AEE 2620: Debunk and Connect with Lindsay and Michelle

This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2620. Debunk and connect with Lindsay and Michelle. Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English?

We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection. With your American hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl. coming to you from Colorado and New York City, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

What does the word debunk mean and how do you use it? Today, learn how to bring up new research in tons of areas, including nutrition, science, history, politics, and more. Listen in today.

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Hey there, Michelle. What is going on with you today? Not too much, Lizzie. How are you? I'm feeling good. I'm ready to be on the mic and talk about a good topic for today for our listeners.

Yeah? Yeah, me too. Lizzie, do you tend to believe studies that come out in the news or are you wary of them? That's a tricky one. 15% of people who eat this will die like in like 20 years, you know, about food illness, you know, there's so many things that come out.

What do you what's your feeling when you see those? I tend to believe them when it supports a habit I already have. And it says it's like coffee. These days, the press on coffee is good.

Yes. Yes. Coffee right now. But then you never know. In two years, it could be like, oh, now it causes cancer. I mean, that's what happened with, not exactly what happened with wine, but back in the aughts, do you remember when everyone said, red wine, it's good for your heart.

It's so good for you. And so everyone started drinking more red wine. And now they're like, nope, alcohol in general is very bad for you. I know. It's so hard.

It's so hard to follow along. I don't know anymore. So that's why I try and stick with everything in moderation and hope for the best. I mean, not obviously things that are terrible for me, but yeah, things that are on the fly.

So today we're going to talk about a word that often comes up in these scenarios. And this is, I think this is kind of a buzzword today because we're always, I mean, I've seen it a lot recently. Yeah. Because we're always talking about these kinds of things.

So what's the word? Debunk. Debunk. Debunk. I love it. It's kind of fun to say. It sounds like we're dropping news here. Yeah. How do you spell that? Yeah.

D-E-B-U-N-K. Interesting word. I don't know where it comes from, but it basically means to show that people believe that something is now false that maybe they believed was true before. Yeah.

Yes, right. Yes, exactly. So we're going to talk more about that in just a second. Guys, we want to remind you to hit follow wherever you're listening to the All Ears English podcast so you never miss an episode.

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or that subscribe button if you are consuming this on YouTube. So Michelle, this is going to be fun because I've always found it interesting, especially in American culture, poke fun at ourselves here. We're so obsessed with health research, nutrition research, but we still have some of the highest rates of obesity in the world. It's like, what gives?

Yeah. Good question. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's also because we're such a large country. Yeah, sure. And it's like, it's so hard to get everybody on board.

But different areas in the country are totally different. And so it's very, it's very interesting. So with this word debunk, so again, it's kind of like proving something is wrong. Yes.

You might hear things like debunk a myth, debunk a theory, debunk a common misconception. Do you say debunk or debunk? Which do you say? I feel like you could say both, right?

Debunk? I think you could say debunk. Yeah. Now we're saying it too many times that it's sounding slow. I think that I say both. I think there's no way to go wrong with this.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you might hear this or see this word in the news a lot, right? Like, so we talked about, you know, debunking, I guess I say debunk a study, like what we were, what we're talking about, you know?

Oh, like they, the coffee, you know, they, they said that coffee was bad, but now we've debunked that and we realize it's great. Right. Yeah. All the better for us.

Yes, exactly. But it's not just nutrition, even though I really enjoy, I don't know, I find nutrition really interesting. So I enjoy seeking out those. Whenever those articles are in the news, I always read them and add them to my body of knowledge, misunderstandings, right?

But it goes beyond just nutrition, of course. So here's one with nutrition, though. I read an article debunking the misconception that a low-fat diet is good for you. And this is another thing.

that has been coming out recently, but then people saying high fat diet is good for you. I'm not sure about that either. Right. It's, it's, you know, some of it, you just have to, you just have to take it all with a grain of salt and like kind of just do your best.

I don't know. It's because, I mean, you know, then they say there's good fats and bad fats. When I, you know, when we were growing up, Lindsay, I'm sure you remember it was like, everything was low fat, low fat. Yes.

Meanwhile, they're adding all these chemicals in. Right. That are probably really dangerous for our health. Right. All these fake sugars and, you know, sort of additives and preservatives.

Yeah. They had to make it taste good somehow. Right. Right. Yeah, I remember when I first started thinking about that. I remember because I would always get like low fat salad dressing.

And I remember one of my mom's friends was like, Yeah, but like what? They have to do something to make the taste good. So like, what are they? And That sort of made me think.

And yeah, I always remember that. This is why I love traveling. Because if you go pretty much anywhere else in the world, a lot of the food is fresh. Like you go to Italy, France.

I mean, you're eating farm to table. And it's not astronomically expensive either. Oh, God. I remember I went to Slovenia last year. Slovenia, the food in Slovenia is so clean.

It's just so clean. And you can tell, you feel it in your stomach when you're eating it. It's just such a different experience than eating here in the States. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Here's another one. The supervisor debunked the rumor that layoffs were going to happen next week. So what are we saying here? What did the supervisor do?

Yeah. He basically, he or she basically said, okay, it's not true. There is a rumor, but the rumor is incorrect. There are no layoffs. He addressed it in some way and said that it was false.

Um, or what's another, I'm going to show you something that will debunk your prior misconceptions about homeschooling. Right. Yeah. That's an interesting thing.

Homeschooling in this country, like, um, Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, sometimes people think, oh, like they have judgments on homeschooling. And then but people who homeschool their kids, they feel really strongly about it.

Sure. Interesting stuff. And this is all colliding with the Instagram age, right, where we have people kind of just saying what they think is true, whether it's based in any science. They just use certain phrases that feel heavier.

