Daily Dose of English 225
Veterans Day
Daily Dose of English 225
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben, and you're listening to A Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about Veterans Day, because today, November 11th in the U.S. is Veterans Day, which is a federal holiday, And it is always celebrated on November 11th. It's one of those normal holidays that's not on like a day of the week specifically. And it is usually a day off for schools and work. Work not always, but usually schools. And yeah, we're gonna talk about it a little bit. I don't know a ton about it, but I'll just share what I have read and what I know about it as being from the US. But it's definitely one of those holidays that is not super widely celebrated, like there's not a ton of celebration. There usually are parades and events that happen, but they're typically for people in the military or families of, or in the military, like, sorry, rather, a military family is what we often call them. And that's when there is somebody in the family who's in the military. And so like their whole family, like part of their identity is about the military. Because if you don't know what the word Veteran is a veteran is somebody who has been in the military But isn't it no longer is And so it generally refers to people who have been to war or been in a war but I think technically it does it does apply to anybody who is served in the military and Doesn't and then it's now not in the military anymore and Veterans Day, which is actually a combination of a couple of different holidays in the US. So the original name was Armistice Day, which was honoring the end of World War I in 1918. Um, which apparently was on the, uh, the major hostilities of World War I were formally ended on the end of the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, which is, uh, November 11th and which is the date that we get today. um it's also a combination of remembrance day which is a um a day to remember the war sort of thing um and those have sort of become one holiday in as veterans day and i i think there's other similar holidays in other countries, but there's usually on it. It's like it's different, right? It's not. It's this is a specific US holiday that doesn't. Really have an exact version in other countries. Like I said, there are some sort of similar one and whatnot. And Veterans Day generally is about all veterans, all branches of the U.S. military, because it is not just limited to, for example, World War I or II, but it also does remembrance for the Korean War, whatever other war, Vietnam War, lots of different wars in the past that have been fought, which is not great obviously there's a you generally want to have fewer wars as a as a as a society as a country but um it is fact of the past, and so having a day for remembrance and for memorials is good. Memorial Day is different though, I will clarify. Memorial Day is a different day, which is about the people who have died in the military, and the Veterans Day is more about the people who are still alive and who are still living for the, I guess, like the peace after war, you could say. That is really most of what I know about it because we don't really learn a ton about it. We just get the day off. So basically all non-essential federal government things close. There's no mail delivered. It's a paid holiday and that kind of thing. And apparently there is also legally two minutes of silence to be observed at 2.11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. But I never really thought about that. They might do it on the radio, for example. The radio might not play anything for two minutes on 2.11 on Eastern Standard Time. But that is not a thing that everybody observes. So in the last half of this episode, since I don't really have a ton more to share about Veterans Day, I thought that I could recommend a couple of U.S. war movies, basically. Movies that are about some kind of war or have one of the U.S. wars as a central focal point to potentially give you some watching material or viewing material if you wanna learn a little bit more about the U.S. military from more of a pop culture standpoint, right? You don't really wanna dive into super-duper specific in-depth um looks into it because it is war in the military so it's not really the most amazing thing to dive deep into, I guess, unless you're really interested in that, in which case, go for it. But anyways, I think I'll start with one of my favorite film, just a really good film in general, which is Good Morning Vietnam, which is about a radio presenter, a very famous radio presenter who is brought into Vietnam during the Vietnam War as a way to try to cheer up the troops and to bring morale back into the people there. Morale is basically people being, feeling good, feeling excited, feeling positive about the future. That's generally called morale. And if there's poor morale, it's really hard to get people to do things or to work together because their morale is very low. And so in this case, Robin Williams is the actor. He does an amazing job and he really fills that role. Definitely recommend that movie. It's just a really good movie in general. Another, not really, I wouldn't say it's fully a war movie, but Forrest Gump I also just absolutely love and there is a pretty large section where he's in the military and it does an okay job at like representing what it would look like. There is like a lot of the, I mean a lot of the costuming in many of these movies is pretty good, especially the movies that don't talk bad about the military basically, generally get support from the military. So they're able to do things pretty well. So if something is just set in the military and it's relatively neutral, they generally like that because it makes people think favorably about the US military, which is good for recruitment, good for PR, a whole bunch of other things. So, I like that movie a lot. Very good story. Then there's a couple more grittier ones. So, Apocalypse Now is a very, very famous movie. And I don't love that movie. It's really long, but it does look really, really good. And I don't actually remember if it's supposed to be realistic fiction or if it's like a little bit mystical, like mystical fiction. Apocalypse Now, but it's a very famous movie. It is good. I wouldn't say it's like I didn't love it that much but it is it is a good movie movie Let's see. Um, it is loosely inspired on them on the novel heart of darkness But yeah, it looks like it's generally a Realistic it's supposed to be realistic. Yeah, I don't yeah, it's been a long time since I watched it, but it is Yeah, it looks like it's a relatively normal movie, but it's also set in the Vietnam War, so 1969. Saving Private Ryan is another very famous one that's got Tom Hanks in it. Saving Private Ryan is good. Again, not super my cup of tea and not my favorite movie just because I don't love those kinds of like really I would almost say like grittier of wartime movies, but good movie for sure. And then the other one that I thought of is Captain America actually, because that one is set in a, like a mystical version of like a magical superhero version of World War II, but it is, it does have really good costuming. It's got a big budget. It looks good. And I, the original Captain America, I quite like. And so I think that's a really fun, again, not realistic because it's got superheroes in it, but it is cool and it does give you kind of a bit of a look into how things kind of work. There's like sections that talk about the draft and that sort of thing. And yeah, so those are my recommendations off the top of my head. I'm sure there's, I know there's many more good wartime films that either tell good stories or are more realistic or whatever it might be. But I think there's a little bit of something for everybody in those recommendations. And yeah, I hope that you maybe learned a little bit of something in this episode. I know that it's a bit not super dedicated to the topic, but that's also because I don't have a ton to talk about. So that's everything for me today. I hope that you enjoyed and I will see you again tomorrow for another episode of A Daily Dose of English with me, with Ben. See you then. Have a good one. Bye.
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