Urban Legends

Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

And my name is Catherine. And today we're talking about some very interesting stories.

We're going to learn some words for stories or tales. But specifically, what kind of stories,

Marco?

They're popular stories that you hear maybe through emails or maybe in your town there's

some particular story about maybe a ghost or many different things that they're kind

of hard to believe but that happened a long time ago and people still talk about today.

And they're scary.

Yeah, they're kind of scary.

So let's listen to today's dialogue, hear some interesting stories. And when we come

back, we'll be talking more about what these words and phrases mean.

Have you read all these crazy things that are going on around the world?

What do you mean?

I was reading about how some people get tricked or drugged in their hotel rooms and have their

organs removed. Then they're sold on the black market.

Don't tell me you actually believe all that. Don't be so gullible. They are just urban

legends. They're just stories people make up to scare you.

Well, I was also reading about how some popular songs have subliminal or even satanic messages

if you play them backwards. Can you believe that?

You really think an artist or songwriter is going to go through the trouble of putting

subliminal or satanic messages in a song? Don't be so naive.

Well maybe you are right. But how about the story about how KFC has rows of headless

chickens which are super grown in order to get bigger chickens faster?

Sounds a bit too far-fetched to be true, don't you think?

All right, we're back. So let's take a look at Language Takeaway.

Language Takeaway.

So here on Language Takeaway today, we have some words that will help us understand the

dialogue. The first word is drugged. So I was reading about how some people get drugged

in their hotel rooms.

That's right. So if you get drugged, it means that someone gave you some drugs in order

to make you sleepy or in order for you to not remember what happened.

All right. So he was drugged means someone gave him a drug, something that made him go

to sleep.

Right. And it's not necessarily always a bad thing because obviously if you go to the hospital,

the doctor may drug you in order to, you know, so you don't feel so much pain or something.

Exactly. If you're in an accident, you're in a lot of pain, the doctor drugs you so

you don't feel that pain.

That's right.

All right. So he was drugged. This person is drugged. And then what happens?

Well, his organs were removed.

All right. So organ, an organ is a noun. It's a thing. Those are actually the things that

are inside our body.

Right. So your heart, liver, your pancreas, kidneys, etc.

These are all organs. And this is basically the category for the part of the body. It's

anything really inside your body that has a function.

Okay. So this is supposedly this story is that people, you know, usually tourists, they

get tricked or drugged and then they get their organs removed.

Now what kind of a story is this, Marco? Because it's not just a normal story.

Right. All of these stories that we saw in the dialogue are called urban legends.

Okay. Urban has to do with cities, right? Legend is a story that may or may not be true.

That's right.

It comes from a long time ago.

So an urban legend is actually a story that is probably not true that you hear from other

people like your friends.

That's right. So usually most of these stories fall under this category. You know, they're

urban legends. You don't really know if they're true, but people say it happened to a friend

of theirs from a long time ago or stuff like that.

Exactly. So a friend of a friend of a friend of mine told me that in hotels, sometimes

they take your organs. Well, obviously that's not right.

Right. Right. All right. So after that, we have two great adjectives for describing people

who like to believe stories like this. What are those two adjectives?

Well, we have the adjective to be gullible and to be naive.

All right. So they're a little bit different. To be gullible means to believe everything

that people tell you.

Right. So if you're gullible, you pretty much believe anything you see or you hear.

Yeah. So maybe your friend says, did you know Michael Jordan is coming to the office tomorrow?

Right. And you believe it, then you're very, very gullible.

Very gullible. You believe what people tell you. But naive is similar.

It's similar, but I guess it has a little bit of a different meaning in the sense that

you're not, it's not that you're so gullible, but you wholeheartedly trust people. So you're

naive, you're innocent.

You're innocent. Maybe you don't have a lot of life experience. So you trust people and

you can call a person naive. You say, well, he's very naive about these kinds of things.

