Latest / Luke's English Podcast / 941. The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Learn English with a Short Story)(M4A_128K)

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941. The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Learn English with a Short Story)(M4A_128K) · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, listeners, Welcome back to Luke's English podcast. How are
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: you doing today? I hope you're doing fine. So it's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: time for another story episode. In this one, I'm going
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: to tell you a story and help you to use
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: it to learn English. That's the idea. Now, there are
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: plenty of things that I could say in the introduction
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: to this episode. I could talk to you about how
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you could use this story to improve your English, and
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I could teach you some bits of vocabulary that I
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: feel that you need to know at the beginning before
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: we get started, and I could say other comments and things.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: But you know what, I'm not going to do any
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: of those things this time. Instead, I'm going to jump
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: straight into the story as soon as possible. So what
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: you could do is you could consider this to be
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: a sort of mini test of your listening skills. Can
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: you understand the story? Can you follow it? Can you
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: deal with those moments when perhaps you don't understand certain
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: bits of vocabulary? Can you follow it all the way
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: through until the end. I will explain lots of things afterwards.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: After I've done the story, I'll explain quite a lot
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: of stuff. I'll summarize what the story means in my
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: own words. I'll discuss some of the themes of the story,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: and I'll also go through some of the vocabulary, but
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: let's just get straight into it. One thing I should
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: say is that, yes, this story was written by H. G. Wells.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: It was written and published over one hundred years ago.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: But if you're worried about learning old fashioned English, don't worry,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: because I've adapted the text of this story. I've updated
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: all of the English, so the details of the story,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the tone of the story is still the same, but
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I've changed the English to make it modern, up to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: date English, so you can be sure that the English
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: that you can hear and read in this story is
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: all the kind of English that we still use today. Okay,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: so old story, but modern English. Let's just get started
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: straight away. You can find the text of this story everything.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I'm reading the PDF for the episode, which is available
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: in the description right in the episode show notes just
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: under this episode. Have a look in there. You'll see
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: a link where you can get the PDF where you
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: can find the story text. But let's just go for it. Okay,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going to start the story now. I'll read the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: whole thing to you. It's about five thousand words long,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: so it should take me how long, ten fifteen, twenty
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: minutes to do the story, and then I'll explain a
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff afterwards. Okay, right, So this is the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: man who could work miracles? By H. G. Wells. Here
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: we go. It's doubtful whether George Fotherington was born with
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: his special power. Personally, I think it came to him suddenly.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Up until the age of thirty, he didn't believe in
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: anything supernatural. In fact, he was a total skeptic. Now
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: is probably the best time to describe him. He was
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: a short man with bright reddish hair that stood upright,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: hot brown eyes, a mustache he liked to twist at
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the ends, and a face full of freckles. His name,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: George mac whirt of Fotherington, didn't exactly sound like someone
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: destined for greatness. He worked as a clerk at a
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: shop called Gombshots, and he absolutely loved arguing and debating,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: especially if it meant proving other people wrong. It was
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: actually during one of those heated debates, while he was
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: loudly insisting on this particular occasion that miracles were impossible,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: that he first realized something strange was going on. The
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: argument took place in the Long Dragon Pub. His opponent
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: was Toddy Beamish, who kept responding to Fotherington's long winded
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: claims with a frustratingly calm so you say, which he
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: did over and over again. It was enough to push
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Fotherington to the edge of his patients. There were a
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: few others in the bar that evening, a dusty cyclist,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the pub landlord, mister Cox, and Miss Maybridge, the bar maid,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: who was busy washing glasses with her back to the group.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: The others were half listening, half smirking at Fotherington's over
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: confident tone. Wound up by Beamish's stubborn replies, Fotherington decided
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: to go all in. Look, Beamish, let's be absolutely clear
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: about this, all right. A miracle is something that completely
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: goes against the laws of nature, the laws of science,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: and that's just impossible, isn't it. Anyone who knows anything
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: knows that the only way a miracle could happen is
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: if someone somehow willed it to happen with their mind.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: But obviously no one has the power to do that, right,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: it stands to reason, so, you say, replied Beamish again,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: still calm and annoying. Fotherington turned to the cyclist, who
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: hadn't said a word so far, and asked for backup.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: The cyclist gave a small, awkward cough and nodded in agreement.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: The landlord refused to get involved, but when Fotherington went
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: back to Beamish, he was surprised to get a reluctant
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: All right, maybe to his definition of a miracle. Great,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: said Fotherington. Encouraged, he began to illustrate his point, even
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: though it wasn't really necessary. So here's an example. See
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: that oil lamp. Naturally it couldn't be hanging upside down
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: and still working right. Well, you say it couldn't, said Beamish.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Oh come on, said Fotherington. You're not seriously saying it could.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Beamish gave in no, all right, it couldn't. It would
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: be ridiculous, said Fotherington. Imagine someone walks up to that
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: lamp like me and says, putting all their willpower into it,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: turn upside down without breaking, and keep burning steadily like this,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: he pointed. And then all of a sudden something incredible happened.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: The lamp, the ordinary, very real lamp above the bar
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: of the long dragon. Flipped in the air and hung
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: upside down, still lit, its flame pointing downwards. Everyone in
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: the room froze. Fotherington stood there, finger raised, eyebrows scrunched,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: expecting it to fall and smash. The cyclist ducked and
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: leapt across the room. Everyone else jumped in shock. Miss
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Maybridge turned around and screamed. The lamp just hung there
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: for a few seconds, perfectly still. Then Fotherington gasped, I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: can't hold it much longer and stumbled backwards. The lamp
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: flared up, crashed into the bar, bounced off, shattered on
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the floor, and went out. Thankfully the lamp had a
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: metal base, or the whole place might have gone up
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: in flames. Mister Coxe, the landlord, was the first to
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: say anything, and once you stripped away all the swearing,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: he basically called Fotherington an idiot. But Fotherington couldn't argue.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: He was too stunned. He had no idea how he'd
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: done it. The others were furious. They all thought he'd
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: played some stupid trick and smashed a perfectly good lamp
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: in the process. He was now seen as a clumsy,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: irresponsible nuisance. His head spinning Fotherington left the pub with
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: no real fight. His collar was rumpled, his face was hot,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: his eyes watering from stress, and his ears were burning
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: with embarrassment. As he walked home, he eyed every street
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: lamp nervously, half expecting them to flip upside down too.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until he was alone in his tiny bedroom
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: on Church Row that he could start to think clearly.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: He took off his coat and boots, sat on the
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: edge of the bed with his hands in his pockets,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: and kept repeating, I didn't mean for the bloody thing
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: to flip, did I? Then it hit him at the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: exact moment he'd said those words to the lamp, he
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: hadn't just spoken them, he'd actually willed them, and when
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the lamp floated, he'd somehow known it depended on him
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: to keep it there, even though he had no idea how. Now.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: He wasn't the most deep thinking man, Otherwise he might
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: have got lost pondering how someone can accidentally will something
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: to happen. But the thought came to him in a simple,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: foggy sort of way, so naturally he decided to test it.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Feeling a bit silly, he pointed at his candle and
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: focused hard. Lift up into the air, he said, to
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: his astonishment. The candle rose, hovered for a second and
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: then dropped, bouncing off his dressing table and plunging the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: room into darkness. The only light left was the last
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: faint glow of the candle wick, dying out. He sat
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: in the dark, frozen. So it did happen, he whispered,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And I've got no clue how or why. With a
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: deep sigh, he fumbled in his pockets for a match. Nothing.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: He checked his coat, still nothing. Then he had a thought,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: if he could work miracles, maybe he didn't need matches.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: He held out his hand into the darkness. Let there
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: be a match in this hand, he said. He felt
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: something small and light fall into his palm, a match.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: He tried a few times to light it, and then
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: he realized it was a say match, the kind that
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: needs a special surface. Annoyed, he tossed it away. Then
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: it occurred to him he could have just made it
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: already lit, so he tried again. This time, he said,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: let it be burning, and sure enough it appeared on
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: his table, flaring on the mat. He grabbed it quickly
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and it went out, leaving a little black scorch mark
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and a thread of smoke curling into the air. Now
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: fully intrigued, he put the candle back in its holder,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: pointed at it, and said, you be lit. The flame
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: came to life instantly. He stared at it, then glanced
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: at himself in the mirror, eyes wide, mouth open. He
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: met his own gaze and asked, quietly, still think miracles
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: are impossible? After that candle trick, Fotherington sat still for
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: a while, just staring into the flame. His thoughts were
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: all tangled up. The only thing he could be sure
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: of was that somehow things happened when he willed them to.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: That was the key. But the strangeness of it all
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: made him nervous. He decided not to try anything too
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: wild until he'd thought it through a bit more. Still,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: he couldn't help experimenting. He pointed at a glass of
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: water and turned the water pink. Then he turned it green. Then,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: with a bit more effort, he created a snail. A
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: moment later, he panicked and made it disappear again. Then
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: he made himself a brand new toothbrush, just for fun.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: By the early hours of the morning, he'd come to
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: a conclusion his will power must be something truly rare
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: and powerful. He'd always had a feeling there was something
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: unique about him. Now, at last he had proof. His
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: fear and confusion were slowly being replaced by a sense
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of pride. He could do something no one else could.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: He even started imagining how it might benefit him. Then
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: the church clock struck one. As impressive as his powers were,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: he still had to be at work in the morning, unless,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: of course, he could will himself out of it, but
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: that idea felt a bit much for now. Instead, he
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: began getting ready for bed. While pulling his shirt over
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: his head, he had a flash of inspiration. Let me
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: be in bed, he said, And just like that he
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: was lying under the covers, undressed, he added quickly, and
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: then in a nice soft woolen night shirt. Ah. He stretched,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: smiled and sighed with contentment. Ha ha, And now he said,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: let me fall asleep, nice and comfy. The next morning,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Fotherington woke up at his usual time, but he wasn't
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: his usual self. He sat quietly through breakfast, wondering if
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: everything he remembered from the night before had just been
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: a dream. Then he decided to test things carefully. He
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: had three eggs for breakfast. Two of them came from
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: his landlady, decent enough, but a bit stale. The third, however,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: was different. He willed it into existence himself, a perfectly
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: fresh goose egg, cooked exactly how he liked it. It
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: was delicious, and with that he was sure it hadn't
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: been a dream. He rushed off to Gomshots, trying to
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: act normal but brimming with quiet excitement. He couldn't concentrate
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: on his work at all, but it didn't matter. He
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: simply made up for lost time in the last ten
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: minutes with another miracle. As the day went on, his
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: wonder turned into confidence, even joy. That said, he still
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: cringed at the memory of the whole long dragon lamp incident.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: To make things worse, his co workers had heard a
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: twisted version of the story, and now they were teasing
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: him about it. Clearly he needed to be more careful.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Lifting things into the air might cause a scene, especially
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: if they broke, but other kinds of miracles they could
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: be done discreetly. He began planning little ways to improve
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: his life. At one point he conjured up a dazzling
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: pair of diamond shirt studs. They looked brilliant, but then
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: young mister Gomshot came over and Fotherington panicked. What if
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: he asked where they'd come from? He quickly made them disappear.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: It was becoming clear that this gift needed caution. It
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: was like learning to ride a bike. You had to
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: practice and stay alert. That's probably what pushed him to
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: go for a quiet walk after dinner, out past the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: gas works, where he could try a few more miracles
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: in private. He didn't have the wildest imagination, and outside
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: of his miraculous powers, he was still a very ordinary man.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: But one image came to mind, a biblical one, Moses
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and his rod turning into a snake. By the way,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: in the Bible, there is a story in which Moses
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: turns his rod it's his stick, into a snake, performing
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: a miracle to impress an emperor. Fotherington considered trying that,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: but it was too dark for anything that dramatic, so
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: instead he remembered a story he'd read about Tannhauser printed
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: on the back of a concert program. It had something
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: to do with enchanted flowers, and it seemed harmless enough.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: By the way, in the opera, the character's wooden staff
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: blooms with flowers for some reason another miracle in myth
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: or culture. Fotherington took his walking stick, a nice one
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: from poona Penang, stuck it upright into the grassy edge
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: of the path and said bloom. Suddenly the air was
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: filled with the scent of roses. He struck a match
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: and held it up to see the stick had indeed
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: sprouted flowers, bright, beautiful, fragrant roses. He was admiring his
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: work when he heard footsteps approaching. Worried he might be discovered,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: he panicked and said go back. He meant turned back
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: into a stick, but instead the stick shot backward at
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: high speed and smacked straight into the legs of the
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: person coming along the path. Ow who's throwing bushes around you, idiot?
