AEE 2631: How to Connect Over Manias, Kicks, and Bugs

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2631, how to connect over manias, kicks, and bugs. 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, Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, coming to you from Arizona and New York City, USA.

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Are you currently obsessed with anything? On today's episode, we share unique ways to talk about being super into something, whether it's just you or a whole cultural phenomenon. Listen in today.

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Take the quiz now for free at allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. Hey, Aubrey, how are you? Hello, Michelle.

This is so fun that you and I are on the mic. Lindsay is out for a little bit, but you'll still be hearing her voice. We are excited for her and I'm excited to record with you, Michelle. Yes, we're gonna have a lot of fun.

But Aubrey, are you a fan of the Beatles? I am a huge Beatles fan. My parents were Beatles fans, my husband, my kids, everybody loves the Beatles. And I feel like more than any other band, I could like, name a Beatles song and I could karaoke it pretty easily.

Like, what about you? yeah i mean i used to sing beetle song with my son just for him to go to sleep yes blackbird on boss baby is so sweet oh yes i know it yep yeah we did in my life i want to hold your hand all of these things do you have a favorite song

Um, probably, um, I will. And it's like, who knows how long I've loved you. You know, I love you still. Would I wait a lonely lifetime? If you want me to, I will.

I can't sing it, but I can quote it. It's the most beautiful song. If you're unfamiliar with, I will by the Beatles. I think it's on the white album. Um, it's just so beautiful.

What about you? Favorite Beatles song? It's hard to choose, but I do really love In My Life. I really do love that song. And all of the movies and everything in culture.

Yesterday was such a great film, like paying tribute to, I don't know if you saw that, but it was like, what would the world be like if the Beatles had never been a band? And it's such a great movie. I've seen it so many times, actually. Oh, that's awesome.

So, I mean, I'm guessing, you know, you know about Beatlemania, right? I mean, I know like my parents were, you know, into the Beatles and they experienced Beatlemania. So today we're actually going to talk not so much about the Beatles, but we can.

We're going to talk about the suffix mania. And this is a really interesting one because it can apply to many different things. Yes. Guys, hit follow wherever you're listening to the All Ears English podcast so you never miss anything.

All right, Aubrey. So you should be able to tell us. What is Beatlemania? Yeah. So this happened in the 60s, in the 1960s, when everyone was so wild for the Beatles, obsessed.

It was a cultural phenomenon and formerly known as Beatlemania. Fans would... wait in droves, huge crowds waiting for them to come in at an airport or their concerts. People were fainting.

They were so passionate. There's nothing like that now. Their Swifties are intense, but they're not fainting, right? I guess I don't know for sure. Maybe from heat exhaustion, but not from being so emotionally invested in a famous person.

Yeah, I mean, fetal mania is definitely known as just like this really iconic time period and a cultural phenomenon that happened. So let's I mean, but so, Aubrey, what is mania? Let's kind of deconstruct this. Yeah, sort of.

obsessiveness, I would say. I think of WrestleMania, which is just sort of a fun name for the actual event of going to these wrestling spectacles, right? But when you talk about mania specifically is a technical term for an obsession for something, right? Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, but it can be used also in like kind of a more medical way about an, a compulsion and obsession, things like that. So we're going to talk about this more, but yeah, exactly. Like WrestleMania, that's a really good example.

Sometimes it's just kind of a fun thing. title right people are obsessed with it there's some sort of craze um but i also looked up some other interesting ones so there's bibliomania which is i'm sure yep obsessed with books and this is interesting every time i looked up mania uh it came up with tulip mania which was apparently you know dutch and about tulips in the 1600s

Okay. And still people now, I know a lot of people go to Holland, the Netherlands to see the tulips. And you could call them, you know, tulip crazed or be like, oh, it's tulip mania time when you have a friend that like, that's all they want to do is go see the tulips. Exactly.

So you can say what it is and then add the word mania. So Aubrey, essentially is what you're saying. Could you make your own word? Yeah, definitely. Often I would shorten the initial word.

Like I wouldn't say chocolate mania. I'd say maybe like choco mania, kind of like we say chocoholic. We'll shorten the first word, especially if it's longer because others have too many syllables. Too much.

Yeah. Right. Especially if it's a longer one. I mean, I would say like, for example, I could say right now I'm experiencing Kindle mania, right? I got a Kindle.

