📜🗒Listening Transcript🗒📜

EVOLVING BEYOND LYING

The average person lies twice in the first ten minutes of meeting someone new, and up to 50 percent of the time when speaking to their mother. A study showed that 99 percent of people lie, and even the few who claimed not to, probably also are lying.
What if just for a day you were incapable of telling a lie, no matter how small?
According to anthropologists, there is a tribe that dwells in the mountains of Central America who are unable to lie, ever. The Tarahumara people, famed for their long distance running, avoided the influence of outsiders for thousands of years. In doing so, they also maintained a strict moral code based on utmost honesty.
The Tarahumara still place this value system above all else. Some psychologists believe that over time, their emphasis on truth-telling caused changes in brain chemistry. They may have less gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for creating lies. What started as a moral obligation to tell the truth may have become a physiological trait of the members of this unique tribe.
So does this mean that it’s possible for all humans to evolve out of lying?
Well maybe, but it doesn’t sound very likely, does it? According to some sources, lying was first used by humans to promote cooperation and to create bonds between individuals. That’s why one of the most common types of lies is a white lie, that is, a lie considered to be harmless. Oftentimes white lies are told to protect someone from hearing something that will hurt their feelings.
When language developed, lying quickly became easier and more common. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to lie without using any words? Language makes it possible for humans as young as two to lie.
Instead of evolving out of lying, exactly the opposite is happening. As we evolve, we lie more. But there’s good news! Individually, we tell fewer lies as we age. We may not evolve out of lying as a species, but as individuals over the course of a single lifetime, there is still hope.
Are you more honest as you age?

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

Beauty is in the eyes the beholder, is this idiom wrong?
🔵Listen carefully to the podcast to find it out, and try to answer to the questions.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

🧡💛Listening Transcript💛🧡

IDIOM: BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ Is this idiom wrong?
In the African nation of Mauritania, big is beautiful. Some women even visit “fat farms” where they gorge on large quantities of high calorie foods, hoping to return home a bit rounder. Meanwhile, weight-loss camps are gaining popularity in many western nations.
From culture to culture, ideas of beauty vary. In rural Indonesia, for example, big feet are celebrated. For indigenous Maori people in New Zealand, blue face tattoos are desirable. And long earlobes are a sign of beauty to the Masai people of Kenya.
They say beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, but it may also lie in a mathematical calculation.
Did you know that a numerical ratio of 1 to 1.618 can actually predict beauty? It’s called the “divine proportion” or “golden ratio.” It shows up in all cultures and across all time periods. And people considered beautiful have faces and bodies that often display this golden ratio.
In beautiful people, the ratio is often present in the distance between the eyes compared to the length of the lower face. It can also appear in the length of the arms relative to body height. To determine whether an entire face reflects the divine ratio, first, measure the length and the width of the face. Then, divide the length by the width. The closer the answer is to 1.6, the more the face exhibits the divine ratio.
Even more interesting is that the golden ratio isn’t exclusive to human beauty. It exists frequently in nature as well. The golden ratio can be found in the spiral of a snail’s shell, in the petals of certain flowers, and on the markings of a tiger’s head.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, constructed in 2484 BC, also displays the golden ratio. But the golden ratio doesn’t appear in recorded history until around 300 BC. During this time, Greek mathematicians noticed the golden ratio consistently appearing in geometric shapes. The ancient Greeks were obsessed with physical perfection, and many of Greece’s most famous sculptures display the golden ratio.
In modern times, some people even have plastic surgery to achieve this special ratio. Humans continue to be captivated by beauty. Yet, pursuits of physical beauty aren’t always fulfilling. More than half of plastic surgery patients regret the procedure.
We’ve all heard the idiom, “Beauty is only skin deep.” And indeed, a recent study found that the most attractive qualities in a partner had little to do with physical appearance. Instead, participants chose playfulness, kindness, and humor to be most important.
So what is it that really makes a person beautiful? What do you think?

