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
- 末班车 In Tokyo, the trains stop around midnight. Tomas learns this five minutes too late, and discovers 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
- 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
- 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
- 雾在她身后合拢 On her last afternoon, Polly flies high over the island one more time before fog rolls in and hides it... Audio
- 一座接在火山上的村子 Polly finds the same underground heat that cooked lunch also fills a giant public pool and warms homes,... Audio
- 天亮就埋下的晚餐 Polly watches a cook lower sealed pots into holes heated only by the volcano below, where dinner cooks for... Audio
- 一个火山口,两种颜色 Polly finds one huge old crater holding two lakes side by side, one blue and one green, joined underneath... Audio
- 两次被认定消失的鸟 Polly searches an old laurel forest for the priolo, a tiny grey and pink bird found only here, once thought... Audio
- 欧洲最后的两座茶园 Polly finds one of only two working tea plantations left in Europe, started after disease wiped out the... Audio
- 九座岛,三大板块 Polly arrives over São Miguel, the largest of the nine Azores islands, and learns that three tectonic... Audio
- 波莉坐公交车 Polly boards the bus downtown for the first time, with a patient capybara at the wheel and one nervous... Audio
- 波莉问路 Polly gets lost looking for the library and learns that asking is faster than wandering. Audio
- 波莉点一杯咖啡 Polly finds a corner cafe, orders a coffee with milk, discovers churros, and stays for a while by the window. Audio
- 波莉逛市集 Berta shows Polly the neighborhood market. Polly asks about an unfamiliar fruit, buys apples, and learns... Audio
- 波莉认识新朋友 Polly arrives on a new street, meets Berta the bear over the garden fence, and they agree to meet again at... 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
- 阿穆尔河 Polly reaches Khabarovsk on the sixth day of the Trans-Siberian, sees the Amur River bordering China, and... Audio
- 贝加尔湖 Polly spends the fifth day of the Trans-Siberian running along Lake Baikal, the deepest and oldest lake on... Audio
- 穿越乌拉尔山脉 Polly crosses the Ural Mountains, the dividing line between Europe and Asia, on the third day of the... 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
- 自我编辑者 Polly learns that octopuses edit their own RNA in real time, building a brain that is different in each... 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
- 会看颜色的皮肤 Polly watches Pasta find food under a coloured plate even though octopuses are colour-blind through their... Audio
- 会思考的身体 Polly watches Pasta solve a maze with two arms working independently. She learns that two thirds of an... Audio
- 那不勒斯湾 Polly arrives in Naples and is welcomed into the world's oldest marine biology institute, where she meets a... Audio
- 离开山谷 Polly says goodbye to Ranger Tomas and flies west out of Yosemite, watching a peregrine hunt swifts on her... Audio
- 冰川点上的银河 Polly watches sunset from Glacier Point and stays for the Milky Way, looking through a park astronomer's... Audio
- 俯冲猎鹰 Polly tries to copy a peregrine falcon's dive from El Capitan, learning how the falcon's third eyelid and... Audio
- 与护林员托马斯同行 Polly spends a morning in Ranger Tomas's truck, learning how he tracks bear feeding in wildflower meadows... Audio
- 山谷之上 Polly arrives at Yosemite Valley from the air, takes in its U-shaped glacial geology, watches climbers on... Audio
- 空杯子 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