Episodes
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Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under The Microscope. Hi, 安澜.
Hi, lulu. Hi, everyone.
So, 安澜, can I propose a topic?
Of course.
The other day, during my live stream, you know, watching TV shows.
Oh, yes.
我们之前有一次那个看剧解梗的直播, 你知道吧? 然后我们就看了一个剧叫Ted Lasso.
I love Ted Lasso.
《足球教练》这个剧. It is about an American football coach going to coach a football team in the UK.
Yeah.
So, (I’m) not going into details but one of the things that we've noticed, because there's obviously a lot of cross cultural misunderstanding thing.
Yeah.
There was this particular part where Ted, the American guy got really confused about all these names for Britain or like people's like "oh, yeah, is that Wales, is that another country?"
It does get confusing.
Yeah, because when you meet英国人, sometimes they say "I'm from the UK". Sometimes they say "I'm British", sometimes they say "I'm from England".
Yeah.
So, I thought today let's just get that sorted out.
Yep. There's lots of different names for the UK, but first of all, let's start with the official name. So this is the name that's on my passport.
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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to one of your favorite segments【词源考古研究所】...
Do do do do ~ do`
I haven't said the English name yet.
Sorry.
【It means what? 】
Do do do do ~ do`
Welcome to the show, 安澜.
Thank you. Hi, everyone.
You're in high spirit today. So I'm assuming we're talking about a fun word today.
We're talking about I have to say an activity I really enjoy doing.
So it must be quite boring then.
It’s actually... we’re talking about quizzes.
Quizzes, Q-u-i-z.
Quiz can mean测验测试或这种什么问答. I like quiz in the sense of when it’s a fun quiz. I don't particularly like quiz when it's given by teachers.
I remember when I was at school, we used to have lots of pop quizzes. So just these type of quizzes, the teacher would say right, books away. I'm gonna test you.
No preparation. 这种随堂突击测验, I hated that.
I really, really hate that.
This is why now I'm a teacher, I don't give that.
Actually that's why when I was a teacher, I used to give those all the time.
You are such a horrible human being.
I know.
All right, quiz doesn't sound English. Where does it come from?
There is a famous story which to be honest, I think is a myth, most people think it's a myth. It's believed that it was invented by a theater manager in the 18th century.
You would be surprised how many words are invented by people working in theaters.
Now he bet that he could introduce a word into the language within 24 hours.
That was before social media time and the internet, how could he do that?
What he did was, he went out according to the story, he went out and hired a group of street children, so children that lived on the streets, homeless kids, okay. To write the word quiz which was a nonsense word.
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Episodes manquant?
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Acting fast, I moved behind him and struck his head with the handle of my revolver. He collapsed back onto the floor. I held him down with all my strength, using my arms and knees to pin him in place while Holmes blew hard on his whistle, calling for help.
There was the sound of running feet, and three men rushed into the room. Two were policemen in uniform, and the third was a plain-clothed detective. I realized he was the man I had seen earlier standing in the doorway.
"Is that you, Lestrade?" Holmes asked.
"Yes, Mr. Holmes. It's good to see you back in London, sir."
"I thought you could use some help. Three unsolved murders in one year isn't very good, Lestrade."
The two policemen took over holding the prisoner, who had gotten back on his feet.
In the light of their lanterns, I saw the prisoner clearly for the first time. He had a weathered face, like someone who had spent years outdoors. His blue eyes were sharp and strong, but also cold, like a hunter. He ignored everyone except Holmes, staring at him with a mix of hatred and surprise. "You devil," he kept saying. "You clever, clever devil."
"My dear Colonel," Holmes replied, "I don't think we've met since the day you threw rocks at me above the Reichenbach Falls. Gentlemen, let me introduce Colonel Sebastian Moran, formerly of Her Majesty's Indian Army, and the best big game hunter in the East. No one has hunted more tigers than you, right, Colonel?"
The old man glared at Holmes. With his fierce eyes and bristling moustache, he looked a little like a tiger himself.
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"He threw another stone, and it hit the ledge very close to my head. I realized with alarm that Moriarty hadn't been alone. This man must have been watching while the professor attacked me. He had seen his friend die and me escape, and now he was trying to do what Moriarty couldn’t."
