Episode 0148

And my name is Catherine. So, Marco, what are we talking about today?

Today we are taking a look at a guy who is a little bit too afraid of people in general.

There's a good word for this in English, someone who's almost too afraid all the time, someone who is overly cautious. We call this person paranoid.

Okay, so if you are paranoid, you think that everyone is uh wants to hurt you or that everyone is out to get you.

Wait. Did you hear that?

That's no. Did you hear that?

No, I didn't. Someone at the door.

No I didn't.

Marco can, uh, can you check the...

Yeah, so a paranoid, somebody that is paranoid.

All right, so why don't we listen to this dialogue for the first time and see what this person is all paranoid about.

There it is again.

Is everything okay?

So, since when is your house a bank?

What do you mean?

I mean, what's up with the four locks and iron bars on your windows?

A lot of psychos out there.

Just the other day, they caught that peeping Tom red-handed. Had a high-power telescope and binoculars by his window.

What's the matter with you? Why are you acting all paranoid?

Paranoid?

You see, Dan, we have to be on guard at all times.

People just invade your privacies if they knew you. Telemarketers, solicitors, even your bank.

I like to keep everything on a need-to-know basis.

Okay, well, what did you want to see me about?

Alright, we're back, so um yeah, I think this guy is a little bit too um cautious.

I would have to agree with you and I would go so far as to call him paranoid, but uh there's a lot of great stuff in this dialogue that we can use and a lot of different situations, so let's take a look at some of these new words in today's language takeaway.

Language takeaway.

All right, the first word on language takeaway today is sicko.

Sicko is also the name of a movie that was a documentary, famous in America by Michael Moore actually. But uh, sicko in this context means someone who is a bit weird in a bad way.

So if you tell somebody, you're sick, but like in that tone, right? You're saying, you're sick. You're a sick person.

You're gross. Right. You're saying you're gross or people who have inappropriate humor, who make jokes about not so nice things. Right. Yeah, they're sick.

But uh in this case, sickos are people who maybe like to hurt other people, or people who are a little bit crazy. People who are not normal.

So it's not a nice way of calling someone crazy, right? If you if you say, oh, he's a sicko, it's not really nice.

Not at all. It's a way of saying that you're almost scared of this person because they're kind of weird and almost they have problems.

All right, so sicko.

Uh moving on to our next word, we saw that the guy was afraid of telemarketers.

Exactly.

So what are these guys?

Well, we've got two words being put together here, tella and market. So uh, tella, like telephone. Telephone. Communication, over communication. So they're not in person, they're people who call you up and market things. They try to sell you stuff over the phone.

So this is very common, you're your you get a phone call on your cellphone and they ask you if you're if you're happy with your long distance calling plan or if you need new TV cable or something like that.

Exactly.

So these are telemarketers, these are people who call you trying to sell things to you.

And a very similar to to these is a solicitors.

Exactly, but the big difference here with solicitors and telemarketers, is that solicitors actually go to your house, they knock on your door.

So they're also called door-to-door salesmen or saleswomen.

That's right. So door-to-door salesmen, they go from door to door trying to sell things. But in this case a solicitor is someone who comes to your house to try to get you to do something, to buy something.

All right, very good. And moving on to our next word, we have a peeping Tom.

That's right. We heard this a little bit earlier in the dialogue and a peeping Tom is again a negative thing to say about someone. A peeping Tom, well, the word peep means to look but kind of like, yeah, it's a quick look.

So peeping Tom is a person who spies on other people.

Okay, so a synonym of a peeping Tom would be a voyeur.

A voyeur, so someone who um, without getting caught, tries to look at other people while they're in their homes. And so it's really bad because uh, it's usually inappropriate, it's usually people who are watching women get undressed or

Right, right.

Yeah, yeah.

So a peeping Tom is just an informal way of saying a voyeur or somebody who is spying on people.

So those are the words for today in language takeaway. Let's listen to our dialogue again and then we'll be right back.

Is everything okay?

So, since when is your house a bank?

What do you mean?

I mean, what's up with the four locks and iron bars on your windows?

A lot of sickos out there.

Just the other day, they caught that peeping Tom red-handed. Had a high-power telescope and binoculars by his window.

What's the matter with you? Why are you acting all paranoid?

Paranoid?

You see, Dan, we have to be on guard at all times.

People just invade your privacies if they knew you. Telemarketers, solicitors, even your bank.

I like to keep everything on a need-to-know basis.

Okay, well, what did you want to see me about?

Now we're back and we had some interesting phrases in the dialogue. Uh the first one being, you can never be too safe.

Fluency builder.

All right, so this is uh this is a common mom phrase. You often hear mothers say this when they're sending their kids off to school or whatever. They say, don't talk to strangers. And the kid says, 'well, why not?' You can never be too safe. Right? It's it's good to err on the side of caution.

So it's okay to be extra extra safe or extra cautious just in case.

Exactly, you never know what's going to happen, so it's better to be cautious than not. And that's what this um this person's saying. He's saying, well, security, it's important. You can never be too safe, you never know what might happen.

