LEILA FADEL, HOST: As we take in the news, whether it's politics, global violence, climate change, there is plenty to be stressed about. So if you are ready to stress less, NPR has a new series for you. Over the next five weeks, we'll introduce skills and tips - everything that science has to offer on the best ways to reduce stress and feel better. NPR's Allison Aubrey is here to tell us more. Good morning, Allison. ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila. FADEL: OK, stress less sounds good, especially this week. It does seem like a pretty stressful time. AUBREY: Yeah, it's easy to feel overwhelmed between work and family demands and the relentless news cycle. It's a lot. But it turns out there are some pretty simple strategies to reduce stress and increase positive feelings, and there's a lot of science to show they work. You can think of these strategies as skills that you can learn. FADEL: You can learn to be less stressed? AUBREY: Yes, absolutely. Do you want to try? FADEL: Yeah, I'm stressed. AUBREY: For the next 10 seconds, I want you to complain - like, any gripe, any annoyance - let it out. FADEL: OK. I'm tired all the time 'cause of my job. I am constantly flabbergasted by the way human beings can be so cruel to each other. The planet's dying. I mean - I don't know - should I keep going? AUBREY: You sound agitated. FADEL: I'm agitated. AUBREY: Now for the next 10 seconds, tell me what you're grateful for. What brings you joy? FADEL: An amazing meal, my incredible family, my support system, my group of friends and actually - the job that causes me stress, I actually really, really love. AUBREY: Yeah, just listening to you made me smile. Do you feel the difference? FADEL: OK, yeah, sharing things that we're grateful for actually helps manage the stress. AUBREY: Yeah, when it comes to feeling grateful, there's a lot of evidence that this can really give people a boost. This recent study found people who have a strong sense of gratitude are actually more likely to live longer. And - get this - even if you don't have a sunny personality, gratitude is something you can practice and get better at. FADEL: OK, like a lot of things in our life - right? - a hobby, an instrument, sports. AUBREY: Absolutely. The evidence shows that you can learn to experience more joy, less anxiety, even amid hard times. The evidence is just so solid. It's the basis of this whole series. So the way it works is each week, through this online course, you're introduced to one or two new skills, and then you practice them. So this includes exercises to help with self-compassion, a lesson on how to savor - to get more joy out of everyday experiences - and another skill called positive reappraisal. FADEL: Positive reappraisal? AUBREY: Yeah, disappointing things happen all the time, right? And the skill of positive reappraisal is to look for the silver lining. It's a familiar concept, but it's hard to do because we have this kind of deeply ingrained instinct to be on the lookout for threats or danger. Here's Judy Moskowitz again. MOSKOWITZ: Something happens. You're like, that's a bad thing, right? And that's adaptive. Humans have evolved to pay attention to the things that will impact them negatively. AUBREY: And there's value in this, of course. It helps us avoid bad situations or danger. But in modern times, we can just take it too far. We can forget to see the good. So what positive reappraisal does is help you reframe a situation or think of something good that may come from a negative experience. MOSKOWITZ: My favorite positive reappraisal and my go-to is always, well, that could have been worse. It's highly annoying for my children, for sure. But I'm always - my first thought is, like, oh, you know, this is kind of bad, but it could have been much worse. AUBREY: You can't do this in every situation - not amid a bad trauma. This is an exercise to help you gain perspective. And if you practice this - like, intentionally take time to reframe things - the evidence shows it can be helpful. So let's try. Like, when we started, you complained that you were losing a lot of sleep because of your job. Can you reappraise that situation? FADEL: I'm gainfully employed and living in a peaceful place. AUBREY: Yes, yes. And you like your work you said. FADEL: I really do like my work. 📻 字数限制，完整文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

ADRIAN MA: For economists who study population growth and decline, the fertility rate is a very important metric. The fertility rate is the average number of children a woman has in a lifetime. And here, 2 is the magic number. That's what demographers call the replacement rate. And when the global fertility rate falls below 2 for long enough, that leads, over time, to something called depopulation. DEAN SPEARS: Depopulation is the name for what happens when birth rates are low enough that the population shrinks decade by decade and generation by generation. MA: This is Dean Spears, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin. And while fertility rates vary from country to country, on a global scale, they've actually been declining for centuries. And in fact, the vast majority of people on Earth today live in a country where that rate is below 2. Mike Geruso is also an economist at UT Austin. MICHAEL GERUSO: I think something that's important to understand here is that depopulation wouldn't require people having smaller families than they do today. Family sizes like today's would be enough to cause depopulation. MA: And Mike says this trend of fertility rates falling below an average of 2 is happening all over the world, in North America, Latin America, Europe, and even in countries like China, Russia, and India. So Mike and Dean have run the numbers. They estimate somewhere around the year 2080, the world's population will peak around 10 billion. And then over the next 300 years or so, the population will drop off to just 2 billion. So that sounds pretty drastic. But, I guess, the threshold question here is, is a smaller population necessarily a bad thing? Dean, what do you think? SPEARS: Well, one big consequence of depopulation is that it would mean less progress in all the things that we all care about. The world's become a safer, richer place over the same narrow span of human history when the population's been booming. And that's not a coincidence. MA: I mean, one way you've both distilled this argument in your book is to say that more people equals a more prosperous planet. And you break down this idea into a couple of economic concepts, one being idea generation and the other being fixed costs. So, Mike, can you just talk about why these concepts lead you to conclude that more people are better? GERUSO: Yeah. The concept of idea generation creating economic progress was something that economist Paul Romer won the Nobel Prize for in 2018. And the notion was that ideas are an endlessly renewable resource. Once you or I discover or learn something, we can share it. And that can be reused over and over again. And innovation doesn't just mean high tech. So yes, like, tailored gene therapies come from human innovation, but so does the technology of how to organize a construction crew or a kindergarten classroom. And so that's one reason why we should care about global depopulation because it means fewer people collaborating, learning, sharing knowledge that has, basically, been a tide that's lifted all boats in the past couple hundred years. MA: Hmm. OK. And, Dean, what about the other concept of fixed costs? How does that translate into an argument for more people? SPEARS: So many of the things that we value have this property that economists call fixed costs, where the cost is all in creating it once and for all. And there isn't a very high cost or any cost at all for an extra person to use it. And so one of these things with high fixed costs, you need other people to want it or need it just like you do, and then everybody can use it. And so one of the ways that we might lose out in a smaller world is that there wouldn't be so many people who want the things we want or need the things we want and paying the fixed costs to make it happen. GERUSO: So one of the things that we talk about cheekily in the book is that we have a vaccine for RSV. We have a vaccine for chickenpox. We have a vaccine for COVID. We have those vaccines because it made sense to invest in them because those diseases affect many people. There's no vaccine for sealpox because, you know, only a few people a year get sealpox. And it's, you know, people that are working in marine rehabilitation facilities and get bitten by a seal. But it sort of demonstrates that you really need a critical mass of people to justify the investment in finding cures for diseases, in building great public works, in-- in doing all sorts of things that have these wide public benefits. MA: So you've just laid out the argument for why a bigger population is better for people's living standards. But I know some people are listening and thinking, could a population that's smaller be better for the planet? What do you say to that? 