Mitch And Isi celebrate hitting 100,000 subscribers on YouTube with a recap of the past weeks. They debate bodily mishaps, Rammstein stereotypes and Edgar Allen Poe's Eurovision cameo. They then answer one of your questions on teaching and learning English in their online pub in this episode's Unhelpful Advice section.
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Mitch:
[0:24] We have got 100,000 subs and we would like 100,000 more. Welcome to the Easy English Podcast. Hopefully by now we have the blue tick of confirmation. What does it mean, the blue tick? Do you know? Is there like a meaning behind it?
Isi:
[0:51] You are now considered (Responsible.) I mean, we didn't do anything. We didn't send them like a passport or so, to give us like an official thing. But I guess you're considered a bigger creator. (Wow.) I don't know.
Mitch:
[1:05] We did it.
Isi:
[1:08] We should know that. I Google it.
Mitch:
[1:09] We did it. And we wouldn't have done it without the help of our listeners and viewers and members, all of which are amazing people, who have helped us get to this milestone. And we would like to celebrate that in a few ways. I think one, we will do a video podcast, which you'll be able to listen and watch, and we'll put it on our YouTube. (Yep.) But also we will do a special YouTube episode, which will be the next one that comes out that you'll see. Yeah, we'll show you a bit of a behind the scenes thing / Brighton, why we love Brighton, and show you some people of Brighton, why they love Brighton, show you some of our favourite hangouts, but not all of them.
Isi:
[1:51] And an ode to Brighton.
Mitch:
[1:52] Yeah, an ode. Or an ode. (Ode.) An ode to Brighton. (Oh, God.) Is that German; ode?
Isi:
[1:59] Ode.
Mitch:
[2:00] Ode.
Isi:
[2:01] Eine Ode.
Mitch:
[2:01] An ode, ode.
Isi:
[2:04] Ode could have been right. (Could have been right.) Okay, I'm very sorry.
Mitch:
[2:07] It's not English anyway, it sounds too nice to be English. We wanted to start off by saying thank you to everyone, because we didn't invent those 100,000 subscribers. They are you. You are the 100,000.
Isi:
[2:22] Maybe they're not. Maybe they just listen to the podcast and they don't even... have ever seen a video of us.
Mitch:
[2:27] Oh my God.
Isi:
[2:27] So if you haven't, we have a YouTube channel, by the way.
Mitch:
[2:30] What are you doing?
Isi:
[2:31] No, but thank you so much. It is incredible. It seems a bit unreal, so I cannot really... it's like, not that you really think like, oh, we got 100,000. A bit unreal, isn't it?
Mitch:
[2:43] Yeah. And yeah, we're still working on things like, just because we have 100,000 doesn't mean that we're a set channel, like we're quite far from it. (Yeah.) Like, you know, we still have quite big ambitions of Easy English. You know, it's a lot of people do like a full-time job and then they're YouTube from the side, but Easy English is quite a demanding beast and does require a lot of... (A lovely beast.) It's a lovely beast that we enjoy doing, but yeah, it's something we'd like to do, both of us, full-time in the future. So this is what we're going to be building towards, and having 100,000 subscribers is definitely a big milestone for us, in getting there.
Isi:
[3:22] Yeah.
Mitch:
[3:22] We're still beginning, that's how it feels like. But this is confirmation that we've achieved our first big goal.
Isi:
[3:29] And we couldn't and can't do it without your support. So we want to thank the ones that that are already a member of Easy English, thank you for supporting us. And if we can once ask for support, it would be great, if you enjoy our content, our podcasts, our videos, if you would consider supporting us, so that we can keep doing this, that we can keep producing regularly, podcasts and videos. We obviously offer even more if you become a member. We've got worksheets for our videos, transcripts for our videos, vocab lists for our videos. We got, an interactive transcript for our podcast, where you can basically translate the transcript while listening into lots of different languages. And what else, Mitch?
Mitch:
[4:19] We also have a conversation membership where we host people in our online pub and we just get to talk about day-to-day English to help you improve your speaking and listening skills. And finally, we have our donor membership, which is for people who want to really help support us and have a little private Zoom with myself and Isi, right?
