Men and women

Men and women

You are going to listen to Mark Gungor, a pastor who gives very funny seminars on helping married couples understand and improve their relationships. This is an excerpt from one of his talks.

Seminar title: Laugh Your Way To a Better Marriage

Comprehension questions

Part 1

1.    What does he compare men’s brains to? 

2.    Men have only a few compartments (work, money, cars, etc.). True / False

3.    What is the rule that governs men’s brains? What does it mean?

Part 2

4.    What does he compare women’s brains to?

5.    Why do women have such a good memory?

6.     Complete this sentence with a generalization Mr Gungor makes: _______tend to _______  _______

Part 3

7.    What’s the most popular compartment with men? Explain.

8.    Give an example of an activity related to that compartment.

9.    Complete this sentence with a generalization Mr Gungor makes: _______have the ability to think about ______________ and still _______

Interesting words and phrases: What do they mean?

1. for hours on end

2. unique
3. aware

4. chance

5. frankly
6. seemingly

7. to drive someone crazy

8. to be driven by something
9. to be made up of

10. to put something away

11. to tend to

12. to witness

Comprehension questions - ANSWERS

PART 1

1.     Little boxes.

2.     False. They have a box for everything. There are boxes everywhere.

3.     “The boxes don’t touch”. Don’t mix topics.

PART 2

4.     A big ball of wire. The Internet (the information superhighway)

5.     Because they’re more emotional and when an event is connected to an emotion you can remember it forever.

6.     Women tend to remember everything

PART 3

7.     The Nothing Box, where there’s nothing to think or worry about. Men go to this box whenever they have a chance.

8.     Fishing.

9.     Men have the ability to think about absolutely nothing and still breathe

TRANSCRIPT

We can start discussing men’s brains, women’s brains, and how they’re very different from each other. Now, I wanna start with men’s brains, all right? Now, men’s brains are very unique. Men’s brains are made up of little boxes. And we have a box for everything. We got a box for the car, we got a box for the money, we got a box for the job, we got a box for you, we got a box for the kids, we got a box for your mother somewhere in the basement... We got we got we got boxes everywhere! And the rule is ‘The boxes don’t touch’. When a man discusses a particular subject, we go to that particular box, we pull that box out, we open the box, we discuss only what is in that box - all right? And then we close the box and put it away being very very careful not to touch any other boxes.

Now women’s brains are very very different from men’s brains. Women’s brains are made up of a big ball of wire. And everything is connected to everything. The money is connected to your car, your car is connected to your job, and your kids are connected to your mother, and everything is connected to everything! It’s like zzzzzzzzz! It’s like the Internet superhighway, okay? And it’s all driven by energy that we call emotion. ‘Cause it’s zzzzzzzzz. It’s one of the reasons why women tend to remember everything. Because if you take an event and you connect it to an emotion, it burns in your memory and you can remember it forever. The same thing happens for men. It just doesn’t happen very often because, quite frankly, we don’t care. Women tend to care about everything! And she just loves it: ‘zzzzzzzzz …. Hahahaha!’

Now, men, we have a box in our brain that most women are not even aware of. This particular box has nothing in it. It’s true, it’s true. In fact we call it ‘The Nothing Box’. And of all the boxes a man has in his brain, the Nothing Box is our favourite box. If a man has a chance, he’ll go to his Nothing Box every time. That’s why a man can do something seemingly completely brain-dead for hours on end, you know, like fishing. Now, they’ve actually measured this. The University of Pennsylvania a couple of years ago did a study and discovered that men have the ability to think about absolutely nothing and still breathe. You know, they connected all the wires and stuff like that, marked their brain activity, all of a sudden he ends [flat line noise on brain machine] ‘I think he’s dead!’ -  ‘Huh?’ Women can’t do it, they can’t do it. Their minds never stop [sounds of electric activity].And they don’t understand the Nothing Box and it drives them crazy! Because nothing drives a woman more crazy or makes her feel more irritated than to witness a man doing nothing!