英文小酒馆 LHH - 节目列表

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and happy new year. 一年前的今天, 我们在新年特辑里讲到了new year resolution新年的决心. In this episode, Lulu is gonna walk you through some very interesting and natural expressions to do with starting and beginning. We're also going to look at some inspiring quotes about new beginnings. Let's get started. To talk about the word “start”. It's usually about something new, exciting. For example, start up a new company. Nowadays you look around, there's so many startups. 初创公司就被叫做startup. And in English, when you say start a family, it doesn't mean getting married. It actually means having a child. For example, a married couple would say we're planning to start a family next year. That means they are ready to have a baby. But apart from these basics, there are many idioms in English with the word “start”. The first one is a fresh start, to get off to a fresh start. This means everything's new, everything's exciting. For example, you might say I'm excited to get off to a fresh start with my new job. 新工作, 全新的开始. Same can be said about new relationships, new homes, a new stage in your life or a brand new year. In comparison to a fresh start, we can also have a head start. Getting a head start means to get ahead of schedule or to start before other people. To have a head start. 有抢得先机或者提前做某件事的意思. For instance, the report isn't due until next Friday, but I'm going to get a head start on it by doing some research over the weekend. The report isn't due until next Friday, but I'm going to get a head start on it by doing some research over the weekend. Although getting a head start is a great attitude, it is a huge Challenge for a procrastinator like me. 如果你也和璐璐一样, 是个procrastinator拖延症患者, a head start might be a bit of a Challenge to you. In addition to fresh start and head start, you also hear the expression, jump start or kick start. Sounds very vibrant, doesn't it？You have jump and kick. Actually to jump start originally means to jump start a car that is connecting the car to another car's battery using cables in order to restart it. 其实jump star的原意是指一辆汽车上电池没电了, 发动不了, 就可以用两根电缆线把没有电的电池和另一辆车上的好电池相连, 帮助这辆车启动. 这个就叫做 jump start. You might have seen it in TV shows and movies a lot. In day to day speech when you say jump start something or kick start something. It means to put things in motion, especially if they were previously stopped or slow. For example, this seasonal promotion might help jump start sales again. 这一季的推广活动应该可以刺激销售额重新增长. This seasonal promotion might help jump start sales again. As for kick start. An example would be we need to find ways to kick start this project, 要想办法启动这个项目. Actually, I once mentioned in the buzzword segment, there is a website called kick starter, which is a crowd funding website that helps fund creative projects. 之前我在buzzword里面也提到过, 其实有一家很有名的支持创意项目的众筹网站, 就叫做 kick starter. So far we have talked about fresh start, head start, kick start, jump start. And perhaps a more common expression you would hear in day to day speech is to start over. If you start over, it means you begin again. Usually because the past wasn't so great, you experienced some difficulty, some challenges, mistakes or even failures. You might say she is planning to start over after her divorce and move on with her life. 离婚之后她计划重新开始自己的人生. Actually nowadays it is getting rather common for people to start over later in their life. And that I find to be really inspirational. I guess it's never too late to start over. As long as you have enough determination. Sometimes people would also say they want to start over with a clean slate, a clean slate. It's like a blank board. Basically, everything has been erased. Clean slate 白板一块, 其实就是零过去, 重新开始.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and welcome back to one of your favorite segments, the Sound of Musicals. 欢迎回来 , 你们最喜欢的板块之一, 曲外之音. Hello, Oliver. Hello. So welcome back to the show. And since I have been proposing some of the musicals, so now it's your turn. Which one would you pick? Well. I've got a couple of questions actually, before we begin, my first question is, do you like witches and magic and things like that? Oh. I love witches. They're pretty good. Wizardry witchcraft. My thing, that's totally my territory. Okay, okay, what about if I give you some characters? Could you tell me the show that they're from? Do you think? Okay. Interesting How about a lion, a scarecrow, a tin man. Any ideas? Ah, we're gonna talk about Wicked. Yeah. Wicked. Wicked. So Wicked中文名叫魔法坏女巫. It sounds like a child's show, but it's actually not. Wicked is a musical based on a novel of the same name, which was published in 1995. But this story is actually based on an older novel, and the film named The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. 