#76 Sue Elvis | The Art of Conversation and Lifelong Learning

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of your favorite podcasts? Join us for a unique twist as Sue Elvis steps in as our interviewer, flipping the script on your usual hosts, Jesper and Cecilie. Sue brings heartwarming feedback from new listeners who love our open-minded and conversational style. Together, we reminisce about the origins of our podcast, the nervous excitement of recording our un-aired Episode Zero, and the inspirations and motivations that fueled our journey into podcasting.

Podcasting isn't always smooth sailing; we delve into its spontaneous and sometimes challenging aspects. From overcoming self-consciousness and technical glitches to the dynamic of hosting as a duo versus solo, we dive into what makes our podcast tick. We also explore the balance between preparation and spontaneity and highlight the joy of continuous learning and growth. Our conversation touches on how focusing on setting an example and taking risks has been crucial in overcoming the initial hurdles.

Curiosity drives our choice of podcast guests, steering us away from rigid criteria. We share insights on balancing multiple creative projects with personal life commitments and the importance of giving back to the community.

Join us for a captivating episode that underscores our passion for meaningful conversations and continuous discovery in friendships.

🗓️ Recorded June 18th, 2024. 📍 At  Åmarksgård, Lille Skendsved, Denmark

▬ Connect with Sue Elvis  ▬
Website: https://www.sueelvis.com
Unschooling Website: https://www.storiesofanunschoolingfamily.com
Books by Sue Elvis: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Sue-Elvis/author/B00QTDRCBM
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/stories_ofan_unschoolingfamily/
YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@SueElvis
Podcast: https://www.storiesofanunschoolingfamily.com/my-podcasts/ 

Chapters

• 0:00 Unschooling Podcast Creation and Exploration
• 14:23 Spontaneous Conversations and Learning Experiences
• 29:56 Podcast Guest Bios and Engagement
• 36:43 Project Selection Based on Curiosity
• 45:32 Continuous Family Learning and Exploration
• 57:25 Navigating Homeschooling Laws While Traveling

Transcript

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So today we are yet again. This is our fourth time together with Sue Elvis, which much means that we like you, sue, and one of the last time we talked, we actually talked about, instead of us asking you a lot of questions that we should kind of lend the mic to you. So welcome. And today it is Sue who are interviewing us. 

00:22 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
Thank you, jesper, and hello Cecilia, who are interviewing us. Thank you, jesper, and hello Cecilia. Yeah, thank you for allowing me to sit in the host chair today. You might remember I suggested that at the end of our last episode because I really wanted to come back and talk with you again and I thought, hey, you know, if I made that suggestion, you might invite me back. 

00:44 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
We would probably have anyway. 

00:47 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I'm really looking forward to the conversation and I just want to thank you for sitting in the guest chair being guests on your own podcast today, so I hope that we can have a good conversation Now. Can I tell you that I've had some really good feedback about your podcast A lot of people who hadn't known about your podcast until I told them about it. I said you know, I'm the self-directed podcast, go listen. And now you've got a lot of new fans and the one thing that keeps coming up is the reason people like your podcast is well, obviously because of you, but because they're conversations and you're so willing to listen and you're not sort of telling people this is how it is, but you're willing to explore a topic and you listen carefully and I get the idea that you're willing to share your opinions, but you're open to hearing other people's and maybe changing your mind about a few things down the track. 

02:04
I don't know. I'm always like that. I like to listen and to see if there's run it through my mind while I think on it and see if I need to adjust my beliefs or my ideas about unschooling, and so I think that's what people love. Is that our conversations or your conversations with anybody. They're exploring the topic, going deeper, and everybody's listening carefully to each other. 

02:31
But the other thing, I think, is that you're very, very interested in people and you make us, the people, the guests, feel very welcome and as if you haven't got anything better to do today. Then sit in front of your camera here and find out more about the people you've invited along on your podcast, and you really want to hear what we have to say. So I would just like to know how your podcast came into being. Did, uh, did you sit down one day and think, oh look, everybody else is podcasting these days. This is the way to actually communicate and to join the bigger conversation. We must, uh, try podcasting. So how did you come about? How did your podcast come to be? 

03:25 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
so I think you should answer that question, but say thank you for the overwhelming feedback feel a little, yeah, humbled and and grateful, um, wow, well, um, okay, I will release the episode at some point what episode, the one I never aired, so don't do it, I might do it. 

03:50
So what? The reality is that Cecilia and I, as many people have talked about hey, this unschooling thing is interesting and podcasting is. We're listening to a lot, it could be a fun way of sharing and after many, many years of going down the path of unschooling and parenting, we believe that we still have stuff to explore, but also that we might have picked up something along the way that we could share. And then we wanted to try it, and the real start before the start was that we were interviewed by a guy called amrit santu for his podcast, and after the podcast we talked about oh man, it could be fun to start a podcast. And he said, yeah, but you? He gave the same advice as everybody else, more or less you need to set a date, you need to record 10 episodes, because if you are to do this, you have to commit and you should really do it, and if you're two people, it would be a good idea. And I was thinking about it and like, okay, yeah, it could be cool, and nothing happened. 

05:02
Then one day I saw an interview, because my, besides parenting and unschooling, my other big interest is marketing, which is the line of work I've been doing for 25 years, and and there was this guy who have written a book called. I should be able to remember his book. One of them is called Hookpoints it's a book about marketing, and the other one is called From Zero to One Million Followers in 30 Days, and he talked about how he leveraged social media and ads to grow his following, and he's very much a market marketeer, but he had some interesting points and what he said in that interview was actually I say yes to whoever invite me for a podcast, um, and then I was like, okay, let me try to write to him. And then he said yes, and then I was so unprepared and I was like, okay, now I need to do it. And I recorded the first episode zero, but just me not me and Cecilia and I was so nervous and I was sweaty and just insecure on so many levels that we decided to not air it, even though he gave some really good advices for people about how, how they can leverage marketing to get their, their message, heard by more people, and and then so that was episode zero, which we never aired. 

06:39
Maybe I one day will air it, if I can dare re-listening to it and hear myself. Maybe I'm not so bad, you know. But then we went back to this guy, amrit uh santu, and said so, amrit, we're actually doing it. Do you want to be our first guest? And we recorded the episode with him and agreed in that episode one that we, if he was up for it, we would re-interview him for episode 100 and talk about what have happened since our first episode. And now I think this might be episode 74, 75 when this comes out, and the podcast is out in more than 100 countries now, which is kind of fun, um, and, and I'm learning from it on two levels one is, uh, yeah, multiple levels. Let me take the one I can. Yeah, yeah, please. 

07:39 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Then I have this, uh, afterwards because it seems like there's a shift. 

