No Smoking!

Marco: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another lesson at EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

Katerina: My name's Katerina.

Marco: So, Katerina, what are we talking about today?

Katerina: Today, we're going to be talking about a popular topic all over the world, and that is smoking.

Marco: Well, not so popular in the States right now, to be honest.

Katerina: Well, that's the thing. In every country in the world now, they are becoming more strict on smoking and where you can smoke. So, it's becoming very difficult for smokers nowadays.

Marco: Well, it's a good reason to want to quit.

Katerina: And that's what we're going to be talking about today is quitting smoking.

Marco: Well, before we get going, we do have a really important phrase that we should preview in today's vocabulary preview.

Voice: Vocabulary Preview

Marco: Alright, so on vocabulary preview, we're going to take a look at this word "pack of smokes".

Katerina: Pack of smokes.

Marco: A pack of smokes.

Katerina: So, "smokes" is a word for cigarettes. It's the same thing, "smokes" or "cigarettes".

Marco: Right, but a "pack" is, you know, like 20 cigarettes.

Katerina: It's a box of cigarettes. You buy them in a pack. You don't just buy one at a time. So, again, the phrase is "pack of smokes".

Marco: Pack of smokes. So, why don't we listen to our dialogue for the first time and see what's going on with this smoker.

Voice: DIALOGUE, FIRST TIME

Katerina: Ugh, it smells like an ashtray in here.

Smoker: Hi, honey. What's wrong? Why do you have that look on your face?

Katerina: What's wrong? I thought we agreed you were going to quit smoking.

Smoker: No. I said I was going to cut down, which is very different. You can't just expect me to go cold turkey overnight.

Katerina: Look, there are other ways to quit. You can try the nicotine patch or nicotine chewing gum. We spend a fortune on cigarettes every month, and now laws are cracking down and not allowing smoking in any public place. It's not like you can just light up like before.

Smoker: I know, I know. I really am trying, but I don't have the willpower to just quit. I can't fight with the urge to reach for my pack of smokes in the morning with coffee or after lunch. Please understand.

Katerina: Fine. I want a divorce.

Katerina: Sorry, I just smoked a pack of cigarettes.

Smoker: You do smoke, don't you?

Katerina: Well, we'll talk about that later.

Marco: Alright, so it is a little bit extreme, though. I mean, he's divorcing her because she won't quit.

Katerina: Well, some people really are health conscious and are afraid of the negative side of smoking, which has a lot of health side effects.

Marco: Yeah. Well, as he was complaining about all the negative effects and the negative aspects of smoking, he did mention, both of them mentioned a lot of great words and phrases. So why don't we take a look at them now in Language Takeaway?

Voice: Language Takeaway

Katerina: Well, this first word is a word that's very important for any smoker who goes to a bar or restaurant and needs to put the ash somewhere, right? So when you smoke, there's some ash, there's some messy, dirty stuff, and you need an ashtray to collect it.

Marco: An ashtray.

Katerina: So an ashtray is something that's usually round or square and you put it on a table and it's just very helpful to keep the house clean or restaurant clean. So if you're in a restaurant, you say, "Hey, can I have an ashtray, please?"

Marco: So the residue or the stuff that when you're smoking it comes out the gray, I don't know, like dust, it's called ash.

Katerina: Right. And this is a tray. But the complaint here is, "It smells like an ashtray in here." That means it smells really, really bad in here.

Marco: Yeah, it smells like cigarettes.

Katerina: Yeah. So that word again is ashtray.

Marco: Ashtray. All right. Well, and the guy was complaining and he said, "Well, I thought you were going to quit smoking." And she said, "No, no, I said I was going to cut down."

Katerina: She says it's very different from quitting smoking. So Marco, maybe we should talk about how cutting down and quitting are different.

Marco: All right. So if I say I'm going to cut down on smoking, it's just I'm going to smoke less.

Katerina: Okay, so let's take an example. I smoke 10 cigarettes a day, but I want to cut down. How many should I smoke later? Maybe?

Marco: Like two or three.

Katerina: Two or three.

Marco: Instead of quitting. So if you quit smoking, that would mean zero.

Katerina: Zero cigarettes, no smoking anymore.

Marco: Right.

Katerina: All right. So you can also cut down on carbs like carbohydrates. So some people who cut down on carbs eat less bread. They don't eat any pasta. So these are really good ways of trying to talk about dieting as well as smoking.

Marco: Right. And I think we have a couple of examples of other ways we can use this phrase cut down. So let's listen to them now.

Voice: Example 1.

Speaker A: Our company has decided to cut down our workload. So from now on, we leave at 3pm every Friday.

Voice: Example 2.

