[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are offering $10,000 as a reward for information on the suspect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are offering tickets to Disneyland as a reward for the tagged post with the most likes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are offering tickets to Disneyland as a reward for the tagged post with the most likes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are offering tickets to Disneyland as a reward for the tagged post with the most likes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are offering a lifetime supply of chocolate as a reward for whoever finds the mystery item.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are offering a lifetime supply of chocolate as a reward for whoever finds the mystery item.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are offering a lifetime supply of chocolate as a reward for whoever finds the mystery item.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After, I like to treat myself by...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After, I like to treat myself by


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After, I like to treat myself by


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a long day of work, I like to treat myself by binging a K-drama.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a long day of work, I like to treat myself by binging a K-drama.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a long day of work, I like to treat myself by binging a K-drama.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a nerve wracking shift, I like to treat myself by relaxing in my hot tub.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a nerve wracking shift, I like to treat myself by relaxing in my hot tub.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a nerve wracking shift, I like to treat myself by relaxing in my hot tub.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a good session at the gym, I like to treat myself by eating some dark chocolate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a good session at the gym, I like to treat myself by eating some dark chocolate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a good session at the gym, I like to treat myself by eating some dark chocolate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a hard day at the office, I like to treat myself by going for a beer with friends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a hard day at the office, I like to treat myself by going for a beer with friends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After a hard day at the office, I like to treat myself by going for a beer with friends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They like to tease him about where he lives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They like to tease him about where he lives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They like to tease him about where he lives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They like to tease him about how gullible he is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They like to tease him about how gullible he is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They like to tease him about how gullible he is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They like to tease him about the old car he drives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They like to tease him about the old car he drives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to say exactly what I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to say exactly what I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to cancel plans at the last second.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to cancel plans at the last second.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to cancel plans at the last second.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to run away when things get too serious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to run away when things get too serious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to run away when things get too serious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to hope for the best, no matter the circumstances.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to hope for the best, no matter the circumstances.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a tendency to hope for the best, no matter the circumstances.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to leave before they kick you out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to leave before they kick you out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to leave before they kick you out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to apologize to the client in person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to apologize to the client in person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to apologize to the client in person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to come five hours early to help set up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to pick up your sister at the airport at 3am tomorrow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to pick up your sister at the airport at 3am tomorrow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not joking. You have to pick up your sister at the airport at 3am tomorrow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're wearing the same outfit you wore on our first date.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're wearing the same outfit you wore on our first date.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're wearing the same outfit you wore on our first date.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're wearing the same outfit you wore yesterday at the office.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're wearing the same outfit you wore last time we went to the movies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're wearing the same outfit you wore last time we went to the movies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're wearing the same outfit you wore last time we went to the movies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to try to get to know her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to try to get to know her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to try to get to know her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to work more than we have to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to work more than we have to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to work more than we have to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to stay friends with him anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to stay friends with him anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to hold back from speaking the truth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't see a reason to pretend like she didn't do something wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were you the one who told me to submit my designs to the boss?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were you the one who told me about the costume party tomorrow night?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were you the one who told me about the costume party tomorrow night?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were you the one who told me I should read the left hand of darkness?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were you the one who told me I should read the left hand of darkness?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Were you the one who told me I should read the left hand of darkness?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now you can see our original quality here is floating point 32 bit. So our realization quality we want to keep at floating point 32 bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, you don't want to store these ZGY files


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Inside the patrol project itself or else the project can become quite large, use more memory and take a lot longer time to do things than otherwise. So we store them externally. So we come down here to click on user defined. We tell it where we want to go. We can click on this browse icon and go out to wherever we'd like to put it and what, tell it what we'd like to put it. We'll call this new amp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It shows us the information. It actually does these things in background. So you can see here now it's already 68% full. And over here you can see new amp has a gray X next to it. That means it hasn't been finished yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once this is completed up to a hundred percent, now


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rebuilding trust, where it aims to hit the target.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's why it's called curling, cause you curl- It's curls. Curls.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now they're trying to hit that target, 2%, without knocking themselves off. Global growth is expected to slow this year. I hope it's not going to spiral down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I wasn't able to swift enough out of the way and so the economy came to a stop. It is also the year of elections.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Heavy, once set free, may be difficult to control. And even if all do the right things, well,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The world of curling can teach us much about today's global economy. Having raised interest rates,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You want to knock your competitors to one side?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Richard Quest, CNN, Davos!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The World Economic Forum's theme this year, Rebuilding Trust, where it aims to hit the target.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's called curling, cause you curl- Curls! Curls! Yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Think of these stones as being the economy. Various governments, prime ministers, presidents, finance ministers, they set their course and send it on its way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now they're trying to hit that target, 2%, without knocking themselves off. Global growth is expected to slow this year. I hope it's not going to spiral down. That did nothing. That did nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I wasn't able to swift enough out of the way and so the economy came to a stop. It is also the year of elections.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The world of curling can teach us much about today's global economy. Having raised interest rates,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, when all's said and done, in a competitive environment,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You want to knock your competitors to one side?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To make sure our students are able to leverage the value of artificial intelligence while protecting from temptations like cheating and doing something they shouldn't be doing academically. We are charged with preparing our students for the world that they'll enter as they leave our school system. We have to make sure they're ready.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To make sure our students are able to leverage the value of artificial intelligence while protecting from temptations, cheating and doing something they shouldn't be doing academically. We are charged with preparing our students for the world that they'll enter as they leave our school system. We have to make sure they're ready.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like every country, Israel has an inherent right to defend itself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The vile attempt to deny Israel this fundamental right is blatant discrimination against the Jewish state, and it was justly rejected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The charge of genocide leveled against Israel is not only false, it's outrageous. And decent people everywhere should reject it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like every country, Israel has an inherent right to defend itself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The vile attempt to deny Israel this fundamental right is blatant discrimination against the Jewish state, and it was justly rejected.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The charge of genocide leveled against Israel is not only false, it's outrageous. And decent people everywhere should reject it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the question I pose is, and I'll answer the question myself, is does anyone still use paper maps in their personal lives? Well, we know that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The use of paper maps is way down. I actually have a set of paper maps exactly like the one shown on the left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But purely for backup, you know, if I'm on a trip and everything else goes down, then what do I use? Uhm, that's what I have. But most of the time, we like to use digital map services, uhm, at home and at work. So if you go to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First of all, to use Petrel Studio GIS, and the example and the exercise are going to have to do with free mapping services, your computer has to be connected to the internet to see the map services.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, what the URLs for those services are. Of course, there are many different map services, commercial services available. Uhm, and I couldn't begin to tell you what, what all they were. But, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A, uhm, sort of a sampling of all the different services that are available. For example, this is Google Maps, Google Maps Terrain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're kind of teasers. So you hit select the services you want and you hit okay. And what you will get is on the input pane.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In this case, uh, I didn't see anything at first. I wondered, well, what's happening? So, what I realized is, you know, the Earth is mostly ocean, so I landed in the middle of the ocean. So, zoom out, zoom out, zoom out. That would be, uhm, mouse button 1 and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your wells, your seismic surveys, your lease and cultural boundaries, your annotations, pipeline facilities on top of these map layers. So, uuuh, have a good time with them. And now we're going to have a Petrel Studio exercise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Often you will have core photos that you want to attach to wells and put into patrol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Make the files of type be a bitmap log and then click the photo that you want put on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To 1950, and these are in measured depths. When I click the OK button, Patrel imports the log.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Under the well I clicked on, under well logs we can see the core photo here, and also under global well logs we can see the core photo. In this case it's treated very similarly to just a log. If we want to add it to our well section, click the box, there we can see the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And same at the top. Drag it to wherever we want it to go until we're finally satisfied.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So in the run-up to the 2016 election, I was, like most of us, watching the rise in discord and vitriol and nastiness in our public spaces. It was this crazy uptick in polarization. It was both disheartening and distressing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I started thinking with a fellow journalist, Jeremy Hay, about how we might practice our craft differently. How we might go to the heart of divides, to places of conflict like journalists always have, but then once there, do something really different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We knew we wanted to take the core tools of our craft, careful vetting of information, diligent research, curiosity, a commitment to serving the public good, to serving our democracy, and do something new.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so we mapped out this process, what we call dialogue journalism, for going to the heart of social and political divides. And then once they are building journalism-supported conversations between people on opposite sides of polarizing issues.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But how actually to do this in a world that's so divided, so deeply divided, when we live in a world in which we, cousins and aunts and uncles, can't talk to one another, when we often live in separate and distinct news ecosystems, and when we reflexively and habitually malign and dismiss those with whom we disagree. But we wanted to try.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and so right after the 2016 election, in that time between the election and the inauguration,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We partnered with the Alabama Media Group to do something really different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We brought 25 Trump supporters from Alabama together in conversation with 25 Clinton supporters from California.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we brought them together in a closed, moderated Facebook group that we kept open for a month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we wanted to support them in building relationships, not just with each other, but with us as journalists.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then we wanted to supply facts and information, facts and information that they could actually receive and process and use to undergird their conversations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so as a prelude to this conversation, the first step in what we call dialogue journalism, we asked


