 And yes, we are live. I've said the word fun about a hundred times. So, hey Liz, how's it going? We are live. Good, I think, you know. What do you mean, and you think it's good? Or you think we're live? I'm trying to like set up YouTube comments so that I can like, so that I can also read YouTube comments. It's true, until we get that first comment, you're always like, are we live? Are we, is really anybody out there? We're hoping the system is still working. Are you out there? You can tell that it's very warm here because I have put my hair up. I have as well. That's why I have no hair as well. Just to stay cool, just to, you know, to see what's going on. Well, there are a lot of people joining us so we know everything's working correctly. Awesome. We have comments from both Facebook and YouTube, so hello everyone. Wow, we're thrilled. We have so many people. If you are joining us for the first time, I should say my name is Adam and you can- I'm Liz Wade. Yeah, the one, the only. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple Adam novices. There are. But there's only one Liz Wade. One of them I think is a scientist of some kind. Well, there was a Lutheran pastor and my other, my favorite Liz Wade, oh, see, now this is what happens when I start YouTube. My other favorite Liz Wade is a character in a movie. Oh. I think that they might have stolen my name to use in this movie because it's such a cool name. I think if you're watching this, don't tell people, let's give people a chance to figure out if you know what the name of the movie, where I care- Oh, I don't even know the movie. Well, how do you know it's a character in a movie then? Oh, I Googled it. I mean, don't you Google your name sometimes? Yeah, mine just comes up with a bunch of spotlight stuff. Well, so does mine other than this movie reference. Okay, well, maybe it really is you. All right, we do have some cool comments. Oh my goodness. This is like one of those mornings that is just getting away from me. And of course, for many people watching right now, it could be the nighttime or your lunch break or maybe you're watching us at work, so. That is an interesting English phrase, getting away from you. Yeah, that is true. Well, it seems, I mean, you can kind of understand what it means, right? Things are getting away from you, like you try to keep catching like. What you wanted to do or your plans. Yeah, what you wanted to do, your plans. All right, so, Asifa says hi and hello. Zone Tony says hello. Dr. Chinvu, hello. We've got Lolo is from Saudi Arabia, hello. Imran says hi, Adam and Liz, hoping you are both doing great. Oh, that's so nice. I hope you're doing great too. What else we got, Adam? Oh, we have some people asking where are we? We are in the United States. Okay, sorry. I just think I think I just got my favorite comment, maybe of all time. Okay. Maybe you see it on YouTube. It says, Maagharadzana says, hi Liz, you look like Lara Croft today. Boom! That's true. For those of you who don't know who Lara Croft is, she is a video game heroine who has a movie, I think movies starring Angelina Jolie, I think. Yeah, there might be a couple movies, honestly. Could be. So if you are new to spotlight, we just want to say hello, welcome, and to know that in this spotlight live, we are talking at normal speed. So if you can't understand us, you may want to try some of, spend some more time listening to our programs, which are at a slower speed. So this is for, this is a fairly advanced conversation that we're having. Is that accurate, Liz? Yes, yeah. We are two native English speakers who are speaking as if we are in a real converse, I mean, we are in a real conversation. So we're just speaking like we would as friends. Yeah. Yes, so we are happy to be here. We're gonna talk about a lot of interesting, fun things, some new things that are happening with the Spotlight program that is coming out. We apologize for two things. If we mispronounce your name, we try our best. But also if we can't get to all your comments, however, if you're on YouTube and you hit that join button, we and join, it's a few dollars, you can join us and get a special emoji or you can give us a few, a dollar or something and then do a super comment. So we will make sure to see those comments and answer those questions. And of course we will try to answer them. Yes, right in the chat area, you can see there's like a little smiley face and the little sort of like money sign, a dollar sign and then you can click on that dollar sign and we will be sure to read your comment. Some people have used that super to say, I really want to support your work and this is one small way that I can do that. Some people have said, well, I've been using the script on your website for a couple years, so I wanted to do this to help pay for that service. And we love anything that you can contribute. And of course, that money goes toward writing scripts and posting videos on YouTube, making new videos. So yeah, it's cool. And as Adam was saying, if you want more from Spotlight English to get PDF scripts delivered to you or a personal video shout out for some special thing in your life or just to have your name on every video, you can click join below, learn more about that. And it does not charge you unless you want it to. So yeah, it's cool. It's very cool. Well, we have a lot of stuff to talk about. So we always say, please tell us where you're from. We have Asa Alshara from Syria who says hello. So when you tell us where you are, we love hearing where around the world that you're from, but we'll try to get to those. We have a few things we do wanna talk about. Where do you wanna start, Liz? Should