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

"Quitters never win and winners never quit" Do you believe in this statement?
🔵Listen carefully to the podcast and try to answer to the questions below.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

🏆🎖Listening Transcript🎖🏆

"QUITTERS CAN BE WINNERS"
Bill Gates has been named the world’s richest man 16 times. While he owes much of his success to perseverance, he probably owes just as much to his willingness to quit.
It turns out that the old saying, “quitters never win and winners never quit” isn’t exactly true. Many of the world’s most successful people are serial quitters.
Gates probably wouldn’t be the famous billionaire he is today if he hadn’t dropped out of college. He was a sophomore at the prestigious Harvard College when he decided to quit.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also famously quit Harvard College to pursue his dream.
Mahatma Gandhi quit his successful career as a lawyer and went on to become one of the most famous revolutionaries in history.
According to psychologists Gregory Miller and Carsten Wrosch, people who are willing to quit are healthier than those who refuse to give up.
In one study the psychologists looked at two different groups of people. They called the group that was willing to give up the “Quitters” and the group that refused to give up, the “Bulldogs.”
In almost every measure of health, the Quitters performed better. They suffered less from skin disorders, poor sleep, indigestion, and headaches. They also found that the Bulldog’s stress hormones showed they were in a state of chronic stress.
Quitting doesn’t just support our health. The freedom to quit has also been statistically linked to healthier marriages. In the U.S. before the 1960s a marriage could only end in divorce if both partners agreed to it. In the late 60s and 70s this law changed so that anyone could divorce without permission from their partner. Stanford University researchers found that this new ability to freely end a marriage led to women’s suicide rates dropping by 20 percent and domestic violence rates falling as well.
Some companies even recognize that employees quitting can also be beneficial to the company. One progressive online company, Zappos even pays its new employees $1,000 to quit within the first month. Zappos believes that their company culture will benefit from employing people who are there for more than just money. Because customer service is such a big part of Zappos’ success, they need employees who are willing to go the extra mile for them. That means hiring people that have enthusiasm for the job, not just for the money.
It seems the freedom to quit is not only a basic human right, but an essential part of being a healthy human being. It’s just not true that “quitters never win and winners never quit.” Sometimes quitting is an important part of winning in the end.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

It seems that animals act weird before an earthquake happens,can we predict earthquakes by this signals?

🔵listen carefully to the podcast and try to answer the questions.


#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

🐶🐱Listening Transcript🐱🐶

CAN DOGS AND CATS READ YOUR MIND?
In the early morning of December 26th, 2004, there was a large earthquake under the ocean close to Indonesia. This earthquake started a tsunami sending giant waves to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Over 200,000 people lost their lives that day. It was a tragic day that no one could have predicted.
In both Sri Lanka and Thailand, elephants ran up hills away from the ocean an hour before the tsunami hit. Birds flew away from low-lying areas, and zoo animals hid. There were also reports of two ocean-loving dogs that refused to go to the beach with their owner 90 minutes before the tsunami. Even bats were acting strangely that day. There were stories of bats active and awake 30 minutes before the tsunami, even though they’d normally be sleeping during the day.
What was going on with these animals? There are many theories. Maybe they are able to feel vibrations in the earth before an earthquake. Maybe earthquakes release gases from the earth that the animals can smell. It’s also possible that earthquakes cause sounds that humans can’t hear, but animals can.
There are many possible reasons why animals might know about an earthquake before it happens, but some people believe there is something more mysterious happening. They think that animals might have some psychic ability that allows them to feel what is about to happen.
Can animals really see or feel the future? Rupert Sheldrake, believes so. Sheldrake is a biochemist and the author of the book, Dogs That Know When Their Owner Is Coming Home.
Sheldrake surveyed dog and cat owners about whether their animals seemed to know when they were on their way home. 50% of dog owners and 30% of cat owners said ‘yes’. Intrigued by this, Sheldrake set up experiments with over 100 dog owners. He videotaped these animals to see if they would come to the door or window before the owner came home. He knew that some dogs might have a habit of waiting at a fixed time, so he had the owners leave work at random times. Some animals might hear their owner coming to the door, so he decided to measure only if the dogs knew when their owner was leaving work.
Sheldrake showed in his experiments that dogs did seem to have the ability to know when their owner is coming home. In one of the most successful cases, he filmed a dog named Jaytee in Manchester, England. In this experiment, Sheldrake chose random times for Jaytee’s owner Pam to return home. During the time that Pam was at work, Jaytee was only at the window 4% of the time, but when Pam was on her way home, Jaytee was at the window 55% of the time.
Can dogs really read our minds or is there something else happening here?


