B1 · Finding your flow
Polly's weekly adventures and real-world stories.
- Løpet der osten alltid vinner Once a year in England, people chase a wheel of cheese down a dangerously steep hill, and the cheese almost... Audio
- To helt nye dyr, hver på størrelse med en fingernegl Scientists in Montenegro just described two snail species new to science, found on limestone cliffs in a... Audio
- Dagen en ekte bille ødela en datamaskin In nineteen forty-seven, engineers found an actual moth stuck inside a giant computer, taped it into their... Audio
- Reken med en sol inne i kloen A small ocean shrimp snaps its claw so fast that it creates a flash of heat nearly as hot as the surface of... Audio
- Huset delt mellom to land In a small town on the Belgian-Dutch border, some houses sit in two countries at once, and the front door... Audio
- Hæren som tapte for fugler In nineteen thirty-two the Australian military was sent against emus eating the wheat crop in Western... Audio
- Sjimpanser har dialekter A new study of more than eleven thousand recorded calls found that young chimpanzees in different parts of... Audio
- Internett ligger under vann Almost all international internet traffic travels along cables lying on the sea floor, which break... Audio
- Dyret som lager terninger Wombats are the only known animal to produce cube shaped droppings, and the corners are formed by uneven... Audio
- Byen som bor i én bygning Almost every resident of Whittier, Alaska lives inside a single fourteen storey building reached through a... Audio
- Denne fuglen sover mens den flyr Frigatebirds stay in the air for days over open ocean, and researchers put recorders on their heads to find... Audio
- Lunsjen et helt land spiser In the Dominican Republic the main meal lands at midday, it is almost always the same three things, and the... Audio
- Kartet ditt ville vært feil innen lunsj Satellite clocks tick faster than clocks on the ground, and if nobody corrected for it your phone would... Audio
- Du gløder. Ingen kan se det. Human skin gives off a faint light all day long, and a Japanese team photographed it in a sealed dark room. Audio
- Denne blåfargen finnes bare ett sted A stony beach in the Dominican southwest, one pebble that is blue all the way through, and the single... Audio
- En arm som kan smake Octopus suckers contain special receptors that let an arm taste whatever it touches, even in total darkness. Audio
- Friidrettens største lønningspose noensinne A brand new athletics championship this month paid its winners more than the sport has ever offered before. Audio
- Å lære en datamaskin å snakke hval Researchers are using artificial intelligence to search for real structure inside the clicking patterns of... Audio
- Trærnes langsomme hjerteslag Laser scans at night revealed that trees pulse gently every few hours, possibly pumping water through their... Audio
- Blomster klokka tre om natta At three in the morning, Bangkok's biggest flower market is more awake than midday, and it never really... Audio
- Sirkelen og morgenbåten The Ring of Brodgar at dusk, then the small practical business of leaving an island, done in four sentences... Audio
- Nittidagerskornet In a bar in Kirkwall, a flat dark bannock turns out to be the reason the islands were farmable at all. Audio
- Samlingen på skjærene Grey seals are hauling out on the low rocks before the pupping season, and the questions Polly has been... Audio
- Bygd av det de hadde On Lamb Holm, two army huts hold a chapel that prisoners of war made out of scrap, and the only honest... Audio
- Landsbyen under stormen At the Bay of Skaill, a guide with a carrying voice explains a village that a storm returned to the light... Audio
- Stolen ved peisen A guesthouse above the harbour, an argument about what counts as a quiet room, and a chair whose whole... Audio
- Båten kommer inn Polly lands at Stromness off the morning boat and works out, one question at a time, how a place with no... Audio
- Ti tusen utøvere, én åpningskveld The 2026 Asian Games, hosted jointly by Aichi and Nagoya, Japan, bring together roughly ten thousand... Audio
