Wondering what The "English Learning for Curious Minds podcast" is all about?
Here's an update on how things have been going, almost 400 episodes and 5 million downloads after we started...
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is going to be an unusual episode.
[00:00:26] It’s unusual because you might think you've heard it before.
[00:00:29] The first episode I ever made was called “Meet The English Learning for Curious Minds podcast”. Perhaps you’ve already listened to hundreds of episodes and you think you’ve already “met” the podcast.
[00:00:42] But don’t worry, this will be a bit different, or at least it will be significantly updated.
[00:00:49] In this episode I’m going to talk about myself, and about this podcast.
[00:00:53] I'll talk about how things have developed since I started it. I'll give you a bit of a private, “behind the scenes” look at how the sausage is made, and I’ll tell you a little bit about what I’ve learned in the past three and a half years.
[00:01:08] OK then, let’s get right into it.
[00:01:12] So, perhaps you have already listened to the very first episode of English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:01:19] Perhaps you've listened to every episode of English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:01:24] If so, you’re amazing, thank you.
[00:01:27] No matter whether this is the first episode you've ever listened to, or you’ve listened to every single one of them, let me start by telling you a little bit about me, the host of the podcast.
[00:01:37] I’m Alastair, Alastair Budge.
[00:01:40] As you might be able to tell from my accent, I’m from the UK, I’m British.
[00:01:46] I grew up in a bunch of different places in the UK, from the south of England to just outside Edinburgh, in Scotland. I’ve lived most of my life in London, but I’d definitely not call myself a Londoner.
[00:02:01] I'm not actually in the UK right now.
[00:02:03] In fact, I haven't actually lived in the UK for quite a long time.
[00:02:09] For the past six years, I've been living on a tiny island called Malta, which is in the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Sicily.
[00:02:18] Your next logical question might be… Why? That seems like an unusual place to be, so what are you doing there?
[00:02:27] The answer is actually quite simple: my wife was offered a job at the university here. We knew absolutely nothing about Malta, I didn’t even really know where it was, but we thought, well why not, and packed up everything from London and moved.
[00:02:43] Her job was originally a one year contract, which turned into two years, three years, and well, life can surprise you, we're still here six and a half years later.
[00:02:54] So, let me tell you a bit about this podcast, about English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:03:01] I started it at the end of 2019, three and a half years ago.
[00:03:07] To be completely honest with you, I started it as a bit of an experiment, to see whether anyone would listen.
[00:03:15] The idea behind it came from my own experience, not as an English teacher but as a language learner.
[00:03:24] See, like you, I imagine, I think of myself more as a language learner than as a teacher.
[00:03:32] I’ve learned lots of different languages to varying degrees. Like lots of people of my generation in Britain, I learned French at school.
[00:03:42] But as any French person who meets a British tourist will know, the general standard of language teaching in Britain is..not very good.
[00:03:52] In any case, I loved languages, and tried to find every opportunity I could to pursue this.
[00:03:59] I ended up studying French and Italian at university, to what I guess would be a C1 or C2 level, then going on to do a Masters in Chinese Studies.
[00:04:11] As part of these studies, I spent a year studying at both French and Italian universities, and I also taught English in China, so I know what it’s like both to teach and to learn.
[00:04:24] In all these years both as a student and a teacher, observing my own behaviour, that of my friends and that of my students, the people I was teaching, one thing was abundantly clear: learning is 100 times easier if you are actually engaged with what you are learning, if you find it really interesting.
[00:04:45] I saw this with my own behaviour. When it came to textbook-based learning, I always did the minimum amount of work. I knew I could pass the exams by doing this, and there were many more fun things to be doing at university than sitting down with a grammar book.
[00:05:03] But when I found something that I actually cared about, when I found a book or a film director I loved, I would consume everything I could, and it didn’t feel like studying.
[00:05:17] Now, what does this have to do with English Learning for Curious Minds?
[00:05:21] Well, in my native language, English, I read a lot, I watch documentaries, go down Wikipedia rabbit holes, I'd describe myself as being quite obsessive in terms of enjoying learning about history, politics, economics, about how the world works.
[00:05:38] So, I thought, what if there was a way to combine this thirst for knowledge, for information, with learning a language?
[00:05:48] As to the format of how this could be delivered, I had never had much success with apps or gamified style learning, streaks and stars and all that kind of stuff.
[00:05:59] Reading and watching films or series both have their advantages, but they are imperfect. If you are simply reading, you don’t have the oral element, you can’t hear spoken language. And if you are watching something you either have subtitles, which are tempting to read, or you have no subtitles and you can miss words.
[00:06:22] But what is the best of both worlds? Something where you can listen and have a transcript to refer to to check what has been said, which helps you remember new words and expressions.
[00:06:34] So, I thought, as a language learner myself, I know that listening and learning about interesting stuff is the most effective way for me to learn a language.
[00:06:45] Not only do you listen to real, native content, but you learn about stuff that you would be curious about in your own native language.
[00:06:55] Surely I can’t be the only person in the world who would like this…
[00:07:00] I figured that the only way to test it was by trying, so I wrote the scripts for five episodes, asked a friend for a microphone, recorded them, built a basic website and hit publish.
[00:07:14] The first one came out in December 2019, it was the first “Meet the English Learning for Curious Minds” episode.
[00:07:22] And you can still listen to it now, if you like, it’s episode number one.
[00:07:28] Right from the start, I wanted to offer people the ability to pay a small amount of money to access all of the learning materials, the transcripts and vocabulary.
