#316 Curious Minds Learn Faster with Alastair Budge
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Hello everybody and welcome back to the Level Up English podcast, the best place to come to practice the English language, learn about the British accent and culture, with me, your host, Michael Lavers.

I am super happy and super excited for today's episode because I'm talking with a special guest. And this is Alistair Budge from Leonardo English. And I just I can't say enough how much I enjoyed our conversation. I won't say too much about it now because we do talk quite a lot about Alistair's podcast.

in today's episode. But very briefly, Alistair has a podcast called English Learning for Curious Minds. And as you maybe can tell from the title of this podcast, it really is just Alistair's

following his curiosity in each episode. So I was immediately interested in this concept, in this idea. So I invited him onto my podcast to talk about it. And we just covered some of the topics that I found interesting that Alistair has covered over the last couple months.

and hopefully it can be a good preview as well. We have a lot in common, actually. We both started our podcast around the same time. Alistair started in 2019 and now has listeners from all around the world. So I imagine if you like my podcast, when I look at kind of these random topics to help you improve your English...

I think you might like Alistair's podcast as well. But anyway, I really don't want to delay for too long today. I just want to remind you that if you need some extra help following this podcast, you might be interested in getting the transcripts, which...

are all available on the website. So if you go to levelupenglish.school and then you click on the members button at the top of the page, you can access podcast transcripts, vocabulary lists, and many, many more courses and things to help you improve your English. And it's also a great way to support my podcast as well.

Anyway, let's get into the episode now. Hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think in the comments. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am very happy today to be joined by Alistair Budge. How are you today? I'm fantastic, Michael. How are you? I'm pretty good as well. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your podcast and what you're up to, because it's quite similar to my podcast in many ways. So I think the listeners would be interested to hear.

Sure. So I have a podcast for intermediate to advanced English learners. It's called English Learning for Curious Minds. And I started it, I think, at a similar kind of time to you, I think. The first episode was published in December of 2019. So it's just over five years, which seems like a very long time.

And the idea behind it was really to kind of tell fun stories, talk about interesting things in English in an accessible way. So my background is really as a language learner. So I studied languages at university. I've lived abroad for quite a while. I speak Italian with my wife. I'm learning Swedish.

And I've got quite a long background, let's say, in language learning. And one of the things that always frustrated me as a language learner is, you know, you get to that level where still kind of native level like news and books and films can be a little bit tough sometimes.

a little bit hard, but textbooks and material that is specifically for language learners can feel a little bit simple and repetitive. And so I wanted something that kind of bridged that gap, that still was interesting and kind of got me excited about learning.

But was graded in a way that made it more helpful to me as a learner. So kind of coming from my own personal experience, I wanted to create something like that for people who were in a similar situation, but were learning English. And yeah, that's how the podcast came about.

It's amazing. I love the idea so much that, you know, it's not just teaching English. Like, here's the grammar. Here's what you need to know. I think a big word for your podcast that we can talk about today is curiosity. So you're kind of following your curiosity, it seems like, and just picking almost like random topics that you find interesting, presumably, and the listeners might as well, and using that to help improve people's English, which I think is a much more...

I don't know. It's much more fun, but it's all kind of authentic way of learning, you know, more natural way of learning. So it's, yeah, I think it's a great idea. It's certainly more fun for me because I, uh, you're completely right that I just, I just kind of choose topics semi at random that I think this is an interesting story. Uh, this person has an interesting life. This is an interesting idea to talk about at the moment.

uh go away and do a bunch of research try and kind of figure out a way to talk about it in yeah in a way that makes sense but is also interesting uh and what normally happens is as i'm kind of doing that kind of research and uh kind of exploring this subject in more detail i find other things that are like tangentially interesting

And I think, okay, well, that's a good thing. I'll put that on the list of potential episodes. And I researched that and there's something else that, that crops up. So I now have this, you know, absolutely massive list of episodes that I want to make. I, I just checked before we went on this, uh, we jumped on this call and I think it's like 639 subjects that I, that I kind of in the hopper.

And some of them, you know, some of them won't make it because I'll start and then realize that actually something that I thought was potentially interesting. I can't find a way to turn it into the into an episode that I feel proud of. And obviously be lots of new ones that added to as you know, as I discover new things. So it really is a kind of vehicle for my own curiosity. I think that that is just a great way to learn.

