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”.
*Churchill Speech 4 – “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”

What gave Britain the edge? Well, it was partly radar, partly the brilliantly engineered Spitfire – which was specifically made as a bespoke fighter to keep up with and out-speed the German planes, while holding extra fuel to keep pilots in the air longer. The Spitfire is now a national icon, and it has to be said, is a rather beautifully designed plane, with its rounded and curved wings and fuselage.

But also it was the individual pilots involved in the fighting. There was one squadron which stood out, the 303rd. You might imagine them to be a band of plucky young British gentlemen, but in fact they weren’t. These men who may have saved Britain were in fact foreigners, from Poland.

303 Squadron
303 squadron was one of 16 Polish squadrons who flew with the RAF during the Battle of Britain. They were pilots who had flown against the Germans previously, but who had escaped to England when Poland was invaded. They turned out to be the highest scoring RAF squadron during the Battle of Britain. One of the pilots in particular was not in fact Polish but of Czech origin and was called Josef František. He is perhaps the most famous member of the squadron and is famous for being one of the highest scoring allies in the Battle of Britain.

The squadron chose its own name, The Kościuszko Squadron – named after another flying squadron that had taken part in the Polish/Russian war of the 1920s. In fact the 303 contained some members of that squadron. So they were already a pretty distinguished flying team. It was made up of about 21 pilots and a number of ground staff, and what was the prime reason for their success during these air battles? Anger and a vicious hatred of the nazis. This was like a high-energy fuel for these men, who just couldn’t wait to take down Nazi planes at the earliest opportunity.

But their opportunities were slow to come. The team was based in Northolt in England, and were assigned two RAF officers to look after them. The officers were responsible for training the Polish pilots in RAF protocol, but also in the basic English necessary to follow orders and instructions. So, before the pilots even got a chance to take to the skies, they were forced to sit through weeks of English lessons, and I imagine in those days it was pretty mind numbing stuff! There was no LEP that’s for sure.

Apparently the Polish pilots were so desperate to get at the Germans that during a training flight, when a party of German planes was spotted in the vicinity, one of the Polish pilots, called Ludwik Paszkiewicz, broke formation and tore after the German planes engaging them in combat. He shot down a German Messerschmitt Bf 110. The RAF officers were convinced and the next day the squadron was immediately put into action. This was the beginning of an incredible run of missions in which the 303 squadron scored a record breaking number of kills in the air. Apparently, these guys were absolutely incredible. Again, fuelled by a bitter hatred of the Germans, the pilots just pushed everything that bit further, going out of their way, taking incredible risks to take down as many planes as possible. But also, their use of British Hurricane fighter planes was a big advantage for them too. Previously they’d flown planes that were less powerful and less well-engineered. This had honed their flying skills considerably. IN their previous planes they’d been used to having to fly much closer to the enemy in order to get accurate hits. In the Hurricanes, with their increased speed and firepower the pilots continued to fly very close to enemy planes like they had done before, but this time the results were devastating. The German planes didn’t stand a chance. Later the squad were equipped with Spitfires and this made all the difference.

No. 303 Squadron claimed the largest number of aircraft destroyed of the 66 Allied fighter squadrons engaged in the Battle of Britain, even though it joined the fray two months after the battle had begun.

Josef František was a particularly successful pilot. He was considered by his commanding officers to be ill-disciplined and a danger to other pilots when flying in formation, but he was devastatingly successful at taking down Germans. In the end, he was given the right to break formation and go out on solo missions to pick off as many enemy planes as he wanted. In this way František was able to fight his own private war against the Germans, allowing him to take down at least 18 planes in one month, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal.

Sadly, on 8 October 1940, František’s Hurricane crashed in Ewell, Surrey during a landing approach after a patrol. Reasons for the crash are not known, but according to some theories, he may have been making aerobatic figures to impress his girlfriend, or it might have been a result of battle fatigue and physical exhaustion. So he never lived to see the end of the war.

The success of 303 squadron in combat can be mainly attributed to the years of extensive and rigorous pre-war training many of the long-serving Polish veterans had received in their homeland, far more than many of their younger and inexperienced RAF comrades then being thrown into the battle. Tactics and skill also played a role, as well as a daring commitment to bringing down the enemy; on one occasion, No. 303’s Sgt Stanislaw Karubin resorted to extreme tactics to bring down a German fighter. Following a prolonged air battle, Karubin was chasing a German fighter at treetop level. As he closed in on the tail of the German fighter, Karubin realised that his Hurricane had run out of ammunition. Rather than turning back to base, he closed the distance and climbed right above the German fighter. The German pilot was so shocked to see the underside of the Hurricane within arm’s reach of his cockpit that he instinctively reduced his altitude to avoid a collision and crashed into the ground.

After World War 2, Poland was occupied by Soviet forces and its borders were redrawn as part of the 1945 Potsdam Conference. Poland became enveloped in the Soviet Union (correction: Not the Soviet Union, but the Soviet controlled Eastern Bloc), behind the iron curtain. I’m not sure how many Polish people feel about what happened after world war 2. I understand there is some bitterness at the allies, and probably Britain in particular about this, that perhaps we sold-out the Polish or forgot them, or betrayed them by not securing their freedom. Many sad things happen at an international diplomatic level during or in the aftermath of war. They’re regrettable. I wonder how the Poles generally view Britain these days. Is there resentment there? Or is that just a thing of the past. I hope we can all let bygones be bygones.

Nowadays a lot of Polish people live and make their living in the UK. In London for example there is a very large Polish community. Where I used to live in Hammersmith there is the Polish cultural centre just up the road, and many Polish people live in the area. I guess for many of them it’s a chance to get more opportunities for living in the UK, and I’m pretty proud to be part of a country that offers opportunities for people from other countries, and it’s clear to me that residents from other nations can bring a lot of skills and benefits to the country they move to. I’m not one of these people who complains about immigrants stealing people’s jobs. Immigrants are often skilled people who can contribute a lot, as we saw from the example of the 303 Squadron, who might have given the RAF an edge over the Germans in the Battle of Britain. Maybe they saved the day and helped Britain stay free, allowing us all to indulge in these nostalgic memories about our “finest hour” in which we stood up to the Nazis when all hope was lost.

That is the end of the story and that’s the end of this episode. Please leave your thoughts on the page as usual. Have a good day.

Luke
BR2

7 Reasons Why The Brits Should Love the Poles (Thank you Piotr Perliński)

297. Using Humour in the IELTS Speaking Test (With Jessica from All Ears English)

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On the podcast today I’m talking to Jessica Beck who has been working in English language teaching for over 10 years. She is an instructor, a teacher trainer and an author of 14 textbooks for learning English. You may also know Jessica from her work on the IELTS Energy Podcast (www.ielts.allearsenglish.com), which is part of the All Ears English. I talked to Gabby and Lindsay from AEE on LEP last year about culture shock, remember that? Well, Jessica is part of the All Ears English team, and is known there as the “Examiner of Excellence”. So, she knows a lot about the IELTS test, and he’s got some good advice for any of my listeners who plan to take the test, including how you can improve your speaking score if you have a good sense of humour. If you’re not planning to take the test, these skills can also be applied to your use of English in general life too.

[DOWNLOAD]
Jessica has kindly written a blog post which includes the tips and useful language she mentions in this episode. You can read that blog post below.

I expect that most of you know what the IELTS test is, In fact, I have done an episode about IELTS before on LEP in which I went through every part of the test in one episode, dispensing various bits of Jedi wisdom to help you get a better score. That episode is called “Tips and Tricks for the IELTS Test”, and is episode number 254 of Luke’s English Podcast.
Check it out here www.teacherluke.co.uk/2015/01/22/254-ielts-tips-tricks/

For those that don’t know, IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System, and it’s now the world’s #1 test of English language level. The test measures your English in 4 areas: reading, writing, listening and speaking. The maximum score in each area is 9 (expert user) and the lowest is 1 (total beginner). Lots of universities, employers and other institutions around the world require an IELTS score as requirement for entry, and 7 is usually the target score, sometimes it’s higher, sometimes lower depending on the institution. Cambridge University in the UK for example requires a minimum of 7.5 overall, with no less than 7 in any of the categories. So, if you want that place at a great British or American university, the first challenge is often to get a really good IELTS score, and what you need is good advice and strategies to help you do your best.

So, in this episode we’re going to meet Jessica, and talk specifically about the IELTS speaking test, in which you have a 15 minute interview with an IELTS examiner and your spoken English is tested in a few ways. Jessica has loads of tips for the speaking exam, and I’m hoping that she can give us some advice on how having a sense of humour can get you a better score in the test. So listen for some more top tips for IELTS in this one.

Also, what do you think would happen if I took the IELTS speaking test? Well, listen to the whole episode and you’ll find out…

Now, let’s meet Jessica the “Examiner of Excellence”.

Read Jessica’s Blog Post:

Humor Increases IELTS Speaking Scores

Say what??!!

I’m serious. It does.

By Jessica Beck from All Ears English IELTS

Many students, and teachers, for that matter, view all exams as formal and academic. Because of this, they believe that on these exams, test-takers must behave, speak, and write in an academic, formal style all the time.

