– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

Hello and welcome to bonus episode number 148 of  the Culips English Podcast. The series where we  

B.I.G.B: build our fluency, improve our cultural  knowledge, grow our vocabulary and become better  

and clearer English communicators. If you like  those goals, then you're in the right place,  

and I'm going to do my best to help you achieve  them. By the way, my name's Andrew. I'm a Canadian  

English teacher, but I live abroad in Seoul,  South Korea. And here in our bonus episodes,  

I tell you a story each and every week from my  everyday life. And yeah, I'm telling you these  

stories so that you can improve your English with  me. We'll do it together. To accompany each and  

every episode, there's a 100% free transcript  plus a vocabulary glossary. And if you're a  

Culips member, then we'll throw in a comprehension  quiz as well, so you can test and see how much you  

are able to understand from this episode after  listening to it. And if you'd like to sign up  

and become a Culips member, just visit our website  Culips.com for all of the info about the benefits  

and bonuses you get as a member and, yeah, to sign  up and become a part of our community. Speaking of  

our awesome Culips member community, in today's  episode I'm going to talk about something that  

was requested by one of our members in one of my  weekly small group speaking classes. For Culips  

members we have three weekly speaking classes  that you can join one, two, or three of. And we  

talk about a recent Culips episode and also at the  end of each class we have a kind of open session,  

a Q&A if you will, where people can leave comments  or ask questions or we just chat and hang out. And  

one of the members, and I really have to apologize  because I can't remember exactly who requested  

this topic, so please let me know if it was you  and I'll give you a shout out in the next episode  

because it's totally escaping my mind right now  about who it was, so I apologize for that. But  

one of our members, in a recent speaking class,  asked me if I could give a behind-the-scenes tour  

of how we produce our content and our lessons here  at Culips. And I thought that was a really cool  

idea because actually there's a ton of work and a  ton of effort that we put into creating each and  

every Culips episode. So, I thought I would shed  some light on some of the tasks and things that  

we have to do behind the scenes that maybe you  don't see as just a regular Culips listener. So,  

that's what I'm going to do in this episode  today, everyone, is walk you through steps A  

to Z. I have to say “Zed” as a good Canadian  or American pronunciation A to “Zee”,  

which I do have to admit rhymes and flows a  little bit better than A to Z. But anyways,  

from start to finish of the Culips episode  production process, and without any further ado,  

let's get right into this week's story. So  here we go. I hope you enjoy, let's do it.  

If you're a regular Culips listener, then  you'll know that each and every week we release  

two brand-new episodes. One episode is a bonus  episode like this, which is just me talking with  

you and hanging out with you and telling you  a story. And then one of the other episodes,  

we could call “a regular episode,” is with me and  one of my co-hosts. And I have a whole bunch of  

great co-hosts here at Culips that help me make  awesome English lessons. Kassy from the USA,  

Suzanne from the USA, Anna from England but  lives in Spain, and Indiana from the USA,  

and also Alina who's originally from Russia but  now lives in Ireland. So, I have just a whole host  

of amazing co-hosts. And don't get confused  about the word "host" there. “A whole host”  

means many. So, I have many awesome co-hosts that  help me here produce some of the regular Culips  

episodes. And as I mentioned, we release one of  those each week. And we have different series.  

We have our Simplified Speech series, which  is for intermediate level English learners,  

where the content is a little bit easier, a  little bit slower. We have our Chatterbox series,  

which is for higher intermediate to advanced  English learners where we talk about a more  

complicated topic. But both Simplified Speech  and Chatterbox are really just like free-flowing  

conversations. It's almost like you get to listen  in to a conversation between good friends. We  

also have our Real Talk series, which teaches you  the English that you need to know for real-world,  

everyday situations. And we have our Catch Word  series, which is our vocabulary series where we  

teach you some useful, helpful vocabulary,  like idioms or phrasal verbs, that will  

improve your English listening and speaking.  And so for each of those different series,  

I have a co-host. Indiana and Kassy are helping me  out with Simplified Speech, Real Talk, and Catch  