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Shouted a voice. That hit me right on the shin.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Oh er sorry, mate, said Fotherington, flustered and tugging at
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: his mustache. The voice belonged to Winch, one of the
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: local police constables. What the hell was that, said Winch,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: limping forward. Then he squinted at Fotherington. Wait, it's you.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: You're the bloke who smashed that lamp at the long Dragon.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Erm I didn't mean anything by it, said Fotherington, backing away.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Then why do you do it? Eh? Oh oh, come on,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: muttered Fotherington. Not again, not again, Winch repeated, you've assaulted
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: a police officer, you have, That's what this is. Fotherington
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: couldn't think of a decent excuse. In the end, the
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: truth came out in a rush. I was working a miracle,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: he said. Winch stared at him. A what uh a miracle?
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Fotherington repeated, trying to sound casual. Winch gave a loud snort.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: What a load of rubbish. You don't even believe in miracles.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: It's just another one of your stupid magic tricks. Fotherington
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: realized too late that he'd just revealed his secret. He's
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: in credible power to someone who would never understand. Frustrated
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and angry, he snapped, Oh I've had enough of this,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: he said, just just go to hell, and in a blink,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Winch was gone. Fotherington stood frozen. Winch had vanished. He
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: hadn't planned it, not really, he was just so fed up,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and the words slipped out before he'd thought them through.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Oh I didn't mean that much, he muttered, not really.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: It's such a powerful gift. I wonder what hell is
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: actually like feeling shaken. He trudged back to town, keeping
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: his head down. He didn't bother checking what had happened
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to the flowering stick. He just wanted to get home
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and lie low back in his room. Sitting on the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: edge of his bed, he took off his boots with
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: a sigh. Then a thought struck him. Maybe he could
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: fix things. Maybe he could say and Winch somewhere else,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: somewhere less eternal. He quickly transferred the constable to San
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Francisco and then went to bed. That night, he dreamed
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: about an angry Winch, red faced and furious, trying to
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: find his way back across the ocean. The next day,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Fotherington heard two pieces of news. Someone had planted a
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: beautiful climbing rose bush against the house of old mister
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Gomshot on Lullborough Road, and Constable Winch had gone missing.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: They were dragging the river for him. That weighed heavily
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: on Fotherington's mind all day. He managed to finish his
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: work on time, miraculously, of course, but he was completely distracted.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: His thoughts were all over the place, buzzing like a
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: swarm of bees. Several people noticed how quiet and thoughtful
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: he was, and made jokes about it, but he couldn't
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: stop thinking about Winch. That Sunday evening, he did something
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: unusual for him. He went to chapel. Mister Maydig, the preacher,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: a thin, excitable man with a long neck and wrists,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: happened to be giving a sermon about things that aren't lawful,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: touching on miracles and mysterious powers. Fotherington, who wasn't normally
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: a chapel goer, sat bolt upright, his skepticism now seriously shaken.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Something about the sermon struck a chord. He waited until
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the end, then made up his mind he'd talk to
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: mister Maydig. Why hadn't he thought of it earlier. After
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: a few delays and some curious glances from the congregation,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: mister Maydig brought him into his study behind the chapel.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: A warm fire crackled in the fireplace, and mister Maydig
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: stood in front of it, casting a long shadow on
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the wall as he said, so, mister Fotherington, what can
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: I do for you? At first, Otherington was nervous. You
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: probably won't believe me, he said, but well, He danced
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: around the subject for a bit, then tried a question
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: what's your view on miracles, mister Maydig, well, said the preacher,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: adopting a thoughtful tone. Fotherington cut in again, do you
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: think it's possible that an ordinary person, someone like me, say,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: might have some kind of inner power, something that lets
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: them do incredible things just by willing them. Well, it's possible,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: said mister Maydig, cautiously, something like that might be possible. Well, then,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: said Fotherington, if you don't mind, I'd like to show
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you something, just a small example. He pointed at a
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: tobacco jar on the table and said, turn into a
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: bowl of violets. The jar shimmered and turned into a
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: bowl of fresh violets. Mister Maydig jumped in shock. Huh.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: He leaned over, sniffed the flowers and stared at Fotherington.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: How did you do that? Fotherington tugged on his mustache.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Just told it to he said. Is that a miracle
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: or black magic or something else? Entirely? That's what I
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: want to know. Mister Maydig was completely speechless. And I
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: only discovered this a week ago. Fotherington added, it's just
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: sort of started happening. Must be something strange about my willpower?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Is that the only thing you can do, asked mister Maydig. Oh, no,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I can do a lot more. Fotherington paused, remembering a
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: magic show he'd seen once. Watch this, he pointed at
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the flowers, changed into a bowl of fish. No, I
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: mean a glass bowl full of water with goldfish swimming
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: in it. It happened instantly, clear water, golden fish flicking
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: their tails. I could change it into anything, said mister Fotherington,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Just anything. Here be a pigeon, will you. In another moment,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: a blue pigeon was fluttering around the room and making
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: mister Maydig duck every time it came near him. Stop there,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: will you, said mister Fotherington, and the pigeon hung motionless
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: in the air. I could change it back to a
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: bowl of flowers, he said, And after replacing the pigeon
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: on the table, he worked that miracle. See, he said,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: And now back into your tobacco jar. Mister Maydig picked
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: up the jar, carefully turned it in his hands and
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: placed it back on the table. Well, he said softly.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: That's why I came here, said Fotherington. I needed to
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: talk to someone about it. Then he began telling the
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: whole story. The lamp at the pub the candle, the match,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the toothbrush, the snail, and of course Wench. As he spoke,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: the sense of mystery and awe in mister Maydig's face
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: slowly shifted to something more like admiration. By the time
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Fotherington mentioned the third egg, may Dig raised a trembling hand.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: It is possible, he whispered, incredible, but it fits a gift,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: A rare, powerful gift. I always wondered about the miracles
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: of Mahomet, the Jogi's Madame Blavatski. But yes, yes, this
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: could be a deeper law, something hidden beneath the surface
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: of ordinary nature. His eyes sparkled. Go on. Fotherington went
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: on to describe his incident with Winch, how, in a
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: moment of anger, he'd accidentally banished the constable to Hell, then,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: feeling guilty, moved him to San Francisco instead. Now, said Fotherington,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. He's probably confused, may
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: be scared out of his mind, and furious too. I
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: keep having to send him back every few hours whenever
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: I remember, But of course he doesn't understand what's going on.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: He might even think that he's losing his mind if
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: he keeps buying train tickets trying to get here. It's
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: going to cost him a fortune, he paused, scratching his head. Oh,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and I thought afterwards, what if his clothes got scorched
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: in Hell before I moved him. If that happened, maybe
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: they arrested him for public indecency in San Francisco. I
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: gave him a new suit once I realized. But still
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I'm in a bit of a mess. Mister Maydig looked
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: very serious. Yes, yes, this is getting complicated. He started pacing,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: waving his arms as he thought. Let's set aside the
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: winch situation for a moment. What we're dealing with here
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: isn't evil or black magic. There's no criminality about it.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: What you're doing, it's miracle working, pure and simple, and
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: not just any miracles topp tier miracles. He stopped and
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: pointed at Fotherington. My dear mister Fotherington, you are a
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: man of enormous importance. You could be the key to
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: amazing things. There's so much good you could do in
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the world, in society. Well, I've had a few ideas,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: said Fotherington, although some of them came out a bit wrong,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: like that fish bowl earlier. First it turned into the
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: wrong sort of fish, and then the wrong sort of bowl.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: That's why I thought I ought to ask someone. You
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: were absolutely right to come to me, said mister Maydig,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: completely right. This gift, it's limitless. Let's test it. Let's
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: really see what you can do, and so incredible as
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: it may sound. On the evening of Sunday, the tenth
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: of November eighteen ninety six, in the small study behind
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the Congregational chapel, George Fotherington, urged on by the wide
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: eyed and excitable mister Maydig, began performing miracles. At first,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: they were small ones, the kind of tricks spiritualists or
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: stage magicians might pretend to do, turning teacups into flowers,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: making the fireplace flicker green, floating sugar bowls. Mister Maydig
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: watched in awe struck silence, occasionally whispering extraordinary and remarkable.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Fotherington wanted to deal with the winch situation right away,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: but Maydig stopped him. Let's begin with the easy stuff,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: he said. We'll work our way up. As they continued,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: their confidence grew. Soon they were chatting excitedly like old friends,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: planning all the good they could do. Eventually, they moved
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: into the dining room. Dinner was set, but it was miserable,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: a cold, dry bit of meat and a couple of
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: stale biscuits. Mister Maydig sighed, my housekeeper, missus minchin, he said,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: isn't exactly a culinary genius for Fotherington looked at the table.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Would you mind? He said? If I fixed this by
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: all means, what would you like? Mister Maydig asked for
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: something modest, but Fotherington went with what he fancied. I'll
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: have a nice pint of stout and a proper Welsh
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: rare bit. And just like that, the table transformed. A
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: rich supper appeared, steaming hot stout in a tankered a
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: cheesy rare bit bubbling on the plate. They sat ate
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: and talked miracles. After a while, Fotherington looked up and said,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe I could help you with the missus minchin.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Mister Maydig looked uncertain. Hm, she's a bit sensitive truth
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: be told, doesn't take well to being told what to do.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: And it's nearly midnight. She'd be asleep by now. Fotherington
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: thought it over, Hm, couldn't I just improve her a
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: little while she sleeps? At first Maydig resisted the idea.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: It felt risky, but eventually he agreed cautiously. Well, okay,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I suppose so. Fotherington whispered the command that Missus Minchin
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: should become a better, kinder, more thoughtful woman. They returned
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to their meal, both a little tense, now listening for
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: any sign it had worked. Then noises from upstairs, voices,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a door opening, glass breaking. Maydig rushed out. Fotherington heard
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: him calling up to the housekeeper, then soft footsteps on
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the stairs. A few minutes later, Maydig returned. His eyes
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: were wide, his face shone with amazement. She's changed, he said,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: truly changed. She woke up and and in tears, smashed
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: her secret bottle of brandy and confessed everything through the door.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: It's the most touching repentance I've ever seen. He began
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: pacing again, hands raised to the heavens. This opens a
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: whole new world. If we can do this with one soul,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: imagine what we can do for everyone. The success with
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Missus Minchin left both men buzzing with excitement. If they
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: could reform one person in her sleep, what else could
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: they achieve. Mister Maydig started reeling off ideas wild enthusiastic
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: plans to change the world for better. He wasn't just
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: talking about fixing her few local problems. He meant global reform,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: a moral revolution, ending vice and misery, uplifting all of humankind. Fotherington,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: still chewing on the last bite of his rare bit,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: nodded along. M seems like there's no limit, he said.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: And about Winch, Yes, yes, yes, we'll sort Winch out
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: in good time, said Maydig, brushing the issue aside. He
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: was too excited to focus on one missing policeman. This
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: is about everything, mister Fotherington, the whole world. They stayed
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: up well past midnight, performing miracles together, starting small and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: getting bolder. Eventually they slipped out into the quiet streets
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: under a full moon, ready to put their plans into action.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: They moved like a pair of giddy schoolboys, Maydig flapping
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: his arms full of dramatic gestures, and Fotherington short and
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: bristling with excitement. No longer shy about his powers, they
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: began with acts of kindness and reform. They instantly sobered
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: up every drunk in the area. They turned all alcohol
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: into water over Fotherington's objections. He had a fondness for stout,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: but Maydig insisted. They improved of the railway lines, fixed potholes,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: drained the muddy swamp at Flinders Lane, and made the
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: soil on one Tree Hill rich and fertile. They cured
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the vicar's stubborn wart. They even began discussing what could
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: be done about the collapsing pier down at south Bridge.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: The town won't know what's hit, it, cried Maydig, breathless
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: with joy. Just imagine the surprise, the gratitude. Just then
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the church clock struck three oh no, said Fotherington, suddenly worried,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: three o'clock already. I've got to work at eight, and
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: missus Whims will be up soon too. We're only just
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: getting started, said Maydig. There's no rush. Think of all
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: the good we're doing, Think of all the lives we'll change.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Fotherington hesitated. Then Maydig stopped walking, his eyes wide with inspiration.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: My dear chap, he said, pointing up at the moon.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Do what Joshua did Joshua. Fotherington blinked in the Bible,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: said Maydig. He stopped the sun in the sky. You
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: can stop the earth freeze time. That way, we'll have
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: all the time we need to finish everything. Fotherington looked doubtful.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Oh that's a big ask. Well why not, said maydig.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: You won't be doing any harm. You just stop the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: rotation of the earth, No big deal. Fotherington took a
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: deep breath. Sh All right, then, I'll see what I