很多人应该听过中文名叫绿野仙踪或者奥兹国或者Oz国历险记. Oliver, let me ask you the original story, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, how popular, how well known it is in English-speaking culture? It is incredibly popular. I am certainly the movie is, I think it's one of the most watched movies, it's up there in the what most watched movies of all time category. It is so popular, certainly in the UK, I'd imagine in the US as well. And probably all around the world. The characters - easy to kind of get along, to understand that easy to like and it's got a very clear, good, bad type of type of vibe to it. So everyone can kind of support the hero and against the evil wicked witch. Yeah. Did you watch or read it as a child? I have watched the movie. I watched it a few times as a child, but I’ve never read the book. The book is a new one for me. Okay. So the original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, follows a Kansas farm girl named Dorothy. And I'm sure many of you recognize the name Dorothy陶乐丝或者陶乐西. And so, she's just an ordinary farm girl, but one day she ends up in a magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a cyclone. Yeah. Dorothy, Toto and their house all get taken away in a big tornado or cyclone or something and placed in this magical world with talking scarecrows and Tin Man, robots and lions who are terrified of everything, cowardly lions and it's very very good. Yeah, and she was trying desperately to get back home. And she ran into a lot of adventures. It sounds almost like very similar to the whole idea of Alice in Wonderland. It does feel very similar to that, yes, getting a young girl lost in a magical world just trying to get home. Yeah, so apart from those characters that Oliver just mentioned, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman. They're also the Wicked Witch and the Good Witch and the Wizard of Oz. 这里面还讲到什么坏女巫, 好女巫. If you have read the book or watched the movie, I'm sure you know which ones I’m talking about. But this musical, interestingly, is told from the perspective of the two witches, it's not focusing on Dorothy at all. No. Wicked takes the original story of The Wizard of Oz and it flips it around. It happens, I've seen it happening a lot in movies and things nowadays. The movie Magnificent did something similar where the evil traditionally evil character, we see the story from their point of view and from their perspective and it's not quite what we assumed it was. And Wicked, does it very well.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to 【It Means What? 】 Yeah. Thank you, 安澜. Every time. 欢迎大家回到我们的新板块【词源考古研究所】. Hi, 安澜. Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. So 安澜, if I ask you about the hottest topic in the world of technology, what do you think it would be? Well. Two letters. It is gotta be AI. Yes. And to talk about AI就说到人工智能的话, of course, we need to talk about robots. Yes. 机器人. I know a lot of you probably have trouble pronouncing that word, although it's very easy, but I've heard many mispronunciations. So for American pronunciation, you would pronounce it Robot [ˈroʊˌbɑt], and British pronunciation? We will say robot [ˈrəʊbɒt]. Roughly the same. Yeah, but it doesn't really matter, because it's not an English word anyway. Oh. Is it not? Nope. It actually comes from Czech. 就是捷克, 捷克语. Was it also robot in Czech? In Czech, it’s - there's a word “robota”. Robota, let me guess, this gotta be a word related to machine, automation, technological advances, all of those fancy things. No, it means forced labor, slave or serf. What? That's what it means. Okay. Forced labor, 强制劳动, slave奴隶 Yeah. Serf我记得的话s-e-r-f对吧? Yeah. That's right. 是农奴的意思. Yeah. That's what it means. By the way, what is the difference between a serf and a slave? Well. Serfs were like slaves, as they were forced to stay on the land where they lived. But serfs were part of the land. If they were sold, it's normally with land. And they had some rights. Yeah, they have some very basic rights. But they had to pay for every one of those rights, if I remembered correctly.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi 安澜. Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. And then the unemployment what you call it the Dole. Yeah in spoken English we will call it the Dole. But if you actually see it in governments, notice it is called jobseekers’ allowance. Jobseekers’ allowance, I like the positivity instead of unemployment allowance. Yeah, the idea is that you only getting that money because you're looking for a job as opposed to live in unemployment benefit. I see, I see. So, you pay one contribution into national insurance, and that covers medical, that covers maternity, that covers pension, and that also covers unemployment. So, it pretty much covers everything. And this was first introduced in 1911. So it's been around for a very long time and it's