I’m your host, Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today. I have to say I’m proud of you for clicking play on this episode, you’ve got so many options about how you can choose to spend your time, but you decided to hang out here with me and take some steps toward improving your English fluency.

And I just think that’s really impressive. So, job well done.

There’s a free interactive transcript for this bonus episode on our website Culips.com. And I think of the transcript kind of as like your secret weapon that can help you to maximize your understanding and comprehension of what you hear here today.

On top of that, the transcript is helpful for building your vocabulary, or shadowing, or really many other study techniques. And best of all, it’s free, right? So, make sure you check it out by visiting our website, or by just clicking the link in the description for this episode.

Today we have something a little different on the agenda. We’re taking a slight detour from our regular programming with an interview. And not just any interview, but an interview with a fellow English podcaster and fellow language lover.

Recently, I had a fascinating conversation with Alastair Budge, the host of English Learning for Curious Minds. And you’ll get to listen to that interview here today.

Alastair and I talked about his life in Malta, his podcast, and a special project he’s been working on recently, an audio drama for English-language learners called Pioneers of the Continuum. And in fact, yours truly, me, I had the chance to play a small, tiny role in it.

We’ll listen to the interview in just second, but before we do, I want to play the Pioneers of the Continuum trailer for you. I think it will help set the stage for the conversation that I had with Alastair and put everything into context for you.

So, let’s listen to the trailer now, and then we’ll jump right into the interview. I hope you enjoy it. Here we go.

Andrew: Alastair, welcome to the Culips English Podcast. It’s so great to have you here.

Alastair: Amazing to be here. Thanks so much for having me, Andrew.

Andrew: Yeah, no problem. So, Alastair, I thought we could start just with you telling us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, what’s your story, that kind of thing.

Alastair: So, my name is Alastair. I am from the UK originally. From kind of all over in the UK. I moved around quite a lot when, when I was younger, but have lived the most of my life in London. However, I have been living in the small country of Malta for the past six years.

Malta is a very small place, so I wouldn’t blame your listeners if they didn’t know too much about it. But it is a tiny rock in the middle of the Mediterranean.

If you think of Italy, like a leg, kicking a ball, the ball being Sicily, and then just keep on going down from Sicily, about 100 kilometers, and you hit this tiny little island called Malta. And that is where I’ve been living for the past six years.

Andrew: That’s really interesting. What is the population of Malta? You said it was a small place, I’m imagining that there aren’t too many. What is the word I use? How do you describe somebody from Malta? Is it Maltian? Like what’s the, what’s the word that you use?

Alastair: Maltese.

Andrew: Maltese, OK. There’s probably not too many Maltese. What’s the population of the place?

Alastair: It’s very small place. It’s 316 kilometers squared, I think. But their population is around 500,000 people. So, it’s actually one of the most densely populated countries in, in Europe.

Andrew: OK.

Alastair: It’s very, there’s a lot of people, you could come here and lots of people expect there to be, I don’t know, goats and beaches. And, and nobody here. But it’s, it’s very developed here.

Andrew: Wow, that’s really interesting. So, what brought you to Malta in the first place?

Alastair: So, it’s actually my, my wife. She was offered a job at the university here. And it was meant to be for one year. So, we moved here not knowing anything about Malta. Neither of us knew anything at all about Malta. We didn’t even really know where it was and we’d never been here.

But we thought, well, Mediterranean island, one year, what can go wrong? And yeah, six years later, we’re still here, have two little Maltese babies. And yeah, it’s sort of temporary home I guess.

Andrew: That’s amazing. And what language is spoken on the island? It’s Italian or Maltese? I’m not sure. You have to please forgive my ignorance.

Alastair: I knew just as much as you did before I moved here. So, I was very confused as well. But there are two official languages of Malta.

Andrew: OK.

Alastair: There is Maltese, which is a Semitic language, it sounds a little bit like Arabic.

Andrew: Wow, interesting.

Alastair: And there’s also English because Malta was a British Crown colony for 150 years. So, it was kind of governed by, by the UK. So, the Brits left behind English as an official language.

And that’s why it’s very easy for a British person like me to exist in Malta because you don’t really need to, need to learn any other languages. English is a perfectly acceptable language that’s spoken everywhere. Lots of people don’t even speak Maltese. So, it’s, yeah, it’s a good place to be if you speak English.

And also, if you want to learn English.

Andrew: Maybe I’m gonna have to visit you’re doing a great job at selling it. Sounds like a lovely place. And you said, yeah, people go to Malta to study English as well. Are there many language schools, there are opportunities for people to learn English?