🌟 字数限制，完整文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可以加入【打卡交流群】

Ariana Aspuru, Host: The classic nine to five is now looking like the nine to long after five or even later for some workers. Wall Street Journal reporter Ray A. Smith joins me to talk about it. Ray, what's causing this now? Ray A. Smith: There are a couple of reasons. One is just because companies have been slowing their hiring of new employees. And so that leaves a lot more work for current or existing employees to do. That just gives them an increased workload. And so they're having to catch up off hours, whether it's evenings or weekends. Another reason is their days are typically stacked with back-to-back meetings, so they barely have time to do the actual work that they're supposed to be doing, and so they almost have no choice but to get that work done at night or early in the morning or on weekends. And then a third reason is we're all expected in this global world where companies are international and workers are in different time zones, we're all expected to be on all the time. Ariana: And we've seen a shrinking white-collar job market for the past few years, and we've seen lots of companies conducting layoffs, and that has to add on to that pressure to perform. How has that impacted what's on workers' actual plates during their workday? Ray: Yeah, what it meant for employees and their workday and their workloads is just that they have more on their plates. They're almost doing three jobs instead of one. They're doing a lot of jobs beyond what's in their job descriptions, and they're not getting a promotion or an increase in pay for that. They're just being tasked with more and more. This is increasing workday and increasing workload. And it's a lot because of layoffs, but also it's driven by this idea that companies are really trying to be more efficient. They're saying, we don't need as many employees to get this work done, and we're not going to hire any more employees. So the employees that are left there are just tasked with doing a lot more work. And companies really feel At this point in time, when the white-collar job market, as you alluded to, is softer, that they have the power to ask more of their employees, because what are the employees going to do? They're not going to be able to just up and quit. Ariana: How does this leave employees feeling at the end of the day, whether it's at 5, 8, or sometimes 10 p.m.? Ray: Employees have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, a lot of us thought we'd be able to, after COVID, have more work-life balance. And we heard a lot of employers talk about more work-life balance. And now employees are feeling a little betrayed, like that wasn't true. And so there's this feeling that, what happened to all this talk about work-life balance? Now I'm back to feeling burned out. We saw mentions of burnout rise 32% year over year during the first quarter. That's to their highest levels in almost a decade and that's from a Glassdoor report. So it's just employees feeling really burned out and resentful and also feeling like this is unsustainable. Ariana: How does the level that you're at in the company impact the amount of time that you're working outside of that nine to five, like a entry level versus a senior level employee? Ray: The manager sets the tone. And so if a manager is on all the time, whether it's through osmosis or just a feeling that if your boss is on, you should be on too, there's this expectation that you're going to follow your boss's lead or your manager's lead. Ariana: And I want to turn to what actions workers feel like they can do. I'm wondering, in your reporting, did you hear from people who were telling their managers about their off-hours work and what are the possible risks or implications in doing that? Ray: In some cases, some workers that I talked to told me that they have tried to talk to their bosses or their managers about what is unreasonable or to set expectations or even to set boundaries. But they acknowledged that they were concerned that when they brought that up, it sounded like they couldn't handle the workload, and they were afraid of them being perceived as not being up to the task. Other employees told me they've tried, in some cases, on their digital calendars to make it clear when they are busy, so they'll block time on their calendars. so that they can't be invited to meetings or interrupted for meetings. That's one strategy that some people are using to try to at least limit the amount of meetings they get called into so they can focus on work. 🎨 字数限制，完整文本见公众号【琐简】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

In today's society, we oftentimes separate love from moral philosophy in pretty profound ways. We think about love as primarily a psychological phenomenon, something that we don't have a great deal of control over. When we think about morality, we think about looking for rules and principles that do not have any exceptions, that are unemotional. How could a certain emotion and attitude be so central to our lives but also be seemingly completely independent of ethics? Aristotle famously said when you really love a friend, you experience that person as a second self. When they suffer, it feels like you too are experiencing their suffering. And the Love Ethic says those same feelings should be extended to strangers. How do we navigate our lives in an era where our politics, our economics, our technology is causing us to become far more isolated and divided? That question is a major impetus for us to think seriously about these ancient moral traditions that put love at the center of how we navigate our lives and how we navigate our society. My name is Meghan Sullivan, and I am the director of Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and the University Ethics Initiative. A Love Ethic or a love-based approach to ethics says to love your neighbor with the same intensity with which you love yourself. One of the origins of the Love Ethic in the Christian tradition comes from this very famous story that happens in the Gospel of Luke, "The Parable of the Good Samaritan." So here's the setup. One time there was a man traveling down a road when he's attacked by some robbers. And he is beaten within an inch of his life. A Jewish priest walks by and he doesn't stop. Next a Levite. A Levite would have been a very important person who served in the Jewish temple, who supported the priests. He moves to the side of the road and he just keeps walking. And then, Jesus says, a Samaritan comes down the road. And he rushes over and he rescues the man. He stays up with him all night, nursing his wounds and keeping him alive. And what Jesus seems to be saying is you have the same moral obligation to do what the Samaritan did for this man. Is that true? The Parable of