English Conversation Listening Practice - British English Podcast (With Level Up English)

71,729 views

2023-02-22 ・ English Like A Native


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English Conversation Listening Practice - British English Podcast (With Level Up English)

71,729 views ・ 2023-02-22

English Like A Native


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Okay, so today I've got Michael here from Level Up English.
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Hi Michael, how are you today?
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Hello.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm very good.
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Good to see you.
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If I said to you, how are you?
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And you turned around and said, "well, actually, I'm having a terrible
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day", it is not the done thing is?
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I think in general, unless you are really, really close to someone.
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Uh, when you say, "how are you?"
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You're just looking for a very quick "Yes, I'm fine.
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Thank you.
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Let's carry on".
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It's like an icebreaker or an introduction to your conversation,
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but genuinely Michael, how are you?
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Well, I'm a bit cold.
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I've got painful knees, you know.
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What happened to your knees?
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They're always bad.
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I did a long walk yesterday, um, for a few hours.
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Sitting down too much, walking too much, not having a balance of each...
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Right.
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Okay.
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...I think isn't good for your joints, is it?
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Yeah.
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I find when I'm static.
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Static's a nice way to describe being very still.
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When I'm static, so if I have a day in the office just sat at my desk,
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I have to actually stand up quite a few times because I start to feel
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like my knees hurt, my hips, my back,
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I feel like an old lady.
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Is walking something that you do often?
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It is, yeah.
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I mean I try...
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I successfully try, I would say, to do it every day, go for at least a...
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you know, half an hour walk if I can.
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It's something I really enjoy.
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I mean, there's nothing I enjoy more really than putting in a podcast,
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going through a walk, rain or shine.
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It might just be the same route I've done a thousand times, or it might be
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somewhere new I haven't been before.
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You said come rain or shine.
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That's a nice little phrase, isn't it?
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Yeah.
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It's like whether it's raining or it's sunny, doesn't matter to me.
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I'll go out.
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So do you have all the kit then?
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All the gear?
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I've got like a nice winter coat that keeps me warm, but it's not waterproof,
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so I might come back a bit soggy and wet, but I dry my clothes out and
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I find actually the discomfort of walking in the rain makes arriving
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home more enjoyable, you know?
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So we'd probably call this hiking, right?
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If you're going for a long walk, maybe over surfaces that aren't level, so it
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might not be an actual purpose-built path, but you're walking in the countryside
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or in the hills, in the mountains.
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This would be hiking.
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Really?
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Mm-hmm.
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Wouldn't it?
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Mm-hmm yeah.
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Yeah.
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And I think having a good pair of shoes is really important
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if you are into your hiking.
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So tell me, you've got some good walking shoes.
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No!?
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Well, I'm kind of a minimalist, so I only have one pair of shoes at a time, and the
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one I have now, the pair I have now, I didn't realise until after I bought them,
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but they're not good for wet weather...
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Right.
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...like even if it's just like a wet field with like grass, my feet will be soaked.
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Oh, I've kind of got used to it.
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In fact, there's a video on my YouTube channel where I was walking on Dartmoor,
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like a national park here in the UK and, I was like filming and I jumped
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across a little stream and I thought it was flat ground, but it was like a bog.
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So it was very, very soft mossy ground, saturated with water.
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It looked stable, but it wasn't.
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So I ended up like up to my knees in water.
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Oh no.
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Um, walking boots.
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Wouldn't have saved me then anyway.
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No.
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Well, I've done some hiking in the Dolomites in Italy.
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Mm-hmm.
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Nice.
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And we did, um, I think we did six weeks out in Argentina
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and, and went to Patagonia.
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So I think having decent shoes, good socks, uh, you know, and a
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windproof jacket if nothing else.
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Yeah.
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Did you have the crampons, like the spiked shoes to go on the ice?
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Did you have that?
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No.
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No.
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So we..., this is one of the stories I often tell, my dangerous adventure story.