[00:07:39] I knew from my own experience that these resources are incredibly helpful, valuable, and can be a crucial part of going from passive consumption to active learning.
[00:07:51] So I figured, well I would happily pay for something like this, I thought perhaps other people might do so too.
[00:07:59] Now, fast forward to today, the podcast has been listened to over 4 million times by people in literally every country in the world. I checked and there've even been listeners in the Vatican City, but I can neither deny nor confirm that the pope is a listener. That’s actually a privacy thing - all you can see in the podcast analytics is the country, nothing about the individual person.
[00:08:26] So, let me tell you a little bit about what has happened since I recorded the first one, so I can take you on a bit of a journey through the history of this show.
[00:08:37] I told you I started this as a bit of an experiment. I gave myself three months, thinking “if it doesn’t go anywhere, if nobody listens and nobody becomes a customer, well I’ve only lost three months, and it won’t be a waste of three months because I'm sure I'll have fun and learn something”.
[00:08:58] After these three months the show had about 50,000 downloads, and paying members from a dozen or so different countries.
[00:09:06] It was off to a good start!
[00:09:09] But it was still, to a certain extent, not my full-time job.
[00:09:14] When I first started, I was still working part-time as a marketing consultant, to pay the bills.
[00:09:22] See, before starting this podcast, and the business behind it, I had a relatively successful career working in technology startups in London, so when I started the podcast, I was also consulting on the side.
[00:09:37] Anyway, about six months after starting this podcast, I decided to go all-in, to fire myself from the consulting jobs, and focus on making the best possible product for curious independent learners, for you.
[00:09:54] Things got a little bit more professional.
[00:09:58] Now we have a professional editor, professional researchers, scriptwriters, and teachers working to create the learning materials that come with the show.
[00:10:09] There are now hundreds of thousands of people who listen every month and we have paying members from almost 100 countries.
[00:10:18] Now, let me tell you a bit more about the journey to get to today, where we are now, and what we have planned for the future of this podcast, and for Leonardo English.
[00:10:30] When I first started making the podcast, it was super unprofessional. I knew absolutely nothing about how to make a podcast.
[00:10:39] Naively, I thought it was not much more complicated than getting a microphone and pressing record.
[00:10:46] Of course, you can’t do a podcast without pressing the record button and talking into a microphone, but there is a lot more that goes into making one than that. In fact, I listened to the first version of this episode, back from December 2019, and I felt pretty uncomfortable listening to it.
[00:11:05] Part of me thought it would be better to remove that episode completely, and replace it with an updated one, but I always think it is fun to see where people and companies have come from.
[00:11:18] It makes it all a bit more real, you know?
[00:11:21] So, anyway, I’ve left the old versions up for you to see, for posterity’s sake.
[00:11:27] We are at almost 400 episodes now, and ever since that first episode we have made two new ones every single week, covering all sorts of weird and wonderful topics.
[00:11:39] As for the process of going from an idea to a finished episode is actually quite a lot more complicated than you might think it is.
[00:11:48] First, there’s the idea, the concept for the episode, or for the series. I’m often asked how we come up with the ideas, but the truth is that I have a massive list of potential ideas, plus we have lots of great suggestions from members, so there is absolutely no shortage of potential ideas.
[00:12:09] Then, we plan out the structure for the episode, the research team does amazing work researching the subject matter at hand and then writing an outline.
[00:12:19] Next up is the scriptwriting itself, where we try to turn an interesting subject into a compelling story. Sometimes this is really easy, if there’s a story about someone’s life, or a particular historical event with lots of twists and turns.
[00:12:38] Sometimes it’s a bit trickier, for example if it’s about a political or philosophical concept, but we try to draw out the human elements of it, to turn it into a nice story.
[00:12:52] When the script is complete, I’ll normally leave it for a few days then go back and rewrite large parts of it.
[00:12:59] Then comes the recording. That bit is not so complicated, it is literally a case of having a microphone and pressing record. But I hadn’t appreciated until starting this podcast that it is actually quite difficult to get good quality sound.
[00:13:16] I live in Malta, which is essentially a 24/7 construction site, so finding a time where there are no hammers or drills is difficult.
[00:13:26] I also live across the street from a pub and have two young children, so finding a time when there are no drills, no children, and no people drinking beer across the street is…not easy.
[00:13:41] In fact, for about six months I had to record every episode after 11 o’ clock at night, as that was the only time when there was relative peace!
[00:13:51] Anyway, after the recording comes the editing. Up to episode number 100, I think it was, I did all of the editing myself. Now we have a professional editor, so if you’ve been listening since the start and you’ve noticed the sound quality getting better, well you have our editor, Eze, to thank for that.
[00:14:13] After the editing, we go through and create the worksheets, including custom definitions for advanced vocabulary, vocabulary explanations, and as of recently a series of comprehension and vocabulary questions, a quiz to test your knowledge after listening to the episode. We write a description of the episode, write a summary, find a relevant image, add tags to it so people can find it easily on the website, create a little YouTube video, then upload it.
[00:14:45] All in all, from start to finish, one episode can take anything from 8 to 20 hours to make.
[00:14:53] And this happens twice a week.
[00:14:56] You get to enjoy the finished product, but there is a lot of work behind the scenes with making this style of highly researched and produced type of podcast.
[00:15:07] Now, if this is one of the first episodes you’ve listened to, you might be wondering “where should I start?”