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What they thought the other side thought of them. So when we asked, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Trump supporters from Alabama, what they thought, the Clinton supporters in California thought of them, this is some of what they said.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They think we are religious Bible thumpers, that we're backwards and hickish and stupid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They think that we all have Confederate flags in our yards, that we're racist and sexist and uneducated. They think we're barefoot and pregnant with dirt driveways.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then think we're all prissy butts and we walk around in hoop skirts with cotton fields in the background.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then we ask that same question of the Californians. What do you think the Alabamians think about you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they said this, that we're crazy, liberal Californians that we're not patriotic, we're snobby and we're elitist, we're godless and we're permissive with our children.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then we're focused on our careers, not our family. And then we're elitist pie-in-the-sky intellectuals, rich people, whole food eating, very out of touch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So by asking questions like this at the start of every conversation, and by identifying and sharing stereotypes, we find that people, people on all sides, begin to see the simplistic and often mean-spirited caricatures they carry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in that, after that, we can move into a process of genuine conversation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So in the two years since that launch California-Alabama project, we've gone on to host dialogues and partnerships with media organizations across the country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they've been about some of our most contentious issues, guns, immigration, race, education. And what we found


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Remarkably, is that real dialogue is in fact possible. And that when given a chance and structure around doing so, many, not all, but many of our fellow citizens are eager to engage with the other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And too often we've gone to each side, quoting a partisan voice on one side and a partisan voice on the other, with a telling anecdotal lead and a pithy final quote, all of which readers are keen to mine for bias.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But our dialogue-based process has a slower pace and a different center.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And our work is guided by the principle that dialogue across difference is essential to a functioning democracy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that journalism and journalists have a multifaceted role to play in supporting that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So how do we work at every stage where it's transparent as possible about our methods and our motives?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At every stage, we take time to answer people's questions, explain why we're doing what we're doing. We tell people it's not a trap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No one's there to tell you you're stupid. No one's there to tell you your experience doesn't matter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we always ask for a really different sort of behavior, a repatterning away from the reflexive name-calling so entrenched in our discourse that most of us on all sides don't even notice it anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they, they, they say things like, how can you believe X and how can you read Y and, and you believe that this happened?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But generally, in this miracle that delights us every time, people begin to introduce themselves and they begin to explain who they are and where they come from. And they begin to ask questions of one another.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And slowly over time, people circle back again and again to difficult topics, each time with a little more empathy, a little more nuance, a little more curiosity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not a Sunday morning talk show. It's not the flinging of talking points.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not the stacking of memes and gifs or articles with headlines that prove a point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's not about scoring political victories with question traps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that our state of discord is bad for everyone. It is a deeply unhappy state of being. And people tell us this again and again. They say they appreciate the chance to engage respectfully.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With curiosity and with openness and that they are glad and relieved for a chance to put down their arms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so we do our work in direct challenge to the political climate in our country right now. And we do it knowing that it is difficult, challenging work to hold


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And support people in opposing backgrounds and conversation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we do it knowing democracy depends on our ability to address our shared problems together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we do this work by putting community at the heart of our journalistic process, by putting our egos to the side to listen first, to listen deeply,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To listen around and through our own biases, our own habits of thought, and to support others in doing the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So for many of the participants in our groups, there are lasting reverberations. Many people have become Facebook friends and in real life friends, too, across political lines. After we closed that first Trump-Clinton project,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About two-thirds of the women went on to form their own Facebook group, and they chose a moderator from each state. And they continue to talk about difficult and challenging issues.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And people tell us again and again that they are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this work. Grateful to know that people on the other side aren't crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Grateful that they've had a chance to connect with people they wouldn't have otherwise talked to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a lot of what we've seen and learned, despite the fact that we call ourselves spaceship media, is not at all rocket science. If you call people names, if you label them, if you insult them, they're not inclined to listen to you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Snark doesn't help, shame doesn't help, condescension doesn't help.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Genuine communication takes practice and effort and restraint and self-awareness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So lead with curiosity, emphasize discussion, not debate, get out of your silo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A black hole. So over a hundred years ago, Einstein came up with this geometric theory of gravity, which deforms space-time. So matter deforms space-time, and then space-time tells matter in turn how to move around it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can get enough matter into a small enough region that it punctures space-time. And even light can't escape. The force of gravity keeps even light inside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly, the geometry of space time tells the earth how to move around the sun. You're almost seeing a black hole puncture through space time, and when it goes so deeply in, then there's a point at which light orbits the black hole.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Until last week, we had no idea what a black hole really looked like. The best we could do were simulations like this in supercomputers. But even here you see this ring of light, which is the orbit of photons. That's where photons literally move around the black hole. And around that is this hot gas that's drawn to the black hole, and it's hot because of friction. All this gas is trying to get into a very small volume, so it heats up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, so this is the galaxy where we're going to zoom into the galaxy M87. It's 55 million light years away. Which is a long way. Uhm, but at its heart, there's a six and a half billion solar mass black hole. That's hard for us to really fathom, right? Six and a half billion suns compressed into a single point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it is governing some of the energetics of the center of this galaxy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So black holes are the smallest objects in the known universe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, but they have these outsized effects on whole galaxies. But to see one, you would need to build a telescope as large as the Earth. Because the black hole that we're looking at gives off copious radio waves. It's kind of emitting all the time. And to make- That's exactly what you did. Exactly. So what you're seeing here is, uh, we used telescopes all around the world. We synchronized them perfectly with atomic clocks. So they received the light waves from this black hole, and then we stitched all of that data together to make an image.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we had to get lucky in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. In this case, we were both, I like to think. But light had to come from the black hole. It had to come through