Isi:
[4:40] Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, first of all, thank you, if you support us already, and it would be really, really, really great to see more of you in our community. If you want to become part of it, go to easyenglish.video/membership. And, to show you a bit what we are offering and to say thank you for your support, for listening, for sending us questions and ideas and everything. We want to give you all our perks.
Mitch:
[5:09] A free giveaway, for this podcast and for our episode that came out on the 24th of May. We'll be giving links in this podcast, on the website, in our show notes. We'll also be posting it on our YouTube, on our community section and on our Instagram and on our Facebook. So, it should be quite easy to find. We'll probably have it in bold, caps lock, underlined, exclamation marked, there'll be a free giveaway link to not only our video perks which is our transcript, our vocabulary list, our worksheets and all of our audio and video downloads, but also for our podcast membership, which is our interactive transcript for the podcast and also the extra bit the aftershow. You'll be able to download all of those bits in our free giveaway to say thank you for helping us reach the 100,000 subscriber milestone. So if you didn't get that before, go to easyenglish.video/membership to get all of those goodies for free.
Isi:
[6:18] Okay, now to the real topics.
Topic of the Week
Mitch:
[6:32] Recap!
Isi:
[6:32] Okay, let's start with the coronation.
Mitch:
[6:34] Katy Perry was there.
Isi:
[6:37] But not how you said it would happen.
Mitch:
[6:40] She didn't sing at Westminster Abbey, no. That's what I thought was happening. But she did sing the day after.
Isi:
[6:46] And did she actually, I didn't see that. Did she actually perform the songs that I thought?
Mitch:
[6:50] Didn't her tit fall out or something? (What?) Something happened though. There was like controversy with her. I think like her tit fell out, or something happened when she was...
Isi:
[7:00] She couldn't find her place, or, in the church?
Mitch:
[7:02] Oh, that happened. Oh yeah, she had a massive hat on and couldn't find her seat.
Isi:
[7:06] It's not Britney Spears. That was a tit.
Mitch:
[7:08] No, Janet Jackson was the tit.
Isi:
[7:09] Oh, wait. That was like...
Mitch:
[7:11] She kissed Madonna and Janet Jackson's tit fell out.
Isi:
[7:14] So the coronation, we watched it. Not all of it.
Mitch:
[7:18] We watched it with your family.
Isi:
[7:20] With my family. (In the living room.) But no one... actually, none of them watched all of it. We all went in and out, the TV was just on.
Mitch:
[7:27] It went on for ages.
Isi:
[7:28] Yeah, it went on for ages, and it was a bit ridiculous. And I made the comparison very early onwards. If any one of you has ever been to Germany and knows German carnival, especially in Cologne and the surrounding, in Dusseldorf and the Rhineland area, I know that Creighton knows that, so this is for you, Creighton. If you look at pictures of... I just wanted to say Prince Charles, King Charles and Queen Camilla, especially him, it looks a bit like carnival. Really, it's all this red and white stuff as well. And you could put him on a carnival stage and he could give a... they do those funny speeches. That could have been happening. Although he didn't smile once. He didn't have fun, did he?
Mitch:
[8:15] No.
Isi:
[8:16] It's just really exhausting. I can understand that, actually. It's an exhausting thing. You were there, what, three hours or so? Four hours?
Mitch:
[8:23] He was basically just a coat rack. There's just lots of people coming to him, putting shit on him, taking it off. Hold this. Hold this, please. Here's a cape. Take that cape off. Put the crown on. Crown off.
Isi:
[8:34] It's such a huge protocol, which is obviously thousands of years old, but it's a weird thing. I'm sure they were all not really into it. It cannot be that much fun. The party afterwards, the dinner afterwards is probably more fun than just sitting there. And then all the guests, they also just have to sit there, straight and smile and don't move. And then you just sit there on those wooden benches forever, and half of the church didn't even see anything. Do they have monitors? Do they stream it?
Mitch:
[9:05] They have their phones on BBC News.
Isi:
[9:09] No, but it's just a long, long, long, long thing. It's kind of impressive too. It's something that you really never ever see. So it is, in a way, although I'm not a fan of the monarchy, it is quite interesting to witness, I would say.
Mitch:
[9:24] My favorite bit was they played the Champions League theme at one point.
Isi:
[9:27] You know, it's not the Champions League theme.
