English Across The Pond - Podcast Transcript
Episode 36
STUFF!
Dan: Hello and welcome to English Across the Pond! We are so excited, it's a very
special week because for the first time what you're about to hear is a completely live
broadcast. Earlier this week, Jennifer and I met up on YouTube and recorded our
podcast there. So what you're about to hear is completely live, unedited, real and
exciting. Our topic for this week is minimalism and stuff and we're asking the question of
whether buying things, going shopping and owning things can really make you happy.
As always, stay tuned for the language focus, Jennifer answers a question from the
TOEFL speaking exam and I answer a question from the IELTS speaking exam. If you
would like a free episode guide to go along with this lesson then click the big blue button
in the middle of our homepage at englishacrossthepond.com. If you would like to get
even more from us then click on subscribe at the top of the homepage. Okay, English
Across the Pond is going live! Let's do it.
Jennifer: And it is official! English Across the Pond is live! Oo oh! Dan: Hello everybody, nice to see you! Jennifer: Hello, hello to all of our wonderful English Across the Ponders, our Ponders,
welcome to our first live episode broadcasting from YouTube! Hello, how are ya? Dan: I'm very well, I'm live from the UK. It is today - the sun was shining so I went
outside and just looked at it for about an hour and now I can't see. Jennifer: Oh my gosh, did you have to put on - did you have to slather all on sunscreen
so you didn't - so your delicate British skin didn't burn?
Dan: It was still only about four degrees. Jennifer: Oh gosh... yeah.
Dan: But it was sunny! And Spring is in the air and you can only really appreciate the
sunshine when you haven't seen it for about seven months. So England is a happy
country. How are things in your neck of the woods?
Jennifer: Oh you took my phrase!
Dan: [laughter] How are things in your next of the woods!?
Jennifer: Umm in my neck of the woods they're great! It's - I mean look at the sun right
now it's like that blaring on me. But it's sunny, it's quite warm for it still being Winter, two
days ago it was kind of chilly, we actually had to turn the heater back on. But I am
looking forward to going on a walk and lying by our pool later, I'm not going to lie by the
pool like in a bathing suit or anything but just laying a blanket out kind of in the grassy
area near the pool.
Dan: [Laughter] Yeah. Umm, what you could do here is you could lie on the pool?
Jennifer: Because it's frozen. Dan: Because it's frozen?! Jennifer: Perfect!
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: So umm, kind of letting people know what's going on live. So we are now
broadcasting live every, single Tuesday, to give our listeners, to give you listening to this
podcast later the opportunity to connect with us live! So - and to actually see the
conversations we're having, to give that real conversation practice and opportunity to be
seen real. So, basically guys you can't get any more raw than this. Dan: And umm, while we hope that of course our quality is just as good as it always has
been, now we are not editing anything out. If we make a mistake, it's a mistake, if we go
wrong, we go wrong. Can't think of what to say? We can't think of what to say, so this
really is as real as you can get. And we wanted to make it authentic and real for you, so
no more editing, no more snipping bits out when we don't know what to say, this is a
real live 30 minute conversation. You may be watching us live on YouTube, or listening
to us live on YouTube. You will also be able to listen to us in the podcast in the normal
way. So you may be listening to us later in the week in our podcast as normal. Jennifer: Yes! So the podcast stream on iTunes, on Stitcher and on our website, English
Across the Pond is still available every single Friday. We still have the episode guide for
you to download, we still have the transcripts that you can sign up for and receive, so
everything for our podcast listeners is staying the same, we're basically adding a
Tuesday feature today live to connect and interact with us. We're still going to have a
vocabulary, a language focus, I hope everyone is like ahh, mind-blown, this is amazing!
Dan: So you're not losing, you're just winning! It's a win-win, everyone wins! Jennifer: Hash tag winning!
Dan: Hash tag winner. And what is the topic of our first live podcast Jen, what are we
talking about today?
