SCOTT SIMON, HOST: An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has caused 177 suspected deaths out of about 750 cases, according to the World Health Organization. Health officials warn the risk of rapid spreading is now high, and as of this morning, there are now five cases in Uganda. The strain is rare. There is no approved vaccine or treatment. The outbreak is in eastern Congo, where multiple armed groups and national armies operate, and that makes containment of the disease extremely difficult. Reporter Emmet Livingstone is in Kinshasa. Emmet, thanks so much for being with us. EMMET LIVINGSTONE: Thank you for having me on. SIMON: What's the situation like at the moment in Congo? LIVINGSTONE: Well, Ebola appears to have been circulating widely here for a while and circulating without being noticed. The first known case was of a nurse who developed symptoms on April 24 in the provincial capital of Ituri province in the east. Now, because she developed symptoms on April 24, that means that the disease was spreading for at least several weeks, and, likely, several months beforehand. She unfortunately died afterwards, and she was buried in a gold mining town called Mongbwalu, which is about 50 miles away from the provincial capital. And Congo's health ministry has noted that there was a spate of deaths in Mongbwalu in April, which some locals thought had been caused by witchcraft. It was only last week, by which point dozens of people had already died, that an Ebola outbreak was declared. And since then, confirmed cases have popped up in other provinces of Congo, including North Kivu and South Kivu and even, as you noted, in the neighboring country of Uganda. So it's already spread quite far. SIMON: Tell us, please, about the town that seems to be at the epicenter of the outbreak. LIVINGSTONE: Sure. So maybe, just first, generally a bit about Ituri province because this is one of the most cut off and violent provinces of Congo. There are lots of active armed groups, including some of the country's most brutal, like the CODECO and the ADF, which is linked to the Islamic State. And the epicenter of the current outbreak is in Ituri, and specifically in a town called Mongbwalu, which was, until very recently, considered almost a no-go zone. It's gotten a little bit better now because the Congolese army has been there for a little while. As I said, it's a gold mining town. It's in a remote area, and it's got all the problems of poor mining towns in Congo. People have very little money. They live in unsanitary conditions, and food is really expensive. It's also hard to access, so the whole area generally is considered pretty insecure. SIMON: What are some of the difficulties that healthcare workers are facing as they try to get to the region? LIVINGSTONE: So one of the biggest difficulties is distrust in the local community. People aren't used to outsiders coming in. Last night, a tent in an Ebola treatment center was burnt down. Because it's so remote, tracking cases is very difficult. It's difficult to persuade patients to isolate. And then there's a problem of testing. Samples have to be transported to the capital, Kinshasa, which is over a thousand miles away. All of this is compounded by U.S. aid cuts, which have definitely had an impact, according to Congo's health minister, Roger Kamba. LIVINGSTONE: So the health minister said, essentially, that the virus knows no borders. It knows no race or tribe. Borders do exist for people on the ground, though, and this is going to be one of the major problems. A large portion of where the outbreak is occurring is happening in an area that's governed by a rival administration, run by rebels from the M23 group. The main airport in eastern Congo is Goma, which is closed because it's in a city run by the rebels. Regional borders are also now starting to either close or become more restricted. Just the other day, I was very lucky to get one of the very last flights from Uganda into Congo. And this is becoming a major issue, not just for Congo, but for all countries in the region. SIMON: Reporter Emmet Livingstone in Kinshasa. Thank you so much. LIVINGSTONE: Thank you. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Hey friends, it's Rosie. Welcome back to Radio Headspace. There's a quote by William Blake that's followed me for years. I was angry with my friend. I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe. I told it not, my wrath did grow. I used to think that that poem was dramatic. Then I lived it. There was a relationship in my life, not explosive, not chaotic, just one of those steady, loving connections where something small began to feel, you know, a little off. It wasn't one big moment. It was subtle. A comment here, a pattern there, then a feeling in my chest that tightened just slightly every time a certain thing happened. And I noticed it. But instead of naming it, I swallowed it. Because I didn't want to be difficult. I didn't want to disrupt the peace. I didn't want to be the one that made things heavy. So I told myself I was being mature, that I was flexible and evolved. Look at me choosing harmony. But harmony built on silence isn't harmony. It's pressure. Underneath that quiet exterior, resentment was quietly fermenting. And resentment is sneaky. It doesn't burst through the door. It surreptitiously seeps under it. I found myself being short, withdrawing, overanalyzing, and feeling misunderstood, even though I hadn't actually said what was true. And that's when I realized something about responsibility. We often think responsibility means being good, keeping things smooth, not rocking the boat. But real responsibility is something else entirely. It's response-ability. The willingness to respond honestly to what's happening inside of you. Not just what's expected of you, not just what keeps things comfortable, but what's real. Psychologically, when we suppress emotions, especially anger or hurt, they don't disappear. Research shows emotional suppression actually increases stress, raises cortisol levels, and decreases relational intimacy. Silence doesn't preserve connection, it distorts it. Because when we don't speak what's true, the other person isn't really relating to us. They're relating to a filtered version. And love has nothing real to meet. That was the turning point for me. One night, instead of pretending I was fine, I sat down and said something simple. This might not be a big deal to you, but it's been sitting with me. I didn't accuse. I didn't make it some big drama. All I did was describe what I was feeling. And do you know what happened? The sky didn't fall and the relationship didn't implode. In fact, something softened. Because responsibility isn't about blame. It isn't about controlling someone else's behavior. It's about owning your inner experience. It's saying, hey, this is what's happening in me. I don't need you to fix it, but I need you to know it. That's not weakness. That's integrity. Mindfulness plays a powerful role here. Before we speak, we have to know what's true. That means pausing long enough to feel the discomfort without rushing to either suppress it or weaponize it. Sometimes we don't speak because we're afraid of conflict. Sometimes we don't