While this may be true for some tests, there are many reasons why an IELTS candidate should not behave this way on the Speaking exam.

As we discussed on the podcast, a common mistake students make is not learning about what the IELTS examiner is looking for.

Students often look at example questions, memorize high-level words and phrases, and believe this is enough.

It’s not!

You must know what you are graded on, and where to use these words and phrases.

Your score, which can be from 0 to 9, is broken down into 4 aspects- Fluency and Coherence, Vocabulary, Grammar and Pronunciation.

You can read definitions of the band scores in each aspect at https://www.ielts.org/pdf/SpeakingBanddescriptors.pdf.

What you must notice about the band score descriptors is that the examiner wants to hear a range from you- a range in vocabulary, in your ability to communicate about a variety of topics, and in your pronunciation.

The fact is that in Parts 1 and 2 on the IELTS Speaking exam, almost all of the questions are about you. They are personal and informal. Therefore, if you answer these questions in a formal way, you are showing that you do not have a range of communication ability and that you are unable to talk about personal, informal topics.

So, where does humor come in? How does it help you raise your score? Read on!

Humor helps you improve your pronunciation score. It helps you relax, allowing you to show your personality and use emotion in your voice. Showing relaxed and expressive pronunciation can push this score up to a 7 or higher!

It improves your fluency and coherence score. If you are able to answer some informal questions with a few informal anecdotes, or very short stories, about yourself, this will show that you can communicate appropriately and effectively in informal speaking situations.

It improves your vocabulary score, because you show you can use appropriate vocabulary to the question, and you have some knowledge of more interesting words and phrases. Showing the examiner a range of informal vocabulary in Parts 1 and 2, and formal vocabulary in Part 3, pushes your score up to a 7 or higher.

NOTE: Even though I’m encouraging you to communicate in a relaxed way, this doesn’t mean that you slump your shoulders and provide one word answers. You must always sit and behave respectfully, and ALWAYS answer in complete sentences.

We gave some examples of how to answer in a humorous manner on the podcast, and the phrase “self-deprecating” came up a few times.

Self-deprecation is the ability to make fun of yourself, or to share information about yourself that shows you make mistakes.

This is a humble way of communicating, and it can endear you to your listeners.

This is true on the exam and in real life!

For example, if the examiner asks, “Do you enjoy taking photographs?” A self-deprecating answer would be, “I’ll admit, I actually love taking selfies. I know this is a silly habit, and that is honestly a bit embarrassing, but I take selfies absolutely everywhere- at home, on the bus, walking up the stairs, waiting for my dry cleaning. However, I post almost none of them, so I guess it’s not that horrible of a habit!”

Other phrases you can use to introduce answers like this are: You won’t believe this, but…, This is crazy, but… and I’m a bit embarrassed to say this, but….

An excellent way to prepare to communicate in this way, on the exam and in real life, is to watch stand-up comedy, or see/listen to interviews with stand-up comedians.

Some podcasts that I recommend are Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, a news quiz with three stand-ups, How Did This Get Made, a show with 3-4 stand-ups who talk about really bad (but sometimes popular!) movies, and Comedy Bang Bang, an interview show with hilarious skits.

If you challenge yourself to experience this type of Western, English humor, not only will this help you communicate impressively with the IELTS examiner, but it will also help you talk naturally with native speakers, and understand more jokes in movies and TV shows.

Have fun and get your target score!

Click here to get the 7 Easy Steps to a 7 or Higher on IELTS

Jessica Beck is the IELTS professional at All Ears English IELTS. She has helped hundreds of students reach their target score through her simple, step-by-step systems and strategies. Learn more with Jessica on the IELTS Energy Podcast in iTunes.

294. California Road Trip (Part 7) Earthquakes & Hippies

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Hello listeners and welcome back. This is part 7 in this series which is based on my recent trip to California. I didn’t expect this to be a 7-part series, but it just keeps going because I’ve found more and more things to talk to you about! It’s like the podcast episode that refuses to die, it keeps coming back for more! It’s like the Lambton Worm or something – just when I think I’ve finished it off, it gets longer! I think this will be the last episode, but who knows. Time seems to shrink when I’m recording episodes of this podcast. An hour seems to disappear in just a few minutes because I get really involved in what I’m saying. I wonder if it’s the same experience for you. I hope so.

[DOWNLOAD]
If you haven’t heard the previous 6 episodes in this series then I suggest you go back and listen to them first. So far I’ve talked about lots of things including the history of California, some British & American English, Venice Beach, Segways, Baywatch, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hollywood & Celebrity Culture, Hotel California by The Eagles, Yosemite National Park, bears, The church of Scientology, an interview with AJ Hoge from Effortless English, a biography of Robin Williams, and descriptions of the things I did and saw while on my honeymoon with my wife.

In this episode I’m planning to talk about San Francisco, earthquakes, the hippie movement, customer service, the California coast and some more British and American English vocabulary.

A lot of what I am saying is transcribed on the page for this episode at teacherluke.co.uk. Look for episode 294.

*I’m expecting a package to be delivered by the postman at some point, so you might hear a knock at the door or the buzzer. It goes ‘buzz’, so it’s not a doorbell it’s a buzzer.*

Let’s get straight into it.

August 16
Cemetery & view of Golden Gate Bridge.

Fisherman’s Wharf & tourist area. Sea lions that weirdly arrived in the harbour just after the 1989 earthquake. Why did they suddenly arrive after the quake? Perhaps their previous social spot had been damaged or something like that. I’m not sure.

Cable car. Long delay and pretty grumpy service but it’s a great experience, hanging on to the side of the car as the driver pulls various weird levers, making the car move up and along the steep streets. We met an American couple who had been married for over 30 years. The wife did all the talking. Apparently they’d been to a Giants game (baseball) and he had caught a loose ball that had flown into the crowd. Apparently this is quite an honour in the states. You can keep the ball.

I met AJ Hoge in the afternoon. Listen to the previous episode for that interview.

That evening we ate dinner in a really well-reviewed Japanese restaurant just near our hotel – Sanraku – incredible sushi! This is the best Japanese food I’ve ever had outside Japan, and I had a load of sake and a couple of beers. Sake is really nice and a little dangerous to drink because you get drunk without realising it because it has such a light taste.

August 17
Earthquake in the morning!
A bit about earthquakes.
Tectonic plates.
They move against each other. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they press against each other.
Sometimes pressure builds up and then the plates suddenly move at the fault lines. This causes ripples of movement through the ground, or the whole ground to suddenly shift position. The movements, ripples, vibrations or whatever you want to call them can last some time, and they can cause huge amounts of damage.
If the quake happens off-shore, then there’s likely to be a big tidal wave or tsunami after the event. As the ground is displaced very quickly, it can displace massive amounts of water. For example, it might cause the water level to rise suddenly. Imagine filling a plate with water and then tipping the plate slightly. It would cause some of the water to run off the side of the plate. It’s like that but on a much larger scale of course. The water has so much volume and mass that it is almost impossible to stop. When it reaches the land it carries lots of earth and all kinds of detritus with it, turning the wave into an incredibly powerful and unstoppable wall of destruction. You can see footage of this from the Japanese tsunami of 2011. What a tragedy that was (although the Japanese showed characteristic strength and determination in the way they recovered from it).

It pretty much impossible to predict an earthquake, but it seems that along the San Andreas fault at this particular spot near San Francisco, there is a really big earthquake every 70 years or something, and the big one is long overdue. In fact, the whole region of California is subject to earthquakes quite regularly.

Earthquake Myths and Facts
Here are some myths and facts about earthquakes, from the U.S. Geological Society website.
http://www.usgs.gov/faq/taxonomy/term/9830

San Francisco style
Everyone’s wearing sports gear and they’re all really health conscious. They’re constantly in their gym gear and they look very active and healthy. In fact, being healthy and looking after yourself seem to be important aspects of life in this part of the country.

Acai bowls
My wife persuades me to switch to these instead of the big plates of pancakes and its a good move.
Acai are berries that grow in Brazil and apparently they contain everything you need. Vitamins, nutrients, amino acids and all that stuff. These acai bowls are popular all along the coast. They’re a bit hipsterish, but they’re good. The acai berries are turned into a kind of powder, which is mixed with things like almond milk or hemp milk, and frozen fruits, and then blended to form a sort of sorbet. This is then put into a bowl and mixed with granola, nuts, cut banana and strawberry, and is topped with coconut flakes or other things. They’re really good and they keep you going for ages without making you feel bloated. In fact, you don’t feel that full, but you’re not hungry either, and it gives you plenty of energy and no guilt.

My wife is now on a mission to make acai bowls popular in Paris!

Haight Ashbury
We then walked towards the Haight Ashbury area. The plan is to walk all the way over to that part of town, picking up some coffee on route. Then we’d walk through HA, pick up lunch at Wholefoods there, and eat a picnic in Golden Gate Park where apparently there is live music every Sunday. I’m quite curious about Haight Ashbury, because I’ve heard about it and read about it so many times, especially in documentaries about music and art from the 1960s.