Jennifer: Yeah so today is a how-to episode right, teaching our listeners how to do
something and we're focusing on how to improve your speaking. And we're throwing in
a little s - umm, emphasis on like the TOEFL or IELTS exam, so how to improve your
speaking, especially for that IELTS exam. And what inspired this episode was a
documentary I saw on Netflix called Minimalism.
Dan: Oh wow. Jennifer: Yeah so you know, Minimalism and stuff, what's your first thought when I say
that my friend, across the pond?
Dan: My first thought about minimalism? Jennifer: Mhm.
Dan: In what context?
Jennifer: So if I say "minimalism" what pops into your mind?
Dan: Well I guess not saying too much and getting to the point if we're talking about
speaking. So I guess keeping things brief or --
Jennifer: -- No sorry I'm talking about stuff, things.
Dan: Ohh! I see. So in that case... mmm, I would say that I like to be kind of minimalist
and I don't really like a lot of junk everywhere and this is where me and my wife
disagree a little bit. She's not really - she's not messy and she's certainly not dirty, but
she has a lot of things around the house. And I love nothing more than having like an
open space or a clean space so, yeah I love minimalism, I think it's fantastic. I would
rather have a big wall with one picture in then a big wall with 50 pictures in, what about
you?
Jennifer: Ooo! Interesting point with the pictures and I hope your wife is not watching
this! You're calling her a... - having a pigsty.
Dan: She's on occasion slightly messy I'll only say that much!
Jennifer: But you love her!
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah. So it's interesting what you said about the pictures - as you can see in
my background here I have about fifty - or I have about fifty pictures and things right
here, so the idea of minimalism really appeals to me, I really like the idea of it, it's
something I'm working on and I'm going to try and implement in my life soon. But, the
main question I have for you to focus on today and a main question for our... our
listeners to think about is, can stuff, can things bring happiness?
Dan: Can I first - just if I tip up my camera very slightly and look behind me look.
Jennifer: One picture on the wall.
Dan: Yeah, a big wall - I haven't even - when I said it I didn't even realise it was behind
me, but yeah one big wall with one small picture. Umm, can stuff bring happiness, is
that your question my friend?
Jennifer: Can stuff, can things bring happiness?
Dan: Umm I think people believe it can and there's such a thing as retail therapy, which
is the concept of you feel stressed and you need relief, you need happiness and you go
shopping and buy stuff. And I personally, don't believe in retail therapy and I - if you buy
the right thing, a thing that you really love then yes that can bring happiness, but I don't
think just having things for the sake of having things brings happiness I'm afraid.
Jennifer: Mmm. No, no I don't think things can buy - I think it can bring instant
happiness, maybe like an instant feeling of like "Ahh!" like what you said about retail
therapy, but then what happens with stuff? It goes onto a shelf like what we have right
here, it goes into a storage closet, it goes into a box and then - how can that bring
happiness, you know, later?
Dan: It's just accumulating, it's what it's doing is gathering dust.
Jennifer: Yes, umm what I - I love - this is a first example of why I love live, because we
can connect instantly to like, images and we can show everybody watching live what
we're talking about. Listeners I think will put - we will put the picture of Dan's wall and
the picture I'm about to show in maybe our episode guide so you can live it as well. But
this is one more reason you should join us live to see these pictures. You mentioned
having one picture on the wall?
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: Can I show you what my ideal wall is? What my old wall was before we
moved?
Dan: Do it.
Jennifer: Okay, so putting this on the screen.
Dan: [laughter] I saw it, I saw it, go on.
Jennifer: Ahh run away! So yes, here. It's a little bit blurry I think.
Dan: No, I certainly get the idea, yeah gorgeous.
Jennifer: So about 100 pictures on the wall, that is my ideal wall.
Dan: You know what I would do with that?
Jennifer: What?
Dan: Constantly straighten every single picture all the time. I would have to give up work
just to keep straightening the pictures.
