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

Okay, so today I've got Michael here from Level Up English.

Hi Michael, how are you today?

Hello.

Thank you for having me.

I'm very good.

Good to see you.

If I said to you, how are you?

And you turned around and said, "well, actually, I'm having a terrible

day", it is not the done thing is?

I think in general, unless you are really, really close to someone.

Uh, when you say, "how are you?"

You're just looking for a very quick "Yes, I'm fine.

Thank you.

Let's carry on".

It's like an icebreaker or an introduction to your conversation,

but genuinely Michael, how are you?

Well, I'm a bit cold.

I've got painful knees, you know.

What happened to your knees?

They're always bad.

I did a long walk yesterday, um, for a few hours.

Sitting down too much, walking too much, not having a balance of each...

Right.

Okay.

...I think isn't good for your joints, is it?

Yeah.

I find when I'm static.

Static's a nice way to describe being very still.

When I'm static, so if I have a day in the office just sat at my desk,

I have to actually stand up quite a few times because I start to feel

like my knees hurt, my hips, my back,

I feel like an old lady.

Is walking something that you do often?

It is, yeah.

I mean I try...

I successfully try, I would say, to do it every day, go for at least a...

you know, half an hour walk if I can.

It's something I really enjoy.

I mean, there's nothing I enjoy more really than putting in a podcast,

going through a walk, rain or shine.

It might just be the same route I've done a thousand times, or it might be

somewhere new I haven't been before.

You said come rain or shine.

That's a nice little phrase, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's like whether it's raining or it's sunny, doesn't matter to me.

I'll go out.

So do you have all the kit then?

All the gear?

I've got like a nice winter coat that keeps me warm, but it's not waterproof,

so I might come back a bit soggy and wet, but I dry my clothes out and

I find actually the discomfort of walking in the rain makes arriving

home more enjoyable, you know?

So we'd probably call this hiking, right?

If you're going for a long walk, maybe over surfaces that aren't level, so it

might not be an actual purpose-built path, but you're walking in the countryside

or in the hills, in the mountains.

This would be hiking.

Really?

Mm-hmm.

Wouldn't it?

Mm-hmm yeah.

Yeah.

And I think having a good pair of shoes is really important

if you are into your hiking.

So tell me, you've got some good walking shoes.

No!?

Well, I'm kind of a minimalist, so I only have one pair of shoes at a time, and the

one I have now, the pair I have now, I didn't realise until after I bought them,

but they're not good for wet weather...

Right.

...like even if it's just like a wet field with like grass, my feet will be soaked.

Oh, I've kind of got used to it.

In fact, there's a video on my YouTube channel where I was walking on Dartmoor,

like a national park here in the UK and, I was like filming and I jumped

across a little stream and I thought it was flat ground, but it was like a bog.

So it was very, very soft mossy ground, saturated with water.

It looked stable, but it wasn't.

So I ended up like up to my knees in water.

Oh no.

Um, walking boots.

Wouldn't have saved me then anyway.

No.

Well, I've done some hiking in the Dolomites in Italy.

Mm-hmm.

Nice.

And we did, um, I think we did six weeks out in Argentina

and, and went to Patagonia.

So I think having decent shoes, good socks, uh, you know, and a

windproof jacket if nothing else.

Yeah.

Did you have the crampons, like the spiked shoes to go on the ice?

Did you have that?

No.

No.

So we..., this is one of the stories I often tell, my dangerous adventure story.

So we were out in the Dolomites and there was one walk called Punta Ana.

And this is actually via ferrata.

Mm.

So via ferrata is where you are walking up a mountain, and it's not like, it's not

mountain climbing, so you're not climbing up a rock face, although sometimes on a

via ferrata you might have to, but it's generally walking on a mountain path,

but it could be a little bit treacherous.

And so there is a metal bar that's like a handrail that you have to clip onto

that goes all the way along the walks.

So there's one called Punta Ana, and it was in what we call the shoulder season,

which is when it's not quite the high season, when it's nice and warm, and it's

not the down season, the cold season.