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So we were out in the Dolomites and there was one walk called Punta Ana.
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And this is actually via ferrata.
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Mm.
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So via ferrata is where you are walking up a mountain, and it's not like, it's not
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mountain climbing, so you're not climbing up a rock face, although sometimes on a
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via ferrata you might have to, but it's generally walking on a mountain path,
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but it could be a little bit treacherous.
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And so there is a metal bar that's like a handrail that you have to clip onto
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that goes all the way along the walks.
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So there's one called Punta Ana, and it was in what we call the shoulder season,
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which is when it's not quite the high season, when it's nice and warm, and it's
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not the down season, the cold season.
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So there was snow on the top of the mountains, but it was lovely and
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sunny at the bottom, you know, so we weren't really prepared for the snow.
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We set off late and we didn't have crampons, but we did have a rope...
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Important!
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And we came to one bit that was like a saddleback, so it was like
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between two like hilly sections.
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There was this just ridge that you had to walk across, which I'm sure
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in the dry weather would've been fine, but with it covered in snow...
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and it's a sheer drop on either side of the saddleback.
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So you're walking across this ridge that's covered in snow and I was
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like, this is just so dangerous.
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One slip and it's sudden death.
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This is no messing around.
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This is death.
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So we used the rope that we had to go over the rope that was supposed
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to be for the via ferrata, but that was very high above our heads.
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So we, we looped this rope over, tied one side around my partner,
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one side around me, and we said, if you fall, the other person has to
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jump off the other side to balance.
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And then we, we, you know, very carefully walked across this saddleback,
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but what we realised was, you know, we weren't gonna turn back now.
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This was getting serious.
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Mm-hmm.
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And then we had a sheer rock face in front of us, a vertical rock face
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that we had to properly climb up.
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Again we only had walking boots on, which was a mistake because our
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feet kept slipping off the rocks.
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It was awful.
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Again, we knew at this point we can't come back now.
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We can't come back.
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That's the scary part.
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We were halfway up and we realised we were making bad time.
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The last cable car from the top of the mountain was gonna go really
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soon, and that was it for the season.
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That was gonna be the last cable car for the season, and we were too far
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behind, so we started shouting out.
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We could see there was some people far in the distance.
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Shouting out, saying, please, we're here.
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Don't go without us.
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Anyway, long story short.
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We made it, we were exhausted.
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We made it just in time.
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They were holding the cable car for us and they said, you know..
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Wow!
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"...we, we were about to pull out the mattresses at the station for you
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to spend the night up here, but you would've had to hike out the next day."
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And I, and we would had no food.
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You know, it was just, it was a very dangerous situation.
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Have you ever had anything like that?
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Yeah.
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Your story is terrifying.
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I'm really glad you made it...
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made it back okay.
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But yeah, like, I guess I must have been about like 15 or something and my dad
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took me on a via ferrata in the Alps.
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Okay.
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And I didn't really know what it was.
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I kind of trusted my dad, like, yeah, it'll be fine.
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And it kind of starts out climbing a ladder.
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It's not too bad.
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You have to have yourself hooked in with your harness and your...
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your ropes.
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So it's not really possible to fall.
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Although I kind of always think, why are we trusting these metal poles?
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Like, you know, everything breaks one day.
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How do we know it's not gonna be today...
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Um, but then as we ascended, it turned more and more into a cliff.
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And I think, as you said before, it was like a cliff.
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It was just vertical and it was, you know, just like ladders and
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metal things you had to hold onto.
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So it was like proper climbing, but it was safe.
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Yeah.
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And it was, you know, good holds to hold onto, but looking
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below me and just seeing...
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for me in my, you know, younger mind, it felt like hundreds of feet below me.
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I don't know how much it really was, but it was just terrifying.
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And we didn't...
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We made it to the top, but if you look back on the photos of that day,
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you can see like my face is just grumpy for the whole day after that.
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I was in such a bad mood.