I'm starting to read more. I just want to sit and read and I can't. That's awesome. You wouldn't say like, I have Beatlemania. It's more like that was the name of the actual, it kind of became this formal name, right?

It's sort of a name for a phenomenon. So yeah, it is specific the way we use it. A lot of ways sounds strange to me, right? If I try to think of something I love, volleyball is a good example.

I would never be like, I have volleyball mania. Right, right. But if the entire culture for some reason became obsessed with volleyball, like sometimes during the Olympics when the sand volleyball players are so good and people get really excited about it, then we might be like, maybe you would name the certain person would be like, we have carry mania because we're like obsessed with this athlete who's amazing, right? Would use it that way.

Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I do agree. It feels less awkward. It feels a little awkward to say there's this mania amongst myself because mania, generally, I would say we do think of it, if you're going to make this up, if you're going to make up your own word, yeah, I think it is when it's kind of a big cultural thing.

A lot of people are involved in it. A lot of people are excited about it. I think it would even be really uncomfortable common for someone, for example, to say, I have Kindle mania.

You would just be like, I'm obsessed with my Kindle. I can't put it down. Right. There are other ways would say it. If the, if the culture in general, like everyone has a Kindle all of a sudden, then you might be like, you know, we have Kindle mania.

It's bigger. It seems like it's more about a group of people, right? Yeah. I, I agree with you. I think that that's a really good point. And yeah, I mean, it makes me think of, you know, when iPhones, you know, when they used to come out and it was just this big, everybody would be waiting in line.

I don't even know if they do that anymore. But you could say, oh, it's Apple mania or iPhone mania. Absolutely. You might hear that on the news, even if somebody is doing, you know, a little piece about it, a lifestyle piece on the news.

So very, very interesting. Yeah. So I would say it's less about an individual and more about a group phenomenon. You can use it playfully for an individual.

Absolutely. But in general, to tack on mania at the end of something, you're saying that a lot of people are obsessed with it. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

All right. So we will talk more about this after the break. Add a little curiosity into your routine with TED Talks Daily, the podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday. In less than 15 minutes a day, you'll go beyond the headlines and learn about the big ideas shaping your future.

Coming up, how AI will change the way we communicate, how to be a better leader, and more. Listen to TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. OK, so but as we kind of touched on briefly a moment ago, it can also be used about a medical or a mental health condition.

So, for example, I mean, kleptomania is the urge to steal a person who has this is a kleptomaniac. Yes. And this is interesting because this is about the individual. Exactly.

It's used very differently here when it's an obsession or a mental health condition that one person could have. Right. So it's almost like when it's a more formal medical term, that's more individual.

So then there's also pyromania, right? Yeah, which is the desire to start fires. So a person that has this desire is a pyromaniac. And of course, we use these very often to exaggerate.

I remember my little brother, we always called a pyromaniac because he just wanted to start the fire when we were camping. And then he would want to play in it and poke and it would be like, you're such a pyromaniac. He, of course, wasn't really a pyromaniac that had this obsession. He just liked fire like a little like young boys often do or girls, young kids.

It's like, oh, fire. Yes. exactly and yeah it is interesting how sometimes we do for for that type of thing or even kleptomania i mean people do whether or not it's pc or okay to say that that you will hear people saying things like i mean i can imagine right if somebody accidentally steals the is it like they walk out of a store and they realize that they had something in their bag that they were holding or something like that they were just looking at it and they accidentally and then you know i could see them saying to their friend sorry i'm a kleptomaniac, you know, but you can joke about it.

If like someone takes a cookie from like your packages of cookies, package of cookies without asking, you'd be like, you are such a kleptomaniac because you're accusing them of stealing it without acting asking, but just in a playful, fun way.

Right. And sometimes people even just shorten it to klepto, right? That's right. Yeah. And pyro be like, oh, you're a pyro or you're a klepto. And it's short for those.

But of course, you know, these can get sensitive. So be careful with these because if somebody actually does know somebody with that condition. It could, you know, it is kind of poking fun. It is poking fun at a mental health condition.

So, you know, maybe be careful with these, but it's good to know in case you hear them. So I wouldn't run around and start saying those as a joke right now. Yeah, maybe with very close friends where you're very confident that that's not a concern or not something that would offend them. But yeah, that's true.

You wouldn't say it to just a coworker that you don't know well. Right, exactly. Then there's also, I don't even know how to say this one. Trichotillomania.