speak because we're afraid we're wrong. Sometimes we don't speak because we're afraid we'll be too much. But what if not speaking is the thing that slowly disconnects us? There's a difference between being peaceful and being silent. Peaceful is grounded. Silent is guarded. And relationships need grounded honesty. So here's something gentle to try. Bring to mind a relationship that matters to you. Notice something you've been carrying quietly. Not the explosive thing. Just a subtle thing. Now, in a private space, maybe in your car, maybe in the shower, maybe just sitting still, say it out loud. Don't rehearse it. Don't refine it. Just let it exist. And perhaps you can just fill in the blanks to these sentences. I feel hurt when... I feel small when... I feel unseen when. Notice what happens in your body. Sometimes simply naming it to yourself releases half the charge. And here's the important part. You don't have to decide right now whether to share it outwardly. Responsibility starts internally. When you're clear, calm, and rooted, then you can choose how to respond. Love doesn't need performance. It needs something real to meet. And often, the most responsible thing we can do is to stop pretending we're unaffected. 🪴更多英语听力和文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

LEILA FADEL, HOST: Many teen boys spend a lot of time in front of the mirror. It's a rite of passage. But some boys are taking part in a very risky trend to change their image. NPR's Alana Wise reports. ALANA WISE, BYLINE: There's caring about your looks, and then there's looksmaxxing, a viral movement that urges boys and young men to radically improve their appearance. Some of the more benign advice offered in this online community revolves around gym tips and skin care, like this from user Michael Hoover on YouTube. MICHAEL HOOVER: I tried using all of the most popular looksmaxxing glow-up tips to see if they would make me more attractive. WISE: But more extreme tactics call for elective surgery, steroid use or even a practice called bone smashing - hitting yourself in the face with a hammer in a misguided attempt to improve your jawline. Here's controversial looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular. CLAVICULAR: I'll just lay down in my bed and brace my head so that there's no CTE and then smash my zygos so that they grow. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Oh. WISE: Doctors say bone smashing is ineffective, dangerous and can cause permanent damage. Dr. Gene Beresin has worked in child psychiatry for 40 years. He says the looksmaxxing movement is one of the most troubling trends he's seen. GENE BERESIN: The combination of young male development with the emphasis on appearance and social media is a very dangerous combination because it can result in significant physical as well as mental health consequences. WISE: Also troubling is the movement's origins. Looksmaxxing grew out of the incel community. That is involuntarily celebrate men who blame women for their lack of happiness and sexual fulfillment. Maximizing their looks became a way to attract female attention, but looksmaxxing was rife with negative undertones from the start. BERESIN: You're scored from being subhuman to what's a normie or a norm to Chad. And Chad is the - unfortunately, it's the essence of white supremacy. WISE: That means to be a Chad, you have to meet European beauty standards - sharp-jawed, tall and white. Beresin says there are signs parents can look out for to see if their sons are dipping into problematic behaviors. BERESIN: Do they complain that they're not looking good enough? Are they comparing themselves to others? Is there a change in their eating habits? WISE: Beresin says it's important to speak early and often about body image and to approach without judgment. But it can be hard to get boys to open up, says Valerie Adams-Bass. She studies adolescent identity and body image, particularly among Black youth. VALERIE ADAMS-BASS: Males are not socialized at home and certainly not in peer groups to say, I'm having a tough day. Right? They're not socialized to say, you know, I'm really struggling with what to wear, how to look, how to have a conversation. WISE: She suggests taking an interest in their passions, like maybe video games, as a way to introduce deeper conversations. ADAMS-BASS: Where you can begin to sort of break down, why is that the avatar you've chosen? Right? Why is it that you're choosing these exercises for the gym? Why is it that you are socializing with this particular group of young men? WISE: Adams-Bass says making these subtle introductions can help soften boys to the idea of talking more openly. ADAMS-BASS: It may not all come at once, but I do believe that you have to. And this takes work, right? So - takes work to break down the walls of adolescence. WISE: Her big piece of practical advice? She suggests parents try to redirect their sons' focus from their appearance and image-obsessed social media to healthier outlets like sports, art and coding. Alana Wise, NPR News, Washington. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

SCOTT DETROW, HOST: Even as relations between the world's two largest economies get more tense, some young Americans are becoming obsessed with China. In the latest word of the week, Ashish Valentine delves into the meaning and story behind Chinamaxxing (ph). ASHISH VALENTINE, BYLINE: Open up TikTok or Instagram in the U.S., and you've likely seen people talk about maxing - internet slang for going all in on something. People like Adrien Dervaux are experts in looksmaxxing (ph). ADRIEN DERVAUX: In order for you to get a sharper jaw line, it is through elevating your hyoid (ph) bone. VALENTINE: And channels like Matt's Crypto can teach you all about wealthmaxxing (ph). MATT: In terms of the ROI on these coins, if we invested it today. A hyper liquid price of 100 to $250. VALENTINE: Now, the latest maxing trend has people adopting Chinese lifestyle habits like drinking hot water. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) HASAN PIKER: ...On the yacht. I'm here in Shanghai. We've been Chinamaxxing all day. VALENTINE: Livestreamers Hasan Piker and Will Neff went to China last year, showcasing high-tech big cities, like Shanghai and Chongqing, to millions of viewers. UNIDENTIFIED TOUR GUIDE: Guys, we will arrive at the train station. PIKER: Wow. WILL NEFF: Whoa. It's so big. PIKER: It looks like an airport. VALENTINE: The live streamers' trip quickly became yet another culture war flashpoint back at home. Some praised their street interviews with ordinary Chinese people while others accused them of being used by America's top rival as a soft power propaganda tool. Recent polls often show Americans are increasingly divided on whether to cooperate or compete with China. SHAOYU YUAN: When China becomes part of American identity politics, the public naturally splits along the party lines. VALENTINE: This is Shaoyu Yuan, a New York-based scholar who writes about Chinese soft power. He says Americans are also getting information about China in two very different ways. YUAN: People who mainly get China through politics and security headlines move toward a threat framing. And people who get China through daily exposure and peer-to-peer culture tend to have a more mixed view. VALENTINE: Yi-Ling Liu, who writes about tech in China, says the Chinamaxxing trend in America says much more about the U.S. than it does about China. YI-LING LIU: Americans' perspective of China has shifted, and I think it's really rooted in the U.S.'s own insecurities about its dysfunction. VALENTINE: In other words, young Americans are channeling frustrations with their declining standard of living. She says the Chinamaxxing trend is perhaps a rare moment for connection across an ever expanding geopolitical divide. For NPR News, Ashish Valentine in Taipei. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

