[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's right. He headed the customer support department.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is a nice verb to use, uhm, to show that you are leading something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, and now I struggle with Chinese.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why don't we hear a couple of examples of how this word is used.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, so uhm, the condition or the state of O as being on time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the verb address has the stress on the second syllable.


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[Assistant] Alright Marco, well, this classic question, why should we hire you? I think you'll hear it in many, many different interviews. And how did he deal with it here?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Given the opportunity, I could bring this kind of success to this company.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, a really, really strong closing argument.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, but let's turn now to the classic, classic question, your greatest weakness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly. So, so, really be truthful. Tell, tell the interviewer what you're not good at, cause, cause you're, there's obviously something that you're not good at.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, be prepared to answer the question, what is your greatest strength?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, uhm, you, you wanna be, uhm, as specific as you can, and again, give those examples, give those, give those successes, give those numbers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well remember there are three parts to this interviewing series and you can find them on our website at EnglishPod.com.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright guys, well thanks for listening, good luck in your interviews, and until next time, goodbye!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So on this occasion we're going to be talking about food, so let's preview some words on vocabulary preview.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so the head chef is the main cook, so to say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so the sous chef is the second in line to the head chef.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is also the major that people study in college to become a chef.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a noun. Okay, so I think we're ready to dive into our dialogue. What exactly is going on?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, you can tell in his voice that he's really stressed out. Okay, let's take a look at some of this kitchen vocabulary that we found in Language Takeaway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some people peel their tomatoes, I don't know why.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if you're gonna eat carrots, first you gotta chop them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, you can't put a whole carrot in... In your soup. In your soup or in your rice.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, this is a verb to butcher something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's when you remove all the bones and all the organs from the meat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so, so it's really easy. A butcher butchers meat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So to put butter on something. So you can butter a piece of bread.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or in this case, the fish is being buttered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, now we're ready to listen to our dialogue for the second time. We're gonna slow it down a little bit so it's easier to understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so let's take a look at these kitchen words in Fluency Builder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so in the weeds it means that you're really busy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, in the weeds. Okay, our next word, running low on. Running low on. Running low on. Running low on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so before we get into explaining what running low on means, let's listen to some examples.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So as we heard in the examples, you could also be running low on fuel, for example, on your car, et cetera. Running low on. Alright, and now let's take a look at our last word. Doing really well. Doing really well. We are doing really well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe it sounds a little bit difficult to understand. What are you doing really well?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, the restaurant is doing really well. The business is doing really well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly. So you can use it with people, you can use it with businesses, you can say, oh, I'm doing really well in my new job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so you can use it in those different ways.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's good because for me it helps me relieve stress.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And people don't understand it because they think cooking is work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So what about you guys? What do you like to cook? Do you have any particular dish that you prepare very well?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly, because we know that we have listeners from all over the world and of course we want to know what type of food you prefer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So come to EnglishPod.com and post your questions, your comments, and your recipes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For sure, if a good recipe comes along, we'll prepare it and uh, we'll let you know how it turned out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What started as a platform for hobbyists is poised to become a multi-billion dollar industry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Inspection, environmental monitoring, photography and film, and journalism. These are some of the potential applications for commercial drones. And their enablers are the capabilities being developed at resource facilities around the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For example, before aerial package delivery entered our social consciousness, an autonomous fleet of flying machines built a six meter tall tower composed of 1,500 bricks in front of a live audience at the Frac Center in France.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And several years ago, they started to fly with ropes. By tethering flying machines, they can achieve high speeds and accelerations in very tight spaces. They can also autonomously build tensile structures. Skills learned include how to carry loads, how to cope with disturbances, and in general, how to interact with the physical world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their aim is to push the boundary of what can be achieved with autonomous flight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are no external cameras. Each flying machine uses onboard sensors to determine its location in space and onboard computation to determine what its actions should be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only external commands are high-level ones, such as takeoff and land.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a so-called tail sitter. It's an aircraft that tries to have its cake and eat it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like other fixed-wing aircraft, it is efficient in forward flight, much more so than helicopters and variations thereof. Unlike most other fixed-wing aircraft, however,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is capable of hovering, which has huge advantages for takeoff landing and general versatility. There is no free lunch unfortunately.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the limitations with tail-sitters is that they're susceptible to disturbances, such as wind gusts. We're developing new control architectures and algorithms that address this limitation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For example, one such question would be What is the minimum number of moving parts needed for controlled flight?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now there are practical reasons why you may want to know the answer to such a question.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It turns out that decades ago, skilled pilots were able to fly remote-controlled aircraft that had only two moving parts, a propeller and a tail rudder. We recently discovered that it could be done with just one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the monospinner, the world's mechanically simplest, controllable flying machine, invented just a few months ago. It has only one moving part, a propeller.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It has no flaps, no hinges, no ailerons, no other actuators, no other control surfaces. Just a simple propeller.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even though it's mechanically simple, there's a lot going on in its little electronic brain to allow it to fly in a stable fashion and to move anywhere it wants in space. Even so, it doesn't yet have the sophisticated algorithms of the tail-sitter, which means that in order to get it to fly, I have to throw it just right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the monospinner is an exercise in frugality, this machine here, the Omnicopter, with its A propellers, is an exercise in excess. What can you do with all this surplus? The thing to notice is that it is highly symmetric. As a result, it is ambivalent to orientation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This gives it an extraordinary capability. It can move anywhere it wants in space, irrespective of where it is facing and even of how it is rotating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It has its own complexities, mainly having to do with the interacting flows from its eight propellers. Some of this can be modeled, while the rest can be learned on the fly. Let's take a look.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This machine over here is actually two separate, two-propeller flying machines. This one wants to spin clockwise, the other one wants to spin counterclockwise. When you put them together, they behave like one high-performance quadcopter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If anything goes wrong, however, a motor fails, a propeller fails, electronics, even a battery pack, the machine can still fly, albeit in a degraded fashion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This last demonstration is an exploration of synthetic swarms.


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[Assistant] The large number of autonomous, coordinated entities offers a new palette for aesthetic expression.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We've taken commercially available micro quadcopters, each weighing less than a slice of bread, by the way, and outfitted them with our localization technology and custom algorithms.


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[Assistant] Because each unit knows where it is in space and is self-controlled, there is really no limit to their number.