So there was snow on the top of the mountains, but it was lovely and

sunny at the bottom, you know, so we weren't really prepared for the snow.

We set off late and we didn't have crampons, but we did have a rope...

Important!

And we came to one bit that was like a saddleback, so it was like

between two like hilly sections.

There was this just ridge that you had to walk across, which I'm sure

in the dry weather would've been fine, but with it covered in snow...

and it's a sheer drop on either side of the saddleback.

So you're walking across this ridge that's covered in snow and I was

like, this is just so dangerous.

One slip and it's sudden death.

This is no messing around.

This is death.

So we used the rope that we had to go over the rope that was supposed

to be for the via ferrata, but that was very high above our heads.

So we, we looped this rope over, tied one side around my partner,

one side around me, and we said, if you fall, the other person has to

jump off the other side to balance.

And then we, we, you know, very carefully walked across this saddleback,

but what we realised was, you know, we weren't gonna turn back now.

This was getting serious.

Mm-hmm.

And then we had a sheer rock face in front of us, a vertical rock face

that we had to properly climb up.

Again we only had walking boots on, which was a mistake because our

feet kept slipping off the rocks.

It was awful.

Again, we knew at this point we can't come back now.

We can't come back.

That's the scary part.

We were halfway up and we realised we were making bad time.

The last cable car from the top of the mountain was gonna go really

soon, and that was it for the season.

That was gonna be the last cable car for the season, and we were too far

behind, so we started shouting out.

We could see there was some people far in the distance.

Shouting out, saying, please, we're here.

Don't go without us.

Anyway, long story short.

We made it, we were exhausted.

We made it just in time.

They were holding the cable car for us and they said, you know..

Wow!

"...we, we were about to pull out the mattresses at the station for you

to spend the night up here, but you would've had to hike out the next day."

And I, and we would had no food.

You know, it was just, it was a very dangerous situation.

Have you ever had anything like that?

Yeah.

Your story is terrifying.

I'm really glad you made it...

made it back okay.

But yeah, like, I guess I must have been about like 15 or something and my dad

took me on a via ferrata in the Alps.

Okay.

And I didn't really know what it was.

I kind of trusted my dad, like, yeah, it'll be fine.

And it kind of starts out climbing a ladder.

It's not too bad.

You have to have yourself hooked in with your harness and your...

your ropes.

So it's not really possible to fall.

Although I kind of always think, why are we trusting these metal poles?

Like, you know, everything breaks one day.

How do we know it's not gonna be today...

Um, but then as we ascended, it turned more and more into a cliff.

And I think, as you said before, it was like a cliff.

It was just vertical and it was, you know, just like ladders and

metal things you had to hold onto.

So it was like proper climbing, but it was safe.

Yeah.

And it was, you know, good holds to hold onto, but looking

below me and just seeing...

for me in my, you know, younger mind, it felt like hundreds of feet below me.

I don't know how much it really was, but it was just terrifying.

And we didn't...

We made it to the top, but if you look back on the photos of that day,

you can see like my face is just grumpy for the whole day after that.

I was in such a bad mood.

I think I'd just been traumatised, you know.

What worries me about the via ferrata is you have to have a special

harness thing to hook on with.

So you have your harness...

...which is what you wear, and then you would normally, with climbing,

you'd have a rope and some carabiners, which are the connecting metal loops.

That's right, isn't it?

Carabiners?

Yeah.

When you do via ferrata, you have a special, I think it's called a tether,

um, a special tether that is all bunched up into a short, what feels

like a short rope or a short lead, and to connect from your harness through

to your carabiner that you hook on.

So it feels short.

But then what would happen is if you fell this tether tears and it

releases quite a long stretch of like, I don't know, 10 metres or something.

It's quite a long stretch.

Mm.

Okay.

So it's all bunched up inside this tether.

It tears open if you fall.

And the idea is that it, it's taking some of the momentum out of your fall

as it's tearing, it's slowing your fall down because if you were to just...

you need space.