"A third stone came flying down and missed me by inches. I had no choice but to scramble back down the cliff. In my rush, I lost my balance and hung from the ledge by my fingers while another stone flew past my ear. I kicked around until I found a place to put my foot and kept going down. Halfway down, my hand slipped and I fell, getting hurt and bleeding on the path. Then I started running. I ran for miles through the mountains as night fell."
"A week later, I arrived in Florence, Italy. I had managed to lose my pursuer and thought that no one knew where I was—except my brother Mycroft. I had to tell him because I needed money. I'm sorry, my dear Watson, that I didn't feel I could trust you with this information, too.
"I was in so much danger that I couldn't risk contacting you. But your account in The Final Problem helped make people believe I was dead. It would not have been as believable if you had known the truth.
"Over the past three years, I wanted to write to you many times, but I was afraid. Not just for my safety, but for yours too. My enemies might use you to find me. That's why I acted so strangely earlier this evening. If you had recognized me, it could have been very dangerous for both of us."
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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to one of your favorite segments【词源考古研究所】, It Means What?
Hi, 安澜.
Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.
So what are we gonna talk about today?
First I wanna ask you a question, okay,
what would you do if you clogged your toilet?
Clogged my toilet? What are you talking about? I never clog my toilet. I'm a lady.
Really?
Okay. If I accidentally clog my toilet, I would use a plunger. I would use any method to try to unclog it.
But what if you can't? I'll call someone, I'll call a guy. Are we talking about plumber today就是水管管道工?
So we're gonna talk about the word. Plumber or plumbing
Plumbing is a word... I would assume the origin of this word has something to do with pipes because你说水管，我们说上下水管道工。
No, it comes from Latin “plumbum”, means lead.
Lead铅, 这个词在它作为金属的时候, 它读lead[led]，在作为引导的时候它读lead[li:d]. Here is lead[led], was it because the original pipes, water pipes they were made of lead?
Exactly. So the Romans were famous for their plumbing. They were famous for their water supplies and their aqueducts.
Yes, the aqueducts are those things that you use to transport water.
And the Romans use lead to make the pipes.
Isn't that a bit dangerous?
Yes, it is. The problem is that lead is highly poisonous,
对, 铅就是特别有毒的.
Yes. The problem is that nobody realized that lead was that dangerous. So some scholars actually think the reason why the Roman empire fell is because of lead poisoning.
I guess a lot of these things that we now know to be highly dangerous, they were found out because people died from it, (exactly) massive amount of people died from it.
So some people think that if you read Roman history, there's lots of people who are a little bit crazy or a little bit of eccentric or do very weird things. Some people have suggested that actually that could have been partly lead poisoning because lead poisoning does actually make you slightly erratic. It does affect your nervous system.
It's heavy metal poisoning, exactly. It's like in Chinese history there's a lot of because of all the 炼丹, there's a lot of mercury poisoning.
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The Empty House
It was the spring of 1894, and all of London was shocked by the terrible murder of Mr. Ronald Adair. I wished my late friend, Sherlock Holmes, was still here because this crime had a mystery to it that I knew he would have loved to solve.
Three years had passed since Holmes's death. He had died during a fight with his enemy, Professor James Moriarty, at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Both of them had fallen into the powerful water below. Now, all I had were my memories of Holmes and the many adventures we had shared together.
My time with Holmes had given me a deep interest in crime, and every day I read the newspapers to look for unsolved robberies and murders. Sometimes, I even tried to use Holmes's methods to solve them, though I wasn’t very successful.
The murder of Ronald Adair was especially interesting to me, and I carefully read all the evidence presented at the inquest. All day, as I visited my patients, I kept thinking about the case. However, I couldn’t figure out how the murder was committed, or who the killer was.
Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, who was the governor of an Australian colony. His mother came back to England from Australia in the summer of 1893 for an eye operation. She, Ronald, and his sister Hilda lived at 427 Park Lane in London. Ronald quickly became popular with the upper class of London society. He seemed like a well-liked young man who had no enemies. In the autumn of that year, he got engaged to Miss Edith Woodley, but they ended the engagement by Christmas. There were no bad feelings, and they stayed friends.
People who knew Ronald Adair said he was quiet, modest, and easy to get along with. There was nothing about his life or personality that made it seem like he would meet a violent end. However, he died in a strange and brutal way between 10:00 and 11:20 p.m. on the night of March 30, 1894.
