Latest Practiceenglish Podcast Episodes
Heat pumps: the green way to heat a home (Heat up)
Plain English - June 10, 2024 11:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Most homes in cold-weather places have furnaces or boilers to provide heat indoors. These are effective and are relatively cheap to install, but they run on fossil fuels. A greener option is heat pumps. But like electric cars, heat pumps face barriers to wider adoption. In this le...
Mona Lisa background: mystery solved? (Stand up to scrutiny)
Plain English - June 06, 2024 11:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: The Mona Lisa is the most famous portrait in the world, but much is not known about it. The background shows a lake, rock formations, and a stone arch bridge, but the location has never been known definitively. Now, a geologist and art historian says she has identified the backgro...
Surge of dengue in Latin America (Buy up)
Plain English - June 03, 2024 11:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Dengue fever is a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes. Though it's not deadly in the vast majority of cases, about five percent of patients require hospitalization. And cases are surging in Latin America. There have been more dengue cases in four months of 2024 than in all of 20...
Impressionism turns 150 (Fall into)
Plain English - May 30, 2024 11:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Impressionism, the art movement that celebrates bright colors, thick brushstrokes, and outdoor settings, turns 150 years old this month. Though Monet, Degas, Renoir, and others are celebrated in museums and art schools around the world, their work was initially rejected by the art...
Three big ideas from behavioral science (Stick with (someone))
Plain English - May 27, 2024 11:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: "Behavioral science" is the field of studying how humans behave in the real world. Today, take a look at three groundbreaking findings from the career of Daniel Kahneman. First, we feel pain more intensely than we feel pleasure. Second, we make decisions using two different system...
Daniel Kahneman and behavioral economics (Pass away)
Plain English - May 23, 2024 11:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Daniel Kahneman was a trained psychologist who became the ""grandfather of behavioral economics"" with his experiments on human behavior and decision-making. Though he never took an economics class as a student, he won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences for his work on how...
Updates on Iceland, Trump, and recent stories (Nod off)
Plain English - May 20, 2024 11:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: A corridor of magma below the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland burst to the surface through a series of volcanic eruptions. The Golden Bachelor couple is getting a divorce. Trump is nodding off at his first criminal trial. You'll hear the latest on these stories and more in our semi...
Quebec is squeezing Montreal's English speakers (Squeezed out)
Plain English - May 16, 2024 11:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Quebec, Canada's only French-speaking province, has long protected its language. But now, some English speakers say the province has gone too far. New policies by the provincial government restrict the use of English in certain circumstances. And Quebec recently raised tuition for...
Canada's complicated bilingualism (In a pinch)
Plain English - May 13, 2024 11:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Canada is a bilingual country, offering government services in both English and French. But the balance isn't 50-50. French is the dominant language in just one province, Quebec. Only 20 percent of Canadians speak French natively. And francophones are more likely to be bilingual t...
The translator at the center of a sports betting scandal (Caught up in)
Plain English - May 09, 2024 11:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Shohei Ohtani is a superstar baseball player in Los Angeles. Since his arrival in the U.S., he has used a Japanese translator. But the translator stands accused of stealing money from Ohtani and using the money to pay off sports gambling debts. Ohtani himself is considered the vic...
How zoo animals behaved during the eclipse (Quiet down)
Plain English - May 06, 2024 11:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's Story: How do animals behave during a total solar eclipse? It's a difficult question to answer because eclipses are so rare and they don't often pass over zoos or areas where animals can be observed. But the path of totality of this year's eclipse passed directly over six zoos, allowing ...
Paris's Olympic dream: swimming in the Seine (Run through)
Plain English - May 02, 2024 16:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Swimming has been prohibited in the River Seine for over 100 years, and for good reason: it has been filthy for much of that time. But Olympic organizers pledged to clean up the river and hold swimming events in central Paris. The Olympics start in June, but bacteria levels are st...
Chef José Andrés and the Israel-Hamas conflict (Throw yourself into)
Plain English - April 29, 2024 16:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Chef José Andrés is famous for his high-end restaurants. He's also the founder of World Central Kitchen, a charity that helps serve meals to people in disaster areas. And now, he finds himself in the middle of the Israel-Hamas war after seven World Central Kitchen workers were killed by an I...
Stephen King has been terrifying fans for 50 years (Come together)
Plain English - April 25, 2024 16:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Fifty years ago this month, ""Carrie,"" Stephen King's first novel, was released. It was the first of many, as King became one of the world's best-selling authors. His stories involved the supernatural, terror, and horror. Several have been adapted into movies and television shows. The 77-ye...
Massive bridge falls after collision with ship (Fire up)
Plain English - April 22, 2024 16:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" A massive bridge over a river in Baltimore, Maryland, fell into the water last month, after a container ship veered off course and crashed into one of the support columns. The ship lost power and had mechanical problems in the moments before impact. All port activity was halted in the afterm...