History of Haight Ashbury & the Hippy Movement
What happened in Haight Ashbury in the 60s? What was the hippy movement all about?

There was a counterculture movement, a youth movement in the USA (and in many other places of course) that started in the late 1950s but really gathered momentum in the 1960s, seemed to peak in the middle of that decade, and was pretty much over by the early 1970s. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, as I know that a lot of you listening to this are fans of the music that we associate with that time, and you may well know as much about this subject as I do, but nevertheless here is a brief history of the hippy movement.

This was a subculture and ideological movement which started with the beatniks earlier in the decade. “Beatniks” – that’s kind of a nickname given to the movement that came before the hippies. The beatniks were writers, artists, intellectuals and radicals who were united in a general feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo. They rejected materialism (e.g. the idea that happiness in the USA can be found by marrying, getting a steady job, buying the right home with the right car, and the right modern accessories in your home and all that kind of square thinking). The Beats were more interested in soul-searching and trying to find some deeper meaning to life. This seems pretty normal now, and part of the dominant culture these days. Everyone has their soul-searching teenage period where they write a diary, write poetry and get all deep and meaningful. Well, that was common for teenagers of my generation in the UK, who got into indie music, started dressing like goths and smoked self-rolled cigarettes. The beats were the first to do that (although I expect there were other movements in Europe that did essentially the same thing, like the Bohemians). The Beats were heavily inspired by jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and like this kind of jazz music, life for the Beats was a free-form search for truth and inspiration in the creative process. It was like a big improvisation with no boundaries. Sounds pretty groovy, hip and cool right? In fact those are words that come out of that time. All of them were probably coined by jazz musicians, but the beat generation appropriated them, or at least used them too. So, if things were good they were ‘cool’, or ‘hip’. You ‘dig’ things which are ‘cool’. The opposite of ‘cool’ was ‘square’.

We associate the Beat movement with certain writers, who are called the Beat writers, or Beat poets. These are people like Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsberg, William S Burroughs and Ken Kesey. Some of the beats were into buddhism, sexual liberation and drug use. Out of this subculture came the hippies, who pretty much based their whole way of life on the ethos of the beat generation, and used books like “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac as a starting point for their own rejection of materialism and ‘normal’ life.

The word ‘hippie’ comes from the word ‘hip’, meaning ‘cool’ or in tune with this way of thinking. People also used the word ‘hipster’, but now we know we use the word ‘hipster’ for another kind of modern subculture – those uber-cool people who you find in East London who grow their own denim butter, have long beards and skinny jeans, use no electricity, ride fixie bikes, reject mainstream products in favour of vintage or handmade stuff, reject the dominant political system, and live in an apartment paid for by their rich parents. They’re similar to the beat generation or the hippies but today’s hipsters just seem to be more interested in just being cooler and more culturally aware than everyone else, and don’t have the same sort of communal spirit or mission as the hippies did.

Anyway, a whole generation of young people in the USA and in other parts of the world in the 1960s were really influenced by the beat generation and took on their values, and pushed them further – not everyone did this – not everyone at the time was a hippie. No, it was a subculture after all, but enough people lived the lifestyle for it to be a significant cultural movement. The hippies took it a bit further and embraced the whole concept, forming communes (shared living communities) in certain places – notably Haight Ashbury in SF and Greenwich Village in NYC (where the likes of Bob Dylan were playing protest songs and folk music in cafes).

The introduction of certain drugs, especially LSD into these communities really accelerated the whole movement, along with certain key events like the escalating conflict in Vietnam and the release of records like Bob Dylan’s first album, and albums by the Beatles. LSD was a drug that was created by accident by a pharmacist/chemist. It ended up being appropriated by the hippie movement because of the way it gave users incredibly transcendent mind trips, which made the hippies feel like they were experiencing things on a whole new level of consciousness. The innocence, youth, energy and vitality of this movement peaked in 1966/1967 particularly in the community of Haight Ashbury where, according to the accounts of lots of people, there were all kinds of open, free gatherings of people who took LSD, danced, made love and generally were very peaceful and transcendent, when they weren’t organising protests against the Vietnam war or other injustices. The hippies were for harmony with nature, sexual liberation, the use of drugs for mental liberation (aka consciousness revolution), peace, free love, communal living and eastern influenced spirituality. For the hippies, their immense optimism, fuelled by psychedelic drugs and perhaps a certain amount of naive idealism created the feeling that their love was going to change the world, and that there would be a sort of consciousness revolution which would cause the whole world to realise a totally new way of thinking and to start living in peace. The soundtrack to this period was albums like Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band by the Beatles. The thing is though, all the drug taking and free love did not come without a price, and it was naive of the hippies to think that their lifestyle was sustainable. True spiritual transcendence could not be achieved by simply taking a 2 dollar hit of acid, and many people just ended up mentally damaged by their use of LSD, and when harder and more addictive drugs like heroin arrived, the scene became much darker. In fact, hard drugs and other things like the later threat of AIDS pretty much killed the innocence and youthful spirit of the movement.

The optimism of the hippie movement and its decline were really well described by writer Hunter S. Thompson in his book Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. There is one particularly famous passage in which he describes the essence of the movement as like a wave that travelled across the country, then broke and flowed back again, leaving a sort of cultural high-water mark, or a cultural mark on the country. This is probably Thompson’s most celebrated bit of writing. There is a film version of the book, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp, who does an amazing acting performance in the role of the main character, who is a version of Hunter S. Thompson. Let’s listen to the scene from the film when Thompson talks about Haight Ashbury and the hippie movement. This is Hunter S. Thompson, played by Depp, in 1971, looking back at the previous 5 or 6 years, surveying what had happened before.

Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas – The High Water Mark

The Woodstock Music Festival was probably the culmination of this whole movement. It didn’t take place in San Francisco, but near New York. That was a massive happening, with hundreds of thousands of people who gathered together to celebrate love and peace, with some of the great bands and musicians of the time, like The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Crosby, Stills & Nash playing the soundtrack.

The end of the dream came with a few events that showed the dark side of all that drug taking and chaos – Charles Manson, Altamont (a Rolling Stones concert that involved the Hell’s Angels who killed a guy), hard drugs and their damaging effects, AIDs.

How does this relate to that Eagles song? They’re singing about people damaged by loss of innocence – the same people who used to be idealistic, but ended up lost in decadence and the temptations of sex, drugs and rock & roll.

Talking of rock & roll, let’s listen to George Harrison, who of course was a member of the Beatles and someone who was at the heart of this whole scene. Here he is from the Beatles Anthology documentary talking about how he visited Haight Ashbury in 1968 expecting it to be a kind of hippie heaven of peace and love, but in fact by 1968 it had become quite a scary place with lots of people just living in the street, begging and taking hard drugs (he described them as ‘bums’). I think it was quite a shock to him and that’s when he decided to stop taking LSD and he sort of rejected the hippie movement and instead chose to embrace Indian transcendental meditation – a much more disciplined and well-established form of spiritual exercise.

George Harrison (originally from Liverpool, UK) – Haight Ashbury 1968

What’s Haight Ashbury like now?
It still has that general atmosphere, but the original feeling is long gone I think. But it’s still a really cool place, and I was very interested in visiting it in order to see what it was really like. Now it’s artisanal coffee shops, a mix of branded clothing stores and unique clothing boutiques. Really it’s just another tourist destination where you can buy Bob Marley posters, hippie clothing, bongs, pipes and fake retro t-shirts. It’s a bit like Camden Town or something. It’s not a genuine place of consciousness revolution any more although there are still some communes of hippies living there and I think that there’s a lot of housing which is offered to homeless people, or people of no fixed address. In the surrounding streets I saw quite a few homeless people, or homeless looking people and people who seemed to be suffering from mental illness, or on medication for drug addiction. You also find some interesting murals painted on the walls with anti-capitalist messages written on them. That’s partly the feeling of the area, but also there’s a sense that the place is a bit of a tourist attraction. There’s Nike store there for example, which is like a temple to individualism and materialism.

Many people think that the place is not what it used to be. I can’t help feeling a bit sad about this, because the hippies were onto something good. Their intentions were good, but maybe they were idealistic and naive. Maybe they were reckless with their drug use and their free sex, or maybe their movement got crushed by the establishment. Anyway, now in Haight Ashbury there are just remnants of those old values. Lots of organic shops and incense and stuff like that, and certainly some people who believe in ethical and sustainable living, but still a sense of increasing commercialisation. I wonder about some of the locals who have lived in the area for a long time and who now find themselves living in a commercialised tourist attraction.

I think I may have come across one of these people during a visit to CVS – a chain of pharmacies that you find all over the USA. We went in to buy some bottled water. We chose one bottle of Californian water and one bottle of Fiji Water, which is bottled in Fiji and then shipped to shops around the world, including California. We got to the counter to pay and the middle-aged woman who served us just said, in a very passive aggressive manner, “Yeah, why NOT buy bottled water from the other side of the world”.

I recognised the sarcasm, and immediately felt judged. What was she really saying?

Guilt trip! This made me feel pretty bad for a while, until I snapped out of it.

