You are a JSON assistant. You only reply in valid JSON and never in normal text. Request a rating for the complexity of a video based on the provided details. The rating should be a single "result" property containing a floating point number between 0 and 1. Here's a guide for the rating:
0.0 - Perfect for total newcomers: Simple words and phrases, clear visuals and context.
0.3 - Easy: Simple sentences and common words suitable for beginners. The video might have visual aids and context for better understanding.
0.5 - Moderate: Intermediate sentences and a wider range of vocabulary. Some idioms might be used, requiring some background knowledge.
0.6 - Known Better: The video includes specific vocabulary and ideas. Viewers should have a solid understanding of the language to comprehend fully.
0.8 - Challenging: Advanced vocabulary and complex sentences. The video may have detailed discussions that need a strong command of the language.
1 - Expert: The content is designed for fluent speakers, with niche terms and ideas that might not be known to all native speakers.
 Description: Hi! My name is Ben. These videos and this channel are for all English learners interested in improving through comprehensible input. 

I make videos of various difficulties and levels, so if this one was too easy or too hard, check out the others on my channel! And make sure to subscribe. 

To get access to all the transcripts for these videos, visit the channel blog at https://benslanguagelab.com. Or, enable the Subtitles.

I work for a language company called Refold (https://refold.link/benslanguagelab).
Language: en
Title: Daily Dose of English 214 - Halloween
Caption: [Music] hey everyone my name is Ben and you&#39;re listening to a daily dose of English this is a short simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English you can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benl language.com I&#39;m glad you can make it today because in this episode we&#39;re going to be talking about Halloween the spooky uh season no the spooky holiday because today at least when this episode is coming out is Halloween oh can keep it don&#39;t don&#39;t step on my uh what&#39;s that called uh it&#39;s not a mouse it&#39;s a keyboard don&#39;t step on my keyboard dude okay so the 31st of of October wow uh the 31st of October is always Halloween it always lands lands on the last day of October and it is meant to be a bit of a spooky holiday um I think it&#39;s become sort of famous enough that most of the world is at least knows that Halloween exists if they don&#39;t actually celebrate it which you might I don&#39;t know um I don&#39;t know where Halloween is actually like celebrated hallo um I spelled it wrong it&#39;s got two e&#39;s and one W I said WWE um all Halloween let&#39;s see where is it like uh looks like it&#39;s a Christian holiday so probably in um countries that have a lot of influence from that have something similar um I can&#39;t really find a a list quickly on this um on this Wikipedia article so I&#39;m just going to continue talking about Halloween CU I don&#39;t actually know but it seems like there&#39;s some version of um oh yeah here it is observed by many Western Christians and many non-christians around the world wait that&#39;s completely useless um oh geography of Halloween so it looks like there&#39;s like US Canada um Brazil um there&#39;s there&#39;s a different kind of thing in Mexico um China okay but they Al they all have like something it looks like right Chinese celebrate the Hungry Ghost Festival in mid July so okay that&#39;s not even close to the same time of year um but yeah here it says like Japan mostly um has Halloween because of American pop culture um so yeah looks like there&#39;s various things around the world anyways I&#39;m getting very distracted um I want to talk a little bit about what we do for Halloween in the US so the core thing is to uh is like spookiness and scariness I talked a bit about this in the spooky season episode but lots of people decorate their houses with um spiders ghosts witches uh zombies skeletons all sorts of of spooky things Graves lots of stuff many people put up lights or moving statues right people love these statues that move and try to scare you um everything&#39;s uh brown or orange and um black and um a lot of people carve pumpkins that&#39;s probably one of my favorite things to to do um when you carve a pumpkin you get a big old pumpkin but you often go to the pumpkin patch to get them because pumpkins grow quite well in the US climate so you go to a big place that has a bunch of pumpkins growing and you pick out your pumpkin and you take it home and then you open it from the top so you cut out a hole you um open the pumpkin and you take out everything on the inside so all of the seeds all of the like there&#39;s like these sort of stringy things inside you take that all out and you can either compost it or you can actually um make the seeds into pum sunflower or sunflower seeds jeez uh pumpkin seeds so you can sort of dry them um roast them dehydrate them whatever it is and put like some salt and maybe some other things on them and they&#39;re really good um you can also buy pumpkin seeds in lots of Stores um but then you have this big old pumpkin so once you&#39;ve cleaned it out it&#39;s nice and clean on the inside you actually will take a usually like a pen or something like that and you&#39;ll probably draw a shape onto your pumpkin um or something that you can that repr is maybe a little bit spooky or whatever there are also lots of um like guides that you can print out and you can um onto a piece of paper or they come in they already come in in a little booklet and you can cut them out or print them out and sort of tape them over your pumpkin and then use that as a stencil so a stencil is something that you use to help you draw