Alastair: Yes, it’s one of the, it’s one of the biggest industries on the island. I think it’s about 10% of the GDP, something like that, is made up of language students. So, there are lots of English schools.

It could be a great place for people to get an immersion-English experience, especially people who are, you know, looking for a slightly smaller place than London or New York or Toronto, those kinds of large cities.

Also, people who are looking for a, let’s say, a Mediterranean-type of climate, rather than the rainy, the rainy days of London.

And it’s a little bit, a little bit more affordable as well. So, there’s lots and lots of people who come from all over the world, lots of people, especially from Korea, and Japan, and South America. So, it can be a very international, international place.

Andrew: That’s amazing. And the cost of living is what you said it was like a little bit more affordable than London is an expensive place, or what’s it like in that regard?

Alastair: I think 10-15 years ago, it was, it was significantly cheaper. Now, as with, as with everything, things got a little bit more expensive.

But when someone from yeah Japan, or Korea or Colombia might be considering the different options, especially if they were going for, I don’t know, three or six months or something like that, then, in general, the tuition costs are a little bit lower in Malta than they are in, in these larger cities.

And of course, the cost of living is, is lower as well.

Andrew: Very cool. OK. Well, listeners something to keep in mind. If you’re thinking about studying English abroad, maybe put Malta into your Google search bar and give it a search and see if it could be a good fit for you. Thank you for sharing that information with us, Alastair.

And speaking of learning English, you and I have something in common in that we are both podcasters. And we recently also have collaborated on a project and in fact, that’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re talking today is to kind of promote and introduce this project to our listeners.

But before we get to that, why don’t we talk about your podcast so could you tell us About the podcasting side of your life.

Alastair: Sure. So, I am the um, I guess, the writer, producer and host of a podcast called English Learning for Curious Minds. I started it about three and a half years ago, in December of 2019. We make two episodes a week, on all sorts of kind of weird and wonderful subjects.

The idea is that there’s a historical figure or a period of history or an idea, something going on, on in the world that listeners might be interested in learning more about. And that’s a scripted episode there between 15 to 20 minutes long, aimed at kind of intermediate to advanced learners.

So yeah, I’ve been doing that for three and a half years. We’re about 380 episodes in or something like that. So been going for quite a while. Not, not as many as you.

Andrew: But that’s pretty good, though. That’s quite a few.

Alastair: It’s yeah. When I now listen back to the first ones, I’m kind of embarrassed because I was just getting started. Now I feel like they sound little bit better. But yes, so that’s the, that’s, the main podcast English Learning for Curious Minds.

Andrew: You’re braver than I am. Because I fear to go back and listen to my old Culips episodes. I don’t think I ever want to do that. So, if you go back and listen to your old content, well, I have a lot of respect for you.

Alastair: I try to avoid it. But occasionally I’ve had to.

Andrew: OK, could you tell us about some of the topics that you cover? Because there are just like a really wide variety of interesting topics. And especially I think people who are into history, or into ideas, philosophy, these kinds of more advanced topics, would really love your podcast.

So, what kind of topics do you cover exactly?

Alastair: Sure. So, a lot of it is based on the, you know, the lives of historical figures or authors, people like that. Stories of companies.

So, for example, I did a miniseries recently on kind of misunderstood women through history, where we looked at Anne Boleyn, who was the unfortunate queen who got her head chopped off by her husband, Henry the Eighth. Elizabeth the First, and then Catherine, the Russian Empress.

We looked at the life of Walt Disney, Elvis Presley, I’ve just done one on the paradoxes of Zeno. So, there’s a lot of kind of interesting content. People often ask me how I decide what, what to cover, what subjects to choose. And really, I just find things that I am interested in.

People who have interesting lives, interesting perspectives, then try to research it and talk to people about that person in a fun and interesting way. And condense what is often quite a difficult topic to, to understand, condense it into a kind of 20 minute, interesting and accessible episode.

Andrew: Nice. And I wanted to ask you about how long it takes you to prepare one episode, because I imagine that you’re doing a lot of research and time spent writing and producing the episode.

You know, one of the nice things about Culips is although we do have to do some research and some prep before recording, we kind of just hit record and whatever comes out of our mouths is what we include in the podcast.

But yours is a little bit different. And I think you probably have to put a lot of hard work in to produce one episode. So, I was curious, like, for one 20-minute episode, how many hours are you usually spending getting ready for it?

Alastair: That’s a good question. I mean, it can take up to kind of 10-12 hours in total, I think, but I, I sometimes cheat because there’s, you know, the books I’m reading anyway.

And I think, OK, I’ll just I’ll kind of, I’ll take this and take some of the best ideas and package it up into a podcast episode, or documentaries that I wanted to watch anyway, that I will use as as basis for research.  So, it takes a lot of time.