What do you think? I expect most of you are thinking – ignore her, she was being really rude! And you’re right, but…

I think she had a point to be honest, but I’m not sure if she made it in the right way. (I mean, giving someone a guilt trip about a product they are selling someone may not be the best way to get your message across, or maybe it is – it had an effect on me!) The woman was certainly rude to me, but does that matter if her point is valid? I wonder what it must be like for her working in CVS, while having these values. Maybe she doesn’t have to work there, maybe she has no choice. Who knows. I don’t even know her background, but just that one comment tells me a lot. What do you think? Did she have a point? Is it wrong to buy bottled water which is sourced in another country? Should the woman have said something to me? Is she a hypocrite for working in the shop even when she disagrees with some of the products it sells? Let me know your thoughts as usual.

I did have another couple of experiences with slightly passive aggressive, weird behaviour.
Another guy by the side of the road who seems to be homeless, tried to attract my attention: “Oh did you drop something…hey!” I just kind of shook my head and smiled a bit, but said no. He said “oh no it’s just my brain entrails you’re stepping on” There is a slightly bad vibe from some of these old hippies, but nothing more than that really. I didn’t feel unsafe there or anything, just a bit freaked out by some of these people.

In the park there was a guy who could have been homeless, or mentally ill, I’m not sure really. He was busking, and by busking in this case I mean playing classic American songs, like Motown, The Beach Boys, Elvis on a loud tape player and just singing along – loudly and badly, like a bad public version of karaoke that nobody wanted to listen to. There were three youngish people sitting on the bench next to him, looking pretty awkward because this guy was pretty loud and acting quite crazily and I think it was a bit off-putting for them. After a while they got up to leave and didn’t really acknowledge him or give him any money, and he said “Hey, thanks for the tip!” – A pretty passive aggressive comment considering they hadn’t given him a tip. I think they were a bit put off and possibly slightly scared of him, and they didn’t respond but kept walking away. He repeated, louder and louder “Hey, thanks for the TIP!! HEY THANKS FOR THE TIP!!!” – a slightly disturbing moment, but nothing bad actually happened.

Despite some of these little scenes had a really nice relaxing time in Golden Gate Park, even though there was no music when we were there, except for the “thanks for the tip” guy. We lay on the grass reading and napping a bit, digesting our food.

More Audiobook Recommendations – www.audibletrial.com/teacherluke
Let’s continue to look at a few recommendations for California-related audiobooks you could download free by going to www.audibletrial.com/teacherluke

The two books I’d like to recommend are associated with the Beat movement of American literature, which was so important to the values of the later hippy movement.

“On The Road” by Jack Kerouac
This is probably the book which inspired the hippy movement more than any other. This is what is written in the summary for this book on audible.com: Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that “set them free”.

Do you fancy listening to an actor read that book to you? Visit www.audibletrial.com/teacherluke to sign up to a trial membership. You can download any audiobook you want, and then either cancel your membership and keep the audiobook, or continue as a member and enjoy more audiobooks every month.

“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey was part of a group of writers called The Merry Pranksters, which also included a man called Neal Cassady who was one of the inspirations for a principle character in On The Road. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters were a group who advocated a particular way of life that inspired the hippy movement. The Merry Pranksters sounded like a cool and funny bunch of people. They drove around America in a big bus. That was the inspiration for The Beatles “Magical Mystery Tour” film. Basically, Ken Kesey is a very important figure in the American counter cultural movement of the 1960s. A key writer in the Beat generation. Beat writers like Kesey influenced so many important cultural figures that followed them, including pretty much all of the famous rock musicians who emerged from the 60s and 70s, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Byrds, Neil Young and everyone else basically. They’re the ones who defined that whole lifestyle that is now so globally pervasive.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is the story of a charismatic criminal who ends up in a mental hospital when he’s not really mentally ill. He fakes it in order to avoid prison, thinking it will be much easier. What he discovers is that the mental institute is far more sinister than he’d imagined, and he ends up in a great mental power struggle against the strict nurse who runs the hospital. It’s all about the corrupting nature of power, about fighting against the establishment, about the fine line between sanity and insanity, and the idea there is something rotten at the heart of the American administration. What’s more, it’s just a great dramatic story, terrifically well written with some fantastic surprises. The main character is a lot of fun, and the evil Nurse Ratched is a great villain.
It’s sad, joyful, moving, and powerful, particularly at the end. There’s also a great film of this book, starring Jack Nicholson.
You can download the original version, narrated by Kesey himself (abridged and only 3-4 hours), but I recommend the 50th Anniversary Edition read by actor John C. Reilly (who I’m sure you’d recognise if you saw him – he’s a brilliant actor, with a really distinctive voice). It’s unabridged, so you get the whole book which comes to 10+ hours of audio.

End of Part 7. Part 8 coming soon, and I’m sure it will be the final chapter in this series. :)

292. California Road Trip (Part 5) Scientology / Meeting a Bear in Yosemite / The Trek Gone Wrong!

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Hi listeners, I hope all’s well. Here’s part 5 in this series which I’m doing about my California road trip. In this episode I’m hoping to talk about these things: The Church of Scientology, Yosemite National Park and our slightly dramatic adventure there, more British and American English, and if time I’ll talk to you about San Francisco, where among other things I met and interviewed AJ Hoge. So let’s get started. [In fact I only managed to talk about Scientology and the Yosemite experience – British & American English, and AJ Hoge will be in the next episode].

[DOWNLOAD]
Periscope Live Broadcast
While recording this I’m also doing a live-stream on Periscope. You might be thinking – oh, I wish I’d known about that, I would have watched it! You can watch the videos of the live feed here: (and there’s about 45 minutes of extra stuff in the videos that you don’t hear on the podcast)

The Road Trip Continues… 11 August
Prepare to drive to Yosemite – we go to CVS and stock up on water and other supplies, program the SatNav (GPS) to take us via Bakersfield and Fresno, then up Highway 41 into Yosemite, where we have managed to book a spot in a camping ground. We’re both really looking forward to being in the fresh air in the mountains.

Before leaving we stop for breakfast in a recommended cafe where they do awesome pancakes with whipped cream, maple syrup and free refills of coffee. We park the car and walk up the street and then suddenly come across a huge imposing blue building. It’s massive and weirdly painted bright blue. It’s the headquarters of the Church of Scientology. At this point I’d like to talk a little bit about Scientology, which I consider to be a fascinating and (here’s that word again) mysterious aspect of California life.

What’s the Church of Scientology?
Here’s a recording I made at that moment.
Play the first recording.

It’s a religion, and quite a controversial one. Some people call it a cult. Some of its members are famous celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Apparently the church has a lot of influence in Hollywood, and lots of people think it’s really weird and secretive. There are even suggestions that the church has been involved in criminal activity, threats – again these are just allegations, but it’s pretty mysterious and fascinating, like something from a mystery novel.

I recently saw a really interesting documentary about Scientology, called “Going Clear” in which lots of ex-members (people who decided to leave) of the church explain what it’s really like, and they don’t say very positive things. In fact the documentary seems to suggest that it’s a power-hungry cult which takes money from its members and threatens them with retribution if they try to leave. There are also suggestions that the church committed crimes like burglary, theft and intimidation in order to avoid having to pay a huge tax bill to the US government. Bold claims indeed. What’s really going on in this blue building?

A brief history of Scientology
This time I’m going to paraphrase a summary of Scientology that I’ve found on the “For Dummies” website. “For Dummies” is a series of books that help to explain various complex subjects in simple terms. You might know the series – they have distinctive yellow covers. It’s a really good series and they have books on almost every subject. A quick look at the For Dummies series on Audible shows titles like… (read some titles).

Recently I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of “British History for Dummies”, and it’s really good and yes I got that from Audible. You can get it too if you want – just click an audible button on my site or go to www.audibletrial.com/teacherluke and sign up for a trial and you can get a free audiobook. You could choose one of the “For Dummies…” books. Just search Audible for “For Dummies” and you can see all the books available.

Anyway, For Dummies also have a website with clear and fairly brief summaries. So, let’s check out the summary for Scientology. You can check the link here: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-is-scientology.html
So, what I’m about to say is based on information in that summary, but also what I learned from the Scientology pamphlets I’ve read and what I learned from several documentaries I’ve seen.

The church was set up in 1953 by a writer called L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard was already fairly successful as a writer of both science fiction stories, and then self-help books. His most successful self-help book explored the relationship between body and mind, and he called it Dianetics. This book became the basis of the religion he then set up called Scientology. Some critics say that Diabetics is just quackery (not proper science or psychiatry) he only set this up as a religion because it was a tax-dodge. In the USA religions don’t have to pay tax, so Hubbard is criticised for having a cynical reason for making his religion in the first place – so that he could make money, or worse – that he was just power-hungry. Whatever the reason, Scientology was set up as a religion in the USA.