the Good Samaritan cries out for philosophical debate. The most prominent way of interpreting the parable says this is primarily about our duty to help others. Where I think we should push back a little bit is thinking, this isn't a parable about duty. It's a parable about love, and in particular, about what it means to find a reason to love a complete stranger. A Love Ethic has three components. First, what gives anyone moral significance is their mere human dignity. You don't have to do anything else to be of profound value except exist. The second component of the Love Ethic is love is at the very basis of our moral reasoning. We should always be grounding our reasoning in interpersonal love, what it means to love another person who has dignity. The final component of the Love Ethic are applications of these principles to all of the kinds of debates and puzzles that face us as we try to navigate contemporary society to create a moral code that others will want to live with. If you're anything like me you read the news every day and you'll read some story that you really morally disagree with and you'll read about the people who are featured in the story who've made that terrible decision and you'll think, not only do I not love these people, but I really wish them the worst, like they are my enemies. And the Love Ethic says to put ourselves more and more in this situation where we imagine having the reaction to complete strangers as we would to people that we love. Imagine that stranger was your own parent, or your own sibling, or your best friend. Would you still feel that same level of resentment? And we realize, you know, love is complicated. You might have family members whom you love, who are part of a very different political party. You might have friends that are part of a really different racial group. You might have people that you love in your life who you oftentimes think make terrible decisions. What the Love Ethic asks you to reflect on is the fact that you don't have any of those standards in your ordinary love life so why would you put any of those kinds of requirements on your concern for others? And there are ways that you can go from being a less loving to a more loving person if you're willing to work that virtue muscle. If you're looking with love, you just pay a little bit more attention to take in the details allow them to affect you. A big part of exhibiting the Love Ethic and practicing it means giving yourself a little bit more time to pay attention to other people rather than paying attention to all of the other things that are trying to demand our mental life in the 21st century. 🧐 字数限制，完整文本、视频版和更多文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Ariana Aspuru, Host: Despite a tough job market, you might still be able to negotiate your way into a better offer. Wall Street Journal columnist Callum Borchers recently wrote about how to do it, and he joins me. Callum, when a company tells you that this is their best and final offer, do they really mean it? Callum Borchers: Well, they might really mean it when it comes to your base salary. But as I discovered, there are sometimes other things that you can negotiate, but you might not even think to ask. And so that was part of what was interesting talking to job seekers or coaches or recruiters about saying like, yes, there are things on the margins and we can talk about what some of those things are. Ariana: Yeah, I feel like when I first started working, my understanding was that I have to negotiate. Like, you have to just put yourself out there and, you know, try to get the best that you can. But that seems from your story like it's really not the case anymore. What's changed in the past few years? Callum: Well, the job market is not what it was a few years ago. I mean, look, the unemployment rate is still very low. Like by historical standards, this is still a pretty good market for workers. It's just that a few years ago, people were able to snap their fingers and get multiple offers. Sometimes companies sort of overpaid. And I think that's part of what's happening now is that businesses sort of relish their ability to say, hey, take it or leave it. It can be useful to just kind of like know what the numbers actually are, as you say. So if you're thinking, oh, everybody negotiates or I have to negotiate, that's not really the case. At the end of last year, when ZipRecruiter did its quarterly survey of new hires, they found that roughly half of people had been able to negotiate their job offers at that time. Now at the beginning of this year, we see a pretty steep drop though, down to 31% of new hires saying they can negotiate their job offer. So from about half to less than a third. And some of that is because they just feel like they don't have as much leverage as they did a few months ago. Ariana: So those job seekers that are still pushing that, I'm going to put air quotes on it, so-called "final offer", is it a gamble to try negotiating now? Callum: Only if you're kind of rude or a jerk about it. You know, it's funny talking to these career coaches as I worked on this story who said that's the number one thing that prevents people from actually opening a negotiation is they think, oh, I'm going to sour the relationship. They're just going to yank the offer. One job coach who's been at this for like a decade said, I've seen that happen maybe twice in my career. And that was because somebody was just really prickly about it. So the idea is if you can convey, hey, I'm really excited about this opportunity. I've already started thinking about how I can join the team and make a difference. Are there things besides base salary that perhaps we can negotiate to help bridge the divide between the two of us? Ariana: Yeah, your brain always goes to the worst case scenario. You're like, I'm going to come off greedy. And especially in a job market like this, there's also the sentiment that you should be lucky to have an offer and just have anything. Callum: Absolutely. The tone really matters a lot in these conversations. What you're trying to convey, too, though, is that you're a savvy business operator. And especially depending on the role that you're in, it's worth thinking about a couple of things. One is that the employer might actually see that as a positive. That could be a useful business skill. So they might actually view you as an asset. And the other thing to remember is that the talent manager or the recruiter on the other side of the table is under some pressure too. Their job is to bring the company's first choice candidate in the door. So they may also be sweating a little bit to close the deal. Ariana: And this negotiation, like we've been talking about, is a delicate balancing act. Let's say someone's already decided, like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go ahead and ask for something. You spoke to people who pulled it off. I want to spill some of those negotiating secrets. How did they do it? Callum: They did it by thinking about what was really important to them and what was realistic. What could a company potentially offer, even if they said we can't really do better on salary? So, for example, Cynthia Thorpe, she told me she recently started a job as an HR executive. The base salary was really not going to move, but she said the title was important to me. They were advertising for a director of human resources. And she said, I really want to signal to everyone at the company that I'm here to shape workplace norms. So how about we call me the director of people and culture? 