Word. Anna's helping me out with Chatterbox,  and Suzanne is kind of everywhere, and she'll  

help me with anything. And Alina helps me with our  community side of things, and our monthly updates,  

and the monthly challenges. So, I got some awesome  support here at Culips to help me make really  

good English lessons. And yeah, we couldn't do it  without the team. It really is a team effort. So,  

actually the life cycle of a Culips episode begins  as soon as we finish recording one episode. So,  

as soon as an episode is finished recording,  before that recording session is finished,  

and I say goodbye to one of my co-hosts, we always  pick a recording date for the next episode. So,  

I guess that's really where things start, is  we need to pick a recording date. And as I  

mentioned just a while ago, my co-hosts are spread  throughout the world in different continents and  

different corners of the world, in different time  zones even. I mean, thankfully, Kassy lives here  

in Korea, where I live, but she's in a different  city. And actually right now she's on vacation in  

the USA. So she's in a different time zone than  me right now as well. And so this can sometimes  

make scheduling a little bit difficult. But  I think it's really important here at Culips  

that we have a variety of different hosts. I love  that I have co-hosts that I can talk to that come  

from different places, have different accents,  different life experiences, different cultural  

backgrounds. And even in the case of Alina,  she's an English learner just like you as well.  

I think that perspective is super, super important  to have here at Culips too, is that we have some  

staff members, some team members, who have gone  through the difficult process of learning English  

just like you, and can now use English, speak  English, and understand English at a super,  

super high level. So yeah, I guess what I'm trying  to say here is that sometimes picking a recording  

date can be a little bit of a difficult process,  but we get it done. And once we have chosen our  

recording date and planned our recording session,  then we can move on to step two. So, step two is  

planning the episode. And guys, I've been doing  Culips for a long time, so I have just an app  

in my phone where I make notes. Anytime a good  episode idea comes into my head, I write it down  

and I've got this huge list of episode topics. I'm  always adding to it, always revising it. And so,  

honestly, the brainstorming aspect and the episode  planning is pretty easy because I can just go to  

my list and I have so many ideas written down  there. Occasionally, members of our Culips  

community will request a topic, just like this  episode today was requested. And often that makes  

for a really good episode and one that I love to  do as well. I love it when people request topics  

and yeah, I'm happy to do as many as I can that  you guys request. So, if you ever have an episode  

idea, just let me know. Send me a DM through our  Discord and I'll be happy to try my best to make  

it become a reality. And sometimes I also ask  co-hosts. My co-hosts are always brainstorming  

as well. And they'll say, "Oh, Andrew, I have this  idea. How about we do this for an episode topic?"  

And that's really great as well. So, we're never  short of ideas. We always have lots of good ideas.  

And I think, you know, some people have asked me,  "Have you ever worried about running out of ideas  

here at Culips?" And I counter with, like, "Do  you ever run out of things to talk about with  

your friends?" I mean, maybe some people do, but  for me, whenever I see my friends, we're always  

just like chatting like crazy. And I think here  at Culips as well, we'll always have things to  

talk about. We're always going through the world  and having new experiences, learning new things,  

seeing new things. New things are happening all  around us all the time. And so, there's always,  

always plenty to talk about. So I'm not really  worried about ever running out of ideas. But yeah,  

the next step anyways is choosing a topic. And  then depending on the series, there could be more  

planning that needs to go into an episode  or less planning depending on the series.  

For topics like Simplified Speech, usually we're  talking about a kind of daily, everyday topic,  

and honestly, they don't need too much planning.  Usually, I brainstorm maybe five or six rough  

discussion questions where I think, "Oh, it could  be interesting if we explored the topic in this  

way or that way." But it doesn't require too much  planning. Some of the other series though require  

more research or more work. For example, Catch  Word, our vocabulary series. We have to research  

the definitions of the words. We need to make some  examples for you and we could do that on the fly,  

I suppose, but I think a little bit of prep goes  a long way. So, we like to research and make some  

good example sentences so that we can really  explain and teach the vocabulary that's the  

topic of that lesson in a good way. Real Talk  is similar. It requires a lot of preparation,  

making good example conversations and dialogues,  and coming up with appropriate expressions  

that you can use in a specific situation. And  Chatterbox is case by case. It really depends  

on the topic at hand. Sometimes it requires quite  a bit of research, and sometimes we can do it just  

freestyling. It really depends. But anyways,  the next step there is to prepare the episode,  

plan the episode, and make sure that everything  is good and ready to go. And when I say plan and  

prepare the episode, it's not like I'm  making a script or anything like that.  

