 Hello, I am Adam Navas. I am here with the pleasant as always Liz. Wait. Hello, Liz. Hi, Adam. We are going to have a real conversation between the two of us, two native English speakers. We are going to talk about the program Shoes of the World. I'm very excited to talk about this program. If you haven't listened to this program, you can find it on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, or you can check out, if you haven't been to our website, spotlightenglish.com. You can follow along with the script there. You'll also find a lot of other resources and other programs that you might not discover if you're just on YouTube or listening through the podcast. If you're interested, as always, make sure when you're on YouTube, you click that join button. That really helps us out, gives you some extra content, some behind the scenes stuff, some early exclusives. It really is just a great way to support this channel and all the work we're doing. What did I miss? You can follow us on social media, et cetera, et cetera. You guys know the drill. Like this video, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. Yeah. We're doing good stuff. Liz, Shoes of the World, this was a program you wrote. I did write this program. The program even begins like this. You think about, well, how complicated does a shoe have to be? It just needs to cover your foot. Even if you take away all of the fashion parts of shoes, because of course there are, I don't know, what are some famous shoe brands. I know there are some in programs like Sex and the City. Jimmy Choo. Yes. Those are the fashion. Yes. We are not high-end. Clearly, I am not in this shoe fashion world, but there's expensive shoes and fancy shoes. Even if you take away all of those shoes, even if you don't think about fashion necessarily, there's still a lot of different kinds of shoes culturally, which is really interesting to me, which is why I wrote this program. This program really, it starts with a very, to me, funny example of shoes. These shoes made of gold. They're literally made of gold and covered in diamonds. There are like 140,000 pounds or something. Now, you mean pounds not in weight, but in blood. Right. Yes. Yes. Sorry. Great British pounds. The program starts like, would you buy these shoes? I wouldn't. Even if I had that much money, I don't think I would buy those shoes. But then it goes into different shoes that are culturally around the world. It talks about clumping from the Netherlands and babushes from, was it Morocco? I forgot. I think that's right. Yes, Morocco. Gaita shoes from Japan. There's parukas from India. I know I'm forgetting one. Well, anyway, that's why you listen to the program, right? Yeah. To find out about those shoes. Really going through all of those shoes and why they are, the Sami boots, the boots of the Sami people, and really finding out how culture has influenced shoes and how shoes maybe have just become part of what a culture is. Yeah. Adam, are you a shoe guy? Do you like wearing shoes? I mean, not wearing them, but collecting them. That is a great question. I have a spotlight program that I wrote about sneakers, right? Oh, yes. Sneakers and collecting sneakers. And around about that time, I am not, here's an English idiom. A clothes horse. Oh, right. So a clothes horse, where you enjoy collecting and displaying your clothes, either like, you enjoy wearing your clothes or on your body. Right. I don't know why it's called a clothes horse, but whatever. I don't have a lot of clothes in my closet. Most, my wife and I share a closet. Most of it, the space goes to her. I'm happy with what I have. But I bought a pair of shoes because I always, my sneakers, so sneakers are a very casual, sporty shoe. They were always old running shoes. And I thought, I'm going to buy a pair of sneakers. Right. And I do think, if you don't mind, Adam, I want to like, this is an interesting English thing because in UK English, these would be trainers, right? So sneakers is the word that is really most popular in the US or tennis shoes, sneakers or tennis shoes. But these could also be, these are trainers in the UK, maybe. So before I show you, are they Air Jordans? No, no, no. Okay, but I'm going to give you a quiz. Okay. Okay. Okay. So there were two brothers who were in Germany. Okay. Yep. Okay. And they had a shoe company. And then they had a fight. And they broke up into two separate shoe companies that are now global brands. Okay. You know what they are. Well, one is Adidas. Correct. Which is really technically Adidas. Yes, which is what you're going to see from me. Oh, man. If you know, write it in the comments. Write it in the comments. This is a good one. I'll show the shoes. Yeah, this is like a quiz. And then we'll tell you what the other... I mean, I should know what the other one is. All right, I give up. Okay. Well, I'll show you my shoes. So the first pair I got with these gray with the black stripes. Okay, this is the first... They look like vans. They're not vans. Don't call them vans. They look like vans. They're not vans. Okay. And then I decided, you know what, this is going to be my thing. This is not vans. I got maroon. Oh, fancy. Okay. Now I'm going to show you out of order. Okay. Okay. So these are my next... We're getting into really good ones. You did get a lot of shoes, Adam. All right. So we have kind of a gray with the blue. Yeah, I like that one. Nice. Nice. Classy. All right. So this is... I'm showing you... I'm going to show you my latest one that I got for my birthday. And then I'll show you the best one. Wow, this is actually not like you. Whoa! I know. Bright red. Now, the greatest. I've only worn these three times. They are so special. Okay. That... I feel like... Is that like the classic Adidas? I don't know. I feel like that... No, no, no. The classic one is just black. But for some reason, those colors to me feel like they are like the classic like 80s version or something. So there was a children's book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Yes. And part of what he does, he has to go buy