EMILY FENG, HOST: Earth has a new set of constellations... PERSON #1: Three, two, one. FENG: ...Satellite constellations. Billionaire space entrepreneurs are launching tens of thousands of satellites into orbit. PERSON #1: Go SpaceX. Go Starlink. PERSON #2: And lift off of Falcon 9. PERSON #3: And lift off of Falcon 9. Go SpaceX. Go Starlink. FENG: These networks run major internet services like Starlink or Global Positioning data, or GPS. And all these rockets are having an impact on the Earth's atmosphere. Eloise Marais is a professor at University College London and author of a new study all about those satellite mega constellations. Welcome. ELOISE MARAIS: Hi. FENG: Professor, tell me about these launches. What is the impact of all these satellite launches? MARAIS: Yeah, there's two sources of air pollution that come from these satellite launches. The rockets that are launching satellites into space are producing pollutants that are being released into all layers of the atmosphere as the rocket ascends. But then also when these satellites reach end of life, they need to be discarded. And the only viable way we have to discard these satellites is to burn them through the higher layers of the atmosphere and hope that entirely disintegrate. FENG: What impacts on the climate do they have? MARAIS: This is a little bit unusual. We have particles that are sort of small, suspended pieces of material in the atmosphere that come from these rocket launches called black carbon or soot particles. These are being put higher up in the atmosphere, and they're actually blocking some of the sun's incoming rays and cooling the atmosphere down. So in that way, they're a little bit like a geo engineering experiment, some of these proposed ideas to try and cool the lower layers of the atmosphere. FENG: Wow. So there's so many soot particles high up in the atmosphere that they're able to cool Earth down. MARAIS: Yeah. FENG: How much are they cooling Earth down by? MARAIS: Currently, not a lot. The amount of black carbon that's produced by these rockets - mostly Falcon 9 rockets that SpaceX launches - is very, very small in comparison to pollution sources closer to the surface of the Earth, like ships and cars and other sources that produce black carbon. But because they stay there for so long, 2 1/2 to three years, the impact is actually greater. So the longer a pollutant stays in the atmosphere, the bigger the effect they have. So even though it's a small effect now, if the space industry grows, it will very quickly become a bigger impact. FENG: There've been a couple of ideas floated around where people intentionally want to put particles high up in the atmosphere to cool Earth down. So I have to ask, if this is being done accidentally because of satellite launches, is that cooling down a good thing? MARAIS: It sounds like a good thing. That's why we're debating the idea of geo engineering as a way to very quickly cool the planet to try and reverse some of the warming that's happening as a result of greenhouse gases, but we haven't done this yet. We haven't done it to scale because there are so many unintended consequences of geo engineering the planet. We could start to deplete ozone in the higher layers of the atmosphere. We could change circulation patterns of the atmosphere, these sort of processes that move air hundreds of kilometers in the higher layers of the atmosphere. So it is an accidental geo engineering experiment without the careful ethical forethought that's needed before we adopt geo engineering. FENG: OK, back here on Earth, is there anything governments should be doing to regulate in the short term things like satellite launches? MARAIS: I think the issue is that we don't really have a solid regulatory framework to try and govern how we use space responsibly and sustainably and ethically. And unfortunately, is - it is a shared space, so it does require governments to work together, which at this stage does seem to be a big challenge. FENG: That is Eloise Marais, professor at University College London. Thank you. MARAIS: Thank you very much. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Alexi Pappas | TED • Nov 2025 I was one month out from my Olympic race in Rio, the 10,000 meters, when I couldn't hit my splits in a very important workout. And I thought, what am I going to do? Am I good enough? I cried in lane one. Was I even worth it? If I couldn't do this in front of my five teammates, could I do it in front of thousands of people on the world stage? I begged my watch to change its mind when my coach, who was also an Olympian, turned to me and said something calmly and confidently, "Take your watch off, " he said. "What?" "Take your watch off." He never said this to me before, so I thought maybe I wasn't good enough. And he said, "No, Lex, it's the 'rule of thirds.'" "What's the 'rule of thirds'?" I asked. And then he told me the best advice I've ever gotten in my entire life. The rule of thirds is that when you're chasing a dream or doing anything hard, you're supposed to feel good a third of the time, OK a third of the time and crappy a third of the time. If you felt too good all the time, it might be a sign that the ratio's off, and you're not pushing yourself enough to go beyond the boundaries of your potential and to the great unknown. You might need to dial things up. But if you feel too bad all the time, that might mean that you are fatiguing or doing something unsustainable, and you might need to actually dial things back. If you're within this ratio, then the bad days aren't bad. They just mean you're chasing a dream. That day, my coach had me take my watch off because it wasn't about pace, it was about effort. And I love my bad days now. So this rule has really changed my perspective that day and for the rest of my life. That day, I got back on the track, and I finished the workout giving 100 percent effort even when I didn't feel 100 percent fast. And then I went to the Olympics, and I broke a national record, and I ran a personal best. And it was awesome. It was awesome. The Olympics is awesome. My coach was right, OK? He was right. And this rule has not only helped me in my running, but it's how I live the rest of my life. It's how I wrote my book "Bravey," it's how I've directed three movies and it's even how I look at myself day to day, how I feel, how I think about my mood and my emotions. OK, a few years after the Olympics -- I guess I wasn't done running. I went and entered this big ultramarathon. And that means it's over a marathon. And it was