07:42
Now you're saying something other than where it comes from oh, yes, yes I have a little yeah, tiny, tiny, good thing because what I imagined you would say when I gave the talking stick to you is we've had some in conversations about how we enjoy being part of culture. We enjoy reading books, we enjoy listening to podcasts, we enjoy arts, we enjoy going to watch a play or listen to a concert, or maybe there would be a sculpture somewhere that we'd like to see. So the things we humans create to share the human experience and explore it together as as as one people. Basically, we like to take that, so we travel the world and we go explore and we want to know about the history of the world and we like the museums and we enjoy it. If someone sits on a corner somewhere embroidering something and, you know, sharing their craft, and we said, in order to be a full human being, we need to take part in this. We need to make sure that we share, that we create something for other people to enjoy, that we I've been blogging for more than 10 years at the time, so in a way, I was sort of kind of already doing it, but we felt like we'd like to do something together and we'd like to do something that was, I don't know, more exploratory and well. 

09:20
So when I blog I write things that I know from my life and my experience, so that's like it has that center. But when we could invite other people to share their passions and their journey and their, it would be a more open project. So we would create culture, but we would also help other people be part of the sharing that is so important for the human life. So that's where the idea came from, before the whole. Yeah, we appeared on a podcast yeah this guy whole thing. 

09:56
We had this idea that we wanted to create something with a lot of people. We wanted to talk to people, other people, and they would be able to express their point of view, and we wanted to take part in the creation of shared space. 

10:15 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
How can you consume without taking part in the creation? You can't, but it's fair. 

10:22
Yeah, no. But the three things for me that is really joyful is one I love making projects and learning through projects, which is my own you can say, unschooled, self-directed mind. The amount of stuff I've learned through making a podcast is just wonderful about how to record it, edit it, all the tools I get to use. I'm like a little boy in a candy shop, really having fun with the creation part of all this. But what is really interesting is as we invite people and do not just talk among ourselves, as some people who have a podcast would do. What happens for me and cecilia is that it gives really good inputs into our life. 

11:10
I read books cecilia have read years ago. 

11:13
When we are about to interview someone and we get new deep impacts in our life and ideas that link us with us, where we reflect on them over time and in our life we are like, oh yeah, okay, you remember this that one person said one year ago and we're still working with that idea, that concept. So I think, as just basically a couple, it has given us a lot of great time together. And the third thing I really like is how often are you saying to yourself and the people you're around hey, let's sit down, let's have a conversation where we're actually so focused on the conversation and it's trying to explore a subject, as you say, that we kind of believe someone else would maybe be interested in listening along, because a lot of everyday chit chat is cool, nice, wonderful, but it is. It is not the same deepness and I in my life had missed the longer, deeper conversations and that hole is fulfilled with making the podcast. So a long answer to a short question and it might be that the whole way today soon. 

12:27 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
No, I find it really interesting, jesper, that you haven't published your first episode and that you said you've learned a lot along the way. Now, when I started podcasting, I was really quite happy with my first episode. I thought, wow, I've done it, I've gone out there, I've learned how to do it. My mic wasn't very good and the quality of it, of my podcast, has improved a lot since my first episode. But I thought, wow, I sat down and I did it. I recorded an episode. I got it uploaded. It was on Apple Well, it was iTunes in those days and anybody could listen, did it. I recorded an episode. I got it uploaded. It was on Apple well, it was iTunes in those days and anybody could listen to it. And I felt so proud of myself. 

13:12
And then my kids listened to it and they said, mum, you're not using your normal voice, you're using your other people voice. And all of a sudden I got self-conscious about the whole thing and I have my confidence. But I went really down and I thought I've got to go and I've got to go and delete that episode. What will people think? What if people criticize me? And then I said, no, it was my daughter, sophie. Uh, she wanted a podcast as well and she said I'm gonna go make an episode, mum. 

13:48
And that was the point that I knew I had to leave my first episode exactly where it was, because we have to be an example to our kids, don't we? We don't have, if you, if we wait till we're perfect at something, we'll never do it. We've got to take risk, we've got to be brave and to be prepared to put ourselves out there. And what does it matter if someone comes along and criticizes and actually nobody did? It was all in my head. But as the, I think I've made I don't know over 200 episodes, which is not a lot for the number of years I've been podcasting, because I've had lots of breaks. But as I was podcasting, I learned more and more, like you said, jesper, and it was a not only joining in the big conversation and giving back to people. I felt I was getting a lot from it as well, because it was a learning experience for me and I. I assume that's what it's like for you as well. 

14:50
Not that I think that you need to learn anymore, because I think you've got it all all wrapped up now, but I'm sure, learning journey yeah, but I'm sure that there's things along the way that you've thought, oh, I could do this better here, or we might use this software instead of that. One I had a lot of problems with at the beginning was umming and ahhing, and I learnt not to do that so much. But you two you're together and you're having a conversation together. I wonder if that's more relaxing, um puts you more at ease than it would I always, because I don't always record by myself. I sometimes record with my daughter, but I've made loads of episodes by myself and so I sit down and I talk to myself. So do you find, having you said, you do some of this together and it's an experience and you learn together, you talk about it together, but you're comfortable in each other's presence. So I think you must be well ahead of somebody like me who sits down and just talks to themselves and it feels a bit strange at times. 

16:04 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I'm not sure I would be able to do that think we could do it without guests no no, I don't think we could. 

16:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think well, maybe we will mature at some point. 

16:17 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
But it's a conversation and we have talked so much to sit in the expert chair. 

16:24 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So much I feel like the things I really have to say that I find important to say. It's better to say them in the context of a conversation than to sit down and then explain, explain it it all Like here's how it works, I don't know. I mean, are we comfortable doing it together? Sometimes we get really annoyed with each other actually if we're late or I don't know. I think the dynamic between us that we go, we meet people, we meet new people is usually Jesper, who reaches out and reads a book, or at least the flip side of the book, and and reach out to someone and says we should talk to this person. It looks like a, it looks like a nice person. And my deal. 

17:22
When Jesper said let let's do a podcast, I felt at the time I remember I felt I had too much to do and I said it's a good idea, but I can't handle any more tech. I write a lot and it never ends up on the blog because of all the tech, because I have to translate it, I have to make sure all the comments are right, I have to find pictures and I have to do all the teching and all the all the behind the scenes stuff and I kind of I like to just say what I mean and then I'm done with that. I the whole process after. I don't like that. 

18:08
So the deal was and I was also I can't read all the books. I have a lot of books that I'm reading, so if you add more books to my pile, I just can't keep up with that. So the deal basically is that I just show up yeah, sometimes I don't even know who we're talking with. Yes, jesper tells me in the morning we have a podcast at whatever time and I'm like, okay, and I just show up and you do all the tech. That's the other part of the deal. I can't. I'm like I'm not doing any of that. 