Uh, I, as I said, I'm, I'm learning Swedish at the moment. And part of what I'm doing is I, I go to a Swedish class. Uh, I live in Sweden and the Swedish government provides like free Swedish classes for all immigrants up to, I think, I think it's something like B1 or B2 level.

as a way to try to get new newcomers to the country to integrate properly and the language and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, I have a wonderful teacher. She's great. But I think she's a little bit constrained by the, by the material that's provided, but sometimes she gives amazing things. So yesterday evening, we have these three hour long lessons from, it used to be 6 PM till 9 PM on a Monday, which is fantastic.

It's quite a long time, but she gave us this text about like Swedish women,

Swedish immigration to the United States in the latter half of the 19th century. And I was like, this is really interesting. This is something I didn't know about before at all, or I had some kind of very base knowledge about, but it was super interesting. And I really wanted to go through and understand all of it, kind of go through and figure out all the words and really engage with the material.

in a way that I just wouldn't have if it was a more generic text about something that didn't seem so interesting to me. So really, that's kind of what I'm trying to do with the podcast. And yeah, it's been five years, over 500 episodes now. So it's been a while, but luckily I'm still not running out of topics. Yeah, you've almost got an infinite amount. It's amazing. Yeah.

And yeah, I feel like the best way

I don't know if this is always true, but I think generally to be a good teacher, it certainly helps to be learning a language yourself. And you kind of know what is enjoyable. You know what works for you. And you can use that in your own teaching, of course. Yeah, I think that's something that I always try to consider as well. And I guess we could also mention the name of your podcast now. We can guess your brand name is Leonardo English, right? And the podcast is English Learning for Curious Minds. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

So the English learning for curious minds is the name of the podcast. Like Leonardo English is the kind of umbrella company. I have a few other things, a few courses and another like narrative podcast as well. That I made a couple of years ago, I think called pioneers of the continuum. Yeah. But English learning for curious minds is the kind of the core of it all where it all starts.

And Leonardo English, people often think my name is Leonardo, which I guess is a perfectly reasonable assumption. But it is not Leonardo. I don't have any connection to anyone called Leonardo. But it is named after Leonardo da Vinci, who is, in my opinion at least, the sort of quintessential curious mind, someone who –

dipped his finger into lots of different things and was not afraid to just, you know, be a master of many, many different disciplines. And I think that's something that I try to, you know, try to embrace that you don't have to just be interested in history or politics or,

sports or whatever it's uh it's a perfectly good thing to learn a language kind of dipping your dipping your feet into all these different subjects because there's a lot of um a lot of interesting stories about so many different things and if you're just restricting yourself to kind of staying in one lane then i think you're missing out on a lot of a lot of interesting opportunities for learning

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You enjoy the story while we spoon-feed you the grammar and vocabulary bit by bit. Understand authentic spoken German with an ongoing story that makes you hungry for more. Yeah, for sure. I get the sense it's quite rare these days to have that mindset. Of course, it's very good to specialize in one area. You can explore very deeply and it makes a lot of sense if you want to be a teacher of some subject or something.

uh some kind of you know become a doctor or something but in in many cases as you said there's benefits to covering a wide range of topics and expanding your mind so yeah i don't know i feel like it's not encouraged in society in order to get a job there aren't many jobs where you need to to be spread yourself that thin across different topics so it's yeah it's nice to have stuff like this that can uh make it more interesting um

And I remembered one thing I was, sorry, just before I forget, there's one thing I was going to say before, which was, I feel like there might be a gap in the market. I don't know if you'd ever consider doing this one day, but writing some books maybe in a similar way, because I love reading graded readers. I don't know if you've used them for Swedish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it's kind of like,

stories designed for language learners, kind of made to be slightly easier, not use really obscure, difficult words. I feel like they're often quite boring. They're often fictional stories about characters that don't really interest me. And I'd love to have some more that were random topics I find interesting, like some that you'd cover on your podcast. So

Maybe if you've got some time in the future, you can consider writing your episodes into books. Yeah, that is a fun idea. I do make transcripts and vocabulary lists and study packs for each episode. So perhaps that's an opportunity to expand and make something a little bit more...

permanent in the future. But I completely agree with what you were saying in terms of people being constrained and thinking that you have to be an expert in one particular thing rather than just exploring it kind of being

exploring all of your talents and interests. I guess it's part of a function of 21st century capitalism that people become experts in particular things, and that's the most efficient use of everyone's time and labour. But it brought to mind...

This person that I would really like to make a podcast episode about that I haven't done yet, but he keeps on cropping up in various different episodes. And I'd never heard of him. Maybe you'll have heard of him. He's called Cornelis Drebbel.

And he is he was, I should say, a Dutch. I've got his Wikipedia page up here. So this is not some kind of photographic memory, but he was a Dutch engineer born in 1572. And the reason I mention him is because he was his basically a kind of kind of mad, mad inventor.