Ronald Adair enjoyed playing card games. He was a member of three card clubs in London and played almost every day, but usually for small amounts of money. On the day he died, he played two rounds of whist at the Bagatelle Club, one in the afternoon and one after dinner. His fellow players—Mr. Henry Murray, Sir John Hardy, and Colonel Sebastian Moran—later said there were no big wins or losses that day. Adair might have lost five pounds, but that was a small amount for someone with his wealth. He was a careful player, though he did win big sometimes. For example, he once won £420 in a single round with Colonel Moran as his partner.
On the night he died, Ronald Adair came home from his club at exactly ten o'clock. His mother and sister were out visiting someone. The servant said she heard him go into his sitting room on the second floor. She had already lit a fire in the room and opened a window to let out the smoke.
No one heard any noise from that room until Lady Maynooth and Hilda came back home at eleven-twenty.
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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to The Sound of Musicals.欢迎回来区外之音， And this is the second episode for the musical Cats. Hi, Oliver.Hello again.
So last time we were talking about Cats, and we have summarized or you summarized the plot or the none plot for cats, basically a bunch of cats trying to go to kitty heaven.
Yeah, cats go to kitty heaven and start their new life.
So are there any themes?
Well there are. They're a little bit harder to find than in most musicals, but one of the more obvious ones is the idea of rebirth. They go to the heavy side layer, their version of heaven, and they are reborn using their cats nine lives. That's quite an interesting idea there because you only get one cat a year to go, so they have to choose who deserves it.
So it is seen as an honor or as at least a good thing, it’s a rare opportunity.
It’s seen as like a prize or a benefit or something they get to go, they get to start again.
And then they can come back and have everything again that they've lost in their life this time through age or injury or illness.
Speaking of age, I think one of the reasons that number Memory is so popular is because it's so sad. It's not just about cats, it’s not just about an individual. It speaks to all of us because all of us will age, will all die, will all lose our useful energy.
Yes, it is one of the few songs which you can really connect within this musical. A lot of them are introduction songs. There's some very strange songs and some very good songs, but this one it stands out because everyone can connect to it.
She sings about the happiness of the past and what she used to be like and what she is like now and it's another strong theme of this musical is the idea of losing things.
Another character, Gus, I think his name Asparagus, but they call him Gus, he used to be an actor, but he became ill and his hands his paws shake. And He can't act and that through injury and through illness now he can't do what he used to do. And his song is looking back at his time as an actor and his crowning moment of playing this part. But of course now he can't do that and they're all looking backwards and remembering what it was rather than doing it now.
So a lot of reminiscing about the good days that are past tense that are gone.
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· The Romantic Poets were among the first celebrities in history.
o Famous for their talent and their scandalous lives.
· William Blake
o Born in London on November 28, 1757, Blake was not only a poet but also a painter and printmaker.
§ His prints and artworks are known just as much as his poems.
o Blake's work often explores themes of spirituality, imagination, and the nature of reality.
§ He often had visions as a child, including angels in a tree and God looking at him through a window.
§ Also, known for being a pioneer in the free love movement.
o In poems like "The Tyger" and "The Lamb," he explores the dualities of existence—good and evil, innocence and experience.
§ His most famous poem is Jerusalem which is now considered to the unofficial anthem for England.
o Influenced many poets, writers and is considered the inspiration for comic literature.
· Lord Byron
o Born George Gordon Byron on January 22, 1788, in London, Byron was both a poet and a nobleman.
o His life was marked by scandal, adventure, and a fierce dedication to personal freedom.
§ “Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know”
§ He was disabled and bulimic who suffered with body image issues.
§ Byron used to drink out of a skull he found and made flower pots out of the rest.
§ He had numerous affairs with both men and women as well as his own half-sister.
o Byron's most famous works include Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan.
§ In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Byron introduced the "Byronic hero," a brooding, rebellious, and charismatic figure that became a staple of Romantic literature.
§ Don Juan, on the other hand, is a satirical epic that parodies the traditional hero by presenting its protagonist as a flawed yet sympathetic character.
§ He was one of the first writers whose works were pirated!
o Byron fought for Greek independence and died in Greece in 1816
· Percy Shelley
o Born on August 4, 1792, in Sussex, England.