18:39 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
No, but that's also real life. Sometimes you meet a person and you get into a conversation Also real life. Sometimes you meet a person and you get into a conversation and that is how I explore people. When I meet them, I ask questions because I'm really curious and I find people really fascinating. They're fun. 

19:00 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I think that you could do a lot of preparation beforehand, find out everything about your guests, or you could find out through the conversation that you're recording, and so there's no real. Yeah, look at books and things, but talking to people is such a better way of finding out about people than it is about reading about them or doing your research, isn't it? You have that person in front of you and you have the opportunity to explore things with them face to face and find out who they are. But there was something in your last well, it won't be your last episode when this is published episode I think it was 72, the Travelling Village one. Oh, yeah. 

19:51
And you were talking about your travels and I'm not sure, maybe, what you both said. I think you said it, cecilia. How about how it is the people who are the adventure, not so much the, the beautiful sights that you get to see when you're traveling, but the people that you meet, the people that you get to know, and I guess, the people that you learn from and they learn from you. And people enrich each other's lives, don't they? 

20:23 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
yeah, yeah, the podcast is part of that. I mean that we meet people because we reach out, and we reach out because of whatever you know could be a book they wrote or it could be a post that they put on social media. It could be someone telling us about someone and we're like, oh, maybe we should talk to this person and it's a good way to I don't know just get in touch with a lot of different people. I think also part of the not preparing too much is that we have decided to trust the process very much, that the spontaneity of of just having it's a real meet. The first time we talked to you was the first time we talked to you on the podcast. I never met you before and it was a real meeting between two, three people and and we really talked about the things that came up first. 

21:23
Whereas had I read a few of your books and a lot of your blog and prepared and and written down a lot of questions, or had I had a standardized question sheet that some other podcasters have and they do amazing, but it's just not me. Um, with the same questions you ask everyone and then you explore that there wouldn't be this. You know what? Just what's top of mind for you, what's top of mind for me and how? What? There's so much more energy in that. In my experience and these conversations, they seem very chaotic, but they always arrive at a point where something very interesting and relevant shows up, like in the center of it, and then then we start spinning around it and then we cut it because so that it doesn't become too long yeah, the first time you invited me on your podcast sometime last year, I remember saying, oh, yes, I'd love to do that. 

22:24 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
And then I sent you an email saying do you have a list of questions that we're going to be talking about, a list of topics, and I waited and waited and I thought they're not going to send me any guidelines about what? 

22:39
we're going to talk about and I thought, well, how am I going to do this? Because I won't be able to prepare, I won't have all my information, all my answers, um, on my fingertips. Because, yeah, I won't know what you're going to be talking about and perhaps I, yeah, perhaps I won't know what to say. And then, but since talking to you, I don't, especially in the last episode that we recorded together I don't know what episode that was, was it 70, 70, 71? 

23:18 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I have no idea. 

23:20 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I think it was last 71. 

23:22
But we were talking about how we don't always have the answers and how that's all right, but the confidence to come and talk to people in a conversation and not have the answers and be able to say, I don't know, what do you think let's talk about this together and try and work it out, or, uh, it a new way of doing things. 

23:46
I think I say the new way Most of the podcasts I listen to are that format that you've just explained Set questions, the guest is prepared, the host works his or her way through the questions, and I think this is why your podcast is a bit different and why it's a breath of fresh air. As you said, it's spontaneous and we're learning together as we chat, and that's sort of a reflection, I think, of the conversations that we have with people in the real world. Well, I say the real world not via technology, face-to-face and even around the dinner table with our families is where we learn by chatting and expressing an opinion, listening, accepting that opinion, asking questions and just exploring, without shutting people down or saying, hey, I don't agree with that asking the question, being open to question everything. 

24:56 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
basically, and being on this exploratory journey, I don't even expect to find answers. That's not my goal. I find perspectives, ideas, bottles, strategies, options, and that's what I'm juggling walking through life. Put yourself in the expert chair and also from the interviewer's point of view. If you think you have all the right questions lined up, you lock yourself into one position. You think you know what you're exploring, you think you know what's going to happen when you open that box. You think you kind of know what's in there and you expect from the person answering the question that they also know exactly what to unfold and how to unfold. It and the conclusions. 

26:02
Here is how it is and that that basically puts all of us in in a position of ofness. We don't move as if I had decided this is how it is and I will say I don't know and I'm never going to know how it is. This life is too complicated, it's too big, it's too amazing, it has too many options and corners and surprises for us, good and bad. So if I think that my strategy or perspective or philosophy is right, this is how it is, then I position myself as if I was like inside an archive and I had a little number and you could look me up, kind of thing. But I'm not. 

27:08
I'm part of the process of life. I'm part of, I'm part of big bang. I'm part of something that exploded and is still exploding and no one knows where it's going. So, and life is this whole movement, things unfolding and decaying and growing back and finding new ways and coming up with surprises, and that's the reality of life. I don't want to be in that position and I don't want to put anyone in that position. So I mean, there's actually more to the story of coming unprepared than oh, this is nice, and then I have more time to, I don't know, cut my fingernails. It's. It's because I think it's real and something real comes up and I have a deep trust in the process. We talk to awesome people about amazing things. 

27:59 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And I will respond to that. There's also a reason. I just feel we are very meta about the whole podcasting thing, but it's also interesting to explore. There's a reason why I don't do bios in the start of a podcast. I've tried it. I feel it's unnatural. I wouldn't. 

28:19
Um, I try to present the guests to people in the same way I would if I had a friend with me at a party and I met another friend. I was like wanting to introduce them to each other because they needed to talk. Like hey, this is sue, she's awesome, she knows a lot about unschooling if that was the way I wanted the direction to take. But these like there's podcasts that do like five minutes. Uh, bios of this person is so amazing because this is their cv and now you need to listen to them as these experts. Then you have set the tone of what you are listening to and you are not exploring the conversation. 

28:58
Um, and and I, I don't like to have determined this is what we will get out of this person I, some of them, like the one with the greg um, who is the philosophy guy I don't know if you heard it. It was such a stupid way I made the podcast because I was like I searched for self-directed and he had made a video podcast called self-directed on on philosophy and all like hey, let's talk. And it was a really fun, good, deep conversation. I liked it a lot, but I'm not. I'm kind of simple sometimes in what, how I'm choosing guests. It's like that could be fun. Let's talk and then we talk but I also will. 

29:41 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
But I think you just, you, just um. I think you're very interested in so many different things and people that anybody could potentially be a good guest. 

29:57 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
We have started out a lot in unschooling and I deliberately didn't call it the unschooling. What really interests me and it's a way I want to grow our podcast into is my fascination in my life has always come from people who are self-directed in the way that they. For example, a good old friend is a breakdancer who took that career into becoming a stage performer and made theater plays with electro boogie and breakdance in it and to be able to live outside the normal nine to five and create a world for yourself. I love listening to these people's stories why they did it, how they did it, and I want to meet and explore more of these people's lives. But until now there's been so much about the whole unschooling that I wanted to explore and parenting that that I have yet to invite these guests on. But it will start to come. But after 70 episodes I'm almost done In exploring the unschooling. 