some shoes that are not what he wants, right? He had to buy plain old white shoes. So part of the reason I feel so special in these is because they're white and they will get dirty. So I try to keep them very special. That is true. But of course, the... These are not American shoes. These are kind of a global. So some shoe companies really go around the world. They're not... I don't think people think, oh, this is a German company or, you know, it's a very good company. Right, right. So if you haven't written in the comments, the other shoe company now is Puma. Puma. I don't think I knew that. I mean, I know Puma shoes. Yeah. So they were two brothers and they each... Really? Yeah. In the same city, in Germany. And if you know the city, I don't know the city, but if you're in Germany and you're watching this, let us know. Yeah, I don't know. Was it a big German city like Berlin or Hamburg or something? Probably. I don't know. That's great. So Liz, I showed you my shoes. When you think shoes, do you have a specific... Like if you were a country, would you have a shoe? Would you have a... I feel like probably like me personally or like the US. Because I feel like the US, we might be like a high heel. Don't you think? Yeah. Like just like fancy on the outside, but like super uncomfortable. Is that bad? Yeah, I think you're talking... You're editorializing a little there, but that's okay. Yeah, I don't really wear heels. But yeah, I don't know. I kind of like... I like a plain shoe. Yeah. So I mean, I do actually... If I am going to buy a pair of shoes, it's probably now that I'm older and my legs start hurting. If I walk too long, I buy more comfortable, expensive shoes. So even if I buy a pair of nice shoes, I don't know. They're going to probably be more expensive. Yeah. But I don't think there's like a cultural shoe so much from the US. I have worn a Gita before. Oh yeah. Like from Japan. Those are really interesting. Because you know, I love this from the program that they can go on either foot. Oh, okay. Because it's like a V in the middle of a block of wood. Right. And it yeah, it still goes between your like first and second toe. Okay. But it's just offset a little. Interesting. Well, that brings up an interesting question that if you would travel to a place like Japan, would you bring those shoes back and wear them? Like would you buy them as a functional piece, as a fashion piece or just as a souvenir? I probably would not because they are very uncomfortable for me personally. I mean, it's just a block of wood. This is like the Padukas in this program too. I will tell you what though, I would buy a pair of those boots from the Sami. Oh yeah. I would wear those. Those seem pretty functional. Yes. I love that. Like they're made out of like that because the Sami are from the north. Right. So they have very cold weather and they raise reindeer and then make boots out of the reindeer skin. But I have, you know, sometimes I like to travel with my family. And a couple years ago, we went to the Netherlands, which I do have some Dutch ancestry in my ancestry. So it's a little bit like my grandparents, some of them came over from the Netherlands. And so it wasn't necessarily a trip where we visited places like that. But you know, it's always fun. And I'm sure that people know what shoe is associated with the Netherlands. And it is the Klampen or clogs. So I do actually, we came back with a pair. Here, I'll hold them in the correct hands. We came back with a pair of Klampen. And I don't, I mean, I don't have gigantic feet, but these do fit my feet. Yeah. You're supposed to wear them. You should tell people what those are made out of because it's an unusual material. Okay. So this is made out of one solid piece of wood. Usually I think a softer wood. You can hear it. Hello. No, but so we saw them actually make these shoes on a machine that was basically like a spoon that was like on a machine. And it would, it would just scooped them out, like scooped the wood out, shaped it on the bottom. Yeah. And then of course, you know, they dry it out so that the wood is nice and dry. And then they paint it. And this is a, this is a typical sort of paint design or whatever in, in the Netherlands. But yeah, you're supposed to wear it with a very thick sock and have about two fingers of space behind here so that you don't get blisters. And you can wear these shoes like outside. And yeah. I had always heard that they were made of wood so that they would float. I think that might be an urban legend. Or I think that might be like, that is true. But why would they, why would they need to float? Because they're in the Netherlands. They're below sea level. No, I think it's because like they're, they're good for like going outside. And like if you drop a tool on your foot. Oh, it's like a steel-toed boot. But I wouldn't. Right. So maybe it has multiple, if you're watching this from the Netherlands. Yeah. Please. Who's right? Who's right? Me or Adam? In all things. It's you. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I don't really typically wear these. So they're more for decorative or? They're more decorative and you know, they're just for fun. Yeah. Well, if you want to let us know your favorite brand of shoe, your favorite kind of shoe, your favorite, if your country has a particular shoe that was not in this program, leave a comment below this video on YouTube or on our website. And we'd love to hear we, we look at all those comments. We try to respond to as many as we can. And I will say, if you are a member, we always respond to your comment. Always. Members, we try to respond to as many as we can, but members always get a response to their comments. Yeah. And yeah, like we said, follow us on social media, check us out on Facebook, on Twitter and the website. And make sure you are subscribed, of course, because we are coming out with new content all the time. We are having new ways of helping you practice your English and you don't want to miss those. So until next time, we hope you listen, watch, practice and learn spotlight out.