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Intergalactic space through the Earth's atmosphere where water vapor can absorb it. And everything worked out perfectly. The size of the Earth at that wavelength of light, one millimeter wavelength, was just right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so this is one of the members of our team, Lindy Blackburn, and he's sitting with half the data recorded at the Large Millimeter Telescope, which is a top of 15,000 foot mountain in Mexico. And what he's holding there is about half a petabyte.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which, to put it in terms that we might understand, is about 5,000 people's lifetime selfie budget.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, so the way this technique works that we use, imagine taking an optical mirror and smashing it and putting all the shards in different places. The way a normal mirror works is the light rays bounce off the surface, which is perfect, and they focus in a certain point at the same time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We take all these recordings, and with atomic clock precision, we align them perfectly later in a supercomputer. And we recreate kind of an Earth-sized lens.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So what you're seeing is that last orbit of photons. You're seeing Einstein's geometry laid bare.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the puncture in space-time is so deep that light moves around in orbit so that light behind the black hole, as I think we'll see soon, moves around and comes to us on these parallel lines at exactly that orbit. It turns out that orbit is the square root of 27 times just a handful of fundamental constants. It's extraordinary when you think about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You'll see here that some light from behind it gets lensed, and some light does a loop-de-loop around the entire orbit of the black hole.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when you get enough light from all this hot gas swirling around the black hole, then you wind up seeing all of these light rays come together on this screen, which is a stand-in for where you and I are, and you see the definition of this ring begin to come into shape.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's what Einstein predicted over a hundred years ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you wind up with some of the gas moving towards us below and receding from us on the top. And just as the train whistle is a higher pitch when it's coming towards you, there's more energy from the gas coming towards us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you see the bottom part brighter because the light is actually being boosted in our direction. And how physically big is that? Our entire solar system would fit well within that dark region.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The reason we don't see light from there is that the light that would come to us from that place was swallowed by the event horizon. So that's, that's it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is a very powerful black hole, not by universal standards, it's still powerful, and from the north and south poles of this black hole, we think that jets are coming. Now, we're too close to really see all the jet structure, but it's the base of those jets that are illuminating the space time, and that's what's being bent around the black hole.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there's something called the, if I can get wonky for one moment, the innermost stable circular orbit. That's the innermost orbit at which matter can move around the black hole before it spirals in. And for this black hole, it's going to be between three days and about a month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you may have heard of spaghettification, where you fall into a black hole and the gravitational field on your feet is much stronger than on your head so you're ripped apart. This black hole is so big.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That you're not going to become a spaghetti noodle, right? You're just going to drift right through that event horizon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Blackwell, that's the term we are. So, blackwells really are the central mystery of our age, because that's where the quantum world and the gravitational world come together. What's inside is a singularity, and that's where all the forces become unified, because gravity finally is strong enough to compete with all the other forces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's hidden from us. The universe has cloaked it in the ultimate invisibility cloak, so we don't know what happens in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, we already know it's there, and we've already taken data on it, and we're working on those data right now. So we expect or hope to have something in the near future. I can't say when.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. So it turns out that the black hole in M87 that we saw before is 6.5 billion solar masses, but it's so far away that it appears a certain size. The black hole in the center of our galaxy is a thousand times less massive, but also a thousand times closer. So it looks the same angular size on the sky.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So these are, these are only some of the team, uh, we were just, uh, we marveled at the resonance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That this image has had. If you told me that it would be above the fold in all of these newspapers, I'm not sure I would have believed you, but it was. Because this is a great mystery, and it's inspiring for us, and I hope it's inspiring to everyone. But the more important thing is that this is just a small number of the team. We're 200 people strong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With 60 institutes and 20 countries and regions, if you want to build a global telescope, you need a global team. And this technique that we use of linking telescopes around the world


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Effortlessly sidestep some of the issues that divide us. And as scientists we naturally come together to do something like this. Well, boy, that's inspiring for us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Someday, when you get where you're going, you will look around and you will know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson about everyday items. The kinds of things that you see and use everyday or more accurately,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The kinds of things I use everyday because this lesson was made by me walking around looking at all the things I use everyday. This is part two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For those of you that haven't watched part 1, I did it back in the fall of 2021. It was called Everyday Items Part 1, and I talked about things like tweezers, something that you use to take a sliver out, or clothespins, which apparently are called clothes pegs over in Britain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in this lesson I'm going to talk about a, I think 40 more everyday items, things that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You use everyday things that as you go through your day, you just need to have. Uhm, and again, most of these will be things I use everyday. I'm sure most of them are also things that use, that you use everyday as well. Anyways, welcome to this English lesson about everyday items part two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A water bottle. So yes, I do have a water bottle here. I'm hoping that when I hold things up to the camera...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The camera will focus. Of course, now it's not working. It was working really well earlier, but I think you can see this. I have started to use a water bottle almost every day. It's kind of nice because it has a lid and you can just flip it open when you want to drink. And this one has a lock here as well so that if it falls over, it doesn't spill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're supposed to drink a lot of water. That's a healthy thing to do. So having a water bottle, let's see if it will focus this time around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nope, the camera just doesn't like the water bottle. Having a water bottle is really handy. In English, when you say something is handy, it means that it's useful. It means that it is something good to have. Water bottles help you stay hydrated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do I have a lunch bag? Yes, I have a lunch bag. This is actually a lunch bag from one of my kids. Uh, this lunch bag is something that a lot of people take to work or school now. So a lunch bag, it's kind of hard to get it in the frame, isn't it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lunch bag is something. I'm getting angry with my camera because it's not focusing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was working so well earlier. What has happened? Anyways, a lunch bag is something you can take to work or school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the morning, you make your lunch and then when you are at work or school, you have your lunch. I'm going to have my lunch at noon today. Do you want to have lunch with me? Do you want to eat lunch together? Those are all common things that you might say if you take a lunch bag to school with you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then inside, because these lunch bags are insulated, we often have what's called an ice pack. Come on camera, you can focus camera. Let me just try something for a second here. I'm not sure why the camera is so stubborn right now. Nope, it's decided it's not gonna focus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's just forget about that. This is something you put in your freezer and then you can put it in your insulated lunch bag the next day to keep your food and drinks cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have a lot of ice packs in our freezer. Myself and my kids, we all put our ice packs in the freezer at night so that the next day we can put them in our lunch bags and we can keep all of our stuff nice and cool. So it is handy to have an ice pack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Travel mug, yes, this is my favorite travel mug. You've probably seen this travel mug because I use it during my live streams. The nice thing about a travel mug is it will keep your tea or coffee really hot for a really long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's also insulated, so that means that when something hot or cold is inside of it, it stays really warm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, let's, uhm, I'm just laughing at the chat where Harry's saying, the camera likes you more than your stuff. That's pretty accurate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, anyways, a travel mug is handy. A lot of people will make a pot of coffee in the morning and fill their travel mug and then they will be able to drink from their travel mug while they're driving. They'll most likely put it in a cup holder in their vehicle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not sure why this one's next, but yes, I do have a box of Kleenex with me. As you can see here, this is made by a company called Scotties, but we call these Kleenex in Canada. I think in most countries, people call these tissues, but in Canada, we call them Kleenex. You use them when you need to blow your nose.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes you have a cold and when your nose is running you need to blow your nose because you have lots of snot in your nose. Sorry, there's no other way to describe the stuff that comes out of your nose. We just call it snot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's one of those English words that really matches the thing that it represents. Snot sounds funny and it sounds kind of weird and snot is funny and weird. But yes, you would use a tissue or Kleenex if you needed to blow your nose. Breath mints. I don't have these.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but it is quite common for people, especially people who drink coffee, to eat breath mints, not brent mints, breath mints, as they go through their day. Uh, breath mints are usually