31:00 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think we'll keep talking about unschooling, though. Yeah, I also wanted to add to the thing About not doing the bio that I feel like it's a trap that we can easily fall into. To talk about accomplishments. To be like here is whatever person, he wrote nine books on pottery and he made a million dollars and have seven children and did walked across whatever country on his hands or whatever and it's all these accomplishment things. And once you do that which is, I mean, people do awesome things and we could list them and maybe sometimes we should, but if we do that and that's how we present the person, it's very easy to fall into the trap of comparing. So the next guest only wrote two books, you know, and now we have a guest who didn't even write a book. 

32:05
Oh yes, Can we talk? There's something wrong with that. So I want to let the person shine and also let whatever is relevant right now in that person's life shine through. The conversation Doesn't have to be maybe someone walk across, let's say, France on their hands when they were 17. And that's pretty awesome. But you know, right now they're doing something completely different and it's actually not relevant. Why is this thing? 

32:40 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I don't like it, but it's a leftover of the school system to unschooling again we're listing the accomplishments. You are only accomplishments. What can we see that we can put on that list? It's the world of ticker boxes, and look at my seaweed, how awesome I am, and I will not support that that's not who I want to meet either. 

33:06 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I want to talk to a person yeah, another curriculum I like how you were talking about giving back and helping. I think it was in that episode about the travelling village and I guess what you were just saying earlier in this episode about how you want to be part of the, I'm putting in my words, but not just consuming, but giving back to the community, and I guess it's just being part of the conversation again, the bigger conversation. Instead of just listening, you want to actually join in and I find a lot of people on the internet only listen and in some ways I find it frustrating that this is the way life has become that people tune into their computer and I can't see them and they'll read everything that I've read, or they'll listen to things that I have recorded. And I will invite people to become part of the conversation, but most people won't. And I will invite people to become part of the conversation, but most people won't. Most people would just click on, read quietly and go away. 

34:30
And it is frustrating sometimes because I think we all need some feedback or we all need to talk to people. Otherwise I sometimes feel I'm talking to myself and I think, well, is what I'm doing actually useful? Or I'm just sitting here talking to myself and this is what you've got instant connection with your audience. But, apart from the guests talking to you, do you get much feedback, like from social media? Uh, emails, other people telling you? 

35:06 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
not a lot. People are not big feedbackers uh, actually, um, but I. Then sometimes you meet people and they're like, oh, I've heard your podcast and they like it, and sometimes I'm like, why didn't you write anything? I was sitting here waiting to be petted a little. I'm okay with that. For me it's the conversation and I hope that it can help facilitate dialogue between people. So, yes, please send me some feedback. I love the log and I hope that it can help facilitate dialogue between people. So, yes, please send me some feedback. I love the love. No, but besides that, no critique only love. 

35:47 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
How do? 

35:47 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
you decide what you're going to do, because I was looking at all the things that you're involved with Now. You've got all your, I suppose, work things that are earning you an income so that you can live this lifestyle of travelling, but you've also got social media accounts blogging, podcast, youtube channel and I could be wrong, but I thought I saw a post from you quite a while ago and you said that you couldn't keep up with everything and you were going to concentrate on the podcast. Is that true? Did I get that right? 

36:27 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
this was quite a long time ago, last year sometime can't remember all the different things we do and say and mean. Cecilia at one point wrote a daily daily post on the social media and the whole of the 2023 I was sharing every day and experiment, and and it was I remember yeah, I read some of those, celia, and I remember one of them. 

36:53 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
you said I don't know what day of the week it is anymore. You said that writing about it every day, it was a flowing. 

37:05 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I can't be on track with what day it was. That helped, yeah, it does. It did. I didn't know this morning either. I had to ask someone what day of the week it was. I very often don't know no so the the youtube channel is basically just the podcasts. 

37:20 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Now yeah, yeah, we don't do anything of that. 

37:22 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I find it also. I mean, we could talk about that a little bit. Maybe it's a little bit like you saying. I feel like I'm talking to myself. I kind of the podcast makes sense to make. We can see on the statistics that we have listeners. The conversations in and of themselves are valuable for us, so I'd do it even if no one was listening. 

37:49 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I love them. 

37:50 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I love the people I met. It's always interesting to have the conversation, so it makes sense in and of itself and we do get some feedback and some people are very grateful. They say Also the other podcast that I'm doing with the ladies only. 

38:09
On unschooling, there's a lot of good feedback. People really feel they enjoy it, so it makes sense. I feel. I suppose every time I get one email, there'll be a hundred people out there feeling the same. They just don't tell me. And with the other projects, there are many things we could do with our time, but. But the question is what's more important and what creates value that's actually valuable, and at the moment I'm sort of contemplating. I would like to do all these things, but then please give me some extra hours to do them. I mean, if I could do them without spending hours, I'd do a lot of things, yeah, but I feel like I actually. So I'm in the process of writing a book. 

39:11
Right now it's been six months of writing a book. Right now it's been six months, and yesterday what I was writing about was how the hours fly in this weird way. Maybe it's like every time I sit down. We live in a huge house with some friends. There are lots of places to sit down and write. Every time I do it, something happens every time. Every time someone's hungry, someone needs to talk to me about something, uh, a piglet runs away, something, something. All the time, and somehow, for six months I kept up with working on this project every day, no five because it gives you something and then, for the last month, seems like the hours are just like like clouds. 

40:14
They like go away. We have dinner at 10 30 in the evening, because I don't know how it happens, but it happens and then I wake up at six anyway, after sleeping four or five hours because of the light or because of whatever. I don't know why. Actually, it goes on and on. So, yes, I feel like I have to focus, I have to let go of a lot, of, a lot of these projects, or at least like leave them hanging until maybe somehow I can complete them. Right now we do the podcast. We do that consistently it actually comes out every week and I work on the book more or less consistently. 

40:59
I've been writing quite a lot of blog posts, but they're just not online because I can't be bothered to do the tech part and the other things. I just find the offline reality so much more important. If one of my teenagers come and sit next to me and say something it could be whatever, you know what I dreamt or my mom, I'll totally shut it off. The other thing, I mean, I'm just not. Nothing is more important. And so the hours evaporate because, because, spending them with the children, and now that we're back, we're back in our home country, so we also have a lot of friends and family that we haven't seen for a year. There's a lot of catching up, there's a lot of social life and it is more important, so I don't do the things that I could do. 