Mitch:
[9:31] And then I saw the meme of people interpreting the songs wrong, because they were all done in Latin or Welsh. And there's one about Camilla having a wide vagina.
Isi:
[9:42] Can we say vagina in this podcast?
Mitch:
[9:44] We said tit. (Mmm...) Tit and vagina.
Isi:
[9:48] What is a good word that like, teenagers would use instead of saying vagina?
Mitch:
[9:52] Fanny.
Isi:
[9:55] Is that bad or is it like, just to have a word for it?
Mitch:
[9:58] No, Fanny is... (Isn't Fanny a name?)
Isi:
[10:00] Oh, that's bad, isn't it?
Mitch:
[10:01] Also, yeah.
Isi:
[10:02] I mean, why wouldn't we be able to say vagina? Vagina's not a bad word.
Mitch:
[10:06] It's medical. Spending way too much time on fannies. Yeah, fanny...
Isi:
[10:09] But you see, cultural thing. I didn't know that.
Mitch:
[10:12] But bum bag, this is in the video I made with Justin, part two, American English versus British English. In British English, it's a bum bag, the little bag you wear down on your waist. And in America, it's called a fanny pack.
Isi:
[10:23] They're also have fanny?
Mitch:
[10:25] They don't know what fanny is. I told Justin that fanny means vagina and he freaked out, which is probably the best bit of that episode.
Isi:
[10:32] Because you normally have it in front of your V. (Eurgh.) Okay, let's stop now.
Mitch:
[10:38] How did we get on to vaginas from the coronation? We also, whilst in Germany, watched the Eurovision. Woo!
Isi:
[10:48] Yeah, for the first time in forever.
Mitch:
[10:52] Which was a delight. I was laughing my head off the whole way through.
Isi:
[10:56] Yeah, but we only watched it because two German entertainers, who also have a podcast that I listen to and Mitch kind of co-listens to when I listen to it, they did the commenting for Austria. So we watched it on Austrian TV, well, online, but that was just a funny thing. We just wanted to hear the commentating. But the whole show is just so ridiculous. It's such a long, boring thing. I don't know. I'm not a fan.
Mitch:
[11:23] I'd like to do it. I'd like to... I think it'd be really fun to get drunk and do like a live streaming of the Eurovision if it's possible, on YouTube next time.
Isi:
[11:33] We could do that next year, but not for four hours. Then let's only, I don't know, it just goes on forever and forever. I didn't even see the end, which you only watch it for. You want to see who wins. And then I slept.
Mitch:
[11:44] I don't want to see who wins. I don't care.
Isi:
[11:46] Yeah. But you want to see like who...
Mitch:
[11:47] And who won?
Isi:
[11:48] Sweden.
Mitch:
[11:50] Sweden won.
Isi:
[11:51] Have not until today. Have ever heard the song because when they did the song, I was washing up in the kitchen. We had dinner with it. Then, when they won, I haven't watched the winner's performance, so I actually have no clue what the winner's song is.
Mitch:
[12:08] It was scary Billie Eilish Lady with the long nails.
Isi:
[12:11] Can you sing it?
Mitch:
[12:13] The only one I can remember of all of them was the first one when I was not drunk, because after that, we'd already started drinking. And it was the Austrian... Austria went first and he did the song about the gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe and it was Edgar Allan Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Edgar Allan, Edgar Allan, Edgar Allan Poe.
Isi:
[12:34] Well, not bad.
Mitch:
[12:39] He'd be spinning in his grave, never mind turning, that people used his name for like, Euro pop. It was all terrible. But my favourite was the Boy George guy.
Isi:
[12:52] Yeah, I liked him too. From Belgium.
Mitch:
[12:54] Yeah, Belgium. (He was good. He was good.)
Isi:
[12:56] I liked the song.
Mitch:
[12:58] There was a Take That kind of, rip off somewhere in there, wasn't there?
Isi:
[13:02] There was one other, I think, female singer from, I don't know where, but the song was not for me at all. It was a bit ballad-ish, but she was a good singer, which is also not given, that you come that's a good singer there.
Mitch:
[13:16] Yeah, that's got nothing, singing has nothing to do with it.