Hubbard is loved by the Scientologists, but viewed with a lot more suspicion by many non-members of the church. For example, the French government, who considered him to be a fraudster and tried to convict him of customs violations in the 1970s. “Britain, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Venezuela all closed their ports to his fleet in the 70s. At one point, a court in Australia revoked the church’s status as a religion.” (Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#Life_in_hiding) These are all reasons why he went into hiding in 1970. To go into hiding means to leave the place where you live and go to a place where nobody can find you. He was the leader of the church right up until he died in 1986.

What do Scientologists do?
You can walk into a Scientology centre in many cities in the world now, and have a counselling session. In fact you might be invited in for one. When I used to live in London I used to walk past the Scientology centre in central London and they would sometimes as me if I wanted a stress-test. I always said no because I felt it was just a way for them to get me into the centre. I imagined it would be like this:
“Hi, are you feeling a bit stressed today? Would you like a free stress test?”
and then you go in and they check you out and tell you that you’re feeling all stressed out and that stress is really harmful and that they have all the solutions to how to combat stress and live a more effective life – and it’s Scientology. “Here’s a leaflet” or “Would you like to sign up to a course?” and then you’re in.

Sounds okay doesn’t it? I expect it is helpful at the beginning, for many people. It’s just not for me.

A counselling session at the church is called an audit. Essentially, this is a bit like a psychotherapy session. You’re invited to share deeply personal things in order to free yourself from emotional burdens. It sounds a bit like Freudian psychoanalysis doesn’t it? In fact Scientology completely rejects psychoanalysis. Apparently, Scientology is the only way. During these auditing sessions you are hooked up to a machine which is called an E-meter. According to scientology this can measure your thoughts, well – it’s not just as simple as ‘thoughts’ – apparently it’s related to immortal spirits from space which inhabit our bodies and prevent us from living a healthy and happy life. Auditing allows us to set these spirits free, which makes us feel better. Critics say the e-meter just measures electromagnetic energy in your hands and is no more revealing about your mind than a crude lie detector test. But, according to Scientology if an e-meter is used by a Scientology minster then it really works. Freeing yourself from levels of emotional burden in these auditing sessions is called going clear, and there are different stages of clarity. In order to achieve those levels of clarity you need to do more and more audits, share more and more personal problems, and also contribute more and more things to the church. This costs quite a lot of money as courses of auditing are not cheap, and all of this goes to the church, and also all the private and personal things you’ve said in auditing sessions are recorded and kept by the church. The aim is to free yourself of all your emotional burdens and achieve a state of perfect clarity. Apparently the church of Scientology is very rich as they have purchased some incredible pieces of real estate around the world, such as this massive building in Los Angeles. It’s not clear exactly how much power they have. Some say they exert some influence in Hollywood’s entertainment industry.

What do Scientologists believe?
Scientologists believe that people are in fact just receptacles for immortal spirits which came down to earth many years ago. The church doesn’t like it if these spirits are called aliens. Because, it sounds bad if you believe in aliens. It sounds a bit mad doesn’t it. So let’s not call them aliens. Apparently, these immortal ‘spirits’ live within us. They’re trapped inside us, and they can only be freed by going through auditing sessions, until you get to the top of level of clarity when I guess the aliens, sorry spirits go somewhere else. I’m not sure of the details of what happens to the spirits, or if we are the spirits, or what they look like.

OK, fair enough I suppose! We’re all entitled to our beliefs. What’s so controversial about them?
Here’s what’s written on the page from Scientology for Dummies, by Scott Barnes: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-is-scientology.html

Scientology is one of the most controversial religious movements of our time. Many people reduce their world view to nothing more than a cult that brainwashes its members and then fleeces (cons) them by charging outrageous fees for some auditing classes. Critics lambast the church for its rejection of established psychiatry, and many people take issue with the church’s “Celebrity Centres,” which are facilities that are technically open to the public but primarily serve the most famous Scientologists in the arts, sports, and government (think Tom Cruise, Isaac Hayes, and Nancy Cartwright).

Reports from some who have left the Church of Scientology are even more incriminating and include stories of church members being held for years against their wills at “rehabilitation camps” for violating certain policies, or sending members to go through the trash of the church’s critics and former members to find material to blackmail them into silence. In 1979, several Scientology members were convicted for participating in the largest theft of government documents in U.S. history. Scientologists have also been accused of tampering with witnesses in court cases and even murder.

In response to these claims, Scientologists state that their religion is genuine and that the movement has been distorted, and that they are being persecuted.

Among the criticisms are: Scientology preys upon people who want to make it in Hollywood by suggesting that they can help, then they force them to stay in the church with the suggestion that they can harm their careers due to their extensive connections in the business, they illegally resisted an investigation into their accounts by the IRS (the US tax office), they bully their members and they blackmail high-profile members like Tom Cruise and John Travolta into staying in the church – remember the church has recordings of all those extensive and deeply personal auditing sessions. These are all allegations and criticisms which have been made against the church – not necessarily my thoughts. I haven’t decided what I think of them yet and I’m just curious.

Is it possible that all of this sinister stuff is going in within these imposing blue buildings that we saw? I wonder…

Play the second recording.

I decided I’d try and talk to someone. I felt a bit excited and a bit nervous because I know the church can be a bit touchy about people doing recordings or making documentaries about them, which I guess is understandable. Anyway, I decided that I wanted to talk to someone so I went over to some of the people in uniform who were walking around the building. I spoke to a woman who was very nice and normal, of course. I told her I was making a holiday diary, and that I had just come across the building and wanted to interview someone about it. She took me into the building and I spoke to someone in reception. I made a recording afterwards.

Play the third recording.

What do you think about Scientology?
The woman I spoke to seemed very happy and proud to be working at the organisation. The place looked very smart and clean. Many members of the church say that it has helped them a lot. But what about all these allegations? Tell me what you think? Is the church a cult? Is it a force for good? Is there a church of Scientology in your country? What do you think?

Yosemite National Park
Yosemite is a huge national park, and probably one of the most stunning parks in the world. Most of the tourism there is centred on Yosemite Valley, which is full of meadows, a river and pine trees, and some accommodation and camping grounds. Around the valley you have incredible granite rock formations including stunning mountains. There are granite rock faces like El Capitan, Half Dome, Sentinel Dome and so on, also some of the highest waterfalls in the world. The whole thing combines to be a stunning place to spend time camping, cycling, hiking or rock climbing and it is visited by about 5 million people per year. There are a few roads that go round the central part of the park surrounding the valley. 95% of the park is wilderness and hardly any people go there except experienced hikers, climbers and campers. You might know Yosemite from the Apple Mac operating system. At the time I’m recording this podcast, the most recent OS for mac is Yosemite (I believe the next one is called El Capitan – also a rock face in Yosemite National Park). So if you have a Mac with Yosemite, you’ve probably seem desktop images of the place. It’s absolutely stunning. Being there is a bit like being inside your own Apple Mac, but obviously much much better than that because nothing can compare to seeing it with your own eyes.

We drove out of LA and the through back end of the Hollywood hills. Handsome countryside with a highway which is great for driving. But the land soon becomes flat boring farmland. The driving is fun in the Camaro, which comes into its own on the open highway (which is rarely open because of all the cars). I realise that I’ve hardly put my for down the whole time. Most of the driving in LA has been slow cruising or edging forwards in traffic.
I floor the Camaro with some space ahead and it reveals masses of hidden power, roaring and leaping forwards with yet more revs all the time. It seems to have about 9 gears and they’re all RAAAAA!
We eat up the highway and eventually arrive in Fresno after about 4 hours. Fresno, aka Mall-land. It seems to be one giant shopping mall. I guess we’re in the commercial district but there is just open mall after open mall. We pick one with a Wholefoods and get sushi, which is not that great. Wholefoods is like Mecca to us. London has a few, Paris none.
What’s great about Wholefoods?
They’re normal in USA but this one isn’t that great, or maybe the expectation was too high.
It’s freezing inside and boiling outside.
We wander around mall-land looking for supplies.
Then the drive to Yosemite in the mid/late afternoon. A couple of hours.
The landscape gets more and more interesting as we climb up and up the winding highway. Wonderful driving and lovely smell of pine cones and pine trees. We drive with the windows open and the sun on our faces through the trees.
Eventually we’re in Yosemite and we glimpse views of stunning granite formations but keep going. We go into a tunnel and on the other side (tunnel view) the whole valley opens out on the left side. It’s my Mac desktop but we’re actually there. Can’t see properly from the Camaro. Terrible visibility.
After an hour of driving in a daze we arrive at our campsite.
Describe the tents.
Friendly atmosphere. Our tent is situated pretty well.
There are strict regulations about bears.