I now have a wonderful lady who helps me with research called Natalie. So there luckily, I’m not doing everything all on my own anymore, but it can take quite a while.

And I think with trying to make something short, is often just as hard as trying to make something that is long because you’re trying to condense the, the most interesting parts of the story.

You’re trying to kind of pick the most relevant bits and tell a fun and engaging story at the same time as not missing out any kind of crucial details. So, I’ve, I’ve realized I’ve got a lot better at trying to actually create these things.

Because you’re always striking a balance between kind of just telling, telling the facts, and making it somewhat dramatic and engaging to listen with. So, I think I’ve got a bit, bit better at striking that balance, but there’s still, yeah, I’m still learning.

Andrew: No, I think you’re doing a great job. And I imagine that it would give you a nice excuse to kind of read more books and check out documentaries and stuff, right?

If you’re like, always kind of looking around for new ideas, it could be a nice, yeah, excuse to spend some time in front of the TV, or something like that.

Alastair: Certainly, I feel like this is just, my life is now, rather the podcast is an excuse for me to be doing things that I’d want to do anyway. And just, all I have to do now is just kind of package them up and share, share these, these ideas with, with the listeners.

Andrew: So, we’ll move on to our project that we’ve been working on together, called Pioneers of the Continuum here in just a moment. But maybe before we move on from your podcast, we should tell our listeners where they can find it. So how can they check it out for themselves?

Alastair: Sure. So, the, the name of the podcast is English Learning for Curious Minds. And you just open up your podcast app and type English Learning for Curious Minds. You should find it there.

Andrew: All right, excellent. Let’s talk now about Pioneers of the Continuum, which is your brainchild. And I think, a really interesting and exciting project that you’ve been working on to gather podcasters from the English language-learning community, and we’re all like working together on this audio drama. Would you describe it as an audio drama? Is that an apt way to talk about it?

Alastair: Do you know I, I wasn’t sure what I should call it. And I was searching for a really good expression. And I think you’ve just created it. So yes, I think, I think it’s an audio drama.

Andrew: An audio drama. Well, I have to admit that I have stolen that from a Korean-language podcast that I listened to, they produce an audio drama, so it’s not my own. But anyways, what is exactly Pioneers of the Continuum?

Alastair: So, Pioneers of the Continuum is an audio drama…

Andrew: Nice!

Alastair: …that, an eight-part audio drama, with eight mini episodes of kind of around 15 minutes each. And it is a story, a fictional story, about a group of historians, linguists, and scientists who managed to invent a time machine.

And each one has the, has the opportunity to go back in time to a place and a time of their choosing. And in each episode of the audio drama, one of the characters tells the story of what happens. So, it all kind of links together in, in a fun way.

There’s some, some kind of interlinking between the characters. And so that is Pioneers of the Continuum.

Andrew: Excellent. And actually, you reached out to me and asked me to voice one of the characters. So, I play a historian who goes back in time to the age of the Romans. And yeah, it was an interesting experience for me, because I have never done any dramatic acting or anything before.

But you also gathered, how many like eight or nine different English podcasters?

Alastair: There are seven.

Andrew: OK. And they’re all different podcasters from the English language-learning community, right? Could you tell us about some of the other people who are involved in the project as well?

Alastair: Sure. So, I can tell you a bit about the people. And I’ll give you a little teaser about what their, their character does. And, and what happens.

So, the first, the first episode is Luke, from Luke’s English Podcast, and he plays a character who goes back in time with the objective of killing Adolf Hitler but finds that things are a little bit more complicated than, than he bargained for.

Then there’s you, Andrew, you as you said, you go back in time to the time with the Romans, and you get into a little bit of trouble.

Then the third episode is Lindsay from All Ears English and Lindsay, actually well Lindsay’s character goes back in time to when she was, to just before she was born, to try to save her father from an accident, but she also realizes that the reality that she thought was, was true, is not quite the reality of the time.

The fourth one, I believe is Tom from Thinking in English, who goes back 100,000 years to, to the time of the cavemen. And he, he also gets into a little bit of a surprising situation, let’s say.

Then number five is Anna from English like a Native. Anna plays a, the character of an activist who goes back in time to the, to the time of the suffragettes, the protesters for, for women’s rights. And she yeah, she gets into a bit of trouble as well, that seems to be a theme here.

And then the sixth one is Ariel from Easy Stories in English. And Ariel’s character was brought up in a religious home. And so, the character tries to go back to find Jesus, and leaves more confused than, than they arrived.

