A2 · Getting started
Longer stories about daily life, past and future.
- 七条裙子和银鱼 Polly goes down to town and sees gull ladies in seven skirts drying fish in the sun. ? Quiz included Audio
- 骑士和鹿 Polly hears the old story of a rider and a deer at the cliff edge. Audio
- 海底的大峡谷 Polly finds a giant canyon hidden under the sea near the beach. Audio
- 特意种出的草 Polly learns that Central Park was built by hand on blasted rock, and that real sheep once ate the grass... Audio
- 没有人经过的车站 Polly finds an old subway station built to look nice, closed long ago because new trains were too long for... Audio
- 带阳台的房间 Marcos gets a hotel room with a nice balcony. Audio
- 一个人的桌子 Mia eats alone in a small restaurant, and the waiter helps her choose. Audio
- 曾经和黄金一样贵的香料 Saffron comes from tiny flower threads picked by hand, and for most of history a pound of it cost about the... Audio
- 每年夏天都会消失的湖 In Slovenia, a huge lake fills a valley in winter and then vanishes underground every summer, leaving... Audio
- 我家旁边的公园 A squirrel describes the small park next to its tree: the pigeons by the benches, Mr. Badger and his bread,... Audio
- 把黄金贴在冰淇淋上的城市 Kanazawa in Japan makes almost all of the country's gold leaf, and wraps whole sheets of it around soft ice... Audio
- 只飞九十秒的航班 A tiny plane hops between two Orkney islands in Scotland on the shortest scheduled flight in the world. Audio
- 不喊就会坐过站 A shared minibus with no bell and no screen, where the only way off is to say so out loud, early and twice. Audio
- 永远吃不完的午餐 In Spain, the best part of lunch starts when the food is finished. It even has its own name. Audio
- 在意大利千万别点拿铁 In Italy, the word latte does not mean coffee. One small word can bring you a big surprise. Audio
- 咖啡从哪里来 Coffee begins as a red fruit on a green plant and travels far before it fills a cup. Audio
- 在夜车上睡觉 Night trains in Europe carry travelers between cities while they sleep in cozy beds. Audio
- 蜜蜂如何酿蜜 Honeybees turn sweet flower nectar into golden honey through hard teamwork in the hive. Audio
- 那条漫长的丝绸之路 The Silk Road was a famous trade route that linked China with Europe for many centuries. Audio
- 亚马逊河，最大的河流 The Amazon is the river that carries the most water in the world. Audio
- 有三颗心脏的章鱼 The octopus is a clever sea animal with three hearts and blue blood. Audio
- 海底的电缆 Long cables under the ocean carry almost all of the information that travels between countries. Audio
- 那场叫作马拉松的长跑比赛 The marathon is a very long running race with a curious and surprising history. Audio
- 村子里第一盏亮起的灯 While the whole village sleeps, one window glows: the baker lights the oven so fresh bread will be ready by... Audio
- 藏在时钟里的小鸟 In Germany's Black Forest, carved wooden cuckoo clocks call out every hour while children wait and laugh. Audio
- 禁止死亡的小镇 When a small Italian town ran out of space in its cemetery, the mayor signed an order telling people not to... Audio
- 会坐公交车的猫 Every morning a cat climbs onto the same city bus, watches the streets go by, and gets off at his own stop. Audio
- 会爬瀑布的鱼 In Hawaii, a fish smaller than your finger climbs up waterfalls taller than buildings, using its mouth as a... Audio
- 蒸汽与小碟子 A first night at a Taipei night market, where pointing, smiling, and one brave question buy a very good... Audio
- 拉出方块的动物 Wombats make cube shaped poop, and now we know why. Audio
- 这种鸟边飞边睡觉 Frigatebirds fly for many days and sleep only a little. Audio
- 全国人都吃的午饭 In the Dominican Republic, everyone eats the same lunch at the same time. Audio
- 火山煮的晚饭 In the Azores, people cook food inside a hot volcano. Audio
- 末班车 Tomas misses the last train in Tokyo and sleeps in a tiny room. Audio
- 空杯子 On his first day, Pedro drinks from a cup that is not his. Audio
- 四十七号 Carla waits a long time at the clinic for a small cut. Audio
- 在里斯本迷路 Sofía gets lost in Lisbon and a woman helps her with a map. Audio
- 天亮前的厨房 Before sunrise, Polly visits Omicho market, three hundred years old, where crabs are sold in winter. Audio
- 打到几乎消失 Polly visits a gold leaf workshop, where a piece of gold the size of a coin becomes a sheet as big as a table. Audio
- 大声吸面才有礼貌 In Japan, slurping your noodles loudly is not rude, it is a sign that you are enjoying the meal. Audio
- 往上流的瀑布 On very windy days, strong gusts can blow a Norwegian waterfall's spray back up into the sky. Audio
- 石圈与早班船 The Ring of Brodgar at dusk, then the small practical business of leaving an island, done in four sentences... Audio