Is there another way that we can combine it like, you can never be too careful?

Exactly, exactly. Same same thing. Yeah.

All right. What's our next phrase?

Our next phrase is about this peeping Tom, this person that they caught, uh they caught him red-handed.

We caught you red-handed. Or he's been caught red-handed.

So what does that mean?

Uh this is a it's a very colorful phrase and I don't just mean that because we're calling him red-handed, but um to catch red-handed means to catch someone while they're doing something wrong.

So if I see you breaking into someone's house and I say, Marco, stop. I'm catching you, stop now. I just caught you red-handed.

You saw me doing the act.

Exactly.

Uh and another way of saying this is, you caught him with his hand in the cookie jar.

Mm, okay. And this is this is another great phrase. You can imagine a child who sees the cookies in a in a very special jar on the the counter in the kitchen. And uh mom says, don't eat the cookies. Well, the child goes into the kitchen and sees the cookies and opens the jar and puts his hand in the jar and then mom comes and says, 'caught you!'

That's that's a boy with his hand or a child with their hand in the cookie jar.

So it's the same thing. I can say, I caught you with your hand in the cookie jar.

Or you are caught red-handed.

All right. And our last phrase for today is, you are on a need-to-know basis.

All right, this is a great one. This is often said in spy movies, I think. Um, so we say, you're on a need-to-know basis. That means that if you really need to know something, then I will tell you. But if not, I won't.

So you only have the information that is necessary, no more or less, right? You're on a need-to-know basis.

Right. So I say, tell me, Marco, tell me what happened. I want to know!

Right. And I can say, no, no. You're on a need-to-know basis and you don't need to know this.

All right, so a need-to-know basis, as you say, very popular among spy movies and government movies and stuff like that.

Conspiracy movies.

All right, so let's listen to this dialogue for the very last time and we'll be right back.

Is everything okay?

So, since when is your house a bank?

What do you mean?

I mean, what's up with the four locks and iron bars on your windows?

A lot of sickos out there.

Just the other day, they caught that peeping Tom red-handed. Had a high-power telescope and binoculars by his window.

What's the matter with you? Why are you acting all paranoid?

Paranoid?

You see, Dan, we have to be on guard at all times.

People just invade your privacies if they knew you. Telemarketers, solicitors, even your bank.

I like to keep everything on a need-to-know basis.

Okay, well, what did you want to see me about?

All right, so um, the guy's a little bit paranoid. There's another word for this as well, similar, right? Schizo.

Schizophrenia is a disease and uh a lot of people have it and it's not too uncommon. But a popular slang word to say someone's crazy is schizo.

So if you guys remember this movie, A Beautiful Mind, it's all about uh this famous mathematician named John Nash. And uh well, he was a genius, he came up with game theory and uh a lot of subsequent usage of this for economy, for many things.

But um, it was proven that he was schizophrenic, right?

A paranoid schizophrenic. So not only did he kind of uh have experience reality in different ways, but he's also paranoid. So he was afraid that the government was trying to kill him.

And so he he was um, he was irrationally afraid of everything going on around him and it made him very uh unsafe because he could hurt himself or hurt other people.

And the interesting thing about this is that there is no actual cure for it. You just learn to cope and live with it.

So you never really get cured, you just kind of learn how to understand what's real and what's not.

And uh that's all the time we have for today. So if you have any questions, doubts or comments, please come to our website englishpod.com. And uh we're there to answer them.

The English pod audio review.

Listen to the meaning, then say the vocabulary word.

A deranged, psychotic or morbidly obsessed person.

Sico

Doing something wrong or illegal.

Red-handed

To affect in an unwanted way.

Invade

Having a feeling that people will harm you.

Paranoid

Situation where you have only the information you need.

Need to know basis.

Let's try that faster.

Having a feeling that people will harm you.

Paranoid

To affect in an unwanted way.

Invade

A deranged, psychotic or morbidly obsessed person.

Sico

Situation where you have only the information you need.

Need to know basis.

Doing something wrong or illegal.

Red-handed

Now say the word and hear it in a sentence.

Sico

That psycho just brushed against me again.

Sico

Sico

Our society is full of these types of psychos.

Red-handed

The little boy was caught red-handed stealing cookies out of the pantry.

Red-handed

Red-handed

The graffiti artist was caught red-handed. He was identified by the paint on his hands.

Paranoid

Don't be paranoid, Bob. Even if there were aliens, they wouldn't want to abduct you.

Paranoid

Paranoia is characterized by extreme anxiety and fear.

Paranoid

I don't think he is just being paranoid. There really is a vampire waiting outside.

Invade

The troops invaded at dawn.

Invade

The place is invaded by tourists every summer.

Invade

I must insist you not come in. It really is an invasion of privacy.

Need to know basis.

The details of my date last night are on a need-to-know basis.

Need to know basis.

If you don't have a specific need to know, I can't tell you.

Need to know basis.

Access to the report of the UFO crash are on a need-to-know basis.