41:58 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I have another perspective and answer on it, on how I choose projects. For me it is primarily curiosity. When I was 16, I wanted to make a movie and I made an amateur feature film to the local cinema and stuff, and that was a great learning journey. Then I was misled to believe I wanted to be a movie director for some years. But what I really really deep in my heart loves is learning by doing projects, and I made an animated film that went to festivals all over the world and it was really fun to learn how to animate. But when I learned to animate, it kind of was like it wasn't fun to do anymore. 

42:45
Later in life I became an editor-in-chief of an online youth magazine and that was really fun for some years until I mastered that. Then I met Cecilia and we life happened and it was wonderful and at some point I met an old friend I've been to a European film college with and he was writing children books and I was like, oh man, I want to write children books and he said, well, well, why don't you? And so I did and then I wrote 18 books for the beginner reader. But what happened was when I started self-publishing and then they got into by a big publishing house and then I was finished with it because now I've proven to myself I'd learned all the stuff I found important about it. I learned how a book works. I know I can open it, that stuff but how do you actually support the beginner reader with an illustration and all these things? When can you make a cliffhanger in a book? All these things I find fascinating to learn. But when I was officially approved as a order of these children books, it wasn't really fun anymore. And then I went on to some new stuff and the fun thing about the podcast. Now I've learned to make a podcast, I've learned to get it out into the world and all these things. So the tech part of it is not so interesting anymore, but the talks are still interesting. I still learn from every conversation we are on to explore something and work-wise I'm I'm so, um, so blessed that I get to do more or less the same. 

44:22
I, I, I look at projects and I'm saying to myself I would love to work on this project, uh. So now I, for example, is helping the gordon newfield uh with his uh, the marketing of his courses and it was based on. I saw his work and was like this is important, I would love to help with that. And then, through working with it, I deepen my knowledge of all he's doing. So for me it is like, uh, what can I bring to the table? Oh yes, but you know something about marketing. Then I bring that to the table and what I get out of it is partly a salary, but it's most of all all the things I learn on the side by working with the content and and I find that really, really blessed that I in my professional life can more or less choose projects where there is a learning goal for me in them. With so I get a new and deeper and better understanding of the world, because I am motivated by constantly learning new stuff. 

45:30
I like learning new stuff. I like learning new stuff, but I can't be bothered to do it on my own. I mean, most of the books I've read the last year is because we invited the guests on the podcast and I was like maybe I should read that book and I love that process. But could I pick up the book without me having a goal in front or something? No, I couldn't. So I figured out to work with my laziness in a productive way. So if there's a project, there's a direction and I I'm ready to learn stuff well, I've always got something. 

46:04 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I'm always looking for new things to learn myself. Uh, one of my favorite ways to spend a free day when I haven't got anything else to do is to explore the App Store and download various apps and get free seven-day trials and see what they all do, like AI image generators, image generators, or I'm just trying to think of some of the things video editors, photo editors, all sorts of things I've tried and then I decide whether, after seven days, I usually cancel my subscription. I've been satisfied with what I've learned from the app Few of them I've kept, but not a lot. But when you were telling me, jesper, about your AI images and I just thought, yeah, that's the sort of thing that I love to do sit down and work on something and see where it goes, and always looking for something new to learn about. I just wonder, though, if you feel that that is. I think, oh, I think it is a good example for our children to, for them to see us continually learning, continually getting involved in projects and putting possibilities before them. Possibilities before them, like when I was talking about when I was making my first episode of my podcast. My daughter was watching and she said, hey, I could do that. 

47:39
I remember the first time I did wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo and I told my kids what I was going to do and they said, oh, we could do that. And then, when I recreated my first blog, all my girls came around and said show us, mom, we could do that. And so it's sort of like a it makes learning within the family. It's like everybody just learns. There's, everybody has their projects. It's just a natural thing to do, and I'm just wondering whether your family has any joint projects you work on. For example, a few years ago we all worked on making music videos together and put them up on YouTube, and that was such a wonderful experience to all of us to pool our talents and to work towards one project together. And I wonder if you've got anything like that within your family, or maybe your travels. That connects you, because you plan, you talk about where you're going, so that in itself is a project that you all have some input towards, isn't it? 

48:57 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It is clear that our life is in a I don't know if it's the right expression constant flux, or it moves back and forth in different rhythms. Sometimes we travel slow and it's more in one place for a longer time and that gives place for more of the co-creation. When we are on the go, it is very intense and it is like breathing in and breathing out. What happens in these periods. You breathe in, get all these things in your life. I mean just the road trip we had from Spain to Denmark. 

49:33
We saw and explored and experienced so many things, and now in Denmark we can breathe out a little, but we're still exploring and breathing in. I look forward to breathing out. Some years ago, we made a project called handpancoursescom together where we, together with a master in the handpan we met in spain, produced a lot of educational videos in how to learn to play the handpan and we worked on that as a family, where storm edited the videos and the kids were involved in shooting the videos and were there and around seeing that happening. That was a really fun project. 

50:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Um, these days, that's not I think it's mostly the travels, as you say. We come together around exploring the world and, um, that can go pretty deep, but it's not a production as such. It's more like, oh, now we're here, what's that? And then you start unraveling and, oh, but what does that mean and what's that painting on that wall and who's that, who did it and what's that time and what do we know about that and what happened in egypt at the same time, and it's a lot of history and culture and language that spins around the conversations and we get together around Exploring the world and I think we're probably A lot of the time, quite overwhelmed. I will say Tend to do a lot of things. 

51:21 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And we cook a lot. 

51:22 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
We cook a lot of food, we share the meals with a lot of awesome people, we visit a lot of sites nature, culture, history, museums and we talk a lot about what we saw and what it made us think. We watch documentaries and we discuss cultural traits or trends. So it's very driven by these conversations and this exploration of what life is and what the world is and where it comes from and where it might go and what we feel about it. There's a lot of ethics we talked about with the kids and a lot of practical things to do. When you live as a nomad. You have to come up with where do we sleep? We sleep. What do we eat? Has anyone seen the knife? How can we wash our clothes? Did we have a shower in the last few days? What do we do about that? 

52:21
A lot of things that are practical that we also have to solve as a group, very tight-knit, and we're very physically close to each other a lot of the time and sometimes we we embark on a learning journey all together, but then some fall off and and then some continue and then maybe we pick them up or becomes this and while they fell off it they weren't falling off, they were doing something else and they come back and add that to the pile of the conversation. It's like, very much like. I see these, um, I see these chaotic patterns of colors that mix and they're still pretty. It's not brown, it's, it's still pretty, it's, but there's no plan, there's no structure. We very often start something and don't finish it, which is fine, because when the energy has left, the project we were reading. The last shakespeare one we read was I think maybe it was just romeo and juliet, and they actually got really annoyed with romeo the kids. 

53:41 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
He's such a brat he's such an idiot. 