#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

🔵Listen carefully to the audio and try to answer the questions.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

🖥HUMAN VS COMPUTER🙎🏻‍♂

Can you tell the difference between a computer and a human? As computers become more intelligent, it will become more difficult to say which is which. In 1950, a scientist named Alan Turing predicted that machines would one day become intelligent and able to think. He made a test called the Turing test. According to this test, a machine is intelligent, if it can fool people into thinking it is human.
Last year, a computer program called Cleverbot passed this test. Cleverbot was made by Rollo Carpenter in 1987. It was a new type of program that learns how to communicate from having conversations with people.
When Carpenter first started making Cleverbot, the program didn’t know any words. He began having text conversations with the program and it recorded what he said. If he said “hello”, Cleverbot learned the word “hello”. If he said, “How are you?” Cleverbot learned the phrase, “How are you?”
Carpenter also had his friends make conversation with Cleverbot, and these conversations were also recorded. Between 1988 and 1997, Cleverbot recorded a few thousand conversations with Carpenter and his friends. This was relatively very little information, and not enough to make the program seem human.
In 1997, Carpenter made Cleverbot into a website. Over the next 10 years it recorded 5 million lines of conversation. Cleverbot now makes 200,000 replies an hour and has text conversations with 3 million people a month. This has given Cleverbot so much information, it now seems very human.
If you ask Cleverbot a question, it searches through its records and finds the best answer. If for example, you ask Cleverbot, “What is the meaning of life?” you’ll get an answer that sounds like it’s coming from a human. It has heard this question thousands of times from real people all over the world and will pick an answer that best fits your conversation. Now it may not be an intelligent answer, but it will sound human. Carpenter gets emails everyday from people who think he’s lying and can’t believe that Cleverbot is really a computer program.
Last year, Cleverbot passed the Turing test at a technology festival in India. During the contest, 30 humans had a text conversation on a computer connected to a secret partner. Half of the computers were connected to Cleverbot and half of the computers were connected with real people. The text conversations were then displayed on big screen TVs at the festival. Three hundred and thirty four people at the festival then voted which conversations they thought were with a human partner, and which conversations they thought were with a computer. The Cleverbot conversations were thought to be 100% human 59% of the time.
Try practicing your English with this computer program at Cleverbot dot com. Remember, Cleverbot has had millions of conversations with many different kinds of people. Some of these people were smart, some were stupid, some were interesting, some were boring and some were just rude. Cleverbot is repeating these conversations, so some of the things Cleverbot says will be stupid, boring, rude or use idioms that are difficult to understand.
There are two things you can do if you don’t understand what Cleverbot says. You can ignore it and change the topic, or there is a button that says, “Think for me.” This will make Cleverbot answer its own question.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

🔵Have you ever heard of soul treatments and the miraculous effect it has on people?

