 Welcome to our new video podcast program discussion. I don't know if we've already picked a name for it, but in this podcast, we'll have a conversation about this week's featured program. And if you haven't listened to this program already, I really encourage you to go check it out on our website at www.spotlightenglish.com or here on YouTube in our 2021 playlist. And just listen to that program, follow along with the words. And then that's what we're going to discuss today in this program. We hope you'll join the conversation in the comments or yeah, anytime. I'm Liz Wade and with me as always is Adam Navas. Say hi, Adam. Hi, how are you? Oh, I'm pretty good, you know? That's, I feel like that's the typical, just non-descript answer when people ask. I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm good. Yeah, you don't, people don't actually want to know. I mean, they do. Yeah. But they don't, it's more of an exchange of, hello, how are you, blah, blah, blah? Yes. I've acknowledged your presence. Exactly. But I don't really care. It's not the time to go into your deep inner light. Yeah. Well, Adam, I had a really bad day. Ah, too much. There you go. Everything bad happened. Right. You don't want to know that. No. So if people have come here for the first time, we are regularly doing Spotlight Live. We are regularly making programs where you can learn English, practice your English. So this is something new. Where would this, Liz, how would you describe where this program, this conversation, might fall if people are just new? How do the pieces fit together? I think that what we're really trying to do is give you some additional content and really cover the whole spectrum, the whole line of your learning, right? So we have a spotlight, a classic spotlight program for someone who is a beginner speaker or maybe lower intermediate level. And then once you get a little more knowledge of English and you need a little bit faster of a speed, we have Spotlight Advanced, which uses our same script, our same simpler sentence style, but with a more natural speaking speed. So it's not gonna be quite as slow. And yeah, and then we have Spotlight Live, which is just kind of fun, but we have a conversation. And this program is really about, yeah, you and I having a conversation. So this is two native English speakers speaking at a normal speed to each other about this interesting topic. So hopefully we will, we find something to talk about in every program. What I love about Spotlight is, it's not just practicing like, waiter, may I have a napkin or whatever. It's actually talking about real issues that impact your life or that you can use to improve your life. So it gives people a sense of what two native speakers might talk about in reaction. So. And how you can enter a conversation and talk about stuff. So Adam, I know that you are dying to find out what program we are gonna talk about today. Yes, I am. This is actually a program that I wrote about the human face. It's called, what is your face saying? Yes. I have more face than most people. My face goes all the way back. That's a little bit gross. So really, so like I said, I wrote this program and I wrote it because I saw a BBC special called the human face. Okay. And I thought it was so interesting because of course everyone has a face. Right. Right. And you sometimes don't know what your face is doing. Right. I know that I apparently have a very expressive face. So one of the vocabulary words in this program is expression. And an expression, a facial expression is when you move your muscles to make an emotion on your face. So like happy, like, or surprised, or, you know, sad. Those are all facial expressions. Right. And so what I was saying, I have a very expressive face apparently. So sometimes, you know, if you ask me, can I have that last donut? And I'll be like, sure, you can have it. And you know that my words are saying yes. Your true feelings are expressed in your face. My face often betrays my feelings. Yes. It doesn't exactly give the message that I wanted to. You know, it is interesting because no one accidentally says something that they don't mean to say, right? Well, I mean, I mean, it can come out. It's a lot harder to do that. It can come out. You can say, oh, you can exclaim something. But our faces show things that we don't always mean, right? Like you were just saying, like, you know, in your heart, you should let me have that donut. But your face, your true feelings come out. And that is just a fascinating kind of look into humans. Yeah. Yeah. So when I was watching that documentary, it, you know, impacted, it made me think about the way that I am over expressive in my face. Do you think that would you like to dial it back? It'd be more stoic? Yeah, I think so. Like I have worked very hard. Like when maybe I hear something that I don't want to hear or something, you know, I try to just, I don't know. I can't think of an example. I just agree with you. I think you should let the expression come out. They come out by themselves. Right. If you're watching this right in the comments, we want votes. Should Liz be robotic or should she be expressive? See, I have to do a lot of work with my eyebrows. Yeah. Well, and I will say, like, you know, I used to do some acting in high school and college. And one of my acting teachers would say, well, I mean, not all the time, but she was, she talked one