Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 179 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're doing great.
Today we're going to talk about a really interesting topic.
I hope it's interesting for you.
I like this topic because when you go deep into this topic, you can learn a lot about different people that have different types of fears.
And the topic that I'm referring to is phobias.
So you have probably heard this word before.
A phobia is like an intense fear of something that's irrational kind of.
It could be a fear that is about something that is scary, but maybe you have a very irrational level of fear.
So I'm going to talk about five different phobias in this episode today.
You've probably heard of a few of them, but maybe not all of them, and then I'm gonna do a part two, like I'm gonna talk about more phobias, because I find this topic interesting and there are a lot of interesting phobias to talk about.
But that part two will be an advanced episode.
So for those of you that are listening time family members or VIPs you'll be able to hear the part two to this episode next week, I think.
I don't have the dates in front of me, but I think it's next week.
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Eventually, you need to be able to do that.
You need to be able to understand that. more than one person talking.
This is something I struggled with for a long time in Spanish, until I actually forced myself to do this and put myself in those group settings.
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All right, let's get started.
Okay.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time!
Okay, let's talk about five different phobias.
Let me start with maybe the one that people are the most familiar with out of the five that I chose, which is claustrophobia.
A lot of you probably know this, what this means already.
This is a fear of confined spaces.
Confined meaning that you are trapped inside of these spaces.
You're not in an open space, like the walls are all around you.
There isn't a wide open space that you can use to exit, right?
So claustrophobia is, I think, a pretty common phobia, but people have it to different extremes.
Some people might be extremely claustrophobic, and I think a lot of people might just be a little bit claustrophobic.
And for me, for example, I don't think I have an irrational fear of confined spaces, but I will say that I sometimes feel uncomfortable.
If I'm in a very tight, confined space, that's not necessarily something that makes me feel good.
So maybe I have a little bit of this, but Probably not because these phobias are more referring to people that have an intense fear of that.
I don't have an intense fear of confined spaces, but I can understand this phobia because if you can imagine the worst experience claustrophobic scenario, like you're stuck in a coffin or something like that and if you just think about that and you're stuck in this coffin underground, that's terrifying, and so i think if you think of these extreme scenarios, you can see why claustrophobia is a real phobia.
But when you just examine it from like a normal everyday perspective, not these extreme situations, of course some people have an irrational fear of confined spaces, like they don't want to be inside in rooms, in spaces where the walls aren't wide enough or they don't have a ton of space.
So some people are more irrational about this, and i should say that i love open spaces too.
I think most people do.
Most people love open spaces, but not everyone has a fear of small, confined spaces.
I have worked many times for many months in a small closet.
When I first started this podcast, I think I recorded I don't know how many episodes, but probably a few dozen episodes from a tiny little closet where I couldn't even move.
I couldn't even open my arms.
So I just made do with what I had.
When you make do with something.
This means that you use what is available to you, even if it's not much.
So I just had to make do and use that tiny little closet.
That was the only space I had to record this podcast.
Thankfully, now I don't have to work from a closet.
But if I had claustrophobia, I probably wouldn't have been able to do that.
So claustrophobia is probably a somewhat common phobia, and so is the next one.
I think this next one is one of the most common ones, and that is arachnophobia. a fear of spiders.
And I say that this is probably one of the most common ones, because I feel like even people that aren't extremely afraid of spiders, these people still find spiders creepy and kind of ugh.
They give you this bad feeling when you see them move, especially move all of their legs, the way that they walk, walk around.
And if you don't have Arachnophobia and you say no, I'm not super afraid of spiders, if you just imagine Waking up and looking and seeing that you have a huge spider on your chest or on your face, I'm sure you would probably scream and jump out of bed, even if you don't have extreme arachnophobia.
So for that reason, I think that this phobia is something that touches a lot of people to different levels.
Like I said, even if you're not extremely afraid of spiders, you probably still find them creepy.
Like me.
I wouldn't say I have extreme arachnophobia, but I don't like spiders and I hate their legs.
I hate seeing them move.
It creeps me out.
I don't have a huge problem with killing spiders, squashing them with a paper towel.
When you squash something, that means that you press it down against some surface to kill that little bug or whatever.
So I kill plenty of spiders here, because there are a lot of spiders and what we call daddy long legs.
I don't know if these are technically in the same category as the other spiders, but these are the ones that have these uh skinny little legs and they don't have a big body.
Those are super common here where i live, so i have to kill a lot of those daddy long legs and other spiders as well, And I don't have a problem with that.
However, I don't want a spider to come and crawl on me.
That would freak me out.
So I don't like spiders.
And I have seen some pretty big spiders.
I remember in this small village that I used to go to in Mexico, there were some interesting bugs there, all kinds of interesting bugs, and specifically they had these huge spiders.