Jennifer: Yeah so if you're watching live, let us know in the chat which would you prefer?
One picture on the wall, many pictures on the wall.
Dan: The correct answer is one! I'm joking. We're all different.
Jennifer: Yes. We need to embrace our differences. So, this documentary had an
experiment, can I tell you about the experiment?
Dan: Surely.
Jennifer: The experiment is, to truly get into the mind-frame and the mind-set of
minimalism and adopt this lifestyle is you have to do an experiment that one of the
creators did himself. It's taking everything you own, or maybe - yeah everything you own
and putting it into a box.
Dan: What.
Jennifer: And only taking out what it is that you need. In the end after a set time I believe
the guy did it for 21 days, but let's say after one month you then evaluate everything that
you still have in the box, something you didn't use in that one month and think "do I
really need it?"
Dan: Mmm, yeah.
Jennifer: Could you do that experiment? Walk me through that experiment in your life
with your stuff.
Dan: So I'm going to put all my stuff in a box?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dan: It'd have to be a very big box.
Jennifer: Well let's say boxes.
Dan: Umm, well obviously things like clothes and stuff like that would come out, umm
and my music and my computer and things like that would come out. I've got a lot of
paperwork actually, old bills and things like that I just keep, I don't know why, I could
probably get rid of them.
Jennifer: Oh my gosh, yes.
Dan: But, I'm just looking around, I don't actually - there was a time in my life when I did
kind of hoard and I was more sort of like, I had more stuff. And at some point or another
I think, there was this - I can't even remember what it was, there was this one day maybe I was a teenager and this one moment where I looked at this thing and thought I
actually don't think I'm ever going to need this, and if I really ever do need it, I could
probably get it - maybe it was a book I could probably get another one, and I got rid of
the book. Hopefully I gave it to a charity shop. And that was kind of like, tipped
everything and since then I've very much "Let it go, let it go" just let things go.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dan: I don't think I've ever regretted sort of like - so if in doubt, throw it out. So I honestly
don't think there'd be that much left in the box.
Jennifer: Interesting! Yeah so I gave the idea to my husband and he's like "Well, what
about our camping stuff? We're not going to go camping next month, we throwing that
way? And what about this and what about that." And it led me to think of how we as
people have so many justifications about why we need something.
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: And like for me personally I know with like some clothes, maybe I haven't worn
a dress in two years, but I think ahh, but if there's a party with this theme I can wear this
dress there and I won't have to buy it later.
Dan: Like a black and white checked dress themed party that's never going to happen,
that kind of party?
Jennifer: Exactly, exactly. So, this umm - the documentary I was talking about it gave
this fact that the average American spends 300 - or Americans, not one person,
Americans spend $380 billion per year on stuff. Which is... yeah, mind-blown. Would
you say it's similar in the UK?
Dan: Yes because I believe that we live in a society that makes us believe that buying
things will lead to happiness. And I think we're duped, we are tricked into believing that's not to say that buying some things, like a photographer wants a new camera, you
know there are perfectly valid purchases made, but I think a lot of things like impulse
buys. And of course we spoke about the trick of Valentines or Christmas and when you
buy you don't really want, I'm sure the figures in the UK would be similarly astronomical.
Jennifer: Ooo yeah. If I asked you the question; what is your most important
possession? Do you have one answer?
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: Thing. It's got to be a thing.
Dan: Yeah. Durimin. No it's not really. My most treasured possession apart from - a
thing is MP3's, my external hard drives. Although of course the external hard drive is
just a metal box but what it contains is 1000's of hours of music and - so yeah, if I had to
rush in in a fire, there's a fire and I've saved my wife and daughter then it would be my
external hard drives. What about you?