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[Assistant] The reality is that it is difficult to predict the impact of NASA and technology. And for folks like us, the real reward is the journey and the act of creation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a continual reminder of how wonderful and magical the universe we live in is. That it allows creative, clever creatures to sculpt it in such spectacular ways. The fact that this technology has such huge commercial and economic potential is just icing on the cake. Thank you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so today we're gonna be talking about a really great topic, one of my favorites.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beer. So beer is a very popular drink, especially in bars and when you go out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, and it's also not very strong like a vodka or whiskey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so we are going to be at a bar today and we're going to be looking at some of this vocabulary that you would find.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so let's listen to our dialogue for the first time and then we'll come back and look at these words.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. Well, it happens sometimes you go to these very exclusive bars and they charge you like if it was gold. I mean, that's crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, let's take a look at some of these great words that we saw in Language Takeaway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On tap. On tap. So he asked, what do you have on tap? Now this is a strange sentence. What exactly does it mean?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, this is a very popular thing because like you say, it's fresh beer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, let's take a look at our second word. Happy hour. Happy hour. Happy hour.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now this is very common and popular with bars. Yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so happy hour could be from 5pm till 10pm, 50% off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this brings us to our third word, a special. A special. A special. A special. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is a noun, and what does it mean when a restaurant or a bar has a special?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, very good. And now, they ordered a pint of Heineken and half a pint of Budweiser.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so we understand how much a pint is. What is, what would be the equivalent in liters?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so almost half a liter is one pint. Yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, it is very common when you go into a bar you can order a pint of beer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, right. So let's take a look at our next word on language takeaway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so it's usually maybe like a salad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so some common appetizers at a bar and we saw them in our dialogue. Nachos and mozzarella sticks. Nachos. Nachos. Nachos. Nachos. So nachos are little chips, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so those are nachos. They're very common in the United States.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mozzarella cheese, and the, this cheese is, what is it, how is it prepared?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, well, mozzarella sticks, a very popular bar food.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so we saw some really good vocabulary words there, and now let's take a look at putting it together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So a common mistake is asking, what about your weekend? What about your new job? Now, this is incorrect, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, because in our dialogue, the bartender said, and what about some appetizers?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, so he's saying, well, why don't you have some, some food?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so I can say, what about going to the movies?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so really good examples and the same thing we can apply to how about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ah, alright, perfect. Okay, so let's listen to this dialogue one last time and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about bars and beers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is the perfect opportunity to tell everyone about the world renowned beer shake.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone that listens to this recipe is a non-believer. They say that it is not possible for it to taste good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, now you take two eggs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, not cooked, not boiled, anything. You take two eggs and put them in the blender. It could be one or two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you take about half a cup of sugar. Put it in the blender.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it has no milk. Okay. But, it's actually really good. I've prepared it for some people, they're like, no, that's not possible, it can't taste good. And in the end they're like, wow, this is actually pretty good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's uhm, it's actually really common in Ecuador, in Peru, I've even seen it in Chile, usually with a dark beer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? So like a Guinness or? It could be a Guinness or yea, if it's that, a dark beer is a little bit sweeter, so you wouldn't add so much sugar. But if you have another beer like a lager or a stout, you could still do it, but just add a little bit more sugar because that beer is a little bit more bitter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You should. Try it out and let me know how it works.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and we're definitely there to answer all your questions and I'll be posting the recipe as well on the website.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hello, I'd like to show you guys 30 seconds of the best day of my life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that was El Capitan in California's Yosemite National Park. And in case you couldn't tell, I was climbing by myself without a rope. A style of climbing known as free soloing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was the culmination of a nearly decade-long dream, and in the video I'm over 2,500 feet off the ground. Seems scary?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it is. Which is why I spent so many years dreaming about selling out cap and not actually doing it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But on the day that that video was taken, it didn't feel scary at all. It felt as comfortable and as natural as a walk in the park, which is what most folks were doing in Yosemite that day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today I'd like to talk about how I was able to feel so comfortable, and how I overcame my fear. I'll start with a very brief version of how I became a climber, and then tell the story of my two most significant free solos. They were both successful, which is why I'm here. But the first,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the first felt largely unsatisfying, whereas the second, LCAP, was by far the most fulfilling day of my life. Through these two climbs, you'll see my process for managing fear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I started climbing in a gym when I was around 10 years old, which means that my life has been centered on climbing for more than 20 years. After nearly a decade of climbing mostly indoors, I made the transition to the outdoors and gradually started freesoling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I built up my comfort over time and slowly took on bigger and more challenging walls.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there have been many free solos before me, so I had plenty of inspiration to draw from. But by 2008, I'd repeated most of their previous solos in Yosemite, and was starting to imagine breaking into new terrain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The problem, though also the allure, was that it was too big. I didn't really know how to prepare for potential free solo. So I decided to skip the preparations and just go up there and have an adventure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did at least climb the route roped up with a friend two days before just to make sure that I knew roughly where to go and that I could physically do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when I came back by myself two days later, I decided that I didn't want to go that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew that there was a 300 foot variation that circled around one of the hardest parts of the climb. I suddenly decided to skip the hard part and take the variation, even though I'd never climbed it before. But I immediately began to doubt myself. Imagine being by yourself in the dead center of a 2,000 foot face, wondering if you're lost.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a beautiful September morning, and as I climbed higher, I could hear the sounds of tourists chatting and laughing on the summit. They'd all hiked up the normal trail on the back, which I was planning on using for my descent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But between me and the summit lay a blank slab of granite. There were no cracks or edges to hold onto, just small ripples of texture but slightly less than a vertical wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had to trust my life to the friction between my climbing shoes and the smooth granite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I carefully balanced my way upward, shifting my weight back and forth between the small smears. But then I reached a foothold that I didn't quite trust. Two days ago I had just stepped right up on it, but that had been with a rope on. Now it felt too small and too slippery. I doubted that my foot would stay on if I waited it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I considered a foot further to the side, but seemed worse. I switched my feet and tried a foot further out, seemed even worse. I started to panic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could hear people laughing on the summit just above me. I wanted to be anywhere but on that slab.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My mind was racing in every direction. I knew what I had to do, but I was just too afraid to do it. I just had to stand up on my right foot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so after what felt like an eternity, I accepted what I had to do, and I stood up on the right foot. And it didn't slip, and so I didn't die, and that move marked the end of the hardest climbing. And so I charged from there towards the summit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so normally when you summit Half Dome, you have a rope and a bunch of climbing gear on you, and tourists gasp and they flock around you for photos.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That night in my climate journal, I duly noted my free solo Fafdom. But I included a frowny face and a comment, do better, question mark.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'd succeeded in the solo, and it was celebrated as a big first in climbing. Some friends later made a film about it. But I was unsatisfied.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I actually took the next year or so off from freesoling because I knew that I shouldn't make a habit of relying on luck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But even though I wasn't soloing very much, I'd already started to think about El Cap. It was always in the back of my mind as the obvious crown jewel of solos. It's the most striking wall in the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But eventually I came to accept that I wanted to test myself against LCAP. It represented true mastery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I needed it to feel different. I didn't want to get away with anything or barely squeak by. This time I wanted to do it right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The thing that makes LCAP so intimidating is the sheer scale of the wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most climbers take 3-5 days to ascend the 3000 feet of vertical granite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The idea of setting out of a wall of that size with nothing but shoes and a chalk bag seemed impossible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 3000 feet of climbing represents thousands of distinct hand and foot movements, which is a lot to remember.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Many of the moves I knew through sheer repetition. I'd climbed a cat maybe 50 times over the previous decade with a rope.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this photo shows my preferred method of rehearsing the moves. I'm on the summit, about to rappel down the face with over a thousand feet of rope to spend the day practicing by myself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once I found sequences that felt secure and repeatable, I had to memorize them. I had to make sure that they were so deeply ingrained within me that there was no possibility of error. I didn't want to be up on the wall wondering if I was going the right way or using the best holds. I needed everything to feel automatic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Climbing with a rope is a largely physical effort. You just have to be strong enough to hold on and make the movements upward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But free soloing plays out more in the mind. The physical effort is largely the same. Your body is still climbing the same wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But staying calm and performing at your best when you know that any mistake could mean death requires a certain kind of mindset.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I work to cultivate that mindset through visualization, which basically just means imagining the entire experience of soloing the wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was about 2,000 feet off the ground and consisted of the hardest physical moves on the whole route. Long poles between poor hand holds with very small slippery feet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that wasn't even the hardest part. The crux culminated in a karate kick with my left foot over to the inside of an adjacent corner. A maneuver that required a high degree of precision and flexibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Enough so that I've been doing a nightly stretching routine for a full year ahead of time to make sure that I could comfortably make the reach with my leg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I practiced the moves, my visualization turned to the emotional component of a potential solo. Basically, what if I got up there and it was too scary? What if I was too tired? What if I couldn't quite make the kick? I had to consider every possibility while I was safely on the ground, so that when the time came and I was actually making the moves without a rope, there was no room for doubt to creep in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doubt is the precursor to fear, and I knew that I couldn't experience my perfect moment if I was afraid. I had to visualize and rehearse enough to remove all doubt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But beyond that, I also visualized how it would feel if it never seemed doable. What if, after so much work, I was afraid to try?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What if I was wasting my time and I would never feel comfortable in such an exposed position?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were no easy answers, but LCAP meant enough to me that I would put in the work and find out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some of my preparations were more mundane. This is a photo of my friend Conrad Anker climbing up the bottom of El Cap with an empty backpack. We spent the day climbing together to a specific crack in the middle of the wall that was choked with loose rocks. They made that section of climbing difficult and potentially dangerous because any misstep might knock a loose rock to the ground and kill a passing climber or hiker.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Take a second to imagine how ridiculous it feels to climb 1,500 feet of a wall just to fill a backpack full of rocks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's never that easy to carry a pack full of rocks around. It's even harder on the side of a cliff. It may have felt silly, but it still had to get done. I needed everything to feel perfect if I was ever going to climb the route without a rope.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After two seasons of working specifically toward a potential free solo of LCAP, I finally finished all my preparations. I knew every handhold and foothold on the whole route, and I knew exactly what to do. Basically, I was ready. It was time to solo LCAP.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On June 3rd, 2017, I woke up early, ate my usual breakfast of muesli and fruit, and made it to the base of the wall before sunrise. I felt confident as I looked up the wall, and felt even better as I started climbing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About 500 feet up, I reached a slab, very similar to the one that had given me so much trouble on Half Dome. But this time was different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I scouted every option, including hundreds of feet of wall to either side, and I knew exactly what to do and how to do it. I had no doubts, I just climbed right through.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even the difficult and strenuous sections passed by with ease. I was perfectly executing my routine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I rested for a moment below the boulder problem, and then climbed it just as I had practiced so many times with the rope on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My foot shot across to the wall on the left without hesitation, and I knew that I'd done it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Climbing Half Dome had been a big goal, and I did it. But I didn't get what I really wanted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With 600 feet to go, I felt like the mountain was offering me a victory lap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I climbed with a smooth precision and enjoyed the sounds of the birds swooping around the cliff. It all felt like a celebration. And then I reached the summit after three hours and 56 minutes of glorious climbing. It was the climb that I wanted, and it felt like mastery. Thank you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives and not being able to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was just a little kid, so I didn't really understand why, but as I got older, I realized we had drug addiction in my family, including later cocaine addiction. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, partly because it's now exactly a hundred years since drugs were first banned in the United States and Britain, and we then imposed that on the rest of the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a century since we made this really fateful decision.


