英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

It's becoming increasingly popular for businesses to only accept payments by card. Yes. London's bus network has been cashless since 2014. 越来越多的商家只接受刷卡支付。是的，伦敦的公交系统从 2014 年起就已经全面取消现金支付了。 And now there are many food and drink outlets in the UK that only accept payment by card. We're looking at the benefits of a cashless company. 现在英国有许多餐饮店也仅接受...

Back in March 2018, an insurance company from New Zealand started a landmark trial with its company staff. It decided to trial a four-day working week. Almost 250 staff at Perpetual Guardian took part. 早在 2018 年 3 月，新西兰一家保险公司开始对员工进行一项具有里程碑意义的试验：他们决定试行每周四天工作制。大约有 250 名来自 Perpetual Guardian 的员工参与了这项试验。 We're looking at the pros and con...

I'm talking to Simon. Hi Simon. Hi. 我正在和西蒙说话。嗨，西蒙。嗨。 Who is hoping to become a full-time freelance sports writer. Am I right about that? Yes, just about, yes. 他希望成为一名全职自由体育作家。我这样说对吗？是的，差不多，是的。 What kind of sports do you write about? Well, at the moment I only write about football. 你写哪种运动？嗯，目前我只写足球。 That's my specialist sub...

Hey, WorkLifers, it's Adam here, and I have some exciting news. 嘿，WorkLifers，我是 Adam，有个令人兴奋的消息要告诉你们。 Last year, by popular demand, we started releasing more conversations and debates with my favorite thinkers, creators, doers, and leaders. 去年，根据大家的强烈要求，我们开始发布更多与我最喜爱的思想家、创作者、实干家和领导者的对话与讨论。 The goal is to figure out what makes the...

You know that saying, move fast and break things? I do. Well, we say move fast and fix things, because in our experience, speed and fixing go hand in hand. Absolutely. 你知道那句“快速行动，打破常规”的说法吗？ 我知道。而我们说的是“快速行动，迅速修复”，因为根据我们的经验，速度和解决问题是相辅相成的。的确如此。 Speed's gotten a dangerous reputation, but it signals that you take a problem seriously, a...

We belong to an organisation that puts you in touch with pet-sitters when you go away. People who can look after your house and animals while you're on holiday. And it was coming up for renewal, wasn't it? The subscription, yes. 我们加入了一个组织，当你外出时，它会帮你联系宠物看护的人。他们可以在你度假期间照顾你的房子和动物。而我们的会员马上要续费了，是吗？对，就是订阅服务。 Every year. Fine. But...

Iceland has no shortage of natural dangers – volcanic eruptions, glacial floods, scaldingly hot springs and bitterly cold winters. But it is at least one of the few places on Earth where humans don't have to worry about mosquitoes – until now. 冰岛总是有各种各样的自然危险，那里有火山喷发、冰川导致的洪水、滚烫的温泉和苦寒冰冷的冬季。不过，冰岛至少是地球上少数几个人类不必担心蚊子的地方之一，直到现在...

"No pain no gain!" That's a mindset applied to many things – from working long hours when starting a new business, to studying hard for an important exam. And gym culture often encourages people to push themselves to their limits, leading people to have an all or nothing attitude, where they feel they must either have an extremely tough fitness regime, or do nothing at all. But what if it doesn't...

We're talking about a restaurant. A restaurant that became the top-rated restaurant in London. Except that the restaurant was a fake. 我们要谈的是一家餐厅——一家成为伦敦最高评分餐厅的餐厅。只不过，这家餐厅是假的。 It didn't exist. Yes, so we ask who did it, why he did it and how. Well, let's start with who, Richard. 它根本不存在。那么我们来问：是谁干的？为什么要这么做？又是怎么做到的？我们先从“谁”...

Hey, what's up guys, MKBHD here, still in Las Vegas, and I've seen a lot of self-driving tech so far here at CES, like if you walk through any of the halls with cars in them, there's tons of like open room concepts and things like that, but they feel kind of useless, you know, like as long as they're still in a concept phase, they don't really feel real yet. 大家好，我是 MKBHD，现在还在拉斯维加斯...

Imagine you're the mayor of a small, rural town. Over the years the houses have become empty as people move to the city for employment. An earthquake 50 years ago caused terrible damage and forced more families to leave their homes. 想象一下，你是一座偏远小镇的市长。多年来，随着人们为了工作迁往城市，镇上的房屋逐渐空置。而且在五十年前，一场地震造成了严重破坏，迫使更多家庭离开家园。 And you find you...

In the UK, over 3 million people are vegetarian. That's 7% of the population. And in addition to that, a further 600,000 people, less than 2% of the population, are vegan. 在英国，有超过三百万人是素食者，占全国人口的7%。除此之外，还有大约六十万人（不到2%）是纯素食者。 Yeah, now 600,000 is not a lot of people, but it's 4 more, 4 times more than in 2014. And half of these made the change just last y...