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, flavored with peppermint or spearmint or some kind of mint. You can see this one says fresh mint.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're meant to give you fresh breath. If you've eaten food that gives you bad breath or maybe you have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then we also have chewing gum. Chewing gum is different than breath mints. Chewing gum is something you chew in your mouth. It becomes really soft and chewable as you put it in your mouth and chew it. You don't eat it. You don't swallow it. You chew it and it has all of the same flavors


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As breath mints usually. Usually there's mint or peppermint or spearmint, a variety of flavors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I used to chew gum when I was younger, but I don't chew gum anymore. But I do eat breath mints sometimes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So another everyday item, something that's kind of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, strange is if you take your pocket, if you pull your pocket inside out, there will be this blue fluffy stuff in your pocket and we call it lint.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lint is something that just kind of comes off of clothing. It accumulates in your pockets and in other places. In fact, I'm pretty sure if you dry your clothes in a dryer, uhm, there will be a little screen that collects the lint. And the reason I'm mentioning lint is because the next item


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is what we call a lint roller. So this is a lint roller. You can see this lint roller. Uh, looks exactly like the one over there. You use a lint roller to get lint off of your clothing. But also to get dog hair or cat hair off of your clothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we have a lint roller because sometimes Walter and Oscar, our dogs, like to rub against our legs and if I'm going to work and I'm wearing good clothes, I'll use my lint roller to kind of roll my pant legs in order to remove the dog hair because I don't want to have dog hair on me when I go to work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Toilet paper tube. Do I have a toilet paper tube? Yes, I have a toilet paper tube.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Toilet paper tubes are kinda cool. One of the cool things about toilet paper tubes is that, uh, you can make things out of them. And if you're wondering where this came from, it comes from the toilet paper roll. When you're done using a roll of toilet paper, you have what's left on the inside, and it's a toilet paper tube.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kids often use these to build things. Sometimes they'll glue them together and do other things. Sometimes they'll pretend


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That they're a pirate and this is their telescope, but, uh, you definitely run into toilet paper tubes. Definitely an everyday item in my opinion. Again, this is what's left when you are done using a roll of toilet paper.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Zip lock bag. So some people, oh, I want to make sure I don't spill stuff here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some people use a Ziploc bag when they go to work, when they make their lunch. Uhm, they will put a sandwich in a Ziploc bag. Uhm, the reason we don't just call this a plastic bag is because of the top. The top can re-close. I don't know if you can hear that. Let's, uh, let's do this for a sec. Ready?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So now, this bag is closed. In fact, if I put something in it, do I have something small? Yea, I can put my remote control in it. So if I put my remote control in it, and then I close it, then the bag,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is sealed. It's very handy when you are making your lunch. If you have Ziploc bags, Ziploc bags keep your sandwich fresh. So when you get to work or when you get to school, uh it tastes as fresh as the time you made it in the morning. So that is a Ziploc bag.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A notepad. I did have a notepad here somewhere. Here's my notepad. So I keep a notepad by my desk. Usually the notepads I have


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Write things down. If you're wondering where, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I do when I have an idea for an English lesson, I quickly write it down on a notepad. I keep one by my computer at home. I keep one by my computer at work. Uhm, and then usually I add them to a big spreadsheet where I keep all of my ideas.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but anyways, notepad, really handy. Uhm, I think what I use a notepad for the most is to write a grocery list when I go to the grocery store. Milk, eggs, bananas, bananas, of course. By the way, thank you to all of you that live in countries that produce bananas. I still eat one every day. They are awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A charger. Do I have a charger? Yes. So a charger is one of these fun little devices that plugs in the wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then the other end has a spot for usually a USB cable so that you can charge your phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So gravity still works in this part of the world. I'll just point to this picture because it kind of rolled away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, a charger is something that you use when you want to charge your phone. Maybe you want to charge your e-reader, uh, or some other device. You plug it into an outlet, you hook up a charging cable, and you plug in whatever you want to charge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the way, that's what our outlet, that's what the prongs look like in Canada. I know they are different in all parts of the world, but that's what they look like here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then of course we have a charging cable, which I was gonna show you how this plugs into the charger, but I dropped the charger. Uhm, we have a lot of these in our house. Of course a charging cable is what you use to connect your phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To your computer or you connect your phone to a charger. Uhm, and then that's how you charge your phone or other devices. Uhm, when I said we have a lot of these in our house, it's because there are six people living here and there are a lot of devices in our house. So we have a lot of charging cables and chargers all over the place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An egg carton. So this might seem like an odd one, but yes, I do have an egg carton here. Uhm, the reason I put this on the list of everyday items is because I eat an egg or two every morning. So not only do I eat bananas, but I do like having an egg in the morning. Sometimes I eat a boiled egg. Sometimes I eat a fried egg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes I eat a scrambled egg, which is the same as frying it, but you mix it up. Sometimes I have my eggs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Would mean twelve eggs, but they do have egg cartons now that hold six. So smaller ones for people that don't eat as many eggs as me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ant traps. Yes, I have ant traps here. I wish the camera would focus, because then you could see them a lot more clearly. But the camera, should I?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll see. You shouldn't mess around with the camera during a livestream. Hopefully everything's still working. Uhm, this says Aunt Bates.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we call them ant traps. But they don't actually trap the ants. Inside of here, or inside of those, there's usually a, a poison that will kill ants. And usually what the ants do is they take what's inside here back to the, uhm, colony.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then somehow it kills most of the ants. So uhm, we call them ant traps, but they don't actually trap ants. They actually just give them something to eat that, uh, isn't good for them. So I'm sure if you live somewhere where there's a lot of ants, you probably use these. We certainly do here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm dropping things now. We certainly do here in the spring and in the fall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then of course there are mouse traps. We use mouse traps. We have a mouse problem. We do live out in the country. I think there might be more mice in the country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and we often have mice in our house, so we do set mouse traps. It's not a nice thing to do because it's sad for the mouse when he tries to eat the cheese.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But uh, for sure we have a lot of mice in the spring especially. When I say a lot I mean like five or ten every spring somehow move into our house and then we use the mouse traps in order to catch them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then Alexa or Google home. I don't know if you guys have one of these devices in your house. We have a few of these. This is a Google home. We also have what's called an Alexa. It has a different name, but we just call them Google homes or Alexis. This is the device where you can say, okay, Google play.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A song by the Beatles, and it will start playing it. Or you can say,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Play a song by the Beatles and it will play a song by the Beatles. So very handy. Uhm, I'm not sure if we call these personal digital assistants. Uhm, most people I know just call it by whatever company they bought it from. An Alexa from Amazon or a Google Home from Google.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really handy for playing music, setting timers, and doing other things that are just handy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sundan lotion. Do I have suntan lotion? Yes. I have my ultra sheer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] FPS 60. No, SPF 60. Sorry, I said that wrong. I said the French version. Uhm, this is something that I wear a lot in the summer. This is definitely an everyday item for me. Uh, because I am someone who, when I'm out in the sun, without suntan lotion or sunscreen, I burn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I work outside all day and if I don't put on suntan lotion, uh, when I come in, I will feel sore and the next day my skin will be very pink or red. So I know, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That it depends on how fair your skin is. I'm definitely someone who, especially early on in the summer, I do need to wear suntan lotion or sunscreen. And I do wear a really high SPF. SPF is the number that tells you how well it blocks the sun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, so we usually buy SPF 60 which is very, very strong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wedding ring. Yes, I have my wedding ring. It's right here. Uhm, I have, I lost this once and Jen found it back outside. It was a miracle. Uhm, we,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, have compost in our kitchen and this somehow ended up in the compost and then Jen found it back a year later. So this is a wedding ring. This is something that men and women wear to signify that they are married to someone. So I wear my wedding ring so that people know that I'm married and I wear it on my left hand and we would call this the ring finger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I don't wear any other jewelry. I do not wear a necklace. I do not have earrings. But some people do wear jewelry and those


