Strange News & Michael Jackson

You are listening to the second episode of English with Dane. Hit it. So crazy or far-fetched news stories from different corners of the world. And yes, these are all true as far as I can tell. As far as I can tell. Several options there. Oh and full disclosure, I get most of these from Reddit, which is one of my favorite websites of all time. And I'll always try to give credit to the user who submitted each particular story or who put up queues each story.

If you're listening and thinking Reddit, what is Reddit? Well, I don't want to discuss what Reddit is right now because I think it would take me a while to explain it, that is. So I will leave it for another day. But feel free to check out Reddit.com spelled R-E-D-D-I-T. So here's our new segment aptly called Strange News. Okay, so we have two stories today, and they both involve animals a jaguar and a whale.

Our first story is from the Washington Post, and it is a story written by Lindsay Bever, and the headline, El Titular, reads A woman was trying to take a selfie with a jaguar when it attacked her, authorities say. That's a very 2019 headline. Let's continue reading. It says A woman was attacked by a jaguar when she apparently tried to take a photo outside of the big cat's enclosure at Wildlife World Zoo in Arizona, authorities said. Notice the passive sentence structure, by the way.

A woman was attacked by. So this one took place in South Africa. Okay, Ocurrio in Sudafrica. Remember, to take place means to happen, to occur. And the headline reads Man escapes whale's mouth after being swept inside while snorkeling. Swept, by the way, is the past tense of sweep, barred in Spanish. However, when used in this context, sweep can also mean to pick up. Okay? So again, man escapes whale's mouth after being swept inside while snorkeling.

Okay, so right off the bat, the primeras, right off the bat, this is like my biggest fear whenever I'm in the ocean. And it actually happened to someone. There are several pictures, by the way, and I'll post them or I'll post a link to them on social media after the show, so you can see what it looked like. Okay, spoiler alert, it's crazy and it is terrifying. Let's keep reading.

It says South African dive tour operator Rayner Schimf recalled nearly being swallowed by a whale after he was mistakenly swept into its jaws during a sardine feeding frenzy last month. Jaws are mandibulas, by the way, like the movie Tiburon in Spanish, okay, but in English that movie is called Jaws, as in mandibulas. So while the whale was trying to eat a bunch of sardines, it accidentally almost swallowed this man, Casicelo Draga.

The 51-year-old was snorkeling near Port Elizabeth Harbor when a series of photos captured him being sucked headfirst into a bride's whale's mouth. A bride's whale's mouth. That's the type of whale, okay, a bride's whale. It continues and says, There was no time for fear or any emotion, he said. I knew instantly what had happened, lo que happened.

I knew that a whale had come and taken me, and I instinctively held my breath, assuming that it would dive down again and spit me out somewhere in the depths of the Indian Ocean in Las Profundidas. To hold your breath, remember, means aguantar la respiración. So he held his breath instinctively, assuming that the whale would dive down again. Man, that must have been the most terrifying moment of his life. And I don't think I would have reacted like that. I would have definitely panicked.

Again, I'll put up the pictures on Twitter, on Instagram, after the show so you can see them. Okay, so that's our strange news segment for today. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you picked up some vocabulary. Okay, let's move on and talk about something else. Okay, so last weekend I watched something very interesting and I wanted to talk about it.

And it might be a bit controversial to talk about, but I wanted to do it anyway, because it made me think about several things, and after all, that's what I'm here to do, right? To talk about things that I've been thinking about. So here goes. I watched a documentary that has become very popular recently, but like I said before, it's also a little bit controversial. The documentary is called Leaving Neverland, and it's about Michael Jackson.

But it's not about Michael Jackson like other documentaries are about Michael Jackson, right? It doesn't focus on his achievements, sus logros, as a pop icon. It doesn't focus on his music, it doesn't focus on his influences, no. It focuses on the alleged abuse that he inflicted on several young children. Now, again, right off the bat, deprimeras. I understand that maybe when you hear me say alleged abuse, it may sound insensitive.

Okay, it may sound like I don't believe the victims of the abuse, but I guess it is the appropriate word, right? Because it means said without proof. Now, this is where one of the big issues is, I think. What is proof? And what do we accept as proof? Okay, but let's talk about that in a moment. First, I wanted to give you some context. So this documentary film was made by Dan Reed, an English director, producer, and writer. And it focuses on two men as they recount their experience, right?