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I think I'd just been traumatised, you know.
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What worries me about the via ferrata is you have to have a special
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harness thing to hook on with.
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So you have your harness...
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...which is what you wear, and then you would normally, with climbing,
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you'd have a rope and some carabiners, which are the connecting metal loops.
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That's right, isn't it?
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Carabiners?
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Yeah.
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When you do via ferrata, you have a special, I think it's called a tether,
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um, a special tether that is all bunched up into a short, what feels
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like a short rope or a short lead, and to connect from your harness through
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to your carabiner that you hook on.
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So it feels short.
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But then what would happen is if you fell this tether tears and it
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releases quite a long stretch of like, I don't know, 10 metres or something.
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It's quite a long stretch.
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Mm.
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Okay.
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So it's all bunched up inside this tether.
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It tears open if you fall.
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And the idea is that it, it's taking some of the momentum out of your fall
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as it's tearing, it's slowing your fall down because if you were to just...
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you need space.
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But if you were to fall and you had a lot of rope, you could get tangled up in it.
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And also the momentum, by the time you hit the end of the rope, the momentum
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would be so hard, you'd break your back...
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mm-hmm.
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or some bones from your harness.
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It would just be too much impact.
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So it has to slow your descent.
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So that's when you have this tearing...
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interesting
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...to release the rope inside this tether.
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Which means if you have a fall and you tear it, it's used, you can't
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restitch it, so it's, it's done.
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So you have your fall, you use your tether, and it's like releasing
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your parachute, but then you need to get back in the plane and carry
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on and jump out the plane again.
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You'd be unlucky to fall twice though, wouldn't you?
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Well, so, but if you...
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imagine you're, you're tired and the weather's bad.
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Yeah.
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You're halfway up a mountain or halfway through a via ferreta and
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you fall, your tether's done, spent.
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Then you have to climb yourself back onto the..., you know, you
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might be hanging from an overhang.
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Somehow you have to get back onto the mountain, back onto the
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path, and then, and then you...
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what do you do then?
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You've got no safety rope, not really, not a, not a genuine one that's gonna actually
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work for you, to get you either all the way there or all the way back, you know?
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Mm-hmm.
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That's always what bothered me when we were doing these very long, quite
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arduous hikes, is that potentially, if I have one fall in the middle, then...
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I'll, I'll be without any real safety afterwards.
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Yeah.
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I feel like that's a difference between us and the pros, right?
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The pros seem to not, the professionals, they don't, they
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don't think about this almost.
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It's like they, they take precautions, but the idea of failing
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isn't even an option for them.
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Like if you've seen people do free soloing where they climb cliffs
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without any rope or safety equipment.
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Like I guess, I imagine they just don't have the concept of failing.
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Like it's not even in their mind.
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'cause if it were, probably it's more likely to happen.
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I guess that's how it works.
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Things like gymnastics and, and climbing as well, but with
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gymnastics it's like 95% mental.
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Like what you are thinking is what's going to happen.
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So you have to get your mind in the right place and not think about falling.
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If you think about it, if you visualise it, it will more likely happen.
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Mm-hmm.
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And if you are scared, you hold back and you tense up in a way that will cause
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the incident or the accident to happen.
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Fear is an obstacle to overcome, but at the same time, it is there to protect us.
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So it's, it's..., I guess there's a balance of appropriate
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levels of fear, isn't there?
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But I guess I can relate to that.
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Like I'm a big fan of, I dunno what you'd call it, it's a bit like scrambling.
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It's not climbing.
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I'm not a fan of that after my traumatic childhood, but more like, um,
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... It's where you use your hands and feet, isn't it?
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it's where you use your hands and feet to climb up like rocky terrain.
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I feel like it's like parkour in the countryside.
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Like I love kind of jumping over rocks, jumping over rivers and stuff like that.
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I think I'm quite good on my feet in that sense.
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But as soon as you start to think about how it could go wrong, then you mess up.
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Yeah.