Isi:
[13:19] But where was she from? Lithuania or so? Maybe not, I don't know, but she was good. Do you remember? She had like a pink/purple dress on or so. Maybe also not, maybe she had a blue dress on. I don't remember, but I know that I thought someone was good.
Mitch:
[13:35] We were just watching because there was basically, a battle as to who would finish last, Brexit Britain or... I don't know why Germany does so bad always.
Isi:
[13:44] It's always... well, we do send in quite weird things always, but I mean...
Mitch:
[13:50] Oh yeah, you had the Rammstein band.
Isi:
[13:52] Yeah, which people outside of Germany and in Germany, sorry for Rammstein fans, a lot of people love that kind of music. What is it actually?
Mitch:
[14:02] What Rammstein?
Isi:
[14:04] What metal, kind of metal is that? Entertainment metal? I don't know.
Mitch:
[14:09] It's not nu-metal, Rammstein, but maybe it is nu-metal.
Isi:
[14:13] Well, anyway, a lot of people love it. So I actually thought that song does fit what German music is to the outside world, outside of Germany. So actually, I thought people would be like, yay, someone like Rammstein coming from Germany. Let's actually vote for them. It didn't work.
Mitch:
[14:31] It didn't do German stereotypes any good.
Isi:
[14:33] I don't listen to too much German music or music coming from Germany. It doesn't have to be particularly German lyrics, but also, there is good music coming from Germany, I would say.
Mitch:
[14:47] Yeah, I like, who was that 90s band, that did like house music, Shaka Khan. Is Shaka Khan not German? No, no, not Shaka Khan.
Isi:
[14:56] You mean...
Mitch:
[14:57] What do I mean? From the 90s house scene.
Isi:
[15:01] Well, you know Alphaville.
Mitch:
[15:02] Haddaway?! Are German?
Isi:
[15:05] Are they?
Mitch:
[15:06] What is love? Baby don't hurt me no more.
Isi:
[15:11] Was ist liebe? (Was ist liebe?) Oh God, good that there was never, well there was probably, well Kraftwerk.
Mitch:
[15:19] Yeah but Kraftwerk made it very clear they were German. But I liked it, it suited it.
Isi:
[15:24] That's what I mean. (Oh it's nice?) And then, hmm.
Mitch:
[15:29] Haddaway were German, amazing.
Isi:
[15:31] Well we do have good music.
Mitch:
[15:32] H-Blockx.
Isi:
[15:34] Although I don't listen... do you know H-Blockx?
Mitch:
[15:37] Of course.
Isi:
[15:38] How? What? Where? Why?
Mitch:
[15:39] I had the Kerrang channel and they did the cover version of I Got The Power.
Isi:
[15:46] Really!? Do you know that they're from Münster?
Mitch:
[15:48] They're from Münster? Wow. This is gonna sound like a crazy, unbelievable story. It's gonna sound really stupid, but my parents had a back garden. Every summer we did two weeks camping with me and my friends in our back garden. And we'd cook our own food and it was sort of us learning how to look after each other and cope without parents.
Isi:
[16:09] But the parents were five meters inside and they would actually give you food later.
Mitch:
[16:13] And we went to the toilet inside as well.
Isi:
[16:15] Yeah. And then your mom actually gave you some real food later.
Mitch:
[16:18] Yeah, exactly. And we played like that... my parents had set up these little tasks so we could win nice prizes. (Oh, that's cute.) It was really fun. And we did it with four or five people in my mom and dad's trailer tent, when they didn't want to use it in the summer. And at that time, H-Blockx, I Got the Power was the biggest song on Kerrang! It was number one for ages and we got obsessed with it. We had a competition who could headbang the longest out of the whole song. Like, really headbanging, like, really throwing your head back. And we had a competition of it in the trailer tent. And the next day we all had like, minor whiplash and we all couldn't move our necks. We all pulled our neck muscles out. (Okay.) So H-Blockx lives in my cult memory.