better um by sort of drawing around the shape that you want that you don&#39;t you&#39;re less likely to make a mistake can he why are you eating my pen stop this is not yours this is my pen it is not for you to eat sir thank you okay back to the pumpkin Thing Once you have your shape laid out you you take a usually you want to take like a a pointy thing to cuz the pumpkins are quite thick so a pointy thing can help you to make like initial um dots or like start the the the the cutting process because what you need to do is cut through the entire pumpkin they&#39;re usually like an inch or an inch inch and a half thick so if you like make a couple of dots it can be really really helpful for like cutting later because then you&#39;re going to take a little knife and you&#39;re going to stick it into the pumpkin and you&#39;re going to slowly cut around your shapes it is um sort of difficult because they&#39;re so thick and you and you have to be very careful not to like um mess up or like create a weird slice in your pumpkin or something um and then you slowly like cut out pieces until you have this empty space in your pumpkin which is the shape of something and then when you put a a light inside or a candle and you put it outside at dark at dark at night it looks really cool it lights up and you can see like the face or whatever it is you can also get really really fancy with it right you can some people will also just take off the skin in some sections so they get like the the orangeness of the pumpkin on the outside then they have like the yellowness of the of the skin of the the inside and then they also have the open sections that they carve out you can also get even fancier and do an a shape on the back of the pump pumpkin and then put it against a wall cuz that way the pumpkin will then sort of project that shape against a wall or something like that and so what what basically what ends up happening is that a lot of people will um carve a pumpkin and then they will put it outside their house and when it gets dark they&#39;ll light the pumpkin so that as you walk around the neighborhood you see a lot of pumpkins outside with candles in them that look really cool is the idea depending on where you live it can be really great or cut of terrible but yeah um fun I guess fact is my mom&#39;s birthday is just 2 days before thanks Thanksgiving before Halloween and one of her favorite things to do as a family is to uh carve pumpkins so that&#39;s what we did a lot growing up on her birthday we&#39;d carve pumpkins because pumpkins don&#39;t last very long either right so we&#39;d get them we&#39;d carve them and then they&#39;d last a couple of days and by like the 1 or 2nd of November that&#39;s when they were kind of starting to get a little bit old and mushy um and starting to go bad some people have a u a tradition of after a couple days after Halloween they go around and they take pumpkins off people&#39;s porches and they smash them cuz they get really fun to smash and they&#39;re really goopy and gross and nobody really wants their pumpkin um the only annoyance is that if it&#39;s out on the street and it&#39;s just like kind of gross um but Smashing Pumpkins is a thing that people do it&#39;s not that common um I don&#39;t know anybody that that does it but it has has happened before um and so yeah Smashing Pumpkins is also a band which is where they get that name from uh what else is there to say about Halloween oh like you also dress up that&#39;s that&#39;s a pretty core of the of the sport what why can&#39;t I say the right word today it&#39;s a pretty core of the holiday is that people dress up and then they go trick or treating trick-or-treating is um usually for younger kids um but they often usually go with their parents as well and that&#39;s where you go from house to house so you dress up in a hall in a Halloween costume and you go to a house and you knock on the door you ring the doorbell and they open the door and you say trick-or treat um and then they give you a some sort of little bit of candy uh candy is what usually happens however um sometimes it&#39;s whatever else um and then you go to the next house right so kids love this right they get lot free candy they it&#39;s really fun to go places you see people from the neighborhood they see your costume if you have a cool costume they comment on it um there is no trick by the way um I don&#39;t know how this started but like what you saying is like uh you have to do a trick or give us a treat right you have do a trick or give a treat right trick or treat um people always give treats um it&#39;s it&#39;s that&#39;s just what it is right there&#39;s always some kind of little snack or candy or whatever and then you go around to a lot of houses and then you go back and you have candy um a lot of kids like that it also doesn&#39;t stop there right then you sort your candy you trade your candy it becomes like this thing that you play with right it so of becomes this toy um that of of whatever it is and so I remember like I really liked trading candy um I would sort it all I would find I would like try to get all of these ones that I liked or whatever for my friends cuz there&#39;s only like what 15 different like pieces of candy that you can really get that are different and so lots of people have their favorite candy that they trade for or whatever it is um but it&#39;s also fairly common for people to do a like a swap right because lots of parents don&#39;t really want their kid to have just a ton of candy um and so they either will like ration it so they&#39;ll take the candy and they&#39;ll hide it away and you can have a little bit over the over the course of like the year or the next couple months or whatever right you have a little bit of a Time rather than just letting the kid have as much goddamn candy as they want or a lot of parents