Team up

Two parties 'team up' when they work together to achieve a goal

Today's story: Super Nintendo World
Explore more: Lesson #555
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Team up

Today I’m going to show you how to use the English phrasal verb “team up.” To team up is to create a team—usually when it’s a small number of parties combining to do something together.

This is most common when two people who typically act as individuals combine forces to create a team, usually for one purpose or one goal.

Today’s topic was all about Super Mario World at Universal Studios. Universal Studios is a theme park that showcases characters and stories from movies, TV, cartoons, and books. Universal Studios is owned by Comcast, which also owns a film studio and the rights to television properties. So a lot of the attractions you see at the theme park—these are based on movies that Universal (the film studio) has produced. This is a way for a film studio to make more money of the movies it produces.

But today you heard that there’s a Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios. But Nintendo is an independent, private company—it’s not affiliated with Universal Studios. And the characters, colors, and stories from Super Mario Brothers are the intellectual property of Nintendo.

Nintendo, of course, does not have a theme park. Universal doesn’t have the rights to Nintendo characters. So what did Nintendo and Universal do? They teamed up to create Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios. They teamed up—here are two companies that formed a team for just one purpose: to create Super Nintendo World at Universal theme parks.

They were two independent companies doing their own thing. Then, they got together and formed a team for the purpose of create these parks. The two companies didn’t merge; they’re still individual companies. They still have their own businesses. But for this one objective, they are working together. They teamed up.

Universal is not the only one teaming up with Nintendo: Netflix is doing it too. Netflix and Nintendo are teaming up to create a special Pokémon series. This was just announced, so we don’t know too much about it. But Nintendo and Netflix are teaming up to create a Netflix series about Pokémon, which Nintendo owns.

ChatGPT is popular these days. With ChatGPT, you can type a question and it produces a realistic-sounding answer, even if it’s completely inaccurate. Microsoft invested in OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. And now Microsoft is teaming up with OpenAI to enhance Microsoft’s “Bing” search engine. ChatGPT still exists outside of Bing. But now you can get your Bing search results in the form of a ChatGPT response, too. That’s because Microsoft and OpenAI have teamed up to enhance Bing in this way.

Have you ever wanted to join a video conference while in your car? I have never wanted that, but I did, occasionally, have to join a Zoom call from my car. Well now Cisco, which makes video conferencing software, is teaming up with Mercedes-Benz to offer video conferencing services from inside the car. Prediction: the awkwardness of video calls will only increase if some of the participants are driving during the call.

All the examples I’ve given you are from the world of business. And most examples that come to mind are business-related examples. But it doesn’t have to be. A handful of neighbors can team up to make improvements to a local park or playground. You might live in a small town with several churches. A few churches might team up to collect donations of food and warm clothes around the winter holidays. A hospital might team up with a local sports star to promote healthy lifestyles in the community. All these are good examples of team up.

JR’s song of the week

Today’s song of the week is “Evangeline” by Stephen Sanchez. In the first ten or so seconds of the song, he samples a different song from the 1960s. And then the rest of the song is in a similar style to a 1950s or 1960s song, but updated for today. I really like this one, which I had not heard before JR picked it. “Evangeline” by Stephen Sanchez.

See you next time!

And that’s all for today. I’m not a big theme-park fan. The idea of waiting in the lines, paying the prices…it’s just not for me. But I have to tell you, I’m curious about this Super Nintendo World. I was not a huge Nintendo fan, but I did like Super Mario Brothers as a kid, and I think the theme park is a great concept.

If any of you have been there, I’d love to hear about it. Tag us on Instagram or in Facebook, our handle on both platforms is @plainenglishpod. Plain-English-Pod on both Instagram and Facebook.

That’s all for today. As always, we’ll be back on Monday with a new lesson. See you then.

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Story: Super Nintendo World