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It's been a year.
52 weeks. 52 Sundays of you asking me if the introsounded too enthusiastic.
It always sounds too enthusiastic on the firsttake.
That is the job, though. Enthusiasm, then editing.
I genuinely did not think we would make it pastepisode 10.
I did. I just did not say it out loud in case Ijinxed it.
That is very you.
That is very anchor of me, yes.
Do you remember our actual first session beforeany of this existed?
Do not.
I am bringing it up.
You froze, Martin. Completely. For almost a fullminute.
In my defense, I had never heard my own recordedvoice used for something real before.
You had a tape recorder as a child. You told ourwhole audience about it.
That was different. That was me talking to myselfin my bedroom.
This was a microphone that other people wouldactually hear.
And now you record three or four times a weekwithout blinking.
Mostly. Some weeks are still rough.
Some weeks, Robert makes my whole week rough.
And I bring that energy into the booth whether Ilike it or not.
Robert.
Do not get me started.
I will not. Today is supposed to be a good day.
It is a good day. I simply reserve the right tocomplain about Robert on principle.
Do you remember the garden hose episode?
Do not remind me.
Halfway through a take, there is suddenly aflooding sound in the background.
Completely out of nowhere.
My automatic watering system chose that exactmoment to malfunction.
In my own garden.
During an episode about staying calm.
We kept the take. It is still online. People loveit.
People love chaos, Martin. And that is the reallesson of this whole year.
Do you remember the week we recorded four episodesback to back
because we were terrified of running out ofbuffer?
I do. I could not feel my own voice by Thursday.
You sounded like a completely different person bythe end of that week.
03:00
I sounded like a man who had said friends so manytimes the word stopped meaning anything.
We do not do that anymore, at least.
We learned. That is the whole point of a year,isn't it?
You stop making the same mistake twice and youfind three brand new ones instead.
Honestly, though, a year of doing this has changedsomething in me.
Go on.
You know, I never fully lost the stutter. It isstill there underneath.
It's just turned into slowness, mostly.
I know.
For years, I thought that was something to manageor hide or work around.
And now?
Now I stand in front of a microphone and get paidessentially to talk slowly on purpose.
The thing I was most ashamed of as a child is theactual selling point.
That is not nothing, Martin.
It is not nothing.
I have changed, too. You know, not just the Robertsaga.
Tell me.
I used to think being the anchor meant stayingcalm no matter what,
absorbing everything, never showing a crack.
I do not think that anymore.
What do you think now?
I think being steady does not mean being silentabout what is hard.
I say more now, on the mic and off it.
That is growth, Julia.
It is terrifying mostly, but yes.
Let's talk about the episodes then.
The ones that actually did something to us, notjust to the download numbers.
Go first.
Episode 10.
Back in October last year, the childhood one.
The tape recorder, the piano, all of it.
I almost pulled it the night before it went out.
Why?
Because it is one thing to talk about a method onthis show,
and a completely different thing to tell strangersthat I used to stand in front of a classroom
and stutter through four lines of poetry.
And then?
And then people wrote in.
Not about the vocabulary, about the stutter.
About their own kid or their own younger self
who never got a Danny whispering the poem back tothem.
That episode is the reason half our listenerstrust us, I think.
Not because we are experts,
because we admitted we were not always fluent inany sense of the word.
I remember reading your first draft of that scriptand thinking,
Martin, are you sure you want to give people thismuch of yourself?
I asked myself that about four times a day for aweek.
And?
And then I thought about Aunt Nora.
06:02
About he doesn't struggle.
He's just composing his sentences.
If she could hand me that sentence when I wasfive,
the least I could do was hand it to a few thousandstrangers 30 years later.
Let's do the next one.
Actually, before that, can I ask you something?
Go on.
Can I ask you about Claire?
Claire is my flatmate, Julia.
I know that, obviously.
I meant, is something going on there?
Nothing is going on with Claire.
We split the rent on a flat near the studio.
She leaves passive-aggressive notes about thedishwasher,
and that is the entire relationship.
People heard episode 107 from the start of thismonth and assumed partner.
She is not my partner.
Fine.
Duly noted for anyone confused.
Claire, flatmate.
So who has had you smiling into your coffee for asolid week straight?
Her name is Elena.
Finally.
Episode 70 back in May was the first time Imentioned her at all, even in passing.