Black Bears in Yosemite
This is bear country and they are all around the park. They come out at night to go on missions into the valley to get food.
Apparently they have over 2x the sense of smell of a bloodhound, are very intelligent and more curious and confident than dogs, they have huge claws and padded hairy feet which make them silent. You must not keep any food or scented products in the tent or car. Everything has to be in the bear boxes which are very sturdy, made of metal and bolted to the ground. Apparently if you leave food out and then turn your back, they can appear and start feeding. Apparently at night, all the black bears head down into the valley under the cover of darkness. Slightly scary.
Naturally it’s pretty exciting to be sleeping in a basic hut with just a curtain separating us in bed and the bears which I imagine to be wandering around our tents at night.
I don’t have to imagine much because that night a bear has a go at the bear box just next to our tent. I hear it trying to open the box before moving on to try another one and another one. I later hear two people walking past talking about the bear they’ve seen. I was frozen solid in bed the whole time.
Apparently if you come across one you should shout at it angrily to try and scare it away.
I wonder what I would shout at it.
What should you say to a bear? What’s the appropriate thing?
I wouldn’t want to be too rude but at the same time it would be necessary to talk in rather strong terms.
I suppose indirect language wouldn’t work.
You have to be direct and clear, yet reasonable.
I’m joking of course. I think I would just scream at it and swear and say any old nonsense.
I imagine some of you would be a bit cooler.
Not me – I’m from the UK. We killed all our bears years ago, and made them fight dogs and other cruel things.
I imagine that any bear meeting me and hearing my London accent would not be that friendly.
So, no need to be cool. Freaking out and panicking is the order of the day here.
The place has a lovely summer camp, hippie Boy Scout feel to it, although it’s a bit crowded and there are lots of kids. It would be nice to have the place to ourselves of course but that’s impossible.
Dinner in the Yosemite Lodge down the road. Modest canteen food. Bought some tourist stuff like a cap and some playing cards.
Then bed after making sure all food and smelly stuff is in the reinforced box, then draw the canvas curtains – definitely not reinforced. Tie them with a good knot. Will it make a difference?
Of course bears won’t be interested in us, but apparently they’re really curious. We’re wearing mosquito repellent coil things. They’re quite interesting and smelly. Maybe a bear will find it interesting.
I would. “Oh what’s that on your wrist” – would the bear equivalent of that be “roar! Let me poke my head into your tent and bite your arm off, or just maul you a bit (because that’s what large dangerous animals do, they maul you).
Slept pretty well in the open air, despite these thoughts in my head and an actual bear or two outside the tent. Had to go to the loo in the night. I did so, noisily, checking the toilet quickly for any bears that might be in there hanging out or whatever. I did my business and had to look over the top of the door before leaving the cubicle, just to make sure there wasn’t a huge bear waiting for me. But it’s all fine.

12 August
Breakfast in the canteen and then a day in the park.
Stayed on the valley floor on bikes. Packed lunches. Wanted to hike but closed. Apparently there was a fire up there.
Amazing seeing the granite up there. Gave me the desire to climb, but that’s not an option without climbing buddies, and my wife hasn’t really done it before. Bikes are a bit awkward – beach cruiser type things. Mountain bikes would have been better. Still, it’s very peaceful and incredibly fresh. Sunshine and cycling are quite tiring so we end up chilling by the river.
I’m a bit worried about tomorrow. What can we do that’s fun and takes advantage of the proper rugged landscape without being too challenging?

That night I drive us back up to Tunnel Point to see the sunset. We end up staying to look up at the stars, lying on our backs. It’s immensely beautiful as there is hardly any light pollution, so the stars are all revealed in their glory. Millions and millions of tiny points of light. Our galaxy the milky way is so rich that it appears to be like a mist across the sky, but in fact it’s a dense collection of many many stars. We see constellations like Orion’s belt and the plough. Driving back through the valley my wife sleeps in the passenger seat and I stop the car again to lie on the bonnet and look up at the stars some more, but I get totally freaked out by the total darkness around me! We sleep soundly that night, ready for a pretty early start in the morning.

13 August
Early start.
Big breakfast.
Coach trip up to Granite Point. Driver very amusing. 26 years and he has perfected his routine. Full of jokes and dry humour and the story of Yosemite. (What’s the story)
Native Americans.
Granite Point.
Panoramic views and start hike.
Some concern over the preparedness, but in fact we’re well prepared. Our shoes are not climbing shoes, but I think some of that is just marketing, and anyway some of the more recent climbing shoes don’t have ankle protection. 8 miles of hike, mostly downhill. Some uphill bits. Some tricky steps. Should take 4-6 hours.
We do the first 3-4 miles without problem except my wife rolls her heel slightly on a rock. As she’s walking she steps on a small rock, and her heel flexes a bit to the right as her foot slips slightly. I worry for a moment if she’s sprained it but she says she’s fine and carries on.
Amazing views.
Stop at Nevada falls, dip our feet in the pools of cold water, chill out and eat sandwiches.
Time to leave and my wife’s ankle has ceased up completely.
Very painful to walk on and we face 5 miles of downhill trekking. Should take a couple of hours normally but it takes us about half and hour to do about half a mile. She’s holding my hand and using me as a crutch. We have to stop. We’re stuck.
Lots of people stop to ask if we’re ok. People are amazingly nice.
Two women called Jenny and Susan stop. Apparently they’ve just done a training course in safety and first aid.

They take our situation seriously and give us water and food, and then call search and rescue for us. I feel bad for not having done this earlier. Anyway, search and rescue take a full description of the injury and say they’ve sent a ranger up to meet us. Suddenly we’re in a kind of emergency rescue situation with the authorities involved. My wife in particular is gutted and embarrassed. They tell us not to move. We wait for about an hour and then the ranger arrives. Apparently he was on the trail already but he made good time to get to us. I’ve bound my wife’s leg in a bandage given to us J and S. The ranger has crutches and more supplies of water and food. He also has material to give the foot support with a splint.

According to him we should climb back up and then down another way. We realise this is going to take us hours and hours of slow and painful movement for my wife. She’s really pissed off and sorry. So am I.

We walk back the way we’ve come, up to the waterfalls again and it’s slow going. Poor wife has to struggle with crutches or one crutch and my shoulder. Very slow. A 2-3 hour trek looks set to take 5-6 hours. That’s a long time for my wife to hobble along a rocky trail up and downhill on crutches with one ankle in pain and unable to take her weight.
But she’s brave and determined. Every time Josh or I asks if she wants to take a break she says “non!”
She’s determined to get down the trail to the bottom, as quickly as possible.

Describe the trail and the things we saw.
Peregrine Falcons nesting above us.
We talk to Josh and he tells us various things:
There are about 5 fatalities from accidents per year.
That sounds like a lot, as if it’s a really dangerous place, but when you consider that about 5 million people visit every year it’s only 1 in a million who die. Imagine London with its 7 million residents. How many deaths are there in London per year? A lot more. So which is the more dangerous – trekking in Yosemite or cycling to work in London?
Nevertheless, there have been some pretty gruesome accidents, usually as a result of stupid tourists who have no sense of safety or no respect for the nature of the park.
Apparently one of the most common forms of death by accident is from people falling over the waterfalls and falling hundreds of feet to their death on the rocks below.
Apparently they jump around on the huge boulders at the edge of the waterfalls with their cameras and selfie sticks, edging forward trying to get the perfect photo or selfie and they edge forward a little too far and suddenly they’re over the edge.

What happens when a tourist falls off one of the highest waterfalls in the world and lands on granite rocks?
Apparently the rangers have nicknamed it the human water balloon. You can imagine what that looks like to the other trekkers and tourists who witness it happening.

Josh tells us other tales of tourists who are unprepared for the wilderness of Yosemite, even though there are numerous warnings written all over the park.

People who attempt to scale the half dome – a huge granite dome thousands of feet above the valley floor with a sheer vertical drop on one side. It takes at least 12 hours to climb up. Most do it over several days. It’s a proper climb for experienced people and it ends with a long ascent up the dome at a 45 degree angle. To get up there you have to hold onto steel cables which have been bolted into the rock, and use crude wooden blocks also bolted to the granite. Some people lose their grip and down they go. Others lose their cool and panic, with the same result. They fall all the way down to the bottom.
The search and rescue Rangers are called up to the mountainside every day. Sometimes it’s necessary to do helicopter rescues.
According to Josh, this year a woman fell from the half dome but didn’t fall to her death. Instead her shirt got caught on a sharp bit of rock and she hung there for two hours before being rescued.

Earlier that day, Josh had to rescue a guy who had fallen out of a tree. Apparently he was climbing the tree, messing around and he fell out and landed badly on a rock. His ribs broke and pierced his lungs. Josh thinks he probably didn’t make it.

This puts things in perspective somewhat. But still, the crutches and the assisted descent are definitely necessary and we count our lucky stars that it’s not worse. Josh tells us that we’re well prepared with water, food and a torch. Yesterday he rescued a Chinese couple who had tried to climb the half dome without knowing what they were doing. It’s at least a 12 hour climb, often more. They’d started after lunch and were quite high up, coming back down when they realised they would never get to the bottom before sunset and then they’d be stranded in total darkness on the trail. Not fun spending a night out there without food or shelter, especially when you know there are bears around, even 9 foot long mountain lions, although they are rare.
Josh heard the couple screaming for help on the trail, and assisted them to the bottom.
Again, 5 million people enter the park every year. Not all of them know what they’re doing.