And he was invited by King James the... Let's get this right. King James I, I think, of... Yeah, James I of England to the 6th of Scotland.

to his court in Westminster to basically be a kind of mad inventor and try to come up with all sorts of inventions that could potentially help the British Navy. And he invented a basic version of air conditioning. There was this famous time

where he kind of convinced the king that he'd invented air conditioning. He invented a submarine that went, I think it traveled like 10 kilometers down the Thames, actually underwater. And this is in the year like 1610 or something. So it's like 300 years or so before the first real submarine was. It was made out of wood. And there are various other things that he invented that,

as well but it's this kind of amazing idea that this person was you know invited just to just kind of tinker away and be knowledgeable about a sufficient number of things that he was able to come up with like two very very different inventions and and lots more that i that i don't know about um but i'm sure i'm sure it would be super interesting

And the amount of people that we have like that nowadays, just very few number because people are so specialized. But that does sound like my kind of job.

Yeah, I can't think of any situation where people would pay you to just sit around and think about things because it doesn't generally make money, at least not for a long time. You need someone like an Elon Musk figure, right? Someone who's already got a lot of money that they can afford to spend time dabbling in other projects. But yeah, it's quite rare these days, as you said. And yeah, I think the Leonardo inspiration...

uh prompted me to want to ask you if there are any other people who you find inspiring you know it could be people you spoke about in the podcast before or just in general i guess you could take it uh any way you want but is there anyone that inspires you in life uh i guess there's lots lots of people that that inspire me um i think in terms of maybe it's easier to talk about like qualities that i've seen people that that i think get

inspirational and make for yeah make for pretty pretty amazing stories uh you know people who just continue doing something for a long time without any immediate kind of payoff or or sense that they are they're kind of doing something um uh like they're going to be rewarded for it so there's this

one episode i made about um a guy he's he's his real name i've forgotten but he's called the uh his kind of nickname was the ice king uh what was he called uh frederick cheetah that's his name and he he was this kind of maniacal american who uh kind of decided that he was going to

make a fortune by taking ice from kind of Boston and new England and transport it all around the world. And he got like huge, big blocks of ice. And he eventually built this sort of empire taking ice, even as far as, as India and Hong Kong, perhaps even, perhaps even Thailand where you are. And obviously everyone told him he was completely mad and that this is all fail. And it was a stupid idea.

And eventually kind of figured out how to do it, how to kind of pack the ice properly, how to store it once it got to the places, how to modify the ship so that they would be able to transport it properly, not fall over and so on. And eventually, you know, it had great success. So I...

I find those characters inspirational. I'm quite glad that I am not really like them because normally when the more research you do into these kind of people, the more you realize that they are often like terrible husbands and fathers and like neglecting of everyone around them. So when making these kinds of episodes, I'm always a little bit

I'm sure as to how much to talk about their personal life, because in many cases they are, you know, just really sound like not very nice people. It's normally men, really not very nice men who are, you know, having affairs or kind of being very unpleasant to their children or their partners, you know,

And that's, you know, that's, I'm not quite sure what the right, um,

amount of airtime to dedicate to that element is because at the same time, you don't want to be completely glorifying them, but it's a bit boring to be like, Oh, by the way, we should, we should acknowledge that this person was, you know, like didn't spend much time with their children or these kinds of things, because it's just not quite as exciting. So yeah, my, my answer to the question of who's inspiring, I,

I think what people like that have done is pretty inspiring, but I don't necessarily want to take inspiration from them in their personal lives. And that does seem to be a theme with almost all of them, all those kind of characters, which I guess it's very hard to do something

uh to do something great uh kind of that's memorable to build something that stands the the test of time and you know be be home at 4 p.m every day to put children in their bath and and do those kinds of things so yeah that's um that's what you're up against

I love that answer. I think that's the perfect answer. Because, yeah, people, I guess, naturally, like maybe it's a human thing. We like to put people up on a pedestal, which is like find someone to admire and kind of worship everything about them and respect every aspect of who they are. But yeah, everyone has a... Maybe it's too strong to say dark side, but everyone has faults and imperfections. And I think it's much wiser to...

identified the traits you like rather than the entire person um and it also made me think have you ever done a episode on Picasso no I haven't um no I uh I know you have a super interesting life um and I've I've done a few I've done a few episodes on artists but the uh the reason I haven't done as many is because

as I perhaps have liked to is because at the moment, at least all the episodes are, you know, audio only. And with something like, you know, an artist or artist or what else would be a good comparison? Let's just say an artist, you know, it's really benefits from the visual element because you can say, and then, you know, and that was the year he did, you know, painting X, Y, and Z and show it to the person.