🎨 字数限制，完整文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: We begin with millions of people across the United States facing an unprecedented and dangerous heat wave. In fact, Tuesday was the hottest day in over a decade for parts of the East Coast. In the Midwest, some roads in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri were closed. Why? Because they were buckling under the searing heat. Meteorologists say this is all because of what is known as a heat dome. That's when a ridge of high pressure builds over an area and then doesn't move for up to a week or more. This high pressure can result in lots of sunshine, very few clouds, but that also means sinking air. And when air sinks, it warms, and that causes temperatures to rise even higher. The dome is created because the air simply can't escape. Now, the climate crisis is expected to make heat domes more frequent and even hotter. So, what are the effects of these high temperatures on our bodies and on our health, and how can we adapt? CNN senior climate reporter, Lara Paddison, put her body to the test under extreme heat, extreme humidity, to highlight the health dangers of a warming world. Lara Paddison: Everything that's going on with my body made that hard. We're here at the University of South Wales in the UK, and behind me here is an environmental chamber where scientists can control the temperature. And so they're going to crank the temperatures up to about 40 degrees Celsius, 104 degrees Fahrenheit. And the whole point of this exercise is to see what impact extreme heat has on my body. This on my head is measuring brain blood flow. Here is measuring skin temperature on my leg. We're going to be looking at cognitive functions, like how is my decision-making affected by the heat. We need to understand what it's going to be like living in a much hotter world. Damian Bailey: Okay, Laura, so you're fully instrumented. You're ready for action, ready for lift-off. Laura: It's 40 degrees now, 20% humidity, and I can really feel it starting to sweat. My face is getting very hot. My skin temperature's gone up by a couple of degrees. Damian: You're doing a really, really good job here. Laura: It's 40 degrees Celsius, but it's 85% humidity, and the difference is intense. It's like a sauna in here. This is really, really tough. Like, hands feel a bit shaky. Everything feels tiring. Even breathing feels weird. Damian: Stop. Great job. Laura: Thank you. Damian: Mission accomplished. So it's not easy. Now, you've got a markedly depressed increase in exercise-induced blood flow to the brain. It's gone from 600 milliliters per minute to 400. Laura: That's really significant. Damian: Which is huge. You're not getting enough fuel into the brain. You're not burning enough fuel to be able to make the right decisions. You would make potentially wrong decisions, rash decisions, and a much larger increase in pressure during exercise. So your heart is working a lot, lot harder, probably about 30% harder, just because of that increase in temperature and humidity. Ola patients, you know, this is a big de.al for them. and they wouldn't be able to do the simplest tasks, even stand up to get out of a chair. From a cardiovascular perspective, that would just be too demanding. Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Now, imagine writing an essay with the help of AI. Maybe some of you have even experimented one of these programs, like ChatGPT. You give it an assignment. You give it a prompt, like, write a book report on to kill a mockingbird. And in just mere seconds, it types out the report. It's pretty amazing. And it sounds easy, right? Well, a new study is raising questions about what that could mean for your brain in the long run. Researchers at MIT studied three groups of students. One group used ChatGPT to help write their essays. Another used Google's search engine to write the essay. And a third group relied only on their own brains, no tech tools at all. And here's what they found. Scientists used brain scans called EEGs And they saw big differences. In fact, the students who didn't use any tools, they showed strong activity in several areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex we just talked about, that's responsible for focus and complex learning, but also what is known as the occipital parietal region, which is back here. That's more linked to visual processing and reasoning. Now, the Google search group, they showed moderate or intermediate levels of engagement in those same areas. Meanwhile, importantly, the students who used AI showed much weaker brain connections, meaning their brains simply weren't working as hard. Now, when some students switched from using AI to writing without it, their brains sort of struggled to re-engage. Others who started using AI suddenly did remember more facts, but weren't able to think as deeply. 📰字数限制， 完整文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: More than 200 million people in the U.S. will face extreme heat and humidity in the next few days. Now, we've been talking a lot about the risks of extreme heat, but should we also think about how to cope with all that moisture in the air? Let's ask Dr. Sheetal Rao. She's an internal medicine physician at the University of Illinois Health, with a focus on how the environment affects health. Dr. Rao, thanks so much for joining us. SHEETAL RAO: Good morning. Thank you for having me. MARTIN: So, you know, we all know that cliche - it's not the heat, it's the humidity. But - OK, so it is the heat, too. But why is the humidity - you know, why is the humidity such a thing? RAO: Well, the humidity just makes the feels-like temperature warmer. So because there's so much moisture in the air, one of our body's main mechanisms for cooling down is having sweat evaporate off of our skin. But when the air is so full of moisture, that evaporation doesn't happen as efficiently or effectively, and so we aren't able to cool down as well. MARTIN: Are there certain people who are most vulnerable in those kinds of conditions? RAO: Absolutely. The people that are the most vulnerable to heat, and more so when it's humid, are the extremes of age - so the very young and our seniors - pregnant women, and then it all comes down to exertion level. So even a regular - you know, a healthy person who's out working very hard in the heat and humidity would be vulnerable. And then, of course, people who are outdoors more for their job or people who are unhoused. And then certain medications, as well, can make people more vulnerable to the... MARTIN: Interesting. RAO: ...Heat and humidity. MARTIN: Oh, wow. Well, that's definitely something people need to keep track of. So are there any kind of myths about dealing with humidity that you want to correct, or any common mistakes that you see that you would like to correct? RAO: Yeah. I think that sometimes people feel that being near a fan might be good enough when it's very hot and humid. And although, initially, a fan may feel that it's cooling you, when it's very humid outside, that sweat really doesn't have any place to evaporate to off of our skin because the air is already full of so much humidity. So the fan kind of just cycles the same air around, and it won't effectively cool people when it's very hot and humid. MARTIN: So what can you do if you - what if you don't have air conditioning? What do you do? RAO: Well, initially, it's good to cool down however you can. Definitely get some rest. Close all of your blinds so it's very cool in your home. Hydrate. Wear loose-fitting clothing, and take a lot of breaks. But at some point, when it gets very hot, air conditioning is likely the only intervention that's going to help you feel cool. And so there are places that people can go to get cool, like, cooling centers, but also just public buildings, like libraries and malls and things like that. MARTIN: OK, before you go - 30 seconds left - like, what's your favorite cooling technique that you can tell us about? RAO: We like to freeze grapes at our house. We like to have frozen fruit and foods like that and cold drinks. MARTIN: That sounds excellent. Ice cream? Does ice cream count as a - that's frozen. Does melted ice cream... RAO: Yeah. MARTIN: ...Count as a cool drink? Asking for a friend. RAO: Sure. MARTIN: OK. RAO: Sure. (LAUGHTER) RAO: Why not? MARTIN: That's Dr. Sheetal Rao at the University of Illinois Health. Dr. Rao, thanks so much for joining us. RAO: Thank you for having me. 📻 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】