- 九十天的谷子 In a bar in Kirkwall, a flat dark bannock turns out to be the reason the islands were farmable at all. Audio
- 礁石上的聚会 Grey seals are hauling out on the low rocks before the pupping season, and the questions Polly has been... Audio
- 用手边的东西造出来的 On Lamb Holm, two army huts hold a chapel that prisoners of war made out of scrap, and the only honest... Audio
- 风暴下的村庄 At the Bay of Skaill, a guide with a carrying voice explains a village that a storm returned to the light... Audio
- 炉火旁的椅子 A guesthouse above the harbour, an argument about what counts as a quiet room, and a chair whose whole... Audio
- 船靠岸了 Polly lands at Stromness off the morning boat and works out, one question at a time, how a place with no... Audio
- 粉色并不存在 Pink has no wavelength of its own; it is a color the brain invents when the eyes see red and blue light... Audio
- 你现在正在发光 The human body constantly emits an extremely faint light, invisible to the eye but detectable with a... Audio
- 雾在她身后合拢 On her last afternoon, Polly flies high over the island before fog rolls in and hides it behind her. Audio
- 一座接在火山上的村子 Polly learns that the same volcano heat that cooked lunch also warms a big public pool and heats homes in... Audio
- 天亮就埋下的晚餐 Polly watches a cook bury pots of food in the ground, where the volcano's heat cooks dinner with no fire. Audio
- 一个火山口,两种颜色 Polly finds a huge old crater with two lakes, one blue and one green, joined together under a strip of land. Audio
- 两次被认定消失的鸟 Polly looks for the priolo, a tiny grey and pink bird that lives only in one forest and was once thought to... Audio
- 欧洲最后的两座茶园 Polly finds one of the only two tea farms left in Europe, started after the island's orange trees died. Audio
- 九座岛,三大板块 Polly arrives over São Miguel, the biggest of the nine Azores islands, made of black rock, green fields,... Audio
- 波莉坐公交车 Polly's first bus ride: does this bus go downtown, one ticket, how much, where do I get off, next stop,... Audio
- 波莉问路 Polly is lost on the way to the library and asks an owl for directions: excuse me, where is it, is it far,... Audio
- 波莉点一杯咖啡 Polly's first cafe order: good afternoon, a coffee with milk, do you have churros, the check please, how... Audio
- 波莉逛市集 Berta takes Polly to the market. Polly buys fruit for the first time: what is this, two apples, how much, a... Audio
- 波莉认识新朋友 Polly moves to a new street and meets Berta the bear. First greetings: hello, your name, nice to meet you,... Audio
- 阿穆尔河 Polly reaches the Amur River and meets a rare crane on the sixth day of the Trans-Siberian. Audio
- 贝加尔湖 Polly spends a day on the train along Lake Baikal, the deepest and oldest lake on Earth. Audio
- 穿越乌拉尔山脉 Polly crosses the Ural Mountains, the line between Europe and Asia, on the Trans-Siberian train. Audio
- 雅罗斯拉夫斯基火车站 Polly boards the Trans-Siberian train at Moscow and begins her seven-day journey to Vladivostok. Audio
- 告别意大利面 Polly says goodbye to Pasta the octopus and flies out of Naples. Audio
- 自我编辑者 Polly learns that octopuses can change their own nervous systems by editing RNA in real time. Audio
- 披萨与悠长午餐 Polly has lunch with Chiara at a Neapolitan pizzeria and learns about traditional Neapolitan pizza. Audio
- 会看颜色的皮肤 Polly learns that octopus skin can sense colours even though octopus eyes cannot. Audio
- 会思考的身体 Polly watches an octopus solve a maze with two arms working independently. Audio
- 那不勒斯湾 Polly arrives in Naples and meets a giant Pacific octopus at the world's oldest marine biology institute. Audio
- 离开山谷 Polly says goodbye to Ranger Tomas and flies west out of Yosemite. Audio
- 冰川点上的银河 Polly watches the Milky Way at Glacier Point and looks through a telescope at the centre of our galaxy. Audio
- 俯冲猎鹰 Polly tries to copy a peregrine falcon's dive, learning what makes the falcon the fastest animal in the world. Audio
- 与护林员托马斯同行 Polly spends the morning in Ranger Tomas's truck, learning about bear feeding and peregrine falcon nests. Audio
- 山谷之上 Polly flies into Yosemite Valley, watches climbers on El Capitan, and rides the shuttle bus at dusk. Audio
- 肉桂的香味 A new neighbor leaves a small surprise outside her door. Audio
- 两公斤的耐心 A first trip to the local market with a vendor who refuses to let her leave with the wrong tomatoes. Audio
B1 · Finding your flow
Polly's weekly adventures and real-world stories.