As they tell us about their experience, their involvement with Michael Jackson throughout their lives. These two men are Jimmy Safchuk and Wade Robson, who met Michael when they were, I believe, ten and seven years old, respectively.

So this two-part documentary takes you through their lives from young boys to adult men, and using real footage, so real videos and pictures and audio recordings, it shows you how their relationships with Michael Jackson, as well as their family's relationships with Michael Jackson, developed, como se desarrollaron. Now I don't want to go through each part telling you what happened, and I don't want to do this for several reasons.

The first being that the content of the documentary is at times extremely explicit, as it details the abuse that these two boys suffered, right, these two men suffered, as well as the ramifications, the consequences that the abuse has had on their lives, attenido, has had. We say key aspects in English, as in key, like llave. Or clave as well. Okay, but you open a door with a key.

Okay, as I mentioned before, it is important that we understand what the word proof means, because I think it's a very relevant aspect when speaking about this documentary and other similar cases. Now, if you have watched or seen the documentary, it is possible that you arrived at one of several different conclusions. And I'm saying this after speaking to several people as well as reading opinions and reviews online.

Obviously, I haven't spoken to everyone about this, so it is impossible for me to give you the full scope or the full range of opinions. But it seems that it seems that the world is divided into three camps or three groups. So this first group is the one that believes everything the documentary says, or most of it at least. This group believes that the abuse occurred just as the people or just as the victims describe it, and as a result are disgusted, are horrified and outraged.

And that this documentary casts an enormous shadow, una sombra enorme, on the singer's legacy. They also believe that we shouldn't even use the word victim when describing these men or boys at the time, because what they are claiming, lo que están declarando or lo que están affirmando, is simply not true. They believe that this whole thing is simply a money grab, a way to get some money, and that they are taking advantage of Michael Jackson's name, fame, and reputation.

This group understands both motivations and finds it difficult to make up their minds, to decide what they think happened. This group cannot deny the testimony produced by the victims or the alleged victims, according to según what side you believe, but also can't deny the financial motivations, right, the financial opportunities that a documentary like this presents. So how do we approach this? I think that there are several things happening here.

The first is that I think it is very easy in a way to be blinded by your admiration for someone. And I mean this in several ways. If you really love someone, it is much more difficult to see their flaws, right, Sus de Fictos. And I understand that abusing children is much more than just a flaw, but you understand what I'm trying to say. A lot of the people who are defending Michael Jackson's name are his biggest supporters, and it makes sense.

It is the people with Michael Jackson posters, with Michael Jackson tattoos, people who have bought every single album and have tried to go to every concert, etc. I understand that these people wouldn't just say, Oh, well, I don't like him anymore. That's just not how our brains work. And these are the people that are demanding proof, right? Pruebas, evidence. The one constant thing I keep reading and I keep hearing is where is the proof? They don't have any proof.

And this is what I wanted to talk about a little bit more. I think that although, a pesar, although it appears sensible to ask for proof, it is sometimes used as a way to dodge the truth, right? What I mean is that the idea that if there is no proof it didn't happen can be quite strange and complicated.

Around the world, thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, are convicted because of eyewitness accounts, some wrongly convicted and some rightly convicted, and we don't seem to have a great system in place to prevent people from remembering events incorrectly. And the reason I'm saying this is because there are two sides to every coin. Believing everyone and believing everything that people tell us is very dangerous, right? Because people lie.

But to say that someone telling you what happened to them cannot count as proof is also dangerous. I think it has to be a case-by-case thing because either way, it can be a very slippery slope. In regard to the documentary, one of the reasons that made it controversial is that these victims had previously testified and said that Michael Jackson didn't touch them. And this is one of the main reasons people are doubting the veracity or the truthfulness of their statements now.

However, it is common for an abuse victim or an abuse survivor to not be able to no ser capaz de, to not be able to tell people, even to understand it themselves, as it was a traumatic event, and our brains often deal with traumatic events in counterintuitive ways, in ways that we do not expect. To not be tricked, or at least to give us a good opportunity to find the objective truth.

And I think this is a very salient or relevant topic right now, especially when we think of the fake news scandals that appear to be increasingly common now, so more common than before. And that it feels like it's up to us, que depende de nosotros, to figure out or to decipher what is true and what is not. Okay, that's what I wanted to say about that. So we're gonna stop here. Don't miss the next episode of English with Dane. That's episode three.

In the meantime, subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you may listen to the show. Feel free to leave a comment or a review. Okay, until next time.