It's just a rough idea about the direction we want  to take the lesson in so that it's well-structured  

and you can really learn something, take something  away from it. As much as possible, we try to have  

just natural speaking here on Culips. We don't  really script anything at all, except for some of  

the dialogues that maybe you'll hear in Real Talk  or Catch Word. Some of those dialogue examples,  

we do make a script and read the scripts for  them. But everything else is really just off  

the cuff. We're thinking of it and making it on  the spot, and we don't really follow a script at  

all. Just that rough outline, the plan that we  create during the planning stage. So, we've got  

our recording date, we've got our plan. The next  step is to actually record the episode. And yeah,  

because all of my co-hosts are in different  spots, we just do it over the internet. Of course,  

I have my mic and my camera on my side, and they  have the same on their side. Now, usually, the  

co-hosts and I, we have a brief chat before we hit  the record button, just to go through the outline,  

to talk about some of the stories that we're going  to share and I always tell my co-hosts, don't tell  

me the story in advance. You can say, for example,  like, you want to talk about this topic, or I'm  

going to tell a story about this. That's fine, but  I like to be surprised, and I want everything to  

be as natural as possible. All of my reactions,  all of the things that I'm saying here at Culips,  

I want me to speak naturally, and I want my  co-hosts to speak naturally as well, so you guys  

can learn from real English. So, yeah, most of  what I hear during a Culips episode, I'm hearing  

for the first time, or maybe I know my co-hosts  will talk about it, but I don't know the details  

at all, so I'm hearing the details for the first  time. Usually, when we record, my co-host and I,  

we record two episodes at a time. And as much as  possible, I try to bank many episodes. So at any  

time, I have between 10 to 20 episodes recorded  in advance, just sitting on my hard drive. I think  

right now, as it stands, I have enough episodes to  get us through all the way through the summer and  

probably into the fall. And that's just because,  well, I like to be organized and have lots of  

content lined up in advance. And also, you never  know, like if you get sick or some recording can't  

happen one day, you never want to be down to the  wire where you just really need to make content  

in the last moment or make lessons in the last  moment. So it's always good to have a queue and we  

always have an episode queue. So, I usually record  once or twice a week with my co-hosts. And like I  

said, we record two episodes each time. So, that's  between two to four episodes, regular episodes we  

make here each and every week. Once the recording  session is finished, well then it's time to go to  

the next stage, which is the editing stage. And as  you guys can probably understand from the way I've  

been talking about Culips lessons so far, I try  to make sure as much as possible that everything  

is as natural as possible. So when I say editing,  it's not like I'm doing a lot of editing. Most of  

it is really, really light. We try to clean up the  audio so that it sounds as good as possible. And  

when I say "we", we have an editor on our team as  well, Marshall. So the editing duties are divided  

between me and Marshall. And yeah, we clean up the  audio so that the quality is as good as possible.  

Sometimes, you know, occasionally there's some  background noise, like if a loud motorcycle drives  

by, we'll try to cut that loud motorcycle noise  out of the background. Occasionally there will  

be some weird mouth noises or breathing noises  that personally just drive me crazy to listen  

to when I hear other people include them in their  podcasts, so I cut those little weird mouth noises  

that sound disgusting out. And occasionally my  hosts and I will talk over each other. Maybe we  

try to say something at the same time and it comes  out really unclear and difficult to decipher and  

understand. If that happens, then I'll try to  clean that up so it's easier for you guys to  

understand. Laughing. If somebody laughs really  loud, which is usually me laughing too loud.  