53:45 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
He's so stupid, he's actually insane and pretty full of himself himself. 

53:52
Yeah, we can't have it, let's read something else. So we read like two-thirds of romeo and juliet, which is like the most epic story, but as it was just, they got annoyed with the guy, no one wanted to play his role and no one wanted to continue. So we're reading always in two languages. It takes forever because we have some really nice translations to our language which are really fun. There's a lot of humor in them, but also, of course, you want to read the english one, but as we're not native, it takes forever, and so, and it takes forever, forever, and I find that's fine, that's fine. I, I don't take pride in, you know, completing things. I want to be where the energy of life is. 

54:39 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I saw your Shakespeare books in one of your reels inside, I think, your vehicle on the shelf and I thought, oh well, shakespeare, because Shakespeare is one of our passions. We've read most of them and, yeah, we didn't like Romeo either. We thought it was. Everybody goes, oh, what a sad story. And we just think, oh, it's stupid. And you know, they're really more of a comedy rather than a tragedy. 

55:12
But you're right that we have had some wonderful conversations leading off things like Shakespeare and then they lead on to other things in our own lives and we've learned so much by just having conversations. We've talked a lot in our episodes together about drinking coffee and sitting around the table and just connecting and having conversations. But I wonder we're not world travelers and maybe there's people out there that would like to do what you're doing and are wondering about such things as legal requirements. Are you free to do whatever you like and not have to answer to anybody? So we had to answer to an education department in order to keep our kids at home, and not everybody does have to do that, but everybody in Australia does. Now, because you travel, are you residents of the world without having to? 

56:19 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
answer to one particular country. There's many, many ways to do it. If you want to live in a country, then you need to follow the requirements around the educational system. As we are from Denmark, it's quite easy, as homeschooling is super allowed. Um, super allowed, it is, it is, it is in the constitution. It's very, it's very, simple. There's no debate. 

56:45 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It will not be removed I think so we can say what works for us, but it doesn't work for 95% of the audience. How anyone would do it legally around their children's education is dependent on where do you come from. Where do you legally live while you travel? What are your plans when you're coming back? Are you coming back? All these things? They are so individual that we can't give any solid advice. 

57:18 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
The best advice we can give is that you really need to figure out what you actually want to do. Do you want to part-time travel? Do you want to full-time travel? What is the future you see for your children? And then you need to read a lot of laws, understand a lot of requirements. It is not necessarily easy, so people need to look up for themselves and understand all the rules there are. I mean, the rules are so different. In Germany you can get in, put into jail if you don't put your kids to school. In Sweden also very strict. Denmark you can homeschool and but the rules also changing and it's weird between right now. 

58:08 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think also, you have to think about all this freedom that we talk about when we talk on schooling. It sounds really nice and I think you know we have to pick our fights. If I had to sit my kids down and teach them math, let's say, in order to preserve the rest of the freedom, I would do it. I would just do it. I would tell my children it's not that I find it very important, but if you do this, we do this, we do it together, then we get all this freedom and this is just how it has to be. It's just like all the other things that life throws at us that we have to do. 

58:48
That might not be our first choice. Sometimes it's just like that. Sometimes we plan on a beautiful walk in the forest and then the temperature drops by 10 degrees and starts raining. Then what am I? To complain to the weather gods or just change my plan? I I think we have to find a way to navigate the field between how we want to live our life and what options we have. And once we've done the thinking and and and the strategizing, then just choose to be happy. I say just maybe not just choose, but choose to be happy, and some some of the things we have to do are just tickets, like private tickets we have to pay for to and to get all the other good stuff. 

59:39 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
That's how it is so, in between your road trips and your visiting museums and conversations around the table, do you do any kind of book work that uh have you like? Some people uh, especially people are at home. Uh, you learn things on the go. You don't have to um sit down and read a book about art. You'll probably go and visit a museum, that type of thing. But have you ever had periods in your life where you have done more formal work with your kids that when you're travelling, maybe you pull out a book or two here and learn a bit of a language or something else that requires? 

01:00:32 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I will give the short answer first, first, and then you can go into the other longer answer uh, right now I challenge you to give a short answer right now I am. 

01:00:43
The book work I'm doing is presenting my oldest son from the for the work of iron in banks, which is a wonderful science fiction author, and I'm reading the book at the same page as him, which is wonderful. I'm rereading it after 30 years or something and just to explore it together because I know how it ends and I cannot wait till the revelation he will get and I'm like, come on, and at the same time I can't remember everything because it's 30 years since I read it. So I'm getting this good experience but I still know what happens and all the curiosity he has about who is the chair maker. It's the one called use of weapons by iron banks. He also written another one called the play of games, fantastic author, and I know how it ends and I just cannot wait till he's there and we are like halfway in the book now and it will be really good. But you probably meant more scholarly kind of book work. Well, I was thinking about. 

01:01:45 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
Cecilia was saying how you you gave up on romeo and gilliatt, but you were all sitting around reading it out loud together. How do you decide on something like that? You invite your kids and say, hey, would it be good fun to sit around here and read Shakespeare together? And I wonder if there's other things like that that make their way into your days when you do have the time to pursue them, because if you're on the road you won't have time to sit there and read Shakespeare together. You'll be doing far more interesting things out in the real world. 

01:02:25 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I think it's a combination. 

01:02:26 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Shakespeare is fun and interesting. I will just you know. 

01:02:30 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
You could go and see a play. 

01:02:32 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
We just did last week, so no. 

01:02:34
So yeah, there's a wonderful thing about the way that we live. 

01:02:44
We've gotten this question quite a few times and, if I can skip the first year of fumbling around and finding our legs as homeschoolers where we thought we had to sit down in the kitchen table and play school, so let's skip that and look at how it looks now and has been looking for five, eight years um, the fun thing is, whenever we stop, if there's a moment where we're actually not in a museum or on a road trip or visiting someone, talking to people, exploring a mountain, going for a hike, all these things, whenever there is a pause, the luxury that our children want, the free time, the play time, is what other people call school. So what they come up with is should we study the line of kings of england? Or hey, what about we read another shakespeare play? Or hey, can we learn about quantum physics? Or hey, I want to speak french. How can I? How can I do it fast? I want to be fluent next week, like so it's not me, it's not like I, I, I come with this now. 

01:04:03 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
We have to read some shakespeare, because that's important come from your curiosity. For example, right now there's a lot of curiosity around the vikings because we have our good friend Berkeley road tripping with us for four months one of our children's friends and then you have all of you gone down to who was the different Viking kings and we are visiting these stone monuments in Denmark from the first Vikings. So visiting stuff in real life often spark a curiosity that is dived deep into in books when you come home. 