I guess that's the main key, right? Or the main point is that you don't really have too

much life experience. So that's why you're naive.

That's right. And just be careful because gullible and naive are things that we say

about people, but they're not nice things. They're not compliments.

Right. So you shouldn't really say it to someone directly like in the dialogue.

Exactly. Maybe as a joke, but not seriously.

Okay. So we have the great adjectives way to describe people. And lastly, we also have

something else that how to describe the situation. Maybe it's too farfetched. It's too difficult

to believe.

So farfetched, this is a great word. It means basically that something is very difficult

to believe. Like you say, for example, the story about Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan

is coming tomorrow. You say, oh, that's pretty farfetched. I don't really think that could

happen.

Right. So something that is farfetched is difficult to happen or very, very unlikely

to happen.

Very unlikely.

Okay. So very good. We saw five key words there. Let's take a break and listen to the

dialogue again.

Have you read all these crazy things that are going on around the world?

What do you mean?

I was reading about how some people get tricked or drugged in their hotel rooms and have their

organs removed. Then they're sold on the black market.

Don't tell me you actually believe all that. Don't be so gullible. They are just urban

legends. They're just stories people make up to scare you.

Well, I was also reading about how some popular songs have subliminal or even satanic messages

if you play them backwards. Can you believe that?

You really think an artist or songwriter is going to go through the trouble of putting

subliminal or satanic messages in a song? Don't be so naive.

Well maybe you are right, but how about the story about how KFC has rows of headless chickens

which are super grown in order to get bigger chickens faster?

Sounds a bit too farfetched to be true, don't you think?

All right, let's take a look now at a couple of phrases on Fluency Builder.

Now in Fluency Builder today we're going to start out with the story about organs, this

urban legend. Now what happens when the organ is taken, the story says that it's sold on

the black market.

That's right. So you probably hear this in the news or a lot of places, the black market

basically. It's not really a physical place, but it's where things are sold illegally.

So guns, organs, stuff like that.

Exactly. So the black market, like you say, is not a place you can go to. It's an idea.

And it's basically anything that's illegal that's being sold. Like guns are often sold

in the black market.

That's right.

Sometimes stolen cars are sold in the black market. Also organs can be sold in the black

market. And this is a serious problem because obviously all of this is illegal.

That's right. So the black market is where all this happens. Now moving on to the next

urban legend that we actually didn't really talk about too much is how many people believe

that popular songs have subliminal or satanic messages in them.

All right. So let's take a look at the word subliminal first. We all know what a message

is, right? It's something that's told to us. But a subliminal message is something that

is told to us without us knowing.

That's right.

So it goes into your mind, but you don't even know it. So it's something that a lot of people

believe in because they think that marketing people or big businesses are trying to control

our behavior.

That's right.

So I could say very quietly, Marco, buy me dinner.

And that's a subliminal message.

Marco says, hey, I was thinking about getting everyone dinner tonight. And then that's basically

a way to control your actions. And so whether or not this is possible, that's another discussion.

That's another discussion.

But so, yeah, that's basically what a lot of people say that some TV commercials or

ads have these subliminal messages that are trying to convince you or persuade you into

maybe consuming that product.

Exactly. But they're a little bit different from satanic messages.

That's right. So that's basically dealing with Satan or the devil.

That's right. So the idea that there are satanic messages means that they're messages about

the devil, about how maybe God does not exist or like, you know, that you should do evil,

not good. So they're very dark and very kind of angry messages.

I think they talk about, for example, I'm not sure which song it is, but like by Ozzy

Osbourne that if you play it backwards, supposedly there's this message that says, you know,

worship the devil and stuff like that. So that's where these urban legends come from.

But obviously it's either coincidence or not true.

Right. That's right. So we've got these messages that are also an urban legend. But the final

one is about KFC. So KFC would be Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what is the legend? The

legend is about their food.