- 螯里藏着太阳的虾 A small ocean shrimp snaps its claw so fast that it creates a flash of heat nearly as hot as the surface of... ? Quiz included Audio
- 永远是奶酪赢的比赛 Once a year in England, people chase a wheel of cheese down a dangerously steep hill, and the cheese almost... Audio
- 两种指甲大小的全新动物 Scientists in Montenegro just described two snail species new to science, found on limestone cliffs in a... Audio
- 一只真虫子弄坏电脑的那天 In nineteen forty-seven, engineers found an actual moth stuck inside a giant computer, taped it into their... Audio
- 被分成两个国家的房子 In a small town on the Belgian-Dutch border, some houses sit in two countries at once, and the front door... Audio
- 败给鸟类的军队 In nineteen thirty-two the Australian military was sent against emus eating the wheat crop in Western... Audio
- 黑猩猩也有口音 A new study of more than eleven thousand recorded calls found that young chimpanzees in different parts of... Audio
- 互联网其实在海底 Almost all international internet traffic travels along cables lying on the sea floor, which break... Audio
- 会拉出方块的动物 Wombats are the only known animal to produce cube shaped droppings, and the corners are formed by uneven... Audio
- 住在同一栋楼里的小镇 Almost every resident of Whittier, Alaska lives inside a single fourteen storey building reached through a... Audio
- 这种鸟一边飞一边睡觉 Frigatebirds stay in the air for days over open ocean, and researchers put recorders on their heads to find... Audio
- 全国人都在吃的午餐 In the Dominican Republic the main meal lands at midday, it is almost always the same three things, and the... Audio
- 你的地图到午饭时就会出错 Satellite clocks tick faster than clocks on the ground, and if nobody corrected for it your phone would... Audio
- 你会发光，只是没人看得见 Human skin gives off a faint light all day long, and a Japanese team photographed it in a sealed dark room. Audio
- 这种蓝色只存在于一个地方 A stony beach in the Dominican southwest, one pebble that is blue all the way through, and the single... Audio
- 一家咖啡馆，两个国家 In one small town, the border between Belgium and the Netherlands runs straight through streets, houses and... Audio
- 你的信息正在海底旅行 Almost everything you send across an ocean travels through cables lying on the sea floor, not through... Audio
- 夜晚会发出蓝光的海滩 On some warm coasts, the sea lights up electric blue when you touch it. The light comes from billions of... Audio
- 你睡觉时也在移动的酒店 On a European night train, you fall asleep in one country and wake up in another, with the Alps outside... Audio
- 由火山烹煮的晚餐 On a green island in the Azores, cooks lower a pot into a hot hole in the ground and let the earth slowly... Audio
- 那座国王几乎从未住过的城堡 A Bavarian king built a fairy-tale castle on an alpine crag, slept there only a handful of nights, and left... Audio
- 走在海底 Twice a day the North Sea pulls back for kilometres, and people walk barefoot across the bare seabed before... Audio
- 为什么手机在寒冷中会没电 Your phone shows forty percent battery, then dies in the snow. The battery is not empty. It is cold, and... Audio
- 挖出一条河的城市 For fifty years, Seoul hid a river under an elevated highway. Then the city tore the highway down, and the... Audio
- 十公里高空 Passenger planes cruise about ten kilometres above the ground. That number is not random: it is where the... Audio
- 远古人类曾在雨林中繁衍生息 Scientists once thought ancient humans avoided rainforests. New evidence from West Africa says they thrived... Audio
- 为什么三千年前的蜂蜜依然可以食用 Honey jars from Egyptian tombs three thousand years old are still edible. The chemistry behind a food that... Audio
- 那场打了三天的网球赛 The longest tennis match ever played: Isner vs. Mahut, Wimbledon 2010, eleven hours, three days, a final... Audio
- 撬锁逃跑的章鱼 An octopus called Inky escaped his aquarium tank at night through a drain pipe, and what it reveals about... Audio
- 花园应有的六种特质 In Kenrokuen, Polly watches koi in a famous pond and learns how gardeners rig cones of rope over the pines... Audio
- 会尝味道的触手 Octopus suckers contain special receptors that let an arm taste whatever it touches, even in total darkness. Audio
- 田径史上最大的一笔奖金 A brand new athletics championship this month paid its winners more than the sport has ever offered before. Audio
- 教电脑说鲸鱼话 Researchers are using artificial intelligence to search for real structure inside the clicking patterns of... Audio
- 树的慢心跳 Laser scans at night revealed that trees pulse gently every few hours, possibly pumping water through their... Audio
- 凌晨三点的花市 At three in the morning, Bangkok's biggest flower market is more awake than midday, and it never really... Audio
- 一万名运动员,同一个开幕夜 The 2026 Asian Games, hosted jointly by Aichi and Nagoya, Japan, bring together roughly ten thousand... Audio
