英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

So if you want to understand how challenging the future could be for creative people, just look at what's happening with musicians right now. Up until the late '90s, people either listened to music for free on the radio or by buying a physical copy to listen to at home. But then the internet happened, and now Spotify and other streaming services give us access to an infinite catalog of music. We d...

When's your next big birthday? How do you feel about that? Do you feel you need to do something spectacular to mark it? Are you excited by the prospect, or dreading the future? 你的下一个重要生日是什么时候？你对它有什么感受？你是否觉得需要做一些特别的事情来纪念这个日子？你是对它感到兴奋，还是对未来感到担忧？ We usually think of birthdays as a time to celebrate, but they can also cause stress and w...

Ballot pops up on my screen, and the ballot itself is simple and easy to use, and I go through it, I take my time, no rush. Whenever I'm ready, I hit submit. And when I hit submit, three things happen. First, my ballot is encrypted. Second, it's anonymized. Third, I get a tracking code, like if it were a FedEx package, so I can track the progress of my ballot all the way through the process. 选票...

About a decade or so ago, I helped run a lot of the campaigns around the US to legalize Uber. And I know that now when you guys think of Uber, it's this giant corporation. But back then, we were a tiny little tech startup, and taxi was this big, politically powerful industry who really didn't like us. 大约十年前，我协助推动了美国各地让 Uber 合法化的许多宣传活动。我知道现在大家一想到 Uber，就觉得它...

So let me ask you a question. How many of you do your banking, your health care on your phones? Right, of course you do. How about like, your love life, your entertainment, travel planning, all that kind of stuff? Right. How many of you vote on your phones? That's the problem. 那我问你们一个问题。你们当中有多少人是在手机上处理银行业务或健康事务的？对吧，当然是这样。那你们的恋爱、娱乐、旅行计划这些...

You listed travel as one of your passions. 你说旅行是你的兴趣之一。 Yeah. But actually my passion is airport to airport, what happens between airports. 是的。但实际上，我热爱的部分是“从一个机场到另一个机场”，也就是机场之间发生的一切。 So you like the flying then, the journey? 所以你喜欢的是飞行本身，也就是这个旅程？ Absolutely. 完全是。 What about that do you like? 那你喜欢飞行中的什么？ I love ai...

The phenomenon that many people believe is a mass psychogenic illness, with a particularly modern twist. 许多人认为这是一种群体性心因疾病，但带有鲜明的现代特征。 The thing about mass hysteria is that it's a line of sight thing, right? Part of the reason you get the symptoms is because you see somebody having the symptoms themselves. 群体癔症的关键在于"视觉传染"——你出现症状，部分原因是你亲眼目睹了...

The spread of the contagion tends to be a function of how connected the victims are to each other. So students at a small town high school, or workers on a factory floor, or even nuns in a convent. 这种"传染"的传播程度往往取决于受害者之间的关联性。比如小镇高中的学生、工厂工人，甚至修道院的修女。 In the Middle Ages, there were several cases reported in Europe in convents, including one extended cas...

I make audio documentaries, and I recently spent some time in a town called Le Roy, New York. It's a town about 50 miles outside of Buffalo. It's a small town. Its claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of Jell-O. 我制作音频纪录片，最近在纽约州一个叫勒罗伊的小镇待了一段时间。这个镇位于布法罗市外约50英里，是个小地方，最出名的是它是果冻（Jell-O）的诞生地。 There's a museum and everything. 那里甚...

Piecing together thousands of fragments of 2,000-year-old plaster has been the ultimate archaeological jigsaw puzzle, but stunning frescoes have emerged. 将数千块两千年前的灰泥碎片拼接在一起是一个终极的考古拼图挑战，不过好在这幅拼图向人们展现出了令人惊叹的壁画。 The lower wall sections are pale pink and dotted with paint to imitate marble. Above them are bright yellow panels with soft gr...

It's been named Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which means 'Dragon Prince of Mongolia', and the University of Calgary scientists say that this species is a window into how tyrannosaurus evolved to become the powerful predators that terrorised North America and Asia until the end of the reign of the dinosaurs.  这个新物种被命名为 “蒙古汗库鲁龙”，意思是 “蒙古龙王子”。卡尔加里大学的科学家们...

Picture your dream living room. You're sitting on the sofa with the window open. What do you hear? Is it the sound of a flowing river? The murmuring of human chatter as friends enjoy a hot drink at the neighbouring cafe? A soundscape is your aural environment – everything you can hear around you, and researchers say the soundscape where you live can influence your wellbeing. 想象您梦dream以求的客...

