Set the stage

Set the stage

Today’s current events lesson was about live theater, so let’s pick an expression with its roots in the theater: “set the stage.”

“Set the stage” is an idiom. And it means to create the conditions for something to happen, to create the environment for something to happen.

I want you to think about going to the theater, going to a play. Before the first actor walks out onto the stage, someone else has done the hard work to prepare the stage for the play. They put the background, the props, the set, the lights. Someone has done the preparatory work. The stage is ready for the show to begin.

That’s what I want you to think about with “set the stage,” except we can use that in a wide variety of contexts. It just means “to create the necessary conditions.”

We talked about “The Phantom of the Opera” in today’s lesson. Every good story has a conflict, right? But it’s hard to open a story with the conflict in the first scene. You need to learn about the characters, learn about the situation first. So in “The Phantom of the Opera,” you first learn about the Phantom, you learn about Christine, you learn about the Phantom’s love for Christine.

And then Christine’s former sweetheart appears. And that sets the stage for the main conflict. That creates the conditions that we need for a good conflict. Now we have the information, now the circumstances are right for a conflict to come later.

One of these days we’ll talk about ChatGPT—maybe next week. ChatGPT is one example of a large language model. I think before ChatGPT, the average person would have struggled to imagine what artificial intelligence was. But now we have firsthand knowledge. Over 100 million people have used it. You might not understand how it works behind the scenes, but you know basically how to use it and what it does. If you’re like most users, you’ve tried out multiple prompts to see what it can do, and what it gets wrong.

My point is, artificial intelligence had been used by early adopters, people who are techy and into futuristic stuff. But ChatGPT is setting the stage for artificial intelligence to be used in a much wider variety of applicants.

Here’s what I mean by that. Before, if you had said, here’s an artificial intelligence tool that can help you respond to e-mails faster, people would have said, “Huh?” The average email user would not have even known what that could look like.

But ChatGPT has kind of taught us what that could mean. People are now used to it. A hundred million people know what it’s like. And that means, in the future, people will be more likely to adopt some kind of AI in their lives. Google can include their own AI version as an add-in to Gmail. Microsoft is including it in its Bing search results. There are many other ways you might use it in the future. And ChatGPT is setting the stage for all that. It’s creating the conditions that are necessary for future adoption of AI language models in your life.

Donald Trump, I mentioned, is officially a candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential elections. First, he needs the nomination in the Republican party. There’s one other candidate who is expected to do very well. His name is Ron DeSantis. He is the governor of Florida. When he first ran for governor, he just barely won—just squeaked in. But in 2022, he ran for a second term and he won big—he won by almost 19 percentage points over his opponent, a very well-known, experienced former governor.

Many people are saying that DeSantis’s win in his re-election sets the stage for his presidential run. Winning big as a governor in a big state: that’s creating the conditions for him to run for a higher office. Look, if he only just barely won in his home state, that wouldn’t look so good for someone trying to win the whole country. But that’s not what happened. He won by 19 points—that’s a lot.

Now he looks like a winner. And that’s creating the conditions necessary for him to take the next step. It’s setting the stage for his presidential run.

The Kansas City Chiefs won last year’s Super Bowl, the championship in American football. Many people credit that to two men: the head coach, Andy Reid, and the quarterback, the most important player in football. On the Chiefs, that’s Patrick Mahomes.

The year before they hired Andy Reid, the Chiefs had a record of 2-14. That means they won two games and lost 14 games. Ouch! But they hired a new head coach, and a few years later they drafted a star quarterback, and that set the stage for their success later in the decade. They won championships in 2020 and 2023.

So what happened? They hired a new coach and got a new quarterback. That created the conditions, created the environment, that they would need to win championships. So hiring Andy Reid and drafting Patrick Mahomes set the stage for the Chiefs’ future success.

JR’s song of the week

Time for the song of the week—it’s another thematic one. It’s “The Music of the Night.” And it’s part of the soundtrack for “The Phantom of the Opera.” This song appears when the Phantom lures Christine, the soprano, back to his lair. He sings about his love for her. The song puts her in a trance; she faints and the Phantom carries her to a bed.

“The Music of the Night” is the song of the week; we’ll credit that to Andrew Lloyd Webber, who composed the music.

See you next time!

A lot of people have told me that I should play a clip of the song of the week during every Thursday episode. Now that, unfortunately, is the fastest way to get a podcast kicked off Spotify and every major podcast platform. I can’t do it, not even one second.

But I can post the Spotify link to Instagram Stories. So on Thursday nights or Fridays, I’ve started to post a link to the song of the week on our Instagram Stories. You have to be following us, @plainenglishpod, and you have to pay attention on Thursday nights or Fridays, watch our stories for the Song of the Week. @PlainEnglishPod

Well now the curtain will fall on today’s lesson, number 571 for Thursday, May 11, 2023. Remember to find the full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/571. We’ll be back on Monday with a new topic. See you then.