[00:15:15] It is a good question. There are already literally hundreds of hours of episodes to listen to.
[00:15:21] Should you start with the first one? The last one? Somewhere in the middle?
[00:15:27] It’s tricky, because many traditional language courses have a clear start and end. You start on lesson one, you go on to lesson 20, or whatever it is, and then you have completed it, you get a nice little certificate that makes you proud, and you’re done.
[00:15:45] With English Learning for Curious Minds there is no clear “start”, and there will never be a clear “end”. This is by design, it’s on purpose.
[00:15:56] It’s also how language learning works in the real world. There is no finish line, it’s about the journey.
[00:16:04] So, back to the question, where to start?
[00:16:08] I would certainly not recommend that you start from the first episode, because I think the quality of our episodes has continued to improve over time. I might even say that the first one is the worst one!
[00:16:22] I’d say that you should start from the episodes that seem the most interesting to you.
[00:16:27] It’s well documented that it’s easier to learn a language if you are interested in the subject matter, and it’s also just blindingly obvious, so start with the episodes that are most interesting to you, and work from there.
[00:16:42] The best way of finding interesting episodes is through searching on the Leonardo English website, as you can type in anything - “gangsters”, “queens”, “British humour” - and you’ll see episodes about that topic.
[00:16:56] Listen to what you are interested in, ignore what you are not, and that is a surefire way of staying motivated, which is half the battle with language learning.
[00:17:08] I’m biassed here, of course, but I think you should also try to listen with the interactive transcript and subtitles.
[00:17:16] If you’re wondering what an “interactive” transcript looks like, it’s much more than just text.
[00:17:22] The transcript has translations in 12 languages, so you can tap on any word or expression and get the definition in your language. This also works with the subtitles, so if there is any word, expression, or even sentence you don’t understand, you can tap on it and you’ll see a translation in your language.
[00:17:44] Now, why am I saying you should use them?
[00:17:47] Well, even if you can understand most of what is being said without the transcript, seeing the words written down at the same time as hearing them will help your reading comprehension, your spelling, and therefore your written English.
[00:18:03] And the fact that you have all of the advanced words and phrases explained for you means you have extra help if you don’t understand something.
[00:18:12] Now, the final point I want to say is that, even though we’ve been going for three and a half years, and we’re almost at episode number 400, I see this as right at the beginning of an exciting journey.
[00:18:26] Not only are we working hard to make two fascinating episodes of English Learning for Curious Minds every single week, but we’re working on new challenges, new shows, like Pioneers Of The Continuum, and new ways of helping curious independent learners, like you, improve their English in a more interesting way.
[00:18:47] There are clearly a million different ways for someone to learn a language, listening and learning with this podcast is just one of them.
[00:18:56] So the last thing I want to say to you is thank you.
[00:19:01] Your time is valuable, you’ve either already chosen, or are perhaps at the start of choosing, to listen and learn with English Learning for Curious Minds, and this is a wonderful thing.
[00:19:13] When I made the first episode I had no idea that so many people, including you, would listen and learn with something I made as a bit of an experiment.
[00:19:24] And knowing that it’s helping you, and people like you, well that makes me very happy indeed.
[00:19:34] OK then, that is it for this unusual episode, “Meet English Learning for Curious Minds version two”.
[00:19:41] I hope it was interesting nonetheless and whether you have indeed been listening from right at the beginning, or whether this was the first episode you’ve ever listened to, well I hope it was an interesting one.
[00:19:53] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode, I’d love to hear from you.
[00:19:58] How did you hear about English Learning for Curious Minds?
[00:20:02] How many episodes have you listened to so far?
[00:20:05] What was your favourite, and why?
[00:20:07] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:20:11] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:19] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:24] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is going to be an unusual episode.
[00:00:26] It’s unusual because you might think you've heard it before.
[00:00:29] The first episode I ever made was called “Meet The English Learning for Curious Minds podcast”. Perhaps you’ve already listened to hundreds of episodes and you think you’ve already “met” the podcast.
[00:00:42] But don’t worry, this will be a bit different, or at least it will be significantly updated.
[00:00:49] In this episode I’m going to talk about myself, and about this podcast.
[00:00:53] I'll talk about how things have developed since I started it. I'll give you a bit of a private, “behind the scenes” look at how the sausage is made, and I’ll tell you a little bit about what I’ve learned in the past three and a half years.
[00:01:08] OK then, let’s get right into it.
[00:01:12] So, perhaps you have already listened to the very first episode of English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:01:19] Perhaps you've listened to every episode of English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:01:24] If so, you’re amazing, thank you.
[00:01:27] No matter whether this is the first episode you've ever listened to, or you’ve listened to every single one of them, let me start by telling you a little bit about me, the host of the podcast.
[00:01:37] I’m Alastair, Alastair Budge.
[00:01:40] As you might be able to tell from my accent, I’m from the UK, I’m British.
[00:01:46] I grew up in a bunch of different places in the UK, from the south of England to just outside Edinburgh, in Scotland. I’ve lived most of my life in London, but I’d definitely not call myself a Londoner.
[00:02:01] I'm not actually in the UK right now.
[00:02:03] In fact, I haven't actually lived in the UK for quite a long time.
[00:02:09] For the past six years, I've been living on a tiny island called Malta, which is in the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Sicily.
[00:02:18] Your next logical question might be… Why? That seems like an unusual place to be, so what are you doing there?