If they find themselves in a particularly cool environment, they can enter a dormant state and survive over a year without feeding. While bedbugs can easily move around, they usually stay within 20 feet of where their human host is regularly sitting or sleeping. So new infestations are most often the result of humans accidentally transporting bugs via furniture, clothing, or other items. 如果它们...

In 1834, the British Royal Navy ship, the Chanticleer, was dealing with a terrible cockroach infestation. The ship's surgeon, however, wrote enthusiastically about the stowaways, describing them as a “most valuable insect.” Their shining characteristic? Devouring every bedbug on board. 1834年，英国皇家海军舰艇“雄鸡号”（Chanticleer）遭遇了严重的蟑螂侵扰。然而，船上的外科医生却热情洋溢地描述了这些偷...

So a final thought experiment. Imagine trying to explain your life right now to a Luddite. Better yet, just imagine trying to explain the life of some ordinary British working-class stiff whose great, great, great, something, great grandfather was out there smashing machines. And I'm not just talking about the ordinary stuff about daily living standards like indoor plumbing. I mean, indoor plumbin...

Very few people in this room have ever worried about how they were going to obtain food or shelter or heat, or how they were going to bury a child who died of diarrhea before its first birthday. Those worries are the normal condition of humanity. We escaped them only through massive chronological luck. That is a precious and totally unearned inheritance, and I think we have an obligation to pay th...

Well, I gather I'm not the only one who spends a lot of time thinking about AI these days. And by think I mean panic. 嗯，我想，最近花大量时间思考人工智能的人不止我一个。我说的“思考”指的是恐慌。 I'm not even worried about the doomsday scenarios because I have no way to assess those. I just think about what's going to happen to jobs, because even if we solve the AI safety problem, it's still going...

And finally, the ammonia in urine does indeed make for an excellent stain-fighting solution, which is why Roman launderers often placed buckets on street corners to collect the urine of passersby. That reminds me, next question! 最后，尿液中的氨确实是一种极好的去污剂，这就是为什么罗马洗衣工经常在街角放置水桶来收集路人的尿液。这让我想起了下一个问题！ A. Many Roman homes featured a vomitorium, a roo...

Are you not entertained? And this is what you think of us. O tempora! O mores! 你们难道不开心吗？你们就是这么想我们的。啊，时代！啊，传统！ Salvete! Minerva here— esteemed Roman goddess of reason, wisdom, handicrafts, and war. It’s come to my attention that many of you have been thinking about Ancient Rome... a lot. But how much do you really know? I’ll be the judge. Let’s play a little game I lik...

We come out of the womb sterile, but that doesn't last for long. All the nooks and crannies of the human body soon become home to microbial life. In this study, scientists took stool samples from 1,000 newborns. Those first colonised by Bifidobacterium longum were half as likely to end up in hospital with a lung infection than those with different starter bacteria. 我们从子宫里出来时是无菌的，但这...

Once widespread around the UK, persecution from farmers and gamekeepers meant Britain's second biggest bird of prey had disappeared from England and Wales by the mid-19th Century. 金雕曾广泛分布于英国，但由于受到农民和猎场看守人的迫害，作为英国第二大猛禽的金雕在 19 世纪中期就从英格兰和威尔士消失了。 The numbers recovered a little after the two world wars, but England's last resident golden eagle,...

Do you ever wake up with a fuzzy feeling in your head, you can't concentrate on anything, or find your memory just isn't working as it should? You're not alone. 39% of British people said they suffer brain fog on a regular basis in a FutureYou Cambridge study. But why do we get brain fog, and can we do anything to prevent it? 您是否曾经以模糊的感觉醒来，您无法专注于任何东西，或者发现记忆无法正常工...

You've probably seen the impossible happen, or at least thought you have. When a magician makes a card disappear, or throws a ball into the air, only for it to vanish, it seems that they are using amazing powers. But the magic isn't happening on stage. It's actually all inside your brain.您可能看到了不可能发生的事情，或者至少认为自己有。 当魔术师使卡片消失或将球扔到空中时，只是为了消失时，他们似乎...

One answer comes from 19th-century philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. He argues that control over our intellectual creations is crucial to the quest for personal fulfillment. For example, musicians making a new song aren't just mixing their labor with the world— they’re expressing themselves. And Hegel believes creators should have the right to control these creative extensions of their personalities. By u...

The mystical city of Ockham is famous for its college of magic. Here, genius spellcasters invent incantations and publish them in enchanted scrolls that others can purchase. As an aspiring wizard, you study these scrolls to learn from the best. Specifically, you’re interested in making mathematical magic— like spells that conjure complex shapes— for researchers to study. Often, you can’t afford th...