Jennifer: Ooo that's a tough one! My mind literally went blank as I was listening to you
and thinking "well what's mine going to be?" because there's so many like little things I
could think of like ohh you know, my phone because it has all the pictures of my son on
it and... you know, so there's so many things. Do I choose like the beautiful pearl
necklace that my husband gave me that was like passed down you know but that's like
a thing, does it really bring my happiness? So honestly, when you are saying that, what
came in my head was my umm my hard drive, my time machine. It's like an Apple time
machine thing that backs up my computer, and so that - why that would be important is
because it has important documents, important emails, all of my photos, music it has so
much that I can just maybe carry and take with me in the end. But gosh, those are such
super crucial things.
Dan: Yeah I think with the external - uhh - external hard drive nowadays it's full of all
sorts of memories isn't it? I mean I only included the music but there's of course like you
say movies on there and photographs on there, I mean it's - I think maybe 20 years ago
many people would have said my wedding album or my photo album, but yeah I mean
all those things now are stashed electronically so yeah I think my choice is a good one,
although I do say it myself.
Jennifer: Yeah maybe you're a tad bit biased.
Dan: [laughter] maybe. Maybe. Yeah.
Jennifer: Umm I definitely, well, this could be a whole other kind of conversation, a
whole other podcast. But umm, I definitely prefer you know, maybe it's a good thing that
I didn't immediately think of one possession because I do like and I do prefer to spend
money on things that are more of like - in a - more of an experience, so like travel or you
know, experience types of things. Live music, I love that.
Dan: So therefore that's just your memory which you carry around with you.
Jennifer: My noggin'. Dan: [laughter] yeah.
Jennifer: So that's a hard question, but also a very common question for a TOEFL exam
for example.
Dan: Yeah totally.
Jennifer: And it's something that you know, we are students taking the TOEFL or IELTS
they'll need to have an answer on the spot right?
Dan: Which can be extremely difficult, because particularly with younger students umm I mean even for anybody at any age it'd be difficult to think of an answer when they ask
you about pollution, or they ask you about education or families and you think, well I
don't know, I haven't got any children or - but you have to try and think of something. So
it's even harder if you're still in your teens and early 20's and you know you haven't build
that bank of life experience. But you have to get used to fielding questions that in a way,
you may don't know the answer to. And you don't really care, really, you don't care that
much about should zoos be allowed or should all animals be - I mean some people
really care about this but you might be into like I said earlier, photography or cooking or
- I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to that. But you need one in the exam,
you've got to think - you can't just say "I like cooking, I don't know"
Jennifer: Yeah no you definitely can't have that I don't know answer. So, I want to kind of
wrap up this chat that we've just had, you know our regular fun chat and learning part of
the podcast in transition to this live language focus. So as our typical podcasts have we
have our conversation chats that you can listen to and our language focus. So in this
language focus we're going to really kind of go over some ways that you can answer
this question on a TOEFL exam where you can use this podcast to improve your
speaking. So we talked about stuff, we talked about possessions, we talked about what
we liked. So as you're listening to this podcast or this live recording you know, what did
we talk about were some possessions that we liked? Or some things that we talk about
- we talked about that we liked you know, do you have some of those same things dear
listener? You know, so you can go back and listen to our conversation when it's
available in the recorded form on Friday and try to create some of your own examples
related to the questions that I asked Dan, the questions that he asked me and that's
going to give you vocabulary, that's going to give you a way to answer some of these
questions.
Dan: And if a student said to you Jen, how can I come up with these ideas, what's a
good way to have an answer to a question that I don't really know the answer to know
you really. But having said that there's not a right or wrong answer in the IELTS exam or
in the TOEFL exam or in the TOEIC exam they don't say what colour do you get if you
mix blue and yellow. They ask you open ended questions.
Jennifer: Red? Just kidding.
Dan: [laughter] Umm, yeah you've just failed unfortunately. Umm, so they always ask
you sort of opinion-based questions, but it may be a question that you don't actually
have an opinion on. So what could somebody do if they're stuck in the exam or with
their teach?