Whereas if you're doing audio only, you kind of got to either assume that the listener knows what that painting is,

which is you know not realistic um or you you kind of describe it clearly i would do a rubbish job of describing uh describing a painting so i so i have not done as many of those i've kind of shied away from them but i think you're completely right that someone like picasso has had such a uh such a amazing interesting life that you could talk about his life

The one artist that I have done an episode on is Caravaggio, who had this amazing life where I think he, I think he was, I'm going to get it a bit wrong because this was like three or four years ago, but he was accused of murder, I think in, in,

Rome or something. And then he fled to Malta, which is this small island just south of Sicily. And it was like, I knew about it because I lived in Malta and he then got into some awful disagreement, I think killed someone else and then had to flee, flee again. And so that episode was about this kind of mad, mad life of this,

This clearly kind of criminal, criminal, but brilliant artist. So he probably fits into the category of people who have done amazing things and been inspirational. But, you know, his personal behavior is not something to emulate.

It's so interesting. That's kind of double side of people. Yeah. I mean, the reason I thought of Picasso is because I once did many years ago, but you know, sometimes it just, these things stick in your head. I taught an English lesson based on an article about Picasso and it was taught. I think it was named like the shadow side or something like that. Talking about, you

yeah the the the shadow side of success where if you look at picasso success like he made a ridiculous number of of paintings in his life like the amount of works he made was just like staggering and if you divide it by how many years he was alive he was like non-stop painting it's insane um

So there's a lot of really good qualities, inspirational qualities about him. But then you look at his personal life where, just as you said, he was cheating on his wife. He had many partners, lots of problems like that. I can't remember all the problems, but yeah, it just, that spring to mind because it's exactly, as you said, like in order to get to that level of success, probably other areas in life are going to have to suffer. So yeah.

I think it's nice to, as you said, nice to mention that if nothing else, because people might have a unrealistic expectation otherwise that they can also reach that while having a happy family and going to the gym and stuff like that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You say it's stuck in your mind. I'm sure it's stuck in your students' mind as well, because, you know, that's a more interesting and more memorable thing than, you

than a kind of standard text about someone going to a supermarket or, or what do they do on their, uh, on their holidays? I remember I, um, uh, when I was at university in the, uh, in the summers, I taught English in China. Uh, and I,

I was, you know, not giving any kind of training or anything. It was just like, in you go. Um, and I just completely misjudged the students level as well. And I remember trying to teach them a, um, I think it, we did this like a week where we're teaching George Orwell. And these were like 11 year old kids. Um, so, so it,

I got it wrong really, but I think they absolutely loved it. Some of them, it was just far too complicated. And there were some who were super, super interested and were going to go away and look up every word and so on. And I'm sure for those kinds of children, you know, given how interested they were and how they kind of wanted to like conquer that text completely,

Uh, I imagine that's the kind of thing that will have stuck in their mind for quite a long time. Yeah. It's certainly, certainly stuck in mine. So that's kind of what I'm just, that was, you know,

almost 20 years ago um but what i'm trying to try continue really with the with the podcast i see that's a nice origin story um and i guess that the benefit of a podcast is unlike in the classroom the the kids that aren't interested you know that not everyone's going to be interested it's just

Unfortunately, classrooms don't work that way. But of course, in a podcast, if people don't like that particular style, they don't have to listen. So you can only, you know, you can foster the audience who actually are interested in that topic, which sounds much more efficient and fun. Yeah. And luckily there are, you know, however many millions of different podcasts that people can juice from. So I think if you're listening to a podcast and you think, I don't like this, then you

you're doing something wrong because you should be choosing one that you like. I've actually been there so many times where I'm listening to a podcast and I've been listening every week for several months or something. And then I'll just take a step back in my mind and think, wait,

I'm not really enjoying this. It's kind of a chore to listen. Why am I listening every week? And it takes like an embarrassingly long time to figure out that I'm not actually having fun. But yeah, it's important to ask yourself that question. Yeah. And people, you know, I think different styles are complementary, right? So it's not that you, you know, if we're talking about people who are wanting to improve their English, it's

It's not like you just have one particular podcast that you listen to all the time. Most people, in my experience, they're listening to kind of three, four, five, six different kinds of podcasts because they're all giving them different types of things. Some are more conversational, some are narrative, some are talking about kind of news related topics. Others are more kind of day to day stuff.