paid by everybody who is earning over£242 a week. A week. Okay, so that's roughly about £1,000 a month then over that. But I suppose it's roughly the same - is the equivalent as the personal allowance threshold, the tax threshold like£12,000. Yeah, and this is something you start paying at the age of 16. So even when I was doing part-time jobs, I probably wouldn't have paid income tax, but I would still have to pay national insurance contributions. Do you have to pay the same amount of national insurance, no matter how much money you make? No, it still has its own brackets. So it's 12% of your weekly earnings between£242 and £967. And it's then 2% of your weekly earnings above£967. I see. So you have again the brackets for people with different levels of income. Yeah. And everybody in the UK, every British citizen and people who are working in the UK are given a national insurance number. This is how you pay into and also access national insurance. Yeah, yeah. So every time I fill out tax return or I fill out any paperworks, I have to add my national insurance number. I see. When you go to the doctors, is that also the one that you show? No, you don't have to show it. There's another number, an NHS number to access medical, national insurance is basically a way of calculating how much you've paid. So, for example, I've lived in China for many years now. What I do is I pay voluntary contributions. Voluntary means they don't force you to do it, but you choose to do it. I choose to do it, because this is important to get a state pension. So, let me get this straight. So, if you are a British person, a British national living overseas, working overseas, you don't have to pay national insurance in the UK. No. But if you don't, then you won't get the state pension. Exactly. So both men and women at the moment, they get their pension at 66. 66. Wow. 66, yeah. It's probably gonna go up very, very soon. And what you have to do is you have to pay for 35 years in order to get the full amount. 35 years. I think this is much longer than in China. Yeah. Now the good thing is that paying voluntary contributions is not really that expensive. It's only about £700 or £800 a year.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi 安澜. Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. So, the topic I'm going to propose today, well, I say “I propose” is actually from one of our fans. Oh, brilliant. So she proposed this topic, because she was recently hired by this company, and she's dealing with all these social insurance tax deduction “五险一金” thing. Okay. Oh, dear. I can imagine that's very complicated. And she wanted us to talk about what it's like in the UK. Okay. But first things first, 安澜, you know the idea of “五险一金”, right? Well, to be perfectly honest, I probably understand the Chinese system more than I do the British system. Of course. Because fair enough, you have been working in China for all these years. Yeah, exactly. You have to pay all of those as well. Yes. But for those of you who are still students or you don't really know that much about 五险一金, let me give you a very quick crash course. 咱们说的五险一金包括五险是养老保险, This is like the pension, 医疗保险, medical insurance, 失业保险, unemployment insurance, 工伤保险, work-related injury insurance and生育保险, maternity insurance. 一金就是住房公积金housing fund. Yes. 安澜, you don't have housing fund, do you? No. I don't have housing fund. I don't think I actually have to pay housing fund because as a foreigner. You don’t have access. I don't have access. Okay. So that's a little bit of introduction to our 五险一金. Now before we get into the UK system, I assume that the basic concept is the same, like pay, there's the idea of gross pay. And there’s the idea of net pay也有这种税前税后的概念. Yeah. So gross pay is your full pay before tax and that's normally what is advertised when you apply for a job. That's normally what's written on your contract. Your net pay is your take-home pay. Oh, you call it take-home pay.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hello again欢迎来到Happy Hour英文小酒馆。关注公众号璐璐的英文小酒馆，加入我们的酒馆社群，邂逅更精彩更广阔的世界 In olden times, when if you made a wish, it would always come true, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in her face. Close by the king’s castle lay a great dark forest, and under an old tree in the forest was a well. When the day was very warm, the king’s child went out into the forest and sat down by the side of the cool fountain, and when she was bored, she took a golden ball, and threw it up on high and caught it, and this ball was her favourite toy. Now it so happened that the princess’ golden ball fell on to the ground beyond and rolled straight into the well. The king’s daughter followed it with her eyes, but it vanished, and the well was deep - so deep that the bottom could not be seen. She began to cry and cried louder