But if you were to fall and you had a lot of rope, you could get tangled up in it.

And also the momentum, by the time you hit the end of the rope, the momentum

would be so hard, you'd break your back...

mm-hmm.

or some bones from your harness.

It would just be too much impact.

So it has to slow your descent.

So that's when you have this tearing...

interesting

...to release the rope inside this tether.

Which means if you have a fall and you tear it, it's used, you can't

restitch it, so it's, it's done.

So you have your fall, you use your tether, and it's like releasing

your parachute, but then you need to get back in the plane and carry

on and jump out the plane again.

You'd be unlucky to fall twice though, wouldn't you?

Well, so, but if you...

imagine you're, you're tired and the weather's bad.

Yeah.

You're halfway up a mountain or halfway through a via ferreta and

you fall, your tether's done, spent.

Then you have to climb yourself back onto the..., you know, you

might be hanging from an overhang.

Somehow you have to get back onto the mountain, back onto the

path, and then, and then you...

what do you do then?

You've got no safety rope, not really, not a, not a genuine one that's gonna actually

work for you, to get you either all the way there or all the way back, you know?

Mm-hmm.

That's always what bothered me when we were doing these very long, quite

arduous hikes, is that potentially, if I have one fall in the middle, then...

I'll, I'll be without any real safety afterwards.

Yeah.

I feel like that's a difference between us and the pros, right?

The pros seem to not, the professionals, they don't, they

don't think about this almost.

It's like they, they take precautions, but the idea of failing

isn't even an option for them.

Like if you've seen people do free soloing where they climb cliffs

without any rope or safety equipment.

Like I guess, I imagine they just don't have the concept of failing.

Like it's not even in their mind.

'cause if it were, probably it's more likely to happen.

I guess that's how it works.

Things like gymnastics and, and climbing as well, but with

gymnastics it's like 95% mental.

Like what you are thinking is what's going to happen.

So you have to get your mind in the right place and not think about falling.

If you think about it, if you visualise it, it will more likely happen.

Mm-hmm.

And if you are scared, you hold back and you tense up in a way that will cause

the incident or the accident to happen.

Fear is an obstacle to overcome, but at the same time, it is there to protect us.

So it's, it's..., I guess there's a balance of appropriate

levels of fear, isn't there?

But I guess I can relate to that.

Like I'm a big fan of, I dunno what you'd call it, it's a bit like scrambling.

It's not climbing.

I'm not a fan of that after my traumatic childhood, but more like, um,

... It's where you use your hands and feet, isn't it?

it's where you use your hands and feet to climb up like rocky terrain.

I feel like it's like parkour in the countryside.

Like I love kind of jumping over rocks, jumping over rivers and stuff like that.

I think I'm quite good on my feet in that sense.

But as soon as you start to think about how it could go wrong, then you mess up.

Yeah.

Like imagine you're jumping over a stream.

It's quite a big stream, a wide stream.

If you think about like, oh, it's too big, it's...

I can't do it, then you're gonna fall in.

But if you just focus on the other side and you just go for it, then

you'll almost definitely do it.

So it is very mental.

Many things are.

I always think if you were able to live for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of

years, would we just end up being bored?

Would we exhaust all the options of, you know, adrenaline sports?

Would nothing excite us anymore?

Well, a counter-argument to that,

it depends what you mean by living, how, how we would live for that

long, because, and really interesting thing I like to think about is, say

if we discovered through medicine, like how to, how to live for

a thousand years, I think we'd be the most risk averse species.

You know, we, we wouldn't do anything risky because let's say

you are like I dunno, 40 years old, and you sadly pass away doing

something dangerous, it's very sad.

But I guess you're like middle-aged then, aren't you?

You, you can...

Yes, I am middle-aged Michael

Oh, I'm so sorry.

I don't know your age, I promise.

I'm 41.

I'm 41.

You don't look it.

You look very, very young.

Look younger than me and I'm...

it's okay.

I'm only playing with you.