We continue to make very slow progress down the trail. My wife is in a lot of discomfort, but mainly she’s frustrated at not being able to go faster. Each step is a mini challenge because of the crutches – she has to place them carefully, and then place her foot carefully too, making sure she doesn’t have to put her weight on the bad ankle.
On the plus side, we get to walk with a ranger and we get the sunset on the trail, with magnificent views of the half dome and other domes in the valley. Again, this all seems so familiar to me because of a computer game – this time it’s Red Dead Redemption, which is set over 100 years ago, and you’re basically a cowboy gunslinger in the wild west. The landscape is very faithfully reproduced in the game, and there is a mountainous area with bears which is really similar to the landscape in Yosemite.

As the sun stretches through the trees onto the trail we are basically alone at this point as it gets to about 8pm. We should have been back 3 hours ago but we still have a long way to go. In this quiet I keep expecting to see a bear cross the path in front of us. Everything seems so still and peaceful that I’m sure any moment now we’re going to come across a bear.
Anyway, the main challenge is to get down the mountain, never mind bears and lions. It’s very rocky, there are lots of steps and boulders and so on. It goes on and on forever until eventually we’re walking in the total darkness with torches on our heads.
I carry my wife for some sections, and it’s a chance to go much faster.

Eventually, after ages and ages, we finally get to the end of the trail at a huge water tank, which is like some massive UFO looming out of the darkness. From there we’re all picked up by a local police officer in his 4×4, which is absolutely huge, like many of the cars. It’s giant, with massive tyres. My wife sits in the cab with the police officer. Between them there is a gun rack with several massive semi-automatic rifles, a shotgun and a few handguns. A typical American cop car! Not only is it a tremendous relief to be off the trail and back in civilisation, but we get a ride in what feels like a tank! The police officer drives us through the forests in the closed area of the park, back to where our car is parked at Yosemite Lodge. We stop at the police station and Josh goes in to get us some food. It’s 11 o’clock and we haven’t eaten since the sandwiches at the waterfall. Josh comes out with two US Army meal rations. These are field packs for soldiers and they contain everything for a full meal including macaroni cheese, tea, coffee, a fruit desert, bread, salt, pepper, butter and the whole things heats themselves up without needing fire. Bonus!

In the end, we are completely knackered and go straight to bed, exhausted after I carefully inspect my wife’s ankle. Thankfully it’s not too swollen or discoloured. In fact, I think she escaped bad injury and her ankle will be fine if she rests it. The next 36 hours will be pretty inactive, with a long sleep and then a fairly long car journey so she can rest it.

End of Part 5! Part 6 coming soon…

291. California Road Trip (Part 4) Stars on Hollywood Blvd / Songs & Movies / UK & US English

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Hi everyone, here’s part 4 in this road trip mini-series. How are you? Are you keeping up with all these new episodes? I suppose if you’re listening to this it means you are keeping up, but don’t feel rushed. Take your time, listen to them at your leisure, in your own time and at your own speed. I hope you’re finding this series interesting. In this one I’m planning to cover these things: Hollywood Boulevard and celebrity culture, an analysis of the mysterious lyrics to Hotel California by The Eagles, a visit to the extremely wealthy area of Beverley Hills, some more differences between American and British English vocabulary, the church of Scientology and then Yosemite National Park.

[DOWNLOAD]
Let’s see how much of that I can actually get through in this episode. I expect there will be one or two more in this series before we get back to normal podcasting as usual.

L.A. Continued… Hollywood Boulevard
I can’t remember which day this was as I’m losing track of time, but it doesn’t matter. At some point we took a walk along Hollywood Bld – that’s the one with all the stars on the ground and the names of celebrities. If you make it as a celeb, they put a star on the pavement here and you know you’ve made it because hundreds of tourists walk all over you and spill coke and ketchup on you every day. That’s the American Dream isn’t it.

Walking along Hollywood Blvd, and looking at the stars there, I wondered – how do you actually get your name on a star here? (Not that I want to of course) I just wondered – who decides which names are added and how does it happen? Since then I’ve done a bit of research (I read a TIME article based on an interview with a member of the selection committee – you can read it here: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/07/16/how-to-get-a-star-on-the-hollywood-walk-of-fame/), and so…

How to get your star on Hollywood Boulevard
Essentially anyone can apply, as long as they have $30,000 dollars to spare, but the application will not be accepted unless it meets these criteria:
1. Do some iconic work in entertainment.
This means that you have to have produced something genuinely notable and celebrated in the entertainment world, like made a popular film, done some great acting on TV or in movies or made some music that’s popular enough to have made you famous. The emphasis is on accomplishing some expertise in the entertainment field, which means that reality TV stars are excluded, because it’s not counted as proper work. So that means no Kardashians. But they do accept animals. In fact several animals have their names embedded into the ground there, including Lassie and even fictional animal characters like Kermit the Frog, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Weird. You also need to have been working for at least 5 years. The main point is that this is a tourist attraction for the entertainment industry, so your name needs to be famous enough to attract tourists to come and see it. Apparently it’s working because the street is jam-packed with tourists and it’s almost impossible to actually walk along the street in some places.
2. Promise that you really want a star.
All applications require a signed statement from the applicant saying that they really want one, and that they will come to an unveiling ceremony if the application is a success. Basically, the star selection committee that is in charge of the process wants to make sure the celebrities are fully prepared to come and promote the addition of their star on the pavement. Again, this is to make sure it gets the proper media coverage, and those tourists keep coming with their dollar bills, their mobile phones and their instagram accounts.
3. Pay $30,000.
That’s how much it costs to enter the application process. Usually it’s not a problem for celebrities to pay this because other people pay on their behalf, for example management companies or other sponsors who have an interest in the person become more and more famous. Half of the fee goes to the Hollywood Historic Trust which maintains the whole street. The rest is used to pay for the paving stone with he star embedded in it, and also the security and photographers at the unveiling ceremony. It seems that people’s desire to be recognised as a famous person is what fuels the economy around here.
4. Impress the selection committee.
It’s a bit like a job interview process I suppose. In your application you need to impress the committee and show them what you’ve achieved in your career, proving that you really are a big star.
5. Choose your spot on the Boulevard.
It is possible to choose where your star is placed. The bigger you are as a celebrity, the more control you have over this. Do you want to be placed in front of McDonald’s or in front of the famous Chinese Theatre Cinema where all the premiers happen? Your power to negotiate this depends on your status in Hollywood. Apparently Clint Eastwood, a high ranking member of the Hollywood establishment, was accepted by the committee years ago but never completed his application, but nevertheless they have kept a space free for his star in a prime location – in front of that famous cinema. That’s how much of a star he really is in Hollywood – they’ve kept the best space free for him. Muhammad Ali didn’t want people walking on his name, so the committee agreed to put his star on the wall – the wall of what? You might ask. Ali’s name is on the wall of the Hollywood and Highland Shopping Centre. I wonder if you can buy a George Foreman grill in that shopping centre.

So that’s how you do it, if you’re interested.

What’s it really like there on Hollywood Boulevard?
Essentially, it’s like a bigger version of Oxford Street. It’s full of cheap attractions and huge crowds of tourists, and it’s a bit tacky. You can’t get much decent food there except burgers and pizza. I don’t recommend it really.
As we walk along the street, squeezing between people, we see names of people. Most of them are dead. There are loads that I’ve never ever heard of.
I’m struck by the thought that fame is fleeting. I mean that it doesn’t last. What’s the attraction of fame? To be so well-known that your name is embedded into the ground or onto a monument so people never forget you. Maybe people are attracted by this because they feel like it’s a way to live forever. But true long lasting fame is only gained by a tiny minority and even then it isn’t immortality it’s just a version of yourself that lives on in popular culture. A ghost.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: L.A. is a mysterious place.
I’ve tried to describe this already in this series. It’s just a general feeling that’s hard to put into words.
There’s a lot of light and dark here. Movie stars shine bright, and there’s so much glamour, but there’s also poverty, homelessness and broken dreams. So many young people have come to L.A. and then ended up corrupted by the place, or hurt by their own idealism and naivety. Some of them died young in tragic circumstances. Think of the girl Peg Entwhistle who jumped off the Hollywood sign in 1932, or young movie stars who died or hurt themselves as the result of a dangerous intake of drugs. River Phoenix for example. He was a fresh faced young movie star and musician, who died from an overdose on the doorstep of the Viper Club, which at the time was owned by Johnny Depp. Why so much oblivion?

Also, so much of the writing, films and music – the really good stuff at least, seems to be essentially about some sense of a loss of innocence, the end of the American dream, the darkness under the surface of American values or dealing with vice – particularly in the form of alcohol and drugs, and the dark side of these things. As if California represents the highest attainment of the American Dream, and is also the place that can turn into a grim and empty wilderness of the soul. Think of the detective stories of Chandler, the songs of The Eagles (not as sunny and nice as you expect) and other bands, the writing of Ginsburg, Bukowski, Burroughs, Kerouac, the comics of R Crumb and so on.

I realise that I’m talking about slightly dark themes here, in what you might have expected to be just a description of a romantic honeymoon. Well, we did have some really nice romantic moments together of course, and there was plenty of sunshine and good times, but as well as that we had a really great time getting to know the place and soaking up the atmosphere of the places we visited and one of my aims in these episodes is to get under the skin of California a bit.