we talk about upcoming programs? Giving people a little teaser? The place that we should start, Adam, is that you need a special video shout out. Oh, do I? Because you just had a very special day. I did. A days ago? Two days ago, Monday. Yes. It was your birthday. Happy birthday, Adam. Happy birthday to me. All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, how old am I? Put it in the comments. How old do you think I am? Be generous, be kind. Yeah. I will tell you in- Why just be truthful? So how old do you think Adam is? I would love to see these comments. I'll give you the full look. The full what? The full look, the profile, you can see. Oh, I see, from all angles. See, yeah. 17, ooh, I like that. Oh. 17. A seafy. I think that person's being too kind, Adam. No. Ooh, we're getting lots of good guesses. We're getting close. You guys are getting close. We've got, okay, so while we're doing that, we've also got a high from Ukraine. We've got Snuvzay saying hello from Ecuador and Facebook. Teji from India saying hello. Oh, we got some numbers here. 32, 38. Oh, we're getting some good numbers. You know, I think they're all close-ish. Yeah. Whoa, there's like on YouTube, there's like a million numbers. I know. 43, 35, 17, 39, 38, 37, wow. All right, I'll tell you how old I am. You guys are, I am 42 years old. Yeah, so there were a couple really close ones. Yeah. Yeah, I'm impressed. Yeah, thank you for guessing. For all of you who guessed younger, thumbs up. For all of you who guessed older, thumbs down. No, don't say thumbs down. You can still join us, even if you said Adam was 55. I know, I will just have tears. I'm going to become that living emoji of the crying face. Adam's going to say, like, OK, I'm just going to be back in 10 minutes, and then you're going to. No, I'm the age I am, right? What are you going to do? Yeah, it's true. You know, I think that there are some benefits to getting older. Such as? Oh, well, you know, you're wiser. You're ready to be wiser, I guess. You have more experience, more life experience. Would you go back, if you could? Like, is there an age that you wish you could, like, you're like, oh, that went. And everything would be the same? Yeah, you wouldn't. I wouldn't be like, I go back. Like, I take back my age. Like, I become 25 again, but everybody around me is the same age. Oh, that's interesting. I don't know how. I don't know the parameters in time travel. I haven't worked out yet. Well, when you get that question settled, then get back to me. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think getting older, when I wake up in the morning, I have to do more, like, stretching. But, you know, this is how life goes. Kat and we have a whole series about getting older and about being healthy at all stages of life. I know, I have. Maybe you need to check out some of those programs. I have a water bottle. I'm trying to drink more water. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you all for guessing my age. Now you know how old I am. I will say Liz is younger than me. Yes, I am. That's what we'll just leave it there. By so many years. Let's just not talk about it. Let's not talk about it. You've got a birthday coming. Now, on your next birthday, we'll talk about it then. Yeah. My birthday is in about six months, so. Well, I'm sorry that I didn't post on Facebook for everybody to give you your birthday greetings, but I hope that the birthday greetings here were enough. Yes. Happy birthday, Adam. Happy birthday to me. Yes. So yeah, what else? Does anyone have any questions for us? We didn't say at the beginning that we invite you to ask questions to us or about Spotlight or whatever. I will say, unfortunately, we learned just before this video started that our website might be down. So if you want to tell us that, we do know that. And as soon as this live stream is done, we will be working on it. I need to give a shout out to a comment. English with Ted says, your program on hate crimes has inspired me to pick up the torch and start a campaign focusing on stopping hate crimes through storytelling. Wow, that's awesome. I think that's amazing. I mean, I'm a big fan of story and storytelling. And so just an extra shout out. And it's always, we make these programs and we know that people watch them and listen to them, but we don't know the effect that they have all the time. So thank you. We really appreciate that. Yeah, that's really great. Josefa says, what have you learned from life, Adam? Oh, in my wisdom. Yes, so what is your wisdom share with us? I will give you a nugget of wisdom. A nugget, a small little bit of wisdom. Everything is made better through taking a deep breath. That's good advice, Adam. Nothing is made worse. Unless you're underwater. Yeah, well. But you still need to take a deep breath before you go underwater, so yeah. Well, thank you for that nugget of wisdom. So I did want to talk about our new programs coming up, which should be pretty fun. One is about quick decisions. And it's based on a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink and about how your sort of gut feelings can influence your life. And I love that you brought up Ted's comment because many, well, some of our gut decisions, our quick decisions are based on sort of our biases and things that we have been talking about in that 10 ways to fight hate series. And so it's a way to really investigate your biases and how you can change how those are coming out. So I think that will be a cool program. We also have one coming out about COVID vaccines. And it's not just about COVID vaccines. It's about sending vaccines around the world and how that process has happened and