And I remember we would be setting up these plastic tables or whatever and you would look underneath it and there would be this massive spider that would start running around and that would freak me out.
When something freaks you out, it scares you.
It makes you very scared, right?
It freaks you out.
So that would freak me out when I would see those huge spiders.
Small spiders...
I don't think that they're that creepy.
But the big ones with long legs, I don't like those.
But for me, what is worse than spiders are cockroaches.
So I do kind of have a phobia of cockroaches.
And it started from certain experiences that I had in the past.
I won't go into detail there because I don't want to creep you out.
But I had some bad experiences with cockroaches and for me, i absolutely hate the way that they look, the way that they move and when you turn them upside down and they wiggle their legs.
When we use the word wiggle, we're talking about someone moving something from side to side in a fast way.
So When you turn them upside down and they're stuck on their back and they're wiggling their legs, it's disgusting for me.
I don't even want to think about it.
Cockroaches are worse than spiders for me.
I do have a phobia of cockroaches.
And unfortunately, when I lived in Mexico, I encountered a lot of cockroaches there.
Especially in the first and second apartments where I lived, there were cockroaches.
And I absolutely hated these things.
And I don't like cockroaches.
Spiders... are bad too, but I don't have an intense fear of spiders, I would say.
Okay, the next phobia I want to talk about is ophidiophobia.
For most of you, this probably sounds like nonsense.
You don't know what I just said.
I didn't know this word either.
This is the phobia of snakes.
And this one is a little tricky because snakes can be dangerous.
So I think it's normal to have kind of a fear of a dangerous animal, right?
That can possibly kill you even depending on the snake.
So this is kind of rational, right in that sense.
But of course some people have this very, very extreme fear of snakes where like, they would probably just pass out if they see a snake.
When you pass out, this means that you faint, you lose consciousness, right?
So some people are so afraid of snakes that they can't even look at them.
It just makes them like wiggle their body and they don't want to even have this thought in their mind.
I definitely don't have a phobia of snakes.
Of course, I don't want to go near a venomous snake.
And where I live, there are a lot of rattlesnakes.
And I am very careful when I go on hikes in nature here because I am definitely someone who I would say I'm a little afraid of rattlesnakes, but that's because they can bite me and they're dangerous.
Their venom is dangerous.
That's why.
It's not because I am super creeped out by the way that they move.
Like, I think, people with aphidiophobia.
They're really creeped out by snakes and how they move and how they slither as we say.
Slither is the verb we use really just for snakes.
They don't have legs and they just move forward in that snake-like manner.
That's called slithering.
So a lot of people don't like to see snakes slither or see their tongue come out of their mouth or whatever, and i don't have a problem with this.
And in fact, when i was a little kid like six years old or something um, some friends and i were at this uh, i don't know what it was uh some type of like center where they had snakes and other animals and And they put this huge snake on our shoulders so we could take a picture with it.
This was a huge snake.
It was heavy.
So I think there were four of us because we needed more strength to carry this snake.
And we took a picture with that big snake.
And I had no problems with it because I knew that it wasn't poisonous.
It wasn't going to harm me.
So I don't have that phobia.
I know that certain snakes are dangerous and I want to stay away from those snakes, but I don't have an irrational problem with snakes.
I don't mind seeing them if I know they're not going to attack me, let's say.
So that's aphidiophobia.
And another phobia that is maybe a little less known like, less known than claustrophobia, for example, and that is agoraphobia.
And this is basically the fear of being in a public or a crowded space in which escape may be difficult.
So on the surface, it sounds like the cousin of claustrophobia because it's related to spaces, but it's not the same because claustrophobia is just the fear of the confined space itself, just the fear of being in that space, right?
That's claustrophobia, whereas agoraphobia has more to do with the escape element right like oh, there are a ton of people here and how am i gonna escape if there's some disaster, right?
So agoraphobia might also uh, be a little more related not just to the space itself, but how crowded things are, how many people are there if you're in the middle of those people.
And yeah, I think that is also something that is related to claustrophobia.
But again, agoraphobia really focuses on that element of escaping something.
And when I think about this phobia, I do need to say that I have this thought sometimes when I'm in a crowded building or something like that and I think hmm, If there were some type of disaster that happened right now, how fast could I get out of this building?
Or would I be able to get out of this building, given the fact that there are many other people around me?
I think about this sometimes.
I wouldn't say I have a phobia.
Like I have no problem sitting far from the exit of some crowded building when we're eating dinner.
I don't have any problem with that.
And people with agoraphobia probably have that issue.
If they go into a crowded restaurant, They probably want to sit close to the exit so that they can escape in case something happens.
So maybe some of you have that thought.