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: can do. He pulled his coat tight, straightened his back,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: and said in as firm a voice as he could manage,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: stop spinning, will you. He never finished the sentence. The
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: very next second, he was flying through the air, head
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: over heels at an unimaginable speed. Everything blurred, his thoughts
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: barely kept up, but somehow he had time to think,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: make it stop, let me land safely, Let me be
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: all right, no matter what else happens. He willed it
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: just in time. His clothes were already starting to singe
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: from the friction as he plummeted. Then thump. He landed
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: in a heap of soft earth. A second later, something
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: huge and heavy smashed into the ground near by, spraying
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: dirt everywhere. It was the church clock tower, or what
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: was left of it, tumbling apart like a bomb had
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: gone off. A cow flew past and exploded against the rubble.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: The world around him was collapsing. A roar of wind,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: dust and destruction echoed in every direction. Lightning cracked overhead,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Trees had been ripped from the ground, Buildings just piles
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: of splinters and rubble. The viaduct, once solid iron lay
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: twisted and snapped in a tangle of metal. You see.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: When Fotherington stopped the Earth's rotation, he hadn't thought about
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: what would happen to everything on the surface. The planet
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: had been spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: now suddenly it had stopped. Everything and everyone on it
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: was flung forward as if fired from a cannon. The
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: result total annihilation. Fotherington didn't understand the physics, but he
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: could see the aftermath, the destruction, the eerie glow of
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: the moon still hanging overhead in the unmoving sky. Everything
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: around him was chaos. He groaned, Oh Lord, this is
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: a disaster. What have I done? He scrambled to his feet,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: but was nearly knocked down again by the violent wind.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Where's may dig What happened to the town? He looked around, terrified.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: This is a right mess. And I didn't even ask
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: for the wind. That wasn't part of it. The dust
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: stung his eyes. He dropped to his knees. Okay, okay,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: think I've got to fix this. And then he saw it,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: a wall of water in the distance, towering above the ruins,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: surging toward him like a vast tidal wave. No, no, no, no,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: no no, he shouted, Wait, just stop, just one moment
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: to think. He held up his hand, shielding his eyes. Right,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: let's get this right this time. Fotherington crouched in the dirt,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: bracing himself against the roaring wind. The giant wave was
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: still coming, a wall of water crashing toward him through
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the wreckage of the world. He could barely think, barely
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: breathe right, he muttered, gritting his teeth. Let's do this properly.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: He took a deep breath, planted his hands in the
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: earth for balance, and shouted into the chaos, even though
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: his voice was almost drowned by the gale. Let nothing.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: I'm about to order, nothing at all until I say off.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Got that, No changes, no miracles, not until I say so.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: The wind howled, the sky cracked with thunder, and Fotherington
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: kept his eyes squeezed shut. Okay, he said, here's what
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: I want. His voice was shaking but his words were clear. First,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: take away my power, all of it. Let me be
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: ordinary again. No more miracles. I don't want them anymore.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: It's too much, it's too dangerous. He paused, catching his breath. Second,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: rewind time. Put everything back the way it was just
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: before the lamp flipped upside down at the Long Dragon.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Let everything be exactly as it was. No one harmed,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: no one dead, nothing destroyed. Another pause, and make sure
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: I forget all of this. Let me be just exactly
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: as I was. Let the world be exactly as it was.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: He dug his fingers into the dirt ready, then at
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: the top of his voice, off instant stillness, no wind,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: no sound, no pressure. Fotherington opened his eyes. He was
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: back in the bar of the Long Dragon, standing just
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: as he had been at the beginning of the story.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: He was talking to Toddy Beamish. The barmaid was still
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: washing glasses. The dusty cyclist hadn't moved. The lamp hung
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: perfectly normal above their heads, and he remembered nothing that
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: entire wild adventure. The floating lamp, the fish, the roses,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: the smashed world. It was all gone from his memory,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: wiped clean, because Fotherington, now without his miraculous powers had
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: restored everything. And so the conversation picked up exactly where
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: it had left off. I'm telling you, said Fotherington, miracle
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: are impossible. They can't happen, not properly. And I'll prove
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: it if you like. Well, that's what you think, said Beamish.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Prove it then, all right, said Fotherington. First, let's be
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: clear about what a miracle actually is. It's something that
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: goes against nature, caused purely by willpower. And off he went,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: arguing just as assertively as ever, blissfully unaware that for
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: one extraordinary night he had been the man who could
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: work miracles, and he'd brought about the total destruction of
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: the earth and everything on it, including you. The end. Well,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: there you go. That is the story of the man
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: who could work miracles. It actually took a little bit
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: longer than I thought. I thought it would take me
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes or something, but it was longer than that.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: But so you made it. Then, you made it all
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: the way through to the end, and well what was that?
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: What did you think of the story? Leave your comments
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: in the comments section. I've got some questions for you.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: So first of all, yeah, what did you think. Do
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: you think the story has a deeper meaning? Did it
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: end in the way you expected? What did you think?
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Now I have to just make sure that you've understood that.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Of course you won't have understood everything, you know, depending
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: on your level of English. Of course, there will definitely
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: be details that you didn't get, probably specific bits of vocabulary.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: But the aim, the idea of this episode really is
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: just to was to give you something you know, something
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: to listen to, to allow you to just practice your general
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: listening skills. But we can get into some details in
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: a little bit. First of all, though, I need to
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: just summarize the story. I think you probably got most
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: of it, I'm guessing, but here it is anyway kind
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: of a summary in my own words. So it's about
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: this guy called George Fotherington, who was not especially extraordinary
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: in any way, of an ordinary man really. He worked
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: as a clerk at a shop. That just means that
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: he was an office worker doing general office work, nothing
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: in particular really, And he was the sort of person
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: who liked having debates about things. He liked discussing, debating
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: and arguing. And also he was a skeptic, right, someone
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: who didn't believe in supernatural things or didn't believe in
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: probably religious things, divine powers, the powers of God, or
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: the idea or things like miracles. And we meet him
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the story. He's in a pub
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: and he's having a discussion with someone. There's a few
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: people around, and he's probably I think he's maybe a
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: slightly stupid character, maybe slightly irritating character, someone who perhaps
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: likes the sound of his own voice and is very
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: sure of his own opinions and likes to debate things,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: especially if it gives him a chance to prove other
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: people wrong. And he is, Yeah, he's a skeptic, right,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: And we all know skeptics. You know, some of them
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: are famous. You know, on YouTube you get people who
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: are famous skeptics and they get involved in debates and
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: arguments about things like, you know, the existence of God
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And some of those people, I mean,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: maybe they're right, but there's a sense that there's a
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: bit of arrogance involved in that. It's about being right
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: and proving other people wrong. Or maybe Fotherington is just
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: an amateur skeptic and an amateur debater. Anyway, he likes
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: arguing with people and he likes to prove other people wrong.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: And he begins by discussing miracles. So, miracles are extraordinary
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: things that can't be explained by science or the laws
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: of nature. Right now, if your first language is based
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: on Latin, or comes from Latin, or was influenced by Latin,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: then you'll have the word miracle in your language. I
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: suppose in other languages the word will be different, okay,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: but a miracle, yeah, Like, for example, Jesus in the
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Bible performed various miracles, right, He turned water into wine,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: he was able to walk on water. He fed thousands
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: of people with just a small amount of food. These
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: are miracles performed by Jesus in the Bible. So this
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: is what miracles are, right, amazing things that can't be
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: explained by science. And at the beginning of the story,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Fotherington is arguing that miracles are impossible, and I don't
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: really understand the way he's about to prove this. He
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: points at a lamp which is hanging in the bar, right,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: a lamp, probably an oil lamp that use it that
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: burns oil to give light to the room. Obviously these
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: days we have electric lamps. But he points at the lamp,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: and he says something like miracles can only happen if
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: someone wills them to happen. To will something to happen
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: is to make it happen with the power of your mind.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Your will is your sort of determination or power of
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: your mind, and we can will things to happen. Normally,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: we can will ourselves to do things, like, for example,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: to will yourself to stay awake. If, for example, you're
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: listening to an episode of a podcast and you're starting
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: to feel sleepy, you might will yourself to stay awake.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Or if you're in an English lesson and it's really
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: important that you don't fall asleep, you have to will yourself,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: you know, will your eyes to stay open, come on.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Or you might will your favorite football team to win
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: the game. You know, come on. Use the power of
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: your mind to make something happen. Use your willpower to
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: will something to happen. So he's saying, if you know,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: miracles are impossible, they can only happen if someone wills
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: them to happen, and then he demonstrates how this is
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: impossible by pretending to do a miracle, but to his surprise,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the miracle actually happens and the thing he's pretending to do,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: actually happens, and he discovers that his willpower is incredibly powerful.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: He has the ability to perform miracles. Now in the story,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: this is not explained. We don't know how he's got
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: this power. It seems to be completely random. And maybe
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: this is kind of the point of the story, is
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: that we're taking this perhaps slightly arrogant person who is
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: so convinced about rationality and a scientific view of the world,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: and we in the story, we're giving him miraculous powers
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: to see what happens. And I mean, I'm going to
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: explain the themes of the story in a moment, but anyway,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: he gets this miraculous power. The lamp floats in the
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: air upside down. Everyone's shocked and surprised. Then he loses
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: control of the lamp and it smashes on the floor.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Luckily it doesn't catch fire, because an oil lamp like
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: that could catch fire. That he could have burnt the
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: pub down. So everyone's angry with him, and everyone thinks
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: that he's done some sort of trick or whatever, and
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: everyone's furious with him and they think he's an idiot,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: and he's embarrassed and humiliated and he leaves the pub,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: but he can't comprehend what has happened, and he goes
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: home and thinks about it and slowly realizes that he's
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: able to perform miracles, and so he starts experimenting, and
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: he's because he's not the most imaginative per All of
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: the miracles he does are quite small, stupid ones, like
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: creating a snail and then getting worried and then making
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: the snail disappear. He's an ordinary, slightly stupid man who's
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: been given this extraordinary power. We don't know why. There's
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: no mention of this coming from God. There's no mention
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: of it being God's work or anything. In fact, it
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: seems to be completely random. Anyway, he experiments with it,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: and he kind of realizes that he can put himself
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: into bed quickly. All of the miracles he performs are
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: pretty unimaginative and small scale things. But then the next
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: day he goes to work and he's distracted by his miracles.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: He doesn't really get any work done, but he uses
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: a miracle to kind of get all of his work
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: done in the last ten minutes of the day, and
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: then he decides that he needs to be careful about
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: his miracles. He can't just be performing them because if
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: other people notice, they might they might not understand. And
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: he decides that he needs to keep it secret, and
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: so he goes out into a little alleyway like a
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: little side street, where he thinks he can practice his
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: miracles on his own. And because he doesn't really know
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: what kind of miracle he should perform, he remembers the
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: story from an opera that he read about once, in
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: which one of the characters performs a miracle by turning
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: their stick into a flowering tree. And so he stick.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: He puts his stick in the ground and makes it
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: blossom with roses, you know, and he's kind of amazed
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: by this, and then he hears someone coming and he
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: tells the stick to go back, meaning go back to normal,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: but he gets it wrong, and the stick goes flying
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: back and it hits this person who is approaching, hits
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: them in the legs. It's dark at that time, so
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: you know, they can't see things, can't see each other
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: very clearly, but the dick flies quickly and whacks the
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: guy in the legs. It turns out this is a
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: police officer, and he's angry he's saying, you've just assaulted
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: a police officer. What are you doing? And the police
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: officer realizes that it's Fotherington and he has heard about
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: what Fotherington did in the pub, and the police officer