uh yeah i'm talking about uh people you know exporting ice to india uh so there's there's all sorts of different uh different kinds of things that people can get from different shows talking again about my my personal experience um i listen to probably three or four different podcasts in swedish and

uh, it's still a much lower level than my podcast is in, in English. Um, but there's, there's one that is that I really like. There's like three minutes and it's just, uh, it's, it's called let's Finns come with Oscar, like, um,

and it's just a kind of narrative. This, this Swedish guy is probably in his mid thirties, just to kind of talk about one thing in episodes. So today I'm going to talk about, you know, watching stuff on YouTube. Then tomorrow I'm going to talk about reading. Then I'm going to talk about, you know, buying clothes and it's like very easy listening. And the fact it's so short means it's just super, super accessible. Um,

And he is completely in Swedish. No, you know, no explanations in English or anything like that. But he talks slowly. He repeats stuff. There's another one where it's more conversational. There's another one, which is the format is like a Scottish guy who's learning Swedish, who's being taught Swedish. So it's almost like you're kind of a fly on the wall in a lesson.

And so there's so many different formats. And I don't think people should be wedded to the idea that like, I have to find this one and this is my one. I think people should people should listen to different ones because they will get lots of value from different kinds of podcasts.

Exactly. That is exactly why we are not competitors, right? We can work together and you can enjoy both our podcasts. So yeah, it doesn't have to be one or the other. So that works in our favor too. Yeah, exactly. Nice. I did want to ask you, if you don't have a question, if you don't have an answer for this, I can help.

my ideas but i wanted to ask what are some of the more like maybe some recent most interesting topics that you've covered on your podcast that come to mind now anything that like you were really invested in as you were researching or talking about it uh so um i just finished doing a big mini series about something that is clearly a a complicated uh

and sort of many ways dark subject but that was like the the rise of vladimir putin and then the the poisonings of um alexander levinenko and sergey skripo are these um two russian uh agents in different kind of capacities who are poisoned in the uk um one killed

And the other was not killed. He survived. So that's like a super interesting challenge to try to address these subjects in a way that does them justice without kind of spending like 10 hours recording like a mammoth thing that goes through the entire language.

entire life of Putin and I know after that I'll get messages from people saying oh you didn't talk about this properly you didn't talk about that which always happens with these slightly meatier ones but that's just what happens I did another one that I thought was super interesting on space mining like asteroid mining and

that came out, I think, last week, maybe. I record them quite a lot in advance and then sort of out they come. So I always get a little bit confused about what's out and what's not out. Me too, me too, yeah. But yeah, it's another kind of category of subjects that I really like. It's sort of like big...

meaty ongoing things that are not about an individual or a country in particular but like fundamental things that could could change the way in which the world works in you know 10 50 100 years uh so that's like just a super interesting thing that it doesn't seem like there's a huge amount of um

kind of publicity about you know not obviously there are many articles and videos and research papers and so on but it's the sort of thing that if it if it works then in a hundred years the world in which we live on would be completely different you know stuff about you know declining fertility rates I think is super interesting as well so

Uh, there's, yeah, there's, there's a lot that I, um, uh, yeah, that I'm, I think I'm quite proud of doing. Um, I, there have been quite a few times, I reckon like maybe 10 or 20% of the episodes I write, I don't actually publish because I think like, I just don't feel I can do this justice or like I record it as like, oh yeah, it's,

like that's not as interesting as as i thought it was going to be um so i most of the ones now i'm i'm uh i think i'm quite proud of uh if i go back and listen to the ones that i made like four or five years ago yeah i think i would probably be squirming in in in my seat because uh yeah i had never done this before so i was i was practicing practicing on the go like like anyone

But now I'm a bit more confident in my ability to explain something in an interesting way. So yeah, there's been a few interesting ones.

yeah i mean all of them sound so interesting to me that the pattern that i'm sensing there or i'm noticing there is yeah maybe like really big events that is kind of overlooked by by the news like yeah declining birth rates is when i hear a lot about on mostly on podcasts actually these days um which the news never seems to talk about i don't know why and not that i see anyway and yeah i think people

Maybe people kind of struggle to see how that will be a big problem Because it seems like well, that's good. You know that the streets are always very crowded I mean less people would be good fewer people would be good. But um, yeah, I I haven't heard the episode but I imagine you spoke about possibly causing Lots of problems and not enough workers and that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's so my my wife is is from Italy and I've got two kids and

And it's sort of mad going to certain Italian towns. She's from a town in the northeast of Italy, which is, they say traditionally, like a town of old people. And you do just, you know, walking around, you don't really see very many children at all. And my, you know, the kind of the reality is that the

that Italy's got a pretty generous kind of pension system. You have, I think, something like 30% of Italian under 18s want to leave the country when they graduate. And they'll be left with a system where everyone who is kind of moving towards retirement now is expecting the same generous pension that people have been getting for kind of 10 to 20 years.