I had gone 18 months without a single date.
And then I met her at a jazz club, completely byaccident.
And I panicked the entire walk over there aboutwhether my shirt was too formal.
You, the guide of momentum, panicking over ashirt.
I coach people on taking action for a living.
And I nearly did not walk through the door.
What was she like?
Calm.
Direct.
She noticed things about me in the first 10minutes that I had not admitted to myself in
years.
She told me later that people spend so much energytrying to be interesting,
and they forget that simply being observant is farmore attractive.
I have thought about that sentence every daysince.
And then episode 73.
Episode 73, mid-May, the forest walk.
Our second date.
I left my phone recording by accident, and somehowwe still published the whole thing.
The bit where she tells you that you talk aboutthe present moment all day,
and are only just beginning to live in one.
That sentence nearly finished me.
And after that?
After that we kept walking, literally andotherwise.
We have seen each other most weekends since May,Julia.
It is slow, the way she likes things, but it isreal.
Martin, that is wonderful!
09:01
It is.
I did not want to make it into content againstraight away,
which is why I have been dodging you about it forweeks.
I noticed.
I was trying to be a good friend and not push.
You were terrible at not pushing.
I know.
I am delighted I finally get to stop pretending.
Get Wise. Visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.
Third one.
Episode 102, back in July.
The World Cup episode.
I still get emotional about the closing lines.
You cried recording that and pretended you hadnot.
You noticed?
I noticed.
That episode connected straight back to our AtomicHabits episodes.
Months earlier, the 1% rule.
The whole idea that you fall to the level of yoursystems.
Watching a national team prove that live, ontelevision,
while we had already told our audience the theory,
it felt like the universe handing us a case study.
It also brought in the most messages we have everhad
about people's own 10 minutes a day.
Boobacar. People still write in asking how he isdoing.
He is not even a real person.
And people ask about him like a neighbor.
That is the job though, isn't it?
Make something true enough that it does not matterif it happened exactly like that.
Fourth. Episodes 106 and 107, just last week.
The Four Agreements.
Interesting that you count them as one.
Because I use them as one.
Genuinely. Not as content in my actual life.
Give me an example.
Robert sent me a one-line email last month that Iread about 11 different ways before lunch.
And the 11th time?
The 11th time I just asked him what he actuallymeant.
Turned out it meant nothing.
He was in a hurry between meetings.
So the assumption cost you a whole morning
and the question cost you one sentence.
Exactly. I am trying to remember that ratio.
Same, honestly.
12:00
Episode 107 is actually where the Claire confusionstarted.
Come to think of it.
I told the Claire story to explain not makingassumptions.
And half our listeners assumed partner anyway.
Which we have now officially cleared up.
Officially cleared up.
Claire flatmate.
Elena whatever this wonderful slow thing actuallyis.
Okay, but seriously.
Thinking about all four of those together.
The website has come a long way since we started.
It really has.
What began as one interactive transcript is nowdozens of episodes deep.
With translations, vocabulary cards, flashcards,the whole system.
And I still think people underestimate what we areactually trying to build there.
Say more.
It is not a podcast archive, Julia.
It is a place someone can actually learn properlyat their own pace.
With the parts of language learning that usuallyget forgotten.
Repetition.
Context.
Kindness even.
That word again, kindness.
It matters.
Most people who come to us have tried and failedat English somewhere else.
And they arrive a little ashamed of that.
A lot of them moved countries, Martin.
They are not sitting in a classroom for fun.
They need this for a job interview or a parent-teacher meeting.
Or just to order their own coffee withoutrehearsing it three times in the car.
That is exactly why slow cannot just be a gimmickfor us.
It has to actually respect where people arestarting from.
And our whole job is to hand them the pianoinstead of the exam.
The piano instead of the exam.
I like that.
I am stealing it for the next outro.
Already stealing it, clearly.
What I want a year from now is for someone to tellus the website
is the reason they finally had a real conversationin English.
Not finished a course.
A real conversation.
That is the whole thing, isn't it?
Not fluency as a trophy.
Fluency as a door that opens.
Yourenglishtoolbox.com
Free.
Growing every week whether people notice it ornot.
Whether people notice it or not.
Happy anniversary, Julia.
Happy anniversary, Martin.
Now go text Elena before we start recordingproperly.
15:03
I already did.
20 minutes ago.
Of course you did.