[00:02:27] The answer is actually quite simple: my wife was offered a job at the university here. We knew absolutely nothing about Malta, I didn’t even really know where it was, but we thought, well why not, and packed up everything from London and moved.
[00:02:43] Her job was originally a one year contract, which turned into two years, three years, and well, life can surprise you, we're still here six and a half years later.
[00:02:54] So, let me tell you a bit about this podcast, about English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:03:01] I started it at the end of 2019, three and a half years ago.
[00:03:07] To be completely honest with you, I started it as a bit of an experiment, to see whether anyone would listen.
[00:03:15] The idea behind it came from my own experience, not as an English teacher but as a language learner.
[00:03:24] See, like you, I imagine, I think of myself more as a language learner than as a teacher.
[00:03:32] I’ve learned lots of different languages to varying degrees. Like lots of people of my generation in Britain, I learned French at school.
[00:03:42] But as any French person who meets a British tourist will know, the general standard of language teaching in Britain is..not very good.
[00:03:52] In any case, I loved languages, and tried to find every opportunity I could to pursue this.
[00:03:59] I ended up studying French and Italian at university, to what I guess would be a C1 or C2 level, then going on to do a Masters in Chinese Studies.
[00:04:11] As part of these studies, I spent a year studying at both French and Italian universities, and I also taught English in China, so I know what it’s like both to teach and to learn.
[00:04:24] In all these years both as a student and a teacher, observing my own behaviour, that of my friends and that of my students, the people I was teaching, one thing was abundantly clear: learning is 100 times easier if you are actually engaged with what you are learning, if you find it really interesting.
[00:04:45] I saw this with my own behaviour. When it came to textbook-based learning, I always did the minimum amount of work. I knew I could pass the exams by doing this, and there were many more fun things to be doing at university than sitting down with a grammar book.
[00:05:03] But when I found something that I actually cared about, when I found a book or a film director I loved, I would consume everything I could, and it didn’t feel like studying.
[00:05:17] Now, what does this have to do with English Learning for Curious Minds?
[00:05:21] Well, in my native language, English, I read a lot, I watch documentaries, go down Wikipedia rabbit holes, I'd describe myself as being quite obsessive in terms of enjoying learning about history, politics, economics, about how the world works.
[00:05:38] So, I thought, what if there was a way to combine this thirst for knowledge, for information, with learning a language?
[00:05:48] As to the format of how this could be delivered, I had never had much success with apps or gamified style learning, streaks and stars and all that kind of stuff.
[00:05:59] Reading and watching films or series both have their advantages, but they are imperfect. If you are simply reading, you don’t have the oral element, you can’t hear spoken language. And if you are watching something you either have subtitles, which are tempting to read, or you have no subtitles and you can miss words.
[00:06:22] But what is the best of both worlds? Something where you can listen and have a transcript to refer to to check what has been said, which helps you remember new words and expressions.
[00:06:34] So, I thought, as a language learner myself, I know that listening and learning about interesting stuff is the most effective way for me to learn a language.
[00:06:45] Not only do you listen to real, native content, but you learn about stuff that you would be curious about in your own native language.
[00:06:55] Surely I can’t be the only person in the world who would like this…
[00:07:00] I figured that the only way to test it was by trying, so I wrote the scripts for five episodes, asked a friend for a microphone, recorded them, built a basic website and hit publish.
[00:07:14] The first one came out in December 2019, it was the first “Meet the English Learning for Curious Minds” episode.
[00:07:22] And you can still listen to it now, if you like, it’s episode number one.
[00:07:28] Right from the start, I wanted to offer people the ability to pay a small amount of money to access all of the learning materials, the transcripts and vocabulary.
[00:07:39] I knew from my own experience that these resources are incredibly helpful, valuable, and can be a crucial part of going from passive consumption to active learning.
[00:07:51] So I figured, well I would happily pay for something like this, I thought perhaps other people might do so too.
[00:07:59] Now, fast forward to today, the podcast has been listened to over 4 million times by people in literally every country in the world. I checked and there've even been listeners in the Vatican City, but I can neither deny nor confirm that the pope is a listener. That’s actually a privacy thing - all you can see in the podcast analytics is the country, nothing about the individual person.
[00:08:26] So, let me tell you a little bit about what has happened since I recorded the first one, so I can take you on a bit of a journey through the history of this show.
[00:08:37] I told you I started this as a bit of an experiment. I gave myself three months, thinking “if it doesn’t go anywhere, if nobody listens and nobody becomes a customer, well I’ve only lost three months, and it won’t be a waste of three months because I'm sure I'll have fun and learn something”.
[00:08:58] After these three months the show had about 50,000 downloads, and paying members from a dozen or so different countries.
[00:09:06] It was off to a good start!
[00:09:09] But it was still, to a certain extent, not my full-time job.
[00:09:14] When I first started, I was still working part-time as a marketing consultant, to pay the bills.
[00:09:22] See, before starting this podcast, and the business behind it, I had a relatively successful career working in technology startups in London, so when I started the podcast, I was also consulting on the side.
[00:09:37] Anyway, about six months after starting this podcast, I decided to go all-in, to fire myself from the consulting jobs, and focus on making the best possible product for curious independent learners, for you.
[00:09:54] Things got a little bit more professional.
[00:09:58] Now we have a professional editor, professional researchers, scriptwriters, and teachers working to create the learning materials that come with the show.
[00:10:09] There are now hundreds of thousands of people who listen every month and we have paying members from almost 100 countries.
