📙 Part 2: Describe a gift you would like to buy for your friend

This episode's vocabulary

Debt (noun) - something, especially money, that is owed to someone else, or the state of owing something.

Mortgage (noun) - an agreement that allows you to borrow money from a bank or similar organization, especially in order to buy a house, or the amount of money itself.

Weigh sb down (phrasal verb) - to make a person feel worried and unhappy because of problems, responsibilities, and duties.

Life-affirming (adj.) - If you describe something as life-affirming, you mean that it makes you feel positive about life.

Put/set sth to rights - to improve or correct something.

Intangible (adj.) - impossible to touch, to describe exactly, or to give an exact value.

Contingent on/upon sth - depending on something else in the future in order to happen.

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Questions and Answers

M: Rory, are you ready?

R: Yes.

M: Yes. Give this gift to us.

R: Well, I think my friends have just about everything they need. But I promised myself that if I ever came into a very large sum of money, like winning the lottery, or if someone left me like a lot of stuff in there will, then I would pay off all my friends debts. So things like student loans and mortgages. Just wipe out all the debt and give them financial independence and peace of mind. I don't have anyone in particular in mind for this, to be honest, mostly because I know it's a problem that a lot of my friends are facing. So I think I would just ask who needed it, and I would give them the gift of financial freedom, ideally, as many of them as possible. I mean, as many of my friends as possible, I think it's an important thing to do. Because when you're weighed down with debt, then you worry about paying that off, instead of doing things which are more life-affirming, like having fun, or taking a holiday or spending time with your friends. And for many people, it's not like it's a choice, like they have to go into debts, to be able to not necessarily get ahead in life, but even just to survive these days, which I think is actually grossly unfair since there are other people who don't have to do that. And this is sort of a way of evening, the scales as it were. So this would be my way of putting the world to rights and helping my friends out and helping them along in life. I suppose that's the point of having friends in the first place, isn't it? So you can call on them when you need help. It's unlikely that I'll ever have that much money in the first place. But at least I'll have my priorities in order if it ever came to it. I suppose other people would buy smaller things like clothes, or maybe like small trinkets. But often, I think the best present you can give people are the intangible things. And I think this definitely counts.

M: Do you prefer to give gifts or receive gifts?

R: I think that's contingent entirely on what the gift is.

M: Thank you for your answer!

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