About the Author

Hilary P. https://adeptenglish.com/authors/hilary/ is a professional psychotherapist and has

practised in the United Kingdom for over 20 years. Hilary has a keen interest in language learning,
with a classical language educational background. Hilary's particular interests & experience is in
psychology, education & learning, especially online learning and language acquisition.

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Transcript For Learn English Article 381

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 Adept English Learning Language Skills Through
Listening
English Learning Language Through Listening
Living a long healthy, happy and meaningful life is something I assume all of us would want. But
imagine if you lived to be 100, or even 1000? In today’s English lesson we talk about longevity.

Adept English language learning is all centered on listening to native English speakers. We make
each of our English lessons interesting in it’s own right, something you can listen to and enjoy, even
if you were not looking to improve your spoken English.

The idea is simple, interesting lesson topics will keep you listening
https://adeptenglish.com/company/learning-system/ . The more you listen the more your spoken
English will improve. We want you to listen to each lesson several times, and most people won’t do
that if the topic is boring.

Repeat listening is a key part of our learning process. If you want to learn more, we have a whole free
7 day English course you can sign up to here. https://7rules.adeptenglish.com/ In this course we
explain why learning our way works, and for many people works much better than traditional
language learning approaches.

With over 380 lessons to choose from https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/adept-english-

podcast-bundles/ , you are sure to find something interesting to listen to.

Transcript: Adept English Learning Language Skills Through

Listening
Hi and welcome to this podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/7ixeOS7ezPTZSaISIx2TTw from
Adept English. If you love our podcasts, give your English language learning a boost by buying one
of our podcast bundles https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/adept-english-podcast-
bundles/ . They are available on our website at adeptenglish.com for a small charge. You get to
download previous podcasts in groups of 50, so that you’ve always got some English language
learning material to work with – and you can get on with learning English and hearing interesting
stuff while you’re doing other things.

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Rule Three of the Seven Rules https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/free-7-rules-of-adept-
english/ is really important to your language learning. And it ensures that you will always have the
time to fit your English language learning in – and the podcast downloads will give you many hours
of listening, so that you’ve always something new to listen to. Variety is the spice of life, so they say!

Let’s talk about longevity

Well, during the period of pandemic that we’re in - and we’re all being locked up again for a month
in the UK - we hear a lot about how old people, ‘the elderly’ as they’re sometimes called, how old
people are more likely to get ill and die from the virus. So it’s actually really nice to talk about
longevity https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/
longevity this week.

‘Longevity’, L-O-N-G-E-V-I-T-Y is a noun and it means the quality of having a long life. If you have
longevity in your family, it means people can live to quite an old age. You might use this noun when
describing an item too, not just a person. You might use longevity of an animal, a relationship, or of
something like a washing machine! Or a set of tyres on your car.

Longevity in the UK
So on the whole, people all around the world are living longer. I noticed this week a news item
which told me that the oldest person in the UK had died. And her age? Well, Joan Hocquard has
died at the grand old age of 112 years old! That’s remarkable. So she was born on the 29th March,
1908 – that’s before the First World War.

Apparently Joan ‘enjoyed butter and cream’ according to her nephew, himself aged 74 years. ‘And
she didn’t approve of dieting’. Interesting isn’t it, when the people who arrive at a very old age, are
asked, they tend to be the ones who enjoy their food and sometimes enjoy their alcohol too. Maybe
it’s about having a relaxed attitude to life. And genetics, probably.

Interestingly, Joan Hocquard was born on the same day, 29th March 1908 as the world’s oldest man,
Bob Weighton. That was until he died in May this year, also aged 112. He was also from the UK – and
died in Hampshire in May. And now the UK’s oldest person is believed to be Sarah Lilian Priest, also
from Dorset, now believed to be 111 years old.

