Name: 2436 The Audacity! Have the Nerve to Connect in English
Uploaded: 2025-07-03T10:19:33.000Z
Duration: 14 min 10 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Guys, Lindsay is out of town, so she is not here, but don't worry, she will be back.

And we're looking forward to having her back.

But Aubrey, we're having some fun over here, right?

Yes, I love recording with you, Michelle.

Tell me, what is the name of the recording software that you use to record things like ads and titles?

Yeah, that's the software that we record on.

Which is a fun name for software because it has an interesting meaning in English, right?

It's not just the brand of some computer recording software.

So today we have a great question from our listener, Bita, about this word.

So Bita says, hey, guys, the other day I came across the term Audacity on an Instagram reel, and I've been hearing it all the time, but I didn't know the exact meaning or whether it is used in a positive or negative way.

I would appreciate it if you could make an episode about it.

And thank you for being our longtime fan.

And great question, and we use it both ways.

This might be super positive to say someone has Audacity.

I mean, when I hear the word Audacity, I think of, well, first of all, our software.

But I also one of the first things I think of Barack Obama because he had a book called The Audacity of Hope.

I don't know if I told you this, Michelle, or listeners out here, you may have heard this, that my son recently had to memorize a speech at school, and he memorized Obama's Yes, We Can speech, and it was all about hope and unity.

It was selections of it because it had to be three to five minutes, but he did such a great job.

It's just such an amazing message of hope.

Yeah, you sent me the video, I remember, and he's just what an incredible boy, right?

But it is interesting to use it this way to say the Audacity of Hope.

So we're going to talk about more what this means.

So it basically means this confidence, this boldness, you don't have fear, right?

And it can be used in either a positive or a negative way, don't you think?

The Audacity of Hope, meaning we are willing to hope even in spite of challenges, in spite of fears, right?

We have confidence that we can have hope in spite of any reason that we wouldn't.

So yeah, let's give some examples of how it can be used in a positive way.

It's amazing that he had the audacity to move to New York all by himself.

And this is really interesting to think about describing someone as having audacity.

You don't always know for sure how positive someone is being, right?

If you say this, there could be an implication that you think it's sort of foolish or foolhardy, right?

That someone maybe is just moving with no funds, no plan.

Be like, he's got a lot of audacity to just move to New York by himself, right?

That might be almost criticism, but someone else might mean it as really a compliment.

Like, I'm impressed that they're that brave.

You would have to listen to the intonation.

You would have to maybe know a little something about the person who's saying it.

Or you might even have to ask a follow-up question, right?

You could say, I think it's so impressive.

And again, is there an implied criticism here or is it only a compliment?

You might see word audacity in news media and the author may have intended one or the other and you won't be sure.

So let's talk about more of the negative side.

Aubrey, you've made a really good point that even the positive ones could be a veiled criticism.

It's not obvious because it could be taken positively.

But these ones are a little bit obvious that they're negative, right?

In this way, audacity means almost too brave.

And Aubrey, you want to read some of those examples?

Subtitles ListPlay Video

2436 The Audacity! Have the Nerve to Connect in English

episode

sort

obvious

context