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[Assistant] I realized there were loads of incredibly basic questions I just didn't know the answer to.


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[Assistant] What really causes addiction? Why do we carry on with this approach that doesn't seem to be working?


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[Assistant] To the only country that's ever decriminalized all drugs, from cannabis to crack, Portugal. And the thing I realized that really blew my mind is almost everything we think we know about addiction is wrong.


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[Assistant] And if we start to absorb the new evidence about addiction, I think we're going to have to change a lot more than our drug policies. But let's start with what we think we know, what I thought I know, right? Let's think about this middle row here, right?


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[Assistant] What do we, what would happen? Now we have a story about what would happen that we've been told for a century.


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[Assistant] We think, because there are chemical hooks in heroin, as you took it for a while, your body would become dependent on those hooks, you'd start to physically need them, and at the end of those 20 days, you'd all be heroin addicts, right? That's what I thought. First thing that alerted me to the fact


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[Assistant] Something not right with this story. So it was explained to me, if I step out of this TED Talk today and I get hit by a car and I break my hip,


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[Assistant] I'll be taken to hospital, and I'll be given loads of diamorphine.


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[Assistant] If what we believe about addiction is right, those people are exposed to all those chemical hooks, what should happen?


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[Assistant] They should become addicts. This has been studied really carefully. It doesn't happen. You will have noticed if your grandmother had a hip replacement, she didn't come out as a junkie.


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[Assistant] And when I learned this, it just seemed so weird to me. So contrary to everything I'd been told, everything I thought I knew, I just thought it couldn't be right. Until I went and met a man called Bruce Alexander, who's a professor of psychology in Vancouver, who carried out an incredible experiment that I think really helps us to understand this issue.


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[Assistant] Professor Alexander explained to me, the idea of addiction we've all got in our heads, that story, comes partly from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century. They're really simple experiments, you can do them tonight when you go home if you feel a little bit sadistic.


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[Assistant] If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drug water and almost always kill itself quite quickly. So there you go, right? That's how we think it works.


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[Assistant] So Professor Alexander built a cage that he called Rat Park, which is basically heaven for rats, right? They've got loads of cheese, they've got loads of colored balls, they've got loads of tunnels. Crucially, they've got loads of friends, they can have loads of sex, and they've got both the water bottles, the normal water and the drugged water. But here's the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don't like the drugged water. They almost never use it.


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[Assistant] None of them ever use it compulsively. None of them ever overdose. You go from almost a hundred percent overdose when they're isolated, to zero percent overdose when they have happy and connected lives. Now, when we first saw this, Professor Alexander thought,


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[Assistant] You know, maybe this is just a thing about rats, they're quite different to us, you know, maybe not as different as we'd like, but you know.


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[Assistant] But fortunately, there was a human experiment into the exact same principle happening at the exact same time. It was called the Vietnam War.


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[Assistant] In Vietnam, 20 percent of all American troops were using loads of heroin.


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[Assistant] And if you look at the news reports from the time, they were really worried because they thought, my God, we're going to have hundreds of thousands of junkies on the streets of the United States when the war ends. It made total sense. Now, those soldiers who were using loads of heroin were followed home. The Archives of General Psychiatry did a really detailed study, and what happened to them? It turns out they didn't go to rehab. They didn't go into withdrawal. Ninety-five percent of them


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[Assistant] Just stopped. Now if you believe the story about chemical hooks, that makes absolutely no sense. But Professor Alexander began to think there might be a different story about addiction. He said, what if addiction isn't about your chemical hooks?


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[Assistant] What if addiction is about your cage? What if addiction is an adaptation to your environment? Looking at this, there was another professor called Peter Cohen in the Netherlands, who said, maybe we shouldn't even call it addiction. Maybe we should call it bonding.


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[Assistant] Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond. And when we're happy and healthy, we'll bond and connect with each other. But if you can't do that,


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[Assistant] Because you're traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that's our nature. That's what we want as human beings.


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[Assistant] At first I found this quite a difficult thing to get my head around, but one way to help me to think about it is, and I can see, I've got over by my seat there a bottle of water, right? I'm looking at lots of you and lots of you have bottles of water with you, right?


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[Assistant] But we're not, right? Now because you've been able to afford the approximately a gazillion pounds that it costs to get into a TED Talk, I'm guessing you guys could afford to be drinking vodka for the next six months. You wouldn't end up homeless. You're not going to do that. And the reason you're not going to do that is not because anyone's stopping you.


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[Assistant] It's because you've got bonds and connections that you want to be present for. You've got work you love. You've got people you love. You've got healthy relationships.


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[Assistant] The core part of addiction, I came to think, and I believe the evidence suggests, is about not being able to bear to be present in your life.


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[Assistant] This has really significant implications. The most obvious implications are for the war on drugs, right? In Arizona, I went out with a group of women.


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[Assistant] Who are made to wear T-shirts saying, I was a drug addict, and go out on chain gangs and dig graves while members of the public could jeer at them.


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[Assistant] And when those women get out of prison, they're going to have criminal records that mean they'll never work in the legal economy again. Now, that's a very extreme example, obviously, in the case of the chain gang. But actually, almost everywhere in the world, we treat addicts to some degree like that. We punish them, we shame them, we give them criminal records, we put barriers between them reconnecting.