Speaker B: You should really cut down on the amount of salt you eat. It's not good for you.

Voice: Example 3.

Speaker C: My doctor told me I need to cut down on fatty foods because of my heart condition.

Katerina: And when you want to smoke a cigarette, you have to do something first with some fires. We call this lighting up.

Marco: To light up.

Katerina: So lighting up, it doesn't mean turning on the light. It actually means using a lighter or some fire to start your cigarette.

Marco: Right. So you want to light up with the lighter, matches, or some sort of fire.

Katerina: The husband says, "It's not like you can just light up like before." That means it's not like you can just smoke like before. So in some cases, "light up" means to smoke a cigarette. We're in a movie theater and someone lights a cigarette and I say, "Oh, you can't light up in here."

Marco: Right. So you can't smoke in here.

Katerina: You can't smoke in here.

Marco: It's another way of saying smoking. Very good. And she was explaining, you know, how difficult it is and she's trying to quit. But she said, "I don't have the willpower to just quit."

Katerina: Ooh, willpower. So this is an important word.

Marco: Willpower.

Katerina: Willpower. You think of the main part of this word is "will". That means the desire to do something. You want to do something.

Marco: So if I have willpower, I have strong willpower. What am I saying?

Katerina: You're saying that you can make a decision and you can follow your decision. So I decide not to eat cake. I have very strong willpower, so I never eat cake. If I don't have strong willpower, maybe I sometimes secretly eat cake in the middle of the night from my refrigerator.

Marco: So that happens, right? Sometimes you don't have strong enough willpower. So you kind of eat a little bit of cake when nobody's watching.

Katerina: Exactly. And you can have willpower about lots of different things. So this is a great word again to use when you're talking about dieting or smoking or drinking.

Marco: Any type of maybe temptation.

Katerina: Exactly.

Marco: All right. And well, she said she had this urge to reach for her pack of smokes.

Katerina: Ooh, "urge" is another good one. It's very similar to willpower, but an urge is kind of like a physical feeling that makes you want to do something.

Marco: So you have like this strong desire.

Katerina: So I have the urge to go swimming today. I don't know why, but I really want to.

Marco: All right. You have an urge. Interesting word.

Katerina: Pregnant women often have these kinds of things too. "I have the urge to do something." We also call them cravings.

Marco: Oh, cravings or urge to do something. All right. Interesting. So we've taken a look at these five great words, and I think we should listen to our dialogue again. We're going to slow it down just a little bit, and then we'll come back and talk some more. OK, let's listen.

Voice: DIALOGUE, SECOND TIME (SLOW)

Katerina: Ugh, it smells like an ashtray in here.

Smoker: Hi honey. What's wrong? Why do you have that look on your face?

Katerina: What's wrong? I thought we agreed that you were going to quit smoking.

Smoker: No. I said I was going to cut down, which is very different. You can't just expect me to go cold turkey overnight.

Katerina: Look, there are other ways to quit. You can try the nicotine patch or nicotine chewing gum. We spend a fortune on cigarettes every month, and now laws are cracking down and not allowing smoking in any public place. It's not like you can just light up like before.

Smoker: I know, I know. I really am trying, but I don't have the willpower to just quit. I can't fight with the urge to reach for my pack of smokes in the morning with coffee or after lunch. Please understand.

Katerina: Fine. I want a divorce.

Marco: And we are back. So we have a great part of our show where we like to talk about some phrases that help you attain fluency. That means sounding like a native speaker of English. And today's phrases are wonderful.

Marco: Alright, so let's take a look at them now in Fluency Builder.

Voice: Fluency Builder

Marco: So on Fluency Builder today, let's take a look at two different phrases. And let's start with the first one. She mentioned something about going cold turkey overnight. What is that phrase? Cold turkey?

Katerina: Now this is a very strange phrase. So first of all, why would a turkey be cold? They have lots of feathers. And second of all, what does it have to do with cigarettes?

Marco: Right. So if I say I'm going cold turkey, what is that?

Katerina: So just take this as a phrase. Don't think about the actual words because they won't make sense in this context. What we're talking about is quitting smoking entirely. You're not going to cut down. It means today I'm not going to smoke at all and I'm never going to smoke again. That means never ever will I smoke another cigarette. So it's cold turkey.

Marco: So if I go cold turkey, it means I stop doing something immediately and suddenly and forever.

Katerina: Entirely.

Marco: Alright.

Katerina: You can use this phrase for different habits, different things that you do like drinking, for example, or cutting down on sugar. But generally we just say this about cigarettes.

Marco: So it's mostly related to smoking. Going cold turkey.