01:04:39 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's true, but at the same time. So if you have, like now, I'm saying standardized things and it might not be exactly fair, but bear with me, if you go, you have the normal life. You get up in the morning, everybody goes in their own direction, kids in, parents working. You come home, you cook a meal and you, you maybe you do your homework. You get things done. Now you have a few hours. Maybe it's saturday afternoon, you have a few hours. What do you want to do? What happens in the? You know there's no agenda, we're not going on a picnic, we're just there. What happens? 

01:05:16
I don't know what happens in people's homes, but I don't think that they pull out math or that they come up with let's read some Shakespeare. I think they're tired. They might be a little burned out from the pushing of the academics down the throat of them in the school system. What happens in my family when we stop is what looks like education Always. It just happened in the US. We had some change of plans and we ended up because we did already buy the ticket back to Europe and it was non-refundable. 

01:05:52
Suddenly we had three weeks because something was canceled and we didn't really well. Anyway, we ended up in a house. It was a very comfortable, beautiful, lovely house and we said, yes, please, we'll borrow this house, but there was nothing to do of things that we like doing. So we we sort of started breathing and just we had all this time at hand and the kids just started on all kinds of educations. One of them like really I want to do this at university. How do I get to the point where I can apply for university? How can I? What am I? Where's the French book? Can we buy it right now? I wanted. Can we do an Amazon prime thing? 

01:06:32
So this was what happened, and it wasn't me pushing it. Actually, I was pretty tired. I was like can I just sit on the balcony to look at the birds and write my book and drink some coffee? So I'm not making this up. This is, of course. They sometimes hang out and play video games and and and whatever, read novels, but what? What comes up is this book work. So when you ask the question, do you sometimes sit down and do a book work? It could have been understood by the listener as if it comes from me if I just said yes, we sometimes do that that I would go buy a math curriculum thing and I put it in front of the children and say let's do this now. And that's not how it works. It comes the other way around that for them, especially our oldest son. He gets really annoyed if too many days in a row there's no space for him to study math. He's like can I please? 

01:07:31 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
But I also under long scope. I see a different kind of learning lust growing a child from around the age of 14, where a lot until that is playing and then it becomes more academically play. You can call it exploring in another way, where you explore through play when you're younger, you explore through books and studying when you get older. And I think one of the faults of the educational system is that they have forgotten about the whole explore by play for the first many years and it's trying to move the academic down to the first couple of years, which the result is. It kills the curiosity of the child in a way that it gets difficult to spark and ignite this lust in children. I find it very simple. 

01:08:31 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Kids be kids. That's my experience as well. But the thing is, all the things that we want them, to the extent that we do have an agenda. I'm not sure I personally do so, but in some extent I do. But as a society, we have this idea about how, where we want the young adult to arrive, let's say the 20-year-old. 

01:08:56
We have a lot of ideas about how this person needs to be formed, from the newborn to the 20-year-old. They need to be able to carry themselves in society. They need to learn some basic academic skills, but also some basic practical skills. Basic academic skills, but also some basic practical skills. We want them to be able to drive a car, ride a bike, tie their shoelaces, clean up in a kitchen, cook a meal, wash their clothes. There are lots of things that we expect these young people to be able to do in our society. Also, we would expect them to speak at least one more language than their native tongue. Um, so there are things and I think we get very, very, very busy, busier and busier. Now we don't. So when I, we were children, it was at seven. You started pushing now, then it became six, so we in. 

01:09:50 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So that's pre-school now this. 

01:09:55 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So we started in class one. That was first day of school, or maybe we did. 

01:10:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
We had a zero. 

01:10:02 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Added the zero, so there's a year before one that they call zero, which is humiliating, and then before that is called kindergarten. But now they have a curriculum in kindergarten, and before kindergarten we have the nursery, and they actually have a math curriculum in nursery. 

01:10:21 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Now yeah, and the thing is, if they actually look at the development of how people are performing, it's just going downhill, it's the same. 

01:10:32 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You're trying to get to the point. 

01:10:34
The thing is I'll take a long time getting to my point. The thing is, in my experience, if we leave them be, the natural process of life puts them exactly there. When they're 20 years old, they know how to cook a meal, they can do basic sciences, they know what it is at some point. If they don't have the. 

01:11:06
We have a son who's very into math and studies it a lot and gets obsessed with it, and we have actually two daughters both of them, but one more than the other who is very, very, very much not into math and does not find it in any way appealing at all at all. And now she's almost 16. And now she says somehow I kind of want to know. I kind of feel like, could I get? Like, just like, could you give me a crash course? Can I get a rundown? You know, I don't want to spend 200 hours, maybe I could spend 50 hours but I kind of want to know what is it with the math thing? So what I'm saying is it comes natural, yeah, and we don't have to push it, but we think we have to push what there is a natural interest in when they are older teenagers. We think we have to push it down the throats of the eight-year-old, which is insane. 

01:12:14 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So I want to address something. Watch, yeah, and that is because we we try actually we say we try to keep our keep our podcast around 45 minutes, but when it is ourselves being asked, we're just babbling on cecil. That is what I'm addressing. Yes, bert. 

01:12:37 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I was about to say. I was about to say I was looking at the time. I was going to say I know you like to keep your episodes around about an hour long and I've got all these other questions and we'll just have to leave it till another time, but the conversation it's always so lovely to talk to you, can you add. I just wanted to say one more thing you were just saying there, cecilia, about you would like your children to learn one more language other than their mother tongue, and that's what I. I have another Danish friend and it's one thing that I really admire about you is that you are fluent in more than one language and that because you are fluent in English, I can sit here and have a conversation with you, because I only know one language and so many people in the world I like I challenge you to learn one more, because I can tell you it is not about only communicating. 

01:13:38 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
The big fascination about learning another language is, um, when you hear words, you challenge them and you're like where does this word come from? What is the origin? Why do they say that? And then you actually can unfold the cultural differences based on how, how their sentences are built and what words they're using. And that is, for me, the most fascinating thing about learning a language. And if you should start with something else than English, don't start with Danish. 

01:14:13
Choose one of the Latin languages, because this is the root of so many things and they when you also know the root of Italian, french or Spanish I'm best in Spanish of those and I'm absolutely not fluent yet but then you can start looking at your own language, saying, oh, and I thought it came from our language. 

01:14:35
If you're english and it's like, no, it actually came from back here and this was the root of it, this was the origin and that is and it so it gives you a perspective of the culture you are in by trying to understand the language and the whole. For me, theation. Sometimes my family thinks I'm mocking the French when I'm going and I kind of am, but I'm. But by trying to explore how they talk, you also an understanding of the culture in another level and the best part about, instead of just seeing it, their culture, looking at the language where it comes from, you start looking at your own language and saying, oh, and you get a deeper understanding of where you're from. So I mean to all you English speakers out there, you will learn so much more about yourself, your own country, your own language, your own culture and other cultures by just learning one more language can I add something well? 