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[Assistant] There was a doctor in Canada, Dr. Gabor Marte, an amazing man, who said to me, if you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design that system. Now,


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[Assistant] There's a place that decided to do the exact opposite, and I went there to see how it worked. In the year 2000, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. One percent of the population was addicted to heroin, which is kind of mind-blowing. And every year, they tried the American way more and more. They punished people and stigmatized them and shamed them more.


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[Assistant] We can't go on with a country where we're having ever more people becoming heroin addicts. Let's set up a panel of scientists and doctors to figure out


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[Assistant] What would genuinely solve the problem? And they saw a panel led by an amazing man called Dr. Hua Gu Lao to look at all this new evidence, and they came back and they said,


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[Assistant] Decriminalize all drugs, from cannabis to crack. But, and this is the crucial next step, take all the money we used to spend on cutting addicts off, on disconnecting them, and spend it instead on reconnecting them with the society.


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[Assistant] And that's not, essentially that's not really what we think of. What they did wasn't really what we think of as drug treatment in the United States and Britain. So they do do residential rehab, they do do psychological therapy that does have some value. But the biggest thing they did was the complete opposite of what we do.


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[Assistant] A massive program of job creation for addicts and microloans for addicts to set up small businesses. So say you used to be a mechanic. When you're ready, they go to a garage and they'll say, if you employ this guy for a year, we'll pay half his wages.


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[Assistant] They rediscovered bonds and relationships with the wider society. It'll be 15 years this year since that experiment began, and the results are in.


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[Assistant] Injecting drug use is down in Portugal, according to the British Journal of Criminology, by 50 percent. Overdose is massively down. HIV is massively down among addicts. Addiction in every study is significantly down. One of the ways you know it's worked so well is that almost nobody in Portugal wants to go back to the old system.


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[Assistant] Now that's the kind of political implications. I actually think there's a layer of implications to all this research below that.


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[Assistant] We live in a culture where people feel really increasingly vulnerable to all sorts of addictions, whether it's to their smartphones,


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[Assistant] Or to shopping, or to eating. You know, before these talks began, you guys know this, that we were told we weren't allowed to have our smartphones on. And I have to say, a lot of you looked an awful lot like addicts who were being told their dealer was going to be unavailable for the next couple of hours.


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[Assistant] And, you know, a lot of us feel like that, and it might sound weird to say, oh, you know, I've been talking about how disconnection is a major driver of addiction, but it's weird to say it's grown because you think, well, we're the most connected society there's ever been, surely.


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[Assistant] But I increasingly began to think that the connection we have, the connections we have, we think we have, are like a kind of parody of human connection. If you have a crisis in your life, you'll notice something. It won't be your Twitter followers who come to sit with you. It won't be your Facebook friends who help you turn it around.


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[Assistant] It'll be your flesh and blood friend, so you have deep and nuanced and textured face-to-face relationships with.


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[Assistant] There's a study I learned about from Bill McKibben, the environmental writer, I think tells us a lot about this. It looked at the number of close friends the average American believes they can call on in a crisis. That number has been declining steadily since the 1950s.


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[Assistant] The amount of floor space an individual has in their home has been steadily increasing. And I think that's like a metaphor for the choice we've made as a culture, right?


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[Assistant] About individual recovery. And it's right to talk about that. But we need to talk much more about social recovery. Something's gone wrong with us, not just as individuals, but as a group. And we created a society where, for a lot of us, life looks a whole lot more like that isolated cage and a whole lot less like Rat Park. If I'm honest,


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[Assistant] This isn't why I went into it, right? I didn't go in to discover the political stuff, the social stuff. I wanted to know how to help the people I love. And when I came back from this long journey and I'd learned all this, I looked at the addicts in my life and if, you know, if you're really candid,


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[Assistant] Uhm, I think one of the reasons why this debate is so charged is because it runs through the heart of each of us, right? Everyone has a bit of them that looks at an addict and thinks, I wish someone would just stop you.


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[Assistant] And I began to think, I began to see why that approach doesn't work. And I began to think that almost that's like the important


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[Assistant] And the logic of the drug war into our private lives. So I was thinking, well, how can I be Portuguese, right? And what I try to do now, and I can't tell you I do it consistently and I can't tell you it's easy,


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[Assistant] Is to say to the addicts in my life that I want to deepen the connection with them. To say to them, I love you whether you're using or you're not. I love you whatever state you're in.


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[Assistant] And if you need me, I'll come and sit with you. Because I love you and I don't want you to be alone or to feel alone.


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[Assistant] And I think the core of that message, you're not alone, we love you, has to be at every level of how we respond to addicts, socially, politically and individually. For a hundred years now, we've been singing war songs about addicts. I think all along, we should have been singing love songs to them.


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[Assistant] That's right, a nice summertime lesson for everyone.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so this is another lesson in our sports series.


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[Assistant] Alright, we have two words to look at here. The first word is sailing.


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[Assistant] So sailing is traveling in a boat.


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[Assistant] Another one of these really difficult, uh, to spell English words.


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[Assistant] That's right. Well, when anchor is used as a noun, it means the hook that you throw over the boat into the water and it keeps you staying in the same place.


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[Assistant] Well we've got two friends here who are sailing in their boat and they decide to take a swim.


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[Assistant] Yeah, or maybe she's gonna punch the shark in the face and she'll escape.


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[Assistant] Uhm, your hands are moving in front of you together.


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[Assistant] Alright, the first one, I love this phrase, uhm, take a dip. Take a dip. Take a dip.


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[Assistant] Yep. Alright, so if learners use this phrase, uhm, I find it sounds really, really great because it's not something that students normally use.


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[Assistant] Moving in a line and not moving side to side.


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[Assistant] Yeah, or maybe uhm, when I get home from work, I go straight towards the fridge.


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[Assistant] Alright, well Marco, I was telling you, uhm, that I used to spend every summer on the lake.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and my family had a really small house on a small island and my cousins had another small house on another small island.


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[Assistant] So our families are really close and we used to go to one house for dinner one night and the other house for dinner the next night.


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[Assistant] So everyone was over at my cousin's house, except for my grandfather.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and so he was thinking, okay, it's late, maybe I better go pick up my wife and see what's going on. So he goes into the boat. It's dark.


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[Assistant] He's driving straight towards the island when suddenly my cousin in his boat drives directly into my grandfather.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and then my, my grandfather's boat flipped over. It turned upside down. Wow. And he fell in the water.


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[Assistant] He was okay, but uhm, you know what, he was really angry about this.


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[Assistant] So we had to go the next morning to get the boat and we actually had to hire some scuba divers to go to the bottom of the lake to get the engine.


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[Assistant] Uhm, but you know what, I've got a million of these crazy lake stories, cause my family- It always happens. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Well, we're out of time for this lesson, but uhm, until next time. Bye!


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[Assistant] The newest installment in the English pod soap opera.


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[Assistant] Well, we're going to preview this word, sleeping with.


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[Assistant] Yeah, but you are doing a little bit more than sleeping.


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[Assistant] Yes, you are in a relationship with someone and you are having sex.


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[Assistant] Right, so most of the time in English, the phrase sleeping with means sex.


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[Assistant] Uh, this poor Veronica and Stephen, I just, I don't know how their relationship could get more complicated.


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[Assistant] The words we're looking at now are about feelings. And so let's take a look at the first one. Confess.


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[Assistant] When you confess something, you tell a secret that you've been hiding.


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[Assistant] So Marco, I confess that I stole five dollars from you.


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[Assistant] So when I am overwhelmed, I am filled with emotion.


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[Assistant] Yeah, but you just, you feel too much. It's like you're, you're, you're going to explode.


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[Assistant] You see somebody and you want what they have.


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[Assistant] So in this case, the doctor is jealous of Veronica's boyfriend because the doctor wants Veronica.