continues to happen and is happening now for COVID vaccines. And it's a lot more interesting than you would think. Oh, it is definitely a program where I learned a lot about the history of vaccines. And when you think about before there was like refrigeration at very cold levels, how would you transfer a vaccine? It's not always the best stories, but it is very interesting. And I learned a lot. Yeah, the story in the program tells how I won't tell it because you really do have to check out this program. But it tells how vaccines traveled from Europe to Central America and then back and many places around the world, but specifically first to Central America. And it is so interesting. Yeah, I think so. Imram Khan Pathan asked, can you do a program about Afghanistan of present situation? First of all, we need to say that if you are listening to us from Afghanistan or around Afghanistan or your heart belongs to Afghanistan, we really just want to say we hope you are safe. We hope those people that you love are safe. And we try not to get too into politics or one country versus another. We really want to focus on loving people and making sure that everybody is safe and has a chance to grow and learn. But yeah, I don't know how to answer that. The question specifically, Liz, about a program about that. Afghanistan is, of course, a rich country with a rich history and a rich culture, but also a very difficult history. Right. Well, one of the things is we are not a news program. So we have a longer what we call lead time. And so we do write programs that don't talk about current events, but they might talk about events that are going to happen or that are planned. But talking about current events, we just don't talk about those because it takes too much preparation to make a spotlight program and all the videos and podcasts that go along with it. So we probably would not do a specific program about the situation in Afghanistan until maybe it's not a current event anymore. However, we do have a couple programs that I can think of right off the top of my head about Afghanistan. So if you wanted to learn more about the country in general or things that have happened in the country that are positive, we do have a program about Skatistan, which is a skateboarding program that helped helps kids in Afghanistan learn to skateboard and is a community program for them. We have one about female climbers in Afghanistan. And I know we have another one that I'm not thinking of right now. So if you do want to just learn more about that country, that is one way that you can learn some vocabulary. You can learn a little bit about the history, about positive things about Afghanistan. So I really do encourage you to check those out if that's something that you're interested in. But we probably won't be talking about current events because it just takes too long to make a program like that. We're happy to talk about them in a live or if we think about it in one of our conversational programs. Yeah. And so we talk about our lives. And obviously, that's what's happening in Afghanistan is in the news and it's problematic. I think one of the things that I, so I'll just talk about myself. And Liz, you can comment. And of course, if you're watching, please comment yourself. One of the things that's hard, it seems like with the pandemic, with things like Afghanistan and politics and a lot of different things, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. So one of the things that we hope that spotlight is for us and for each of you is a place where you can come and feel good. I don't think that's too simple. I think there's something like we want our programs, even the difficult ones, to offer a little bit of hope and encouragement. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like this about our 10 Ways to Fight Hate series, it's a lot of talking about hate and terrible events and things. But I hope that it gives, I hope all of our programs, but this series to fight hate, I hope it gives people some confidence and some real and concrete steps that they can do. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's one of the ways that you and I kind of push away at the darkness inside our own stuff, just to say, you know what, we're going to make sure that these programs are the best programs they can be, that they help people practice their English, but also help make the world a little bit better. I hope they do. Let's go answer a question from YouTube from where did I? Where did I? I lost it. Which one? Oh, here we is. Ada Mimas says, how can I speak English very well? So we have a couple different levels of programs. Our classic program is slower speed. It uses a smaller vocabulary. Our advanced program is the same script as the classic program, but it's a little faster. So you can train your ear to listen a little better. But what you can also do with the script and listening at the same time is you can try to copy the voices in the script. And we have labeled each video for the past months, year, with US and UK voices. So if you especially want to listen to a US accent and copy that, you can copy the speakers that are in blue. And if you want to copy a UK accent, you can copy the speakers that are in red. And you can also, and we, Adam and I have a US accent. So if you want to listen to conversations between US speakers, that's a really great way to train your ear. But you can also pause the video and just repeat what we said. Pause, back it up, repeat what we said. And you can get those sort of cadences or ways that we're speaking down that way if you just copy those sort of things. That's one way that you can use Spotlight