[00:10:18] Now, let me tell you a bit more about the journey to get to today, where we are now, and what we have planned for the future of this podcast, and for Leonardo English.
[00:10:30] When I first started making the podcast, it was super unprofessional. I knew absolutely nothing about how to make a podcast.
[00:10:39] Naively, I thought it was not much more complicated than getting a microphone and pressing record.
[00:10:46] Of course, you can’t do a podcast without pressing the record button and talking into a microphone, but there is a lot more that goes into making one than that. In fact, I listened to the first version of this episode, back from December 2019, and I felt pretty uncomfortable listening to it.
[00:11:05] Part of me thought it would be better to remove that episode completely, and replace it with an updated one, but I always think it is fun to see where people and companies have come from.
[00:11:18] It makes it all a bit more real, you know?
[00:11:21] So, anyway, I’ve left the old versions up for you to see, for posterity’s sake.
[00:11:27] We are at almost 400 episodes now, and ever since that first episode we have made two new ones every single week, covering all sorts of weird and wonderful topics.
[00:11:39] As for the process of going from an idea to a finished episode is actually quite a lot more complicated than you might think it is.
[00:11:48] First, there’s the idea, the concept for the episode, or for the series. I’m often asked how we come up with the ideas, but the truth is that I have a massive list of potential ideas, plus we have lots of great suggestions from members, so there is absolutely no shortage of potential ideas.
[00:12:09] Then, we plan out the structure for the episode, the research team does amazing work researching the subject matter at hand and then writing an outline.
[00:12:19] Next up is the scriptwriting itself, where we try to turn an interesting subject into a compelling story. Sometimes this is really easy, if there’s a story about someone’s life, or a particular historical event with lots of twists and turns.
[00:12:38] Sometimes it’s a bit trickier, for example if it’s about a political or philosophical concept, but we try to draw out the human elements of it, to turn it into a nice story.
[00:12:52] When the script is complete, I’ll normally leave it for a few days then go back and rewrite large parts of it.
[00:12:59] Then comes the recording. That bit is not so complicated, it is literally a case of having a microphone and pressing record. But I hadn’t appreciated until starting this podcast that it is actually quite difficult to get good quality sound.
[00:13:16] I live in Malta, which is essentially a 24/7 construction site, so finding a time where there are no hammers or drills is difficult.
[00:13:26] I also live across the street from a pub and have two young children, so finding a time when there are no drills, no children, and no people drinking beer across the street is…not easy.
[00:13:41] In fact, for about six months I had to record every episode after 11 o’ clock at night, as that was the only time when there was relative peace!
[00:13:51] Anyway, after the recording comes the editing. Up to episode number 100, I think it was, I did all of the editing myself. Now we have a professional editor, so if you’ve been listening since the start and you’ve noticed the sound quality getting better, well you have our editor, Eze, to thank for that.
[00:14:13] After the editing, we go through and create the worksheets, including custom definitions for advanced vocabulary, vocabulary explanations, and as of recently a series of comprehension and vocabulary questions, a quiz to test your knowledge after listening to the episode. We write a description of the episode, write a summary, find a relevant image, add tags to it so people can find it easily on the website, create a little YouTube video, then upload it.
[00:14:45] All in all, from start to finish, one episode can take anything from 8 to 20 hours to make.
[00:14:53] And this happens twice a week.
[00:14:56] You get to enjoy the finished product, but there is a lot of work behind the scenes with making this style of highly researched and produced type of podcast.
[00:15:07] Now, if this is one of the first episodes you’ve listened to, you might be wondering “where should I start?”
[00:15:15] It is a good question. There are already literally hundreds of hours of episodes to listen to.
[00:15:21] Should you start with the first one? The last one? Somewhere in the middle?
[00:15:27] It’s tricky, because many traditional language courses have a clear start and end. You start on lesson one, you go on to lesson 20, or whatever it is, and then you have completed it, you get a nice little certificate that makes you proud, and you’re done.
[00:15:45] With English Learning for Curious Minds there is no clear “start”, and there will never be a clear “end”. This is by design, it’s on purpose.
[00:15:56] It’s also how language learning works in the real world. There is no finish line, it’s about the journey.
[00:16:04] So, back to the question, where to start?
[00:16:08] I would certainly not recommend that you start from the first episode, because I think the quality of our episodes has continued to improve over time. I might even say that the first one is the worst one!
[00:16:22] I’d say that you should start from the episodes that seem the most interesting to you.
[00:16:27] It’s well documented that it’s easier to learn a language if you are interested in the subject matter, and it’s also just blindingly obvious, so start with the episodes that are most interesting to you, and work from there.
[00:16:42] The best way of finding interesting episodes is through searching on the Leonardo English website, as you can type in anything - “gangsters”, “queens”, “British humour” - and you’ll see episodes about that topic.
[00:16:56] Listen to what you are interested in, ignore what you are not, and that is a surefire way of staying motivated, which is half the battle with language learning.
[00:17:08] I’m biassed here, of course, but I think you should also try to listen with the interactive transcript and subtitles.
[00:17:16] If you’re wondering what an “interactive” transcript looks like, it’s much more than just text.
[00:17:22] The transcript has translations in 12 languages, so you can tap on any word or expression and get the definition in your language. This also works with the subtitles, so if there is any word, expression, or even sentence you don’t understand, you can tap on it and you’ll see a translation in your language.
[00:17:44] Now, why am I saying you should use them?