Listen carefully to the podcast and try to answer the questions below

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

💮💮Listening Transcript💮💮

A PRESCRIPTION FOR SOUL MEDICINE
Va Meng Lee is a shaman who works with spirits to heal people and protect their souls. This sort of work usually gets short shrift by western medicine, but Lee works at a hospital, right alongside doctors.
Lee is a shaman and he works at Mercy Medical Center in Merced, California. This hospital was one of the first in the U.S. to formally recognize the role of traditional healers.
Lee says that doctors are good at treating disease, but shamans are responsible for the soul. Like many other cultures, the Hmong believe that parts of the soul can be lost or stolen. Lee’s role with patients is to protect their souls. He does this through ceremonies and rituals.
Many types of medical intervention are taboo for the local Hmong. Shamans were brought into the hospital for one simple reason, to build trust in western medicine within the Hmong community. According to Dr. John Paik-Tesch, the program actually “built trust both ways.”
There was originally a lot of skepticism, but that began to change after a Hmong clan leader was diagnosed with a gangrenous bowel. The doctors hesitantly allowed a shaman to perform rituals. The man miraculously recovered, causing quite a stir at the hospital.
The power of shamanic healing is not agreed upon by all. While some swear by it, many dismiss it as the placebo effect. In other words, they don’t think the shaman’s ceremonies can actually heal a person. They believe that the patient gets healed simply because the patient believes they will be healed. In conventional science, the placebo effect is something to be avoided. But this way of thinking might not hold water anymore. According to recent research, placebos are not just psychological.
Placebo researchers Ted Kaptchuk and Kathryn Hall have found evidence of how placebos work on a molecular level. They have found that the success rate of placebos for some conditions is connected to the presence of an enzyme. Depending on one’s genetics, this enzyme is more or less present. This means that some people may be more genetically predisposed to being healed by placebos. These findings imply that it’s not all in the mind.
According to Kaptchuk, rituals can have a big impact on us through the placebo response. He believes that rituals are able to persuade the mind, and the mind can affect the body. Perhaps shamans like Lee are leveraging the placebo effect through their rituals. Or perhaps they really do invoke spiritual healing. Either way, Mercy Medical’s resident shaman may be doing a lot more than building trust.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

🔵Listen carefully to the podcast and then try to answer to the upcoming question.


#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

🦅🏞🏞Listening Transcript🏞🏞🦅

〰Rest In Peace Great Barrier Reef

In the not-too-distant future, we could be hearing something like this in the news:

The biggest living organism on Earth has passed away. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef lived for more than 25 billion years. At 1,400 miles long, the Great Barrier Reef was the only living organism visible from space. It was home to more biodiversity than all of Europe.

While it’s sad enough to hear that our planet’s biggest organism has died, what’s even more heartbreaking is that we are the ones who killed it. Our dependency on oil and gas has caused global warming which has killed this magnificent organism.

The Great Barrier Reef isn’t the only life that has been lost due to humans and our misuse of the Earth’s resources. In the last 40 years, we have lost more than 50 percent of all this planet’s wildlife. More than 76 percent of freshwater wildlife has disappeared. If things continue this way, it’s predicted that in twenty years we’ll have lost two-thirds of all wildlife on Earth.

We are now seeing species extinction at more than 1,000 to 10,000 times the natural rate. Humans are to blame for this sorry state of affairs.

A popular theory says that people who are dying experience five stages of grief known as DABDA. A person starts off feeling Denial and then moves through feelings of Anger, then Bargaining, then Depression, and finally Acceptance of the fact that death is near.

Some psychologists are now using these five stages of personal grief to describe humanity’s “collective grief” over planetary death and loss.

The first stage is “denial.” Many people are still in denial that climate change is even happening. They turn a blind eye to anything having to do with the problem.

The second stage is “anger.” People at this stage have moved past denial. They are now angry about the state of our Earth and the loss of species.

The third stage of grief is “bargaining.” In this stage, a person is willing to make a trade to regain what they have lost. At this stage, people who are grieving stop playing the blame game. Instead, they focus on making swift changes to save the planet.

The fourth stage is “depression.” In this stage, people begin to accept the reality of the loss. They feel profound sadness or even numbness.

And finally, in the fifth stage, people “accept” the situation. Hopefully, humans never have to fully accept the demise of the earth, because that would mean accepting our own demise as well.

What do you think? Can comparing planetary grief with personal grief, help humanity find a way forward? Or is it too late? Will we actually be hearing about the death of the greatest barrier reef on earth in our lifetime?