You've got no young people, a very low number of births. So very few people are going to be entering the workforce. And, you know, this is a problem that's going to hit massively in 10 to 20 years time. And yeah, it's just a huge existential problem.

that people sort of talk about in like very theoretical terms, like, oh, you know, the fertility rate is 1.3 or whatever it is. And 1.3 obviously is a, seems like a strange thing because someone can't have 1.3 children. You know, you either have zero, one, two, three, four, whatever. And so it seems kind of far away.

And then, you know, career is even more extreme. I think it's like, I don't know, 0.7 or 0.8 or something like that. And I don't have any kind of unique insight into the reasons that it's particularly important.

bad in Korea other than, you know, what I've read in terms of extreme, you know, working hours and kind of pressure being, being put on, put on children and so on. But yeah, like if these things continue for generations, then statistically, especially in countries with low levels of immigration, then population just collapses. Yeah.

which is kind of mad to think that's a possibility. So, yeah, I think I'm very interested in talking about these kinds of things and doing as much research as I can do into them and trying to present a kind of fair and balanced perspective without coming down heavily on,

on any kind of side, really. Just doing my best to present kind of objective facts. And I think with, you know, with fertility, you know, with declining population, that is, that's an objective fact. You can see how many people are being born. You can see how many people are in each age group.

and you have i don't know if you've um if you know what i mean by those um what are they called they're like population pyramid things yeah where it's like um uh and you had normally you have sort of it's small at the bottom and then it kind of kind of goes up like that and then decreases as people get older um and you have some countries now where you know you have tiny bits at the bottom where there's hardly any children being being born kind of going up there and then

It becomes a bit more like a rhombus, I guess. So yeah, it's a really interesting area to talk about. And I'm sure I'll probably end up making more episodes on that, perhaps one specifically on South Korea. That'd be fun. Yeah, I'd like to hear that one. I mean, what...

I know every generation we like to think we're special. This time is special and other times are less special. But I do find it interesting, the possibility that around the time we're living now, it might be the biggest number of people on the planet at one time. I think it's predicted to get 9 or 10 billion. I don't know what the current prediction is, but after that, it may never get to that point.

that level again i mean we don't know the future but that's kind of weird to think about this is a very unique time in that way yeah i think uh i i think the uh i can't remember exactly when it's projected to hit like 9 10 billion i think it's like 20 40 or something like that in the next like yeah it's somewhere between the next like 15 and 30 years and then i guess it's uh uh

demographic modelers have got a, obviously not an easy job, but you can kind of see like the maximum amount of new people added to a population is likely to be. And then you sort of understand how many people are predicted to die every year. And you can figure it out relatively easily. It's not, you know, it's not like a, I don't know, some kind of exponential virus where people can, you know, someone can magically have 10 children in,

in a year. That's just, that's not going to happen. But yeah, it is, it is funny to think that this, that we might live in a time where the global population is at its maximum. What would it mean? What would it mean for it to be decreasing? Yeah.

hmm yeah it's there's so many questions that come up i heard just the other day there was well honestly i don't know where they sourced it from i guess it was an article but i heard on another podcast again uh that i think based on the current predictions the current trajectory in japan uh it's something like by the year 2600 uh there's going to be just one child left

which is a really weird sentence. And I know it sounds very far away, but of course the problems will, will, are supposed to come long before that. But that's like the very end of population growth at that stage, I guess is what it means, which is very dystopian.

Because, yeah, it's incredibly hard to migrate to Japan as a foreigner, right? So that's a kind of like a unique case study in terms of what happens to a population if you have declining birth rates and practically zero immigration.

that's the situation. And then the countries in Europe in particular, where you have declining birth rates, but that's offset by relatively high levels of immigration. So you have the indigenous population

if there were if basically if there was zero immigration like there is in japan then you'd have a similar kind of situation in in the uk and in uh in practically all uh european countries i believe because none of the the they're all below two uh yeah two births per one so yeah it's it's uh it's it's an interesting world

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Very lots, lots to study. I mean, one more topic that really, uh, fascinates me at the moment, quite, quite a, uh, a big, a big topic at the moment is, uh, a Zen pick the Zen pick drug, which I know you did an episode on not too long ago. Uh, do you remember what you said about that? Maybe you explored the potential pros and cons of that.