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Like imagine you're jumping over a stream.
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It's quite a big stream, a wide stream.
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If you think about like, oh, it's too big, it's...
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I can't do it, then you're gonna fall in.
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But if you just focus on the other side and you just go for it, then
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you'll almost definitely do it.
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So it is very mental.
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Many things are.
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I always think if you were able to live for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
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years, would we just end up being bored?
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Would we exhaust all the options of, you know, adrenaline sports?
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Would nothing excite us anymore?
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Well, a counter-argument to that,
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it depends what you mean by living, how, how we would live for that
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long, because, and really interesting thing I like to think about is, say
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if we discovered through medicine, like how to, how to live for
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a thousand years, I think we'd be the most risk averse species.
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You know, we, we wouldn't do anything risky because let's say
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you are like I dunno, 40 years old, and you sadly pass away doing
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something dangerous, it's very sad.
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But I guess you're like middle-aged then, aren't you?
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You, you can...
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Yes, I am middle-aged Michael
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Oh, I'm so sorry.
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I don't know your age, I promise.
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I'm 41.
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I'm 41.
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14:00
You don't look it.
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You look very, very young.
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Look younger than me and I'm...
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it's okay.
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I'm only playing with you.
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14:05
I don't mind.
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Oh, you've made me, um feel awkward now.
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No, it's okay.
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But I get what you mean.
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It's, it's relative, right?
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You feel like you've, you've lived half your life.
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If I were to die tomorrow, it wouldn't be as sad as if I died when I was 15
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because there's less life ahead of me now than there was when I was a teenager.
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Yes.
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And if you were to live to a thousand, if that were possible when you
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died at 40 or even 80, that would be a huge tragedy because you're
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missing out on most of your life.
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Yeah.
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So I feel like people wouldn't do as much if we lived for that long, you know?
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Yeah.
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We'd be much more cautious, I imagine.
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Yeah.
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And maybe we'd work harder on our relationships.
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And it's interesting to think how, what we would do for careers.
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Would we actually change careers many times and try out many different things?
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It would certainly give us more options, wouldn't it?
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Uh, yeah.
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I wonder because there's a lot of projects that people have
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started before that they...
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I think about big cathedrals and things and space programs that they
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know they're not gonna see the end of which is always really amazing
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that people can commit themselves to doing part of a project in their life.
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But I imagine there'd be a lot more people doing important stuff
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like, "okay, I'm gonna dedicate my life to curing this disease.
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(it) Might take me 500 years, but it's doable".
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I wonder how, um, how we'd look if we lived to a thousand.
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You see some people who...
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who do manage to make it to a hundred, but our bodies aren't really built...
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really for, for surviving that long.
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It is interesting when you touch, we touch on longevity and things.
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I actually follow, a chap called David Sinclair, he's someone
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who I've mentioned a lot.
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Yeah.
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15:48
And we actually adjust our lifestyle to, to kind of follow some of the things
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15:53
that he teaches to help you to live a longer life because I really would
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15:57
like to live for a very long time.
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I certainly want to live till I'm a hundred.
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I don't know if I'll get there, but..., even if I make it to 80,
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I want to make sure that I'm as healthy as I can be until that age.
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That's the key, isn't it?
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Yeah.
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I don't wanna be a burden.
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16:13
I mean, in my view, it's not all about numbers.
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Yeah.
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It's about, you know, I'd rather live 60 healthy years than a hundred years
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16:22
where half of them are not, you know, in good condition when you can't do much.
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16:27
Yeah.
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16:27
And you know, I've got two children, I would've liked more children, but
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16:30
you know, that just hasn't happened.
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16:33
And I don't want to be that burden on my children.
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16:36
I don't want them to have to, you know, figure out if they're gonna put me in a
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16:40
home or have to, you know, look after me.
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16:42
And I'd love to be able to be very active with my grandchildren as well
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16:46
if I'm blessed with grandchildren.