Very recently, a restaurant in Manchester, in the north-west of England, won the city's first Michelin star in 40 years. We talk about the Michelin Guide and the effect of winning one of its prestigious stars. Yes, because this restaurant, Mana it's called, opened less than a year ago. 最近，位于英格兰西北部的曼彻斯特有一家餐厅获得了该市四十年来的第一颗米其林星。我们今天要谈的，就是米其林指南以及...

Sawflies are named after the saw-like organ used by the females to lay eggs in plants. The insects want to avoid killing the plants, which provide food for their larvae. 锯蜂以它身上一种像锯子一样的器官命名，雌性锯蜂会用这个锯状器官在植物内部产卵。这种昆虫会尽量避免杀死植物，因为植物可以为它们的幼虫提供食物。 The researchers discovered that small serrations on the sawfly's teeth worked with larger...

When you hear the word 'carnivore', do you think of lions and bears and sharks, or humans? Steak for breakfast, chicken breasts for lunch and salmon and lamb for dinner. No veg and no carbs. This is just a typical day for someone on the carnivore diet. It's a meal plan that only allows meat, poultry, eggs, fish, seafood, dairy products and water. It's animal-based opposed to plant-based. But why a...

Sporting events and organisations have long looked to sponsorship for a way of surviving. For many, without financial support of sponsors, they simply wouldn't be able to compete. We're talking about one particular area of concern in sponsorship. 体育赛事和组织长期以来都依靠赞助来维持生存。对许多赛事而言，如果没有赞助商的资金支持，他们根本无法继续竞争。我们今天要谈的是赞助领域中的一个特别值得关注...

The British Pest Control Association says its members have recorded an increase in complaints about rat activity around the UK. Cleankill, a company that operates in the south of England, says it's seen a 20% rise in call-outs about rats in the last two years, and climate change may be playing a role. 英国虫害防治协会称，其成员记录了英国各地对老鼠的活动情况投诉数量的增长。一家在英格兰南部地区开展...

After MIT Professor Joseph Weizenbaum created the chatbot Eliza, he became concerned that people who had used the programme started to act as if it was human. This might sound like a modern problem, but Eliza was created in 1966. If a programme from the 1960s was capable of tricking people into thinking it was human, what effect could the large-language-model-based chatbots of the 2020s have? 麻省...

For our last business podcast, we talked about the big PLCs, the companies traded on the stock exchange. 在上一期商业播客中，我们谈到了大型公众有限公司（PLCs），也就是在证券交易所上市的公司。 We're talking about the stock exchange. Richard, what is it? 我们现在要谈的是证券交易所。Richard，它是什么？ The stock exchange is also called the stock market and essentially it is a market. 证券交易所也叫股...

People often ask me what we do, and I reply by saying we have an internet business. But we don't actually have a... we're not actually a company, are we, Richard? 人们经常问我我们是做什么的，我通常回答说我们有一家互联网业务。但实际上我们并没有……我们其实不是一家公司，对吧，Richard？ No we're not, we are going to talk about companies, in particular PLCs. So, OK, what is a PLC? A PLC, a public limite...

We're talking about product placement. 我们在谈植入式广告。 Product placement, also known as embedded marketing, has grown both on TV and on the big screen. 植入式广告，也称为嵌入式行销，在电视和大银幕上都越来越常见。 OK, OK, Jackie, I've heard of product placement but what exactly is it? 好，好，Jackie，我听说过植入式广告，但它到底是什么呢？ Well, basically it means a deliberate inclusion of a pr...

We're talking about Instagram and why it's a useful platform for businesses. You know my first question, of course, Jackie. I know nothing about Instagram. 我们在谈论 Instagram，以及为什么它对企业来说是一个有用的平台。当然，你知道我第一个问题是什么，Jackie。我对 Instagram 一无所知。 What is it? Well, it's an American photo and video sharing social networking service and it's owned by Facebook. 它...

In an underground car park in Paris, I encountered something I didn't expect. I had to wipe the spores off my camera. I was in a huge mushroom farm. 在巴黎的一处地下停车场，我遇到了一件意想不到的事情。我不得不用手擦去相机上的孢子，因为我置身于一个巨大的蘑菇农场中。 So why was it down here? When housing blocks like this sprouted up in Paris in the 1960s and 70s, it was common practice to also build...

Huntington's is one of the most brutal and devastating of all diseases. It's caused by a faulty gene which progressively destroys brain cells, which then affects all parts of the body. Symptoms tend to first appear in your 30s or 40s, leading to death within 20 years. 亨廷顿病是最凶残和最具破坏性的疾病之一。这种疾病是由一种基因缺陷引起的，这种基因缺陷会渐进性地破坏脑细胞，进而影响身体的所有部位。...

Have you ever been alone in a room, heard someone coming, and been able to identify who it was based solely on the recognisable stomp of their shoes? Maybe you've experienced seeing a group in the distance, too far to recognise faces, but you're absolutely sure one blurry figure is your friend because of the way they're swinging their arms when they walk. Research suggests that a person's movement...