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

🔵Listen carefully to the audio and try to answer the questions.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@Sirjimmy

🖥HUMAN VS COMPUTER🙎🏻‍♂

Can you tell the difference between a computer and a human? As computers become more intelligent, it will become more difficult to say which is which. In 1950, a scientist named Alan Turing predicted that machines would one day become intelligent and able to think. He made a test called the Turing test. According to this test, a machine is intelligent, if it can fool people into thinking it is human.
Last year, a computer program called Cleverbot passed this test. Cleverbot was made by Rollo Carpenter in 1987. It was a new type of program that learns how to communicate from having conversations with people.
When Carpenter first started making Cleverbot, the program didn’t know any words. He began having text conversations with the program and it recorded what he said. If he said “hello”, Cleverbot learned the word “hello”. If he said, “How are you?” Cleverbot learned the phrase, “How are you?”
Carpenter also had his friends make conversation with Cleverbot, and these conversations were also recorded. Between 1988 and 1997, Cleverbot recorded a few thousand conversations with Carpenter and his friends. This was relatively very little information, and not enough to make the program seem human.
In 1997, Carpenter made Cleverbot into a website. Over the next 10 years it recorded 5 million lines of conversation. Cleverbot now makes 200,000 replies an hour and has text conversations with 3 million people a month. This has given Cleverbot so much information, it now seems very human.
If you ask Cleverbot a question, it searches through its records and finds the best answer. If for example, you ask Cleverbot, “What is the meaning of life?” you’ll get an answer that sounds like it’s coming from a human. It has heard this question thousands of times from real people all over the world and will pick an answer that best fits your conversation. Now it may not be an intelligent answer, but it will sound human. Carpenter gets emails everyday from people who think he’s lying and can’t believe that Cleverbot is really a computer program.
Last year, Cleverbot passed the Turing test at a technology festival in India. During the contest, 30 humans had a text conversation on a computer connected to a secret partner. Half of the computers were connected to Cleverbot and half of the computers were connected with real people. The text conversations were then displayed on big screen TVs at the festival. Three hundred and thirty four people at the festival then voted which conversations they thought were with a human partner, and which conversations they thought were with a computer. The Cleverbot conversations were thought to be 100% human 59% of the time.
Try practicing your English with this computer program at Cleverbot dot com. Remember, Cleverbot has had millions of conversations with many different kinds of people. Some of these people were smart, some were stupid, some were interesting, some were boring and some were just rude. Cleverbot is repeating these conversations, so some of the things Cleverbot says will be stupid, boring, rude or use idioms that are difficult to understand.
There are two things you can do if you don’t understand what Cleverbot says. You can ignore it and change the topic, or there is a button that says, “Think for me.” This will make Cleverbot answer its own question.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

It seems that animals act weird before an earthquake happens,can we predict earthquakes by this signals?

🔵listen carefully to the podcast and try to answer the questions.


#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

🐶🐱Listening Transcript🐱🐶

CAN DOGS AND CATS READ YOUR MIND?
In the early morning of December 26th, 2004, there was a large earthquake under the ocean close to Indonesia. This earthquake started a tsunami sending giant waves to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Over 200,000 people lost their lives that day. It was a tragic day that no one could have predicted.
In both Sri Lanka and Thailand, elephants ran up hills away from the ocean an hour before the tsunami hit. Birds flew away from low-lying areas, and zoo animals hid. There were also reports of two ocean-loving dogs that refused to go to the beach with their owner 90 minutes before the tsunami. Even bats were acting strangely that day. There were stories of bats active and awake 30 minutes before the tsunami, even though they’d normally be sleeping during the day.
What was going on with these animals? There are many theories. Maybe they are able to feel vibrations in the earth before an earthquake. Maybe earthquakes release gases from the earth that the animals can smell. It’s also possible that earthquakes cause sounds that humans can’t hear, but animals can.
There are many possible reasons why animals might know about an earthquake before it happens, but some people believe there is something more mysterious happening. They think that animals might have some psychic ability that allows them to feel what is about to happen.
Can animals really see or feel the future? Rupert Sheldrake, believes so. Sheldrake is a biochemist and the author of the book, Dogs That Know When Their Owner Is Coming Home.
Sheldrake surveyed dog and cat owners about whether their animals seemed to know when they were on their way home. 50% of dog owners and 30% of cat owners said ‘yes’. Intrigued by this, Sheldrake set up experiments with over 100 dog owners. He videotaped these animals to see if they would come to the door or window before the owner came home. He knew that some dogs might have a habit of waiting at a fixed time, so he had the owners leave work at random times. Some animals might hear their owner coming to the door, so he decided to measure only if the dogs knew when their owner was leaving work.
Sheldrake showed in his experiments that dogs did seem to have the ability to know when their owner is coming home. In one of the most successful cases, he filmed a dog named Jaytee in Manchester, England. In this experiment, Sheldrake chose random times for Jaytee’s owner Pam to return home. During the time that Pam was at work, Jaytee was only at the window 4% of the time, but when Pam was on her way home, Jaytee was at the window 55% of the time.
Can dogs really read our minds or is there something else happening here?