- Banken som bare tar imot ost An Italian bank keeps a vault holding more than half a million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, accepted as... Audio
- Batteritallet ditt er en gjetning A phone's battery percentage is not a direct measurement, but an estimate calculated from voltage and... Audio
- Denne stranden er laget av søppel A sparkling beach in Northern California is made entirely of old dumped glass, smoothed into colorful... Audio
- Ingen fjerde etasje noe sted In much of East Asia, elevators skip the number four entirely, because it sounds exactly like the word for... Audio
- Tåken lukker seg bak henne On her last afternoon, Polly flies high over the island one more time before fog rolls in and hides it... Audio
- En landsby koblet til en vulkan Polly finds the same underground heat that cooked lunch also fills a giant public pool and warms homes,... Audio
- Middag begravd ved daggry Polly watches a cook lower sealed pots into holes heated only by the volcano below, where dinner cooks for... Audio
- Ett krater, to farger Polly finds one huge old crater holding two lakes side by side, one blue and one green, joined underneath... Audio
- Fuglen som ble oppgitt to ganger Polly searches an old laurel forest for the priolo, a tiny grey and pink bird found only here, once thought... Audio
- De to siste hagene i Europa Polly finds one of only two working tea plantations left in Europe, started after disease wiped out the... Audio
- Ni øyer, tre plater Polly arrives over São Miguel, the largest of the nine Azores islands, and learns that three tectonic... Audio
- Én kafé, to land In one small town, the border between Belgium and the Netherlands runs straight through streets, houses and... Audio
- Stranden som lyser blått om natten On some warm coasts, the sea lights up electric blue when you touch it. The light comes from billions of... Audio
- Meldingene dine reiser under vann Almost everything you send across an ocean travels through cables lying on the sea floor, not through... Audio
- Hotellet som beveger seg mens du sover On a European night train, you fall asleep in one country and wake up in another, with the Alps outside... Audio
- Byen som avdekket en elv For fifty years, Seoul hid a river under an elevated highway. Then the city tore the highway down, and the... Audio
- Middag laget av en vulkan On a green island in the Azores, cooks lower a pot into a hot hole in the ground and let the earth slowly... Audio
- Å gå på havets bunn Twice a day the North Sea pulls back for kilometres, and people walk barefoot across the bare seabed before... Audio
- Oldtidens mennesker trivdes i regnskogen Scientists once thought ancient humans avoided rainforests. New evidence from West Africa says they thrived... Audio
- Dagen solen forsvant This week, northern Spain watched the first total solar eclipse over mainland Europe in twenty seven years. Audio
- Hvorfor telefonen din dør i kulda Your phone shows forty percent battery, then dies in the snow. The battery is not empty. It is cold, and... Audio
- Hvorfor honning fra 3000 år siden fortsatt er spiselig Honey jars from Egyptian tombs three thousand years old are still edible. The chemistry behind a food that... Audio
- Tenniskampen som varte i tre dager The longest tennis match ever played: Isner vs. Mahut, Wimbledon 2010, eleven hours, three days, a final... Audio
- Blekkspruten som lirket opp låsen An octopus called Inky escaped his aquarium tank at night through a drain pipe, and what it reveals about... Audio
- Slottet kongen nesten aldri bodde i A Bavarian king built a fairy-tale castle on an alpine crag, slept there only a handful of nights, and left... Audio
- Ti kilometer opp Passenger planes cruise about ten kilometres above the ground. That number is not random: it is where the... Audio
- Det siste toget In Tokyo, the trains stop around midnight. Tomas learns this five minutes too late, and discovers where the... Audio
- Polly tar bussen Polly boards the bus downtown for the first time, with a patient capybara at the wheel and one nervous... Audio
- Polly spør om veien Polly gets lost looking for the library and learns that asking is faster than wandering. Audio