and louder. As she was complaining, someone said to her, “Why are you so upset, king’s daughter?” She looked around to the side from where the voice came, and saw a frog stretching forth its thick, ugly head from the water. “Ah! Is it you who just spoke to me?” Said she. “I am crying because my golden ball has fallen into the well.” “Do not cry,” answered the frog, “I can help you, but what will you give me if I bring your golden ball back?” “Whatever you will have, dear frog,” said she. "My clothes, my pearls and jewels, and even my golden crown." The frog answered, “I do not care for your clothes, your pearls and jewels, or your golden crown, but if you will love me and let me be your friend, and sit with you, and eat with you, and play with you. If you promise me this, I will go down below, and bring you back your golden ball.” “Oh yes,” said she, “I promise, if you will bring me my ball back again.” She however, thought, “How silly this frog is! He lives in the water with the other frogs, and can’t spend time with humans!” But the frog, when he had heard this promise, put his head into the water and sank down, and in a short while came swimming up again with the ball in his mouth, and threw it on the grass. The king’s daughter was delighted to see her pretty toy once more, picked it up, and ran away with it. “Wait, wait,” said the frog. “Take me with you. I can’t run as fast as you.” But all he could do was croak loudly. She did not listen to it, but ran home and soon forgot the poor frog, who was forced to go back into his well again. The next day when she sat herself down for dinner with the king and all the courtiers, and as she was eating from her golden plate, something came creeping splish splash, splish splash, up the marble staircase, and when it had got to the top, it knocked at the door and cried, “Princess, open the door for me.” She ran to see who was outside, but when she opened the door, there sat the frog in front of it. Then she quickly slammed the door and sat down to dinner again, and was quite frightened. The king saw that she was absolutely terrified and said, “My child, what are you scared of? Is there some monster outside who wants to carry you away?” “Ah, no,” replied she. “It is no monster but a disgusting frog.” “What does a frog want with you?” “Ah, father, yesterday as I was in the forest sitting by the well, playing, my golden ball fell into the water. And because I cried so much, the frog brought it out again for me, and I promised him he should be my companion, but I never thought he would be able to come out of his water! And now he is outside there, and wants to come in.” In the meantime, it knocked a second time, and cried, “Princess! Open the door for me! You promised me!”

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Britain under the microscope.欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi, 安澜。 Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. Now let's use a magnifying glass and go into these stately homes or manor houses and look at the rooms and also look at the servants. Absolutely. So, what is a typical country house? All that I know it’s huge. Yes. There will be lots of bedrooms. There will probably be a drawing room. Hang on a minute. I always wondered this, what is a drawing room? It's not for people to actually draw there. No, no. In ordinary houses, it's like a living room. But a drawing room is probably a little bit more formal, so you'd have living rooms or drawing rooms. So, some would be for guests, some would just be for the family themselves. I don't know if I remember this correctly, when I first visited Buckingham Palace, there's a drawing room there. Yeah. So that is a very typical thing for those huge like palaces or huge houses. Exactly. So you have different types of drawing rooms. So, some were more formal, some were a little bit less formal. But it's the living space. It's the living space. 就跟我们的客厅一样, 只不过是 much much bigger. Yeah. In big houses, in the UK now, you might see we don't call them drawing rooms anymore, but you might see there's like a guest living room where if people come to visit your home, you might entertain them in there. But normally at the back or in another room, there’s a room where you would spend time just as a family. I see. I see. I'm sure there's like the normal the usual dining room. Dining room, libraries, studies, a gallery for art as well. Yes, because they would collect pieces, wouldn’t they? Yeah. Of course, there will be servant quarters as well. Servant quarters which is usually the downstairs part. Yeah. It's the bedrooms for the servants. Umm, 就这种upstairs, downstairs. Exactly. 