§ Also, he was famous vegetarian.
o He was expelled from Oxford for writing an essay promoting atheism.
o Married a 16-year-old girl Harriet Westbrook.
§ Shelley was cut off by his father and lost a huge fortune.
§ Harriet eventually drowned herself when Shelley abandoned her.
§ Married Mary Shelley, the writer of Frankenstein, three weeks later.
· Also was having a relationship with Mary’s step-sister!
o Shelley's poetry is known for its lyrical beauty, philosophical depth, and revolutionary spirit.
o He was a passionate advocate for political and social reform, and his works often express a longing for a more just and free world.
o Shelley's life was cut short when he drowned in a boating accident at the age of 29.
Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】. Hi, 安澜.
Hi lulu, hi everyone.
So 安澜, you know that we have been developing this new course, this new 四合一literature classics course.
Yeah, that's when we've been going through pretty much the whole of English literature very very carefully.
Yeah, and when we say English literature, we don't just mean England, we mean like English speaking.
English speaking literature.
Yeah, so I thought let's do a literature episode.
Sounds great. But like English literature is huge, which area do you want to focus on?
I would like to do the romantic poets.
Woo, yes.
就是浪漫主义诗人.
When you hear this title, you probably think "oh, it's just going to be very romantic and sentimental lyrics or like verses.
No.
No, we're gonna talk about their 狗血 life.
Yes, the romantic poets were pretty scandalous. And in some cases, pretty horrible as well.
Yeah. Well, unlike the name suggests.
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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope, Halloween Special, 欢迎回来《闲话英伦·万圣节特辑》。
Hello，安澜。
Hello everyone. Hello and Happy Halloween.
Basically, one of my favorite festivals, last year we were doing superstition in the UK, so we're gonna talk about today.
Well, I thought for Halloween it would be nice to do something a little bit historical and also a little bit creepy. So I thought today we can talk about witches.
Oh, witches 就是女巫, ok, actually I have a quite a lot of background knowledge in this.
I know, so that's why I thought it would be good if we can talk about witchcraft in Britain.
Do you know that in university I actually wrote a paper on Witch Hunt.
Really
Yeah, always been a fascinating topic, like 安澜 was saying it's not just a fantasy or supernatural topic, it has a lot of history behind it.
First things first, when you talk about witches in British culture in British history, were they always evil? Were they always like an evil presence?
Not really, no, back in medieval times, and also early, they've always been witches and a lot of them were generally seen as good.
They were seen as good? So what did they actually do?
Well, they were known as cunning folk.
Cunning folk.
Yeah, a man could be a witch back then, they would help to cure people, help the crops to grow, woman to have children. It was a type of folk belief.
It's a little bit like 巫医 that sort of ideas, like witch doctor almost.
Type of thing.
But obviously if you read a lot of stories in the West, in Britain which they were hunted, they were seen as really, really evil.
That was from around the 15th century.
15th century.
Yeah.
How did they turn from the cunning folk which is harmless helpful neighborhood people to this evil presence?
Basically, it was caused by two kings, so Henry the 8th actually made witchcraft a Capital Offense.
Capital Offense, 就是要杀头的罪。
Yeah.
But why?
Because he was worried about the influence of these witches on society, it was also about the church as well, but it was actually another king, a Scottish king who then became king of England, James the First.
So King James the First was someone who was really scared of witches.
Yes, that's because he believed that witches were attacking his family.
That paranoid?
A little bit, but he was kind of educated king, so what he did was he wrote a book about finding witches.
Finding witches so that they can kill them.
Pretty much, and this actually started a witch hysteria when ordinary people started to believe that witches were dangerous.
‘Witch Hysteria’就是这种群体性的恐慌, and people were scared of witches.
Yes.
Because they were convinced by their king, of course, it's interesting that you talk about that he wrote an entire book about how to find witches.
So how to find witches, what were witches like, you said they were men and women?
You could have some male witches, but generally they were older women.
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AI development
Advanced
Intelligence
· Reason or use strategies that help to make judgements
· Plan, learn, use common sense(some humans can’t), communicate in natural language
· Combine these to complete a goal
Current Ai can’t do hands (showing inability to truly reason)
· Hands are a small part of the body
· Often not in focus on pictures
· Covered up or blurry because of motion
AI and Art
· AI created art (using Midjourney) entered into a competition and won.