Sometimes I turn the volume down on the laughing  so that you can still hear what the co-host is  

saying. I don't want to overpower anybody with my  laughing. So just things like that. Occasionally,  

as you guys probably know, I talk a lot and I can  go on and on and on. One of my bad habits that I  

have. So, if the episode goes too long, then  sometimes we cut some content out. But yeah,  

that is what is involved at the editing stage.  And once the episode has been finished and the  

audio is good to go, well then we need to make  the study guide for the episode. Each and every  

regular Culips episode has a study guide that  we give to our members. It's a key part of our  

program here at Culips and we really believe  that following along with each study guide  

and spending time with it will help improve your  English skills faster. So, we put a lot of effort  

into making high quality guides. We really do want  to do a good job with our study guides. And so,  

once the audio is edited, then we transcribe  the audio. And I know these days, if you look  

in your podcast app, like if you're listening  right now on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts and  

probably many other podcasts as well, you can  see an AI computer-generated transcript. But  

those are pretty good. They're pretty good, but  they're not 100% accurate yet. And of course,  

in our study guides for Culips members, we want  to make sure that our transcripts are perfect  

and super, super accurate. So we human transcribe  each and every episode. And I mean, these days,  

AI tools are getting very good at transcribing.  So, what we do is we actually use an AI tool to  

generate the first draft of the transcript. But as  I said, they're like 80% accurate. So, then me or  

one of our other team members will go back through  the transcript that's AI generated and check  

and make sure everything is perfect. Change the  spelling of some words that are incorrect, make  

sure everything's good. The punctuation is good.  The spacing and paragraphing is good and we clean  

it up so that it is a hundred percent natural  so each transcript is actually human checked  

by two different people, by the transcriber and  then later on by a proofreader. So, you can rest  

assured that what you see in the transcript  here at Culips is totally, totally perfect.  

Through some of the other apps, I can't guarantee  that. There are probably a lot of errors. Whenever  

I look at it, I kind of go, “Oh, oh, please use  the Culips transcript, not the auto-generated one  

through some of the apps because it's not too good  yet.” But anyways, OK, so we make the transcript  

and then next after the transcript, we need to  write the study guide. And we have two study guide  

writers, those co-hosts that I mentioned earlier,  Indiana and Alina, they are our study guide  

writers right now. And they go back and forth.  So, Alina will write one guide and then Indiana  

will check that guide after Alina is finished  writing it. And then they switch. So then,  

the next episode, Indiana will write the guide and  Alina will check it. So, they're our study guide,  

dynamic duo, tag team, and they're going back  and forth writing guides and checking guides  

and making sure that the information in the study  guide is super helpful and designed to help you  

improve your English with that episode. Explaining  the key vocabulary, making the quiz, the  

discussion questions, all of these things and then  checking the transcript like I mentioned earlier  

before. So, as you can imagine, this takes a lot  of time. Editing the episode, transcribing the  

episode, writing the study guide, proofreading and  checking the study guide, this process can take  

between one to two weeks usually. I mean if we  really really put the pedal to the floor, put the  

pedal to the metal, then we could probably do it  in a few days. But we don't like to rush things.  

We like to take our time and make sure everything  has been carefully checked and carefully written  

and is just as good as possible. So, essentially,  after Indiana or Alina has done the final human  

check of the study guide and the audio has been  checked again, then it's ready for upload. So,  

when everything's ready, we send it over to  Yoshi, who is our behind-the-scenes guy here  

at Culips. And he's another English learner that  we have on our team. He's originally from Japan,  

but he lives in the USA now. And he's learned  English to a really, really high level as well.  

And so he's another important part of our team.  And he's the dude that does the posting. So he'll  

post the episode. And then we let everybody know  on our Discord server that the episode is ready.  

And yeah, then it's your turn. You go and listen  to the episode and study with it. And of course,  

on our Discord community, we often have some nice  discussions about the episode as well. And then,  

I guess I should say that the final step in  an episode's life cycle is actually our small  

group speaking classes. So at the start of this  episode, I mentioned that this topic today was  

actually requested by one of our Culips members in  one of our small group speaking classes. And after  

an episode is released, usually we give it about  a month, so you'll have a month to listen to the  

episode. Then after a month, we have three small  group speaking classes about that episode. So,  

the idea here guys is that you'll listen to the  Culips episode, you'll spend some time with it,  

hopefully listen to it several times, go through  the study guide, and think about the questions, do  

the quiz, read the helpful study guide content and  examples, all of these things. And then the final  

step is we should speak about it. Because why  are you learning English? Well, most people learn  

English so that they can communicate with others.  And we want to give you an opportunity to do that.  