to speak with an English accent. Yeah. Well, and of course, there is no single English accent. As some of people have said in our comments, like you can have. Yeah, y'all. If you live in the South, you might talk like this. Yes. Yes, there's a lot of different accents in across the United States, across England, in Australia, in South Africa, Ireland. I mean, there are a lot of different English speaking countries which have different accents. Yeah, let's hear an accent, Adam. What's your best accent? I always have to like ramp into my accent. So I always have to like stumble forward. Let's see if I can do an Australian. So it would be a little more lilting. Oh my gosh, that's so good. Yeah, so it's a little more open in the back of your throat. That's more like beetle, someone of the beetles. Yeah, I don't know. I think you have an English accent, but there are so many accents in England that it's a particular accent. Or like you can like talk like you're from like California and you're like really cool. And that is like something that I think is really neat. That's like all I can do. Or at least all you're willing to try on camera. Yeah. I was going to say maybe you'd do Klingon for us. Oh yeah, you can't do that. No. If people don't know this, Liz is a big star trek. Well, you don't need to tell everybody that. You don't need to be embarrassed of that. Yeah, it's true. I will tell you, OK, so getting back to some personal stories. Yeah. We have, I don't know, we have a couple programs about monarch butterflies. Maybe not a couple, maybe one or two, maybe one. Anyway, so these beautiful butterflies come to Michigan where we live and they eat this plant called milkweed. And so a couple years ago, some milkweed started growing in our yard because it is a native plant in Michigan. And this last year, we got a little caterpillar from a friend and we put it in a little container and we watched and waited until it turned into a butterfly and sent it away. So this year, we decided that we would try and find our own caterpillars on our milkweed. And we did. We actually found, I think, six caterpillars. Oh, nice. And so then we watched the caterpillars grow from like a little egg because they are very, very tiny. And then the caterpillar comes out and you can barely see it on the milkweed. And then it gets huge. And then it crawls to the top of the cage and makes a chrysalis. And I think I'm actually going to make a little video about this because it is really cool. And today, we have a chrysalis that will turn into a butterfly. So I am so excited to see it. Well, in one of the things, and we may say this in the program, I don't remember all the details, is that when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, in its little cocoon or chrysalis, I don't know the difference, chrysalis. A cocoon is for a moth and a chrysalis is for a butterfly. Well, thank you for teaching me. Its body turns, it like liquefies itself. Yeah. And it turns just into liquid and then it reforms. It is, and they don't really understand how it does it. Like scientists, like people don't, they just, it's like magic. It is like magic. So that is a really exciting thing that I am looking forward to today. And if you want to see a video about that, let me know. And I would love to make that. Yeah, I think you just have to know. Well, we are at 27 minutes, Liz. We wanna make sure we've hit everything. Some people have asked us to talk about back to school. Oh, okay. So, well, there's, for us, we have been going, like my kids have been going back to school. And yeah, they've been in school for about a week. They are county, so our, what would you, how would you define a county? Like a region? A region. Yeah, a region has said, their health department has said that kids must wear masks at school if they can't be vaccinated. So, well, any kids that are younger than 12. And so they are wearing masks and they're at school. But around the world, people are going back to school. And I'm curious, like what going back to school is looking like for people all around the world, or if they are going back to school. Because of course, COVID is still here. It's gonna be for a while. It's even scarier than it was before. So, yeah. Yeah, I think there's gonna be a lot of changes that we still haven't understood. And school is just one of them. Yeah. Yeah, so whether you're learning online or you're learning in person or your children are learning in person, yeah, let us know, stay safe. Education is very, very important. Our health is very, very important. It's not always easy to know what's best, but stay safe, stay smart, do it all. Just do it all. Check out, check out joining, check out programs. Yeah. And one of the things that we would love is if you can help get the word out about. Yes. And just tell a friend, you know, you don't have to share it on social media if you don't want. But think of somebody. But we would love it if you did. We would love it if you did, of course. But we just would love if you would tell somebody you know about Spotlight and we just really appreciate it. We say it every time, but we never are gonna stop. Spotlight, you guys are the best. Even liking this video is such a big help to us and our channel, so. Yeah, thank you. I guess that's it. That's it. Yeah, make sure to be sure to visit our website. They'll be at www.spotlightenglish.com. We're on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. Wherever you get your podcasts, you have an app you can find us anywhere. Anywhere you want. We'll be there. Wherever you want. Yeah, until then, I think we're saying, listen, watch, practice, learn. And then spotlight out.