As we continue to develop AI and particularly, as we develop artificial general intelligence, I think it's quite likely that at some point we will create a conscious being. I don't know when that will happen, but I don't see any reason in principle why if we can have consciousness in a biological, carbon-based life form – like I am, which has developed a brain and neurons – I don't see any, in principle, reason why you couldn't get something similar happening in something that isn't a carbon-based life form that is made of silicon chips. And if we do that, we will have created an artificial conscious being. Of course, we've already created vast numbers of conscious beings. We're creating animals all the time, and we vary them in their nature by breeding. So it's not the first time we've created conscious beings, but it's the first time we've created an artificial conscious being – non-human conscious beings we've created, who basically we have mostly exploited for our particular purposes as using them for labor like horses and oxen, or rearing them for food like cows and pigs and chickens, and fish now we're rearing in large numbers. So there is a danger that we will, but I'm hopeful that we will realize – if we do create conscious AI – that conscious being has interests, an interest in not feeling pain, an interest in enjoying their life once you have consciousness. And they would be wrong to disregard the interests of that conscious being and simply to treat it as another tool or another slave. Now, it's possible that we'll realize as we get close to creating this conscious being that we would then have to give it rights and would not be able to use it in some way. And we might perhaps halt what we're doing at that point just below the level of consciousness. Or maybe at a very dull level of consciousness where the AI is not really experiencing pleasure or pain because it's not capable of that. It's just got some sort of more neutral, sort of blah state of consciousness, if you like. That's possible. And then maybe it wouldn't really have interests we have to worry about. But I certainly think that if we did create beings that were more like non-human animals, we ought to treat them much better than we now treat non-human animals. And, of course, I also think we ought to change the treatment of non-human animals in order to do that. The question of of how we treat sentient AI is going to be one both for everybody as individuals, just as the question of how we treat animals is one for people as individuals. Are we going to want to have a companion animal, a dog or a cat, and treat them well? Are we going to buy products from factory farms, which means we're supporting cruelty? Those are individual questions, but there are also national government policy issues. And just as I believe governments should set standards for animal welfare, they should not permit the treatment of animals in the way they're now treated in factory farms. So I would think governments will need to set standards for the treatment of sentient, conscious AI once we get to that point. And you know, it'll be a novel question. Maybe they'll set up committees of experts. I can imagine committees, which consist of people who are expert in the AI, and in the nature of the AI, experts knowledgeable about consciousness itself in those sciences, neurosciences relevant to that, but also to have philosophers along, and lawyers perhaps to help crafting policies, and frameworks for this. So I think it will be an interesting task for who knows when. Maybe the middle of the 21st century, there might be committees doing this. 🧐 视频版和更多文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Leila Fadel, Host: Just a few hours after Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire, its future is in doubt. The deal was announced after almost two weeks of fighting and a U.S. strike against Iran over the weekend. For the latest, we have NPR's Daniel Estrin on the line from Tel Aviv. Good morning, Daniel. Daniel Estrin: Good morning, Leila. Fadel: Daniel, how did this unravel so quickly? Estrin: Yeah, it's been a very dizzying turn of events. I spoke with a person familiar with the matter who said late yesterday, President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke and that Netanyahu agreed in principle to a ceasefire with Iran and then Qatar mediated it with Iran. Both Israel and Iran early this morning launched salvos at each other. Iran launched six barrages of missiles at Israel, killing several people, according to Israeli officials. And then Israel's military said it struck military targets and assassinated an Iranian nuclear scientist. Iranian media reported casualties. And then both Iran and Israel said that they would adhere to a ceasefire. But about an hour and a half after Israel announced the ceasefire, Israeli military officials said two missiles were fired from Iran toward northern Israel, and that they were intercepted. Iranian state media denied that missile fire, and Israel's military says it will retaliate. So we're going to have to see in the coming hours, does this completely unravel the ceasefire? Or will this just be a blip? Fadel: I mean, Daniel, listening to you, it's just such a roller coaster. And you've been hearing from people in Israel and Iran living through all this? What are they saying? Estrin: Well, both Israeli and Iranian governments were initially claiming victory and celebrating the ceasefire. But we've been hearing a very different tone among Iranians and Israelis that our reporting team has been speaking to this morning. In Iran, we spoke to a fashion designer named Zahra. She only gave her first name because she could get in trouble with Iranian authorities for speaking her mind. She's an opponent of the Iranian regime and she says she is crushed when Trump announced a ceasefire. She told us she did not think Israel had Iranians interests in mind, but that people like her were hopeful the war would lead to the fall of the regime. And now she's fearful there will be more crackdowns on regime opponents. Here's what she said. She said Trump's ceasefire was quote, ending this war without having defeated the system fully. We can foresee really scary days. She says whoever voiced their opinion will be framed as pro-Israel and punished. And we also heard frustration from Israelis this morning, Leila. Israel declared a tremendous victory, said it had eliminated the nuclear and ballistic missile threats to Israel. But there's Israelis we spoke to said they're not so sure. Maybe Iran would build a nuclear weapon in the future, and they don't see the air war ending. This is Israeli resident Gali Kinkulkin. I'm very skeptical and very, very tired and very, very exhausted and depressed. The situation since 7th of October is so bad and I don't feel like one ceasefire is going to be like, oh, we have a great life again and I'm not that relieved or optimistic. She's referencing there the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war that drags on. And many in Israel are saying this would be a failure if the moment is not leveraged to strike a deal with Hamas to release the remaining hostages. Fadel: Just hearing the sort of fear and disappointment and exhaustion there, what happens now, especially with the war in Gaza? Estrin: Well, the Gaza war is not slowing down. It's only, in fact, the opposite. The Israeli military has issued sweeping new evacuation orders in parts of Gaza, and Gaza hospital officials say Israeli troops have killed dozens of people trying to get food aid. The military said it opened fire at people gathering near troops. Fadel: NPR's Daniel Estrin reporting in Tel Aviv. Thank you, Daniel. Estrin: You're welcome. 📻 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】

