 Hello everyone and welcome to a real conversation between two native English speakers. I am Adam Novus and with me is Liz Wade. Hello Liz. Hi Adam. We are talking about a program today which is part of a series, a wonderful series of programs called 10 Ways to Fight Hate. Educate Yourself. That's today's, this is number five of the series. Make sure you check out the earlier things which talk about, now I'm gonna blank on them Liz. Help me out here. Act. Join forces. Join forces. Support the victims. Three. What's the other one? Oh, I was so good. I had those first. Anyway, we don't need to remember because this is why we make lists. There's a whole playlist in advanced and classic programs. Yes. So today we're going to be talking about education and educate yourself about certain things. Before we, it's, it's speak up. That's number four. Oh, I was like, I thought I had the wrong program. Speak up is number four. So we are doing educate yourself today. Yeah. So check out that playlist. I want to tell you a second while you're checking that out. If you're on YouTube, there's a little button underneath this video that says join. I would say click that button and find out all about YouTube memberships for a few dollars a month. You get a lot of extra content. You can request scripts. You can get some bonus videos. We're throwing all sorts of fun stuff there. A lot of people have joined. We thank you in our videos. It's just a great little way for you to support us. If you don't want to do that, if you're like, that's not for me, hit like, subscribe to this video. That really helps us. And of course, it helps you because you won't miss our content, right? So Liz, this program is about educate yourself and people might not think, well, how does education, how is educating myself fight hate? So the program follows a, starts with a story about an incident in France where there was a hate crime. A terrible incident in France. Yes. And a hate crime is, well, there's a great quote from, let me see if I can find it, from the president of France, Macron, who says every time a citizen is attacked because of their age, their appearance or their religion, it is an attack on the whole country. So age, appearance, religion. I don't know what else would fall under. Preferences. Any, if you're attacking someone because of who they are. Yeah, they're not attacking you. Choose that's just who they are. Just who they are. Yes. What group they're a part of or whatever. So then it talks about different ways that people get. So I'm going to summarize a lot of ideas. People get the wrong idea about what a group is and why they feel threatened by that group or hateful toward that group. Right? And then what we can do and what education does to correct those understandings. Yeah. Well, if you don't mind, I want to kind of zoom back to France at the beginning of this program. Because as I was sort of researching this program with the writer Amelia, I discovered that in France, they're actually for the last few years, in the United States, we talked about in the Speak Up program, we talked about how there was a lot of anti-Asian hate in the last few years. But in France, it has been anti-Jewish hate that has grown at a very fast rate. And so these stories of the eight-year-old boy and the woman are not rare. They're more and more common than they used to be. And I love that you brought up Macron's quote because I was going to bring up the same thing. Last week, we talked about how you know, you maybe accept some risk as a person in order to think about the wider community. And I think that, you know, it's the same here. Like if you are attacking one person, you're attacking the whole community because together we are stronger as a community. So I thought that was a really beautiful quote. Yeah. I think that's, I think one of the things that I, my grandmother says family is the most important in the world. And what we need to do is try to see the whole world as our family. Yeah. And I think that is what we're talking about with community. And it's very easy to see someone as outside. And that allows us to hate them. Right. To put it, I mean, I try not to hate people, but to have wrong ideas, to have, the program talks about biases against people. Right. Well, it makes it, and I think this is a pretty common English phrase, like us versus them. It's making people into two groups, right? It's separating. Well, like, I'm not like them because I'm whatever or they are not like us. Right. You might be following a different English practice program on YouTube. So you are not a spotlight listener. No, don't say that. Everyone can be a spotlight listener. No, that's what I'm saying. We are accepting of everyone. Spotlight, we, here at Spotlight, we have a very open and embracing Adam. Yeah. You know, I will say, if I, if you don't mind, if I tell a little story. Please. When we had ice cream together, Adam, a couple of months ago in the summer, we posted a picture of that on our YouTube community page. And somebody asked, I think they said, like, are you married? Maybe something like, you shouldn't be so close together or something like that. And I responded to say, no, we're not married, but, you know, we leaned in just to take a picture. And then the commenter felt very uncomfortable. And she said, I'm so sorry, I'll delete my comment. And I said, no, please leave it up because I love that we are now learning about each other. You know, we are, we're not, we're not as different as you think. And I love learning about you. And I hope that you love learning about, about me. And I love that about the spotlight community, that we are all together and we're all interested in learning about each other. Yeah. I mean, we want to practice English and we want to help you practice English. But we also want to, I mean, we're curious about the world. We're curious about people who are different than us. And I think that's what this program is really about is, is maintaining curiosity. Because as soon as I put a label on you, you are, let me give you an example. You are a woman, Liz. What? I know. And so I could, I could think that means something, right? And some of those things could be, could be true. Like, maybe you have children, which I know you do. But maybe, you know, what does that mean that you're interested in? What does that mean that