[00:17:47] Well, even if you can understand most of what is being said without the transcript, seeing the words written down at the same time as hearing them will help your reading comprehension, your spelling, and therefore your written English.
[00:18:03] And the fact that you have all of the advanced words and phrases explained for you means you have extra help if you don’t understand something.
[00:18:12] Now, the final point I want to say is that, even though we’ve been going for three and a half years, and we’re almost at episode number 400, I see this as right at the beginning of an exciting journey.
[00:18:26] Not only are we working hard to make two fascinating episodes of English Learning for Curious Minds every single week, but we’re working on new challenges, new shows, like Pioneers Of The Continuum, and new ways of helping curious independent learners, like you, improve their English in a more interesting way.
[00:18:47] There are clearly a million different ways for someone to learn a language, listening and learning with this podcast is just one of them.
[00:18:56] So the last thing I want to say to you is thank you.
[00:19:01] Your time is valuable, you’ve either already chosen, or are perhaps at the start of choosing, to listen and learn with English Learning for Curious Minds, and this is a wonderful thing.
[00:19:13] When I made the first episode I had no idea that so many people, including you, would listen and learn with something I made as a bit of an experiment.
[00:19:24] And knowing that it’s helping you, and people like you, well that makes me very happy indeed.
[00:19:34] OK then, that is it for this unusual episode, “Meet English Learning for Curious Minds version two”.
[00:19:41] I hope it was interesting nonetheless and whether you have indeed been listening from right at the beginning, or whether this was the first episode you’ve ever listened to, well I hope it was an interesting one.
[00:19:53] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode, I’d love to hear from you.
[00:19:58] How did you hear about English Learning for Curious Minds?
[00:20:02] How many episodes have you listened to so far?
[00:20:05] What was your favourite, and why?
[00:20:07] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:20:11] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:19] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:24] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is going to be an unusual episode.
[00:00:26] It’s unusual because you might think you've heard it before.
[00:00:29] The first episode I ever made was called “Meet The English Learning for Curious Minds podcast”. Perhaps you’ve already listened to hundreds of episodes and you think you’ve already “met” the podcast.
[00:00:42] But don’t worry, this will be a bit different, or at least it will be significantly updated.
[00:00:49] In this episode I’m going to talk about myself, and about this podcast.
[00:00:53] I'll talk about how things have developed since I started it. I'll give you a bit of a private, “behind the scenes” look at how the sausage is made, and I’ll tell you a little bit about what I’ve learned in the past three and a half years.
[00:01:08] OK then, let’s get right into it.
[00:01:12] So, perhaps you have already listened to the very first episode of English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:01:19] Perhaps you've listened to every episode of English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:01:24] If so, you’re amazing, thank you.
[00:01:27] No matter whether this is the first episode you've ever listened to, or you’ve listened to every single one of them, let me start by telling you a little bit about me, the host of the podcast.
[00:01:37] I’m Alastair, Alastair Budge.
[00:01:40] As you might be able to tell from my accent, I’m from the UK, I’m British.
[00:01:46] I grew up in a bunch of different places in the UK, from the south of England to just outside Edinburgh, in Scotland. I’ve lived most of my life in London, but I’d definitely not call myself a Londoner.
[00:02:01] I'm not actually in the UK right now.
[00:02:03] In fact, I haven't actually lived in the UK for quite a long time.
[00:02:09] For the past six years, I've been living on a tiny island called Malta, which is in the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Sicily.
[00:02:18] Your next logical question might be… Why? That seems like an unusual place to be, so what are you doing there?
[00:02:27] The answer is actually quite simple: my wife was offered a job at the university here. We knew absolutely nothing about Malta, I didn’t even really know where it was, but we thought, well why not, and packed up everything from London and moved.
[00:02:43] Her job was originally a one year contract, which turned into two years, three years, and well, life can surprise you, we're still here six and a half years later.
[00:02:54] So, let me tell you a bit about this podcast, about English Learning for Curious Minds.
[00:03:01] I started it at the end of 2019, three and a half years ago.
[00:03:07] To be completely honest with you, I started it as a bit of an experiment, to see whether anyone would listen.
[00:03:15] The idea behind it came from my own experience, not as an English teacher but as a language learner.
[00:03:24] See, like you, I imagine, I think of myself more as a language learner than as a teacher.
[00:03:32] I’ve learned lots of different languages to varying degrees. Like lots of people of my generation in Britain, I learned French at school.
[00:03:42] But as any French person who meets a British tourist will know, the general standard of language teaching in Britain is..not very good.
[00:03:52] In any case, I loved languages, and tried to find every opportunity I could to pursue this.
[00:03:59] I ended up studying French and Italian at university, to what I guess would be a C1 or C2 level, then going on to do a Masters in Chinese Studies.
[00:04:11] As part of these studies, I spent a year studying at both French and Italian universities, and I also taught English in China, so I know what it’s like both to teach and to learn.
[00:04:24] In all these years both as a student and a teacher, observing my own behaviour, that of my friends and that of my students, the people I was teaching, one thing was abundantly clear: learning is 100 times easier if you are actually engaged with what you are learning, if you find it really interesting.
[00:04:45] I saw this with my own behaviour. When it came to textbook-based learning, I always did the minimum amount of work. I knew I could pass the exams by doing this, and there were many more fun things to be doing at university than sitting down with a grammar book.