Leila Fadel, Host: We heard about Israel there. Now we want to go deeper on what Iran might do. For that, we're now joined by Vali Nasr. He is a professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Iran's Grand Strategy, A Political History. Good morning and welcome to the program. Vali Nasr: Good morning. Thank you. Fadel: I want to start with how you view the U.S. strikes on Iran. President Trump called them a complete and total success, claimed the U.S. destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities. What do you think? Nasr: Well, I think talking in terms of just military strikes, they were successful, but it remains to be seen whether they achieved their goal. In other words, it's not known how much of the Fordow facility they damaged and whether the Fordow facility had actually been emptied out before it was struck by U.S. forces. And also, the regime is still standing, it's still fighting, it's still shooting missiles at Israel. And so the strikes did not change the tempo of the war and Iran's nuclear program still is open to question. Fadel: Now, right now, Iran is promising a painful retaliation. The spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guard warned the U.S., you can start this war, but we'll be the ones who end it, he said. What options do you believe Iran is weighing right now when it comes to retaliation that they are saying they might carry out? Nasr: I think in the short term, they're just going to keep the U.S. guessing, which actually has impact on energy prices, disrupts business in the region, and it also keeps Washington focused on what Iran might do. They will keep attacking Israel. They might try to close the Straits of Hormuz, although that's unlikely, and they might target U.S. bases, or they may not do any of the above and actually have some other surprise up their sleeve. But I think the main message is that they're not backing down and they're going to continue the fight as it has been happening. Fadel: You say the main message is that they're not backing down. So you don't see a situation in which Iran doesn't retaliate at all or does back down? Nasr: No, I think they will retaliate, but at a time of their own choosing. And it's not going to be exactly what the U.S. expects or when it expects it. I don't think they want to escalate with the U.S. I think they want to signal that they have, that they are survived, they're not defeated, and that they're willing to hit back. But they don't want to give an excuse to the United States to escalate at this point. Fadel: What are you hearing from inside Iran right now? Nasr: I think the people are anxious and angry. They are worried about where this war might go. They are also angry at their country having been attacked. After all, this is a foreign attack on their country. And the country is a bit shell-shocked. And its leadership was shocked at the beginning, but they had plans about how they might respond to an American-Israeli attack, and I think they are following those plans at the moment. Fadel: Do you believe these strikes and the U.S. getting involved in this war with Israel will change the political and diplomatic landscape in the Middle East? Nasr: I think so. I think because the signal here is that the United States and Israel are willing and capable to settle all issues militarily and that international law, rules, diplomacy, etc. won't stand in their way. I think this will have a chilling impact on all countries in the region, be they United States and Israel's enemies or United and Israel's friends. I think it changes conception of security for everybody in the region. Fadel: Now, you've written and studied Iran's strategy and political history for decades. What are the biggest signs that you're going to be watching for in the next few days or weeks as this continues? Nasr: Well, I'm going to, in the very short term, we haven't heard from Iran's supreme leader. I think that will give direction as to how Iran would move forward here, how intensely it might resist or take the challenge that it faces to United States and Israel. But I think I will look for whether or not Iran signals at some point that is ready to change direction in this conflict, either for the worse or to engage the United States diplomatically to arrive at a de-escalation. But I don't see a major change, of course, for Iran. I think they're not sufficiently about to contemplate that they're going to throw in the towel as President Trump demanded. Fadel: Vali Nasr is a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Iran's Grand Strategy, A Political History. Thank you so much for your time and joining the program. Nasr: 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】

Hey friends, it's Rosie here. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Wednesday. I was at the grocery store a few days ago, just trying to get in and out quickly, when someone, out of nowhere, just cut right in front of me. I was perusing the magazines, and this person, no eye contact, no excuse me, just straight up, cut in front, while I was standing there, clearly in line. I stood there, in shock, as the grocery clerk and I exchanged an equally surprised look. I could feel the rage bubbling up as I gripped my non-ripe avocados and thought, oh, we're really doing this today. But instead of reacting, I paused. I took a breath, and you won't believe what happened next. So far this week, we've been talking about how anger is energy. And how holding on to resentment only burns us in the end. But as we will see this week, even that isn't enough to stop us from reacting. Today, I want to talk about something just as important. That little moment, that suspended brief blip, the power of pausing. In psychology, this is called cognitive reappraisal, a key tool in cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT. Research shows that when we pause and reframe a situation before reacting, it actually changes how our brain processes the experience. A 2018 study from Columbia University found that people who practice pausing and reframing their emotional reactions had lower stress levels and made more thoughtful decisions compared to those who reacted immediately. That pause between what happens to us and how we respond, that's where our power is. We don't always have control over what happens, but we do have control over how we react. And the more we practice creating space between our emotions and our actions, the more we can step into our own freedom. So going back to the grocery store. At that moment, I had a choice. I could let my anger take over and let it ruin my afternoon. Maybe even say something snarky. Or I could pause. Instead of assuming the worst. I asked myself, what if they weren't paying attention? What if they're stressed, distracted, dealing with something heavy? And in that moment, the person turned to me and said, I am so sorry. I didn't even see you standing there. I'm spaced out. The moment as quickly as it erupted was quickly diffused. I felt my frustration soften, and I held my little avocados with less frustration. I just smiled and said, no worries. That moment of pause changed everything. Because here's the truth, our minds love to jump to conclusions. And look, there have been scenarios where that wasn't the case, and the person, well, was just straight up rude. My point is, we often assume the worst about people's intentions. But pausing, it gives us a chance to rewrite the story before we react. So here's something to try. The next time you feel anger rising, silently say to yourself, pause. Take one deep breath in, And one exhale out. And then ask yourself, what's the most skillful response here? Sometimes you'll decide to speak up or set a boundary, but you'll do it from a place of clarity, not from raw reaction. And other times you'll realize the situation wasn't worth your energy at all. Anger wants urgency. It wants reaction. But we don't have to give it that. By practicing the pause, we give ourselves the chance to respond with intention instead of impulse. And hopefully over time, that one second pause can change the way we move through the world. 🪴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】