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: is not very happy with him, and Fotherington isn't really
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: able to think very quickly and he gets angry as well,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't know what to do, and he just
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: says to the police officer, oh, go to Hell, which
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: is the sort of thing you might say meaning oh,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: you know, go away. He says, go to Hell, and Winch.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: The police officer disappears, so of course he's just sent
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: him to hell, and he goes home worrying about this.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Why doesn't why he doesn't just bring him back, but
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: he's worried that if he brings him back, then the
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: policeman is going to be angry with him and he's
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: going to I'm looking for him, and he doesn't know
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: what to do. So he's worried that Winch is in
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: hell and he doesn't know what that's like and how
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: that might be, and so he sends him to San Francisco,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: which is I suppose somewhere far away. But he's worried.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: He doesn't know how to deal with that, and he's
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: worried about Winch, and he thinks that maybe Winch will
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: be furious and he'll be trying to get back from
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: San Francisco, so he keeps having to send him back.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: And then he's thinking, oh God, maybe his clothes got
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: burnt off when he went to Hell, so he gives
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: him a new set of clothes. And anyway, he knows
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: that the whole Winch thing is a real problem, and
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: he's concerned what might be happening, And yeah, what is
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: happening to Winch. He's suddenly gone to Hell, suddenly finds
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: himself in San Francisco. Goodness knows what's going on with him.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: But anyway, Fotherington is now worried about all of this
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: and concerned, and he goes to church. He goes to
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: the chapel, which is not something he normally does, and
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: by coincidence, the priest the Nature is delivering a sermon
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: about miracles, and Fotherington is like really gripped by it
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: and listens to everything and is sort of suddenly shocked
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: by this and decides that he has to talk to
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: mister Maydig the priest, and you know, thinks, why didn't
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: I think of this earlier? So he talks to the
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: priest about this, and he shows the priest what he
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: can do, shows him his power, and the priest, mister Maydig,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: is amazed and suddenly inspired by this and decides that
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: this must be some sort of God given power. And
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: he quickly decides that Fotherington's power is incredibly significant, and
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: he gets very carried away by all the possibilities, all
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the good things that they could do. And Maydig is
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: also not the most intelligent character either, and he just
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: gets very very carried away with the potential for doing
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: for what he says, what he calls doing good, and
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: this means reforming everyone's soul, saving everyone in this sort
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: of like small minded Church of England kind of way,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: making them stop drinking alcohol or doing other things, improving
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: the town. So they fix a bridge that they they
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: do lots of little things in the town, slowly performing
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: bigger and bigger miracles. And then they realize it's three
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, and Fotherington, still quite small minded,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: panics and goes, I've got to be at work in
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: the morning. He doesn't realize that he could just you know,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: it doesn't He's got power to do absolutely anything. He
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't need to go to work anymore, but he still
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: worried about getting to work on time the next day.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: And may Dig, who perhaps says is slightly more broad
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: minded or slightly more imaginative, says, oh, well, you could
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: just you know, you could just stop time. You could,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: and he refers to Joshua, I think is another character
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: in the Bible who I think makes the sun stop
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: in the sky or something like that. He says, you
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: could stop time, just stop the earth from spinning and
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: stop time. Yes, and that's what Fotherington does. But of
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: course if you stop the earth from spinning, what actually
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: happens is that everything on the surface of the Earth
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: is destroyed because the Earth is spinning at one thousand
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: miles an hour, right, and if you suddenly stop it,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: everything would fly forwards in the same way that if
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: you're driving in a car at one hundred miles an
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: hour and bam, you suddenly hit a brick wall and
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: the car stops instantly. Everyone in the car goes flying
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: through the window. Right, If the Earth is spinning at
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: a thousand miles an hour and suddenly it stops. Then
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: all things on the surface would just go flying forwards,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: which is exactly what happens. Everything goes flying forwards, total chaos.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: All the trees are uprooted, all the buildings are just
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: turned into rubble. The clock tower goes flying through the
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: air somehow in the middle of all of this. While
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: he's flying through the air, Fotherington manages to will himself
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: to land safely, and he does, of course, and there's
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a huge wind blowing because of course all the air
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: would be rushing forwards at a thousand miles an hour
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: as well. And he kind of looks up and a
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: cow comes flying past him and explodes against the ground.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: I think, horrific. And then he sees in the distance
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: a huge tidal way, which of course is the ocean,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: rushing towards him, and he just about has time to
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: make a couple of final miracles happen, and he sent
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: essentially he reverses times. He's kind of got the presence
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: of mind to be able to do that, to reverse time,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: go back to where he was before all this happened,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: and to forget about it all, and to remove his
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: miracles because they're too dangerous. And that's what happens, and
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: everything goes back to where they were at the beginning.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: He's in conversation, he's still debating with Toddy Beamish in
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: the pub, except now he doesn't have his power anymore
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't remember anything. And so for just one night,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: the world was completely destroyed. Everyone on it was killed
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: for one night. But of course none of us realize
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: that that even ever happened. Yeah, so there you go,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: that's pretty much what happened. Hello, let me just interrupt
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: myself here. It's actually the next day at this moment
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: that I'm recording this part of the episode, it's the
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: next day, and I've decided to keep recording in order
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: to add some more stuff to this episode just to
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: make sure that you're getting all of the added value
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: that you may have come to expect from episodes of
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: Luke's English Podcast. So I'm going to add some more
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: stuff in this kind of second part of the episode.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Before I do that, I just want to know, well,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: first of all, I want to just check in with you.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: How are you doing. Are you're doing all right? How's
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: the episode for you at this point? And I'd like
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: to encourage you to share your comments in the comment section.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: What is your interpretation of this story now? Certainly, on
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: one level, it's just a kind of a fun, humorous,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: lighthearted story with a kind of a funny twist at
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: the end, an unexpected twist at the end. But also
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: there are deeper meanings and more interpretations that we can
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: read in this story. What is the author trying to say?
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: What is it that makes this interesting? When I read this?
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: When I first read this story and I discovered it
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: in that book of short stories which I talked about
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, It's a book that I
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: discovered in a lending library in a supermarket in England.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I spotted the book. It was like this very old,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: very old, aged looking book on the shelf and I
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: had a look and it said HG. Wells Short Stories,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: and I thought fantastic. I love HG. Wells and I
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: haven't read his short stories. I'll take that one of
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: those lending libraries where people just leave books and you
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: can leave other books and pick up books and whatever.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: So I got it, had it in my pocket, my
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: coat pocket for a few weeks. I talked about this
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: on the podcast a couple years ago, and one day
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: at lunchtime. I found myself in that lovely square in Paris,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: next to the fountain that I talked about, and I
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: sat and I read from that book, and I really
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: enjoyed the stories, and this is one of the stories
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: that I discovered in there. Now, the original text might
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: be worth reading, actually, because you know the text I
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: read to you was adapted and modernized. The original text
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: might be interesting for you to read as well, just
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: as a comparison, so you can compare the old fashioned
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: language which is actually more complex but old fashioned, and
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: the version in this story. So that could be kind
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: of an interesting exercise. But anyway, when I read it,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: I was really, how do you describe this? I was
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: really kind of gripped, and it really got my imagination.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: I just absolutely loved these stories because they were so
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: kind of unexpected, but also they felt very fresh. HG.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Wells wrote this work over one hundred years ago, but
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: he's very well known. He's famous. HG. Wells. He's very
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: famous as an author for being ahead of his time,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and he kind of almost invented the science fiction genre
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: before it even existed. He was one of the first
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: people to write this kind of very imaginative work, and
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: he also wrote other things later in his career. He
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: wrote one book which is full of genuine predictions about
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: the future of humanity and the future of human society,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: and it's really really interesting to read how accurate his
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: predictions were. So a very interesting writer in the sense
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: that his imagination was based on a sort of scientific
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: understanding of the world, and he, using that understanding, was
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: able to see how things might go in the future.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: But this story, of course, is a sort of interesting
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: combination of seeing the world from a rational, scientific point
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: of view, which is what Fotherington does at the beginning,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and he's a little bit arrogant about that, you know.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: He loves to argue that superstitious or supernatural thinking or
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: religious thinking, belief in miracles is obviously untrue, and he's
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: very sure of his opinion. And then on the other hand,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: obviously in the story there's this miraculous element which completely
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: disproves his worldview. So it's an interesting mix of these ideas.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: But anyway, i'd like to read your comments. I'd like
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: to know your thoughts, so please do write some things
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: in the comments section. First of all, what is your
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: interpretation of this story? Do you think there's any kind
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: of deeper meaning, Is there any symbolism? What does the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: story mean to you? Does it make you think about
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: the world in any way? Does it make you think
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: about things like a rational point of view, a more
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: superstitious point of view, about maybe human actions and the
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: impact that humans might have on the world if given
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of power, in this case, it's a miraculous power.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: But if human's got sort of incredible power allowing them
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: to do all sorts of things, what kind of impacts
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: might that have? In fact, what kind of impacts might
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: that have already had on the world if you consider
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: things like the technology that we've developed over the last
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: hundred years, right, the industrial technology and the impact that
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: that's had on the world, and now of course artificial
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: intelligence and the power that is at our fingertips. But
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: what the consequences might be of us using that in
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: a perhaps unwise kind of way. So, anyway, what's your
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: interpretation of the story? Do you think there's any kind
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: of deeper meaning or is it just a fun, lighthearted story.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Let us know. A thing I'd like to know from
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: you is, how do you use an episode like this
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: or how do you use a story like this to
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: improve your English? Now, do you just listen to the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: story and just enjoy it? Which is fine. So here
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: are some options the things that you might do, and
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: the good news is that all of these options are
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: good things to do. So do you just enjoy the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: story just listen to it or read it once? Or
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: do you listen to it and then find the PDF
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: and read the story as well? So you listen and read.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Do you kind of go into the text and start
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: to analyze the language in any way? Do you pick
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: out bits of vocabulary and research them and maybe use
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: something like chat, GPT or online dictionaries to you know,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: make sure you've understood those phrases, to understand, you know,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: understand the way that they fit into sentences. Maybe do
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: some practice exercises with them, recall them in your vocab
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: notebooks and things. Do you, you know, do you actively
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: work on your vocab with these stories? Do you repeat
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: after me? Are you doing any kind of shadowing or
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: anything like that with these stories? Now, obviously this one
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: was quite long. It took what was it about thirty
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: minutes forty minutes to read the whole thing, So shadowing
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: all of that will be a difficult thing, but that's okay.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: You can just focus on a section of the story
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: and you know, maybe you speak out loud after listening
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: to a story like this, you can do what I
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: did just now, which is to summarize the story in
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: your own words. All of those things are really good
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: things to do. And so if you do any of
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: those things, that's great. But anyway, share your if you
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: have any kind of method, even if it's just I
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: just listened to the episode, Luke, that's it. Even if
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: it's just that, let us know in the comments section.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: And thirdly, on the subject of vocab, as you listen
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to this story or maybe read it as well at
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: the same time, was there a lot of vocabulary that
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: you didn't know? Did you notice sort of new words
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: and phrases or were there moments when you didn't really
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: understand a certain detail because of a certain word being used?