01:15:43 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
you have reminded me that when we were talking about book work, all my kids well, not the last few, I don't think the first five did a Latin course, and I followed them through twice to help them. So I have got a fair amount of Latin, but I wouldn't call that a spoken language, except of using it in church situations or singing, Then Spanish would be easy for you. 

01:16:13
For example but what you were saying about seeing where our words come from and recognising that sometimes, when I'm looking at a piece of writing in another language, I can pick out words because they have the same root, because I know the Latin word and I can see where it came from. But, yes, I think you're quite right, jesper, and yeah, but I just wanted to thank you there, for I hear that you and your children people in Denmark I don't know about other countries learning English is, um it just something you all do that, uh, and I'm great. I'm grateful for that because it allows us to have conversations together, and sometimes I feel very lazy because I rely on people like you to communicate with instead of go. Well, I have actually looked up some of your, the things that you've on your. When you send me an email and you put a little bit of, uh, some few words I don't know the meaning of, and I'll go look them up and find out what they mean. But, on the whole, uh, I'm relying on your knowledge in order to be able to communicate with you and to share and to be part of the conversation, share ideas and things. So I'm really glad that you know more than one language Just quickly. 

01:17:47
How many languages do you know? 

01:17:50 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
There's a difference between knowing, being able to understand what is being said, and being fluent or fluent-ish. 

01:18:01 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
For me. I can communicate in, I would say, all of the Latin languages, maybe not Portuguese. I can understand Portuguese, I speak fairly good French and Spanish, and so, and then there is well, I can survive in German, yeah, but that's not like I speak it. I understand a good chunk, but I don't speak. 

01:18:29 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I'm not comfortable speaking it and the Swedish and Norwegian languages. The Swedish and Norwegian languages. Yeah those are easy, the Swedish and. 

01:18:33 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Norwegian languages. Yeah, those are easy, but it's the thing is we keep talking. But okay, I'll do it. The thing is we have to learn languages you don't. So it's not being lazy, it's a question of if you come from a culture where less than six million people speak your language and you can see another country from the beach and you grow up going. You know if I, if I would drive anywhere for more than five hours, I'd be in another country, they would speak another language. My country borders I can't even say how many languages If you count the Baltic Sea, which is our borders we have Russia and the Baltic countries and Poland and Germany. We have England, we have the Scandinavian languages, we have Finland an impossible language to learn and my grandmother was Swedish. 

01:19:31
My grandparents lived in Brussels where all languages are spoken all the time. I mean, there were so many languages when I grew up. All the time around me. My dad speaks I don't think I don't even know maybe nine languages. It was just, and I would visit my grandparents in brussels and there would be at least french and english and german spoken in the home all the time the books on the bookshelf. 

01:19:55
It's not like I'm better than other people for speaking all these languages or like kind of speaking them. It's because I grew up with the need and I grew up with the languages. They were there all the time and we don't dob things in Denmark. So when I would watch a movie it would be in the original language and I would have the subtitles. But you hear it. 

01:20:17
That's a cheat sheet to learning a language. You hear it and you read it in the two languages, so you're actually absorbed in watching the movie, but subconsciously you're learning to speak French. That just happened and I'm not sure how many languages I would speak if I grew up speaking English, because you can speak so many people and you can kind of expect them to maybe understand your language. So why would you? We have this American boy with us now this summer and we spend some time here in Denmark and we speak Danish obviously. So sometimes, even though he's around, we'll speak Danish to each other, so he hears the language all the time. He didn't speak a word of another language when he came except for some, but he, you know you can count in some languages. 

01:21:00
I'm not saying he did, but he didn't speak a second language and it's very clear to me that now that he's immersed in someone speaking another language, he's picking it up. He's not trying to. It's not a project. There's no reason to learn to speak danish, but yet things that of course there are many reasons, but in a way, it's not very efficient if you're american. 

01:21:24
And if you want to learn another language and start with spanish, 12 of the population are spanish speakers I mean it doesn't make sense, but I see how the brain works. 

01:21:33
That's where I'm going at. The brain works like that. We want to communicate with each other. We find words and languages interesting and we try. It's just a natural process. It's like we get wet and we immerse in water. Yep, we learn languages when we immerse in language. So we get very good at english in in Denmark because the English language is there all over. We just arrived now with a non-Danish speaking person and it's true that after they're 10 years old, they speak English. 

01:22:07 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, All of them. There's not a, as Cecilia said, there's not a lot of reason to learn to speak, to speak danish. There is hg anderson, our big uh, some, and, and we have some answers, and and for me, for example, I have an old wish I will fulfill in my lifetime, which is one of my most favorite authors. It's called stefano benny and even though it's translated good, I'm like I need to be able to read it in Italian to understand every little detail, because he's so fun, he's the, he's so yeah, so at some point I will learn to read Italian, just to read him the advantage of you uh speaking English. 

01:22:51 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I uh, and you were saying at the beginning of this podcast that this podcast reaches about 100 different countries. 

01:23:02
But, I imagine that within those countries, everybody is listening to you in English and I guess that is the most popular language that you can record in to reach the maximum number of people. So, as your standing host today, I think that maybe I should round up, and I should. I should thank you for being my guest today on your own podcast, but I would like to invite everybody to go and, once they've listened, to go and write you a comment on YouTube or social media and let them let you know what a difference you're making in their lives and to give you a bit of encouragement to keep on recording this podcast. Also, I know noticed that you have some buttons on your website buy me a coffee and you've got a patreon account. So if people would like to support you in a practical way, not just with words, they could make, make a donation to you uh, your fund and then you help because it does. 

01:24:18
It costs money to produce podcasts, doesn't it? And to blog. I think a lot of people think that things we do online are free. It's free to use, but it's not free to produce, and that's one thing I found is that, especially when you're a creative person trying out new things and trying to give the best, find the best ways to communicate your what you would like to say to people. You go looking for software apps, all sorts of things to do a good job and they all cost money. So yeah, I'd like to say, go over to patreon, the conrad family, or buy by yes and cecilia a coffee and, and if you haven't got any money then it just doesn't cost anything to spend a few minutes writing them an encouragement comment. 

01:25:15 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So I just like to thank you for letting me sit in this host chair. 

01:25:19 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
I have really enjoyed our conversation today. I've I've got other things I could have asked you, and no doubt we're going to continue being friends and I'll find out more about you. That's what friends do, isn't it? We're always continually surprised and there's always, uh, more to find out about our friends. We, you know, there's never we never get bored with our friends. There's always something surprising, unexpected or whatever to learn about our friends. So thank you so much for joining me for this conversation today it was fun. 

01:25:51 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It was fun and I hope it wasn't too long well, that's your problem. 

01:25:56 - Sue Elvis (Guest)
Yes, it's on your account, it's. It's nothing to do with me, thank you. Thank you so much.