time about, like, moving each muscle in your face one at a time. So to practice being able to control your facial expressions. So, but, you know, like, you just move, like, this muscle here or just your one eyebrow. And because your face in this program, it kind of describes it a little better, but your face is just covered in muscles. It's all muscle under here. We're going to have to make a thumbnail for this that's, like, us going like this. But so there's so many muscles. And we don't, you know, we don't think about them for one. Right. And for two, we don't actually know how to control them as well as, say, we can control our arms, you know, up and down and whatever. So that is really interesting to me about how you can control those muscles in your face to make expression. I did, I do remember that the hearing a story about the actor Jim Carrey as a kid would stare at the mirror in the bathroom and do just that. He has a very expressive face. Yes, I was just going to say, if in case you don't know who Jim Carrey is, his face moves almost, like, inhumanly, right? Right. Like, it's like rubber where the way his face can move. So that's not surprising to me. Yeah, so he started, we wanted to be able to do impressions and he wanted to do faces and he would make his face. He would practice like an athlete would practice running or jumping. He did face exercises, basically. But that does give me, I have a question for you. So you talked about maybe being self-conscious of how expressive your face is. Over the last year, we've been doing more Zoom calls and everybody's been doing more Zoom calls. So like right now, I can see you on my computer screen and I can see me. Do you think, because I always look at myself, honestly, I think we all do, do you think we'll get better at using facial expressions because of this? Or do you think we'll just, we're more self-conscious and we'll stop using them? I don't know. I mean, I think it's less about like controlling your facial expressions and more about controlling your look to other people. You know, like you don't want to, I don't know, have the camera up your nose or that sort of stuff. So I'm not sure if that's, but it is true. You might be able to identify your facial expressions in a better way and to control your, because there have been some Zoom calls I've been on where somebody said something and I wished my camera had been off because I make an expression like this, like, oh, you know. Yeah, yeah. And I wish I had not done that. You know what we should, it would be interesting to take some pictures of ourselves and see if our listeners could identify what this facial expression, or I'm sure there's some kind of quiz online. Okay, so Adam, one of the interesting things in this program and that I also learned from this documentary, maybe, I don't know, it was a long time ago. First of all, there are over 10,000 expressions that humans can make with their faces. So if you think about how many muscles there are in your face and then expressions across different cultures, that's pretty incredible. 10,000 different expressions. The other one is that there are seven expressions that are universal. Okay. So almost everyone in the world can identify these seven expressions, no matter what culture they're from. Can I guess? Can I guess, do you know what they are? If I guess? Yeah, I do know what they are. Yeah. Surprise? Okay, yep, that's fine. Or shock, like if something happens, if an animal came and was going to attack you or something, that kind of, I think everybody would. Or like if someone was going to throw you a birthday party, a surprise party that you didn't know about. And you walk in and you're like, Okay, surprise. Sadness? Crying? Yep, sadness is one. Sadness. Anger? Yeah. Okay, I guess three. You have to do them when you guess them, Adam. Mmm. That's my angry face. I think that one is really anger. Something with joy or happiness. Yeah, happiness is one. So like literally everyone in the world can recognize when your face is happy. Yeah. I would say shame or embarrassment, but I don't feel like that one is gonna make the list. Like I don't think that would be... No, there's one that's kind of similar to that. Not really embarrassment, but like shame. Like imagine if you see someone doing something that they should not. Oh, what emotion would that be? They shouldn't be doing it. It's like guilt. These are not common words. Right. They're doing something that they shouldn't be doing. I don't know. Maybe when someone hits another person, you might have like disgust. Oh, disgust, yes. Disgust is a good one. Like I want this thing away from me. It's not right. It's not... The other one that's in a similar vein is contempt. Ooh, contempt. I know that is a very dangerous thing in healthy relationships. Yes. You do not want to feel, like if you feel contempt for the person you're with, you may want to get some help. Okay, so I want to tell you a little bit more about that after, but there's one more emotion that you've got. You've got happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, contempt and disgust. There's one more. And this is probably the most common one I would guess. Is there... Well, a very common one. Is it something with like... Here, I've got a hint for you. Oh, you've got a hint. So let's say that you're walking down the street and all of a sudden a rabid dog starts chasing you. You're