And I think I've known maybe a couple people who have had that issue.
And I think one of them, the one I can remember, I think he has this issue.
It's more because he has ptsd from being a soldier in the war and so he kind of has this trauma of oh man, i need to always know where the exit is so i can escape in case something happens.
And so I think it was caused by his war days, and not just necessarily agoraphobia that comes randomly.
But some people just have this without having been in some traumatic situation or something like that.
And they just have a phobia of not being able to escape when in crowded public places.
And it's kind of in the back of people's minds.
Like, oh, what if there's a terrorist attack here or something like that?
Because that has happened a lot in the last few decades.
So I think that those events that have happened have probably contributed more to this type of phobia, because people understand that this is something that can actually happen.
There can be a disastrous earthquake, a disastrous fire, a disastrous shooting, a disastrous terrorist attack.
There could be tons of things because we've seen these things on the news.
This might contribute to people's fear and make them just a little more uncomfortable with being in the middle of some public, crowded area where escape seems difficult.
Right.
So I can get how this phobia has increased in recent years, most likely because of these things we hear about in the news.
Right.
So one other phobia that I wanted to mention is acrophobia.
You might not have heard of this word, but I know that you know this phobia, which is the fear of heights.
So I do not have this phobia, and I'm sure many of you do.
And those of you that have this phobia.
You probably look at us that don't have this phobia as crazy.
Because for you it probably seems so natural to have this fear of heights.
When you look over the edge of some high bridge, it probably seems perfectly natural for you to be terrified, right?
So I can definitely identify with you because my wife has this.
She has acrophobia.
And especially when we walk on high bridges.
Or I remember being in Porto Portugal, with that really tall bridge really, really beautiful view from that bridge.
And my wife did not want to go to the edge of the bridge to look over.
And this always happens when we're on bridges and things like that.
She gets vertigo even sometimes.
I've never had vertigo, so I can't tell you what that feels like.
I can't even really describe it to you.
But I'm sure some of you have had this.
If you have a fear of heights, you might get vertigo when you look over the edge of some high place.
I can't really speak from experience there, but my wife has this, so I know that this is something very common.
Of course, it kind of makes sense because it's natural to not want to fall from a high place.
Of course I would be scared of falling from a high place too, but I don't have the fear of heights if I don't feel like I'm gonna fall.
Like if I just look over a bridge, I don't think that I'm in danger of falling, so I don't have that fear.
I don't have this phobia.
Of course if someone started to push me over the side of the bridge then i would freak out, of course.
So um, that's how you can separate kind of the the normal conventional fear of falling from a high place and maybe a more extreme acrophobia.
My wife she, can't even look over the edge of a bridge.
For me I have no problem with that, but of course I would be freaked out if someone were trying to push me over the edge of the bridge.
So I think that's the key difference there.
And I'll say that even though I don't have...
Acrophobia, that doesn't mean that I can just go skydiving and bungee jumping without any issues.
I would definitely be freaked out from those things because those things actually involve falling.
When you're skydiving, you're falling down from a plane in the air.
And when you're bungee jumping...
You're falling down off of a bridge.
I don't want to fall.
So I'm not saying that I could easily do those extreme sports, because I think, like anyone, I would be scared to fall down from a high point.
So even though I don't have acrophobia, I have no issue being in high places.
Don't expect me to post pictures of me skydiving and bungee jumping on my Instagram soon.
I don't think I'll ever do those things.
When I was younger, I did have the desire to skydive, but nowadays, no.
And ever since I became a father, no.
I am not doing any of these extreme sports that even though they're probably pretty safe if you go with a professional, there's still that very very, very small desire percentage of risk of something going wrong.
And so I won't be doing that anytime soon.
But yeah, maybe some of you like that and have been skydiving before and bungee jumping.
But that's probably not for me, let's say so.
Acrophobia this is an extremely common one um, but uh, i can't say i completely identify with this i.
I will add though, that i have a little bit of a phobia of flying not the part where you're just in the air, but more so the takeoff, when you're taking off and going into the air.
I do get a little nervous during that part, but this is a little different.
It's not the fear of heights.
It goes into the fear of flying, which I don't have a big fear of flying, but...
I do get a little nervous when it comes to the takeoffs.
So I wanted to mention that.
But I think that's it for today.
We'll talk about some other phobias in next week's advanced podcast episode.
So if you're interested in listening to that and using it to practice your listening with English spoken fast, then you can go down and click on the link in the description to become a Listening Time family member.
And remember that it's important for you to eventually start using content that involves more than one person speaking.
And so you can use my U.S.
Conversations podcast to help you practice with that.
That's a good introduction because I give you the transcript with the definitions of keywords and phrases that we use.
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You learn a lot about the U.S.
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All right, thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
