NEW - Quizlet Flashcards: click here for link to vocabulary cards from this episode
[00:00:00.000] - Oliver (Host)
Welcome, listener, to this new podcast for intermediate-level learners of English. My name is Oliver, and I am a language teacher and your host for this podcast. I already co-host an advanced version of this podcast, just called English and Beyond, as well as a Spanish language podcast, Spanish for False Beginners. I host both these podcasts with César from the Spanish Language Coach Group, group, and he's lending his considerable expertise to this podcast. Between us, we have had more than eight million downloads. I mention this not to boast, not to show off, but to reassure you that we have a lot of experience helping English and Spanish learners to improve their language skills. I'll talk a little bit at the end of this podcast about the philosophy and level of the podcast, but I don't want to take up too much time here at the beginning. If you want to read a transcript for this episode, or you would like to practise some of the more difficult vocabulary, these resources are available on our website, www.morethanalanguage.com. For this first episode, I wanted to choose a topic that is one that fascinates me in general and one that is appropriate for the time of year.
[00:01:32.150] - Oliver (Host)
So let's begin. Odysseus and Penelope, Romeo and Juliet, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, or Rachel and Ross, do these names ring any bells? What these couples have in common is that they represent such powerful connections that despite coming from very different time periods, their stories have endured and helped shape the way that we see love today. In this episode, we'll talk about something almost all of us have experienced at some point, though not always with a happy ending: love.
[00:02:17.910] - Oliver (Host)
Love is one of the most essential and complex emotions in human life. And since it was Valentine's Day last week, it seems like the perfect time to reflect on it. Have you ever I wondered, what is love? How do I know if what I'm feeling is really love? Most of us have felt romantic emotions, but we've also experienced confusion and uncertainty about them. Maybe you've fallen hopelessly in love before, or maybe someone has broken your heart cruelly. Perhaps you grew up believing that you needed to find your other half, get married, and live happily ever after, just like in fairy tales. That's quite a lot of pressure, isn't it? Maybe you've been in a relationship for years and are now questioning whether love is still there.
[00:03:14.560] - Oliver (Host)
Do we continue loving someone once the butterflies in our stomach disappear? Or perhaps you've always felt that your way of loving doesn't quite fit with what you were taught or what is socially acceptable people in your environment. Maybe you experience love differently from most people around you. Here's an important question to start with: is there a right way to experience experience love? Personally, I believe that there are as many ways to love as there are people in the world. Love is deeply personal and unique to each individual. It is also shaped by factors like culture and upbringing, which influence how we experience it. According to the poet and essayist, Octavio Paz, the concept of love has evolved over time, taking on different meanings depending on the culture and historical period. Many thinkers have tried to define it, often linking it to emotions and relationships. Some definitions place particular emphasis on romantic love, love between two couples in a relationship. Over time, these two ideas, love and romantic relationships, have become closely linked. But this wasn't always the case. In his book, El Amor Es Imposible, Love is Impossible, philosopher Dario Sztajnszrajber, and of course, I'm so sorry for how I've pronounced his name, he argues that love is incomprehensible and impossible to define, but that it is worth deconstructing; that is, breaking down and re-examining the assumptions that we have about it and how it functions in our society.
[00:05:17.410] - Oliver (Host)
He makes an interesting point: love is a social and cultural construct, meaning it's not natural, and therefore, there has never been just one way to experience love. To be honest, I'm not totally convinced by this argument. I don't think love is just a social construct. He argues that the modern idea of romantic love, where a couple shares a deep exclusive connection builds a family, and maintains fidelity, is actually a Western concept that developed over time, influenced by various cultures and philosophies. Each society and era, beyond individual cases, has dominant ideas about love, social norms that define what is considered acceptable. For example, today in Western societies, it is common for marriages to be based on love between two consenting adults, which seems to us obvious, and anything else would be bizarre. However, in the past, it was common to have arranged marriages and even child marriages, which are now widely condemned. So it shows how what is considered acceptable in love changes. Even within the Western world, though, love is easier for some than for others.