Yeah. So for anyone listening, he doesn't know what a Zempik is. It's essentially a kind of weight loss drug that was, I think it sold under a different name. I think it's called Weed Glove or something. I believe that's what it is. Anyway, it's this sort of miracle drug.

weight loss drug that was initially prescribed to people with diabetes who were obese and the idea is that it suppresses your appetite so you just want to eat less and the

Obviously, this is not health or scientific advice, but the reality is if you want, you know, losing weight is about burning more calories than you than you ingest. And so a Zen pick is a kind of cheat way for people to lose weight because they can kind of continue to eat what you were eating before, if you like. But you just get full more quickly. So you don't want to eat so much of it.

So there are all these case studies done and it works very well in terms of its stated purpose of helping people who were obese lose weight. I can't recall the exact statistics, but yeah.

but it does work very well. And it's kind of went from being, I think, authorized for use only with people suffering from diabetes, who are overweight and suffering from diabetes to, I think people, sorry, obese, to people who I think were overweight. And I

Don't quote me on the exact legality of it now, but I think you can basically be prescribed it by a doctor.

for, you know, for being slightly overweight. And for anyone who wants to lose a little bit of weight can have this kind of miracle drug. And it's just, it's very easy. It's just a jab or a pill, or I think there's another way you can take it. So it's, it's not particularly invasive and there's some mad number of, especially,

especially Americans who are on a Zen pick at the moment. And some interesting stat that I remember from the, from the episode was that it's manufactured by a Danish company. I can't exactly remember the name of the Danish company, but because they made this complete like home run drug,

that brought in kind of tens of billions of dollars of revenue to the company, it actually had an impact on the Danish GDP figures. So essentially you have this situation where this drug being sold by doctors in every state in America

and being kind of used to help people lose weight. The money trail is going all the way back to Copenhagen and helping prop up the Danish pension system and so on. But yeah, it's a really interesting subject because

Again, not health or medical advice here, but if it allows people to lose weight and therefore be more healthy, great. Because being obese is a bad thing for your health. That is just, that's a fact. And so on the one level,

that is a good thing, but at the same time, it's not really addressing the, uh, the root cause of the, of the obesity problem, which is, you know, like bad quality food and people not having enough exercise. So it's sort of, you're like, um, uh, you kind of, you're not really solving the right problem. Um, you're, you're solving the disease rather than trying to find a cure for the actual problem.

And the other thing too, that I thought was kind of interesting about the ideas around a Zen pick is that it's not the sort of thing, at least as I currently understand it, it's not the sort of thing that you like take it and then I like your, you're sorted. You're you've lost weight. You're fine. Now your appetite is back to what it was before. Now you've got to keep on taking it every day.

you know, if it's every day or multiple times a week or so on. So people need to take it to have the same appetite levels. So let's say you were...

Yeah, I think so. And there's all these stories about people who were on a Zen pick and lost lots of weight and it was fantastic. And then they thought, okay, great. Now I'm exactly the weight I want to be and it's perfect. And then you stop taking it.

and they immediately their appetite returns to its previous levels and because they haven't made any fundamental changes to their lifestyle in terms of diet or exercise or anything like that then they just go back um which clearly is very good news if you're the if you are the manufacturer of edempic because i i think it's um it can be pretty expensive i think it's

I think it's kind of like a thousand dollars a month or so without insurance. And yeah, the way that the American health industry works is obviously pretty confusing. And there's all these different prices for how much a drug costs, depending on how you get it. But it's an expensive drug. And you have this situation where

potentially, you know, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world could be, you know, kind of taking this appetite suppressing drug forever in order to stop them eating, you know, stop eating too much bad food, which is a weird way to think about it. But yeah, it's a really interesting idea. Maybe I should make another episode revisiting it in the

But in a few years time. Yeah. Yeah. I think how it goes. Yeah. In the UK, I think that is now I think it's available on the NHS for obesity. And I can't recall exactly how obesity is kind of classified. But I think it's not yet reached the level at which someone who is obese,

is overweight and wants to lose a bit of weight can go to the to a boots or a chemist and say can i have some zempic please right um i believe um but no doubt as the manufacturers of the zempic are trying to trying to change that it's a great business model yeah for sure it's yeah it's such an interesting thing because i think everyone we're so mixed on it because as you as you said it

uh i mean i've heard someone say that um there may be side effects that we don't know about yet we don't know everything perhaps but the health effects of obesity are so severe in every aspect of your health that it probably is worth it again just like you said it's not health advice that's just one idea that i heard um but yeah it's also very strangely you know like

uh a lot of people as well spend so much time uh eating healthy exercising and then it almost feels like other people are cheating which is also a strange feeling but yeah yeah i guess it's it's sort of funny because the as i said the the like answer to to losing weight is it's

it's not particularly complicated. It's might be hard to do, but it's like how to do it is not so difficult. Like the key is not so, it's not so, it's not so hard to find. It's not like if you have a, I don't know, you have some terrible cancer in your body, then clearly that needs medical intervention for someone to fix that. You can't do that yourself.