So, many of our Culips members will gather,  will hang out, will spend some time together,  

and will talk about each and every Culips  episode. So that is the final step, really,  

is having our small group speaking classes about  that episode. So, there's a lot of time, effort,  

and thought and planning that goes into releasing  each and every Culips episode that we make here,  

but yeah, that is the system. To answer the  question, that is how a Culips episode is made.  

Of course, the bonus episodes are a little bit  different because that's just me and they're a  

little more casual and I don't really do as much  planning. I just make a brief outline about what  

I'm going to talk about and then I press record  on the audio and the camera and I just go go go.  

And that's the bonus episode. So, for the bonus  episodes, we also don't have the study guides,  

so there's not as much creation in that regard.  Of course, we still do have the transcript,  

and I make the transcript and check the  transcript, so it's still human-checked,  

but otherwise the production process for a bonus  episode is a lot quicker. Anyways, I hope that  

answered the question, and I hope now you have a  little more understanding of the behind-the-scenes  

process of how an episode is produced and created  here at Culips. Now, before I let you go, I do  

need to share this week's completion code with  you. Each and every week I give you a completion  

code and you can leave an example sentence  with this completion code on our YouTube page,  

our Instagram page, or on our Discord community.  That signals to me and all of the community  

members out there that you finished this episode  and that you completed an English study session  

with me today. So for this week, we are going  to go with the expression "behind the scenes."  

"Behind the scenes." And "behind the scenes" just  means a look at what you don't usually see in a  

production process. Originally, I think we used  this expression to talk about a play or a drama  

production, maybe like a Broadway musical,  something like that where behind the scenes,  

you know, you're seeing like what's behind the  curtain, all the actors hanging out behind the  

stage, and you know, things are a lot different  behind the curtain during a stage production than  

they are in front. There's a lot of planning and  organizing that goes on that you can't really see  

in a situation, and anytime we're talking about  that kind of context, we can say this expression  

"behind the scenes". So, I'm looking forward  to reading your example sentences. Go, go,  

go! And yeah, let's see what you come up with for,  “Behind the scenes.” If you have a topic you'd  

like me to talk about in a future Culips episode,  please let me know on our Discord community. The  

link to join is in the episode description,  and it's free for everyone to join. You can  

just post a message in the topic request channel  that we have, or you can send me a DM. And yeah,  

I'm always open to your suggestions. So, have a  great week of English studying up ahead. Please  

take care as always, and I'll catch you  in the next episode. Until then, bye-bye.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
fluency ˈfluənsi B2	noun - the ability to speak or write a language smoothly and easily
cultural ˈkʌltʃərəl B1	adjective - relating to the customs, practices, and beliefs of a particular society
vocabulary voʊˈkæbjəˌlɛri A2	noun - the words of a language or the knowledge of these words
communicators kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪtərz B1	noun - people who convey information or ideas
abroad əˈbrɔːd A2	adverb - in or to a foreign country
transcript ˈtrænskrɪpt B2	noun - a written or printed copy of spoken words
comprehension kɒmprɪˈhɛnʃən B2	noun - the ability to understand something
benefits ˈbɛnɪfɪts A2	noun - advantages or gains
community kəˈmjuːnɪti A2	noun - a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common
requested rɪˈkwestɪd A2	verb - asked for something
speaking ˈspiːkɪŋ A1	noun - the act of talking
classes ˈklæsɪz A1	noun - sessions of learning or instruction
episode ˈɛpɪsoʊd A2	noun - a single part of a longer series of events or a broadcast
behind-the-scenes bɪˈhaɪnd ðə ˈsiːnz B1	adjective - occurring out of public view
production prəˈdʌkʃən B1	noun - the process of making or creating something
tasks tæsks A2	noun - pieces of work to be done
effort ˈɛfərt A2	noun - physical or mental activity needed to achieve something
process ˈprəʊsɛs B1	noun - a series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular end
steps stɛps A1	noun - actions or procedures to achieve something
organized ˈɔːrɡənaɪzd A2	adjective - arranged in a structured way