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Hi everybody, welcome to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语).

What's your name? Today we are going to talk about names.

Usually the first question we ask someone when we first meet him or her is, "what's your name?".

It's important to know what to call someone, right?

I mean, we don't want to go around saying,

"hey you, hey you, and you, the other you, tall guy, hey, short guy, you over there, the one with the blue shirt, what's your name again?"

If we forget someone's name after he or she has already told us, then we can ask, "what's your name again?".

Some people suggest that when you meet a person, you should say his or her name immediately after you hear it. 

For example, when someone says, "hi, my name's Jack", you should say "nice to meet you, Jack!"

This will help you to remember the name. OK, another good way to help people remember your name is to have an English name.

For those of you in China who are learning English and talking to people from other countries, it's a good idea to have an English name.

Having an English name makes it easier for foreigners to remember your name, and also it's easier for them to say it. 

Being a teacher in China, I have heard many, many English names.

There are names that are quite common in English speaking countries, like Jack, Michael, Billy, Cathy, Susan, Lisa.

There are names that are not exactly English names but were created by people, perhaps because they want to be unique (独特), or perhaps they just like the sound of it.

I remember that I once had a student named Jackfield, and yes, he was unique. I have never met anyone else like him.

There are names that are interesting words that are not usually used as names, but if someone likes that as a name, then that's ok too.

I have met people named Superman, and Charm, and Rainbow. 

You know, that's the thing about names. It is totally up to you (取决于你) what you want others to call you.

In America, people like to use first names (名), so we often say, "please call me Steve", if your first name is Steve, or whatever the person's first name is. 

"Please call me by my first name."

We call this name a given name because it was given to you, usually by your parents, or grandparents. 

Your last name (姓), also called your family name, or surname, is a name that you really cannot choose, it's already settled and there is not much discussion.

A first name, on the other hand, that can be whatever you like, or whatever your family gave you, and if you want to change it later, you can change it.

And the good news is that if you have an English name, you can use whatever name you like.

It's a chance to become a new person, with a whole new name, a new personality (个性).

I always recommend an English name for people who are studying English.

Having an English name helps you to be the new you, the you that speaks English.

However, some people don't want an English name, and that's ok too! Just use your Chinese name and write it using Pinyin (拼音).

I remember my first class ever in China.

All the students had English names: Andrew, Susan, Betty, Eliza, Richard... and then, there was one student who didn't have an English name.

I asked him how I could say his name in Chinese, and he told me, but I couldn't say it right.

I was so embarrassed and so I asked if I could give him an English name.

He said, "nope, I just want to use my Chinese name, Zhong".

So, I just called him Zhong. You know, it's perfectly acceptable to use whatever name you want.

Your name is yours, and it's the one thing we use to identify (辨识) you. It's what makes you special.

If you would like an English name, for you or your child, I would be happy to help you choose one.

We can talk more about your new English name on WeChat, so please add me at meiguoshushu or scan the code below. 

Ok everybody, that's our program for today.

Thanks for listening to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语) and see you next time, zai jian, bye bye.

Hey everybody, welcome to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语). 

Today we are going to talk about Halloween and Jack-O'-Lanterns.

Here's the story below from the website Mental Floss:

The term "jack-o'-lantern" was first applied to people, not pumpkins. As far back as 1663, the term meant a man with a lantern, or a night watchman. Just a decade or so later, it began to be used to refer to the mysterious lights sometimes seen at night over bogs, swamps, and marshes.

These ghost lights—variously called  jack-o’-lanterns, hinkypunks, hobby lanterns, corpse candles, fairy lights, will-o'-the-wisps, and fool's fire—are created when gases from decomposing plant matter ignite as they come into contact with electricity or heat or as they oxidize. 

For centuries before this scientific explanation was known, people told stories to explain the mysterious lights. In Ireland, dating as far back as the 1500s, those stories often revolved around a guy named Jack.

As the story goes, Stingy Jack—often described as a blacksmith—invited the devil to join him for a drink. Stingy Jack didn't want to pay for the drinks from his own pocket, and convinced the devil to turn himself into a coin that could be used to settle the tab. 

The devil did so, but Jack skipped out on the bill and kept the devil-coin in his pocket with a silver cross so that the devil couldn’t shift back to his original form. Jack eventually let the devil loose, but made him promise that he wouldn’t seek revenge on Jack, and wouldn’t claim his soul when he died.