not just any race. It was the hardest race in the country, the Leadville 100-mile race in the Rocky Mountains. And it's 16 times the distance of my Olympic race, over 15,000 feet of elevation. And only half the people who start finish this race, statistically. You go all night, it's wild. And so it's the opposite of the Olympics, right? It's not about pace or time or place. It's about being present and just continuing to move. And there was no coach out there to monitor my thirds. And during this race, I felt every feeling under the sun and under the moon. And you know, it was like I was a brave, capable voyager in one moment, and then I was barely hanging on in others. A past me would have felt really down about the really hard moments. And there were some really hard moments in the woods. But now I understood this was a part of a bigger picture of success. Now in the same race, there was a point at which I felt like I couldn't run anymore. Like, I felt like I had metal rods in my legs, and I had to walk. And I actually walked the last 40 miles of that race through the night, all night. But I didn't give up. And it really taught me to let go of control and just believe in the process and be really, really present. If we step back, the rule of thirds can help us see the picture of a bigger dream-chasing journey and evaluate and assess. And in a moment of pain, it can help us stay on our own team, even when there's no coach or anyone else there to tell you that it was meant to be this way. Instead of asking yourself to be the best, ask yourself to try your best and don't give up. OK? It's a bad day. It's not a bad life. I think that that day that my coach taught me the rule of thirds must have been his good third, because that day he taught me how to understand and coach myself. Thank you. 🗣️更多文本和视频见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST: We know that AI is costing some people their jobs, but it's also speeding the growth of new businesses, especially among Gen Z entrepreneurs, meaning people under age 30. NPR's Andrea Hsu reports. ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: Coffee is a thing in Justus Shaw's family. Four of his five sisters have worked as baristas, and at home in Nashville... JUSTUS SHAW: We had - always had espresso machines, and we were always making drinks for ourselves and friends and guests. And so the table talk was always like, oh, we should open up a coffee shop one day. HSU: About this time last year, he turned that table talk into a mobile espresso bar. He calls it Shaws Coffee Cart. SHAW: My sisters obviously helped me work it. HSU: After all, they knew how to do latte art. SHAW: That was great, helping support, work for free, all that kind of stuff. We were all in it together. HSU: Also helping out for 20 bucks a month was an assistant named Claude, the AI bot. SHAW: Big Claude guy, so shoutout Claude. HSU: Shaw found himself consulting his chatbot friend about, well, everything. SHAW: There's taxes. There's legal stuff. There's employees. HSU: Without AI, Shaw says, he would have been forced to... SHAW: Either consult people or just do a lot of research to try to find the answer to one question. HSU: AI, he says, has helped him grow faster. Aaron Terrazas is an economist with Gusto. That's an HR management company whose payroll platform is used by half a million small businesses, including Shaw's. AARON TERRAZAS: You know, you think about a young startup in the past, having to hire lawyers is very expensive. Having to hire admins was a luxury. HSU: Now, Terrazas says, many new business owners are finding those are no longer barriers. Gusto surveyed 1,000 people who opened businesses in 2025. A majority said AI made the process significantly faster or less expensive. TERRAZAS: It's more of an accelerator than, you know, opening up brand-new opportunities. HSU: Gusto also found the younger the entrepreneur, the more likely they were to rely on AI. More than 70% of Gen Zers used AI to launch their businesses, compared with just over half of Gen Xers. Justus Shaw, who's 25, says it wasn't something he really thought about. Chatbots were already part of his life. SHAW: Obviously, when, like, you know, ChatGPT first came out, I was on that trend and jumped on that and was using it for - I don't know - anything, really. HSU: And it's worked for him. After 10 months, Shaw now has two coffee carts. Revenue has hit six figures, and he does four to six events a week - corporate gatherings, graduation parties, church events, even weddings. He gets inquiries over text, Instagram and email. He says Claude has made responding easy. SHAW: So if I'm going to send them a DM, it's going to give me something a little bit shorter, you know, a little more to the point. If it's going to be doing an email, it's going to be a little bit longer, a little bit more formal. You know, it can throw emojis in there. HSU: Because who doesn't love an emoji? Now, as for whether AI is taking jobs or helping to create them, it's a little fuzzy. Justus Shaw hasn't hired an assistant. He hasn't paid a lawyer or an accountant, but because his sisters have moved on to other things, he has hired four baristas. SHAW: It's a part-time structure. You know, it could be a random 2 o'clock on a Friday, and it could be a 7 a.m. or a 7 p.m. on Monday. HSU: At the end of the day, Shaw is still very much a people person. He loves doing pop-ups downtown on the weekends. SHAW: One of my favorite things is just people walking by, getting to meet people, and family and friends and strangers getting to come up and buy a coffee. HSU: Coffee that, at least for now, is still crafted by a human. Andrea Hsu, NPR News. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

(Yaël Ksander) Humans and chimpanzees share a common evolutionary ancestor that lived about 6 million years ago. Their genomes are extremely similar and only a little more than 1% different. Yet the two animals differ dramatically in many ways. The human brain is three times as big as the chimp's brain, and its cerebral cortex contains more than twice as many nerve cells. What is it about our genome that accounts for this difference? Earlier this century, researchers began to identify where these functional differences in our genome lie. They were surprised to find that most lay in parts of the genome that don't contain instructions for making proteins, and were once dismissed as junk DNA. Some of this junk DNA is now believed to regulate the activities of genes that do encode proteins. In 2021, a team of Swedish scientists published an investigation into what one of the uniquely human parts of this portion of the genome does. In their study, the researchers made use of a technique from stem cell research. The technique causes cells from the skin to revert into stem cells, like those in an embryo, which can then be programmed to develop as brain cells. Using various genome editing techniques, they then introduced changes into human cells to functionally mimic what was observed in chimpanzees, and changes into chimpanzee cells to functionally mimic humans. The researchers found that the effects of the changes in gene regulation caused by the junk DNA were driving the development of the brain cells. Besides understanding the evolution of human intelligence, the researchers hoped to shed light on brain disorders such as schizophrenia. 