Right. So there is fake news out there. Kind of everywhere. It's tricky. It's crazy out there, Michelle. It's crazy out there. It is. It is. Or what's another one?

The professor debunked the myth from the 1800s by explaining the history to the class. Okay. So when you have more context, maybe you can debunk certain myths a bit better.

Or one more. The reporter put out a shocking story debunking the idea that the school system was doing well. Good. Okay. Okay. Yes. Lindsay, have you ever had to debunk anything in your life, at work?

That's a tricky one. I know. I don't know. I feel like, I mean, when we set our highest value here at Allers English as connection, I feel like maybe the industry was more in a mindset of being correct, being perfect, focusing on being correct, but we believe that there's something...

higher it's not exactly the same thing um but i don't have any good examples michelle do you have any anything there are certain there are certain things in the news um you know that will come out where you know where you will talk about them with family or something like that and you're in you know there's a lot of you know political discussion and you say wait a second but that's not true like you heard that somewhere maybe you heard that online and that wasn't a valid source and you know so oh god yeah yeah yeah When it comes to politics and things with vaccines and stuff, people's perspectives, that can get into a really heated area.

You got to be careful to enter those conversations. But yeah. Anyways, we can say more about this. Yes. I mean, but Lindsay, how does someone debunk? What are you debunking with?

Well, so you try to do it with proof, with facts, images, numbers, videos. But I feel like nowadays in kind of this fake news era, we don't necessarily listen to facts or trust facts all the time or not everyone does.

So I don't know. How do you do it, Michelle? Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's how you should do it. But I wonder, like, even now, I'll see things coming up online for me where I'm watching a video of something and I can tell that it's not real.

So that's the scary part about where the news is heading and with AI and things. That's just actually frightening. Because something, I mean, right now, I still think it's a little glitchy where you're watching something and you're like, wait a second, that doesn't look like her. That's not the real person.

Yeah. I don't know. And that's, there's no way. But in a few years or even sooner, you know, it might get harder to tell and we have to be really careful.

Yeah. Don't worry, guys. This is the real us right here. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, it's true. It's true. Yeah. I just a few years from now, I mean, things could, I mean, AI is just moving so incredibly fast, Michelle.

So a year from now, we don't know where we'll be. It's, it's true. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. If you're ready to start your business, go ahead and start with the business platform for entrepreneurs.

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For your period of 1 euro per month on Shopify.eu. Okay, so other ways we might say debunk if we don't want to always go around saying debunk, debunk, debunk. We could say disprove, right? The professor disproved the report by showing the graph she had recorded in her book three years ago.

Or expose, right? So like she exposed the truth, right? So that's more like to uncover. By sharing pictures she had taken of the couple together. Yes, expose.

So uncover, unleash the information that no one knew about before, right? Discredit. The scientists discredited the reporter's claim by bringing her to the lab and showing her exactly why she was wrong.

So all in the same ballpark, not exactly the same. Right. Some minor differences. Right. Yeah. So let's do a role play here. You and I are reporters talking about a story that we're about to break.

I would love to be I feel like in an alternate life, I would like to be like an investigative reporter. If I were better at details, I think. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

It would be it would be interesting. Also, I just want to bring up one more, which I kind of touched on earlier, which was to prove someone wrong or right to disprove could also be another one. So there's a lot here. But all right, here we go.

All right. Wow. This is huge. All right. We need to be strategic about this if we really want to expose the truth. Right. We need proof in order to discredit the claims that came out.

We will debunk everything they said. Okay. All right. Good. So we're really, here we are exposing the truth, exposing the truth. You said we need to be strategic about this if we really want to expose the truth, meaning bring light to the facts.

Right. Yes. And then you said, right, we need proof in order to discredit the claims that came out. And then you said, we will debunk everything they said.

And yeah, and I really admire and respect investigative reporters that get to the bottom of these stories. We need them. But in the US, they're getting a little less funded now. Like investigative reporting, we've talked about this on the show before.

There's the talking heads because it's entertaining. They bring in the podcasters and I don't know who they bring in. like personalities and they just have opinion opinion opinion all night you know on cnn and there's less actual news investigating like go out and investigate a story talk to sources you know that's what i want to see more of but we're seeing less of it unfortunately

Yes, exactly. All right, Lindsay, guys, check out episode 2609. That was English grammar to show your nostalgia. And Lindsay, what do you think about the takeaway for today?

Well, I think it's... I mean, I don't know. It depends on your social circle, but I feel like I sometimes talk about health research with friends. This is an area where you could be a little safer than if you veer into politics.

You could... in a tricky area but like talking about studies that have debunked prior understandings of things like the wine thing is kind of funny and interesting right however however now i think that you know health and politics at there it's really like starting to mix together a lot so that can also it can lead to yeah so i thought i found a topic that was just you found a neutral topic no you didn't yeah No, but I mean, yeah, things like that. But yeah, there's a lot of controversy about what's actually healthy and in politics and who believes what.

And so, yeah, it's wild. It's wild. So try to find a topic that you could talk about scientific research that's continuing to come out that is not so hot button. Hot button is a bonus phrase for today.

It's not a hot button issue, meaning an issue that sends people off into their silos of belief, right? Sports. Debunk some misconceptions about sports or something about how movies are made. There's something out there still, I'm sure.

There's still something to debunk, guys. Don't you worry. All right. Good stuff. Good episode today, Michelle, and I will see you back on the show soon.

You have a good day. All right, you too. Bye. Thanks for listening to All Ears English. Would you like to know your English level? Take our two-minute quiz.

Go to allearsenglish.com forward slash fluency score. And if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything. See you next time.