Video of the week
I spend a lot of my time on YouTube, be it looking for useful and interesting input for my various English training courses, or simply developing my own culture and interests.
Publishing a ‘video of the week’ on my website therefore comes as a pretty logical extension of this, and I hope it allows you to check out some interesting content in a format that combines leisure and learning.
Choosing a 'video of the week' for you.
Date.
Generally, I go for fairly up-to-date publications on topics that are in the news or trending at the time. However, it could be that some historical footage may be of particular interest, so this factor is not ‘carved in stone’.
Length.
Anything from 3 to 7 minutes is a useful guide when checking out videos to help your language learning. This allows you to focus on the style (form) as well as the substance (content), adding the benefit of language learning to the pleasure of viewing.
Subtitles.
Using English subtitles while watching in English, allows you to see and hear the commentary simultaneously, helping you develop both your listening and reading skills.
However, automated subtitles are generally only around 65-70% accurate, causing some confusion for learners. I try to select videos that have had their subtitles corrected (by humans like me!), or where they are generally well done.
Video gallery
Video of the week
Burnout doesn’t happen because of too much work. Liz Wiseman, an executive advisor, suggests it’s something else entirely.
Dr. Andrew Huberman, American Neuroscientist, Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford School of Medicine, shares tools and advice for controlling stress in real-time.
Click here to do the quiz on this week’s video and check how well you understood everything.
Now you can 3D-print metal objects at home.
This commercial and technical presentation is for the ‘techies’ amongst you!
Click here to go to the quiz and check how well you understood everything.
Did you know that just three months of consistent exercise can boost your brain function?
Exercise neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki explains how working out can strengthen your cognitive abilities.
According to Suzuki, even just ten minutes of walking can alleviate anxiety and depression because of the neurochemicals released during exercise. She shares a study that indicated people who were previously sedentary experienced notable improvements in their baseline mood, prefrontal function, and hippocampal function with only 2-3 exercise sessions per week. If you’re already exercising, don’t worry — you’re still able to reap these benefits!
Suzuki believes increasing the intensity of your preexisting workouts only further boosts the benefits for your brain. Just don’t go overboard, she says, because that can hurt you more than help you.
Click here to go to the quiz to see how well you understood everything in the video.
As revenge-travel booms post-pandemic, a slew of low cost airlines like Norse Atlantic Airways, French Bee, and Play have begun advertising cheap transatlantic flights. Their tactics for getting prices down go far further than simply ‘unbundling ancillaries’ – charging separately for everything other than the plane seat – yet still their prices aren’t that much cheaper than legacy carriers like United and Delta. With the summer travel season coming to an end, and international demand set to drop, WSJ’s George Downs visits Norse to find out whether the company’s low fare, low-margin approach will withstand the winter.
0:00 Cheap fares for transatlantic flights
0:55 How low-cost airlines get prices down
2:56 Delta and United offer low fares
5:00 Why Norwegian stopped flying transatlantic
6:24 How low cost carriers can survive winter
Click here to do the comprehension quiz and check how well you understood everything.
A perfectly preserved medieval fortress, on the edge of a bright pink lake. It looks like an unused set from the Barbie film – and yet it’s a real place, and it’s in France. But what exactly makes a lake turn pink? And why does it only do it in the summer? I hopped on a TGV to go and have a closer look…
Now try the quiz to see how well you understood everything in the video.
The shortest flight in Europe takes less than a minute – and it’s getting increasingly hard to justify emissions from such trips as the planet heats up. So, some countries in Europe have begun to outright ban certain routes. Will others follow? And – will such bans make any difference at all?
Ever wondered why it’s so hard to sound like a local when you go on holiday? Discover the pronunciation tips your teachers may have missed.
Anti-waste supermarkets are spreading across France which are selling food rejected by large retailers. 10 million tons of consumable goods are thrown away each year across the country. The shop Nous Anti-Gaspi (Our Anti-Waste) in Paris sells food which has been rejected. On some cheese, Vincent Bosset, the store manager said: « This is completely absurd because this Brie is perfectly consumable and excellent. »
If food waste were its own country it would be the 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gases. In 2016 France wrote a radical zero-food waste law to change that. So, what can the U.S. learn from this hard stance on organic waste?
Antifragility is the idea of putting pressure on a system, or human, the system or human actually grows bigger and stronger. Antifragile systems are all around us. One example of this is our muscular system. We go to the gym to lift weights. By doing so we are putting pressure on our system to help it grow stronger. The human body is an antifragile system. From a psychological perspective, antifragility comes in the form of PTG, or post-traumatic growth. After we experience a stressful event, we learn and grow to become more resilient.
Do we actually grow from adversity?
We like to think there’s a silver lining to tragedy — and this may be influencing both how studies on post-traumatic growth are constructed and how subjects are responding.
Unprecedented heavy rains (a consequence of extreme weather caused by climate change) can take inches off of topsoil in minutes, destroying a farmer’s harvest, threatening their livelihood and impacting the quality of their soil for generations to come. Also impacted are the companies that rely on these farmers to source local ingredients for their products. Unilever is tackling this complex challenge head-on by partnering with Practical Farmers of Iowa to protect and improve soil through regenerative farming practices. But can they convince often risk-averse farmers across the state and beyond?
What is really the difference between Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)? Are they actually the same thing? In this video, Jeff Crume explains the differences and relationship between AI & ML, as well as how related topics like Deep Learning (DL) and other types and properties of each.
It’s obvious that knowing more than one language can make certain things easier — like traveling or watching movies without subtitles. But are there other advantages to having a bilingual (or multilingual) brain? Mia Nacamulli details the three types of bilingual brains and shows how knowing more than one language keeps your brain healthy, complex and actively engaged.
Powerful branding can not only change how you feel about a company, it can actually change how your brain is wired. « We love to think of ourselves as rational. That’s not how it works, » says UPenn professor Americus Reed II about our habits (both conscious and subconscious) of paying more for items based primarily on the brand name. Effective marketing causes the consumer to link brands like Apple and Nike with their own identity, and that strong attachment goes deeper than receipts. Using MRI, professor and neuroscientist Michael Platt and his team were able to see this at play. When reacting to good or bad news about the brand, Samsung users didn’t have positive or negative brain responses, yet they did have « reverse empathy » for bad news about Apple. Meanwhile, Apple users showed a « brain empathy response for Apple that was exactly what you’d see in the way you would respond to somebody in your family. »