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A guide to speaking and pronouncing American English for everyone who speaks English as a second language.

American Accent Training - CD1 - Track01

File 1 – Slow –listening Audio – Handshake Etiquette

File 2 – Medium –listening Audio – Handshake Etiquette

Speaker(s): Professor Gerd Gigerenzer | Remember the volcanic ash cloud over Iceland? The subprime disaster? What about mad cow disease? Each new crisis makes us worry until we start worrying about the next one. When something goes wrong, we are told that the way to prevent further crises is through better technology, more laws, and bigger bureaucracy. How to protect ourselves from the threat of terrorism? Homeland security, full body scanners, further sacrifice of individual freedom. How to counteract exploding costs in health care? Tax hikes, rationalization, better genetic markers. One idea is absent from these lists: risk-savvy citizens. And there is a reason for that. Many experts have concluded that people are basically hopeless when it comes to risk and, like a child who needs a parent, require continuous “nudging." Against this pessimistic view, I will argue that instead of being the solution, experts are often part of the problem, and that everyone can learn to deal with risk and uncertainty on their own. A democracy needs risk-savvy citizens who cannot be easily frightened into surrendering their money, their welfare, and their liberty. Gerd Gigerenzer is managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, former professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and author of Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions. Wed, 21 May 2014 18:30:00 GMT

Risk Savvy: how to make good decisions [Audio]

Speaker(s): Dr William MacAskill | Should I work for a non-profit organisation in Africa? Or should I go into the City, and try to earn as much as I can to donate to good causes? William MacAskill is a research associate in the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford and is also president of 80,000 Hours ethical career advisory service. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording) Tue, 3 Jun 2014 18:30:00 GMT

On Making a Difference and Choosing a Career [Audio]

When Barbara Threecrow speaks to classrooms about indigenous cultures, she teaches by example. For one boy, this had a profound impact.
To listen to more stories visit <link>http://www.soundandstory.org</link>.

The Way Of The Elders

On Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” lecture (1837) and his essays “Self-Reliance” and “Circles” (1841).

How should we live? Emerson thinks that conformity, which includes most of what passes for ethics, jobs, and scholarship, makes us less than truly human. Be true to yourself! But since we’re all ever-changing, that’s a moving target, right? But Emerson thinks that when you get really truly honest about what you think and feel, it turns out that you’ve tapped into something universal, something beyond just you, something eternal.

But don’t expect Emerson to really explain that part; the upshot of these essays is primarily social, not religious, much less metaphysical. Trust yourself, stop bullshitting, stop living according to others’ expectations! Mark, Wes, and Dylan argue over whether this is tired cliche or acutely perceptive, and whether Emerson’s poetic language provides helps or distracts.

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Emerson on Wisdom

Climate Change, Sarkozy

Transcript and background: http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/25/william-faulkner-university-of-virginia-recording/

TRANSCRIPT / DETAILS

William Faulkner on writing

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William Faulkner on writing

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