you're skilled at? Right. Some of those things might be true. Some of those things might not be true. But we have all these ideas to help us. But until you get to know me, you don't know if those things are true. I don't know if those things are true. Right. So it's very difficult to maintain an openness. Because throughout most of human history, it's, it's been our, our group that's kept us safe, right? Safe from animals and predators. And, and it's, it's, we've been able to divide and divide labor and be able to create community that way. But it can be very damaging when we have, when I tell you who you are, rather than asking you who you are. Right. Or not let a person be who they are, like to grow into something else. If you're keeping someone into that, into that box. Right. And I think I would love, this might be very difficult to ask. But if you felt hurt, or that you can, if there's a piece of you that you really feel like you haven't been able to express, I hope you can put that in the comments here. I know that might be a vulnerable thing to do. Right. We want spotlight to be a place where you can say, you know, I am someone who wants to practice English. I am someone who wants to be a writer, be an artist, be a scientist, whatever, whatever you want to do, that you maybe feel like you can't do. Right. Let us know what that is. And, and I don't think we'll be able to help you. But yeah, we want, we want you to, I want you to just feeling heard and feel helpful, you know, like to be in a community and just say, this is, this is what I'm feeling. That can be really helpful. Yeah. Because you are, and that's a message we want you to hear, not just today, but throughout spotlight programs. And I will say, and this touches on this, a word that is fun to say, I think it's fun to say is propaganda. Oh, yes. Yeah. And I wanted to talk about that because it's a fun word propaganda. It's got a nice little propaganda to it. Although it's like kind of a bad thing. It is. Well, I think there's a part of me that thinks I am not influenced by propaganda or advertising. This is what I tell everyone when they're like, oh, ads don't affect me. Yeah. Ads do affect you. That's why they work. Right. Like, there would be no Facebook if advertising didn't work. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Like it's not just like, it's not just someone else. You are also affected by advertising the same way you are also affected by propaganda. Right. And propaganda, if you don't understand what it is, it's a fancy word for, how would you say it's kind of like an ad for hate. Yeah. Yep. It's trying to convince you by scare tactics, like making something very scary or like personally affecting you. Or even appealing to your sense of like scientific reason and using studies and numbers in a certain way to convince you that say a certain people group or any kind of group is less than you are. Right. So it looks, propaganda looks, can look very scientific. It can look very professional and, you know, unofficial. But if it's message is like, it's us versus them, that's not actual, that's propaganda. Right. And if it's very bad propaganda, you're probably going to be able to see it. Right. Good propaganda will feel like the news, it will feel like suggested con content from Facebook or it could, it could be anything. So I, but I don't fit want people who are watching this to think you can't trust anything. Right. Right. Cause there are trustworthy sources. This is, this is part of the reason that you, you like work toward educating yourself. Right. So if you know the, for example, there, there's a lot of ways you can educate yourself. But if you know the like symbols of hate groups around you, or you know the sort of talking points of, of a group, you can sort of look at something either a news article or a pamphlet or, you know, even something somebody's saying with a critical eye. So you can look at it and ask more questions about it. And then, you know, if you, if you are not always questioning in a bad way, but just to get at what, what is actually the bit of truth that this is trying to tell you, educating yourself can help that process be a lot easier. Right. And I think this is, I mean, we're, we're bleeding over into some of the other aspects of this series or the other episodes. Well, they're all interconnected. They are connected. And I think finding that personal connection, finding a person in your community who you don't know, having friends who are different than you, having, yeah, travel is a great way to expand not right now because of restrictions. Maybe safely right now. But it is a great way of saying like, oh wow, pick your country, travel to that country and realize there's not just one thing in that country. Yeah, you know, reading about somebody's culture from a trusted source from somebody who's telling the story of that culture in a way can really make you start to understand. We actually have a program about that called reading and understanding. And it's our most popular program of all time on YouTube, where the beginning talks about a little girl who reads a story about the South and about how black people were treated in the United States in the South and how it was very terrible. And she felt empathy about it and also like understanding. And so when you put yourself in the shoes of someone who is different than you, you do have that feeling, that empathy that you can use. And it takes you out of us versus them, right? And it makes it us only. Yeah, yeah. We are all we. Yes. Well, I think that is a great vision for meeting people, being prepared. I think let's end it by saying we as a spotlight community, here's my challenge, be prepared to welcome people who you don't know, but also be prepared to fight hate when you encounter it because you will. And I think educating yourself is a great way to do that. So make sure you check out the rest of the series as they come out. You can find them on YouTube. You can go to our website, which is spotlightenglish.com. Find us on Twitter. Like and subscribe to this video. Hit that little bell so you get notifications when we've got new content. It's going to be ringing every week because we're coming out with new content every week. And on behalf of Liz, I'm Adam Navas. Until next time, we hope you listen, watch, practice and learn. Spotlight out.