[00:05:03] But when I found something that I actually cared about, when I found a book or a film director I loved, I would consume everything I could, and it didn’t feel like studying.
[00:05:17] Now, what does this have to do with English Learning for Curious Minds?
[00:05:21] Well, in my native language, English, I read a lot, I watch documentaries, go down Wikipedia rabbit holes, I'd describe myself as being quite obsessive in terms of enjoying learning about history, politics, economics, about how the world works.
[00:05:38] So, I thought, what if there was a way to combine this thirst for knowledge, for information, with learning a language?
[00:05:48] As to the format of how this could be delivered, I had never had much success with apps or gamified style learning, streaks and stars and all that kind of stuff.
[00:05:59] Reading and watching films or series both have their advantages, but they are imperfect. If you are simply reading, you don’t have the oral element, you can’t hear spoken language. And if you are watching something you either have subtitles, which are tempting to read, or you have no subtitles and you can miss words.
[00:06:22] But what is the best of both worlds? Something where you can listen and have a transcript to refer to to check what has been said, which helps you remember new words and expressions.
[00:06:34] So, I thought, as a language learner myself, I know that listening and learning about interesting stuff is the most effective way for me to learn a language.
[00:06:45] Not only do you listen to real, native content, but you learn about stuff that you would be curious about in your own native language.
[00:06:55] Surely I can’t be the only person in the world who would like this…
[00:07:00] I figured that the only way to test it was by trying, so I wrote the scripts for five episodes, asked a friend for a microphone, recorded them, built a basic website and hit publish.
[00:07:14] The first one came out in December 2019, it was the first “Meet the English Learning for Curious Minds” episode.
[00:07:22] And you can still listen to it now, if you like, it’s episode number one.
[00:07:28] Right from the start, I wanted to offer people the ability to pay a small amount of money to access all of the learning materials, the transcripts and vocabulary.
[00:07:39] I knew from my own experience that these resources are incredibly helpful, valuable, and can be a crucial part of going from passive consumption to active learning.
[00:07:51] So I figured, well I would happily pay for something like this, I thought perhaps other people might do so too.
[00:07:59] Now, fast forward to today, the podcast has been listened to over 4 million times by people in literally every country in the world. I checked and there've even been listeners in the Vatican City, but I can neither deny nor confirm that the pope is a listener. That’s actually a privacy thing - all you can see in the podcast analytics is the country, nothing about the individual person.
[00:08:26] So, let me tell you a little bit about what has happened since I recorded the first one, so I can take you on a bit of a journey through the history of this show.
[00:08:37] I told you I started this as a bit of an experiment. I gave myself three months, thinking “if it doesn’t go anywhere, if nobody listens and nobody becomes a customer, well I’ve only lost three months, and it won’t be a waste of three months because I'm sure I'll have fun and learn something”.
[00:08:58] After these three months the show had about 50,000 downloads, and paying members from a dozen or so different countries.
[00:09:06] It was off to a good start!
[00:09:09] But it was still, to a certain extent, not my full-time job.
[00:09:14] When I first started, I was still working part-time as a marketing consultant, to pay the bills.
[00:09:22] See, before starting this podcast, and the business behind it, I had a relatively successful career working in technology startups in London, so when I started the podcast, I was also consulting on the side.
[00:09:37] Anyway, about six months after starting this podcast, I decided to go all-in, to fire myself from the consulting jobs, and focus on making the best possible product for curious independent learners, for you.
[00:09:54] Things got a little bit more professional.
[00:09:58] Now we have a professional editor, professional researchers, scriptwriters, and teachers working to create the learning materials that come with the show.
[00:10:09] There are now hundreds of thousands of people who listen every month and we have paying members from almost 100 countries.
[00:10:18] Now, let me tell you a bit more about the journey to get to today, where we are now, and what we have planned for the future of this podcast, and for Leonardo English.
[00:10:30] When I first started making the podcast, it was super unprofessional. I knew absolutely nothing about how to make a podcast.
[00:10:39] Naively, I thought it was not much more complicated than getting a microphone and pressing record.
[00:10:46] Of course, you can’t do a podcast without pressing the record button and talking into a microphone, but there is a lot more that goes into making one than that. In fact, I listened to the first version of this episode, back from December 2019, and I felt pretty uncomfortable listening to it.
[00:11:05] Part of me thought it would be better to remove that episode completely, and replace it with an updated one, but I always think it is fun to see where people and companies have come from.
[00:11:18] It makes it all a bit more real, you know?
[00:11:21] So, anyway, I’ve left the old versions up for you to see, for posterity’s sake.
[00:11:27] We are at almost 400 episodes now, and ever since that first episode we have made two new ones every single week, covering all sorts of weird and wonderful topics.
[00:11:39] As for the process of going from an idea to a finished episode is actually quite a lot more complicated than you might think it is.
[00:11:48] First, there’s the idea, the concept for the episode, or for the series. I’m often asked how we come up with the ideas, but the truth is that I have a massive list of potential ideas, plus we have lots of great suggestions from members, so there is absolutely no shortage of potential ideas.
[00:12:09] Then, we plan out the structure for the episode, the research team does amazing work researching the subject matter at hand and then writing an outline.
[00:12:19] Next up is the scriptwriting itself, where we try to turn an interesting subject into a compelling story. Sometimes this is really easy, if there’s a story about someone’s life, or a particular historical event with lots of twists and turns.
[00:12:38] Sometimes it’s a bit trickier, for example if it’s about a political or philosophical concept, but we try to draw out the human elements of it, to turn it into a nice story.