Let’s consider some songs that deal with the things I’ve been talking about.

Songs about California
One example is the song Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Californication Lyrics here.

Also, we could go back to “Hotel California” and explore the meaning of the song. In fact, let’s do that.

The Eagles – Hotel California – Song Meaning
Click here for the full lyrics to the song: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eagles/hotelcalifornia.html

There are loads of interpretations of the meaning of this song, including some pretty far out suggestions that it’s about satanism, drug addiction. I think the latter is far more likely than the former but let’s see.

Here is a summary of the song’s meaning – both the narrative of the lyrics and the themes the song explores. In fact, this song seems to sum up pretty well what I’ve been trying to say about LA and the excesses and dark side of the American Dream.

In this part of the podcast I’m going to read from a page on Shmoop.com. Here’s a citation and a link:
Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008, November 11). Hotel California Meaning. Retrieved August 25, 2015 from http://www.shmoop.com/hotel-california-eagles/meaning.html
So, if you want to follow what I’m saying just click the link above.

LA movies
LA Confidential, The Big Lebowski, Beverly Hills Cop, Pulp Fiction. Any film noir like Chinatown or The Big Sleep.

Beverley Hills – this is a really rich town, which is undeniably beautiful and well kept with palm tree lined streets, lovely properties and very smart shopfronts and boutique stores but some parts of it are filled with unbelievably fake looking people with loads of plastic surgery. There are Kim Kardashian clones everywhere with butt implants that mean they can’t walk properly. The streets are full young guys in rented sportscars which self-consciously zoom between sets traffic lights. It’s quite ridiculous and fairly ugly really.

And yes, I did just mention Kim Kardashian.

I always thought I would never mention that family on this podcast because I don’t really like what they do. I mean, I think it’s a bit empty and I don’t know why they’re so popular but if I’m going to talk about celebrity culture in L.A. then how can I do it without mentioning the Kardashians (reluctantly).

Who’s Kim Kardashian?
She’s the daughter of a rich West Coast socialite, and a powerful lawyer. She’s famous for being famous. She’s like Paris Hilton basically. That’s how she first became known in the media, as a friend of Paris Hilton. What a claim to fame! “So what do you do Kim?” “I hang around with someone who doesn’t do anything”. Wow, that’s like being famous for doing even less than nothing! So she’s famous for being friends with someone who’s famous because she’s famous. That’s actually quite impressive. Well done! Maybe that’s the appeal. She makes it look easy. Then in 2003 I think she decided that in order to get even more famous that she would have to actually do something, so she released a sex tape. That’s basically a home made porno. Classy. In my opinion, that may be the quickest and least respectable way to make a name for yourself in Hollywood, but fair play to her – it worked. She then continued to sell off her private life in a reality show called Keeping Up With The Kardashians in which the viewer is invited to follow her and her sisters through their pampered and vacuous every day life.

An example of what happens in a show?
I just had a look on Wikipedia for some show summaries. Here’s what I found from a random entry in series 3 of the show. “Episode 22. Khloé faces pressure about her weight when she decides to do PETA’s “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign. Kris and Kourtney confront Kim about her shopping addiction. Kim gets laser eye surgery after struggling to see herself in a mirror at a dance rehearsal. (I imagine that was a huge crisis – not being able to see herself) Bruce is anxious to talk to Kendall and Kylie about his colonoscopy.”
What’s a colonoscopy? That’s when a doctor inspects your colon by sticking a big camera up your bum. Ok, so you’ve got the general idea.

My problem with the Kardashians is that I don’t get it. I don’t get the appeal. I must be wrong because Kim is one of the most followed people on Twitter and it seems that everyone seems to love her. So, I must be wrong – so if you’re a Kardashian fan, let me know why. I’d love to know the appeal.

Is her reality show popular because we just like to look at the lives of the rich and famous? Is Kim Kardashian a role model? Apparently, for some people she is a woman who has taken careful control of her image and is now rich and successful as a result, like Beyonce or something. But, it helps when you start out rich in the first place, doesn’t it? And at least Beyonce can sing and dance. What can Kim Kardashian do? Well, she can take good selfies. She can use Instagram well. She can market herself well. I suppose that’s it isn’t it.

She married Kanye West, the rapper, which I imagine only happened because Kanye West is not allowed to marry himself. Yes, he loves himself, or that’s what people say anyway. Maybe Kim Kardashian fell in love with him just because she was so impressed by the size of his ego. Surely nobody’s ego is as big as mine, she thought – but then she met Kanye and couldn’t resist his charm, and by that I mean his media status. Good luck to them, I suppose. Maybe I’m being cynical and they just really love each other. Well, if that’s the case – good luck to them! I hope they stay together and prove me wrong, and everyone lives happily ever after.

What do you think? I’d love to know.

More American English & British English
These words are all related to food in some way.
UK word – USA word
Chips – Fries
Crisps – Chips
Biscuit – Cookie
Jelly – Jell-o
Jam – Jelly
Sweets – Candy
Treacle – Molasses
Candy Floss – Cotton Candy
Aubergine – Eggplant
Courgette – Zucchini

“Californication” Lyrics & Chords
http://www.tabs4ukulele.com/bands/red-hot-chili-peppers/californication.html#null

End of part 4. Part 5 coming soon…

An Experimental Live Video Podcast on Periscope

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Periscope

Hi listeners,

It’s been a little while since I recorded an episode of Luke’s English Podcast. I’ve been really busy – mainly because of my wedding. I’m now fully married! I’ll be recording a podcast episode about weddings soon. In the meantime, here’s some extra content – my first live video broadcast via Periscope.

Have you heard about Periscope? It’s a smartphone app which is becoming really popular at the moment. All around the world, right now, people are broadcasting live videos of themselves on this app. Lots of people are talking about it, and it is the latest form of social networking and self-publishing. You can download the app from the Periscope website here at www.periscope.tv You can find me on Periscope by searching for @EnglishPodcast. You can also watch Periscope videos from a computer here https://watchonperiscope.com/users/englishpodcast/6862923

Basically, the app works like this:
– You download the app from www.periscope.tv or the App Store (Apple) or Play Store (Android) onto your phone.
– You can sign-in with Twitter, or create a new profile.
– You can then watch live broadcasts from people anywhere in the world. You can check a world map which shows where people are currently broadcasting, then watch their broadcasts.
– It’s possible to send people text messages and communicate with them directly during the recording.
– Periscope broadcasts (scopes) can be re-played up to 24 hours after the live broadcast.
– It’s also possible for users to save their videos on their phones, and then upload them to YouTube for permanent publishing.

I think this could be a really cool way for me to communicate with LEPsters all around the world, so recently I did my first experimental Periscope broadcast, from the SpacePod(TM) where I record episodes of Luke’s English Podcast. I didn’t really tell anyone that I was going to start – I just published a quick Facebook status and a Tweet, and then 15 minutes later I started broadcasting my live video. 25 people joined my first Periscope live broadcast. Yes, just 25 people – it was an exclusive moment! Most of those people were LEPsters, but some of them had never heard of me or my podcast. They were just random viewers who just discovered me and started watching. I have now uploaded the video onto YouTube and you can see it below.

Some details before you watch:
– The frame rate is pretty low. This means the video quality is not great. I think this is because my internet connection, even using WiFi is not great. I hope this will improve in the future.
– During the live broadcast my viewers were sending me text messages, and they were visible on the screen during the broadcast. Unfortunately, those text messages don’t appear on the saved video uploaded to YouTube :(
– Also, during the recording, viewers can create little heart symbols when they like something – the hearts float up the right side of the screen. Again, these are not visible in the YouTube version, unfortunately.
– What do I talk about in the video? I give a quick tour of the SkyPod (or SpacePod or StarPod or PodShip or whatever you want to call the room where I record the podcast), and also I give a quick tour of my website. Watch the whole video to witness some never before seen details of what it looks like when I record my podcast.

Here’s the video (and sorry for the long text, as usual). Enjoy! (despite the poor frame rate)
Luke
p.s. Expect more audio podcasts soon…

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Luke’s ENGLISH Podcast

Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Tag Archives: podcast

323. David Bowie (Part 1)

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CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

Here are lots of David Bowie Links and Videos.
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303. The Battle of Britain

297. Using Humour in the IELTS Speaking Test (With Jessica from All Ears English)

Humor Increases IELTS Speaking Scores

Say what??!!

I’m serious. It does.

294. California Road Trip (Part 7) Earthquakes & Hippies

292. California Road Trip (Part 5) Scientology / Meeting a Bear in Yosemite / The Trek Gone Wrong!

291. California Road Trip (Part 4) Stars on Hollywood Blvd / Songs & Movies / UK & US English

An Experimental Live Video Podcast on Periscope

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CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

Here are lots of David Bowie Links and Videos. Just take your pick and dive in.

This episode is called “The Rematch”.

For Teachers – How to use The Lying Game in class

Humor Increases IELTS Speaking Scores

Say what??!!

I’m serious. It does.

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Here are lots of David Bowie Links and Videos.
Just take your pick and dive in.