Thasunda Duckett | The Way We Work • Jan 2020 When you think about money and your dreams and you're looking at your account, you're like, "My bank account does not align with my dreams." [The Way We Work] Financial health for a typical American household can be stressful. We know that 46 percent of all Americans would struggle coming up with 400 dollars in the event of an emergency. And 60 percent of all Americans will face that emergency within 12 months or less. When you ask the question, "What does money mean to you," most people will say things like, "I feel anxious." And so the insecurities come. The shame comes. I think we have a fraught relationship with money, because it comes with judgment. When you're not able to pay your bills on time, you can personalize that. I don't want anyone to think that I'm not smart. I don't want anyone to know that I am very insecure with money. I don't want anyone to know that I am super stressed out. So now let's change the narrative. [6 lessons on how to improve our relationship with money] [1: Talk about it.] You can't do it alone. And that's when your squad has to come in. It's taboo. We typically don't talk about our stresses when it comes to money. We need to come together as a group of friends, no judgment, no shame. Celebrate the fact that we've made a decision that we want to have a better relationship with money. That is worth applauding or snapping your fingers about. Once you've done that, then you get real. Nothing should be off-limits. Where does this relationship come from? Why am I spending all this money on things that don't align with my goals? What are your fears? What are your hopes? What are your dreams? But then we start to take action. What can we do this week? Or what can we do this month? [2: Understand what money is] Money is not the end-all be-all. It's the mechanism to accomplish whatever your goals are. It does not define you. It's just a mechanism to accomplish what matters to you most. [3: Identify what matters to you ... ] Ask yourself one fundamental question: what are you saving for? If you're saving for a car, if you're saving to pay down your debt, if you're saving for that rainy day fund, it will include short-term goals and it will include long-term goals. [4: ... and then really picture it.] Visualize what you're really trying to accomplish. A vision board is visual representation of what you're saving for. So if we break it down, go get a poster board. Get your markers, get your glitter. Take magazine pictures, cut it all out. Have that picture of that great trip. Have the picture of you paying down your student debt. The vision board sounds like, "Oh, how can that really help?" The point is your goals need to align with your behaviors, and the vision board is really a representation of where you wanna go and then how you live your life, and in the meantime are the steps to really get there. [5: It's not what you make, it's what you keep.] It's not about what you make, it's about what you keep. It's about understanding do I have the ability with what I'm making to take care of my basic needs? And if not, what adjustments do I need to make? And then we start to break it down and talk about the tools. We start to say, "Do we have our savings account, auto-save?" Set it and forget it, or every day, put a dollar a day. Whatever that rhythm is for you, the goal is the rhythm, not the amount. You can start slow. You can start small, but you have to start now. And then let me give you a trick, we all have impulses. Many times, because the phone is always with us, we start shopping. Go out to any site, shop up, put it in your cart. Just don't hit buy. Wait 24 hours, go back and ask yourself, "Do I really need it? What about these items map to my goal?" And if it's nothing, hit delete and you got your fix. [6: Be good to yourself.] It's also important to know that your self-worth is not determined by your net worth. This is something that we can do better about. You celebrate your wins. And when you make that misstep, no judgment, no shame. Just get back at it. 🗣️更多文本及视频见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: All around the world, a toothy, furry plushy named Labubu is causing a frenzy. In this week's Word of the Week, NPR's Juliana Kim explores the meaning and story behind Labubu and what its popularity tells us about today's consumers. JULIANA KIM, BYLINE: It looks like a monster from "Where The Wild Things Are," but when Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung created the character, he was setting out to draw an elf inspired by the Nordic fairy tales he read as a child. Labubu is one of the characters in his illustrated book series called "The Monsters" that debuted in 2015. A few years later, Lung teamed up with the Chinese toy company Pop Mart, and from there, the plushy became a global sensation. COKE DUCK: (Singing) Labu, Labubu. Labu, labu, Labubu. Labu, Labubu... KIM: They're kindhearted and eager to help, though their good intentions can sometimes lead to chaos. Today, Labubus spark long lines outside toy stores, sell out online within minutes and resell on secondary markets for double or triple their original price. Last week, a life-size Labubu figurine sold for six figures in China, according to Yongle Auction. But what exactly is a Labubu? Well, it's a plushy doll that comes in a range of sizes. But the most popular are sold in so-called blind boxes, meaning what's inside is a surprise. MICHELLE PARNETT-DWYER: So I think it's evolved into something that feels like a very new phenomenon, but I feel like it probably has some roots in the Japanese lucky bags. KIM: Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, a curator at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, says those bags were full of leftover merchandise. She showed me a blind box toy she recently bought. It was from a series of classic Disney character plushies. The one she got was Daisy Duck. Is that the one you wanted? PARNETT-DWYER: Yeah. Well, so - yes, yes, I wanted Daisy or Minnie, so... KIM: That's amazing. PARNETT-DWYER: I don't wear her on my bag yet. She's in the bag. KIM: OK. She says there's been a longstanding fascination with mystery, like with cereal box prizes and capsule toys from vending machines, even trading cards such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! PARNETT-DWYER: I think there's a lot of things where the popularity among adults or young adults stems from childhood nostalgia of, I want to have this little stuffy or this little prize, and it's nostalgia-based. KIM: Parnett-Dwyer says reconnecting with your inner child is ultimately a good thing. It helps us have fun, engage with one another and stay young. Juliana Kim, 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】