If you are, you know, if you are obese, then a doctor can tell you what you need to do to stop being obese. But clearly it takes a lot of

willpower and effort um to to do that um and that is really really really hard for lots of people and this uh a zempic drug provides uh provides a shortcut which can dramatically improve their life um and improve their health outcomes which is a good thing um in my opinion um

And in terms of the side effects, I know that there have been lots of people sort of saying, we don't know exactly what these side effects might be and blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, I know there have been very extensive trials. And I guess the role of the FDA and all these different kinds of authorities that regulate drugs is to figure out whether drugs

there have been enough trials that have proven that there are not bad side effects so i guess one has to trust that um that they've done their job yeah yeah all super interesting i feel like we i mean i for sure could just like look at all your episodes and just chat about each one for like an hour just basically repeat each episode but maybe we should finish up soon

Yeah, I could also do that. But I also, you'd end up catching me out a lot as you've probably seen it already because I really want to talk to you about this particular thing you said in episode number 91. That was a long time ago. Let me just kind of remind myself of what happened and so on because I do end up

doing so much research and writing so much that it doesn't quite kind of go in one ear and come out the other, but it doesn't stay in my mind permanently.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. And if you don't mind me saying so, we spoke about inspirational people at the beginning and I feel like you're inspiring me in many ways. I think your curiosity in each area is quite inspiring and maybe that's something that I'll bring more into my own podcast as well about following my curiosity in each episode. So yeah, it's inspiring as a podcaster and a teacher, I would say.

Well, I watched your video about cycling a thousand kilometers around Taiwan and that certainly inspired me. I've done some cycling strips, but nothing nearly as adventurous as that. So, yeah.

Next time you go to Taiwan, although I did get to the end and you said, I wouldn't recommend this. So yeah, maybe I'll, I haven't checked and seen if there's another video about another large cycling trip. If you have one of those, then I'll watch that one. But that was certainly an inspiration to me.

Yeah, there isn't yet, but here's a little preview of my plans for the year. There might be in a few months time. We'll see. So it hasn't put me off cycling. Yeah. Where is a potential destination? Uh,

Uh, incidentally, one of the places with a population crisis, I'm thinking about South Korea at the moment. Um, because they're supposed to have a very good cycling trail, uh, uh, going across the country, not, not around this time, but North to South. So you need to do a bit more research and see if that is, um, doable, but yeah, let's see.

uh yeah andrew from the culips english podcast i'm not sure if you've ever spoken to him he lives in south korea and is a cyclist and i think he is he's he's i remember talking to him about how uh it's funny um kind of cycling around south korea he says everyone in in south korea's got very good cycling gear so um yeah that's my one

a little bit of information about the cycling scene in South Korea. I can't add any more value than that. Well, thank you for saying that. Maybe that could be a great potential future guest on that topic if he's willing to do that. But we'll see. I don't know if he's an expert on South Korean cycling. Probably more than me. I know he has a bike and he lives in South Korea. So...

A very unique position, I'm sure. There we go. And he has an English podcast. There's probably, if the people who live in South Korea have a bike and have an English podcast, he's probably at the centre of that. Yes, yes. Nice. Well, maybe if you don't mind, you could mention where people can find you just one last time.

Sure. So the podcast that I make is called English Learning for Curious Minds. It is available wherever you get your podcasts. So, you know, Spotify, Apple Podcasts on YouTube, too. Although it's just audio only. And if you want to find out more about everything I do, it's at LeonardoEnglish.com.

perfect fantastic and i think you've also got instagram facebook maybe so i can link those up as well if you like yeah yeah exactly cool very nice and yeah go ahead

I was going to say thank you so much for having me on Michael it was a pleasure to to chat and yeah I love what you're doing with Level Up as well thank you so much you've been very kind and it's been so nice to to talk maybe we'll have to come back again to talk about you know cycling or whatever else is on the table but yeah thank you thank you again when I make the episode about Cornelis Drebbel then I can come and tell you about that one yes please please yeah thank you so much see you later

Thanks. Bye. You have been listening to the Level Up English podcast. If you would like to leave a question to be answered on a future episode, then please go to levelupenglish.school forward slash podcast. That's levelupenglish.school slash podcast. And I'll answer your question on a future episode. Thanks for listening. Bye.