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: And so was there vocab that you didn't know? And
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: when you encounter new words or unknown words or phrases,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: what do you do? So again, some more options, and
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: again the good news is that all of these options
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: are good things to do. So do you a when
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: you've come across new words? Do you just keep going
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: in this case, keep listening to the story and not
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: get too worried about the bits you don't understand. Just
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: focus on the bigger picture, just focus on the general understanding,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: and just keep listening to understand the main story. Do
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: you do that or do you When you encounter new
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: words and phrases, do you actively try to guess what
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: they mean by maybe looking at the sentences around the word,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: the other words around, looking at the grammar, working out
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: the part of speech, trying to quickly make a decision
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: about whether this is, let's say, a good thing or
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: a bad thing, or what the meaning of the word
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: or phrase might be. Do you actually actively guess the
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: meaning of unknown words? Which is a very good skill
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: to practice and to develop to an extent you almost
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: you could say that you developed that one almost subconsciously.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: It's a natural process when you read and listen a lot,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: when you come across new language, you naturally sort of
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: like start to fill in the blanks and you get
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: a general sense of what a phrase might mean. But anyway,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: do you guess new words or do you check words?
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: So when you come across something new, do you stop
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: and use a dictionary, for example, an online dictionary like
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: dictionary dot Cambridge dot org. Do you stop and use
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: a dictionary to check the meaning of new words? Or
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: do you let most of the words go but maybe
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: check the ones that seem to be important, Like if
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: there are words that often come up and you just
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: sort of stop and think, wait a minute, what does
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: that word actually mean? And then check it? So what
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: do you do when you come across new words? Just
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: carry on? Do you guess what they mean? Do you
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: check all of them? Do you just check some of them?
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: What do you do? So? Interpretation of the story, how
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: to learn English with these stories and new vocabulary? These
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: are actually things that I would like to talk about
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: right now in this part of the episode. Okay, so
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: we'll start with meanings and interpretations of the story. What
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: does this story really mean? Here are my thoughts, okay,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: and I'll just run through these reasonably quickly. So this
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: is a satirical fantasy story exploring what might happen if
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: an ordinary person suddenly gained godlike powers. So it's a
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: satirical story. It's satire. Satire is work normally humorous work
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: like stories or comedy shows or films. So this is
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: a satirical story. Satire then, yes, comedy, let's say, or
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: humorous work which also aims to kind of criticize something,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: maybe criticize something in society. Often satire criticizes politics or politicians.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: In this case, this story seems to satirize something about
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: human nature or something relating to something relating to human
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: attitudes towards the world. You know, rationalism, the scientific view
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: versus a more perhaps supernatural, spiritual view of the world,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: you know, and sort of seeing what happens when these
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: things collide with each other, or at least when a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: rational person, when a rational person finds that they have
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: miraculous powers, how their worldview is challenged, and you know,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. So, yeah, it's humorous and light on
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: the surface, but there are deeper meanings as well. I
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: wanted to talk again about H. G. Wells, the writer
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: who I just I'm such a huge fan of his work,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: as you can probably tell. But I wonder how Wells
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: came up with this idea. They came up with the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: idea for this story. Now, bear in mind that this
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: was decades, maybe a century or something before this kind
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: of story was done by Hollywood. For example, and we've
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: seen various kinds of films or TV series that explore
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: similar things, like people gaining incredible powers and then what
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: happens as a result, you know, like there's that Jim
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: Carrey film. What's it called, ah God, I can't remember.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: What's the Jim Carrey film where he gets the power
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: it gets god like powers? Okay, that's the one. It's
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: called Bruce Almighty. So there's that. But there have been
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: other films and series and stuff. But I'm sure this
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: is one of the first ever stories where this kind
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: of thing, these ideas were explored. But how did he
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: come up with the idea? Maybe he thought something like this.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: Maybe he just thought, what if a normal, ordinary person
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: suddenly discovered they had a miraculous power? What would happen?
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: What logically might happen next from the person discovering their
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: power to using it, making mistakes, trying to correct them,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: and getting more and more ambitious. What would be the
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: logical steps and how long would it take for things
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: to go profoundly wrong in that situation? And what does
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: this tell us about humanity? There's a point I think
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: about the combination of human ignorance and great power could
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: lead to catastrophe. And this you have to say, is
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: very profound at the moment. You know, this story shows
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: us how absolute power in the hands of someone who
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: lacks wisdom, or lacks imagination, or lacks a sense of restraint,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: or even a sense of huge knowledge about the world,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: giving that person incredible power can lead to disaster. In
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: the story, Fotherington and also may Dig they have a
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: limited understanding of how the world works. Fotherington doesn't really
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: understand basic physics, and as a result, he doesn't know
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: how to use his power responsibly, and he brings about
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: the end of the world, or at least at the
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: end of human civilization, which of course makes me think
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: of that quote from Spider Man. With great power comes
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: great responsibility, which is what Spider Man's uncle tells him.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: It's part of the Spider Man canon. You know, it's
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: important moment in the Spider Man's story, his uncle telling
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: him this, with great power comes great responsibility, which is
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: what gives Spider Man that sense of duty, that public
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: duty that he has to use his powers for good.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: But it's a universal truth, isn't it that you have
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to have a huge amount of responsibility. But also you
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: need to have an incredible level of wisdom and knowledge
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: in order to wield massive power in a responsible way.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: And you know, this makes me think of the dangers
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: of humans having advanced technology that can profoundly damage life
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: on Earth. This includes nuclear weapons, but also just industrial
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: technology that has completely transformed human civilization over the last
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: two hundred years, but which might have seriously affected the
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: balance of nature on Earth. So humans, we have these
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: incredible powers with the technology that we've developed. If you
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: think about the things that that we have advanced and
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: in a just a very short space of time in
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: all of human you know, when you consider all of
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: human history, this tiny little millimeter of human history has
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: seen so much expansion in terms of the power that
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: we have. But do we have the kind of understanding,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: the wisdom, the foresight to be able to use this
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: kind of technology in a responsible way without it ultimately
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: being destructive. Now, it's worth remembering that this story was
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: written and published in eighteen ninety eight, long before humans
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: invented weapons that could destroy all life on Earth, and
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: before we realized how much damage humans could do to
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: the world. I think, which again impresses me in terms
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: of HG. Wells's vision. We also have AI now, of course,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: artificial and intelligen which gives us all a tool that
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: can do anything we ask it to. I mean to
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: an extent, to an extent, of course, but you know
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: what I mean, right we suddenly now all of us
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: have access to this machine. Let's call it. It's software,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: but you can kind of ask it to do something
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: and it does it instantly. Of course I mean writing things,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: producing work, but also images, video audio. It's getting to
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: the point where just the click of your fingers and
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: you can get whatever you want right now. You know,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: when you it is almost miraculous. It almost feels like
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: a miraculous power. And I think we all had that
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: experience when we first used proper AI, generative AI like
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: something like chat GBT. Our first experience with that, which
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: probably happened within the last couple of years for most
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: of us, was quite a profound experience. Really, you know,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: when you first use software like chat GPT, it does
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: feel a bit like a miracle machine. And we have
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: all had that experience of asking it to do whatever
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: we want and then being stunned when it does it.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, and maybe I'm maybe I'm reaching
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: a little bit to make this analogy, but reading about
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Fotherington testing out different things in his room, creating a
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: snail and then making it go away, and sort of
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: realizing the little things he can do and starting to
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: cheat at work and stuff like that, it did remind
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: me or make me feel. Maybe the closest thing in
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: life that I could compare that to is just the
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: first time you use chat GPT and you kind of go,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: oh my god, this is this is I could do
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: anything with this, you know. But even that is the
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg. It's just the tip of the
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: iceberg in terms of the power of AR and the
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: ramifications that it will have on society and the way
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: it will affect everything about the way we live. And
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: that is not an overstatement. That is just, I think
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: a fairly reasonable statement about the significance of AI into
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: our society. So do we have the wisdom to use
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: this incredibly advanced technology. How will it affect civilization now
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: that we've let it out of its box, as it were?
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: How will this impact the world as we know it?
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: And that's just not me being paranoid. Experts, lots of
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: experts are talking about these sorts of things and giving
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: these kinds of warnings. Experts warn the unleashing superintelligent AI
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: could lead to catastrophic consequences like loss of human control,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: societal collapse, or even human extinction if AI systems act
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: in ways that conflicts with human interests. And if you
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: want more of that kind of doom laden podcast content,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: you could listen to episode number nine hundred and nine,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: which is all about the impact of AI on human
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: civilization episode nine oh nine if you haven't heard it.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: But basically, the concern is that once an AI reaches
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: a level of superintelligence, it would be too late to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: contain it because it would already think several steps in
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: advance of us. You know, like in a game of chess,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you've got to think, You've got to be
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: able to think a number of steps ahead of your opponent.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: As soon as an AI reaches a certain level of intelligence,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: it will quite quickly be able to think a number
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: of steps before us. So if you think, for example,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: don't worry, we'll always have control over AI, We'll just
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: be able to unplug it. Well, it will think faster
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: than us, and it will make sure that that doesn't happen. Anyway,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: I'm starting to out paranoid, and I know that whenever
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: talk about these sorts of things, people in the comment
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: section go, well, there's nothing to worry about, Luke. We
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: created AI, therefore we will always control it. But that's
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: not necessarily what the experts say, which is a sort
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: of a stunning thing to think about. Really anyway, how
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: did I reach that conclusion that Fotherington's miraculous power is
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: like the AI which we have developed. How did I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: come to that conclusion? Well, maybe it's just on my
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: mind a lot. And you know, I'm not the only one.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: Of course, you know, it's one of the major things
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: of our time, isn't it? Major subjects? But in the story,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: Fotherington uses his power unwisely and it has terrible consequences
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: that he didn't anticipate. And I'm not talking about AI
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: stopping the rotation of the Earth, because obviously I think
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: that's impossible. But AI presents us with something sort of
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: similar incredible power, but also potential consequences that are beyond
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: our control or understanding. Maybe that's one of the things
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: that caught my attention with this story. I just it
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: moved me in a way that you know, I don't
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: always get with just funny fantasy stories. Catastrophe so terrible thing,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: a terrible thing happening, a disaster. Catastrophe is not just
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: caused by people doing evil things. There's another idea that
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: this story made me think, right, like, the sort of
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: disasters don't always just happen because people are being evil.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: Even attempting to do good things can have unintended consequences
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: because we don't understand everything, so we just make mistakes.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: Fotherington is actually trying to do good things mostly and
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: may dig, but his well meaning, yet naive attempts to
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: improve the world spiral out of control, culminating in the
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: destruction of the Earth, or at least most of life
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: on its surface. Yeah, So, I mean, what about you
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: if you had Fotherington's power, what would you do with it?