The growing popularity of Turkish television (Open to)
Plain English - April 18, 2024 16:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Britain and the United States are the two biggest exporters of television. But the third-biggest may surprise you: Turkey. Long-running Turkish dramas have become among the most popular television shows around the world, from Chile to Bulgaria. -- At Plain English, we make English lesson...
Cracks are showing in America's real-estate racket (In the best possible light)
Plain English - April 15, 2024 16:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Americans buy and sell millions of homes per year, and about 90 percent of transactions use a real estate agent. But agents in the U.S. charge among the highest rates in the world, thanks to their stranglehold on the listing databases. But recent court cases are challenging the agents' contr...
Will new dry 'tiles' be the future of laundry detergent? (Morph into)
Plain English - April 11, 2024 16:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" First there was powder. Then there was liquid laundry detergent. And then there were laundry ""pods,"" small capsules of pre-measured detergent. But now Proctor & Gamble, the maker of Tide, has a new way of getting laundry detergent into the machine. It's a dry tile, which is lighter, easier...
Gabriel García Márquez sons publish last book against author's wishes (Cloud your judgment)
Plain English - April 08, 2024 16:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" The Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez worked on a slim novel called ""Until August"" on and off for decades. In his final years, the author determined the book was not fit for publication and ordered the drafts destroyed. Now, ten years after his death, the writer's sons have...
Podcasting turns 20 years old (Come to mind)
Plain English - April 04, 2024 16:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Twenty years ago, a new computer program let consumers download a feed of audio clips onto their iPod music players. Today, ""podcasting"" serves millions of listeners of all interests. Here's how podcasting has grown over the years. -- At Plain English, we make English lessons for the m...
Like it or not, it's Biden vs. Trump again (Pass the torch)
Plain English - April 01, 2024 16:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Three years ago, it seemed that neither Biden nor Trump would be on the American presidential ballot in 2024. But now both are, setting up a rematch from four years earlier. Too bad it's a rematch most voters don't want. -- At Plain English, we make English lessons for the modern world. ...
Four questions about weight-loss drugs (Press up against)
Plain English - March 28, 2024 16:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Weight-loss drugs look to figure prominently in the business and health landscape of the future. So today, we take a look at four questions about these drugs: How do patients' take them? Are they covered by insurance? How much do they cost? And why are they so hard to find? -- At Plain E...
The perils of going off weight-loss drugs (Slow down)
Plain English - March 25, 2024 16:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Weight-loss drugs like Wegovy have become extremely popular in recent years. Recent studies confirm that patients regain much of the weight they lose if they ever stop treatment. But not everyone can afford to take these drugs for life. -- At Plain English, we make English lessons for th...
How our lives are different after the pandemic (Stick with)
Plain English - March 21, 2024 16:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Four years ago, our lives changed in an instant. As the immediate danger of the pandemic subsided, we went back to our old habits of eating indoors, gathering with friends and family, and traveling. But there are some changes that persisted, even after the pandemic ended. Here are a few of t...
COVID predictions that never came true (Come true)
Plain English - March 18, 2024 16:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratingsToday's story: Four years ago, our lives changed in an instant. As the immediate danger of the pandemic subsided, we went back to our old habits of eating indoors, gathering with friends and family, and traveling. But there are some changes that persisted, even after the pandemic ended. Here are...
Meet me at the 'zombie mall' (Put off)
Plain English - March 14, 2024 16:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" What happens to a large shopping mall after the biggest stores close? The mall often stays open in a zombie state: fewer customers, lower quality, and a depressing vibe. But they can still be profitable under the right circumstances. -- At Plain English, we make English lessons for the m...
The rise and slow fall of the indoor mall (Wander around)
Plain English - March 11, 2024 16:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" The enclosed shopping mall was once the epicenter of suburban social life. But now, the age of the indoor mall is ending. E-commerce and shifting consumer preferences have left some malls struggling. Here's how malls rose to prominence...and how many are fighting for their survival. -- A...
The fate of the penny in 7 currencies (More trouble than it's worth)
Plain English - March 07, 2024 17:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Swiss francs, British pounds, euros, and various kinds of dollars are divided into hundredths. But not all currencies have 1/100th coins. Today, we look at how Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, euro-area countries, the U.S., and the U.K. handle their lowest-value coins. -- At ...
‘Nearshoring’ in Mexico and eastern Europe (Carve out)
Plain English - March 04, 2024 17:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" If the 1990s and 2000s were about globalization and offshoring, then the 2020s are about ""nearshoring."" Large companies in the U.S. and western Europe want to bring manufacturing and services closer to home. But they still want lower-cost labor that globalization has provided them. Mexico ...
The winners and losers of Leap Years (Fall on)
Plain English - February 29, 2024 17:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 62 ratings" Leap Years come (about!) once every four years. The unusual day can cause havoc for some people, least of all the approximately 5 million who were born on February 29. In this lighthearted story, we take a look at how the day affects different people ... and who benefits from the extra day. ...
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