That's right. They say that they don't really have real chickens. Well, they take chickens

and they just super grow them. The chickens are super grown in order for them to get bigger

and faster. And that's basically that they don't even really have heads. They just have

some hoses that go into their bodies and feed them. And in four weeks you have a chicken.

That's disgusting. That's disgusting. The idea is super grown chickens. And so they're

basically they're not real chickens.

Right. That's what the legend says is that they're not. I mean, they really are, but

they're not like naturally grown. You know, usually a chicken takes three months to grow

or something.

Yeah. All right. That's disgusting. I don't want to talk about that. But the idea of super

growing is like using chemicals to do something that's not natural.

That's right. That's right. Chemicals or hormones and stuff. So that's they use it, for example,

on plants. You can super grow a plant by adding fertilizer and vitamins and stuff to the soil

that makes it grow faster.

Or maybe you have bigger carrots than normal, bigger potatoes because they're super grown.

That's right. So, all right. That's a lot of great stuff. Let's take a listen to the

dialogue one last time.

Have you read all these crazy things that are going on around the world?

What do you mean?

I was reading about how some people get tricked or drugged in their hotel rooms and have their

organs removed. Then they're sold on the black market.

Don't tell me you actually believe all that. Don't be so gullible. They are just urban

legends. They're just stories people make up to scare you.

Well, I was also reading about how some popular songs have subliminal or even satanic messages

if you play them backwards. Can you believe that?

You really think an artist or songwriter is going to go through the trouble of putting

subliminal or satanic messages in a song? Don't be so naive.

Well, maybe you are right. But how about the story about how KFC has rows of headless chickens

which are super grown in order to get bigger chickens faster?

Sounds a bit too far-fetched to be true, don't you think?

All right. So, all these urban legends, they are obviously most of them, if not all of

them, are untrue. But they're very popular. Why do you think that is?

I think people like to believe these stories. They're gossipy. They're scary. You get to

make your friends kind of nervous about stuff. But I think also we don't trust a lot of these

things because we've heard for years and years and years and years about subliminal messages

and marketing strategies or about these kind of hidden messages in songs. So, there's part

of us that wants to believe them. But the other part is that you hear it enough, you

start to believe it.

Because I was reading up on a couple of them and the most recent ones are about how they

make the connection about how Nostradamus predicted the 9-11 incident or how Coca-Cola

is actually the one that invented Santa Claus. And even this KFC one where people just believe

a lot of different things. I even found one, the urban legend about be careful when you

go to the movie theater because there might be a syringe or something on the seat that

if you sit down it infects you with AIDS or something like this. So, there's so many of

them out there that if you think about it, they don't even really make sense.

They don't. And I understand that sometimes there'll be one news story like about a needle

in a candy box. And all of a sudden people say, well, don't eat candy because there's

needles in candy boxes.

And obviously, one time event turns into this massive kind of craze.

Yeah. But it is interesting, especially with this whole topic of subliminal messages. I

do remember that actually there was a marketing campaign that was banned in movie theaters

when the previews before the actual movie came on. Supposedly, they had the sound or

maybe on the screen somebody opening up a Coke can and the smell of Coke actually coming

into the theater. And that was kind of like subliminal marketing making people want to

go get a Coke.

Definitely. Well, we used to pump the exhaust from the popcorn maker when I worked in a

movie theater throughout the lobby. So, everyone smells it and it smells so good. Everyone

wants to buy it.

You want to buy popcorn?

Oh, yeah. We would totally use that.

So, yeah. That is a way of like, I guess it is subliminal because you're not directly

telling them to buy it, but you are just giving them all the...

Adjusting it through audio or visual or oratory cues.

Right. And then you have the opportunity to sell them the most expensive popcorn they'll

ever buy.

Exactly. Twelve dollars for a bag of popcorn.

All right. So, it is a very interesting topic. Let us know if you have any comments or questions

about it. You can find us at EnglishPod.com.

We hope to see you guys there. Bye.

Bye.