NPR: National Public Radio

A great website I first found in 2014. And rediscovered in 2023. It has short podcasts you can listen to repeatedly for great learning effect.

NPR Podcasts and Shows

Ones I’ve listened to lately:

How people in a Norwegian town cope with complete darkness

Why AI struggles to predict the future : Short Wave : NPR

A place to start with the topic of AI could be the text on NPR How will AI change the world? 5 deep dives into the technology’s future : NPR. 

From here you can go to five different podcasts, the first of which explains or tries to define what AI is. The link about about how AI struggles when predicting the future is one of these five, and a more difficult one, technically. I would recommend starting with the first.

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London Tower Commemorates World War I

On my visit to London this year, I went to the Tower of London to look at the art project installed to commemorate the British soldiers who died in WWI.

It is quite fascinating as you can see if you go to the link below or google Tower of London.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1491578/photos-red-ceramic-poppies-spill-from-tower-of-london/

November: In the meantime some weeks have past and the sight around the Tower has changed dramatically. Continue reading

The Economist’s Annual Issue of the Year

Link for 2024 The World Ahead 2024 from The Economist

Link for 2023 The World in 2023 – what to expect

The World in 2014

Every year, the British magazine The Economist publishes a special issue that focuses on the events of the coming year. They write about upcoming events, things that might, could or will happen, and report on how on-the-spot their predictions for the previous year were.

This year, their selection of events around the world (Calendar 2014, p 32) was accompanied by a wonderful illustration by Kevin Kallaugher, their editorial cartoonist, and … Continue reading

Internet session Thursday morning 26 September

Every once in a while I like to show groups how the internet can be used to integrate more English into your everyday life, plus just plain interesting stuff, as I find.

Below are some of my favorites that I have also listed or mentioned in other posts.

In the end, one of our group brought a page of his interest (I love it when class participants do that), including copies for reading. It was Louis C.K.’s explanation of why he hates smartphones. Continue reading

TED and other youtube favorites

Youtube has evolved from being a forum for private videos to a platform where all kinds of institutions publish their visual material. Here one of my favorites is TED.

A student of mine showed me a talk given by Colin Stokes (How Movies Teach Manhood). Our classroom has access to the internet and we watched and discussed it together. In the mean time I have shown it to other groups as well.

Colin Stokes talks about his experience as a father Continue reading

BBC World

Update 2023

Besides providing loads of interesting things to explore, I also find the short topical videos under BBC Reel worth looking into, for instance Food for Thought by the nutritionist Kimberly Wilson.

The BBC homepage  provides a range of different kinds of information from current news to specific interests; different media (besides texts you find videos and radio broadcasts), a special page for learners of English, quizzes and many more; in short: great sources for your English improvement; Continue reading