Trichotillomania. Trichotillomania. Never heard of this. I guess it's the urge to pull out hair. I know people who either have the urge to pull out the hair on their head or like eyelashes or eyebrows.

So that's very common, I think. Yeah, so that's definitely a condition that people can struggle with. But Aubrey, what are some other ways, if we're not going to say, I have Kindle mania, right? We're not going to say that.

But what is a way to say that? Yeah, good point. I love that. Because, yeah, we really don't use mania like that for individual things. We might say, I'm on X kick.

Like, I'm on a health kick. I'm on a Kindle kick. I'm on a Netflix kick. Meaning, I like it a lot. I'm kind of obsessed with it. Exactly. Or I've caught the blank bug, right?

Bug. A bug in this situation is kind of like the sickness, right? But here it's like a virus when we say a bug, but we're not talking about an actual sickness here. For example, you could say, oh, I've caught the reading bug.

Or if somebody really likes the show, oh, I've caught the nobody wants this bug or something like that. You could say that. And it's interesting because like you said, bug is usually for an illness. So you would maybe assume this is for negative things that you're addicted to, but it's really not.

I've caught the reading bug. I've caught the French bug. If you're like really excited about learning French, it is actually usually for positive things.

Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah, that is very interesting. Or one more is I'm going through an X phase, right? So I'm going through a horror movie phase.

I'm going through a yoga phase, something like that. Yeah. And this is like, I'm currently into it. I'm obsessed with it, but I know it's a phase. It's probably going to end.

Right. That's true. So why is this important for connection, do you think? Oh, it's so fun to talk about the things we're really excited about right now.

We get passionate about it and we want to hear what other people are excited about right now. So all of these phrases are the perfect way to share that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So should we do a role play? Let's do it. Michelle and I are friends talking about our upcoming visit to Disneyland. My children actually just went to Disneyland.

So this is top of mind. Yeah. They went with their grandparents though. So have fun. It was actually really nice to not have to go. Okay. Here we go. I'm on such a Disney kick right now.

I can't wait. Same. I am rewatching all my favorites. I've definitely caught the frozen bug. Oh, I love that one. I remember when frozen mania was huge when it came out.

Yes. Now my daughter is going through a Moana phase. Oh, Yeah, that's a good one, too. I actually really love Moana. It's one of my favorites. Oh, yeah.

Nice. Yeah. Well, I always say with the movies, because my, you know, my kids do watch, but I always say I've seen all these movies, both 1000 times and not at all. That's what I always say is because they're always on the back.

Yeah. And so I'm like, this seems like a great movie. I don't know what's happening because I am up getting snack after snack after snack or putting the laundry in or something like that. You know, I don't.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So. All right. So I said I'm on such a Disney kick right now. So I'm really into Disney at this moment. And then I said, I've definitely caught the frozen bug.

So I'm naming one movie like I really like it. We're watching it a lot, maybe. So I'm like, I've caught the Moana bug. I've caught the frozen bug. And then I said, oh, I love that one.

And then I said, I remember when Frozen Mania was huge when it came out. So that's something that you might say, because it was a collective experience. Everybody obsessed with it. Just let it go all the time.

It hasn't really ended. No, it's still going right with Frozen 2. And of course, everyone's still the Disney princesses and Disneyland being such a big thing that it's died down some, but Frozen Mania is still a real thing. Yes, exactly.

Exactly. And then I said, my daughter's going through a Moana phase. So here I'm like, she's watching it all the time, but it's probably a phase. It's probably going to die off.

It'll be replaced with the next thing that she's obsessed over. And kids have that a lot. I mean, you think they're going to love Paw Patrol forever. And then one day, it's over.

They replace it with something else. Yes, exactly. And it's kind of sad. It's okay. It's life. All right, guys. So head on over. We also did episode 2611.

That was how to direct someone's attention with enthusiasm. So listen to that one. Aubrey, what do you think takeaways for today? Oh, man, this is amazing.

This is such a great connection episode phrases that you can use to talk about what you're really into right now, but new interesting ways to say that. So I'm excited for you to connect spark a conversation about what you're going through a phase of what you've caught the bug for.

Love it. All right, Aubrey, this was so much fun. Thanks for talking about this with me today. And I'm going to go and listen to I Will by The Beatles.

Yes, do it. Everyone out there listening. Oh, so good. Awesome. Thanks, Michelle. I will see you next time. Bye, Aubrey. Thanks. Bye. See you next time.