Later, Jack irked the devil again by convincing him to climb up a tree to pick some fruit, then carved a cross in the trunk so that the devil couldn’t climb back down (apparently, the devil is a sucker). Jack freed him again, on the condition that the devil once again not take revenge and not claim Jack’s soul.

When Stingy Jack eventually died, God would not allow him into heaven, and the devil, keeping his word, rejected Jack’s soul at the gates of hell. Instead, the devil gave him a single burning coal to light his way and sent him off into the night to “find his own hell.” 

Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has supposedly been roaming the earth with it ever since. In Ireland, the ghost lights seen in the swamps were said to be Jack’s improvised lantern moving about as his restless soul wandered the countryside. 

He and the lights were dubbed "Jack of the Lantern," or "Jack O'Lantern."

The legend immigrated to the new world with the Irish, and it collided with another old world tradition and a new world crop. 

Making vegetable lanterns was a tradition of the British Isles, and carved-out turnips, beets, and potatoes were stuffed with coal, wood embers, or candles as impromptu lanterns to celebrate the fall harvest. 

As a prank, kids would sometimes wander off the road with a glowing veggie to trick their friends and travelers into thinking they were Stingy Jack or another lost soul. 

In America, pumpkins were easy enough to come by and good for carving, and got absorbed both into the carved lantern tradition and the associated prank. 

Over time, kids refined the prank and began carving crude faces into the pumpkins to kick up the fright factor and make the lanterns look like disembodied heads.

By the mid-1800s, Stingy Jack’s nickname was applied to the prank pumpkin lanterns that echoed his own lamp, and the pumpkin jack-o’-lantern got its name.

OK everybody, thanks for listening to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语) and see you next time, zai jian, bye bye.

Today we are going to talk about fear (恐惧).

You know, Halloween (万圣节) is coming up, and I’ll talk more about that later this month, but for now let’s just talk about fear in general.

Who here hasn’t been afraid?

If you raised your hand, I’m afraid you didn’t understand the question or just not telling the truth because truth be told, we’ve all been afraid of something, at one point or another in our lives.

In fact, fear is what keeps us alive. Have you ever heard of the fight or flight instinct (战斗或逃跑本能) in animals?

It means that we either fight back against what we are afraid of, or we run away from it so that we can live to fight another day.

So it seems that sometimes it’s right to fight, and sometimes it’s better to take ourselves out of dangerous situations.

“The only thing to fear is fear itself.”

That phrase was made famous in 1932 by Franklin D. Roosevelt (富兰克林·罗斯福) during his first speech at President of the United States.

It means that we should not be afraid of anything except fear, since that fear will make us unable to move, unable to change.

So, in order to overcome fear, take action.

Do something, anything, and you may find that just trying to take care of a problem can help to make you less afraid.

So, what are you afraid of? Spiders, snakes, high places?

There are some special words that all use the same ending, phobia (恐怖症), which means fear.

So, for example, the fear of heights is called acrophobia (恐高症).

The first part of the word is from the Greek word which means, “the highest place”, and it’s used in another English word, acrobat (杂技演员).

Acrobats are the people who do dangerous things from high places, like in a circus performance.

By the way, some of the most famous acrobat groups in the world come from China.

They are pretty brave, and are definitely not afraid of heights, but if you are, you have acrophobia.

Phrases related to fear:

scaredy-cat

Cats are easily scared and run away at the slightest noise, or sudden movement.

A person who is often easily scared can be called a scaredy-cat.

afraid of your own shadow

Your shadow is not really something that can hurt you but sometimes it may look like someone is following you.

If it is just your shadow that you are afraid of, then you are really too easily scared.

scared stiff

Sometimes when people are scared, they cannot move, and thus, are stiff. If you are scared stiff, that means you are really, really scared.

scared out of your wits

This means pretty much the same thing as “scared stiff”. It means really, really scared.

Wits are our intelligence, our awareness. So if you are scared out of your wits, then that means you are so scared that you have lost your ability to think.

fools rush in where angels fear to tread

Originally written by Alexander Pope in 1711, the idiom means that people who don’t know any better will do things that more experienced people know they should avoid.

If even angels are afraid of going somewhere, then it must be pretty scary. 

Alright everybody, that’s our program for today. Keep an ear out for our next one about Halloween coming up soon.

Thanks for listening to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语) and we’ll see you next time, zai jian, bye bye.

Hey everybody, welcome to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语).

Today I'd like to talk about jujube (枣).

Some people have asked me about the name of this fruit in English. Is it red date? Chinese date? Well, both of those names are ok, but the much better name is "jujube". It is a delicious fruit, and a fun name to say.