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16:49
And so, you know, getting out and, and walking on a regular basis.
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16:52
They do say that you should walk around 10,000 steps a day.
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16:57
A lot.
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16:57
Yeah.
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A lot.
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16:58
I think in modern life, doing a thousand, 10,000 steps a day is a lot.
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17:03
What's that like?
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17:04
I guess an hour and a half roughly of walking.
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17:06
I can really hear that.
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17:07
Cornish accent.
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17:12
It comes out in some, in certain words.
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17:13
Yeah.
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17:14
We were talking about accents.
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17:15
I previously appeared on Michael's podcast, which you should all go and check
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17:18
out if you're not already familiar with it, which is the Level Up English podcast.
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17:22
Right.
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17:23
There'll be links in the description here, so you can check that out.
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17:26
Um, we were talking about accents and uh, Michael asked me if I could
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17:31
tell where he was from and I said it was quite hard to pinpoint.
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17:33
I said, somewhere, maybe around Bristol, he's actually Cornish.
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17:37
And, um, the more I'm speaking with Michael, the more I can
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17:40
hear the ah sound coming out.
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1975
17:42
So that's why my reaction was, uh, came out there.
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17:46
But yes, 10,000 steps a day.
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17:49
I think if you are sitting in an office and you are very busy,
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17:53
it's quite hard to get that in.
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2250
17:55
Something I discovered recently though is you can get treadmills
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3000
17:58
that go underneath your desk.
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18:00
So if you did manage to get a standing desk, you can walk while you are working.
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4350
18:06
I've also seen ones where you can sit down, but it's like..., like
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3975
18:10
bicycle pedals under the desk as well.
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1830
18:11
I've heard they're quite good.
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870
18:13
I wonder how much you'd be able to concentrate if you are, if you're
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3410
18:16
moving, would it be as easy, especially when you're doing what we do?
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2705
18:19
You can't do a podcast when you've got something whirring,
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18:22
to whir is like a noise, like a constant, {makes a whirring noise}.
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3520
18:27
You couldn't podcast with that, could you?
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18:28
Why is Michael doing this.
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18:31
Moving side to side.
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960
18:33
Yeah, I do have a pull-up bar in my garden.
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18:37
'cause I really just enjoy just every now and again, just hanging
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18:40
and trying to do a pull-up.
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18:41
Can you do a pull-up?
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840
18:43
Yes.
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330
18:43
I was gonna ask you how many you can do if, if any.
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18:46
Oh, well, I mean from a dead hang all the way up, I can probably only do one.
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18:51
Mm-hmm.
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400
18:52
But if, uh, if it's kind of like with a bit of a jump up and maybe not going
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18:56
all the way back down again, then I can probably get out about three or four.
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3780
19:00
Mm-hmm.
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180
19:01
I'm relatively strong in my upper body, but I was watching something, I think
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5850
19:06
it was a YouTuber just the other day who said something, a large, I can't remember
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6810
19:13
the figures, but a majority of Americans couldn't do one pull up from a dead hang.
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6675
19:20
Yeah, I believe it.
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690
19:21
And he was trying to put it to the test.
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1500
19:23
He was just out in a, like a busy street asking people to come and
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3690
19:26
do one pull-up and he'd give them a hundred dollars if they did.
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2670
19:29
And surprisingly many people couldn't do it.
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2250
19:32
I think I, I think I saw that actually.
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19:34
Did you?
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270
19:35
Yeah.
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19:35
Yeah.
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335
19:36
And some people, I think that was it, the YouTuber himself, he could
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19:38
do it for a couple minutes or something, but most people couldn't.
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19:41
Yeah, he did, he did like 21 pull-ups or something.
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19:44
He was like, um, he'd trained in the Marines or something.
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2880
19:48
It made me then want to go and do some pull-ups.
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2660
19:51
I think I could do, like, I could probably do like two or something.
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2550
19:54
I'm not, I'm not very good, but I sometimes try at the gym I
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2370
19:56
go to, they've got a bar but I want to get better at that too.