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[Assistant] So when you can't help yourself, you can't control


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[Assistant] Now the doctor, he couldn't help himself from lying to Veronica because he was angry that her boyfriend Steven came into the picture.


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[Assistant] Well basically, you appear in somebody's life. You come into somebody's life.


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[Assistant] Yep. All right. Well, these are some great phrases and why don't we listen to them again in context? So let's listen to the dialogue.


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[Assistant] There's a lot of interesting phrases and, um, and ways you can talk about pregnancy. So if you're knocked up, you're pregnant.


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[Assistant] No, it's not that polite, because it gives you the idea that it was a mistake.


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[Assistant] Yes, another common phrase is, uhm, preggers.


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[Assistant] So, I don't know, for you guys, what's it like in your country where you live? Is there pressure on the guy and the girl to get married? I mean, should Steven and Veronica get married in this situation?


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[Assistant] Yes, so visit our website and tell us what you think. EnglishPod.com.


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[Assistant] The last time we saw Veronica and Steven, uhm, they broke up, right?


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[Assistant] And Veronica was with her friend and feeling really terrible and then Steven suddenly came to sing a beautiful song.


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[Assistant] Well, we're gonna look at four words now. Uhm, the first one, blaze.


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[Assistant] Yes, this one is a little bit difficult, so I think we can use some examples to show us how to use this word.


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[Assistant] When you go to the doctor and say, when will my baby be born? He'll still say, well, your due date is blah, blah, blah.


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[Assistant] Yes. So when something is accurate, it's absolutely certain.


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[Assistant] Well, we've got three phrases for you. Uhm, the first one is the middle of nowhere.


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[Assistant] This is a kind of a funny one, but uhm, I think if we listen to some examples it will help us to understand the meaning of this phrase.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you're in a place with no cities or people or anything nearby.


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[Assistant] Well Marco, uhm, what do you think about this situation? What would you do if you were this guy?


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[Assistant] Hey guys, what do you think? Uh, do you think Veronica cheated on Stephen?


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[Assistant] Yeah, and Marco and I are always around to answer your questions, respond to your comments.


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[Assistant] We go shopping. It is birthday party time.


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[Assistant] We go to the ice cream shop. We get ice cream.


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[Assistant] We go to the toy store. We get a toy.


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[Assistant] We go to the birthday party. We play games.


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[Assistant] Written by Katie Moore Focus Question


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[Assistant] What is a shadow?


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[Assistant] Is a round shape.


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[Assistant] This shadow is a square shape.


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[Assistant] This shadow is a long shape.


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[Assistant] This shadow is a short shape.


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[Assistant] This shadow is a big shape.


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[Assistant] This shadow is a little shape.


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[Assistant] This shadow is my shape.


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[Assistant] Make a list of five shadows and share them with your class.


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[Assistant] Sort the shadows into groups. Science.


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[Assistant] Where does the light that makes shadows come from?


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[Assistant] Share your ideas with your class.


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[Assistant] Naughty grandpa pig, those are granny pig's nose.


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[Assistant] President Obama says the US and its NATO allies are still considering a military response to the situation in Libya, where he said the people were facing unacceptable violence. But Russia says it's opposed to any military intervention.


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[Assistant] We don't want Madame Gazelle catching us getting her party ready.


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[Assistant] Illustrated by Andy Elkerton Focus Question


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[Assistant] It was time to clean the house.


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[Assistant] Draw a picture and write about it. Science.


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[Assistant] Share your ideas with a partner.


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[Assistant] 61 year old Alan Gross was driven into the Havana courthouse inside an unmarked van with blacked out windows. He's charged with acts against the integrity and independence of Cuba and prosecutors have said they are seeking a 20 year sentence.


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[Assistant] Mr. Gross has already spent 15 months in a Cuban jail accused of providing satellite communications equipment which is illegal in Cuba to groups on the island. News item 22.


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[Assistant] The Food and Agriculture Organization is warning that costs could spiral even further if unrest in Libya and the Middle East keeps driving up the price of oil. Rising food costs helped spark the recent protests in Egypt and Tunisia.


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[Assistant] That's right. And we're going to learn a little bit about the history of the workers movement in the United States.


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[Assistant] That's right. So, uh, I guess without further ado, we can get started with the dialogue.


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[Assistant] Yeah, International Workers Day. Uhm, it's not celebrated in the US, but in many other countries it is.


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[Assistant] That's right, and that's where this word comes from. It's the first book in the Bible.


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[Assistant] Yep, but maybe in an academic setting, you can talk about the Genesis.


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[Assistant] Yeah, or a hostile environment, a dangerous environment.


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[Assistant] Yeah, drastic measures. This is a really wonderful phrase, and I think it would help us to listen to a few examples of this phrase in use.


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[Assistant] No, desperate times call for desperate measures.


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[Assistant] After the protest ended, uh, in violence, uhm, people started to get angry because of the brutality the police showed.


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[Assistant] A little bit similar, so brutality is the state of being harsh or very forceful.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and it's, it's quite, yeah, I, I might say something like, oh my god, that test was brutal.


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[Assistant] And Marco, is this something that's used by everyone?


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[Assistant] Great, great. So those are five interesting vocabulary words. As Marco mentioned, we want to look at some more difficult structures now in Fluency Builder.


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[Assistant] Well, the teacher opens his discussion by talking about how an understanding of the legal system is an important aspect of being a good citizen.


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[Assistant] Right, so it usually follows this form. Noun is an important aspect of noun.


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[Assistant] So for example, quality control is an important aspect of keeping customers happy.


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[Assistant] Yeah, professional. And actually this is a wonderful way of setting up your idea.


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[Assistant] That's right, it's not enough to simply do something.


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[Assistant] So here, it's not enough to simply memorize the laws. We're saying that most people just memorize the laws, but they need to go further.


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[Assistant] Right. Or maybe in a business context, it's not enough to simply satisfy your customers. You must impress them.


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[Assistant] Alright, well I wanna move on to one final point here. I found this sentence to be really, really interesting.


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[Assistant] They passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day's work.


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[Assistant] Well, I found that, you know, there's two verbs going on here. They passed a resolution.


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[Assistant] That eight hours would constitute a legal day's work. So we've got two verb times going on here at the same time. And I'm wondering about this, this one would.


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[Assistant] Right, so the resolution was passed a hundred years ago.


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[Assistant] The resolution stated that eight hours WOULD constitute.


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[Assistant] So it's like the primary action was the passing of the resolution and the result is this sort of, this event that happens in the past but is a future event to the first primary event. Does that make any sense at all?


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[Assistant] I think it's because we already have a long weekend in, in uh, May, because we still, because on the 24th of May is the Queen, Queen Victoria's birthday, so we have to celebrate that. Oh really? Yea, we can't have two vacations in the same month.


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[Assistant] Great. Well, what about in your country's listeners? Do you celebrate May Day?


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[Assistant] That's right. Well, thanks for downloading this lesson and until next time, bye.


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[Assistant] I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my TEDx Houston talk. I woke up the morning after I gave that talk with the worst vulnerability hangover of my life.


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[Assistant] The first time I left was to meet a friend for lunch. And when I walked in, she was already at the table and I sat down and she said, God, you look like hell. I said, thanks. Um, I feel really.


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[Assistant] I, I'm, I'm not functioning. And she said, what's going on? And I said, I just told 500 people.


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[Assistant] That I became a researcher to avoid vulnerability.


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[Assistant] I told these 500 people that I had a breakdown.


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[Assistant] And she said, I saw your talk livestreamed, it was, it was not really you, uhm, it was a little different than what you usually do, but it was great. And I said,


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[Assistant] This can't happen. YouTube, they're putting this thing on YouTube. And we're gonna be talking about 600, 700 people.


