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What's your experience of working from home? Does it suit your line of work? Do you feel more efficient or less? This podcast was recorded during the Covid lockdown when working from home was new to us all. How has it changed over the years? It's interesting to look back and see how attitudes have changed.

13, March, 2026

Episode 239: Why do we blow on hot food and drinks?

In this series The Case of Everyday Mysteries: Why do we do That?, we answer the burning question of why we tend to blow on hot drinks and food. Just what are we trying to achieve? Listen in as you'll hear the science and psychology beind this habit, and learn great vocabulary along the way.

Everyday mysteries: why do we blow on hot food and drinks ?

by English Podcasts

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Welcome back to English-Podcasts. In this episode we look at the science behind the simple act of blowing on hot food and drinks. You'll also pick up a ton of great vocabulary.

Notes

Is blowing on hot food and drink actually effective?

How many degress do we actually cool the beverage down by ?

Are we trying to cheat physics?

Are we just simply trying to take control of a situation when just waiting patiently might be just as production?

Do all cultures don this?

Well, these are just some of the questions that we tackle in this podcast. Do you have any of your own thoughts on this matter ? 

 

Recap & Takeaways

As we get quite philosphical listen out for these words which will help you undertand our conversation:

Age-old ritual

A magical gust of air

Molten lava beverage

To be scolded (by a hot drink)

To be overzealous

70°C

A polite puff of air

To cheat physics

"Displacement activity".

Bad manners

A good stiring spoon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In this podcast we give some tips on how to start and round off your emails. Many people are unsure about the correct (and polite) form of saying "hello" and "goodbye" in their emails. This form of communication has become a cultural minefield as we wonder if we are too informal or overly polite. We also give effective tips on how to manage emails and to reduce the number of emails you receive on a daily basis.

In this podcast, we discuss in detail the best tips and advice for getting over the fear of speaking in public and by consequence making your presentations so much more effective. Listen in as we cover stress and breathing, effective slides, how to present data effectively, how to connect with your attendees and how to finish with a knock-out Take Home Message.

Listen to Chris and Renu talking about Renu's project, empowering women in India.

Renu was born in UK and practiced as a UK Lawyer for 10 years. She qualified with an MSc in Ayurveda in 2006 from London and has been an Ayurveda Practitioner and Teacher since then. Renu offers Ayurveda wellness consultations and classes online.

Renu is a writer, blogger and podcaster covering both Ayurveda, Yoga, Wellness and other areas of social interest.

She is the founder and visionary of a sustainability and womens empowerment initiative ‘Stree’ in Rishikesh at the foothills of the Himalayas. Stree has a store in Rishikesh which holds ethically made products from garments to bags to home use products

To receive Ayurveda Consultations and Classes or to purchase Stree products please vist www.streewellness.com

Effective Presentation Skills Tips episode 2

Effective Presentation Skills Tips episode 2 is the second part of a series of podcasts aimed at helping people to be more effective when presenting in front of an audience.

Sue and Chris talk about some of the pitfalls in presentations, including managing stress, redundancy, communication problems and telling an audience what they already know.

Presenting information clearly and effectively is one of the key soft skills, if not the most important soft skill for life, and especially in business.

Getting your message or opinion across is essential, and, today, presentation skills are required in almost every field of professional life.

If you are a manager, a technician, an engineer, a student, business owner or whatever, you may very well be asked to make a presentation at some point.

This can be something that not all of us relish.

This series of podcasts are meant to help you avoid some of the common mistakes that some presenters make, so that you can get your message across effectively and engage with your audience..

Everything that Sue and Chris talk about is about common sense skills that can be applied by anyone in a presentation, there are no miracle answers, just pragmatic tips that actually work.

After all, there is no point being the best student, manager, technician or engineer in your organisation if you cannot communicate what you do and what you want others to do.

The workplace is a very demanding, quick-paced and increasingly uncertain place in which we operate on a day-to-day basis, but does it always have to be a stressful place?.

Pressure to meet deadlines, deliverables and working with difficult people, among other factors, puts modern employees under unreasonable amounts of stress.

In fact, being constantly stressed out is so universal that many people have accepted it as unpleasant, but a way of life - it has become the norm.

While a certain amount of stress is acceptable and can actually be beneficial for you—keeping you alert and focused, helping you cope well with challenges—beyond a certain acceptable limit, stress is nothing but bad for you, if it is not channelled and managed.

Not only does it affect your mental stability but also your health, relationships, productivity at work, and overall quality of life.

People are different, so we all react differently to the same set of circumstances; something that one person may find stressful, another may regard as only mildly challenging or even normal.

How you tolerate and respond to stress depends not only on the particularities of your situation but also on what type of person you are; your natural inclinations, beliefs and behaviors.

In this podcast we look at some of the ways that workplace stress impacts people and we look at :

Stress trends in the 21st century

What stress looks like in the workplace

The effects of stress

The cost of stress

Is your workplace causing you stress?

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Stress can be debilitating, and it can cause and/or aggravate health problems.

Stress is a normal part of human existence — nobody is immune to it — it’s important to arm ourselves with knowledge so that we recognise when stress rears its ugly head. (Amazingly, we don’t always notice it’s happening to us.)

In this series of podcasts we will be looking at various themes concerning stress :

The statistics of stress

Workplace stress

Signs of a stressful workplace

Stress and Covid 19

Managing & coping strategies to combat stress

Measure your workplace stress

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STRESS AWARENESS MONTH IS IMPORTANT

It reminds us to pay attention to our health - According to the official website, "Stress Awareness Month is a national, cooperative effort to inform people about the dangers of stress, successful coping strategies, and harmful misconceptions about stress that are prevalent in our society."

It's going strong - Stress Awareness Month has been an ongoing campaign of awareness and education since 1992 - 19 years already.

Because we're all feeling it - A recent survey found that about two-thirds of workers report engaging in behavior such as drinking or crying regularly in order to deal with stress.

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