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People would refer to their jewelry as an everyday item. It's one of the things that they wear and that's the verb we use. So some people wear jewelry. Some people will wear an earring or they'll wear earrings. Some people will wear a necklace or a bracelet. Uhm, but definitely jewelry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Would be a very common everyday item that people wear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, so I do have my Fitbit. So we would call this a fitness tracker, or a, it's not really a watch, but it works as a watch as well. But mine definitely counts my steps. Uhm, I put this on every morning. I don't sleep with it. I know some people,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But underneath the fitness tracker it's not. So my particular brand is a Fitbit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and, but we would call it a fitness tracker. Uh, maybe you just wear a watch or an Apple watch or something like that, but definitely an everyday item for me would be that I put my fitness tracker on every single morning so I can track my steps and so I can see what time it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It gives me notifications from my phone. So this is connected to my phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My fitness tracker will actually show me the message, which is kinda cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Flyers. Do I have a flyer? Yes. Will my camera focus on it? Probably not. We get these every Thursday. They come in our mailbox and they are usually from stores that are trying to sell groceries like this one. Do we try one more time to see if the camera will focus? No. It's being crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This one is from a grocery store, but we also get flyers from, uhm, stores that sell electronics or home improvement items. So again, a flyer is something that comes in the mail. Uhm, it's like a little booklet we might call it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Usually we just call it a flyer here. Uh, and then when you open it up, it'll tell you everything that's on sale.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These are not as common anymore. Now you most often get discount codes that you can use when you buy something online. But some stores still make coupons where you can go and you give the coupon when you check out. You give the coupon to the cashier and you might get 10% off or


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A dollar off a certain item. A coupon is like getting a little deal just for yourself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bike helmet. Yes, I have a bike helmet. It's right here. A bike, it doesn't really look right. Oh, the straps are inside. Oh yeaah. I'm not, I'm not an expert. Uh, so, a bike helmet is something you wear to protect your head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you fall off your bike, then you avoid getting an injury. Head injuries are bad. If you ride a bike, you should wear a bike helmet. They are required by law in Canada. If you ride a bike, you should make sure that you have a bike helmet on at all times. Ball cap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is an interesting ball cap though. This is a ball cap. In Canada, we would call this a baseball cap. We would call it a cap. We would call it just a hat. We would call it a ball cap. It has a number of different names.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This one is actually from a company that sells seed. So it's not for a baseball team, even though when you hear the word ball cap, you might think it's for baseball. It's just a term we use when we talk about hats. This is one of my ball caps. Don't wear them very often. I should wear them more, maybe. An umbrella.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do not have an umbrella with me because it's bad luck to open an umbrella inside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But an umbrella is something you use if you go out in rainy weather. You open the umbrella and you carry it above your head and it stops the rain from hitting you and then when you're done, you kind of shake it off and you close it and hang it up in your house to dry somewhere. Umbrellas are very, very nice to have when it's raining. Power pack or charger. I have one right here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You probably wish you could see around me because I just keep grabbing things. These are cool devices. It's like a big rechargeable battery, but on the end it actually lets you plug in


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can plug it into this power bank or power pack or portable charger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I've lost my phone now. What did I do with my phone? Oh, I put the flyer on it. I am losing stuff. And then I could plug my phone into the other end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then this will charge my phone. Super handy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When Jen goes to market, she takes a power pack with her to charge her phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the everyday item that I'm glad I do not have to use anymore. This is a COVID-19 rapid test. Uhm, we aren't too concerned anymore, uh, because COVID cases have really gone down here, but uhm, certainly whenever I get sick,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's the words we use. You take a test. I have to take a test and then I have to tell my boss the results. So that if, let's say I have a stuffed up nose and I'm using lots of Kleenex, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, if I still felt like going to work, I would need to take a rapid test.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I would need to take a rapid test and then tell my boss that the results were negative and then I could go to work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or a ceiling fan, which is on the ceiling. But it's getting really really hot here. Uhm, so if you live in a house that doesn't have air conditioning, you will probably have a box fan


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that you can have lots of cool air blowing on you. You will turn on your fan. You will set it to speed one, two or three usually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you like to have air that kind of blows in different directions, you'll get an oscillating fan. That's a fun word to say, by the way. Oscillating. An oscillating fan turns back and forth. Whenever I use an oscillating fan, I usually lock it so it doesn't oscillate and so it just blows on me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a lot of houses will have a ceiling fan, which is another nice way to have some air movement on a really hot day. A ceiling fan is of course on the ceiling, and there's usually a switch or a dial on the wall that allows you to turn it on. Uhm, but yes, definitely as it gets warmer here,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, uh, it's nice to have, uhm, a box fan. Box fans sometimes people put in the window.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, or an oscillating fan that you can put on a table or desk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or a ceiling fan, which is permanently mounted on the ceiling and you can turn it on with a switch. Of course, if you're lucky, you have air conditioning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I put the words AC because in English it's quite common.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's basically a machine that makes the air cooler so that you can be


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes when you have little kids, it's nice to have a nightlight. So a nightlight is a small light that you plug into an outlet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's very, very dim. It's not right. A night light is really nice to have. Uhm, this is actually the night light from our bathroom. So we have this plugged in in our bathroom. So that if Jen or I or one of the kids needs to go to the bathroom at night,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, we don't have to turn the light on because you can see when our kids were younger, we would have a night light in the hallway so that if they got up at night, uhm, they could see a little bit if they were walking around. So we call this a night light. Ours has a happy face on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know if this makes me happy when I go to the bathroom at night, but uh, we definitely have a night light in both of our bathrooms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I will sometimes use an iron in the morning. Uhm, the reason I put this on here though is so I could say iron a whole bunch of times. I like to iron my shirt. This is a hard word.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For English learners to pronounce. It's not iron, it's iron.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Iron. There are a couple of different pronunciations, I think, but in my part of the world we say iron. I'm going to iron my clothes. Oh, your shirt's so wrinkly, you need to iron it. So there you go, iron.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't even know how to explain how I say it, but anyways, it gets hot, it shoots out a little bit of steam from the bottom, and when you iron your clothes, they get all nice and wrinkle free. It takes all of the wrinkles out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A leash, so we have a new puppy. His name is Walter. We have a full grown dog named Oscar. We train our dogs to walk on a leash. Even though we live on a farm and the dogs can run free, we still train them to walk on a leash. So, it's important that uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, when we do need to put them on a leash that they're used to it. In English, when you say someone or something like a dog is used to something, it means that they.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, they can do it with ease. It's normal for them. So our dogs sometimes about once a day for Walter, uhm, we put them on a leash and walk them. Uhm, in English we have another phrase, so they know who's boss. We want to make sure the dogs know that Jen and I


