Daily Dose of English 117
Alternate Universes
Daily Dose of English 117
Intermediate
¡Hola a todos! Mi nombre es Ben y tú estás escuchando una dosis diaria del inglés. Es un podcast corto y sencillo que te puedes escuchar todos los dÃas para mejorar tu inglés. Estoy feliz que estás aquà conmigo. En este episodio, vamos a hablar de Alternate Universes. Alternate universes where things totally different happen, but that are weirdly similar. For example, in that intro, what if I was actually doing a podcast about Spanish, huh? What if it wasn't a daily dose of Spanish but una dosis diaria del español? That would be a very different universe, right? So, I want to talk a bit about alternate universes in this episode. And a universe, first off, is really just what we live in, this humongous space that everything is inside. I think in most European languages, it's basically the same word, universo, lots of different similar pronunciations, but it is the biggest thing that we can talk about in terms of our world. right, because you have, if you're just going in order from size, right, you have like your house, then maybe your city, then your state, then your country, first maybe then region, then country, then continent, then there's the earth, then there's the solar system, then there's the galaxy, and then there's the universe, basically. That's just bigger and bigger and bigger each time. And so the universe contains everything we know and we possibly can know. All of the things that have ever existed, all of the other planets, the stars, space, everything is within our universe. So the universe is very, very large. And in theory, there's no real way to get out of our universe. According to science, we're sort of stuck in our universe. But in science fiction, but then also in real science, like it could exist that there are other universes, alternate universes out there, which are just completely unreachable. So there, you don't need to think about them unless you want to. And that's sort of where we're getting to today. If you want to, because thinking about alternate universes can be very, very fun. because an alternate universe can be the same thing that's happening but with a few, one change or a few small changes. And there's a lot of science fiction that explores this idea. So some that's really popular, one of the more popular ones rather is Rick and Morty is about alternate, is it about alternate universes? Actually, I don't think it is. It's about alternate worlds. No, no, it is, nevermind, it is about alternate universes, right, because there's a ton of different, of the same person. And so the idea is like, what if, instead of me being from the US, what if I was from Mexico, right? And let's say that's the only change. Ben is from Mexico, not from the US. What would that do? What would that change in his world and the entire world? There's all of these different possible little changes. And so, in a lot of this science fiction it creates infinite versions of one person. So like what would the American version of Ben look like? What would the Mexican version? The Canadian version? The Brazilian version? The Chilean version? The Dutch version? The German version? You can have infinite different versions of any little thing. It's the idea with alternate universes. What if instead of recording today, I didn't record and I recorded tomorrow? What if instead of like, there's all of these different universes of branching different possibilities that could have happened. And that is the idea behind alternate universes, that there's infinite stuff out there that could be almost identical, but a little bit different, right? What if you were five inches taller, but everything else is identical in that universe? What if, I don't know, there's a lot of what ifs, basically. And that creates a lot of fun media, right? I mentioned Rick and Morty, but I can already think of a couple other things that are in alternate universes, right? Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse is an alternate universe where there are tons of different versions of Spider-Man from different versions of Earth with different changes and different worlds and things. And they're actually fantastic movies if you want some good movies to watch, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse and the second one, I forget what it's called, but it's like Back to the Spider-Verse or something like that, I don't know. They're both really good movies, they're the animated ones, make sure you watch the animated ones, those are the best ones. And they sort of explore this idea, what if in this universe, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right? And then you get to see all of the different possibilities. Because it creates this fun storytelling where instead of saying, Okay, we have to create a new character. You can say, what if this was a different version of Spider-Man? What if instead of it being Spider-Man, it was Spider-Woman? Or what if it was Spider-Robot or Spider-Pig, right? You get all of these fun different versions, which can create an interesting style of storytelling. You shouldn't do it all the time, but you definitely should try, like enjoy it if you can, right? I don't know if you're looking to write a sci-fi movie or book or something like that, but yeah. There's other examples of alternate universes as well. I'm sort of struggling to think of examples right now, but I know there's more. It's a very popular idea. The Marvel stuff recently turned into alternate universes, but I stopped watching because they just got boring after that. Because one of the issues with alternate universes, I'll go into that, is that it creates no stakes. Stakes are very important to a story. It's the idea of what happens at the end. Why does it matter? What changes? And so for example, in real life, there are stakes, right? If you make a mistake, you made a mistake. You can't go back in time and fix it. If somebody, like in a movie, if somebody, if a character dies, they've died, they're dead, right? They can't come back. Or if they, like there's all these like things that can happen, there are stakes. What if we lose this thing? What if the world ends? That sort of stuff. but the later marvel movies just took away all the stakes because they were like all right we can just go back in time okay we can just go to alternate universes where there's different versions of everybody and it just makes this for really weak storytelling because you're relying on that into that that wow factor to be like okay this is a um not a wow factor you're yeah you're relying on sort of the funness of alternate universes to carry the storytelling. But it's not story, it's just kind of cool. And that's what a lot of people enjoy about things like Rick and Morty or Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, is that they do interesting things with that idea instead of just getting rid of all stakes. you focus in on something and you tell a story from that. Rick and Morty is a little bit different because it's more of a cartoon thing where it explores smaller stories within there, which is a way of getting around it. But that makes a, it's more like weekly stories because it is a cartoon. for adults, but it is sort of that same style of where there's not really anything that changes at the end that much. Maybe the recent seasons have changed. I stopped watching after like, I don't know, season three or something, but anyways, I'm getting off topic. And so that's what I like about alternate universes, that they open up a lot of interesting stuff, but what I don't like is that they can very easily just make it boring. They can just turn off all of the interest and be like, all right, this is, I don't care, there's no stakes at all, nothing's ever gonna happen, I just don't wanna watch anymore. Something that I'm really excited about is that today I'm going to watch Everything Everywhere All at Once, which is a movie from now like two years ago or something that I've never seen, but it has really good reviews and people really like it because apparently it does play with that idea of alternate universes, but in a really fun and interesting way. I have no idea what the pelÃcula is about, which is a movie in Spanish, but I have no idea what the movie is about, but I'm excited because it has really good reviews and a lot of people say that it's one of their favorite movies in this style. So I'm excited to see what it holds. So as you're listening to this episode, maybe you should go check out Everything Everywhere all at once and watch it. It should be an interesting time and let me know what you think down in the comments. And also let me know about your thoughts on alternate universes. Do you like them? Do you hate them? Do you not care at all? What did you think about my alternate universe, alternate intro? What would you do in an alternate universe maybe? But anyways, thank you so much for listening. I hope that you enjoyed. And I will see you again very, very soon in another episode of A Daily Dose of English, all in English. See you then. Bye.
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