Unhelpful Advice
Mitch:
[17:09] So we have a message that someone left for us um... through our website easyenglish.fm, where you can also if you want, leave us a message or ask us a question through our unhelpful advice section and so we uh... have a message today from James. Let's have a listen. "Hi Easy English my name is James,I'm a native English speaker who very much enjoys watching your videos, because you never really stop learning and it's always interesting learning more about my language. I wanted to ask, I know you've touched on this before, I wanted to ask more about how you became English teachers. Did you have to take the TEFL qualification to TELF or is it TELT qualification? And do you have any advice for anybody who might want to start teaching English as a foreign language? And also, I think I quite enjoy joining your pub, your online pub, to have a chat with others. But as I'm a native English speaker, I don't want to be taking the place of a learner who's trying to learn English. So I don't know if it's okay for me to join the pub? Thank you for all you do. Te-ra.
Isi:
[18:21] Aw, that's very nice. (Te-ra.) Hi, James.
Mitch:
[18:24] Hi, James.
Isi:
[18:25] Really, really nice message. Well, where do we begin? English teachers. Well, I'm certainly not an English teacher. I could be one, obviously, even though I'm German, but I'm not an English teacher.
Mitch:
[18:36] Yeah, and I'm also certainly not an English teacher.
Isi:
[18:40] Why certainly?
Mitch:
[18:41] Well, because there are, not because I can't do it, but it's because there are people who have, for sure trained and put a lot of work in curriculum-wise to become an English teacher. However... and by all means, I think it's good to look for those people. But, I think what's so great about what we do with Easy Languages, is that,this idea of learning from a book or this kind of, I would call it old-school methods, learning through reading or... but, there's nothing quite like being here and, well yeah, just listen to how much I'm mumbling, this is what real English people do. They can't even get their own English words out of their mouth.
Isi:
[19:27] The thing is you learn it in school or in a course and then you go to a country where that language is spoken. And mostly, if you really only learn in a course and then go to that country... or to any country that speaks that language, you're like, oh, that was different.
Mitch:
[19:44] One time when I was out filming, I interviewed a German guy and what he said to me, I always now, say to people when I'm asking questions, like, why do you do this? What's this for? And I always say, you know, teaching authentic English. And I always use what he said. And he said that he had been learning officially, through like teachers who had taught, who had learned through this TEFL course. And he'd been studying English for years, and he finally came and he flew in at John Lennon Airport in Liverpool, and he said it all went out the window, instantly.
Isi:
[20:17] Well, that's Liverpool, isn't it? So it's not so easy to start with the Scouse accent. But, yeah. So, we are not teachers. I guess we kind of, you kind of become a teacher in a way, on the way.
Mitch:
[20:31] Yeah. We're kind of like the middle, like third party, aren't we? Helping you find...
Isi:
[20:36] Your way through the language. (Yeah, yeah.) Yeah. But, like with the...
Mitch:
[20:42] Conversation membership.
Isi:
[20:43] Conversation membership, of course you can be part of it.
Mitch:
[20:45] Absolutely. (It would be amazing.) I mean, anyone can support us and you don't have to use the perks we give out in the same sense that with the Conversation Membership. If you want to be a Conversation Member, you can come along, you can just listen, you can get involved, you can do what you like!
Isi:
[21:00] I mean, English learners will be probably very happy about another native speaker joining in and like, making it even more British, so.
Mitch:
[21:08] Yeah, if you want to just come along just to hang out, you know, if you're a supporter of Easy English and you are a native speaker, you're also very welcome just to come, meet new people, hang out with us for an hour or so, share a drink in our online pub, all are welcome. And you don't feel like you're under pressure to speak, you can just listen along and you know...
Isi:
[21:29] We just talk for an hour.
Mitch:
[21:35] We'll just talk for an hour. God forbid.
Isi:
[21:37] Okay, thank you, James. (Thanks.) What a really nice message and yeah, keep on sending those, James and any other of you listeners, any other person, please send us messages because it's really nice to know who's listening, who you guys are. Yeah, we only hear about you and who you are if you send us a message, or if you leave a review somewhere on the apps that you're listening to, that would be also great, because we sit here on this side, and we know a lot of people are listening, actually, surprisingly more than we thought and we would also like to know who you are. Anyway, write to us, send us messages. We are always really, really happy to hear from you. So, now we have dinner.
Mitch:
[22:24] Thanks again for your support. (We have dinner.) We have dinner.Yeah, thanks for the 100,000 of you that have subscribed. And if you haven't subscribed, do it now. Why not?
Isi:
[22:38] Bring us to 101,000. Thank you! (Te-ra!) Te-ra!
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