Teacher Joseph Podcast

Today's Learning English idiom for ESL learners is to Be Hooked on Something Also: Are British people addicted to Smartphones? The English Breakfast is evolving - we now have cheese with coffee. British People now drink Japanese wine "sake". extract Today's phrase is to be hooked on something. To be hooked on something and that's a playful way to describe a habit which may look like an addiction. Now, we often refer to… for example children playing video games too much. Parents might say: “oh you're really hooked on that aren’t you”. And if someone is very passionate about a hobby, we often refer to them as being hooked. Particularly on things like food. We can say, for example: “Oh my children are really hooked on fish and chips. They love that”. It's a way of referring to someone using a repetitive habit. Now we often use it playfully, there's no darker meaning to it. Although, It does indicate that perhaps there's some kind of resemblance to people who have an addiction. Now people who have an addiction let's say to alcohol or drugs they don't usually talk about themselves being hooked on something. But it may be that the habits that they have are the same although having an addiction of course, is a much more serious problem. Let's examine this a little bit deeper. So there's a news story today. And it says, “Addicted Brits are so hooked on their smartphones they need a fix from them every hour”.

Today's Idiom to help you learn English is "to hit the right note". Also:

Nemo, a Swiss non binary singer wins Eurovision

An Archeological dig in Orkney will vanish again into the earth.

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Extract :

To hit the right note is today's phrase, and that means to do or say something in a way that's incredibly effective or well received.

For example,

His speech really hit the right note with the audience.

The comedian's jokes hit the right note, making everyone laugh.

The restaurant's atmosphere hits the right note for a romantic dinner.

The company's marketing campaign hit the right note, resonating with their audience.

To hit the right note. Now, this is actually very, very common. As you can probably guess, it comes from music because if you think of the keys on a piano, when you play them, you're hitting a note. That just means you're making a particular sound. So if you hit the right note obviously you're following music, which is correct. And if you hit the right note as a metaphor, that simply means that you're creating the right ambience. You're creating the right mood for a particular thing to happen.

Now of course we can use it with anything. The boss hit the right note when he offered the employees a pay rise. But, um, we often use it about music as well. For example, last night in Europe was Eurovision. And somebody called Nemo, that was the entry for Switzerland. He hit the right note. Uh. He won. Now, of course, I'm not directly relating. I'm not directly relating Nemo's performance to hitting the right note. This is a metaphor. Okay, so his music clearly is very good. He hit the right note with his audience and because it is a musical act to say he hit the right note is a nice, meaningful coincidence.

We're going to read the the story about Nemo today… it's a little bit complex. So we're going to go through it slowly. And there's a lot of new words here which will help us to understand more about Nemo and what happened yesterday. So it says here, and this is from The Observer:

Switzerland has won the 68th Eurovision Song Contest, ending a fraught and at times tumultuous competition. Swiss singer Nemo, who defines as non-binary, entered the night as the bookmakers third favourite.

Now, if we just look at that one more time, um. A fraught and tumultuous competition, uh, really is just talking about “anxious and confused” I think would be the best way to describe it. Fraught means anxious and tumultuous means confused, maybe disorderly. So, um, this song contest, it says here:

Nemo won the 68th Eurovision Song Contest, ending a fraught that anxious and at times tumultuous disorderly competition. Swiss singer Nimmo, who defines as non-binary, entered the night as the bookmakers third favourite.

Someone who defines as non-binary um means somebody who doesn't easily fit into the category of male or female. Now, this is becoming fairly common across our media spectrum here. And there's an increasing number of people who don't feel okay fitting into society's norms of masculine and feminine. This takes many different shapes. So it's impossible for me to define exactly what non-binary is. Um, but what I can tell you is that Nemo does not define himself as male or female, and therefore he uses the pronouns “they” rather than he or she. Now you can hear there the difficulties in talking about non-binary people because of the pronouns. Just a second ago I said “he” doesn't easily fit in, when of course I should immediately have used the pronoun “they”.

So it's very difficult to try to give you a description using the correct pronouns of what a non-binary person is. Um. Swiss singer Nemo, who defines as non-binary, entered the night as the bookmakers third favourite .

This is the audio for the weekly English Lesson on my Website www.teacherjoseph.com which contains an essay and there's also passages for you to study.

Today's topic is Coffee Shops and Tea Rooms.

A news report from 1964, Martin Luther King was shot.

In Today's Podcast to help you learn English:

The verb and noun "Probe".

Antidepressants are being probed by the Government.

Cheers Stars, Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson begin a new podcast.

Tom Sellick from Magnum PI writes a Book

Jurors in the UK get offered Counselling.

Extract:

Hello everyone and welcome again to another Teacher Joseph Podcast.

Today's phrase is to be probed or to probe. Now this literally means when you take a mechanical instrument and you prod it against something. So let me just give you some examples.