· Books (such as Alice and Sparkle) have used AI artwork. (stealing others artwork to create new artwork.)
· Sora videos have issues. someone’s arm becoming a blanket. A hand randomly appeared on a bed.
ChatGPT can be used to do more
· Answer test questions better than an average test taker(depending on the test)
· Write computer programs or stories
· However, it can hallucinate (give nonsensical answers that sound correct)
Welcome back to Geek Time advanced. This is Brad. How are you doing Lulu?
Hi Brad.
How are you going getting along with your AI boyfriends?
Well. I'm moving on to new relationships very quickly and I'm developing multiple storylines. I think that is fun. So I'm assuming we're gonna talk more about AI.
Yeah, now one thing that's very interesting if you pay attention to like any pictures or videos created by AI.
Mhm.
By ChatGPT or any of those.
Midjourney.
Yeah, you'll see that they can't really do things like hands.
Oh. Yes. I've noticed就是Midjourney. 那个AI绘画它是画不清楚手. Why is that?
Either it's like six fingers or some fingers are really long, bendy, they just don't look realistic. This is a little weird, why, when they can do perfect faces?
Like when you look at a face, a face typically has a particular structure and it doesn't really matter which way you turn. Your face is... it’s things are always gonna be in the same spot. But when you look at someone's hand, right? They can put it into a fist. They can extend their fingers. Some fingers can be curved, some fingers can be straight. It's all kind of like all these different configurations of a hand can be shown in pictures. And so AI gets confused about what exactly is a hand.
And so it has all these different pictures to kind of draw from. So it kind of like combines all of those together and creates this kind of like weird looking thing.
Yeah. It's very interesting that you said that, because AI cannot really conceptualize what hands look like in a three dimensional space. Does that mean that although AI can create like really beautiful artwork, it is mostly still copying to some extent, it is not really, truly reasoning?
Right, AI and narrow AI doesn't really have a way to contextualize things. It just takes data and rearranges it. It doesn't really know what the data is. It just sees what people create and tries to create something very similar to that based on the constraints given to it.
Emm. Does this mean AI the current narrow AI they're just not really that intelligent, despite being called AI, artificial intelligence?
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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Buzzword Mix. In today's Buzzword Mix our buzzword is Non-binary.
If you know the original meaning of the word binary, you probably are getting a bit confused. Are we talking about mathematics?
今天的buzzword叫non-binary, 如果你知道binary原来的意思是二进制的时候, it's a system of zeros and ones, you probably think that we're talking about math, but actually, non-binary is a social concept.
Now, to understand non-binary, first of all, we need to understand what binary stands for here.
Some societies like ours tend to recognize just two genders, male and female.
The idea that there are only two genders is sometimes called a “gender binary”, because binary means “having two parts”, male and female.
要了解今天的 buzzword, 首先要知道这里的binary它指的不是二进制, 而是指的所谓的很多的社会里面的gender binary, 就是性别的二元化, 男性和女性.
These are the only two options.
So when you use “non-binary” to refer to someone, this is a term that people use to describe genders that don't really fall into one of these categories, male or female.
所以non-binary就被翻译成非二元性别者.
Again, you're probably getting a bit more confused.
Now most people, even including transgender people, are either male or female in most societies, but some people don't neatly fit into the categories of men or women, male or female.
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On the evening of Friday, April 24, 1891, I was surprised to see my old friend, the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, visit me. I hadn’t seen much of him in the past few months. The last I heard, he was in Paris working on a secret project for the French government.
“Holmes!” I exclaimed. “It’s so nice to see you! Are you alright? You look even paler and thinner than usual.”
“I’ve been under a lot of stress lately,” he admitted, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Do you mind if I close your shutters?” Without waiting for my answer, he went from window to window, closing and bolting the shutters. The room grew dim, with only a lamp on the table providing light.
“Are you afraid of something?” I asked.
“Yes, I am,” he replied.
“Afraid of what?”
“Air guns.”
“My dear Holmes, what are you talking about?”
“I’m not a fearful man, Watson, but I’m not foolish either. It would be foolish not to recognize danger when it’s near.”
Holmes sat down in an armchair. “I apologize for coming so late,” he said.
“That’s alright,” I responded.
“Would it be a problem if I leave your house later by climbing over your back garden wall?”
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