I don't mind.

Oh, you've made me, um feel awkward now.

No, it's okay.

But I get what you mean.

It's, it's relative, right?

You feel like you've, you've lived half your life.

If I were to die tomorrow, it wouldn't be as sad as if I died when I was 15

because there's less life ahead of me now than there was when I was a teenager.

Yes.

And if you were to live to a thousand, if that were possible when you

died at 40 or even 80, that would be a huge tragedy because you're

missing out on most of your life.

Yeah.

So I feel like people wouldn't do as much if we lived for that long, you know?

Yeah.

We'd be much more cautious, I imagine.

Yeah.

And maybe we'd work harder on our relationships.

And it's interesting to think how, what we would do for careers.

Would we actually change careers many times and try out many different things?

It would certainly give us more options, wouldn't it?

Uh, yeah.

I wonder because there's a lot of projects that people have

started before that they...

I think about big cathedrals and things and space programs that they

know they're not gonna see the end of which is always really amazing

that people can commit themselves to doing part of a project in their life.

But I imagine there'd be a lot more people doing important stuff

like, "okay, I'm gonna dedicate my life to curing this disease.

(it) Might take me 500 years, but it's doable".

I wonder how, um, how we'd look if we lived to a thousand.

You see some people who...

who do manage to make it to a hundred, but our bodies aren't really built...

really for, for surviving that long.

It is interesting when you touch, we touch on longevity and things.

I actually follow, a chap called David Sinclair, he's someone

who I've mentioned a lot.

Yeah.

And we actually adjust our lifestyle to, to kind of follow some of the things

that he teaches to help you to live a longer life because I really would

like to live for a very long time.

I certainly want to live till I'm a hundred.

I don't know if I'll get there, but..., even if I make it to 80,

I want to make sure that I'm as healthy as I can be until that age.

That's the key, isn't it?

Yeah.

I don't wanna be a burden.

I mean, in my view, it's not all about numbers.

Yeah.

It's about, you know, I'd rather live 60 healthy years than a hundred years

where half of them are not, you know, in good condition when you can't do much.

Yeah.

And you know, I've got two children, I would've liked more children, but

you know, that just hasn't happened.

And I don't want to be that burden on my children.

I don't want them to have to, you know, figure out if they're gonna put me in a

home or have to, you know, look after me.

And I'd love to be able to be very active with my grandchildren as well

if I'm blessed with grandchildren.

And so, you know, getting out and, and walking on a regular basis.

They do say that you should walk around 10,000 steps a day.

A lot.

Yeah.

A lot.

I think in modern life, doing a thousand, 10,000 steps a day is a lot.

What's that like?

I guess an hour and a half roughly of walking.

I can really hear that.

Cornish accent.

It comes out in some, in certain words.

Yeah.

We were talking about accents.

I previously appeared on Michael's podcast, which you should all go and check

out if you're not already familiar with it, which is the Level Up English podcast.

Right.

There'll be links in the description here, so you can check that out.

Um, we were talking about accents and uh, Michael asked me if I could

tell where he was from and I said it was quite hard to pinpoint.

I said, somewhere, maybe around Bristol, he's actually Cornish.

And, um, the more I'm speaking with Michael, the more I can

hear the ah sound coming out.

So that's why my reaction was, uh, came out there.

But yes, 10,000 steps a day.

I think if you are sitting in an office and you are very busy,

it's quite hard to get that in.

Something I discovered recently though is you can get treadmills

that go underneath your desk.

So if you did manage to get a standing desk, you can walk while you are working.

I've also seen ones where you can sit down, but it's like..., like

bicycle pedals under the desk as well.

I've heard they're quite good.

I wonder how much you'd be able to concentrate if you are, if you're

moving, would it be as easy, especially when you're doing what we do?

You can't do a podcast when you've got something whirring,

to whir is like a noise, like a constant, {makes a whirring noise}.

You couldn't podcast with that, could you?

Why is Michael doing this.

Moving side to side.