Jennifer: So I think this can really connect to last week's episode where we had Lindsay
our guest on and she made that connection of just introducing yourself to a variety of
things to give you that vocabulary. So if you, know you these types of questions you can
look at common TOEFL questions, common IELTS questions, you can see what the
themes are, see what the questions are and then read, listen, watch a variety of things
to get some of that vocabulary. So pre-learn some of these things to have an idea of
something you can talk about. You said there is no right or wrong answer, so you don't
you know, if I said - if the question is what is your most important possession and you
say your iPad, that's just as good as our wedding photo album, or my hard drive, or a
ring that's been passed down generation to generation. If you're stuck; your TV, why?
Because you use it every day for entertainment, you use it for education on the news
and it helps you relax, boom there's your answer right there.
Dan: Give me a topic and I'll tell you why it's my favourite thing and I'll answer that, the
IELTS question. Just think of anything you like.
Jennifer: So let's do a mock - a practice TOEFL exam where I'm going to give you a
question, you're going to have about 15 seconds to prepare and then you are going to
need to answer in about 60 seconds, so are you up for that challenge?
Dan: Let's do it my friend!
Jennifer: Alright so I'm going to ask you the question - I'm going to pull up my stopwatch
timer here for you, so the question --
Dan: No pressure.
Jennifer: is what is your most important possession and why? You have 15 seconds to
prepare. Your time starts now.
Dan: The beep doesn't help.
Jennifer: Now normally of course there wouldn't be any talking during this preparation,
you as a student would be thinking about everything you can, writing down your notes
and your outline. Beep! Stop. 15 seconds over. You have 60 seconds to prepare your or to give your answer! Your 60 seconds starts now.
Dan: It's a very interesting question and I'm glad you've asked me. My most treasured
possession is my external hard drive. It's two terabyte hard drive so there's a lot of
space on there and it's full of music. The reason this is important is music has played a
big part, umm... has played a very big part in my life. I don't watch movies, I don't really
watch TV, I listen to music all the time and music lifts me up, it helps me when I'm sad, I
like pretty much all kinds of music, music that spans all the decades, all the genres and
my whole life has been me listening to music interrupted by other things that just get in
the way but basically all I do with my life is listen to music. People stop me, like at one
point I had to get married, but after I've got married, I started listening to music again
thanks.
Jennifer: Alright! That's now 60 minutes - 60 minutes... 60 seconds! So, you could see
that the answer was what the thing was but then the bulk, the majority of the answer
was why? Giving reasons. If you think about it, that thing, the answer you give doesn't
really matter. It comes down to what your reasons are so you want to just think if you're
stuck with this particular questions when it comes down to things, what does a thing do
for you and use those reasons to emphasis your answer.
Dan: Can you - do you want to do an IELTS one? Jennifer: Are we short on time or...? Or shall we wrap this up?
Dan: I think we can squeeze in you doing one. Now, the IELTS is slightly different
because you're given, you know, two or three sort of ideas. So what I'd like you to talk
about, you'll have time to prepare, don't panic. What I'd like you to talk about is an
important possession. I'd like you to tell me please, where you got it from, how long
you've had it and why it's special to you?
Jennifer: Okay. Dan: Normally in the IELTS you have 60 seconds to prepare and one to two minutes to
go "blah blah blah".
Jennifer: Does the structure matter in the IELTS, if our listeners want to know?
Dan: No it doesn't have to go in sort of a sort of - no it doesn't have to follow the same,
so I mean people normally do follow the same pattern, but no you could answer it like
two one three, for example if you wanted to. Do you need more time? Are you stalling
for time? Do you need time?
Jennifer? Hmm? Umm so... connections breaking up! Just kidding. Yeah it's fine. So
let's give an answer, shall I just go for it?
Dan: I've got the stopwatch here so like go for 60 seconds if you can, I'll start waving my
arms around.
Jennifer: Well I don't need 60 seconds just because we don't need to have that kind of
dead air! Let's just go this is an answer with no preparation, keep that in mind.
