Daily Dose of English 81
The Summer Solstice
Daily Dose of English 81
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 going to be talking about the summer solstice. because today is the summer solstice, the day of the year where the sun is at the highest position in the sky, which means that we are going to start having shorter days from here on. We haven't talked about the winter solstice yet, I don't think. Yeah, I started this podcast only a couple of months ago. Yeah, yeah, okay. So every year, twice a year, there is a solstice on each hemisphere, so each half of the Earth. I'm from the Northern Hemisphere, and so I'm gonna talk about that. But the exact same thing happens in reverse in the Southern Hemisphere, down on that. And so the solstices are the days where the days start to get longer. And so it's basically when the earth is changing its tilt compared to the sun, more or less. And so what happens is that as we approach the solstice, the days are either getting longer or shorter every single day, really. And then the other way around, as we're approaching the winter solstice, the days start to get shorter and shorter and shorter as we get closer. If you're from close to the equator, so the equator is that center part of the earth, like around the middle, so it goes through Ecuador and parts of Africa, the South America. If you're from closer to there, you might not notice this as much because the days end up being pretty similar because there's less difference between the winter solstice and the summer solstice, right? The days are all pretty similar. This is actually something that I noticed when I moved to Mexico, to sort of Southern Mexico, it's like Central Mexico, because that's way closer to the equator than where I'm from. Because as you go further north, you start to have more, larger differences in the time of a day. And so what do I mean by that? That's a good question. So where I'm from in Oregon, In the summer, the days are really long. The sun sets, so it starts to get dark at like 9 p.m., which is pretty late. And so the sun can set really, really late in the day. But during the winter, it sets really, really early. It sets at like 4 p.m. or whatever. And so there's these really big differences between the summer days and the winter days. And Europe is even further north, and so if you've been to like Sweden or Norway or Finland, right, those really northern countries, their days can get really short and really long. I have a friend from Sweden and he told me about when he would go to school like as a kid, during the winter, all of the daylight would be during school hours. All of the daylight. He would get to school, it would be dark outside and he would leave school and it would be dark again. They'd only have four to five hours of sunlight in the winter. And then in the summer, the days would be really long. like 14 hours of daylight. It would be really, really long. The other way around where there's barely any darkness. And the further north that you go, the more sunlight you get. The more sunlight you get during the summer and the less you get during the winter. in the Arctic Circle, which is the very like top or bottom of the earth, right? There's like this circle where the entire day is dark on the winter solstice and the entire day is light in the summer solstice. I think, I'm pretty sure. Which is kind of crazy if you think about it, right? Almost all humans don't live quite that far north. And so it's a pretty crazy thing to think about because it's just so different. Like we're used to having the days be relatively light and dark and there's this day-night cycle. But a couple times a year, that just breaks. Further North. Anyway, we're talking about today, which is the summer solstice, and that is often a celebrated thing, especially in parts of the world where it's important. So like Europe, North America, it is celebrated because I don't really know why, like I guess it's the change of harvest season, we're going into the fall, and it's just a thing I guess to celebrate. I believe it's also called midsummer, is another one of the things that can be called when you're celebrating it or whatever. And people often have some sort of party, which is not too weird, right? Because it's basically a summer party where you're having a fun for the summer. And that's something that was relatively common where I'm from. people would have summer solstice parties. It's not like it's a huge thing, right? The entire country doesn't like do anything special or change things, but it's definitely a thing that happens when you celebrate. I'm also looking at the data for about about the summer solstice a little bit in various parts of the world. And in Seattle, which is a little bit further north of where I'm from, they have 16 hours of light during the summer solstice on that day. So that means there's only eight hours. Yeah, eight hours of darkness and 16 hours of light, which is about the same for Portland, where I'm from. And then depending on how the further north you go, the more light you get. And yeah, I'm actually saying that yes, if you're in the Arctic Circle, you do get 24 hours a day. It's the entire day. And yeah. So coming back to the idea of celebrating the summer solstice, people often have what we call like a barbecue or a backyard bash, something like that where it's a party with people bring food and have a nice time because the weather is usually nicer in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. And so I wanna talk a little bit about that. My family often had summer solstice parties because it also coincided, that's a good word, the summer solstice often coincided with the end of school. School would get out a couple of, maybe a week before the summer solstice happened, depending on the year. It's not always exactly the same. And so one week would give people enough time to kind of relax and get into the summer vibe and then have a party, right? So it's sort of like the beginning of summer party for like no school rather, end of school year sort of thing. Coincide, I just said that word, I want to talk about it. To coincide is when two things end up happening at the same time, usually in like a good way, right? So it's kind of nice at the end of school and kind of coincides with the Summer solstice And so there's usually like a positive connotation to when you use the word coincide it's kind of a good thing Okay, what else was I gonna say oh Yeah, the party. What do you do like a sort of summer party? Like I said, it's usually outside. So people will have a large backyard. They'll open up their house in some way and and there could be a bit of like inside and outside. And the most common way that I've seen this done is a potluck. A potluck is where a party where everybody brings a little bit of food. And so there's a bunch of different food and dishes and things that people are cooking. And then often the hosts are the people that are having the party. will do something a bit larger, right? So I think the most characteristic American party is the barbecue. A barbecue is that thing that you put outside to cook on, usually it's meats or hot dogs, hamburgers, things like that. And so the host might do some barbecue and then everybody else brings a side dish, something to eat. So maybe salad, pasta, cookies, drinks, beer, things like that. And so everybody arrives, it's usually a bunch of people, and they put their food on one big table, and then you start cooking and people just go around and they chat, they have fun, the kids play, there might be water, sprinklers, or whatever it is. There's a lot of different things that can happen, because it's the summer. And these parties tend to be large, because you want more people to bring more food, to have a lot of interesting things to eat. And so I remember summer solstice parties with probably 40 people, 50 people coming over to my parents' house and there would be a bunch of families, a bunch of kids, a bunch of drinks, ice, maybe even some games, a whole bunch of different things that you can do and have a really fun party. So if you ever have the chance to go to a barbecue or a summer solstice party or anything like that in the U.S., I definitely recommend it. They are one of the more fun things that happen in the U.S. for sure. Another name is a block party. Those can happen. They're not necessarily on the solstice, but those can be really fun too, especially if they have a band. A live band is relatively common to have. And so if you hear that there's going to be a band and that there's going to be a potluck, definitely go. It's fun. You can even practice your English with people and have some nice chats. So that's all that I have for today. There's not a whole ton to say about this, but if you're curious in the summer solstice, definitely look up more information about it. And yeah, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and maybe learned a thing or two here or there. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen and I'll see you again tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye.
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