Right now is the right time to eat some jujube in China. They are delicious, nutritious, and good for your health. The jujube is native to China, and it grows all over the country. 

Have a great autumn everyone, and I hope you love jujube as much as I do!

Thanks for listening to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语).

Hey everybody, welcome to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语).

It has been said that "a picture is worth a thousand words". In that case, there are books and books of words in the greatest online library ever compiled.

I'm talking about your Moments (朋友圈) on WeChat (微信), where at any time we can find photos of friends and strangers doing things from crazy, unique (独特) behavior to boring, everyday living.

The question that social scientists (社会学家) of the future will have to answer a million times is, "why did everybody really want to see what everybody else was eating all the time?".

So, recently someone I know asked me if I really believed what I saw in photos.

It's an interesting question because photos are not actually real, right?

Do things exist only because we can see them? Are we real?

What if what we do every day is just a virtual reality simulation (虚拟现实模拟) on someone's screen in the sky? 

Ok, well, let's just believe that this world is real, and I'm here, you're here, and everything has it's own physical reality.

The question remains:

"are we being cheated by the pictures we see on our phones?"

If you look on WeChat moments, you can see lots of beautiful people doing amazing things, having so much fun, making you wish that you were there and you were them.

That's the power of social media (社交媒体) to trick others into thinking that our lives are more wonderful than they actually are.

Well, you know that's not always the case, since you have posted pics on your Moments too.

You know that we only post the best ones, and sometimes we take a hundred photos just to get one good one.

Besides, the first one you take is usually the best one anyway, if you act naturally.

So, can a picture lie to us?

Nowadays we have lots of tools to help us adjust (调整) photographs for the better. 

Someone told me that girls no longer need to wear make-up (化妆品) for photos, they just do some Photoshop (PS) and voila, they look like a million bucks.

There's also a lot of photo apps that help you make your photos look better than they originally were.

Whatever you do, strike a pose (摆姿势), smile for the camera, show us your lunch, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt (假定某人是无辜的).

Even though we are looking at pictures from a long distance away, beauty is in the eye of the beholder (看起来觉得美就是美), and I think the world looks beautiful from here.

OK everybody, thanks for listening to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语) and see you next time, zai jian, bye bye.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu.

Today we are going to talk about perfection. That’s right, let’s find out if any of us on Earth is perfect.

My guess is that you cannot find the perfect person, unless his or her name is “Nobody”, because as they say, “Nobody’s perfect”!

Well, some people have said that I am a perfectionist, since I always try to do things perfectly.

Maybe it is because I am a Virgo but perhaps it’s not always a good thing to be perfect.

If there is no imperfection in the world, then we’d all have to live up to an impossible standard.

If your expectations are too high, then it may be hard to ever find true and lasting happiness.

Some people are so in love with perfection that they cannot get started on the path to success.

This kind of procrastination is paralyzing and can prevent perfectionists from reaching their goals. 

Perhaps it is best if we keep in mind that the goal is good but the journey is just as if not more important.

That is to say, the path we take to get somewhere is sometimes more satisfying than the destination.

Of course, it’s always good to shoot for the stars and reach for the moon.

That’s a great trait of high achievers, you know, those people who get a lot done, those who are content with what they get because they get a lot!

But these high achievers know their strengths and weaknesses, then they are realistic in what they want and what they can get.

A high achiever likes doing a great job. Perfectionists are only interested in perfection, so they think it is “all or nothing”.

Well, this can lead to severe disappointment to say the least!

So, it is better to not have unreasonable goals.

If you will accept less than perfect, it’s easier to be happy, and to get something for your hard work.

No one can be the absolute best at everything all the time.

As President Barack Hussein Obama said: “better is good”.

Making a small improvement is better than not making progress at all.

Patience and optimism can help more than the inflexibility of the pursuit of perfect.

Don’t get depressed if you can’t reach your goals right away, or if it seems that you will never reach them.

Remember that life is a series of moments, and take it a day at a time.

Don’t be afraid to fail, because, well, here’s a secret, but I guess I can tell you, just don’t tell anyone else ok?

Here is what you gotta always keep in mind: we all fail. Everyone. Every single person is the world thinks that he or she can do better, and that’s a good thing!

It keeps us going and gives us a reason to get out of bed in the morning. 

Alright everybody, that is our program for today.

I hope you enjoy Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu and I hope you have a great day, and even though we say, “practice makes perfect”, keep in mind that the practice is much more important than the perfect.

Talk to you later, bye bye, zai jian.

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