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're the boss, so we usually use a leash to train them a little bit. And we hook it onto their collar. A dog wears a collar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't use this but I wanted to include things that other people might use every day. One is a diary. A diary is something that you write in every day. You might also call it a journal. But usually a diary is something that you write in at night. You buy it as a book and all the pages are blank.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and then at night you just kind of write a few things that you did that day. So today was a nice day, uh, went to the market, sold lots of flowers, et cetera, et cetera. I don't keep a diary. And that's the phrase you use. You say, oh, do you keep a diary? And someone say, no, I don't keep a diary. Uhm, but a diary again is a book that you write things in. Uh, you write in the things that you did that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a French-English dictionary, and I have a French dictionary, and that is something I use quite regularly. Probably not every day, but probably four or five days a week. I'm looking in my French dictionary. I have a Petit Larousse. It's this thick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't bring it with me. I should have. It's it's just upstairs but uhm, a dictionary is something that you probably use every day. It's probably an everyday item for you whether it's an actual book or whether you use an online dictionary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dish brush. This is a dish brush. This is our little dish brush. We use this for washing dishes. So normally, this is by our sink in the kitchen. When we do the dishes, when we wash the dishes, we use this. By the way, in Britain, I think they say to do the washing up. In this part of Canada, we say


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After supper we do the dishes or after supper we wash the dishes. So this is a dish brush.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is a dishcloth. We use this to dry the dishes. So we use the brush to scrub. We use soapy water in the sink. We use the dish brush to wash the dishes and then we rinse them and we use the dishcloth to dry the dishes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, there are a number of different pain medications. There are a number of different things you can take if you have a headache. This is not something I take every day, but the older I get, uhm, I find that once or twice a month, I take Advil because I might have a really bad headache.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or I might have a really sore muscle. Again, I don't take a lot of Advil. Uhm, but Advil, Aspirin, Tylenol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those are all common names for different kinds of painkillers. So we call them painkillers in English. They're pills that you take if you have a headache or something else hurts and you can buy them


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At a drug store or pharmacy without a prescription. That means the doctor doesn't need to write you a note in order for you to buy them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is my personal list of things that I, uhm, make sure I have every day. So we talked about everyday carry, uhm, which is kind of a hip new cool term that I don't use. But if you were to ask me, what do I have with me when I leave every day? I have my ring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have my Fitbit. I have my phone. I have my wallet and I have my keys. So before I walk out the door every morning, this is what I make sure I have. I have my keys, my phone, my wallet, my ring, and my


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fitness tracker or what I call a Fitbit because that's the brand name.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that is, I wonder what yours are. I wonder what four or five or six things you make sure you have in your pockets or in your handbag or purse, uh, when you walk out the door. But these are the five things that I


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Must have with me every day when I leave the house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And some analysts believe this year will be a pivotal year with a strong influence on how the remainder of this decade will go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the end of 2023, we saw continued job growth in the labor market, thanks in large part to consumer spending. Many thought the Federal Reserve's decision to continuously increase interest rates in 2023 in order to help slow inflation would lead to job losses and spin the economy into a recession. Well, that didn't happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're not out of the woods just yet though. The US still faces possible challenges ahead. We're seeing the least affordable housing market in the generation, both the Israel Hamas war and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, let's turn now to social media, specifically TechGiant Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook. The company has announced new settings for teen users. Our medical correspondent Meg Turrell was on CNN recently to discuss the impact of these changes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let it go, let it go. Princess Elsa, Anna, and Olaf, they're pretty big deals in the wire household, thanks to my two young daughters. And right now, we're gonna head to China to a place where more than 30,000 people per day from around the world flock to check out a frozen wonderland. Here's CNN's Layla Harak with more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What is the largest cat that lives in North America? Bobcat, Puma, Ocelot or Jaguar?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you said Jaguar ding ding ding, you are correct. They once roamed throughout the southwestern U.S., but they've been on the endangered species list since 1997.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today's story, getting a 10 out of 10 gives us great pause. After five years of setting up trail cameras in the Arizona wilderness in hopes of spotting the elusive Jaguar wildlife photographer, Jason Miller finally put the cat in catch. CNN affiliate KGUN9's Ryan Fish has more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well done, Jason. You're a great roar model. Being dedicated to your goal and persisting in your pursuits. You must have been feline so proud. Hey, why did the Jaguar refuse to play poker anymore?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause all the other players were cheetahs. Alright, shout out time now. This shout out is going to the felines at Meadow Bridge High School in Meadow Bridge, West Virginia. We see you Wildcats. And this shout out goes to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And spin the economy into a recession. Well, that didn't happen. We're not out of the woods just yet though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The US still faces possible challenges ahead. We're seeing the least affordable housing market in the generation, both the Israel Hamas war and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, let's turn now to social media, specifically TechGiant Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook. The company has announced new settings for teen users. Our medical correspondent Meg Turrell was on CNN recently to discuss the impact of these changes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let it go, let it go. Princess Elsa, Anna, and Olaf, they're pretty big deals in the wire household thanks to my two young daughters. And right now, we're gonna head to China to a place where more than 30,000 people per day from around the world flock to check out a frozen wonderland. Here's CNN's Laila Harak with more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What is the largest cat that lives in North America? Bobcat, Puma, Ocelot or Jaguar?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you said Jaguar ding ding ding, you are correct. They once roamed throughout the southwestern U.S., but they've been on the endangered species list since 1997.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today's story, getting a 10 out of 10 gives us great pause. After five years of setting up trail cameras in the Arizona wilderness in hopes of spotting the elusive Jaguar wildlife photographer, Jason Miller finally put the cat in catch. CNN affiliate KGUN9's Ryan Fish has more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well done, Jason. You're a great roar model. Being dedicated to your goal and purr assisting in your purr suits. You must have been feline so proud. Hey, why did the Jaguar refuse to play poker anymore?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause all the other players were cheetahs. Alright, shout out time. Now this shout out is going to the felines at Meadow Bridge High School in Meadow Bridge, West Virginia. We see you Wildcats. And this shout out goes to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Warriors at Kapolei Middle School in Oahu, Hawaii. Aloha! I'm Koi Wire and we are CNN 10.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have used a polymeric optical fiber with textile based yarns. So when you touch it, you can see that the hand feel is just like any ordinary knitted fabric. So it actually is very soft and very tactile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have used a polymeric optical fiber with textile based yarns. So when you touch it, you can see that the hand feel is just like any ordinary knitted fabric. So it actually is very soft and very tactile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a form of well-being for a lot of people, people with dementia, people with learning challenges. So it actually, uh, encourages their well-being and gives them a sense of calm and also a very easy way for them to have engagement and direct response.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson where we're going to learn how to describe situations and experiences that we have had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you may have had different experiences in your life and you might describe them in this way right now. It was fun or it wasn't fun or I liked doing that or I didn't like doing that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In this English lesson we're going to look at a whole bunch of other ways to describe experiences and situations that you've been in. Let me just repeat that for a sec. We usually say experiences that you had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or situations that you've been in. So we kinda use each word a bit differently, but they both refer to the things that happen in life or the things that you do in life. So once again, welcome to this English lesson where we're going to talk about how to describe situations and experiences.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One way to describe something is to say that it was confusing but often we use the little phrase hard to understand. This is a huge classroom probably at a university and maybe the professor