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[Assistant] Brene, what are you doing? What are you doing? Why did you bring this up? Have you lost your mind? Your sisters would be perfect for this. So I looked back up and she said, are you really going to try to break in and steal the video before they put it on YouTube? And I said, I'm just thinking about it a little bit. She said,


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[Assistant] And then I looked at her and I said something that at the time felt a little dramatic, but ended up being more prophetic than dramatic. I said, if 500 turns into a thousand, or 2,000, my life is over.


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[Assistant] I had no contingency plan for four million.


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[Assistant] And my life did end when that happened. And maybe the hardest part about my life ending is that I


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[Assistant] Learned something hard about myself, and that was that...


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[Assistant] As much as I would be frustrated about not being able to get my work out to the world, there was a part of me that was working very hard to an engineer, staying small. Staying right under the radar.


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[Assistant] But I want to talk about what I've learned. There's two things that I've learned in the last year. Uhm, the first is...


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[Assistant] Let me ask you honestly, and I'll give you this warning, I'm trained as a therapist so I can outweigh you uncomfortably.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so if you could just raise your hand, that would be awesome. Uhm, how many of you honestly, when you're thinking about doing something vulnerable or saying something vulnerable,


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[Assistant] Thank God vulnerability is weakness, this is weakness. How many of you think of vulnerability and weakness synonymously? The majority of people.


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[Assistant] How many of you, when you saw vulnerability up here, thought it was pure courage?


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[Assistant] Vulnerability is not weakness. I define vulnerability as emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty.


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[Assistant] It fuels our daily lives. And I've come to the belief, this is my 12th year doing this research.


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[Assistant] That vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.


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[Assistant] One of the weird things that's happened is after the Ted explosion, uhm, I got a lot of offers to speak all over the country, uhm, everyone from schools and parent meetings to Fortune 500 companies, uhm, and,


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[Assistant] There's three big answers. This is mostly, to be honest with you, from the business sector. Innovation, creativity, and change.


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[Assistant] Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.


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[Assistant] To create is to make something that has never existed before. There's nothing more vulnerable than that.


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[Assistant] The relationship between vulnerability and courage. The second thing I learned is this. We have to talk about shame.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and that became the focus because of the TED Talk, and I'm not kidding that. I'll give you an example about


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[Assistant] Three months ago I was in a sporting goods store, buying goggles and shin guards and all the things that parents buy at the sporting goods store.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, I'm a fifth generation Texan. Our family motto is lock and load. I am not a natural vulnerability researcher. Uhm, so I'm like, just keep walking, she's on my six. Uhm, and then I hear, vulnerability dad! I turn around, I go, hi.


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[Assistant] I thought I'm gonna leave that shame stuff behind because I spent six years studying shame before I really started writing and talking about vulnerability. And I thought, thank God, because shame is this horrible topic. No one wants to talk about it. It's the best way to shut people down on an airplane. What do you do? I study shame. Oh. And I see you. You know.


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[Assistant] I was reminded of a cardinal rule, not a research rule.


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[Assistant] But a moral imperative from my upbringing.


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[Assistant] You gotta dance with the one who brung you.


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[Assistant] And I did not learn about vulnerability and courage and creativity and innovation from studying vulnerability. I learned about these things from studying shame. And so I want to walk you in to shame.


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[Assistant] Union analysts call shame the swamp land of the soul.


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[Assistant] And we're gonna walk in, and the purpose is not to walk in and, you know, construct a home and live there. It is to put on some galoshes and walk through and find our way around.


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[Assistant] We heard the most compelling call ever to have a conversation in this country, and I think globally, around race, right? Yes? We heard that. Yes? Cannot have that conversation without shame.


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[Assistant] Because you cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame. We heard a brilliant simple solution to not killing people in surgery, which is have a checklist.


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[Assistant] You can't fix that problem without addressing shame, because when they teach those folks how to suture, they also teach them how to stitch their self-worth to being all-powerful. And all-powerful folks don't need checklists.


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[Assistant] I saw the Ted Fellows my first day here and he got up and he explained how he was driven to create some technology to help test for anemia because people were dying unnecessarily. And he said, I saw this need, so you know what I did, I made it.


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[Assistant] You know what the big secret about Ted is? I can't wait to tell people this. I guess I'm doing it right now. Uhm, this is like the failure conference. No it is.


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[Assistant] And no one that gets on the stage so far that I've seen has not failed. I have failed miserably. Many times. I don't think the world understands that. Because of shame.


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[Assistant] There's a great quote that saved me this past year by Theodore Roosevelt. Uhm, a lot of people refer to it as the man in the arena quote.


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[Assistant] And it goes like this. It is not the critic who counts.


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[Assistant] It is not the man who sits and points out how the doer of deeds could have done things better and how he falls and stumbles. The credit goes to the man in the arena.


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[Assistant] His face is marred with dust and blood and sweat, but when he's in the arena at best, he wins.


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[Assistant] And at worst he loses, but when he fails, when he loses, he does so daring greatly. And that's what this conference to me is about.


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[Assistant] That's what life is about, about daring greatly about being in the arena. When you walk up to that arena and you put your hand on the door and you think I'm going in and I'm going to try this, shame is the gremlin who says, uh-uh, you're not good enough. You never finished that MBA. Your wife left you. I know your dad really wasn't in Luxembourg. He was in Sing Sing.


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[Assistant] I know you don't think that you're pretty enough or smart enough or talented enough or powerful enough. I know your dad never paid attention even when you made CFO. Shame is that thing. And then if we can quiet it down and walk in and say, I'm gonna do this.


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[Assistant] We look up and the critic that we see pointing and laughing 99% of the time is who? Us.


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[Assistant] Shame drives two big tapes. Never good enough. And if you can talk it out of that one, who do you think you are?


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[Assistant] Shame is a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is I am bad. Guilt is I did something bad.


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[Assistant] How many of you, if you did something that was hurtful to me, would be willing to say, I'm sorry I made a mistake? How many of you would be willing to say that? Guilt. I'm sorry I made a mistake. Shame. I'm sorry I am a mistake.


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[Assistant] There is a huge difference between shame and guilt. And here's what you need to know.


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[Assistant] Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders. And here's what you even need to know more. Guilt inversely correlated with those things.


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[Assistant] The other thing you need to know about shame is it's absolutely organized by gender.


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[Assistant] If shame washes over me and washes over Chris, it's gonna feel the same. Everyone sitting in here knows the warm wash of shame.


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[Assistant] We're pretty sure that the only people who don't experience shame are people who have no capacity for connection or empathy.


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[Assistant] Which means, yes, I have a little shame, no, I'm a sociopath. So I would opt for yes, you have a little shame.


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[Assistant] Shame feels the same for men and women, but it's organized by gender. For women, the best example I can give you is Anjali, the commercial.


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[Assistant] I can put the wash on the line, pack the lunches, hand out the kisses and be work at five to nine.


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[Assistant] I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never let you forget you're a man.


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[Assistant] For women, shame is do it all, do it perfectly, and never let them see you sweat.


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[Assistant] I don't know how much perfume that commercial sold, but I guarantee you it moved a lot of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds.


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[Assistant] Shame for women is this web of unattainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we're supposed to be.


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[Assistant] For men, shame is not a bunch of competing conflicting expectations. Shame is one. Do not be perceived as what? Weak. I did not interview men for the first four years of my study.


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[Assistant] And it wasn't until a man looked at me one day after a book signing and said, I love what you have to say about shame. I'm curious why you didn't mention men. And I said, I don't study men. And he said, that's convenient.


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[Assistant] And I said, why? And he said, because you say to reach out, tell our story, be vulnerable. But you see those books you just signed for my wife and my three daughters? I said, yeah.