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Longevity across the world
So OK, Bob Weighton was for a time, the world’s oldest man. Joan Hocquard and Sarah Lilian Priest
have been in their turn, the UK’s oldest woman. But the UK is not especially known for its people’s
longevity. We have a lot of unhealthy habits here in the UK and not the best diet – though I’m still
thinking about Joan Hocquard enjoying her butter and cream. I think cutting carbohydrate, rather
than cutting butter out may be the key – but that’s another podcast. So I started wondering what the
record was for longevity.

A bit of research tells me that the current world’s oldest woman is Kane Tanaka, who fits rather more
with my expectations, in that she is Japanese. And she was born 2nd January 1903, which makes
her currently 117 years old and still going strong – she’s in good health. I say ‘fitting rather more with
my expectations’ as Japan is known for the longevity of its people, in part because Japanese food is
healthy. But it’s apparently also about remaining active and staying working for longer than most
people do.

Joan Hocquard lived to be 112 years old, but apparently there are around 400 people living in the
world at any given time now, who are over 100 years old. But also interesting – about 90% of these
are women.

The oldest ever person, whose age is reliably recorded was Jeanne Calment, a French woman who
died in 1997, aged 122 years. Imagine living for 22 years after being a hundred? In the UK, when
you’re a hundred, you get a telegram from the Queen!

Living for a thousand years?

Have you ever come across Aubrey de Grey? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey Well, he
is a strange one. He is a Cambridge-educated, world-renowned Biomedical Gerontologist. That’s a
mouthful. ‘Biomedical’ just means relating to both biology and to medicine. So it’s a particular
scientific training. And a ‘Gerontologist’? Well, words in English beginning G-E-R, like ‘geriatric’
concern old people, the elderly – apparently from the Greek γέρων, ‘geron’ meaning ‘old man’.

So Aubrey de Grey is a Biomedical expert who studies ageing and the elderly. And he’s quite an
eccentric – a strange person, a different person that means, evidenced perhaps by his unusually
long beard. He is 57 years old, but his long beard almost seems like an attempt to make himself look
much older than he is.

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Anyway, Aubrey de Grey is famous in part for claiming that the first human being to live to 1,000
years old may already be alive today. That needs thinking about – I’ll say it again. The first human
being to live to 1,000 years old may already be alive today. Well, we’re all living longer that’s a bit of a
stretch, surely?

Research on ageing
Well, Aubrey de Grey is one of a number of people researching ageing – and looking at what
happens in ageing at a cell level. Looking at what changes that cause people to decline and how
these can be stopped or reversed. So cells, C-E-L-L-S are the individual tiny parts that our bodies are
made up of. And Aubrey de Grey and others have identified seven processes at a cellular level in our
body which lead to decline and to death.

So he and others are working on different approaches to alter this, to alter what happens. For
example, how to deal with cells which multiply, which turn cancerous. Or how to deal with cells
which don’t properly get rid of their waste products – Alzheimers would be an example of a disease
caused by this. And research is slow because of lack of funding, but it progresses year on year.
There’s an idea around that ageing is inevitable, that it cannot be changed, so this area of
Gerontology or Gerontology doesn’t attract the level of funding which it perhaps deserves.

How would that make you feel?

I’m not sure how I’d feel, if I lived to be a couple of hundred years old. It might feel a bit sad, maybe
to see so many different times and different people come and go? I guess you would be wise
though, you would have a great store of knowledge. And there’d be plenty opportunity to learn and
practice other languages too, I guess.

Goodbye
If you want more on Aubrey De Grey, let me know – that’s an interesting area. And if you’ve
suggestions for any other podcast topics, why not get in touch and let us know. Send us an email
with your suggestion.

Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

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Links
* Aubrey de Grey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey

* Longevity https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/
longevity

* Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/7ixeOS7ezPTZSaISIx2TTw

* FREE English language course https://7rules.adeptenglish.com/

* 7 Rules Of Adept English https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/free-7-rules-of-adept-

english/

* English language courses https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/

* Listen & Learn https://adeptenglish.com/company/learning-system/

* Podcast Bundles https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/adept-english-podcast-bundles/

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First published: November 2020

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