will also sort of do an exchange well they&#39;ll say hey I&#39;ll trade you all of your candy for a new toy or a Lego set or whatever it is and that&#39;s what I uh what my family always did because uh we didn&#39;t really eat very much candy at all like we&#39;d have a little bit on Halloween um but then it&#39;s like okay the rest goes to the Hallow to the uh Halloween fair is what we called it and so um we would go to bed and then the next day my parents would uh take away the C the candy and they would replace it with um a uh usually a Lego set like I said is what we liked so like not nothing huge they were probably like $20 which back then is probably like $25 or something like that so it&#39;s um I think it&#39;s a reasonable trade for um stopping your child from ingesting a massive amount of candy uh because you can get a pretty good amount of candy on Halloween you end up with a fairly decent amount um that&#39;s generally how the holiday goes uh many adults or um younger adults who don&#39;t have kids will go to a party or something like that like a Halloween party where they dress up um where there&#39;s usually drinks and a bunch of people some people go to dinner some people make dinner some people don&#39;t do anything right they like to stay home and just give out candy or stay home and not give out candy oh that&#39;s another thing that&#39;s that&#39;s the that&#39;s the rule in at least where I grew up if the porch light is on that means that you can go up and knock on the door if the porch light is off that means that they don&#39;t want any visitors at at the house or they&#39;re not home so most houses in the US have a porch which is like that front section that you can walk up to before you get to the door and they almost all have a light right so that you can see what you&#39;re doing when it&#39;s dark outside right and so if you have the light on that means that you&#39;re you&#39;re allowed to go knock on the door and say trick-or treat if the light is off um that&#39;s the sign that nobody&#39;s home or they don&#39;t want visitors so uh that&#39;s the rule why did I bring that up uh oh yeah cuz some people stay home and they turn off off the light and they don&#39;t have candy and they just have a quiet night or whatever lots of people love Halloween I think it&#39;s a really cool holiday I also like the aspect of like going outside and going around to different places and stuff um and so yeah it&#39;s a it&#39;s a cool one it&#39;s yeah the last thing I want to say is that after Halloween in the US that&#39;s the best time to buy candy if you buy candy um because it suddenly goes on sale everything is more expensive like Halloween stuff is more expensive before Halloween and less expensive after Halloween um and so a lot of people what they actually do is they will um wait until after Halloween to buy all the candy that they&#39;re going to give out the next year for the next um uh the next Halloween because it&#39;s like half is half the price um and Candy lasts basically forever because it&#39;s made of sugar and other processed things so it like doesn&#39;t go bad or anything um and so they get a bunch of cheap candy maybe some more some new decorations or whatever and then they wait for next year um but yeah that is pretty much everything I I do also want to quickly talk about uh Spirit Halloween actually so Spirit Halloween is a a brand of retail stores that just sells Halloween stuff and you might think that&#39;s a terrible uh business idea but what they do is they actually take over uh like stores that didn&#39;t do well um in the year and they convert them for just a few months into a Spirit Halloween and then they then they leave they take all the their stuff they put it back in in storage for the next year um and so it&#39;s this like seasonal business and that actually sort of prays upon bus other businesses failing right because what happens is that a business goes out of out of business is what we say um so let&#39;s say like a target has to close a Target closes and then Spirit Halloween says to the whoever the landowner is hey we&#39;ll rent this place really cheap but we&#39;ll rent it for a couple months and so the landowner goes okay we&#39;re not using this for anything else so sure go ahead and rent this for really really cheap right like uh probably half the price so they rent this these this place that should be expensive but they get it for quite cheap they bring in all of their their stuff they put up a couple of of of signs and then they have a spear at Halloween in just like a week or two um they also have pretty good marketing people generally like the the stuff that they sell so it&#39;s it&#39;s relatively well known for that kind of thing even though they only exist for a couple of months out of the year it&#39;s also interesting because Spirit Halloween tends to do better when other businesses do worse right because they get better deals on on rent and stuff like that and more businesses go out of business and y y y and so it&#39;s kind when Spirit Halloween does really well that&#39;s kind of a sign for the rest of the economy which I just think is kind of interesting not actually like a perfect sign but like it&#39;s just it&#39;s it&#39;s definitely related um and so if you&#39;re ever in the US during the Halloween season probably in like um September October November you might see a a spear of Halloween and you could go inside there&#39;s some interesting stuff there and they don&#39;t stick around forever um but that is everything for today nice long episode for Halloween um I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little something about the us or Halloween and if you enjoyed this episode make sure to leave a comment below and tell me what kind of spooky H holiday you have in your country I&#39;ll see you again tomorrow bye