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The professor is hard to understand or the class was hard to understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, this happened to me in university when I took my second calculus class. I think I've mentioned that before. When I took calc one, it was easy to understand. When I took calc two, calculus two, it was hard to understand. I passed but my grade wasn't very good at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can also in English, uh, in a very informal way say that it was something else when you're describing something. So let me use this in a few example sentences because it's kind of a weird little phrase.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I went kayaking on this beautiful lake, if someone said, what was that like? What was that experience like? I might say it was something else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So what this means is that it was amazing. It was wonderful. Uh, it was just awesome. It was really, really fun. Uh, when you say, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have a simpler way to describe something here, and it's just to say that something is enjoyable. We often use this when we talk about having a meal with others. So if you have the experience of having a meal with friends or family, you might say, oh, it was a very enjoyable meal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it was just an enjoyable time. We went to a restaurant. The food was delicious. Uh, we had really good conversation. It was a very enjoyable time. Or it was a very enjoyable thing to do. Sorry, I'll try to pronounce the English words correctly as I do this lesson.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, by the way, when I do these lessons, it's very enjoyable for me. I hope it's enjoyable for you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like not in a city, usually like out in a country. If I walked down this path at night and there was just a little bit of moonlight coming through the tree branches, I would describe that walk as an eerie experience. If someone said, how was your walk?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A little bit scary, uh, a little bit spooky might be another word that we would use, uh, but certainly a walk through the forest at night would be eerie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is a very informal word. I had to look it up to make sure that it's actually a word in English, but when something is really boring, sometimes we call it a snooze fest. So I'll use the example again of a classroom, but this time a teacher who's really boring where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As you're, as you're listening you might actually be starting to fall asleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or you might just use the word snoozefest to describe something that was really boring and you didn't actually fall asleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, sometimes when you're sitting and listening to someone talk for a long time, uh, you could describe it as saying, oh, that lecture was really boring or that talk was, uh, was just a snoozefest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, which means it was so boring you could have fallen asleep, or it might even mean you did fall asleep. That can happen as well. Again, a very informal word, snoozefest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I thought it was just a word I made up, but if you look it up on Google, you'll actually find a definition, uhm, for that word.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when you describe something as outstanding, it means that it was done


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At a very high level. It means that if you're watching a performance, the dancers or actors or singers


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They just, you were just amazed at how good of a job they did. So if I went to see, uhm, a show, uhm, maybe some kind of stage show, if someone said, oh, what was, what was the play like? I can say, oh, it was outstanding. It was just amazing. It was one of the best plays I've ever seen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, when you describe something as outstanding, you just mean that it's really, really well done. I would use this to describe, I don't know if you know English with Lucy, English with Lucy is another YouTube channel, uh, and she teaches English, and her lessons are outstanding. That's how I would describe them. They are


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really well put together. She's very well spoken. Very logical. That's always important to me. I like people who are logical. So I would say her lessons are outstanding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the opposite would be what we call a let down. Maybe you've wanted to go to a concert for a long time and you bought tickets and you went to the concert and it wasn't very good. Maybe the musicians sound really good when you listen to a recording, but when they play live,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They just don't do a good job. You would say, uh, it was a let down. How was the concert? It was a let down. It was kind of a let down. They weren't as good as I thought they were going to be. Another example would be,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you were going to see a play and there was a famous actor in the play, and then the day you go, that actor is sick and they have someone fill in the understudy, uh, performs instead, you would say, uh, the play was really good, but it was a bit of a let down because the main actor wasn't there. So a let down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hope my lessons aren't a let down for you. I hope they're outstanding. No, I wouldn't describe my own lessons that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, when you have a lot of fun, when you go out with friends or maybe go out with family and you really enjoy yourself, we sometimes say that it's a blast. Uh, how was your day at the beach? It was a blast. We had so much fun. We played volleyball. We laughed at night. We had a campfire on the beach.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had a blast or it was a blast. You can use either way to describe it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you really enjoy something when it is a lot of fun, we would say that it's a blast. Mesmerizing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you describe an experience as mesmerizing, you're basically saying you couldn't look away because it was so interesting, it was so cool, it was so fun to watch. When I think of the word mesmerizing, I usually think of musicians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't help but just watch them play. Uhm, I'm not, how would I say this? It's not hypnotizing. That's a little bit different, but mesmerizing just is a time when you're in a situation or experience where you just watch what's happening and you just really, really enjoy it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I talked about this phrase in another lesson a few weeks ago. I think I described a trip as being out of this world. When you say something is out of this world, it just means it was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, so fun, so enjoyable, so awesome. It was one of the most amazing things you've ever done in your life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if you ever went on a trip and you stayed on a lake like this, and if someone said, what, what was that like? You probably would say, oh, it was out of this world, like, at night we could see the northern lights, at night we could see, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, lightning bugs flying around. You might describe it as out of this world. Something that was just really, really fun, enjoyable, and beautiful, I think. All of those things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Captivating. So I would say captivating fits in the same category for me as mesmerizing. When I think of something that's captivating, it's again when


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're appreciating something so much, you, you just, you just can't stop watching. When you go to a concert, when you go to a show, if something just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, visually, it's amazing. When you hear things, it's amazing. Uhm, we would just say it's captivating. When people dance, it can be captivating. When people play an instrument, it can be captivating. It just means that they do it well to the point where you just really enjoy watching them do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Worth it. So this is a phrase that people have asked me about, people who are learning English. What does worth it mean? Well, worth it means that something, you did something and you're glad that you did it. Hey, have you ever gone to Disneyland? Yeah, I went last year. Was it worth it? Oh, it was totally worth it. We had so much fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the flip side would be, no, it wasn't worth it. We didn't have any fun and it was really expensive. So when you describe something as being worth it,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're not always talking about money, but a little bit. You know, was the concert worth it? Oh yeah, I totally would go again. It was totally worth it. I don't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mind that I spent a hundred dollars to see Ed Sheeran. It was worth it. So you're, what you're saying is the amount of money you spent or the time you spent, uhm, was valuable to you. You were like, yes, this was a good decision. Uh, I was happy that I did this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We mean it's amazing, but it might even be...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like almost too much. A good example would be this. If you go to a concert and you see that they have giant screens everywhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They actually have more screens than they need. You could say, oh, it was just over the top. They went over the top for that concert. I mean, there were,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 27 big screens in the stadium. So, when you say over the top, you mean you were expecting something to be this good and it was even better but maybe in a slightly crazy way. It was over the top. My lessons are not over the top.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My lessons are as good as they need to be. That's how I would describe it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hard to follow. Now this one is similar to the first one we look at, uh, looked at. Uh, we talked about hard to understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you say that something is hard to follow, if you said, well, the class, it was hard to follow or the prof, he was hard to follow. Um, it doesn't mean you're walking behind them. It means you're having trouble understanding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You might be experiencing this when you watch my videos. I might talk too fast for you and you might find that it's hard to follow the lesson. So when you describe something as hard to follow, it means you're having trouble understanding it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe you're watching a lot of English television and in some cases you can understand what's happening but with other shows you find it hard to follow, hard to understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the word nasty has a lot of different meanings. When I think of describing a situation and using the word nasty, I usually think of a storm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So sometimes we'll just have a really nasty storm at night. That means there's lots of wind and lightning and rain and thunder. Uh, it's just a crazy storm. So when you describe something as nasty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It means that it's not pleasant. So you wouldn't describe something nasty as being enjoyable. You would say, oh, that was a nasty storm last night. I hope trees didn't blow over in the wind. It was nasty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Remarkable. So when you describe a situation as remarkable, uhm, you're basically saying it's something you'll remember for a long time. You're saying that you did enjoy yourself. Let's say you visit a city somewhere and you just really


