Lori invites her mom onto the podcast to discuss telling time in English, focusing on some of the differences between American and British English usage ..read more

Lori and her Dutch friend Yvette return to finish their conversation about perfectionism and procrastination. This time they focus on the strategies that have proved useful in their own battles with this debilitating problem ..read more

Lori and her Dutch friend Yvette continue their discussion of perfectionism, focusing on how it can cause problems for foreign language learners ..read more

Do you ever procrastinate? Lori sure does! She and her Dutch friend Yvette talk about what procrastination is, why we do it, and what we can do about it ..read more

Hello my lovely English learners! Lori here, your teacher from BetterAtEnglish.com. I love technology, so we’re talking about robots today, but not in the way you might expect. A lot of conversations about robots have to do with whether or not a robot or machine could ever develop genuine feelings or emotions. But today we’re going to be thinking about our own emotions and feelings toward robots, particularly empathy. Can we feel empathy toward robots? And if so, why? Links to pre-listening background — to get the most out of this podcast: Short video of someone “torturing” a robot dinosaur (p ..read more

Episode summary Autumn is in full swing here in the northern hemisphere, so this Real English Conversations episode is full of vocabulary related to the colors, weather, moods and feelings associated with this time of year. Lori and her friend Eliza talk about exercising outdoors, the health benefits of spending time out in nature, and whether or not it’s a good idea to pick and eat wild mushrooms. Are you feeling tired and drained? Grab your audio player and some headphones, get yourself to a park or forest, and have a nice walk while practicing your English listening! I guarantee you’ll feel ..read more

When you watch the news these days, do you trust your eyes and ears? Do you think what you’re seeing is real and happened the way it is being shown? Or is your first reaction to think: Hmm, I wonder if this video is fake? That’s what today’s episode is about, so stay tuned. TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW – Get the full transcript here: https://www.betteratenglish.com/053-is-seeing-believing-deepfakes-and-the-information-apocalypse-transcript Before we get started, I hope you’ll indulge me in a little Better at English background info. I don’t do Better at English for the money, but some of you have been g ..read more

Talking about fat and fat bodies is a tricky area to navigate in English because the word FAT is so laden with meaning, associations, emotions, and feelings — and these are different for everyone. In this episode, you’ll hear a wide variety of people who self-identify as fat talking about their experiences. You’ll hear how they think, feel and talk about their own bodies and how they experience things as a person of size. There are many registers (styles) of English represented here, as well as many different regional dialects. Links to all sources are provided, and most of these are videos. I ..read more

Did you know that you can get FREE transcriptions of any podcast in English, and that it’s fast and easy to do? That’s right, ANY PODCAST! And did I say FREE? If you are serious about your English learning, you will love Otter.ai — a FREE online service that transcribes audio files. This means podcasts, audio taken from videos, anything at all where the language is fairly clear. All you do is upload the file to otter.ai, and then let the A.I do the rest. It’s unbelievably awesome. You can watch my little YouTube demo video demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gw4jviWdno You can find Ott ..read more

Imagine if you will, the following scenario. You’ve volunteered to take part in a psychology study, say, at your university. All you have to do is show up to the lab, sit by yourself in a little booth and play a very simple game of chance, something like flipping a coin, where there’s no skill involved, only luck. You get paid one dollar just for showing up, that’s guaranteed. And if you’re lucky and win the game, you’ll get paid 5 dollars cash. But if you lose, you get nothing. Here’s the kicker: it’s up to you to tell the researchers if you won or lost, they won’t be able to tell. So there a ..read more