[00:06:38.550] - Oliver (Host)
If your way of loving doesn't match societal expectations, you might face challenges. As a result, dominant ideas about relationships can feel oppressive if we don't fit into the expected mould. I'm sure that at some point in your life, love has felt complicated because, really, trying to meet society's expectations all the time can be exhausting, can't it? I'm not even talking about anything particularly unusual. Just think about the social pressure many couples face to follow what is expected of them the expected steps in a relationship. For example, if you've been together for a few years but still live separately, why? If you've been together for 10 years but you're not married yet, why not? If you've been married now for two years, but you still don't have children, what are you waiting for? This pressure, this question can feel overwhelming. And of course, there are people whose love lives don't fit society's standard model at all. When we look at history and other cultures, it becomes clear that there is no single universal way to love. On the contrary, what makes us human is this diversity, the ability to evolve and transform our cultural understanding of love.
[00:08:07.400] - Oliver (Host)
To truly understand how our modern ideas about love developed, let's take a quick journey through history. According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, the origins of love as a human bond date back to the beginning of our species. Unlike most animals, which only mate during specific times of the year, humans has developed the ability to form intimate relationships all year round. This, in turn, helped create social bonds that ensured the survival of early humans, forming the first families and communities. Moving forward in time, one of the earliest recorded reflections on love comes from Greek mythology, the story of Cupid, or Eros, and Psyche. This tale portrays love as a powerful force, one that can dramatic, transformative, and even require great sacrifice. From here, love evolved through different historical periods. First, the Middle Ages - love and marriage were primarily was not necessarily about securing alliances and producing heirs. Romantic feelings were not considered essential. Next, courtly love. In mediaeval Europe, knights idealised noble women, expressing their devotion through poetry and songs, but this love was often unattainable and existed only in words. Physical relationships were rare. Then we come to the Regency era and the Victorian era. Passion became more important, but relationships were expected to lead to marriage, stability, and family life.
[00:09:52.460] - Oliver (Host)
Novels like Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina reflect these ideals. Fast forward to today, where we're still influenced by romantic love, but at the same time, we see higher divorce rates and changing attitudes. Some sociologists believe we're moving towards a new model of love, what Anthony Giddens calls Confluent Love, based on equality, independence, and the idea that relationships may or may not last forever. Similarly, Zygmunt Bauman in Liquid Love, argues that modern relationships relationships are increasingly temporary and unstable, reflecting the fast-paced, uncertain world that we live in. So what will love look like in the future? Will we continue chasing the dream of happily ever after, or will new models emerge? One thing is certain, love will continue to evolve. And just like every era before us, we will continue questioning redefining and reshaping what love means. Thanks for listening. Sending you all my love and César's. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It really helps, especially at these early stages of a new podcast.
[00:11:16.770] - Oliver (Host)
And if you've come here already from English and Beyond, the advanced version, you may be wondering what this is all about - don't I already have an intermediate-level podcast for English learners?
[00:11:28.900] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I've done I've done 35 episodes of that podcast now, English and Beyond, and I've realised over time that it is actually quite hard. So as I said, I think it's more of an advanced podcast now, in reality, and almost all of my listeners for that podcast describe themselves as advanced students. César, my partner, my co-host for English and Beyond, and the host of the Spanish Language Coach podcasts, suggested to me that I therefore begin a new podcast that is genuinely intermediate so that those students don't feel left out. But that also means, listener, that if you found this intermediate podcast too easy, there's a ready-made advanced podcast waiting for you. However, between English and Beyond and the Spanish language podcast, César and I do together, Spanish for False Beginners, I was already struggling for new ideas each week and also finding it quite tough to edit the content I producing in time. So César's other good idea is that we look for inspiration in some of his Spanish language content for intermediate learners of Spanish. So effectively, what we're going to be doing with this podcast is producing a monologue of comprehensible input, relatively slowly spoken, but with lots of help with synonyms, explanations, and flashcards about the same interesting topics that have already proved popular with César's audience.
[00:13:00.890] - Oliver (Host)
I hope you've enjoyed the podcast, and I'll see you next time. Thank you, and bye-bye.
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