Dan: You ready?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dan: Go.
Jennifer: So my most important possession would have to be this beautiful pearl
necklace that was given to me from my husband. And it's special to me not only
because it came from my husband but it was something that his grandmother had given
to him. So his grandmother gave it to him because they were really close and obviously
my husband wasn't going to wear a pearl necklace, but it was with the intention of giving
it to you know, his wife or the woman he was going to spend his time with and it means
a lot to me because I also was able to meet this beautiful, charming woman, so it's
something special because it was handed down from someone who was really
important, his grandma, from someone whom I love, my husband and it's something
that I'm able to enjoy right now, and something I can give to my daughter or maybe my
sons future partner. Dan: Beep beep beep! Wow you actually was - you were actually winding up exactly
one minute. I think when you've been teaching for a long time you automatically go to
the 60th second, I think I do anyway.
Jennifer: Yeah. So --
Dan: -- Well done you!
Jennifer: Thank you! Woo. So, this - this language focus can help you. This episode can
help you with the question related to things, related to stuff. We've talked a little bit
about some things that people might like. We've given you some ideas about why these
things might be important so you can use this episode to build your vocabulary about
stuff, about things. You can get it - you can review how to ask questions about things,
how to have conversations about things, and know that all of our episodes in the past
have been surrounded on some kind of theme. So we had an episode about health, you
may have a question about health and medicine, listen to that episode to learn a
vocabulary to learn how to talk about health. Use our podcast episodes to learn how
you can talk about the themes related to our titles.
Dan: Fantastic. Beautiful. Thank you very much. Our first ever live broadcast has come
to - has flown by! Jennifer: I know! It's - time flies when you're having fun!
Dan: Quite right. It's been a pleasure.
Jennifer: Yeah so, as a wrap-up of this umm you guys know that we've said some
vocabulary, if you're watching live then maybe you haven't really understood. If you're
listening to this podcast, maybe they're expressions you don't quite understand. So
remember you can download the episode guide to this episode from our website
englishacrossthepond.com every Friday. Once you sign up to get the episode guide,
you will have your unique password to get all of the episode guides. So you don't need
to sign up every single time. You sign up once, and then you have access to all future
episode guides. So you can sign up by clicking the link in each of the episodes on our
website or just on our homepage englishacrossthepond.com. That first button in the
middle of the screen is to get the episode guide there. Umm, you'll have access to
definitions, example sentences, expressions, more details about this language focus,
vocabulary etcetera, etcetera.
Dan: It's been fantastic. Shall we do it again next week? Jennifer: We absolutely should do it again next week. Do you want to tell them about
umm, that private members area we have on the website?
Dan: I'd love to. And on our website there is at the top of the homepage you can click on
members, that will take you through to two choices. You can either become a gold
member and you will get a transcript every week, there are videos, there's blog in there,
what else is in there Jennifer?
Jennifer: There is a thank you page where your picture will be on the wall along with all
of our other members as Dan said, the transcript, there's also bonus training videos. So
right now we have expressions about Valentine's day, we have phrasal verb things in
there, we have videos about pronunciation, more idioms and expressions. So when you
become a golden member you get more English training. Dan: Wow! And there's even a platinum membership which would involve having
lessons face-to-face in real-time with Jennifer and I. So if you're really serious and want
to take your English to the next level, click on members on our homepage and have a
look at what we have to offer.
Jennifer: Yes! So everyone listening live, watching live, everybody listening to this
podcast, thank you so much. We love joining umm, we love getting together and talking,
we love that we can help you reach a new goal and improve your English. And we love
to hear back from our listeners. So what do you think about this new live lesson? What
do you think about this new experience? Send us an email. Let us know. Connect with
us. We love ya! Dan: Been great! Thank you so much for joining us on our first ever live YouTube
English Across the Pond. See you next week guys!
Jennifer: Thank you! See you next time! Bye!
Dan: Bye!