[00:12:52] When the script is complete, I’ll normally leave it for a few days then go back and rewrite large parts of it.
[00:12:59] Then comes the recording. That bit is not so complicated, it is literally a case of having a microphone and pressing record. But I hadn’t appreciated until starting this podcast that it is actually quite difficult to get good quality sound.
[00:13:16] I live in Malta, which is essentially a 24/7 construction site, so finding a time where there are no hammers or drills is difficult.
[00:13:26] I also live across the street from a pub and have two young children, so finding a time when there are no drills, no children, and no people drinking beer across the street is…not easy.
[00:13:41] In fact, for about six months I had to record every episode after 11 o’ clock at night, as that was the only time when there was relative peace!
[00:13:51] Anyway, after the recording comes the editing. Up to episode number 100, I think it was, I did all of the editing myself. Now we have a professional editor, so if you’ve been listening since the start and you’ve noticed the sound quality getting better, well you have our editor, Eze, to thank for that.
[00:14:13] After the editing, we go through and create the worksheets, including custom definitions for advanced vocabulary, vocabulary explanations, and as of recently a series of comprehension and vocabulary questions, a quiz to test your knowledge after listening to the episode. We write a description of the episode, write a summary, find a relevant image, add tags to it so people can find it easily on the website, create a little YouTube video, then upload it.
[00:14:45] All in all, from start to finish, one episode can take anything from 8 to 20 hours to make.
[00:14:53] And this happens twice a week.
[00:14:56] You get to enjoy the finished product, but there is a lot of work behind the scenes with making this style of highly researched and produced type of podcast.
[00:15:07] Now, if this is one of the first episodes you’ve listened to, you might be wondering “where should I start?”
[00:15:15] It is a good question. There are already literally hundreds of hours of episodes to listen to.
[00:15:21] Should you start with the first one? The last one? Somewhere in the middle?
[00:15:27] It’s tricky, because many traditional language courses have a clear start and end. You start on lesson one, you go on to lesson 20, or whatever it is, and then you have completed it, you get a nice little certificate that makes you proud, and you’re done.
[00:15:45] With English Learning for Curious Minds there is no clear “start”, and there will never be a clear “end”. This is by design, it’s on purpose.
[00:15:56] It’s also how language learning works in the real world. There is no finish line, it’s about the journey.
[00:16:04] So, back to the question, where to start?
[00:16:08] I would certainly not recommend that you start from the first episode, because I think the quality of our episodes has continued to improve over time. I might even say that the first one is the worst one!
[00:16:22] I’d say that you should start from the episodes that seem the most interesting to you.
[00:16:27] It’s well documented that it’s easier to learn a language if you are interested in the subject matter, and it’s also just blindingly obvious, so start with the episodes that are most interesting to you, and work from there.
[00:16:42] The best way of finding interesting episodes is through searching on the Leonardo English website, as you can type in anything - “gangsters”, “queens”, “British humour” - and you’ll see episodes about that topic.
[00:16:56] Listen to what you are interested in, ignore what you are not, and that is a surefire way of staying motivated, which is half the battle with language learning.
[00:17:08] I’m biassed here, of course, but I think you should also try to listen with the interactive transcript and subtitles.
[00:17:16] If you’re wondering what an “interactive” transcript looks like, it’s much more than just text.
[00:17:22] The transcript has translations in 12 languages, so you can tap on any word or expression and get the definition in your language. This also works with the subtitles, so if there is any word, expression, or even sentence you don’t understand, you can tap on it and you’ll see a translation in your language.
[00:17:44] Now, why am I saying you should use them?
[00:17:47] Well, even if you can understand most of what is being said without the transcript, seeing the words written down at the same time as hearing them will help your reading comprehension, your spelling, and therefore your written English.
[00:18:03] And the fact that you have all of the advanced words and phrases explained for you means you have extra help if you don’t understand something.
[00:18:12] Now, the final point I want to say is that, even though we’ve been going for three and a half years, and we’re almost at episode number 400, I see this as right at the beginning of an exciting journey.
[00:18:26] Not only are we working hard to make two fascinating episodes of English Learning for Curious Minds every single week, but we’re working on new challenges, new shows, like Pioneers Of The Continuum, and new ways of helping curious independent learners, like you, improve their English in a more interesting way.
[00:18:47] There are clearly a million different ways for someone to learn a language, listening and learning with this podcast is just one of them.
[00:18:56] So the last thing I want to say to you is thank you.
[00:19:01] Your time is valuable, you’ve either already chosen, or are perhaps at the start of choosing, to listen and learn with English Learning for Curious Minds, and this is a wonderful thing.
[00:19:13] When I made the first episode I had no idea that so many people, including you, would listen and learn with something I made as a bit of an experiment.
[00:19:24] And knowing that it’s helping you, and people like you, well that makes me very happy indeed.
[00:19:34] OK then, that is it for this unusual episode, “Meet English Learning for Curious Minds version two”.
[00:19:41] I hope it was interesting nonetheless and whether you have indeed been listening from right at the beginning, or whether this was the first episode you’ve ever listened to, well I hope it was an interesting one.
[00:19:53] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode, I’d love to hear from you.
[00:19:58] How did you hear about English Learning for Curious Minds?
[00:20:02] How many episodes have you listened to so far?
[00:20:05] What was your favourite, and why?
[00:20:07] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:20:11] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:19] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:24] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