#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

🔵Listen carefully to the people describing their tour plans, then answer to the questions

#listening
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

🔷🔸listening transcript🔸🔷
🔶🔹The Tour🔹🔶

1⃣. I'm so excited about my trip to Asia. I've never been there before.First, I'm flying to Taipei from the US. I'll be spending three days there, because I hear that there is a lot to see and do. I'll also be spending three days in Seoul I hear the nightlife there is great. Then we go from there to Hong Kong. I'm planning to do lots of shopping there, so I hope two days is enough to buy everything i need. I would really love to go to Beijing for a few days. But, unfortunately this tour doesn't go there. After Hong Kong, we'll end up in Thailand for five days. So I guess I won't be able to get to Tokyo or Malaysia on this trip.Oh well. I have to save a few places to visit on my next vacation.

2⃣. Well, our trip starts off in London. We've got a week there. Then we'll take the bus up to Oxford for two days to see friends. We also wanted to see Cambridge, I hear it's beautiful, but we won't have time this trip. Anyway, then we head to France. We have five days in Paris, which will give us time to see all of those museums. I wish we were going to spend a few days in Germany, too, but this trip doesn't include it. But we do go to Switzerland for three days. I'm really looking forward to that. Then we end up in Italy for the last five days of the tour.

3⃣. We start off in Los Angeles.We're going to stay there for three days because we want to hit the beach and see the sights. We're not going to go to San Francisco this time, because we've been there before.Then we're off to Denver to visit my sister.We're going to stay there for a week. I hope that's enough time, because i haven't seen her since last Christmas, and we have so much to talk about. We were thinking of going to Chicago after that, but we just don't have time, so it's straight on to Washington DC, and New York.We've got two days in Washington and three in NewYork. We'd really love to get up to Boston for a couple of days, but it probabely won't happen. Maybe next time.

#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy

🔆🔆🔅Script high lights🔅🔆🔆

⚜Example: I'll be spending three days there.

📝This structure ( subject+will+be+verb+ing)
Is used to explain future plans

⚜Example: I hear the nightlife there is great

📝Nightlife: is all the entertainment and social activities that are available at night in towns and cities, such as nightclubs and theaters.

⚜Example: we'll end up in Thailand.

📝End up: to reach a final place or position/ to finish at a certain place

⚜Exapmle: Our trip starts off in London

📝Start off: to begin going somewhere

⚜Example: We'll take the bus up to Oxford

📝Take up: to move to the exact place where you should be


⚜Example: Then we head to France

📝Head: Go / head here is used as a verb


⚜Example: I'm really looking forward to that

📝Look forward to:to be excited and pleased about something that is going to happen

⚜Example: we want to hit the beach and see the sights

📝Hit: Arrive/ to arrive at a place

⚜Example: Then we are off to Denver to visit my sister

📝Be off: To leave a place or to depart to another one.

⚜Example: It's straight on to washington

📝Straight on: happening immediately one after another in a series


#listening_class
#team_jimmy
@sirjimmy