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[Assistant] When we reach out and be vulnerable, we get the shit beat out of us.


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[Assistant] And don't tell me it's from the guys and the coaches and the dads.


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[Assistant] So I started interviewing men and asking questions. And what I learned is this.


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[Assistant] You show me a woman who can actually sit with a man in real vulnerability and fear. I'll show you a woman who's done incredible work. You show me a man who can sit with a woman


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[Assistant] And his first response is not, I unloaded the dishwasher, but he really listens because that's all we need. I'll show you a guy who's done a lot of work. Shame is an epidemic in our culture.


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[Assistant] To find our way back to each other, we have to understand how it affects us and how it affects the way we're parenting, the way we're working, the way we're looking at each other.


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[Assistant] He asked, what do women need to do to conform to female norms? The top answers? In this country?


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[Assistant] Nice, thin, modest, and use all available resources for parents.


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[Assistant] When they asked about men, what do men in this country need to do to conform with male norms? The answers were,


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[Assistant] Always show emotional control, work as first, pursue status and violence.


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[Assistant] If we're gonna find our way back to each other, we have to understand and know empathy, because empathy is the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially. Secrecy, silence, and judgment.


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[Assistant] If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive.


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[Assistant] The two most powerful words when we're in struggle. Me too. And so I'll leave you with this thought.


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[Assistant] If we're going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path.


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[Assistant] And I know it's seductive to stand outside the arena because I think I did it my whole life. And thanks to myself, I'm going to go in there and kick some ass when I'm bulletproof and when I'm perfect.


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[Assistant] And that is seductive, but the truth is that never happens.


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[Assistant] And even if you got as perfect as you could and as bulletproof as you could possibly muster, when you got in there, that's not what we want to see.


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[Assistant] We want you to go in. We wanna be with you and across from you. And we just want


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[Assistant] For ourselves and the people we care about and the people we work with to dare greatly. So thank y'all very much. I really appreciate it.


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[Assistant] In Italy, people speak Italian.


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[Assistant] Western leaders have been discussing ways to increase pressure on the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, to stop him killing the people rebelling against him and persuade him to step down.


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[Assistant] The Pentagon in Washington says it's repositioning naval and air forces around Libya so that there's flexibility for action should government planners require it.


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[Assistant] Two of Argentina's former military rulers have gone on trial, accused of overseeing the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners.


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[Assistant] Jorge Vedea and Ronaldo Bigione are accused of kidnapping about 30 babies whose parents were killed or disappeared during military rule.


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[Assistant] The babies were then given for adoption to members of the Argentine military or their allies. Both former leaders are already serving long sentences for murder and torture.


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[Assistant] Western leaders have been discussing ways to increase pressure on the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, to stop him killing the people rebelling against him and persuade him to step down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Pentagon in Washington says it's repositioning naval and air forces around Libya so that there's flexibility for action should government planners require it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two of Argentina's former military rulers have gone on trial, accused of overseeing the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jorge Vedea and Ronaldo Bigione are accused of kidnapping about 30 babies whose parents were killed or disappeared during military rule.


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[Assistant] The babies were then given for adoption to members of the Argentine military or their allies. Both former leaders are already serving long sentences for murder and torture.


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[Assistant] You've got to send one right now! You've got to send one right now!


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[Assistant] No picnic would be complete without a bright blue sky.


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[Assistant] I think this blanket is supposed to be red and blue. Huh? Maybe we need some help.


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[Assistant] Hello everyone, welcome back to EnglishPod, my name is Marco. And I'm Erika. And where are we going today, Erika? To the pharmacy. Alright, to the pharmacy or drug store?


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[Assistant] Or also in British English sometimes people say the chemist. That's right. So as you know, at the pharmacy you get medicine, but there are certain vocabulary words that are related to this place that we need to learn.


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[Assistant] Milligrams. Milligrams. Also the abbreviation for this is MG. That's right. Okay. So a milligram is?


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[Assistant] Exactly, and it's very common to be used with medicine, right? Exactly. You buy medicine in milligrams. Okay, and what's our next word? Price check. A price check. A price check. Okay, so at the pharmacy or at the supermarket, sometimes the cashier will ask for a price check.


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[Assistant] Okay, so a price check. With this, I think we're ready now to listen to our dialogue for the first time, and let's see what our shopper is buying at the pharmacy.


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[Assistant] Now, a capsule is like a small tube, right?


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[Assistant] Inside. And it's covered in plastic, right? Exactly. Now, you swallow the capsule. Yep. And the tablet.


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[Assistant] Okay, so now it's time for us to take a look at some of the phrases that we saw in this dialogue in putting it together.


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[Assistant] Okay, so, be sure not to. Be sure not to. So what does he mean by this?


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[Assistant] I think don't is sounds more like an order. Okay. Very direct. Maybe be sure not to is a little bit softer, a little bit more friendly. So be sure not to. Now for our last phrase. So the pharmacist in the end wanted to check for the price and he said, just hang on there a sec.


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[Assistant] Hang on. Hang on. Well, hang on. What does he mean by hang on?


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[Assistant] Right, exactly. And we can change the time a little bit, right?


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[Assistant] Okay, so with these phrases, I think now we can use them in different circumstances, obviously not only in the pharmacy. Yep. And well, let's listen to our dialogue for the last time.


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[Assistant] Okay, so, with medicine, an interesting thing comes up, right? That's right. A lot of people think that you eat medicine. Okay, or drink medicine? Yeah.


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[Assistant] Alright, so you take medicine. Now, an interesting thing in the United States for example, it's very hard to get medicine without a prescription.


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[Assistant] Okay, so for example, if you have a headache, you can go to the pharmacy and buy aspirin.


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[Assistant] But prescription medicine, you can't get it without the doctor's note too.


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[Assistant] So tell us how medicine and pharmacies work in your countries, and also if you have questions or comments, our website EnglishPod.com is always open and ready for you.


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[Assistant] Illustrated by Lisa Fields. Focus Question.


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[Assistant] What makes something a good choice?


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[Assistant] The best choices are good choices.


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[Assistant] Connections. Writing and art.


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[Assistant] Create a poster that shows how to make good choices.


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[Assistant] Hello English learners, welcome back to EnglishPod, my name is Marco. And I'm Erica. And today we're bringing you another lesson on our sports series.


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[Assistant] That's right. So we're going to learn a lot of great things today. So why don't we start and listen to our dialogue.


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[Assistant] Alright, so, well we saw some great words, and well it's time for us to take a look at them now in Language Takeaway.


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[Assistant] And it's the National Anthem. National Anthem. National Anthem.


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[Assistant] So this is a song, right? Exactly, it's the song that you sing about your country. And many people confuse it, right? Yea, a lot of people might say national hymn. Okay, hymn. Because in some languages it might be like a hymn, like literally translating.


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[Assistant] But, in English it's called the National Anthem.


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[Assistant] Alright, so what about our next word?


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[Assistant] The pitcher. Pitcher. Okay, and now this is one of the players on the baseball team, and his job is to? To throw the ball. To throw the ball really fast.


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[Assistant] Now, the interesting thing is that the baseball commentator said the pitcher winds up. Wines up.


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[Assistant] Very good. So you can use this word not only in baseball, but for other things that require you to do this action.


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[Assistant] Like some toys or maybe like a music box? Okay. Wind up. What about our next phrase?


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[Assistant] Scrambling. Now, we know scrambled eggs from one of our lessons.


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[Assistant] Okay, so the players are moving very fast, trying to get the ball, but they're not doing it very well.


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[Assistant] Right, for example we can say, the people are scrambling to buy their tickets for the concert.