我们之前聊到过的就是在英国那种老的大宅子里面, 等级森严的, 有所谓的楼上楼下upstairs, downstairs, upstairs for the lord and lady. And downstairs for the servants. Apart from that there would normally be huge gardens, land for farming, as well as conservatories and something called an orangery. Actually, just put orangery aside, which is a word I've never heard until this topic. Even conservatories, I think it's difficult for a lot of people to understand, or I don't think they've heard about this before. I only got to know the word conservatory when I was looking at the house listing, the real estate listings in the UK. Conservatory, 如果你是在英国租房或者买房的话, 你就会经常看到这个词, 就what is a conservatory? A conservatory is almost like a type of greenhouse. It's a room that is part of the garden. So, it's normally mostly glass. People would have plants in there, people would sit in there, particularly if it's not a very nice day. So it's like being in the garden, but without being cold and wet. 所以就有点像半温室, 但有点半阳光房的那种感觉。 There are places for people who sit and enjoy the garden。 Exactly, when it's a bit too cold to enjoy the garden. Yeah. What is an orangery? Is not a place just for oranges, is it? It is. Okay. Well. Oranges and lemons. So, you have to think in the 17th 18th century oranges, pineapples, lemons were incredibly expensive. So some rich people, what they used to do was create an orangery. So, they could grow this type of fruit that comes from Italy and other hotter places. So they need a greenhouse for that sort of thing. Yeah. Exactly. And it used to be part of the decoration. Interesting, little bit of the tropical paradise that you guys were like aspiring to have. Exactly. You have to think that most of these rich people, they would travel to Italy and France when they were young, and they used to bring things back. Yeah, I can totally see the charm of that. So that's about the anatomy of the house itself. Now let's talk about the servant quarter....

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Britain under the microscope.欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi, 安澜。 Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. Hi everyone. You sound a bit nasal. I've got a little bit of a cold. Okay. I suppose it adds a different type of charm. Yeah. And it's a good thing. It's audio, I don't look that great at the moment. All right. So, chitchat aside, let us get into today's topic. You know, when a lot of Chinese people when they think about British or English drama就很多人看英剧的时候, I think they start with, you know, what you call it? Big houses, servants, lords, ladies… Yeah. Kind of like sort of period drama. 对, 你们管那个叫period drama, 有点时代剧那个意思。 So for example when I was watching Downtown Abbey. Yes. 唐顿庄园. And also some episodes of Miss Marple like Agatha Christie's, 阿婆的一些都是这种大庄园里面。 Yes. So it’s that time, it's the early 20th century. It's the era of the manor house. I thought today let's focus on that. What did you say? You called them Manor houses. Well. There's lots of different names for them. You can call the manor houses, country houses or stately homes. Manor is m-a-n-o-r. Yeah. What does that mean “Manor”? Well. The manor was basically the big house and the land around it. 就是一个像庄园这种感觉。对吧 Yeah. So, we would still say, for example, the lord or lady of the manor. By the way, statistically and realistically, how many British people still live or still own that type of manor houses? Very very very very few. It's not just, I mean just being rich, is not enough, is it? No. 据我所知, 他好像是要有什么原来的那种贵族aristocrats。 Well. You get some rich people that they do buy these big houses, they probably don't own much of the land around them. But the thing is - incredibly expensive to keep. And normally if you're looking at more of a traditional manor house, it comes with a lot of responsibilities. Responsibilities? I thought that's just a private home, you just take care of it like we do to our houses or flats. No, traditionally being the lord of the manor means that you have very close ties to the village, because the land is so big or it was so big that they would have its own little industries, it would have its own farms. And, it comes with a lot of responsibilities for the villagers, the people who live nearby. Oh, that's why. I'm sure a lot of you when you are watching TV shows like Downtown Abbey think about Lord Grantham.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to our new segment. It means what？ Yeah. OK, your YEAH is getting less passionate. Anyhow欢迎回来我们的新板块词源考古研究所. Hi, 安澜. Hi, 璐璐. Hi, everyone. So let me propose the word of the day. Okay. This is a word that - well basically will bring up some painful memory of the past 3 years. Okay. So, you know it has something to do with pandemic. Yeah. Is this something we probably all got? And that is the word vaccine. Oh yes. Vaccine or vaccination. 就是接种疫苗, 对吧？