Audiostretto 59/4/24 English

How well do you manage to express your feelings? Or how well do you manage not only to allow and express them, but also to communicate them consciously? We live in a society in which we are always supposed to feel good and when we are asked "how are you?", we often don't wait for an answer or take it seriously, but automatically expect a "good" before moving on to the actua...

I was driving past a place the other day on my way to the railway station where the road was cracked along its length and had a slight camber. This road had been repaired not so long ago. When I saw this crack, I thought to myself that the subsoil at this point was obviously active, i.e. in motion, and had damaged the road accordingly. I continued to wonder what would happen if this indication was...

We used to play the gallows game in pairs as children. One of us thinks of a word and draws as many small squares as the word has letters. The other has to guess the word by guessing the individual letters. If he guesses a letter correctly, it is entered in the corresponding empty space. If he guesses a letter that does not appear in the word, the other player gradually draws a gallows with each u...

Minimising effort with minimum drag is the aim of progress. This can be seen in Formula 1 cars: their shape and exterior is chosen so low that they experience as little air resistance as possible at their high speeds and therefore travel as quickly as possible with the lowest possible fuel consumption. In sailing, it's exactly the opposite: here you deliberately seek out the air resistance, th...

There is a saying that one crow does not peck out another crow's eye. So people go easy on their own kind and don't attack each other. But what happens when injustice occurs? Are we then brave enough to speak up, even to our own kind? The weak always need the influence and the voice of the strong. Unfortunately, they are all too often silent. How do you deal with situations of injustice? W...

What a match and a firelighter have in common is that they can light something. In most cases, this is done deliberately and without risk to the environment. For example, lighting a candle or a campfire. However, the match differs from the lighter in a few ways: once lit, it has a very limited burning time. It is sensitive to environmental influences such as moisture and can break when rubbed. How...

You are probably familiar with how certain moments or places suddenly come to mind, like lightning thoughts, and then trigger different emotions or memories. These could be beautiful or threatening, joyful or associated with fear, etc. They are triggered by very different things such as scents, thoughts, people, objects and more. These memories are linked to emotions that we come into contact with...

If I asked you how you define a window, you might say: A window is a recess in the wall of a house. This recess allows light to enter the house. This is correct - but incomplete. If it were only the recess, then the wall would simply be interrupted. However, as I understand it, a window includes at least one pane of glass. In many cases even at least two, which are in a frame and this can often be...

It is said that people like to take the path of least resistance. And I think that's true in many areas and situations. At least that's how I experience it myself. But there is also another side to it: passion. Where I am passionate, I fight, something is important to me and I seek it against all or at least a lot of resistance. The German term Leidenschaft already contains the essence or...

A rope has very different uses. The most obvious, or I suspect most commonly used, is to tie things down or bind them together. But a rope is also used - for example in a park near where I live - to protect a meadow from pedestrians. In other words, the rope stretched around the meadow signals to park visitors: please don't go onto the meadow. Technically speaking, this would be no problem, as...

In Greek mythology, there is a dog called Kerberos. He guarded the entrance to the underworld, the realm of the dead, and made sure that no dead person went out and no living person came in. He did this until the day Heracles - also known as Hercules - came and overpowered him. He strangled and bound him. Of course, this story reminds me of what we celebrate at Easter - that Jesus defeated the dev...

I attend conferences and trade fairs from time to time and companies often exhibit there. Over the years, I have seen new companies emerge and, unfortunately, older ones disappear. I have got to know start-ups and large established corporations. What they all have in common is that they have a name. In the vast majority of cases, this is not by chance. It stands for something, has a message and us...

Test tubes are used for very different purposes in the laboratory. For example, reactions can be tested or small quantities of liquid can be stored in them and they are suitable for heating over a Bunsen burner, etc. A test tube is therefore - as I understand it as a layman - a test environment in which either presumptions can be verified and proven or new things can be tested in very small quanti...

There are one-way streets in our neighbourhood, which means that vehicles have to take roads with lots of bends. There are shops there and so lorries also have to go there. There is a narrow place where vehicles are allowed to cross. This is also a sharp and tight bend. There are beautiful old houses there - and for some time now there has also been a stone bollard about 80cm high. As soon as it w...

Fashion trends change regularly in many areas of life: In clothing, accessories, hairstyles, etc. For men, there is also beard fashion: Beard yes or no, if yes, how long, what type etc.? Full beards have been fashionable among younger men in the recent past. For some time now, moustaches have also been worn again. But a moustache is not just a moustache. There are shorter, longer, wider, narrower....

The next Olympic Games will soon be taking place in Paris. The logo for this event is five coloured rings that overlap or are connected to each other. Each of these rings has a different colour and represents a continent. These are Europe in blue, America in red, Asia in yellow, Australia in green and Africa in black. The colours are derived as follows, according to conventional wisdom: Europeans...

For some months now, the world has been looking with concern at the Middle East, where there is unfortunately a lot of violence. The flag of Israel contains the Star of David. I once looked up what it stands for. One of the things I found out was that the downward-pointing triangle symbolises that man has received his life from God, while the upward-pointing triangle symbolises that man will retur...

I recently read up on the subject of hair and found the following information: Each hair consists of a hair shaft and a hair root. The shaft is the visible part of the hair, the hair root is in the skin. It is encased in the hair follicle, to which a small muscle is attached that can raise the hair. Many nerve fibres also end at the hair follicle. This enables us to perceive hair movements. At the...

New products are constantly coming onto the market. This is one of the characteristics of our market economy orientated society. New products are needed to open up a new market or simply to generate money. In our affluent society in particular, this happens in the food sector. Many things that we don't really need are being innovated and presented with a lot of elaborate marketing. Small snack...

The horseshoe is often regarded as a lucky charm. This is because iron used to be a valuable commodity and finding a horseshoe was considered lucky, just like finding money today. It was also believed that iron had magical powers, as horses did not seem to feel pain when shod with hot iron. This led to the belief in the magical powers of iron and thus the horseshoe as a lucky charm. Many people th...

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to explain something to someone but just couldn't find the words? Or you were abroad, couldn't speak the language, but really wanted to talk to someone, for example to order something in a restaurant? In these cases you feel handicapped or mute. It's like in dreams where you want to say something but you can't make a sound. This ca...

It is said, 'Sharpen your edges and you will bump yourself less'. But it also means 'As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.'. The iron grinds to sharpness in the second case and in the first case the sharp edges are ground blunt. Are the two statements contradictory? No, they are both true. If I sharpen my character by interacting with others, it does indeed become...

Has it ever happened to you that you wanted to get on the train at a platform, but then the carriage you had to get into was so far behind or in front that the platform was no longer there and you only managed to get on with a giant step? Or the same when getting off? Or maybe on a tram or a larger car, when moving to the shop floor etc.? Then you must have missed an intermediate step or an entry...

Chemically speaking, salt is something very simple because it consists of only two elements: Sodium and chlorine. Nevertheless, it is something special, it seems to me: on the one hand, it can be extracted from the ground and, on the other, it is found in the earth's large bodies of water, i.e. in seas and oceans. It is used by humans as a flavour enhancer in food preparation and as a preserva...

I find it interesting that when it comes to the end of the world and the transition to eternity, Jesus uses very concise comparisons. He speaks almost exclusively in parables and metaphors and comparisons in his discourses. And he compares the time in eternity to a magnificent, lavish wedding feast. However, he compares the transition there to a night-time burglary by a thief, and he and the apost...