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: What would be the first thing you would do? And
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: how far would you go? Would you start to do
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: really big things, really big ambitious things, and how far
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: would you go? Now at some point I'm sure it
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: would start to get very complicated for you, if you
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: can imagine. This is what I think anyway. Maybe I'm
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: just a pessimist, but imagine eventually, if you were doing
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: big things, it would get complicated, and eventually you'd probably
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: be saying You'd probably be saying things like this. You'd
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: end up saying, Okay, so stop time, but don't let
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: anyone age or remember that time stopped, and don't let
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: me age either. But also make everyone freeze so they're
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: not moving, but I can move. But if I touch things,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: they don't get affected unless I want them to. You
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: can see that as you start to use your powers
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: for bigger things, you'd start to get more things would
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: start to get more and more complex, and you'd have
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: to think of every possible consequence of your actions and
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: account for them. So I think it would be a
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: bit of a nightmare, really. I think the story also
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: has a sort of these themes of superstitious thinking and rationalism,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: and it's a sort of a critique of the two
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: of them to an extent. The story begins with a
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: debate in a pub about the possibility of miracles. With
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: Fotherington's argument. Wells criticizes superstitious thinking and blind faith, but
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: he also invites us to question the arrogance of Fotherington's
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: scientific beliefs, so he Wells somehow manages to criticize or
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: satirize both viewpoints. Fotherington's skepticism in all things supernatural is
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: quickly proven wrong when a miracle actually happens. So, as
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: well as criticizing superstitious and religious thinking, the story also
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: critiques rigid rational thinking. And this reminds me of a
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: quote from Hamlet. That quote from Hamlet is this, there
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: dreamt of in your philosophy. So in the play, Hamlet
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: has been told by the castle guards at the start
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: that the ghost of his father has appeared to them.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: So Hamlet's been told that the ghost of his father
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: is walking around. And Hamlet and his friend Horatio go
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: up to the battlements of the castle and the ghost
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: appears to them. And Horatio is a practical, rational, down
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: to earth scholar. He's a sort of scientific thinker, and
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: he is stunned by the vision of the ghost. He's
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: shocked by it. He doesn't believe in ghosts, and he says, oh,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: day and night, but this is wondrous, strange, so he
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: can't believe his eyes. And Hamlet replies, well, there are
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio than are dreamt
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: of in your philosophy, And he's suggesting that hum imagination
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: is limited and that there are many things we don't know,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: including things that haven't been discovered and in fact, things
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: we haven't even dreamt of. So even science or a
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: scientific rational view of the world isn't quite sufficient that
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: they're actually there is a lot more to the world
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: than this viewpoint. But anyway, HG. Wells chooses this moment
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: to prove how the existence of miracles can't actually work
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: within the rules of our world, I suppose, hmm, So, yeah,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: the world is mysterious. The presence of Fotherington's miracle powers
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: has no divine explanation. I mean, maydig says that it's
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: a gift, but there's no sense to it really, and
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: Wells doesn't suggest that God has anything to do with it. It
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: all just seems quite random, suggesting that the universe is
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: not controlled by divine intervention by the actions of God,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: but also that there is no rap or logical sense
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: to the world either. So the world is just a weird,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: mysterious place without order either define or rational. That's nice,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: and it's nice. It's always nice to remember that. So
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: those are just some interpretations I had, just some random waffling,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: some rambling from me in an attempt to pin down
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: or describe what the story made me think. But sometimes,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to put into words these feelings
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: that you get when you, let's say, read read a
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: story that catches your imagination, or you watch a film
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: that really kind of grabs you. Sometimes it's just a
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: sense of wonder and mystery, and it's hard to put
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: it into words, but it's quite fun to try. So
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: those were my interpretations. You might think differently. Again, if
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: you have things to add, please put them in the
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: comments section. So I mentioned before about the question of
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: using a storyline this to improve your English, and I
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: just wanted to add some things here. So just listening
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: to or reading stories like this is good. It's really
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: good for your English. So well done. You You did
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: the right thing by listening to this episode. Reading or
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: listening to English regularly is a really important thing to do,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: as well as doing more deliberate studying, and stories obviously
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: are a great way to do this because they're usually
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: quite compelling, you want to know what happens next, they're
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: quite immersive, you get stuck into the story and you
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: kind of maybe forget about everything else and you just
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: focus on what's going on in the story. This is
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: a good state to be in for absorbing English in
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: a kind of subconscious way. I don't know if that
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: is truly a scientific way of putting it, but I
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: just mean that, you know, you're probably paying quite a
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: lot of attention following the story, carefully involved in the
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: meaning of the story and exactly what's happening, and as
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: a result, it's just a good way to expose yourself
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: to English. Now, most people, I think, just don't listen
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: or read enough, and their English suffers as a result.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: And I say that as an English teacher having met
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: thousands of learners of English in my career, and most
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: of them probably weren't doing a lot of reading or
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: listening outside the class. They just basically decided, right, I
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: need to learn English. I'll sign up for an English
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: course and that will be my thirty hours or sixty
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: hours or ninety hours, and that will be me, you know,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: And obviously that time in the classroom with me and
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: the other students or whoever the teacher was, that's obviously
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: very valuable and very good. But we all know that
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: you've got to be in it to win it, and
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: that means that you've got to immerse yourself in English
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: in a meaningful way. And reading a lot stories and
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: listening to a lot of stories like this is a
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: great thing to do. So keep it up, keep doing it.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: You're doing the right thing. One of the reasons people
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: don't listen or read enough in English is because they
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: don't understand everything right and they don't like the experience
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: of reading or listening to something that they can't completely understand.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: But being able to tolerate uncertainty or being able to
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: tolerate not understanding things is an important skill in learning English.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: So relax, you won't understand everything, but just try to
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: follow what you're hearing or reading and doing that is
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: a good exercise, and the more you do it, the
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: more you're able to understand. So again, keep it up.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: You're doing the right thing. Well done. You give yourself
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: a good pat on the back for doing the right
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: thing for your English. Guess meanings of new words. When
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: you meet vocabulary you don't understand, notice it and try
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: to make a quick guess of what it means. I've
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: mentioned before that when you're just listening, it can be
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: harder to notice new language because it's just sound and
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: it's just words, and you can't once they've been spoken,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: they're gone. They're ephemeral, and so it's harder to notice
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: new words or phrases when you're listening. So it's a
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: good idea to if you've listened to a story like
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: in this episode, to go and read the story again,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: to read it as well as well as listening to it,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: find the PDF and actually read the story too, because
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: that can be a good way of making sure that
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: you're noticing new language, and also it will reinforce the
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: impact that the English is having on you. By listening
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: to it first and experiencing it in the sort of
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: the oral version of English and then reading it afterwards
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: can be a very good thing. And when you're reading it,
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: you have more time to stop and notice new language.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: You can see it. There's that visual element as well.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: Combining the oral version of English with the written version
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: of English is an important thing to do. You get
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: more of a rounded view of the language. That way,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: try to work out the grammatical part of speech of
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: any new words, is it a now a verb? Adjective, adverb,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: What function is it having in the sentence. When you
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: get familiar with these basic structural ideas, these syntactic sort
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: of block building blocks of English, when you just understand
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: the grammar of the word or phrase that you're trying
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: to understand. When you know you get that, then that
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: goes a long way in helping you to understand how
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: that vocab works. And also consider the context of the
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: grammar and meaning around the word. For example, deciding if
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: it's a phrase, if this word is part of a
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: fixed phrase. Is it a phrase or verb like point out?
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: You know, something like that. It's not just point it's
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: point out. So decide if it's a phrase or if
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: the meaning is generally negative or positive. You know, making
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: these little inferences, even if you're not completely perfectly guessing
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: the meaning, just taking these extra steps makes a big difference.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: So is it noun, verb, adjective or adverb? Read around
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: the word, try to decide what is being described, if
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: it's positive or negative, if you could perhaps use another
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: word there, and if the sentence will still make sense.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: By doing these things, you're just pushing things a bit further,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: applying yourself a bit more. Going from passive learning to
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: a more active learning process. And then when you've got
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: a sense of what the word might mean, you can
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: then check your guess by looking up the word in
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: a dictionary, looking at the example sentences, making sure that
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: you look at the different definitions, because often words have
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: got a number of different meanings until you find the
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: one that matches, and then you can be like, right,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: I thought. So remember that words often have multiple meanings,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: so you might need to search for the meaning that
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: fits the way the word is being used here in
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: the story in this case. And also words often exist
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: in phrases, so you might need to search for a
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: phrase rather than an individual word. And when you're using
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: online dictionaries like dictionary dot Cambridge dot org, often it
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: will present the words in it present phrases underneath. You know,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: get to know the way that dictionaries organize information. They
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: often are there to you know, they're there to help you,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: and they will often provide phrases in neat lists so
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: you can see, ah, this is not just point this
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: is point out. For example, pointing something out means to
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: identify it or bring someone's attention to it. By the way,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: so yeah, is it a phrase or an individual word,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: are there prepositions or other nouns attached to it? For example?