疫苗. I'm pretty sure you all got vaccinated. Well, for COVID. Oh, yeah, yeah, I got vaccinated quite a few times, actually I think now. Me too, me too. But I've always wondered, although we've talked about vaccination and all the relevant words and expressions in other episodes. But where does this word even come from? Vaccine? Is it medically originated? No, it's actually a Latin word and it comes from the word for cow. Cow like mooooooo, cow. Moo, cow. Vacca. 所以是拉丁文的牛的意思. I fail to see the connection between modern medicine or medical treatment and moo cows. Well, we just call them cows in English. If you call them moo cows, it sounds a little bit stupid. Okay, thank you. That's alright. But I'm pretty sure there's interesting background story. Well yeah. And it all comes from when vaccines were first invented. So, this was in the 18th century and a British scientist named Edward Jenner. Now Edward Jenner was a doctor as well as a scientist. And he noticed something quite strange. That June that time, when smallpox was everywhere.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Welcome back to geek time. We're gonna be talking about cryptocurrency for the advanced lesson. Hey, what's going on? Lulu? Well, I'm prepared to be even more confused. Hahaha. Don't worry. I think this might be easier. Yeah, in the previous episode, we were talking about how cryptocurrency has no central authority or central regulatory bodies to really oversee it. For me, that just sounds like a problem waiting to happen, really sounds like troubles. Because definitely, some people are gonna use it for criminal activities, you know. Exactly. That's one of the things that a lot of people talk about cryptocurrency is the fact that it's connected to crime, which is - you can say that for just about any currency, but cryptocurrency is like the major tool for criminals who are online. Because there's no regulatory body. There's anonymity. Just really a hotbed for a crime. Right. You've like - we've talked about the Silk Road before. Emm. Dark web. Yeah. Using the dark web that are connected to buy and sell goods. All those goods are sold or bought with cryptocurrencies. Because it's much harder to track and to trace. Yeah. It's nowadays the markets are trying to get people to have their name connected to their wallet, but not every market requires that. And so, there is a bunch of people out there that have cryptocurrencies that have just a wallet with no name attached to it. Yeah. Because that was the original aim, that was the original meaning of cryptocurrency, right? They don't want a centralized authority to control all these money transfers. Would there be a lot of money laundering in cryptocurrency? Yeah. Like cryptocurrency, just in like 2021 alone, there was something like $8.6 billion of money laundered using cryptocurrency. That's not even the beginning, like every year that happens, there is other issues involved with cryptocurrency. When you have so much crypto, you can actually use that to affect or inflate the market. You have people that have large sums of cryptocurrency, not only are they using it to launder money, but they are actually able to increase the value of the currency they have, by just selling it to each other for the same amount of money, which increases the amount of trades, which makes people think that it's worth more, and then people buy it for more. Oh, okay. I think I've heard of this. This is called wash trades, right? Right. It happens on the stock market too, gold markets, but it's rampant and in some markets with like cryptocurrency. Yeah. So, it's the whole idea is I have some cryptocurrency, I just sell it to you, you sell it back to me, I sell it to you, you sell it back to me. And so, by doing that we're trying to make it seem that large amount of this cryptocurrency is traded on the market, therefore inflating the value of it. Right. I think the other problem with cryptocurrency is a lot of people obviously use it for speculation. So, like really really - like gambling. Right. Just like buying stock, you want the value to go up. People are investing money in the cryptocurrencies. And when you see like the increase in like the value of Bitcoin over the years, went from something that was worth pennies to being worth thousands of dollars. I think it's worth $30,000 now, and it’s worth $60,000 I think at the beginning of the year something around there. And so, people can take a small investment and make their investment increase 10 times or maybe even a hundred times their original investment. It's a market for gamblers. However, like we talked about last time, most of these cryptocurrency, they do not really have the staying power. They will not be able to really maintain that high value over long term or keep growing. It's very volatile to go up and down fluctuate wildly. Mhm. Yeah, when we look at just like we mentioned Dogecoin earlier, but you could have like five Dogecoin for a penny in 2020. But ...