👨‍🔬 更多英语听力和文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST: Clips have conquered the internet, as in short excerpts of longer videos. They're everywhere on social media, and behind the clips are many, many clippers who are paid by the view. NPR's Bobby Allyn spoke to one of them. BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Emrah Bayraktar was scraping by in Belgium doing a little bit of everything - cleaning cars, working a night shift in a warehouse, making sandwiches at Subway during the day. When he wasn't working, 25-year-old Bayraktar would take out his iPhone and turn long interviews of influencers into snippets and post them to Instagram. EMRAH BAYRAKTAR: And then one random night, I saw a notification saying that I earned $12, and I was like, OK, cool. This is OK. And then two weeks later, I made $2,500. ALLYN: Bayraktar was getting paid when someone would buy something from a link he placed in a video clip. He got so good at it that he started doing it for other influencers and entrepreneurs. Eventually, he quit his job to be a full-time clipper. BAYRAKTAR: I've saw a lot of clippers that quit after a week because they didn't get any views, but I've been at this game for more than three years. ALLYN: Bayraktar now has a YouTube page where he teaches people how to make clipping into a side hustle or even a lucrative career - set to dramatic violins, of course. BAYRAKTAR: I generated over 1.1 million followers, not just on one account, but across six different clipping pages. I grew all of them past 100K followers. Some even passed 200K followers. And I'm going to show you exactly how I did it. ALLYN: It's not the first time somebody on YouTube has pitched a way for you to get rich quick, but thousands of people have followed his lead. And that's because there are now marketplaces where agencies upload videos and allow anyone to clip them for cash. Some recent bounties include an agency offering a dollar per thousand views of clips of Major League Baseball games and an artificial intelligence startup offering $25 every thousand views of clips about its product. The founder of a clipping agency told me that clipping is the modern form of a TV ad - grab a slice of people's attention as they scroll. Bayraktar agrees with that. He says instead of going through Google or Meta to advertise, people are now just posting a flood of clips to social media. He says the pitch to brands usually goes something like this. BAYRAKTAR: We can create a mass clipping campaign. We have a network of clippers. Let us post all of that content, and you don't post videos on Meta ads. You don't waste money on that. ALLYN: Not everyone is buying into the clipping economy. Longtime advertising executive Lou Paskalis of AJL Advisory says clippers are creating a lose-lose-lose situation. LOU PASKALIS: That doesn't really satisfy the consumer, doesn't really deliver good value to the advertiser, and strips the originator of the content an opportunity to monetize that content and pay the individual who created it. So it's a perfectly terrible problem. ALLYN: Analyst Ed Elson recently published a Substack piece called "The Clip Economy," arguing that the measure of success is no longer how many people watch an episode of something but how many people saw the clips. ED ELSON: They are essentially taking over the entire media ecosystem. ALLYN: Elson is the co-host of the podcast "Prof G Markets" with New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway. Elson says clips are increasingly a path for people to jump-start their careers as influencers. He's learning that for himself in real time. ELSON: Something changed for me when a few people in a row came up to me on the street. They said, hey, you're Ed Elson. You're the "Prof G Markets" guy. I said, oh, yeah, yeah. You listen to the podcast? They said, oh, no, I don't listen to the podcast, but I love your clips. ALLYN: So his goal now? To make his podcast into even more clips. Bobby Allyn, NPR News. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST: Where do you shop for groceries? It's becoming harder to put an affordable meal on the table in the U.S., so more Americans are looking for deals. In the first installment of our series What's Eating America, where we look at issues of food and affordability, NPR's Joe Hernandez tells us about the rise of budget grocery stores. JOE HERNANDEZ, BYLINE: Shopping at Aldi was different for Rachel Negro-Henderson when she started coming here regularly early in the pandemic. RACHEL NEGRO-HENDERSON: You'd run into somebody from, like, your neighborhood here, and they would be like, oh, I'm just grabbing a tomato. It was like, almost like there was, like, a shame about coming here. HERNANDEZ: But she says attitudes changed after food prices went up. NEGRO-HENDERSON: Now it's like everyone's like, yeah, I'm saving money. I might as well come here. I'm getting the same product. HERNANDEZ: On a recent Monday morning, Negro-Henderson is one of the first customers through the door at the Aldi in Belmar, New Jersey. She's here to do her weekly shopping for her family of five. NEGRO-HENDERSON: So we're going to be doing shrimp and pasta. It's a lemon pasta this week. We're doing a big chicken pan meal - 'cause it's gonna be rainy - with lots of vegetables. HERNANDEZ: The German-owned discount grocer has become one of the family's go-to stores for food shopping. Negro-Henderson's husband, Rich Henderson, says they were drawn in by Aldi's low prices and its GMO-free store-brand items. RICH HENDERSON: And then, the more we shopped here - the more products we tried - we realized quality-wise, you're not really sacrificing anything. HERNANDEZ: Food prices across the country are way up. Inflation, the threat of tariffs, the war in Iran and corporate cost-cutting measures are all making a typical trip to the grocery store more expensive. Grocery industry analyst Phil Lempert says many shoppers have just started going where the prices are lowest. PHIL LEMPERT: Consumers are just to the point where - give us a break. This is food. You don't screw around with our food. HERNANDEZ: A survey released by the market research firm AlixPartners in December found that a majority of respondents expected to spend as much or more on food this year, but also said they intended to seek out cheaper groceries and avoid impulse buying. That's created an opening for budget grocery stores like Aldi, Lidl and Grocery Outlet. LEMPERT: Which are basically lower-cost grocery stores because they don't have the overhead that your conventional 40,000-square-foot store has. They have less employees. HERNANDEZ: There's also warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam's Club, which boast huge discounts and have been talking up their food offerings too, like in this 2024 Costco ad. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: In this corner, we have fresh produce, bakery and meat. HERNANDEZ: Shoppers are also warming up to less expensive store brands. According to the Private Label Manufacturers Association, sales of store-brand items last year increased nearly three times faster than sales of national name-brand products. But that's not to say that there aren't drawbacks to budget grocery stores. As much as Rachel Negro-Henderson loves Aldi, she says she gets some ingredients at other supermarkets or her local deli. NEGRO-HENDERSON: There's still things, as a good New Jersey Italian, that I will only buy from another store - lunch meat, stuff like that. HERNANDEZ: But the limited selection doesn't seem to be slowing down interest in the store either. Aldi says it brought in 17 million new U.S. customers last year and opened nearly 200 new stores. Phil Lempert says it's a sign that frugal grocery-buying habits are here to stay. LEMPERT: People are using shopping lists more than ever before. People are shopping more online because they can compare prices easier. People are tired of getting ripped off on food prices. HERNANDEZ: Lempert says the old ways of shopping are toast. Joe Hernandez, NPR News, Belmar, New Jersey. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Public health authorities around the world are working to contain a hantavirus outbreak that started on a cruise ship. And the ship is currently off the coast of Africa, but dozens of passengers previously disembarked and then flew all over, including Turkey, New Zealand and the United States. NPR global health correspondent Gabrielle Emanuel is here to bring us up to speed. Hey there. GABRIELLE EMANUEL, BYLINE: Hi. KELLY: Hi. So bring us up to speed. How many cases do we have now? EMANUEL: So eight cases have been reported. That includes three deaths. It is believed that the original man to get sick came into contact with the virus before boarding the cruise. He may have gotten it when bird-watching at a landfill in Argentina. So infection typically happens when breathing in virus particles from an infected rodent's urine, feces or saliva. The issue here is a the specific type of hantavirus that he picked up, the Andes virus, can transmit human to human. But it spreads between people in close and sustained contact. So think a household or a health worker treating a patient, something like that. KELLY: Gabrielle, what are the symptoms, and what is the treatment? EMANUEL: Yeah. It starts with flu-like symptoms and can progress to a severe and deadly respiratory infection. There is no vaccine or specific treatment, but if you get to a hospital quickly, they can provide things like a ventilator, and that can help. The one thing that's worth noting here is that the death rate is said to be 30- to 40%. But Jeanne Marrazzo, with the Infectious Disease Society of America, says it's likely lower than that. JEANNE MARRAZZO: While that's a very scary number, we often don't know what the denominator of people infected is 'cause mild cases might be missed. EMANUEL: It's really only the sick people who show up at the doctor and then get tested, and that's not a lot of people. So the death rate might seem higher than it actually is. KELLY: Got it. I'm just going to ask the question that I imagine is popping into a lot of people's minds, which is, could this be the next pandemic? EMANUEL: It is very unlikely. Here is Maria van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization speaking today at a press conference. (SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE) MARIA VAN KERKHOVE: I want to be unequivocal here. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic. This is an outbreak that we see on a ship. EMANUEL: She emphasized that the threat to the general public is very low. KELLY: And why? What makes the hantavirus so different from COVID? EMANUEL: There are many things. First of all, we have known about this virus for decades, unlike COVID, which was new. It does not spread that easily. You need close contact. Also, COVID and flu mutate very fast. They are often seeing these new strains as the virus reshapes itself. Those changes can make it harder to contain. But from what we know, the hantavirus makes these changes much more slowly. So the thing to remember here is that there are viruses all around us all the time, and the vast majority of the time, they do not spiral into pandemics. KELLY: That is somewhat reassuring. Meanwhile, back to this current outbreak, what's going on with all the other passengers? EMANUEL: So some of the passengers are still on the boat, more than a hundred people. They are not showing any symptoms. They are isolating in their cabins as plans are made to get them off the boat and medically assessed. That's according to the World Health Organization. And then for all the passengers who previously disembarked, countries are working to track them down so they can be informed and monitored and even quarantined. It's country by country. The virus can stay in the body for one to six weeks before making someone sick, so they'll be monitoring for a little while. KELLY: That's NPR's Gabrielle Emanuel. Thank you. EMANUEL: Thank you. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Debbie Millman | TED • Nov 2025 For the last 20 years, I've interviewed hundreds of people about their motivation to create, their ambition and what it feels like to be whole and at home in the world on my podcast, "Design Matters." In one episode several years ago, I interviewed a famous painter about a recent exhibition, a show that had taken years to create. Given the magnitude of the accomplishment, I asked her how long the feeling of pride lasted after opening night. She looked at me, she smiled sheepishly and stated, "About 11 minutes." I thought she was joking, but she wasn't. Since that interview, I've come to realize she's not the only one whose achievements feel ephemeral and fleeting. Not by a long shot. Over the past four years, in addition to my interviews, I've conducted my own version of a Proustian questionnaire for PRINT magazine. Hundreds of creative people have answered the same 10 questions about their life and their work. Given the response I had with the famous painter, I included this question: How long does the feeling of pride and joy at accomplishing something last for you? As I collected my responses to the questionnaire and reviewed all of my transcripts of my interviews and conversations, I saw how, up close, for so many people, the pride and joy of accomplishment dissipates almost as quickly as it manifests. I heard it in the words of a poet who shared that the high of publishing a book lasted until she sent in her final manuscript. I heard it in the voice of a designer who admitted he felt restless the very night of an awards ceremony. And I heard it in the plaintiff confession of a musician who told me, "The only time I feel at peace is when I'm in the studio. Not on stage, not after. Only while I'm making." Another confession. I felt this way my whole life. After publishing a book, after mounting an exhibition, after a TED Talk, after what should feel like I've reached the pinnacle, moments I've dreamed of for decades. The joy evaporates within days, sometimes hours, and once, terrifyingly, within minutes. And then for so many people, what happens next? The quest to create, to make something bigger, more ambitious or more challenging begins again. I found this all utterly