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: What are the collocations? And also always look for more
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: examples to help consolidate the meaning of new language. Doing
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: those things can help you to guess words more accurately,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: and it's a good idea to do that before, I mean,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: make your guesses before you check the actual meaning of
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: the word or phrase in a dictionary. Doing it that
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: way helps to train you how to deal with new
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: words on your own and will probably result in you
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: remembering them better as well. If you're using AI tools
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: like chat, GPT or whatever you know. Of course, other
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: groundbreaking generative AI software is available, of course, but if
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: you're using something like that, you could paste in the
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: whole paragraph where the new word is or new phrase.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: You could take the whole paragraph, paste it into chat
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: GPT and ask what the specific word or phrase means
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: within that particular context. What does the word point? What
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: does the phrase? What does the word point mean in
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: this paragraph? And it will probably identify that it's not
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: just point, it's part of a phrase with point out.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: You know, that can help you identify the right meaning
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: more quickly instead of searching through dictionaries trying to find
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: the right meaning. Chat GPT will just do it for you. Probably.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: You can also ask AI to give you more examples
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: and comments, and even to test you with little exercises,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: which again, of course, is another important step when you're
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: learning vocabulary. Understanding the vocab, recording it in some way,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: and then remembering it recalling, so going from not having
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: the word in your mind to bringing the word back.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: So you asking chat GPT to give you little memory
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: prompts or exercises where you have to recall, bring back
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: the word into your memory, and hopefully use it in
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: some way. Actively collect new words and phrases from stories,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: collect them and make a note of them in some
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: sort of diary or document. Your process could simply be
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: find a new word, guess what it means, check the meaning,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: record it, so, keep a record of it in your
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: notebook or something. Then find a way to make yourself
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: remember the word or phrase, and then practice using it.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: And that's a little process that you can do. Learning
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: vocabulary can feel a little bit overwhelming because there's so much,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: but you don't have to learn all the words all
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: the time. Just some is fine. Whatever strikes a chord
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: with you, right, So you know, in this story, I
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: highlighted about one hundred and eighty words in the story,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty words or phrases, and I've put
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: them all in a list, by the way, which you'll
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: find on the PDF. If you look at the story text,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: you'll see some words or phrases are highlighted in a
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: yellowy orange color. There's about one hundred and eighty of them.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: Those are all things that I think that I could
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: teach you, or things that provide me with a chance
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: to do some English teaching with those words and phrases.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: But you don't have to. You know, you don't have
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: to learn all one hundred and eighty of them. Just
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: some of them is fine, whatever kind of feels right
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: to you. But don't ignore words you don't know as well.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: So you've got to kind of not ignore words that
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: you so try not to ignore new words, but at
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: the same time, don't feel you have to remember all
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: of them. So it's a balance between tolerating some words
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: you don't understand and not really worrying about them and
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: actively taking steps to work out those new words and
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: then learn or use them. But again, don't feel you
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: have to learn all the new words you discover, keep some,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: let others go, you know, and slowly, but surely, bit
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: by bit, you start to develop, expand broaden your vocabulary
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: in a way that's meaningful and effective, in a way
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: that actually allows you to really learn them, remember them,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: make personal connections with them all and then hopefully use
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: them right repeat some sections of the story after me,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: meaning just shadowing, or listen and repeat. I know it's
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: a bit long to do the whole thing, but you
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: could just do a section and speak, you know, practice
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: spontaneous speaking, summarize the story in your own words, give
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: your thoughts about the story out loud. All of those things,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: All of that stuff that I just mentioned, All of
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: that will definitely make a difference to your English if
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: you actually do it. But you have to actually do
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: it or not. Again, this is the good news. You
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: don't have to do all of that stuff. I mean,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: it will help, of course, but also at a base
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: level listening regularly, reading regularly, speaking and writing regularly, to
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: practicing the four skills on a regular basis. This is
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: the most important so on the subject of vocab. I
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: at the end here, so we're getting to the end
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: of the episode. I just wanted to spend a few
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: minutes at the end explaining some vocabulary from the story.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: I like to do this. I actually really love as
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: an English teacher. I love explaining vocabulary and I really
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: enjoy it. I enjoy it more and more. It is
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: the thing in English that I get a kick out
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: of is explaining words and phrases. You know, there's lots
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: of things that as a teacher you have to do.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: You have to explain, clarify grammar, help people learn it,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: deal with pronunciation, the phonetics of English, and the kind
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: of pragmatics of English, the social side, how we apply
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: language to different social situations. But maybe one of the
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: things I enjoyed the most is just dealing with the
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: meaning of vocabulary and demonstrating and illustrating and giving examples
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: of vocab. I really enjoy doing that. So there was
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: so much useful vocabulary in this story, which you can
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: explore in your own time. But yeah, as I said before,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: I created a list of the words and phrases from
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: the story which I highlighted because I thought they were
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: worth pointing out to you. There's that phrase point out
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: I thought they would be worth pointing out to you
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: and explaining, like, hey, look, how about this word? What
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: about this phrase? Because they might be difficult to understand,
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: or they might be unknown to you some of you,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: And because there are things I can clarify or teach
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: you here. That's why I highlighted all those bits of
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: vocab and I've put them in a list on the PDF.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: I've just realized, or I realized earlier, that there are
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty things in the list. You can
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: see a full list below, and a more detailed version
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: of that list will be available for premium subscribers, by
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: the way, So one hundred and eighty things. I'll do
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: some words from the story now, So I'm going to
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: go through some of the words from the first part,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: the first page or two of the story now, and
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: I'll do the rest in an upcoming premium episode. So
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: if you want to get all my vocabulary explanations for
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: the entire story, you'll need to sign up to LP
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: Premium to get my episode, which will be available soon
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: if not now, in which I'll go through the story
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: again and explain the rest of the vocabulary, adding various
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: comments and bits of teaching wisdom with my particular set
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: of skills. So sign up to LP Premium teacher Luke
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: dot co dot uk slash premium. If you don't know
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: how LP Premium works, it's rather than me going on
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: about it now, I'll just say, go to my website
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: to get the information teacher Luke dot co dot uk
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: slash premium info. But essentially it gives you access to
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: extra episodes in which I go further and deeper into
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: actually teaching you English, often explaining vocabulary, and also providing
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: you with worksheets and PDFs that give you the exercises
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: to help you memorize and practice using a new language
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: as well. So I kind of like put it all
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: on a plate for you. That's LP Premium link in
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: the description. But now let me go through some of
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: the vocabulary from the story and I'll continue this as
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: I said in an episode of LP Premium soon. So
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: let's go back up actually to the beginning of the
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: story and look at some of the highlighted bits of
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: vocab that I can talk about. Oh hello, let me
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: just interrupt myself again here, because I've realized that before
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: I go through some vocab from the first page, of
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: this story. There's a couple of things that I need
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: to deal with. I don't know, to be honest, I
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: can't remember if I've explained the words I'm about to
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: talk about, and that's to will something to happen and
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: your willpower, plus some other uses of the word will.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: But here's a little diversion into the word will, the
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: word family of the word will. I don't know if
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: I've explained this because I've kind of lost track. This
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: is actually the third day of recording for this episode now,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: so maybe I've already touched on these words a little bit.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: But anyway, since the word willpower and the verb to
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: will something to happen are quite central to the story,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: I thought it was probably a good idea for me
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: to just make sure that this is clarified, and there's
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: definitely stuff I can teach you here. So I'm going
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: to look at the verb will, and there's actually several verbs,
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: the modal verb will and the regular verb will as well,
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: and then a couple of nouns, in fact, three nouns
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: will and will and willpower. And there's also an adjective
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: as well, which is to be willing to do something.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: So here's a little sidetrack into the word family of
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: the word will. We'll start with the verb and the
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: verb is well, obviously we've got the modal verb will.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: As you know, of course, we use it to talk
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: about the future, usually for example, I will see you tomorrow,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: or you know, if you stop the rotation of the earth,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: everything will be destroyed. Right, So we often use it
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: to talk about the future, right. But also we've got will,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: the regular verb, which is used lots of times in
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: the story. In fact, this verb to will something to
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: happen is used eight times in the story, and in
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: the story, Fotherington wills things to happen. He also wills
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: things into existence. There's also a moment when he wonders
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: whether you can actually accidentally will something to happen, and
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: that's will, willed, willed. So it's a regular verb with
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: an ed ending on the past forms. So to will
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: something to happen just basically means to use your mind
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: to make something happen. Right, So using your mental determination
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: or your desire to make something happen or try to
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: make something happen, almost like using the force from Star
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: Wars to make something happen. Okay, you can imagine kind
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: of closing your eyes and really focusing and trying to
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: use the power of your mind to make something happen,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: you know. So, I mean, obviously in normal life we
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: don't have magic powers, but we still try to will
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: things to happen. I think the example I may have
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: already given is when you're watching a football match and
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: your team you really want your team to win, or
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: you're watching your friend or someone in your family play
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: a game of tennis or something, and you really want
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: them to win, and you maybe close your eyes and
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: furrow your brow and you really will them to win,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: or you will them on you kind of like come on,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: you can do it. Use the strength of your mind
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: to kind of will them to win, you see. Okay,
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: So in the case of the story, this is obviously
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: used a lot because Fotherington's power comes from his mind.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: He comes from his will power, which he uses to
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: make things happen. So that's to will something to happen, okay,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: meaning to really try and use your the strength of
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: your mind, your desire, your mental determination to make something happen.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: You can also will yourself to do something. For example,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: if you're in an English lesson and you're trying not
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: to fall asleep. Is that the example I gave before?
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: I think it might have been yesterday when I recorded
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: the other part of this seems like such a long
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: time ago now. But anyway, you're in class and it's
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: like dead boring because your teacher's talking about the word
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: will and you're like, oh, oh, it's easy, isn't it. It's
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: just a modal verbs talk about the future. Everyone knows that,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: but you're not paying attention anyway. You're starting to fall asleep,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: and you think, I can't fall asleep, and you will
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: yourself not to fall asleep, or you will yourself to
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: stay awake. You're kind of like, come on, you can
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: do it. You're climbing a mountain. It's really difficult and
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: your legs are very tired, but you will yourself to continue. Okay.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: So there's that, So that the verb the modal verb
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: will the regular verb will. Then we look at nouns okay,
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: And the word will power is used a lot in
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: the story as well. It's used about four times. Fotherington
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: talks about there being something special about his will power,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: and he uses his will power to make things happen.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: So your your willpower is like your kind of your
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: the strength of your your your mind, right, the power
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: of your mind, let's say, okay, the kind of fuel
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: or strength to be able to do things right. Your
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: ability to control yourself, your ability to control your actions,
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: your strength of mind. Okay. For example, you know in
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: order to overcome challenges you need a lot of will power, right,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: strength of mind. Okay, Then you've got the word will.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: Just the noun will your will, okay, is your is
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: is what you want to do or what your desire
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: to do something. Okay. So, for example, you have the
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: will to learn English, meaning you really want to. You
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: have the will to reach a proficient level of English
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: means you really want to do it. This is your intention.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: This is your sort of mental choice that you want. Okay.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: You have the will to win. You need the will
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: to win if you want to be the best, right,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: you need the will to win. That's that desire to win.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: And then the will power is your actual strength of mind,
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: your ability to use your mind to make that happen.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: You see, So your will is like your desire the
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: thing you want, and your willpower is your ability to
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: actually make that happen. So willpower is used in the
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: story because this is actually talking about Fotherington's strength of mind,
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: which he uses to make things happen. Yeah, I should
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: also point out that adjective, which is to be willing
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: to do something right, to be willing to do something.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: Are you willing to you know, are you willing to
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: give me a discount? It's often used in business English
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: when you're negotiating with people, and if you're willing to
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: do something, it basically means that you are happy to
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: do it, you're ready to do it, you want to
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: do it, you have the desire to do it. And
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: it's very commonly used when you're asking whether someone is
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: happy to do something or whether someone will do something right,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: and it's slightly more diplomatic language. Instead of saying can
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: you give me a discount? Do you want to give
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: me a discount or not? Instead of being that direct,
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: you might say are you willing to give me a discount?
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: Or would you be prepared to give me a discount?
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: Would you be prepared to sign the contract? Would you
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: be willing to do that today? You see, basically meaning
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: do you want to do it? So that's the adjective.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: So we've done to will something to happen, your willpower,
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: your will to win, let's say. And also there's a will,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: which is something relating to your family and relating to
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: legal things, and that's completely unrelated. Well is it unrelated?