Yeah, I do have a pull-up bar in my garden.

'cause I really just enjoy just every now and again, just hanging

and trying to do a pull-up.

Can you do a pull-up?

Yes.

I was gonna ask you how many you can do if, if any.

Oh, well, I mean from a dead hang all the way up, I can probably only do one.

Mm-hmm.

But if, uh, if it's kind of like with a bit of a jump up and maybe not going

all the way back down again, then I can probably get out about three or four.

Mm-hmm.

I'm relatively strong in my upper body, but I was watching something, I think

it was a YouTuber just the other day who said something, a large, I can't remember

the figures, but a majority of Americans couldn't do one pull up from a dead hang.

Yeah, I believe it.

And he was trying to put it to the test.

He was just out in a, like a busy street asking people to come and

do one pull-up and he'd give them a hundred dollars if they did.

And surprisingly many people couldn't do it.

I think I, I think I saw that actually.

Did you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And some people, I think that was it, the YouTuber himself, he could

do it for a couple minutes or something, but most people couldn't.

Yeah, he did, he did like 21 pull-ups or something.

He was like, um, he'd trained in the Marines or something.

It made me then want to go and do some pull-ups.

I think I could do, like, I could probably do like two or something.

I'm not, I'm not very good, but I sometimes try at the gym I

go to, they've got a bar but I want to get better at that too.

One is easy, two is a struggle.

Then after that, it, you know, it depends.

When I was climbing, I could do a lot more pull-ups than, than I can now, and that's

just because I'm not climbing very much.

You do get a good bit of upper body strength with squash, and you certainly

do with gymnastics, but during lockdown, I was pregnant with my second son,

and I put on four stone with my second pregnancy, which will mean nothing

to you probably, but it's a lot.

Usually you should put on about two stone with a pregnancy.

So I put on four, and that's because it was locked down.

I couldn't go anywhere.

I couldn't measure myself.

I had no way of weighing myself, so I had no clue about my weight gain really.

And so when I had my child, and then I came back to my sports,

which was gymnastics and squash.

I had terrible knees because I'd gained all this weight.

And it took me a lot longer to lose it.

And then all my muscles and my joints just weren't happy.

So yeah, getting back into climbing and gymnastics still hasn't yet happened.

I'm back, I'm fully back with my squash, but it's a long road.

It's a long road back to previous levels of fitness.

Yeah, you can get back there, but I think it's so much easier to lose health

than it is to gain it back, isn't it?

It takes a lot longer to regain muscle or lose fat.

It's, it's a shame how that works.

Yeah.

My mum used to say, when I was eating biscuits she'd say "A minute on the lips,

a lifetime on the hips", thanks, mum.

Just before this podcast, I was feeling a bit peckish, a bit

hungry, so I picked up some cookies, some biscuits, and I was like...

I put it down and had like a handful of nuts instead.

So I feel good about my morning.

Well done.

Well done.

We...

see this, this tin behind us is full of ginger snap biscuits.

My in-laws keep buying us these same tins 'cause we were

like, "oh, they're amazing".

But I really wish they wouldn't because I just can't stop eating them.

It's terrible, especially when it's cold.

Next time I'm in Cornwall, you'll have to tell me where I can go to have

a good walk or a scramble perhaps.

Yeah,

likewise.

When I'm in Surrey, I don't think I've been to Surrey before.

I'm not sure.

So we'll have to let each other know.

Yeah,

yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you so much.

Can you let the listeners and viewers know where they can find you?

Of course.

So there's Level Up English Podcast.

My website is Levelupenglish.school, and you'll find me as well

on YouTube, Instagram.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Thank you everyone for listening.

Take care and bye.

Bye everyone.

Thank you for listening to today's podcast.

Don't forget that if you want to join my club to download the transcripts,

become part of an online community, and to take part in some live,

face-to-face conversation classes.

Then check out my Conversation Club by clicking on the link.

There'll also be links to Michael's podcast, website and YouTube

channel down in the description.

Until next time everyone, take care and goodbye.