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to geek time. Hi, Brad. Hi, Lulu. So what is our topic for today? We're gonna be talking about cryptocurrency. We kind of talked about NFTs before. And NFTs kind of share a basic background with cryptocurrency, but we haven't really gotten into cryptocurrency before. So I think this is where we can kind of get into it. Yeah. This is where everything started basically. First of all, cryptocurrency在中文叫加密货币. I think many people think of cryptocurrency, they think of Bitcoin 比特币 or even Dogecoin 狗狗币. But what exactly is cryptocurrency? Oh, cryptocurrency is just a currency that doesn't have a central government or authority controlling it. So when you have your dollar, your Renminbi, someone had to print that or control the amount of it. And rather than that, It’s usually the central bank, isn't it? Like the central bank. But rather than that, this is something that's online. And there's like a digital ledger that has a list of everyone who has bought or sold the currency. And so they know who has what and this can be like anonymous. And that's why a lot of people really wanted it. But nowadays a lot of the exchanges are kind of starting to collect your personal data for tax purposes and things like that. I see. so let me slow this down a little bit. There's no central authority. 一般来说我们生活中接触的货币, 不管是人民币或者说美金日元, 它都是由central bank一般都是央行来发行的, but cryptocurrency essentially there is no authority, no central authority, no government involved, and no regulatory bodies, 没有这种监管的机构. So It's just everything stored in a ledger. You said像一个账本, a digital ledger. Right. And some people can be anonymous. They can - you don't know who they are. They're just an account number, but others might have to register. They might have to have their personal data there. Yeah, so oftentimes if you're looking at the blockchain, you may not be able to know who the person is. But if you go to like, for example, the government will know who this person is because they've signed up for an exchange and that exchange has tied their account number to their name I see and you mentioned blockchain. This was one of the hottest buzzwords a few years back, blockchain, 区块链. Till this day I still don't know exactly what blockchain is, but I know this is the technology behind cryptocurrency, right? Blockchain made cryptocurrency possible. Yeah, it is basically just all the data. Blockchain is the ledger. You have to decrypt and encrypt all the data. So whenever someone buys or sells something using the cryptocurrency or whenever cryptocurrency is traded, it has to go through authorization and they have to run the blockchain. In order to do this, they're using hundreds of computers or thousands of computers and they go through a process that's referred to as mining. So sounds you're like mining for gold. And essentially, that's what you're doing by using your computer to help the blockchain process. You're going to get some sort of payment. Let me stop you there. So mining here就是挖矿. It's like you are mining for gold or mining for diamonds. And this is a way to make money in this cryptocurrency world? Yeah. because rather than have - like a government doing all the mining or regulation, everyone is pitching in to do the regulation or to do the mining to move the data or to move the currency from one person to another. Oh, I see it's like a community thing almost. I've heard of people doing the mining, 其实我自己朋友圈里面也有人去参与这种cryptocurrency的挖矿.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Once upon a time, in the medieval city of Coventry in England, there lived a kind and compassionate woman named Lady Godiva. She was the wife of Lord Leofric, a powerful and wealthy nobleman. Lady Godiva was known for her generosity and love for the people of Coventry, but her husband, Lord Leofric, was a stern ruler who declared heavy taxes on the citizens. The people of Coventry suffered under the burden of these taxes, and their pleas to reduce taxes were ignored by the greedy ruler. Lady Godiva, however, felt sorry for all the struggles of the common people. Lady Godiva argued and argued with her husband from dawn to night, trying to persuade him to reduce taxes for the people of Coventry. Lady Godiva thought of new ways to raise money and even said she would write to the king. Unfortunately, Lord Leofric was stubborn and refused to reduce taxes. In the end, Lady Godiva lost her patience and she made a bold and strange proposal to her husband. She said that she would ride through the streets of Coventry, completely naked, if he would reduce taxes and help end the suffering of the people. Lord Leofric was shocked that she would even suggest this but eventually agreed to her terms. Leofric knew how shy his wife was so he was confident that she would never go through with riding naked through the city. The people of Coventry soon heard about Lady Godiva's promise which spread like wildfire through the city. The citizens were grateful for any hope of relief from their taxes and they waited for the day of her ride. Lady Godiva, determined to fulfill her promise and alleviate the suffering of the people, prepared for the ride.