confounding, and I became consumed with the question of why? Why does the feeling of creative achievement slip away almost as soon as we grasp it? Why are we in such a rush to want something more? Is it ego, ambition, addiction to attainment? We're living in a culture now obsessed with achievement, and we measure that success with metrics, likes, views, followers, awards, trophies, sales and we celebrate the hustle. We glorify the grind, and we equate visibility with value. Now after 20 years of interviewing more than 1,000 people, I've come to believe that something else is at play. When I look at the creative people I admire most, I see people answering a calling. A calling that says create, shape, build, imagine, express. Not necessarily to be seen, but to be. What if the actual reward is not accomplishment but the act of creating? Think about it. The finished products and trappings of creative accomplishment are often seen as the goal. And if we haven't yet reached mastery, we're told we have to fake it until we make it. Pretend. But I don't think people should have to fake anything. Instead, I'd rather make it until I make it. You see, I believe that the act of making is like oxygen. When the making stops, it becomes hard to breathe. Now I admit I still struggle with this. I crave recognition, I still measure myself by external markers of success, and I'm still racing towards multiple finish lines. But I'm learning, albeit slowly, that these moments will never, ever be enough. They can't be, because in the end, they represent a certain scarcity, while making is the actual abundance. 🗣️完整文本和视频见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】

Arika Okrent | TED-Ed • April 2026 In 1954, Winston Cigarettes launched an ad so controversial broadcasters refused to say it on the air. But the uproar had nothing to do with the dangerous product being advertised — people were appalled by the ad's grammar. Specifically, using "like" as a conjunction instead of "as." Grammatical incidents like this have caused outrage in various regions and languages for centuries. But while we know people take grammar seriously, what's less clear is, why? Where do these seemingly random rules come from? And which, if any, actually matter? The answers to these questions vary from rule to rule, so let's look at three particularly famous English examples. First up, the idea that you should never end a sentence with a preposition. Prepositions are small, common words like with, on, for, or to, that often come before nouns. So, for example, a grammar stickler would consider "where does this rule come from?" incorrect, preferring instead, "from where does this rule come?" This rule comes from 18th century England, when etiquette was all the rage. And amidst countless guides on how to act properly, grammarians flooded the market with books on how to speak properly. Many of the rules in these guides were taken from Latin — a language that was commonly used for written scholarship. But no one had spoken Latin conversationally in 1,000 years, and imposing its rules on speech was awkward to say the least. The rule to never strand a preposition without a noun was one such revived relic. And while the scholars who proposed it presented the idea as a stylistic choice, subsequent writers turned their suggestion into a hard rule. Other rules have origins that are perhaps less arbitrary, but significantly more petty. Consider the idea that you should use "fewer" when referring to countable nouns — like water bottles — and "less" when referring to nouns we don't count — like water. This rule comes from another 18th century grammarian called Robert Baker, who, for reasons unknown, believed "less" was inelegant when used with countable nouns. This might seem strange, but people today wage similar wars on so-called lesser language, such as "like" or "literally." Besides, Baker's preference was part of a larger craze for codifying English. For centuries after the Norman Conquest in 1066, French was the language of nobility in England, while English was seen as the language of commoners. While the English had long reclaimed their kingdom by Baker's time, this insecurity lingered in the hearts of many English grammarians. In fact, Baker also wanted King George to establish an Academy of Letters with 50 officials to protect the English language. That's ten more officials than were employed in France's grammar guard — L'Académie Française. Many English grammar rules have similarly silly origins, such as efforts to distinguish "over" from "more than," or our attachment to Latin plurals like fungi and formulae. The stakes of all these grammatical debates are mostly academic. But one frequently discussed rule does have some real-world consequences. For centuries, "they" has been used in classic literature and everyday speech as both a plural and a singular pronoun. And today, many non-binary and transgender individuals prefer to use "they/them" as singular pronouns to refer to themselves. 19th century grammarians, however, believed that "they" should be an exclusively plural pronoun. Furthermore, in cases where "they" could be used as a singular pronoun, they argued the word should be swapped for the generic "he." This was an obviously patriarchal decision, and during the 1970s, activists eventually convinced some usage guides to begin using "he or she." But today, this quibble continues to cause confusion, even though most official grammar guides have accepted "they" as both a singular and plural pronoun. This isn't the first time we've had this kind of pronoun predicament. For centuries, "you" was also considered an exclusively plural pronoun, and yet today it's completely accepted in singular situations. And that's because grammar isn't a hard science — it's something we all build together to reflect the people using it. So however strange a rule's origins may be, the usage we choose to respect today is far from arbitrary. 🎬视频、更多听力和文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1" 可加入【打卡交流群】

LEILA FADEL, HOST: The oldest millennials turn 45 this year - people like me - and the oldest Gen Xers are 60. How prepared are they to thrive in the decades ahead? NPR's Allison Aubrey reports on a new tool to help. ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: If you're planning for the future, you've likely been advised to track your retirement savings. But Joe Coughlin, the founder of the MIT AgeLab, says there's more to the equation when it comes to navigating a long life. At a time when the number of centenarians is expected to quadruple, he and his collaborators have developed a comprehensive way to plan for aging. It's called the Longevity Preparedness Index. JOE COUGHLIN: Unlike one more, shall we say, survey or index out there about how much money you saved, we want to look at all those big and little things that we take for granted in life. Where are you going to live? What community did you pick? How do you provide care? How will you receive care? Essentially, your social connection. AUBREY: The Longevity Preparedness Index quiz is free online. It takes about 15 minutes to complete. You're asked a series of questions, and a score is determined by your answers across eight domains, including relationships with family, friends, community, your health, your daily activities. MIT AgeLab researcher Katie Warren is about to walk Matthew Hudak through the survey. She opens the quiz on her computer. KATIE WARREN: So we'll go ahead and get started. AUBREY: Hudak is a financial planner in Orange County, California. He's in his early 60s. He clicks through questions about his neighborhood. MATTHEW HUDAK: My neighborhood has good sidewalks and places for walking. Agree. My neighborhood has many places for social gatherings and activities that I would enjoy. Agree. My neighborhood offers me easy access to a pharmacy. Agree. AUBREY: Hudak is healthy and fit, so it's hard to imagine a day he couldn't drive to pick up a prescription or would need help getting places. Many people just don't anticipate changes that come with aging, so the survey includes uncomfortable questions. HUDAK: So it says that, Matthew, in the event you were to need a care provider, do you know who that care provider would be? AUBREY: This question can spark conversation and serve as a reality check of what the future could hold. HUDAK: Watching my 88-year-old dad and my 93-year-old father-in-law - you know, it gives you pause for thought. AUBREY: He says it's better to have your eyes wide open than dig your head in the sand. HUDAK: I'm ready to calculate. Eighty-nine. That's a good score. AUBREY: The average score is 60 out of 100. The index was developed in tandem with John Hancock, a life insurance company that has introduced a new longevity initiative aimed at helping customers live longer, healthier lives. CEO Brooks Tingle says taking the quiz made him realize his own thinking needed to shift. BROOKS TINGLE: People make decisions about where they're going to move in quote-unquote retirement that, for me, might have been driven by - how good's the fishing? - or something. Well, should I be thinking about the quality of healthcare? And then, am I going to have friends down there? So I think just the general lack of preparedness... AUBREY: Yeah. TINGLE: ...Struck me. AUBREY: Answering all these questions about life transitions, community, care and home life can help reveal both challenges and opportunities of the decades ahead. Laura Carstensen directs the Stanford Center on Longevity. LAURA CARSTENSEN: We really need to think about how we build societies where the majority of people can arrive at very old age, happy, engaged and satisfied with their lives. AUBREY: Aging brings unpredictability, of course. But planning for the foreseeable future can help people adapt and hopefully thrive for decades to come. Allison Aubrey, NPR News. 📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

So I spent my most recent birthday in my favorite forest. No plans, no celebration dinner waiting for me, just me, the trees, and the sound of my footsteps on the ground. I was walking slowly letting myself wander. Noticing how the light moved through the branches. And there's something about being in a forest that immediately shifts your nervous system. The pace changes. Your body softens. And you remember that you belong to something much older than your to do list. As I walked, I found myself thinking about the trees as ancestors. Some of them had clearly been there long before me. Some would still be there long after. And then a question surfaced. Have I been a good ancestor? Not in terms of, like, legacy or achievement, but in the everyday sense. How am I spending my time while I'm here? And that question stopped me. I began reflecting on the last 33 years of my life, the choices I remember, the seasons I moved through, the ways in which I've grown, stumbled, learned, and tried again. It was an honest reflection, and honest reflection takes courage. Mindfulness teaches us that reflection is not meant to pull us into regret. It's meant to help us arrive more fully into the present moment. When we reflect with care, we're not asking what did I do wrong? We're asking, how do I want to live from here? Our relationship with time begins to shift when we realize that we're not here to outrun it. We're here to fully inhabit it. I've been thinking a lot about how strange time has felt since 2020. It feels like I've lived many different lives since then. Entire chapters, major transitions. And yet, when I name the number of years, it feels surprisingly small. At the same time, I look ahead and imagine what could happen in the next 6 years, how much can change, how much life can unfold. Even this year feels strange. It's early, but it already feels full. Almost heavy, which makes me pause and wonder. What is time, really? Who decided how we measure it? Who decided the structure of our days, our work weeks, our pace, and how much of that structure actually supports us? I notice that when I compare myself to others, time immediately tightens. I start feeling behind, like I should be further along, like certain parts of my life just need to hurry up. But when I come back to the present moment. Something shifts. Right now, nothing is missing. That urgency fades. The anxiety quiets. I remember that life is not happening later. It's happening now. And there's also a deeper layer to my relationship with time that comes from my family. I grew up in an immigrant household where time was never abundant, where survival shaped the rhythm of the days, where rest was earned, not assumed. My parents didn't have extra time. They were building something stable from the ground up. And they invested their time into me so that I could have more choice with mine. Education, opportunity, space to explore who I am and how I want to live. That inheritance lives in my body. So when I ask myself, if I'm making good use of my time, I'm not asking from a place of pressure, I'm actually asking from a place of gratitude and care. I think about those stories we hear from people near the end of their lives, and the reflections that they offer. Rarely do they wish that they had worked more. More often they wish that they had been braver, more present, more connected. They wish they had not waited until they felt ready. And readiness I've learned is often a choice. It's a decision. I have always felt like an old soul. I remember feeling out of sync with my age early on, drawn to people much older than me, as if my inner clock was tuned differently. And that has shaped how I relate to time. I don't feel rushed by age itself. I feel called by meaning. So what I hope you take from this is not urgency, but empowerment. You have more agency over your time than you may realize. Mindfulness reminds us that even within systems and responsibilities, we still have choice, choice in how we meet our days, choice in what we give our attention to, choice in how present we are for the moments that make up our lives. You don't need the perfect conditions to begin living intentionally. You can begin by noticing, by reflecting, by asking honest questions with kindness. Time is not something that you're running out of. It's something that you are in constant relationship with. And perhaps being a good ancestor starts here. With how you care for this moment. Take care, friends. 🪴更多英语听力和文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】