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Enjoyed all of the buildings you saw. You could say, oh, it was just remarkable. I went to Toronto and it was remarkable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It can also be that you're impressed, like maybe you just thought, wow, they've built some really beautiful buildings in this city. Uh, it is definitely remarkable. So memorable would be another word you could use, but uh, remarkable simply means that you liked it a lot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Puzzling. When you find a situation puzzling, it means that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Either why it's happening or it's hard for you to figure out how to get out of the situation. Uhm, let's say you were sitting in a class in school and it was the wrong class. You might say, oh, this is really puzzling. Why am I in the wrong class and how do I, what do I do now?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's when you're in a situation where you don't know how you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't know necessarily how you got there, and you don't know how to get out of it. By the way, that was a pretty bad explanation of puzzling. You should look that one up online to get a better definition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Inspiring. When something is inspiring, it makes you want to do better things in your life. So the best example would be maybe you went and listened to someone talk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they talked about things you could do to do a better job at work. Maybe your work sent you to a workshop and they had a speaker there who


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes you go and hear a speaker and the person can be described as inspirational. Uhm, and you could use that to describe the event as well. You could say, oh, that workshop was inspiring or the workshop was inspirational. It made me want to do things in a better way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whenever I think of creepy, I think about there's a lake close to my house, and when I was a teenager, there was an old house on the lake. This is not it. This is just a picture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it was an old house on the lake and it had like all the windows were broken and one of my friends liked to go there at night to explore that house and I found the house really creepy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I found the experience really creepy. Uhm, we would go with flashlights and we would kind of, he was always looking for old coins and those kinds of things. So I found it very creepy. Uhm, mostly because uhm, no one lived in the house. The house was starting to fall apart.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we would always go at night. By the way, if you watch...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, any kind of horror movie, you would probably say the movie was really creepy. And we even have a phrase in English you could say, oh, it creeped me out. So when something's creepy, it's a little bit scary. That would be how I would describe it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you describe something as being too much or when you say something was overwhelming, you're basically saying that you weren't comfortable there. For me, when I'm in a crowd of people, it's too much. It's too much for me. When I go to a sporting event and it's crowded like this, it's too much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I go to the s- a store and if the music's really loud it's too much for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's when something is uncomfortable. It's when you don't like something. It's when usually your senses, maybe your sense of space or your sense of touch or hearing, uh, or smell, um, there's just too much happening and you would say, you would use too much to describe it. Like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ah, I went to the concert and, uh, I was in the front row, but it was too much for me. It was, it was too loud. It was too crowded. It was too much. I did not like it at all. It was overwhelming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we use this phrase a lot, by the way, too much. Uhm, yeaah, it was just too much for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mystical. Whenever I think of an experience that's mystical, it's usually something


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That happened early in the morning. I was on a trip once for school and I couldn't sleep because of the time change and so I went for a walk before the sun came up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I would say that walk, that experience was very mystical. Uhm, I saw the sunrise, uhm, there were no people around, I was just in nature. So I would say mystical is a beautiful feeling you get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Usually from being in nature at a time when something cool is happening, like a sunrise or a sunset.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, maybe you're walking along the ocean hearing the waves and watching the sun go down. You might say that that's a very mystical experience. And then of course we have magical, which is very, very similar. Magical would again be used to describe an experience that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just really enjoyed and was really fun. It was very, very interesting and it made you feel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really, really cool inside. Like if I visited this castle, I would probably say the experience of visiting the castle was very magical. Uhm, I felt like I was in another time and place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A zoo. So I used this phrase in a short lesson a few weeks ago. I said, ah, it was a zoo. So the best example I can come up with for describing a situation


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a zoo would be Black Friday in North America. So Black Friday is a day in November where the stores have really cheap


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, things. So for one day you can buy all kinds of things like TVs and other items for not very much money. But it's a zoo. People line up in the morning. When they open the doors it looks like this literally. People run in and they


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My students have lots of energy and they're having trouble sitting in their seats. And when I come home, I might say, Jen might say, how were your classes? And I might say, Oh, it was a zoo today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You do know what a zoo is, right? A zoo is a place where there's lots of animals. So when we use this phrase, when we describe something as a zoo, we're basically saying people are acting crazy, uh, in that situation. Nuts. So this is a very informal way


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To describe something similar to when you say something was a zoo. Every time Apple comes out with a new phone,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People line up for hours at the Apple store in their city to get the new phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I just think this is nuts. When you say something is nuts, it means you're like, I don't know why people do that. They're a little bit crazy. Maybe I wouldn't do that. I just think it's nuts. You can also use nuts to describe something like this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could say, oh, it was nuts at the store. There were so many people there and they were all trying to grab the same thing. So when you say something is a zoo or when you say something is nuts, it's very, very similar, both very informal, uh, but both quite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So a ghost is like a spirit of someone after they've died. I don't really believe in ghosts, but when you have a town with no people in it, we call it a ghost town. We also describe something where there are no people as a ghost town.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was gonna say that is devoid of people. Do you know the word devoid? Uh, this, when a something is devoid of something, it means that it's not there. But when a store is empty in the middle of the night, you might describe it as a ghost town. And then of course,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One other word on the same level is packed. So we're talking about a place being very crowded. Uh, what was it like at the grocery store? It was packed. There were so many people there. What was it like, uhm, at the restaurant? The restaurant was packed. We had to wait an hour to get a seat. So when you say something is packed,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It means it is very, very crowded. It means that there are a lot of people there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then pleasant. When you describe something as being pleasant, it means that you enjoyed it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We sometimes describe conversations as being pleasant. Oh, I had a really pleasant conversation with my mom the other day. That means I had a nice conversation, an enjoyable conversation. It means I smiled a lot during the conversation. So when you describe, uh, an event, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A situation or an experience as pleasant, it means it made you happy. It was nice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do actually gives me more energy for the day. When I go for a walk, I'm more alert. I'm more awake. I'm very, very energized. So you could say that working out is energizing. It gives you energy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Refreshing. When you describe something as being refreshing, it means that