- Polly bestiller en kaffe Polly finds a corner cafe, orders a coffee with milk, discovers churros, and stays for a while by the window. Audio
- Polly på markedet Berta shows Polly the neighborhood market. Polly asks about an unfamiliar fruit, buys apples, and learns... Audio
- Polly møter noen Polly arrives on a new street, meets Berta the bear over the garden fence, and they agree to meet again at... Audio
- Klatring i det Tørreste Stedet Polly arrives at ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama, the driest place on Earth, where four enormous... Audio
- Vladivostok Polly arrives in Vladivostok at the end of the 9,289-kilometre Trans-Siberian, stretches her wings, and... Audio
- Amur Polly reaches Khabarovsk on the sixth day of the Trans-Siberian, sees the Amur River bordering China, and... Audio
- Bajkalsjøen Polly spends the fifth day of the Trans-Siberian running along Lake Baikal, the deepest and oldest lake on... Audio
- Tidssoner Polly explores the dining car on the fourth day, learning that the whole train runs on Moscow time across... Audio
- Over Uralfjellene Polly crosses the Ural Mountains, the dividing line between Europe and Asia, on the third day of the... Audio
- Bjørkeskogene Polly wakes up on the second morning of the Trans-Siberian, watching the birch forests of European Russia.... Audio
- Jaroslavskij stasjon Polly boards the Rossiya at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station to begin the 9,289-kilometre, seven-day... Audio
- Farvel til Pasta Polly says goodbye to Pasta the octopus and flies out of Naples toward her next destination. Audio
- Redaktøren av Seg Selv Polly learns that octopuses edit their own RNA in real time, building a brain that is different in each... Audio
- Pizza og den lange lunsjen Polly has the long Italian lunch with Chiara at a Neapolitan pizzeria, learning the protected rules of... Audio
- Huden som Ser Polly watches Pasta find food under a coloured plate even though octopuses are colour-blind through their... Audio
- Kroppen som tenker Polly watches Pasta solve a maze with two arms working independently. She learns that two thirds of an... Audio
- Glasskrukken Polly watches Pasta open a screw-top jar to catch a crab, learning that octopus arms taste what they touch... Audio
- Napolibukta Polly arrives in Naples and is welcomed into the world's oldest marine biology institute, where she meets a... Audio
- Forlate Dalen Polly says goodbye to Ranger Tomas and flies west out of Yosemite, watching a peregrine hunt swifts on her... Audio
- Melkeveien over Glacier Point Polly watches sunset from Glacier Point and stays for the Milky Way, looking through a park astronomer's... Audio
- Halvkuppelen Polly rides thermals up the 1,500-metre north face of Half Dome with a flock of swifts, reaches the summit,... Audio
- Falken i stup Polly tries to copy a peregrine falcon's dive from El Capitan, learning how the falcon's third eyelid and... Audio
- Sequoiaen Polly visits Mariposa Grove and perches on the Grizzly Giant, a giant sequoia nearly 3,000 years old,... Audio
- På tur med Ranger Tomas Polly spends a morning in Ranger Tomas's truck, learning how he tracks bear feeding in wildflower meadows... Audio
- Over Dalen Polly arrives at Yosemite Valley from the air, takes in its U-shaped glacial geology, watches climbers on... Audio
- Søndagspaella An adult granddaughter visits home and finds her grandfather hasn't forgotten anything yet. Audio
- Den Tomme Koppen First day at a new office, a small lesson about asking before assuming. Audio
- Nummer førtisyv A small injury, an old magazine, and a waiting room that teaches patience. Audio
- Toget til Granada An overheard phone call on the train turns a long trip into a kind of company. Audio
- Feil bokhandel A simple coffee order leads to a strange conversation about a bookshop that doesn't exist anymore. Audio
- Villfaren i Lisboa A wrong turn on a steep street becomes the best part of the trip. Audio
- Rom 304 har utsikt A late check-in turns into a small gift when the hotel runs out of rooms on the lower floors. Audio
- Et bord for én A traveler eats alone in Madrid and discovers the waiter is the real star of the meal. Audio