And there’s the same character in the, in the final two episodes. And that character is played by Christian from Canguro English. And Christian’s character, in fact, travels to the future. So, he travels the future, expecting to find an amazing world full of, full of life. And he also is a little bit surprised at what he finds.

So those are the seven characters. It’s been absolutely amazing to collaborate with all of these distinguished people from the world of English language podcasting, obviously, including yourself. And it’s been, it’s been a very fun project to work on.

Andrew: Alastair, what was like the inspiration for starting this project, like we said, it’s really ambitious, there are all these people involved. And just the thought of trying to organize all of this is a little bit daunting, in my opinion, but you managed to get it all done.

So, like, what was the impetus for starting the project?

Alastair: So, I wanted to do something a little bit different, I guess. And I know how important having compelling interesting input is.

Or in plain English, just stuff that people want to listen to and enjoy listening to. And that can be, you know, that can be conversations with between two people about their daily lives. It can be interesting stories about historical figures.

Or of course, it can be, you know, a fun and interesting, fictional story that people would like to listen to. So, I thought, well, I’ll just try and create this. And I, it was a collaboration between me, and a guy called Emile, who actually writes a lot of our content.

So, I’m not going to try and take credit for it at all. But the idea was to create this, you know, time traveling story, which allows one character to narrate one person to narrate one, one character in one episode.

It has been, has been obviously quite a lot of quite a lot of work, trying to get everything lined up, and make sure that everything sounds good, and the story works well.

But yeah, the inspiration was, firstly, I wanted to try and see if I could do it. And the second, I guess, the second motivation, the selfish motivation, I guess, was that it gave me an excuse to, to collaborate with people like you, people I’ve looked up to for a long time.

So, it’s kind of allowed us to have this kind of conversation.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s awesome. And I know as a language learner myself, like I live in Korea, and I study the Korean language, and have for a long time, I personally love listening to radio dramas, audio dramas, just because personally, I find audio, better to learn with than video.

Because I don’t have enough time to sit down in front of the TV and watch, you know, movies and dramas, I can do that a little bit, and I enjoy doing that. But I have lots of time to put some headphones in my ears while I’m walking my dog or while I’m doing the dishes.

And we really do need to get that input into our brains and through audio, I think is the best way to do it, or one of the best ways to do it. And so, I’m excited to bring this project to all of the listeners out there, and I hope they will enjoy it and I’m sure you feel the same way.

And we should tell everyone about how they can access it and how they can check Pioneers of the Continuum out. How of the Continuum people do this?

Alastair: Sure. So, if you open up your podcast app and you just search for Pioneers which is P-I-O-N-E-E-R-S of the Continuum. C-O-N-T-I-N-U-U-M. So, Pioneers of the Continuum and it’s available for free on every single major podcast app and there’s free interactive transcripts as well all that kind of stuff.

So, 100% free available wherever you get your podcasts. And maybe we can also put a link in the, in the show description as well.

Andrew: Yeah, we should definitely do that just so that people can find it easily. So, guys, just click the link in the description. That’s probably the easiest way to find it. And Alastair, I can’t remember the plan. Is it going to be released all at once? Or is it like one episode per week kind of thing?

What’s the release schedule like?

Alastair: So, on May the 23rd, we are going to release the first three. So that’s, that’s Luke’s one. That’s your one. And that’s, that’s Lindsay’s one. And then thereafter, every week, there will be one new episode for five weeks.

Andrew: All right, amazing. So, everyone, please check out both of these resources that we talked about: English Learning for Curious Minds and Pioneers of the Continuum. And Alastair, I have to say a big thanks for involving me in this project, and also for coming on to Culips to talk with me today. Thank you so much.

Alastair: Thank you so much for firstly, for having me on. And secondly, for doing such an amazing job of playing Bobby The historian. He did a wonderful job and I’m sure that all Culips listeners will be eager to hear you playing the part of historian. He goes back to ancient Rome and gets in a bit of trouble.

Andrew: Yeah, so listeners are gonna have to check it out and let me know how I did. And yeah, if you like this kind of audio drama content and let me know and let Alastair know and who knows, maybe we can make more of it as well into the future. But for now, Alastair, I think we’ll wrap things up here.

So, thank you so much again, and we’ll talk to you next time, OK?

Alastair: Amazing. Thanks so much, Andrew.

Andrew: Wasn’t that great? I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. Remember, if you want to learn more about Alastair’s podcast, English learning for Curious Minds or Pioneers of the Continuum, be sure to check out the description for this episode for the links.

So, thanks so much for tuning in to this bonus episode of the Culips English Podcast. Keep up the great work on your English studies this week. And stay tuned for a brand-new Culips episode coming very soon. Until next time, take care, and bye-bye!