- 只收奶酪的银行 An Italian bank keeps a vault holding more than half a million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, accepted as... Audio
- 电量数字只是猜出来的 A phone's battery percentage is not a direct measurement, but an estimate calculated from voltage and... Audio
- 这片海滩是垃圾做的 A sparkling beach in Northern California is made entirely of old dumped glass, smoothed into colorful... Audio
- 哪儿都没有四层 In much of East Asia, elevators skip the number four entirely, because it sounds exactly like the word for... Audio
- 攀登世界最干燥之地 Polly arrives at ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama, the driest place on Earth, where four enormous... Audio
- 符拉迪沃斯托克 Polly arrives in Vladivostok at the end of the 9,289-kilometre Trans-Siberian, stretches her wings, and... Audio
- 雅罗斯拉夫斯基车站 Polly boards the Rossiya at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station to begin the 9,289-kilometre, seven-day... Audio
- 告别意面 Polly says goodbye to Pasta the octopus and flies out of Naples toward her next destination. Audio
- 披萨与悠长的午餐 Polly has the long Italian lunch with Chiara at a Neapolitan pizzeria, learning the protected rules of... Audio
- 周日的海鲜饭 An adult granddaughter visits home and finds her grandfather hasn't forgotten anything yet. Audio
- 第四十七号 A small injury, an old magazine, and a waiting room that teaches patience. Audio
- 开往格拉纳达的火车 An overheard phone call on the train turns a long trip into a kind of company. Audio
- 错误的书店 A simple coffee order leads to a strange conversation about a bookshop that doesn't exist anymore. Audio
- 迷失在里斯本 A wrong turn on a steep street becomes the best part of the trip. Audio
- 304号房的风景 A late check-in turns into a small gift when the hotel runs out of rooms on the lower floors. Audio
- 一个人的餐桌 A traveler eats alone in Madrid and discovers the waiter is the real star of the meal. Audio
C1 · Stretch yourself
Rich, natural texts about places, history and ideas.
- 那头游了一万五千公里的鲸鱼 Polly learns about two humpback whales who swam 14,000+ km from Australia to Brazil, breaking the world... Audio
- 悬崖上发现的两个无名新物种 Scientists in Montenegro have described two snail species new to science, found on limestone cliffs in a... Audio
- 澳大利亚败给鸸鹋的战争 In nineteen thirty-two the Australian military was deployed against emus devastating the wheat crop in... Audio
- 原来黑猩猩也有口音 A new study of more than eleven thousand recorded calls finds that young chimpanzees in different parts of... Audio
- 用奶酪做抵押放贷的银行 An Italian bank stores and ages more than half a million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, accepted as... Audio
- 为什么到了午饭时间你的地图就会错 Satellites tick at a different rate than clocks on the ground, and without a deliberate correction your... Audio
- 你的皮肤从未停止发出的光 Human skin gives off a faint light around the clock, invisible to the eye, as a Japanese team confirmed by... Audio
- 到底是什么把你的话带过大洋 Almost everything sent between continents travels not through satellites but through cables lying on the... Audio
- 你睡觉时穿越国境的酒店 On a European night train, a traveller falls asleep in one country and wakes in another, with the Alps... Audio
- 首尔藏了半个世纪的河 Seoul spent decades entombing a river beneath a highway, then reversed course and dug it back into the... Audio
- 星期天仍然要求的东西 An adult granddaughter returns home for Sunday paella and discovers that her octogenarian grandfather's... Audio
- 住在一栋楼里的小镇 Almost the entire population of Whittier, Alaska lives inside a single fourteen storey building, reached... Audio
- 国王几乎没来得及见到的城堡 Bavaria's King Ludwig the Second poured a fortune into a fairy tale castle he would inhabit for barely a... Audio
- 走过海底 Twice each day, the tide withdraws for kilometres along the Wattenmeer coast, inviting walkers onto the... Audio
- 你的手机没坏,只是冷了 A phone that shows forty percent battery and then dies the moment you step into the cold has not run out of... Audio
- 比帝国还长寿的蜂蜜 Honey sealed inside Egyptian tombs thousands of years ago remains perfectly edible today, and the reason... Audio
- 挣脱锁具的章鱼 An octopus named Inky vanished from a New Zealand aquarium overnight, and the ingenious route he took to... Audio
- 攀登最干燥之地 Polly arrives at ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama, the driest place on Earth, where four enormous... Audio
- 能看见的皮肤 Polly watches Pasta find food under a coloured plate even though octopuses are colour-blind through their... Audio
- 思考的身体 Polly watches Pasta solve an acrylic maze using two arms independently. She learns that two-thirds of an... Audio
- 与巡护员托马斯同行 Polly rides shotgun with Ranger Tomas Rodriguez through Yosemite for a morning, learning how rangers... Audio