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3060
19:59
One is easy, two is a struggle.
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1920
20:01
Then after that, it, you know, it depends.
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2250
20:04
When I was climbing, I could do a lot more pull-ups than, than I can now, and that's
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20:10
just because I'm not climbing very much.
442
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1440
20:11
You do get a good bit of upper body strength with squash, and you certainly
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4350
20:16
do with gymnastics, but during lockdown, I was pregnant with my second son,
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4336
20:20
and I put on four stone with my second pregnancy, which will mean nothing
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4734
20:25
to you probably, but it's a lot.
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1860
20:27
Usually you should put on about two stone with a pregnancy.
447
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2520
20:30
So I put on four, and that's because it was locked down.
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20:33
I couldn't go anywhere.
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1080
20:34
I couldn't measure myself.
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1234315
1530
20:35
I had no way of weighing myself, so I had no clue about my weight gain really.
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6180
20:42
And so when I had my child, and then I came back to my sports,
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20:48
which was gymnastics and squash.
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1980
20:50
I had terrible knees because I'd gained all this weight.
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3455
20:54
And it took me a lot longer to lose it.
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20:56
And then all my muscles and my joints just weren't happy.
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21:00
So yeah, getting back into climbing and gymnastics still hasn't yet happened.
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5010
21:05
I'm back, I'm fully back with my squash, but it's a long road.
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21:10
It's a long road back to previous levels of fitness.
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21:14
Yeah, you can get back there, but I think it's so much easier to lose health
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21:17
than it is to gain it back, isn't it?
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21:20
It takes a lot longer to regain muscle or lose fat.
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21:24
It's, it's a shame how that works.
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1980
21:26
Yeah.
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100
21:26
My mum used to say, when I was eating biscuits she'd say "A minute on the lips,
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4020
21:30
a lifetime on the hips", thanks, mum.
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21:35
Just before this podcast, I was feeling a bit peckish, a bit
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2280
21:37
hungry, so I picked up some cookies, some biscuits, and I was like...
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21:41
I put it down and had like a handful of nuts instead.
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2140
21:44
So I feel good about my morning.
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21:45
Well done.
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415
21:46
Well done.
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475
21:46
We...
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270
21:47
see this, this tin behind us is full of ginger snap biscuits.
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4480
21:52
My in-laws keep buying us these same tins 'cause we were
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3360
21:55
like, "oh, they're amazing".
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1225
21:57
But I really wish they wouldn't because I just can't stop eating them.
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3480
22:00
It's terrible, especially when it's cold.
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2760
22:03
Next time I'm in Cornwall, you'll have to tell me where I can go to have
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22:08
a good walk or a scramble perhaps.
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22:10
Yeah,
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22:10
likewise.
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22:11
When I'm in Surrey, I don't think I've been to Surrey before.
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22:13
I'm not sure.
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22:13
So we'll have to let each other know.
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22:15
Yeah,
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22:16
yeah, absolutely.
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960
22:17
Well, thank you so much.
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810
22:18
Can you let the listeners and viewers know where they can find you?
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22:22
Of course.
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22:22
So there's Level Up English Podcast.
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22:24
My website is Levelupenglish.school, and you'll find me as well
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22:29
on YouTube, Instagram.
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22:32
Yeah.
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22:32
Fantastic.
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22:33
Thank you everyone for listening.
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22:35
Take care and bye.
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22:37
Bye everyone.
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22:39
Thank you for listening to today's podcast.
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22:42
Don't forget that if you want to join my club to download the transcripts,
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22:46
become part of an online community, and to take part in some live,
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22:51
face-to-face conversation classes.
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22:54
Then check out my Conversation Club by clicking on the link.
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22:58
There'll also be links to Michael's podcast, website and YouTube
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23:02
channel down in the description.
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23:05
Until next time everyone, take care and goodbye.
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3900
About this website

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