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: I suppose? Basically a will is a legal document, and
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: in the will you write all the things that you
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: want to happen when you die. Typically, who is going
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: to inherit your house, inherit your money, and inherit different
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: things from you when you die? Okay, so you might
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: leave your house to your children in your will, and
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: when someone dies you need to check the will and
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: see what's written in the will, and then you know
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: you need a lawyer to actually carry out all those wishes.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: So I suppose it's similar in the sense that your
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: will is your desire what you want to happen, and
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: your will the document, is a written document of what
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: you want to happen when you die. So anyway that
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: would be you know it was written in his will.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: He left me the house in his will. You need
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: to read the will. Have you written a will yet? Okay? Right, good,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: that's that. Then let's now go back to yesterday and
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: let me just explain some vocab from the beginning parts
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: of the story at the end of the episode. Here.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: So here we are again at the start of the story.
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: I'll only do this for a few minutes. Maybe I'll
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: do the first five, six, seven items of vocab and
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: I'll leave the rest for LP premium. So The Man
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: Who Could Work Miracles by H. G. Wells, The story
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: starts like this, it's doubtful whether George Fotherington was born
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: with his special power. Personally, I think it came to
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: him suddenly, So it's doubtful whether he was born with
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: the power doubtful. So if something is doubtful, it just
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: means it's not sure. We're not sure about it. For example,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: it's doubtful weather. In fact, weather is quite common after
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: the word doubtful, you could say, if it's doubtful, if
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: the match will happen tomorrow, it might be canceled because
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: of the weather, I mean the rain. So it's doubtful.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: So I'm using the word weather weather here as a
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: conjunction w H E T H E R. That's whether.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: The conjunction similar to the word if it's doubtful, whether
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: George was born with his power. That's whether the conjunction
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: w h E t h e R. But I've also
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: got another word weather like rain, sunshine, wind, that's w
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: e A t h e R. The pronunciation is the same. Anyway,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: it's doubtful if George was born with his power, or
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: it's doubtful whether George was born with his power, but anyway, doubtful,
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: it's not sure. For example, it's doubtful weather the game
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: will happen tomorrow it might be canceled, or it's doubtful
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: whether the meeting is going to take place. We're not sure. Okay,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: that's doubtful. And it's worth noticing that the B in
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: that word is silent, so doubt. You know, you might
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: have a doubt about something, right, you might be doubtful
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: about something, or something might be doubtful, But the word
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: doubt the bee is silent, so it's doubt, and it's
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: not doubt, no doubt, doubt. There's almost a W sound doubt, doubt, doubtful,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: So don't let that be influence your pronunciation. It's not
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: doubtful or doubtful, it's doubtful. You could even replace the
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: bee with a W and you'd be in the right zone. Doubtful. Next,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: we've got up until the age of thirty, he didn't
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: believe in anything supernatural. In fact, he was a total skeptic.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: So a skeptic is someone who doesn't really believe in something. Okay,
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: to be a skeptic or to be skeptical about something.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: I should point out that the spelling of skeptic in
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: British English is usually s C E P T I C,
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: whereas in American English you might see it with a
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: K instead of a C. But the words mean the
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: same thing and they're pronounced the same way. Sc in
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: British English usually an sk in American English usually So
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: George was a total skeptic, meaning he was skeptical about
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: the supernatural. He didn't believe in supernatural powers. So you
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: can be skeptical about lots of things. It's not just about,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: you know, supernatural things. You can be skeptical about all
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, like, for example, I don't know. You
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: might be skeptical about about COVID nine. You know, you
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: might be a COVID nineteen skeptic. You might believe that
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: it's it wasn't real, that it was all made up
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: by the government as a way of controlling us or
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: something like that. You know, so you might be a
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: COVID skeptic. Let's continue. Now is probably the best time
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: to describe him. He was a short man with bright
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: reddish hair that stood upright, So this is describing his hair.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: It was bright reddish hair, so describing the color. It
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't just red but redish. Now, if we're talking about
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: hair colors, we've got black hair, brown hair, blonde hair,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: and also ginger hair. But there are different sort of
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: different shades of ginger. Many you know, fifty shades of ginger,
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: let's say, And on one end of the scale you've
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: got like ginger hair, true red hair. But then some
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: hair is kind of like between being really ginger, like
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: a kind of Ron Weasley from Harry Potter that's like
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: full ginger some people, or Ed Sheeran or Mick Hucknell
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Some people are just sort of
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: on the spectrum. And so if someone's hair is a
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: bit red, you can say it's reddish. So that suffix ish.
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: I've talked about this lots of times on the podcast
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: because it comes up quite a lot. I don't know
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: if you've noticed that suffix ish not just in English, right,
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: But it's what color is it? It's a kind of
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: a bluish green color, right, which means it's kind of blue,
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: sort of blue. We also use it with times. I'll
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: see you about tennish. The match begins at about tennish,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: around about ten o'clock. Okay, Yeah, So that'sh as a suffix.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: You add it to the end of words, and it
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: means kind of or around about or approximately, often with colors,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: often with times. Yeah, he had a He had reddish
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: hair and a mustache. He liked to twist at the ends.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: So he liked to take the ends of his mustache
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: and twist them between his fingers. So to twist something, right,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: So turn it between turn it in your fingers. What
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: else do you twist? What else do we twist? Hm?
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: What things do we twist? Well, if you have an accident,
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: you might twist your ankle. That's where your foot. You
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: twist your foot and you you sprain your ankle. You
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: might end up on crutches. You don't have to go
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: to hospital if you if you twist your ankle. But
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: otherwise you twist lots of other things. He could twist
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: a piece of string, make it go round. If you
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: make a cocktail, you put a piece of lemon, you'd
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: twist the lemon before you put it in the glass
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: to squeeze out some of the juice. Anyway, he liked
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: to twist his mustache at the ends, so you can
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: imagine the ends of his mustache kind of going up
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: at the ends because he twisted them with his fingers.
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: Quite a cool look, quite a distinctive look, to twist
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: your mustache. Maybe I should start doing that. Maybe I
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: should start twisting up the ends of my mustache. I
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: had a student once from Sweden. When I used to
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: teach English in London. In the summer, we used to
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: get these groups of journalists from Sweden, the Swedish journalists.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: We used to get Norwegian ones as well. Actually funny
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: that we used to get these scan groups of Scandinavian
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: journalists come. And I remember one particular summer there was
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: a student who had this extraordinary mustache with the ends
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: that were twisted all the way up, and they pointed
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: all the way up towards the sky, this amazing mustache,
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: and we all asked him about his mustache, and he
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: told us that he got wax. He used to put
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: wax in his mustache, which is how he managed to
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: get the ends of the mustache to point upwards like
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: that he used to get wax. And he said that
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: the wax he used for his mustache he bought in
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: a specific shop in London, and he would travel to England,
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: travel to London and specifically go to this one shop
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: where he could buy this particular mustache wax. And he
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: proudly told me that he was planning to visit the
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: shop that afternoon in order to go and get his
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: supply of wax for his mustache so he could twist
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: the ends up. But it was a distinctive look, so
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: reddish hair mustache he liked to twist up at the
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: ends and a face full of freckles. So freckles are
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: things that some people get on their skin, especially on
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: their face. They're like little brown dots. And it's normally
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: people who have fair skin or people who have a
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: fair complexion. Often people with red hair will have a
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: fair complexion, a very light, pale skin which might be
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: sensitive to sunlight. But often people with that kind of
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: complexion when they do get exposed to sunlight, sometimes the
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: skin comes out in freckles. They're generally considered to be attractive.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: But like little brown dots, which is like a reaction
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: of the skin when there's a certain skin pigment, which
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: is maybe there's like an excess or too much of
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: a certain pigment in the skin, it produces these little
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: brown dots which are freckles. Okay, often on a person's nose,
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: they might get freckles like that. Now, they're not spots.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: Spots are like spots are red, and they can be
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: a bit embarrassing. Some people consider them to be a
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: bit ugly when you're a teenager. When we're teenagers, we
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: often get spots on our face because of all the hormones,
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: and it makes us feel embarrassed. Those are spots. But
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: freckles are not spots. They're just like, yeah, little brown dots,
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: which are cute generally. Yeah, you know what. That's all
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do in terms of vocab explanation. I
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: could go on and on and deal with the rest
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: what I just did one, two, three, four, five, things, doubtful, skeptic,
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: reddish to twist something at the ends, and freckles. I'm
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: not going to do the rest of the one hundred
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: and seventy five items in the list because there isn't
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: time now. And yes, if you want more, if you
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: want more of that kind of thing, if you want
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: to hear me go through the entire story explaining specific
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: bits of vocabulary, then you can do that. But you'll
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: need to sign up to LP Premium, get your premium subscription,
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: you would. The way it works is you sign up
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: once you've you pay like a fairly small number of
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: euros every month. It's like you buy me. You could
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: buy me a bottle of what would it be, I'm
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: going to say a bottle of beer. You could buy
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: me a bottle of beer a month, or maybe two
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: cup two cups of coffee a month. I mean, you know,
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: like the most basic Starbucks, cheapest Starbucks coffee. You could
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: get me maybe one and a half of them every
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: month for the price of LP Premium. That's the kind
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: of cost that it is. And when you sign up,
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: you get access to all the Premium episodes I've ever done,
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: and there's something like two hundred and fifty episodes now,
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: all dealing with vocab and some grammar, lots of pronunciation
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: practice and stuff. And you can go to LP dot
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: Supercast dot com sign in, you can listen to all
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: the episodes there. You also get all the free episodes
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: with no advertising in the episode show notes, you get
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: links for PDFs and video versions, and you can really
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: easily add your premium subscription, which is all the free
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: episodes and the premium episodes. You can add that episode
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: list to whatever podcast app you use on your phone,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: like Spotify, Apple, podcas asks. You can do that and
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: then instead of having the free list of LP on
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: your phone, you've got the premium list on your phone,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: no advertising and all the premium content. Is super convenient. Yeah,
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: you could just go to LP dot supercars dot com
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: or the same thing is teacher Luke dot co dot
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: uk slash premium if you want to continue with the
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: story and hear the rest of my vocab explanations. So
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: that's more or less the end of this particular episode.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: I just would like to end with some more questions,
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: again encouraging you to get in touch and express yourself
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: in English in the comments section. So here are some
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: other questions for you to consider. So does the story
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: have a deeper meaning for you? Did it end in
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: the way that you expected? Did Fotherington get why did
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: Fotherington get his power? And does this matter? I mean
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: to be honest, this is not mentioned in the story,
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: but maybe you've got your own theory. What mistakes did
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: Fotherington make? And you could say he should have like
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: he should have done this, he shouldn't have done that.
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: If you discovered you had his power, what would you do?
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: Would you do small things or big things? And what
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: consequences would your actions have? Possibly does this story teach
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: us a moral lesson? Does it have a moral lesson
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: to teach us? And what is it? And you know, generally,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: what does this story mean to you? Does it make
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: you think about any of the things I talked about,
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: superstitious beliefs, rational scientific thinking, the dangers of unlimited power,
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: human ignorance, artificial intelligence, or anything else. Leave your comments
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: in the comments section. Thank you so much for listening
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: to Luke's English podcast. Tell your friends about the podcast
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: if you love them. If you don't, really, then just
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: keep it a secret. Thank you for listening, and I
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: will speak to you again on the podcast before too long.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: All right, all right, good good, nice one. Have a
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: lovely morning, afternoon, evening or night out there in podcast land,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: whichever part of Letland you live in. I hope you
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: have yes. I hope you enjoyed yourself with this episode
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: and learned a thing or two. Speak to you next time,
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: but for now, it's time to say good bye, bye bye,
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: bor Boe