Our great intelligence causes great anxiety. There's a burden to our cognitive enlightenment. As existential organisms, there's all sorts of supernatural beliefs that we invest in. There's the common ones that most people are familiar with - related to the religious traditions that we're part of - but there's also all sorts of other types of supernatural beliefs such as the belief in ghosts, a belief in other types of spirits, a belief in psychic powers, a belief in almost superhuman abilities like mind reading. We also invest in things that aren't necessarily hardcore beliefs, but that we might refer to as supernatural - lite, things like UFOs and aliens. Our interest in the supernatural is probably a story as old as our species. There's something about wanting to not be confined by earthly parameters. The story of supernatural thinking is a complex one, that is there's not just one source or one cause of our supernatural interest. 1. Mortality But a big one is the realization of our mortality. Supernatural beliefs give us some sense that even though life on this planet is short, even though it's uncertain, there's a part of me that is more than that. There's a part of me that's beyond my material existence. I have some spiritual essence that transcends mortality. We also have to deal with the loss of loved ones, and supernatural beliefs help us deal with loss. When a loved one passes, we gain some sense of comfort in our sadness that we still remain connected to them in some way. In some way, the relationship persists even though they're not physically with us anymore. 2. Understanding All animals, at some level, need to make sense of the external world. It helps to have some basic understanding of cause and effect. But what makes humans unique is not only do we need to make sense of our external world so we can navigate it, but we also have an internal world. We're very introspective. We're highly self - aware. And so we wanna make sense of our own lives, and supernatural beliefs can help us make sense of the external world by helping make it more orderly and predictable, but it also plays a critical role in helping us make sense of our own existence. 3. Smallness At some level, all humans are aware of the fact that we're tiny. We're tiny in a lot of ways, right? If you think about our relative size in the Universe, we're just a tiny spec on a planet that's just a tiny part of a much larger Universe. In addition to that, if you think about the concept of time, that also makes us feel small. We know that our time on this planet is very brief in the grand scheme of things. Supernatural beliefs help us connect ourselves to something that solves that problem of smallness. Even though I'm only here for a brief moment in time, I am connected to others who have been here for a long time, and hopefully connected to others that will be here for a long time in the future. 4. Personal Struggles As humans who are highly introspective, we have all sorts of insecurities and personal struggles that we have to deal with. Supernatural beliefs, in a lot of ways, help us - they help offer guidance, they help us feel like there's some sense of order or purpose in our lives. They're part of that dialogue with the self. That's one of the reasons people pray for instance, is they want to have a conversation or connection with the divine as a way to help resolve some of their personal challenges and struggles. So there seems to be a lot of evidence that supernatural thinking is natural to humans - it's part of what it means to be a human, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good. Critics of supernatural beliefs would think that they can make us believe in things that are just scientifically false. Supernatural beliefs can make people dogmatic, which can contribute to serious conflict, even war. At the same time, they are actually also quite good for us. That anxiety inspires us as part of the story of what makes us want to advance society, and to help others because we look beyond the mortal self. Supernatural beliefs help us feel like we're part of a meaningful, cosmic drama. 🧐 视频版和更多文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】

Gorick Ng | TED • Sept 2023 In many workplaces, there are rules that are completely unspoken. Understanding them is crucial for success, and yet you won't find them in your employee handbook. Unless you're lucky enough to have a mentor or manager who pulls you aside to help, you just kind of have to figure them out on your own. [The Way We Work] Starting a new job can feel like starting at a new school. You're meeting new people, you're getting thrown into unfamiliar situations, and you're constantly wondering: What does everyone think of me? But whether you're starting your first job ever or just starting a new role, making a great impression doesn't have to be so scary. It all comes down to deciphering those unspoken rules and demonstrating what I call the three Cs: competence, commitment and compatibility. The first C is competence. On day one, your new colleagues are probably looking at you and thinking: Can you do your job? The way to convince others, not to mention yourself, that yes, you can, is to show your homework and to give others something to react to. Let's say it's your first day, and it's utter chaos. People are forwarding you messages with nothing more than a "See below" at the top and pulling you into meetings without any notice or context. Your manager just gave you a task, and two minutes in you're already confused. Instead of going back to them right away and saying, "I don't know what to do next, help!" Or doing what I did, which is not asking questions at all, think about a similar task that you tried in a previous job, in school or just for yourself. What steps did you take then? Then make your best guess and just give it a try. Then go back to your manager and say, "I'm working on X, and I'm not quite sure of what to do next. I've taken X steps and spoken to so-and-so and I understand this part, but I'm still unclear about this other part. What do you think about this approach?" No, I'm not suggesting that you fake it till you make it, but what I am suggesting is that you try until you can't try anymore. Time matters, though, so give yourself a limit. And depending on your deadline, figuring things out on your own. Then ask and then learn from what others tell you. It's your first bit of knowledge around how things work here. The second C is commitment. Besides looking to see if you can do your job, your colleagues are also looking to see if you're dedicated. During your first week in a new job, try asking your manager questions about expectations. My favorites are one, what are my top priorities in this role? Two, how would you like to communicate day-to-day and week-to-week? And three, what have your highest performers done that you'd suggest that I do too? For your peers, try to go more casual. In your first few days, your manager will be probably, or well, at least hopefully, taking you around and introducing you to your other teammates. In those moments, think about how you can transform some of those "Hi's" into conversations and then those conversations into relationships. One option is to ask how others' weeks are going. For those you really get along with, try involving them in your work and maybe even your life with phrases like, "Oh, I'd love to get your input on A." Or "Could I get your advice on B?" These can all go a long way in deepening a relationship. The third C, it's compatibility. Every time a new person joins a team, the others on it want to know: Will you get along with us? By initiating conversations, you're already expressing compatibility. But while you're at it, use this time to try and identify who's in charge of what or what I call "invisible swim lanes." Let's say you've just started a new remote job. First, ask your manager if there's an org chart. It's a diagram showing who reports to whom. And if there is one, amazing. But formal job titles and reporting lines can only tell you so much about how things really work. So when you're in meetings and group chats, pay attention. What's each person's role? Who reports to whom? Who's on whose side, who commands respect, which behaviors get rewarded and which behaviors get punished? Understanding these norms, loyalties, power brokers and swim lanes is what people are really referring to when they say that it's important to understand a team's "culture." And by the way, while you're mapping out these swim lanes, look around to see if there's any swim lane that might be unoccupied or in other words, what tasks might be available that aren't currently being done that can help your team accomplish more, better, faster, cheaper, safer, more securely. By doing this, you'll show that you're competent enough to spot gaps, committed enough to fill them and compatible enough to not overstep. 🗣️字数限制，完整文本及视频见公众号【琐简英语】，回复1可加入【打卡交流群】