not gonna be surprised. You're gonna be... Afraid? Yeah, fear. Fear, okay. Fear. So that's interesting to me that you've got anger, shock and fear. No, anger and fear and surprise. Surprise. So surprise is a little bit different than shock, right? But the subtlety, like because those are such survival, like we need those things to survive, but things like romantic love is expressed differently in the face or... Yeah. That's so interesting. But that's seven out of 10,000 you're saying. Yeah, yeah, that you can... So like for example, people in one culture might use their eyebrows more to express, to have their expressions or might use their mouth more or whatever. And so those wouldn't necessarily be universal. But okay, so getting back to this contempt one and relationships, this was another thing that I found really interesting in the research of this program because this program follows the story of a couple who go to like couples counseling because they think their marriage is over, right? Okay. And they find, maybe I should leave it as a spoiler. No, they find that they are having a little bit of communication problems, but the real problem is that they are, their faces are showing contempt for each other. And so not only is a person picking up from their partner, you know, you're angry at me or your words are mean, but their face is also showing like you're an idiot. And so it's just an additional layer of communication that's happening. Yeah, you know, that is very interesting because I could say to you, Liz, you are the worst. Which I don't actually mean, but you know what the words mean because my face is saying that's where the true meaning comes, I think. Yeah. Well, that's why there's so much problem over like texting too, right? Like if you text me, Liz, you're the worst and you don't put like a winky emoji or like smiling. I know, I do not like emojis, but I started to use them for that reason that I realized, oh, they're like that facial expression. Yeah, that's not a whole communication. People need to know that I'm just joking or that I'm serious. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, yeah, okay, so the other thing I wanted, I know we're running up against time now probably, but the one other thing I wanted to touch on is that the program talks about like facial expressions in babies. Oh. And another thing that I found really interesting that babies even like minutes old, minutes, okay? Scientists showed them like three pictures, right? One was just a blank page, one was just a page of like random shapes and one was like a picture of like a face. Right. A new face. And so the babies would follow the face over the other two things. So, you know, they held up a blank page and moved it around. The babies didn't really follow that with their eyes. They follow the face, which I think is so interesting because we're just, we're hardwired to do that, right? Yeah. Like we're hardwired to look at people's faces and to respond to those emotions. Yeah. Yeah, no. So opening it up for like deeper, sorry, I was gonna say opening it up for a deeper question, like what is all of this like texting communication doing for us, right? Is it maybe harmful that we're not seeing each other's faces when we communicate? Well, I think that's part of the question, you know, over the last year with people wearing masks and covering part of their face, you know, sometimes I know that when I have to run to the store to pick up some food or some groceries and I see somebody that I might know a little bit, I'm not gonna stop and talk to them, but I try to smile at people, but I have to do it like this. Yeah, and then you look very foolish. You do, you feel foolish, but you wanna communicate, you know, normally you'd be like- It's a bolder express with your eyes because your mouth can't- Exactly, exactly. So just trying to use whatever resources are available to communicate that way. Cause you know, like you're trying to be polite, you're trying to show that you're, you know, happy to see this person, but- Or I- Right. Yeah. It's so, it's a strange thing. I think masks will be with us for a long time, if not forever, and texting and emojis are definitely not going anywhere. So it's an interesting question and I think I would love to hear from some of the listeners of the program what they think as we travel more, as we interact more, will our facial expressions ever just kind of become merged or what part of your facial expressions and using your language, do you think we would find interesting? Yeah, yeah, that's true. Or even just like how you think that this past year, 2020, has impacted facial expressions, right? Like do you do the same thing as Adam at the grocery store or somewhere where you're like, Yeah, that's a good question. Well, Adam, I've really enjoyed this discussion. Yeah. And I hope you all get to listen to the what is your facing program. We'll link that down below in the program notes. And we would love to hear what you have to say about it. Be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any of our videos of any of our levels of English practice. Click the little bell when you do that so you get a notification every time we have a new video. You can find our programs on our website, spotlightenglish.com, on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Thank you so much for watching and for joining in with our discussion.