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[Assistant] Exactly. It's a very good term that you can use also in your daily life. Exactly. Alright, and what about our last word for today on Language Takeaway?


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[Assistant] Okay, so we learned for example that in soccer you have two halves.


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[Assistant] Alright, so as we said, there are a lot of English terms that come from baseball, but we use them in business context or in your daily life, right?


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[Assistant] Alright, so the first phrase that we have is up to bat. Up to bat! Up to bat.


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[Assistant] So for example, you can be at a meeting, and maybe it's your turn to talk.


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[Assistant] So the, yeah, exactly, your boss will say, okay, Erica, you're up to bat.


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[Assistant] Right, strike one. So in baseball you have three strikes. Three tries. Three tries before you're out. Yes. And so now the same thing happens in daily life.


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[Assistant] Or maybe your parents will say, okay, that wasn't nice, strike one.


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[Assistant] Okay, so that's also called a strike. And the pitcher threw a curveball. A curveball? Curveball.


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[Assistant] So, you can say, oh my boss threw me a curveball today.


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[Assistant] Uh-huh, or something that was difficult to handle.


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[Assistant] Alright, so that's basically a curveball, you can say an unexpected problem or situation. That's right. And our last phrase, and well probably one that you already know, home run. A home run. A home run.


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[Assistant] And you hit it outside of the of the playing area or outside the park. Yes. And now if you use it in a business context or in your daily life.


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[Assistant] That's right, so we've seen a lot of these great phrases and as you can see, a lot of them from baseball are used in your daily life and there are many, many more.


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[Assistant] Alright, so an interesting dialogue, a very interesting sport, and well, personally, I never played this as a child. Uh, me neither, really. I don't really like it too much, but it is kind of fun to go to a game, and especially in the United States have those hot dogs and all that stuff.


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[Assistant] Exactly. So, well, we encourage you to come to our website EnglishPod.com. Tell us what you think and also, of course, if you have questions or doubts, be sure to tell us.


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[Assistant] John is planning on renovating his nightclub so as to make it more modern.


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[Assistant] Robert is worried that the square footage of this land is not big enough.


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[Assistant] See? Now this is what a marriage is all about. Compromise.


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[Assistant] See? Now this is what a marriage is all about. Compromise.


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[Assistant] See? Now this is what a marriage is all about. Compromise. See? Now this is what a marriage is all about. Compromise.


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[Assistant] See? Now this is what a marriage is all about. Compromise.


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[Assistant] In the mid-'90s, the CDC and Kaiser Permanente discovered an exposure that dramatically increased the risk for seven out of 10 of the leading causes of death in the United States.


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[Assistant] In high doses, it affects brain development, the immune system, hormonal systems, and even the way our DNA is read and transcribed.


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[Assistant] Folks who are exposed in very high doses have triple the lifetime risk of heart disease and lung cancer and a 20-year difference in life expectancy.


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[Assistant] Now, the exposure I'm talking about is not a pesticide or a packaging chemical. It's childhood trauma.


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[Assistant] We're losing a basketball game. I am talking about threats that are so severe or pervasive that they literally get under our skin and change our physiology. Things like abuse or neglect or growing up with a parent who struggles with mental illness or substance dependence.


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[Assistant] Now for a long time, I viewed these things in the way I was trained to view them. Either as a social problem, refer to social services,


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[Assistant] And then something happened to make me rethink my entire approach.


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[Assistant] When I finished my residency, I wanted to go someplace where I felt really needed. Someplace where I could make a difference.


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[Assistant] So I came to work for California Pacific Medical Center, one of the best private hospitals in Northern California.


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[Assistant] And together, we opened a clinic in Bayview-Hunters Point, one of the poorest, most underserved neighborhoods in San Francisco.


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[Assistant] So we hung a shingle and we were able to provide top-quality care regardless of ability to pay. It was so cool. We targeted the typical health disparities. Access to care, immunization rates, asthma hospitalization rates.


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[Assistant] And we hit all of our numbers. We felt very proud of ourselves. But then I started noticing a disturbing trend.


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[Assistant] A lot of kids were being referred to me for ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.


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[Assistant] But when I actually did a thorough history in physical, what I found was that for most of my patients, I couldn't make a diagnosis of ADHD.


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[Assistant] Now before I did my residency, I did a master's degree in public health. And one of the things that they teach you in public health school is that if you're a doctor and you see a hundred kids that all drink from the same well,


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[Assistant] And then one day, my colleague walked into my office and he said, Dr. Burke, have you seen this?


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[Assistant] In his hand was a copy of a research study called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study.


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[Assistant] That day changed my clinical practice and ultimately my career.


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[Assistant] Adverse Childhood Experiences study is something that everybody needs to know about. It was done by Dr. Vince Felitti at Kaiser and Dr. Bob Anda at the CDC, and together, they asked 17,500 adults


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[Assistant] About their history of exposure to what they called adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs.


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[Assistant] Those include physical, emotional or sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, parental mental illness, substance dependence, incarceration, parental separation or divorce or domestic violence. For every yes, you would get a point on your A score.


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[Assistant] And then what they did was they correlated these ACE scores against health outcomes. What they found was striking. Two things. Number one, ACEs are incredibly common.


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[Assistant] The second thing that they found was that there was a dose-response relationship between ACEs and health outcomes.


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[Assistant] The higher your ACE score, the worse your health outcomes. For a person with an ACE score of four or more, their relative risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was two and a half times that of someone with an ACE score of zero.


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[Assistant] For hepatitis, it was also two and a half times. For depression, it was four and a half times. For suicidality, it was 12 times.


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[Assistant] You know, you have a rough childhood, you're more likely to drink and smoke and do all these things that are going to ruin your health. This isn't science. This is just bad behavior.


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[Assistant] It turns out this is exactly where the science comes in.


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[Assistant] It affects areas like the nucleus accumbens, the pleasure and reward center of the brain that is implicated in substance dependence. It inhibits the prefrontal cortex, which is necessary for impulse control and executive function, a critical area for learning.


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[Assistant] And on MRI scans, we see measurable differences in the amygdala, the brain's fear response center.


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[Assistant] So there are real neurologic reasons why folks exposed to high doses of adversity are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior, and that's important to know.


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[Assistant] The reason for this has to do with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the brain's and body's stress response system that governs our fight or flight response. How does it work?


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[Assistant] Well, imagine you're walking in the forest and you see a bear. Immediately, your hypothalamus sends a signal to your pituitary, would send a signal to your adrenal gland that says, release stress hormones, adrenaline, cortisol.


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[Assistant] And this system is activated over and over and over again.


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[Assistant] To maladaptive or health damaging.


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[Assistant] Children are especially sensitive to this repeated stress activation because their brains and bodies are just developing.


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[Assistant] High doses of adversity not only affect brain structure and function,


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[Assistant] Developing hormonal systems and even the way our DNA is read and transcribed.


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[Assistant] So for me, this information threw my old training out the window, because when we understand the mechanism of a disease, when we know not only which pathways are disrupted, but how


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[Assistant] Then as doctors, it is our job to use this science for prevention and treatment. That's what we do.


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[Assistant] So in San Francisco, we created the Center for Youth Wellness to prevent, screen and heal the impacts of ACEs and toxic stress.


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[Assistant] We started simply with routine screening of every one of our kids at their regular physical, because I know ...


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[Assistant] Though if my patient has an ACE score of four, she's two and a half times as likely to develop hepatitis or COPD. She's four and a half times as likely to become depressed, and she's 12 times as likely to attempt to take her own life as my patient with zero ACEs. I know that when she's in my exam room.


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[Assistant] For our patients who do screen positive, we have a multidisciplinary treatment team that works to reduce the dose of adversity and treat symptoms using best practices, including home visits, care coordination, mental health care, nutrition,