Maura: Now, today we are going to do a Chatterbox episode. And that is where Harp and I get to chat about all different kinds of topics. And sometimes we also interview people. Now, today I’m going to interview someone who is very interesting and who most of you all, or almost everyone, already knows. I’m going to interview Harp.
Harp: It’s true. I’m so interesting!
Maura: We thought that if you’ve been listening for a while, you might be curious about us and want to get to know us more. Or if you’re a new listener, like, maybe it’s your New Year’s resolution to learn English, and you’re just tuning in, you might want to know a little bit more about who we are. So, I’m going to interview Harp. And this episode, we’re going to do something that we haven’t done before. When I’m interviewing Harp, I want you to keep an ear out for an expression that means to fail or to succeed, OK? So, in this episode, Harp is going to use an expression that means to fail or to succeed in a certain situation. So listen to this episode and I’ll reveal at the end what the expression is.
Harp: Very exciting! Let’s get started.
Maura: All right. So, Harp, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and where you’re from and where you grew up, because we’re not from Montreal, where we podcast from.
Harp: Yeah. You know, it’s funny because people ask me this question all the time and I have a little bit of a hard time responding because I’m kind of from two places at the same time, I would say. Because I was born in Fort St. John, which is in Northern British Columbia. And when I say northern, I mean northern. It is 15 hours north of Vancouver. And I lived there until I was 13. And Fort St. John is a very small town and there isn’t much to do, but it’s quite pretty. It’s in the northern forest so it’s really pretty. But like I said, it’s a bit boring, so my parents decided that they wanted to move and they thought about some different places and they decided we were moving to Edmonton, which is in Alberta. So now when people ask me, I say I’m half from Edmonton and half from BC because when I was 13 I moved to Edmonton and I kind of grew up there. I went to university in Alberta and Edmonton is home to me. People ask me where I’m from, I usually say Edmonton.
Maura: All right. And did you like growing up out west? I can ask you that because I’m not from that part of Canada.
Harp: I really did enjoy it. Fort St. John might have been boring, but it was a cute little town. We had a good group of family and friends there. And Edmonton, I actually really enjoyed growing up there. It’s a bigger city in terms of Canadian size, but it had a small-town feel to it but there were things to do. It was a nice place. I really enjoyed both my college and my university
Maura: So, what did you study at university?
Harp: I studied political science.
Maura: So does that mean you wanted to become a politician?
Harp: I was actually thinking more of becoming a lawyer. And so it’s a really common route to go from political science into law. And I love politics. Even now, I read the news a lot, I’m always following what’s going on politically in Canada, the US, and even internationally.