EP04 五分钟英语-Weekend Edition
#英语 #英语口语 #英语听力 #英语学习 #学英语 #五分钟
开场白：
Happy weekend! It looks like that spring has finally arrived. You can smell the freshness in the air. This is the first weekend edition of the second season of my podcast.
在第二个Season，我想在周末特辑里跟大家聊一些我本周读到的一些有关电视、书籍、电影或者艺术的相关的文章。希望你也能喜欢。
Today’s article is published by the Washington Post, titled
Two new shows chronicle the fall of Theranos and rise of Uber — and tally the human cost of tech greed
It reviews two latest TV series that feature two iconic tech giants, Theranos and Uber, as well as their founders, Elizabeth Holmes and Travis Kalanic.
这两部电视剧介绍了两个硅谷的神话公司和他们的创始人，但更重要的是讲述了tech greed对人性的影响。
Here are some great excerpts from the piece
原文摘要
* （1:05"): The Theranos founder represented a story that so many had been waiting for: on the left, an inspirational tale about a true visionary overcoming the entrenched sexism of Silicon Valley to become, for a short while, the youngest self-made female billionaire; on the right, definitive proof that the tech industry is a meritocracy and that any woman worth her salt just needs to lean in and play the game right for her genius to shine through.
* （1:54"): No wonder, then, that the cottage industry chronicling the Holmes saga continues unabated, even after the disgraced entrepreneur was convicted of fraud this year. (She is scheduled to be sentenced in the fall.) Hers is an irresistible narrative — one with no shortage of humiliated boldface names, a scream-worthy pile of money practically flushed down the toilet and, at the center of it all, an image-conscious young woman who knew she was a screen for a multitude of projected desires and manipulated them for her own benefit.
* （2:38"): If Elizabeth Holmes reinvented herself into a biotech messiah, Travis Kalanick, the co-founder of Uber, transformed himself into a cartoon. At least that’s the impression left by “Super Pumped,” Showtime’s new business-centric anthology drama from “Billions” creators David Levien and Brian Koppelman. Subtitled “The Battle for Uber,” the first season, adapted from journalist Mike Isaac’s book, centers on one of the tech world’s most notorious “bad boys,” who resigned as the ride-share company’s CEO in 2017.
* （3:25"): The first two episodes are fueled by sneers, bombast, hard rock and dialogue that tries a little too hard to replicate the “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars” line from “The Social Network” without ever getting there. Add the energy-drink-commercial-style narration by an unrecognizable Quentin Tarantino, and you might start wondering if secondhand testosterone poisoning is fatal. But then the supporting characters — starting with Travis’s first major investor, Bill Gurley (Kyle Chandler) — emerge, and “Super Pumped” becomes much more humane, coherent and watchable.
* （4:08"): That love of stunt extends to the series’ visuals. In fact, it’s a relief when the show’s palette — gray on gray on gray — gives way to an animated video game sequence (of course Travis sees any given situation as something to level up from) or a flow chart of rhetorical tactics he can use against his opponents, many of whom simply thought of themselves as conversation partners until he forces them to realize otherwise. It’s a portrait of a young man as a leader who, handed ludicrous sums of wealth and power, only brings out the worst in himself and others — a real-life horror story.