So imagine you're a doctor and someone comes to you and says,

oh, I have this big thing on my arm, like a spot or a blemish, and you get your tool and you start to push it to see what's in there. Maybe you want to burst it just to see what's there.

Also, if you work in a factory and there's a big machine and it's not working properly, you can probe it, you can look around it, you can get your tools out. You can try to work out why it's not working for you.

That is to probe or in the passive voice you can say that the machine is being probed by the boss.

Now, the most common way to use this is as a metaphor. When something breaks down, whether it's a rule or a policy or a government issue, or even when people are not working to their capacity what they could be doing. There's often a probe, and in this case it means like an investigation as to why something isn't working the way that it should. So today's main news story says

Prozac is among 30 drugs to be probed over some kind of link to suicide and self-harm. And we're going to read through this story together. And this story today is from the British newspaper. The Independent. Okay. It says.

“Concerns raised by families over the safety of most commonly used antidepressants force an official review”. Now let me just explain a little bit there. So first of all antidepressants or antidepressants. That's the medication some people take to stop them being depressed. It says concerns raised by families over the safety of the most commonly used antidepressants. So the most common ones, okay, like Prozac. There’s being concerns raised by families over their safety. because these, uh, medicines are being given to everyone and the story continues, that they're being given to children as young as four years old. 1s

So let's continue reading this. It says “more than 30 of the most common antidepressants prescribed in the UK are to be reviewed by the medicines regulator, as figures point to hundreds of deaths linked to suicide and self-harm among people taking them. The medicines, which include Prozac, will be looked at by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. And it will look into the effectiveness of the warnings which these medicines carry”.

So, you know, these medicines often have a warning on them. So it doesn't say they're going to remove the medicines. It looks like they're going to be changing the warning on them. It says there were 85 million prescriptions. That's the note from the doctor... prescribed…that's the verb we use when the doctor gives medicine. There were 85 million prescriptions for antidepressants in England in 2022. 23. That's up from 58 million in 2015. 2016. So yeah, big concerns there over Prozac. So we'll just read that first part again.

“Concerns raised by families over the safety. of the most commonly used antidepressants forces an official review by the government after hundreds of these things have been prescribed some to children as young as four years old”.

A news report from 1956 where the UK Government rejects advice about Smoking being bad for health. Followed by subsequent developments.

Private Police in the UK is now as popular as ever....today I read a news report about it.

Today's podcast for learning English:

The English idiom world's apart,

The King and Prince Harry don't want to meet,

Young British People have anxiety about using phones.

Extract:

Today's phrase is to be worlds apart. Worlds apart. And that basically means that you are very different from other people's opinions or ideas, to be worlds apart. Let me give you some examples.

So your best friend is getting married and you can say:

I really don't know why those two are getting married. They seem to be worlds apart on many different issues. To be worlds apart.

Uh, another example might be Um, I have two children and they're both worlds apart. They're completely different from each other…. to be worlds apart.

Those are two examples of how you could use it. You could describe your old boss and your new boss as being worlds apart in terms of how they want to move the company forward. To be worlds apart and there we are.

Right. So one headline, which is in our newspapers today is all about the Royals. Now, this story is from our Daily Mirror:

The headline says, “Worlds Apart”. And it's talking about how Prince Charles and Prince Harry are very, very different people. And it's saying here that just a few days ago they were both less than two miles apart in Central London. And yet, none of them. (Or I should say neither of them because there's only two) wanted to see each other.

It says here: “Prince Harry and his father the King were just two miles apart yesterday, but still did not meet, the Duke was at an Invictus games event in Saint Paul's Cathedral. While Charles hosted a Palace garden party. They last met in February. The King was said to be too busy to see Harry”.

Well. who knows what the true story is there but we're going to read through the rest of the story. So you can hear it. So it says,

“Prince Harry yesterday came closer to his father, the King, than he has in months, but the reunion royal fans have been hoping for never materialized”.

I'm not sure anybody cares enough to wonder if they'll have a reunion or not. It says:

“The Duke was briefly in London to mark the 10th anniversary of his Invictus games, that’s in St. Pauls Cathedral as Charles hosted a Buckingham Palace Garden Party just two miles away but the King was said to be too busy to see his son, confirming a statement earlier this week that revealed the pair would not meet because the monarch had a busy program of official events”.

Another news story which is being carried by the independent today. Uh, it's saying that young British people are worlds apart from their counterparts in other countries. The story is saying that if your aged between 18 and 34 you would never dare answer the telephone.

And it says here “once upon a time the sound of your phone ringing would bring about excitement. Uh, but these days, people usually ignore it…. in a recent survey 70 percent of people, within that age group up to age 34 said they wouldn't dare answer the telephone they would prefer a text and 37 percent said they would wait for a voice message”. Um, someone here is saying “people my age now are simply terrified of the phone. We might as well call it something else entirely because we are just not comfortable with it”.

A news report from 1964, the Beatles visit New York.

A news report from 1965 reporting the death of Winston Churchill.