Katerina: Some people like to smoke less, like one cigarette a day or one cigarette a week. But going cold turkey is supposed to be the hardest.

Marco: Right. Okay. Going cold turkey. Alright. And well, he was explaining the different negative aspects of smoking. He said, well, you know, they spend a fortune on cigarettes every month. And he said, laws are cracking down. So if the laws are cracking down, what is he trying to say there?

Katerina: Well, this is actually a very interesting point because in America right now, it's very hard to smoke in public places. So this means that the government is trying to stop people from smoking. So they say, no more smoking in public places, no more smoking in restaurants, no more smoking in bars. And so this means they're cracking down. They're making it harder to do something.

Marco: So they are becoming more strict. I think for this phrase, we should listen to a couple of more examples just to make sure we understand it.

Voice: Example 1.

Speaker A: The police are cracking down on drunk driving in our city.

Voice: Example 2.

Speaker B: Our school has really started to crack down on tardiness.

Voice: Example 3.

Speaker C: The president has passed a law that will crack down on possession of illegal substances.

Marco: Alright, so the government is cracking down. Laws are cracking down.

Katerina: Yeah, exactly. So this is an important one because you read this in the newspapers as well about certain laws and police action.

Marco: Alright, great. So I think it's time for us to listen to this dialogue for one last time and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about this vice.

Voice: DIALOGUE, THIRD TIME

Katerina: Ugh, it smells like an ashtray in here.

Smoker: Hi honey. What's wrong? Why do you have that look on your face?

Katerina: What's wrong? I thought we agreed that you were going to quit smoking.

Smoker: No. I said I was going to cut down, which is very different. You can't just expect me to go cold turkey overnight.

Katerina: Look, there are other ways to quit. You can try the nicotine patch or nicotine chewing gum. We spend a fortune on cigarettes every month, and now laws are cracking down and not allowing smoking in any public place. It's not like you can just light up like before.

Smoker: I know, I know. I really am trying, but I don't have the willpower to just quit. I can't fight with the urge to reach for my pack of smokes in the morning with coffee or after lunch. Please understand.

Katerina: Fine. I want a divorce.

Katerina: So do you have a problem with this vice as you call it? Are you a smoker?

Marco: I'm really not. I'm the type of person that could maybe smoke socially like if we go out to a bar with drinks, a social smoker like they call it, right?

Katerina: Yeah, I'm jealous.

Marco: But not really. You're a habitual smoker, right?

Katerina: Right. Well, I was. I'm trying to cut down. So as a habitual smoker, I often smoked every day. Sometimes I smoked a lot and sometimes I smoked less. But right now I'm in a period where I'm mostly quit.

Marco: Okay, almost.

Katerina: Yeah, well, I haven't smoked in a while. And when I do, it's just one cigarette.

Marco: Now, it is interesting because like we mentioned, laws are cracking down on where you can smoke. But also taxes and cigarettes are becoming much more expensive, right?

Katerina: Absolutely, especially where I'm from in Chicago. It's easy to spend maybe 10 US dollars or 12 US dollars on one pack of cigarettes.

Marco: On a pack of cigarettes. Imagine that. So then you have people that can't help smoking one or two packs a day. So how much is that a month? It's just an amazing amount of money.

Katerina: Thousands of dollars. Well, and I have to say, though, a lot of my friends who used to smoke in America have quit. So this is maybe working.

Marco: The whole thing of making cigarettes more expensive.

Katerina: Yeah, making them much more expensive.

Marco: Now, another interesting thing, and what I was reading recently, is that you know those warnings that come on cigarette packs that say "smoking kills", "smoking causes cancer". Actually a study has proven that it's not effective, that people don't mind it or even worry about the cautions on the cigarette packages.

Katerina: Well, as a smoker, I could say that, yeah, you generally, if you're going to smoke a cigarette, don't look at the label that much. You just, you know, you throw it in your bag and you forget about it.

Marco: But it's actually gotten to the point where people choose the cigarette pack based on the picture. So it's like, "Oh yeah, give me the one with the black lungs or give me that one."

Katerina: Oh, God.

Marco: Yeah, it's interesting. So it's not really working. I guess we're going to have to find other ways to make people more conscious about this vice.

Katerina: We should.

Marco: But come to our website at EnglishPod.com. Tell us what you think about this vice, smoking. Is it good? Is it bad? Are you a habitual smoker or just a social smoker?

Katerina: Yeah, we also have lots of great stuff, tools for you on our website and expansion sentences and all that stuff that helps you continue your studies outside of, well, the car or your house. So check it out. Let us know what you think. And until next time.

Marco: All right, we'll see you there. Bye.

Katerina: Bye.