Beyond English 不止英语 - 节目列表

🎧 节目简介 早安！你是否经历过这样的折磨：周末和朋友商量去哪儿吃饭，日料、火锅、西餐挑了个遍，大家讨论了半个小时才终于拿定主意。或者在工作中，团队为了一个方案的细节争论不休，最后终于敲定了一个版本。 在这个“从混乱到确定”的过程中，如果你只用 decide 或者 choose，语言就失去了灵魂。 本期 Beyond English 不止英语，Mandy 陪你一边喝着晨间咖啡，一边通过“尘埃落定”的绝妙画面，深度体会 Settle on 这个高级短语的魅力，让你的表达更具故事感。 📖 CORE VOCABULARY • Settle on: [最终敲定/选定] - To make a final decision about something after a period of thinking or discussion • Settle for: [将就/退而求其次] - To accept something even though it is not exactly what you want • Chaotic: [混乱的] - In a state of complete confusion 🗣️ BILINGUAL SCRIPT (中英对照 · 辅助理解) [Sighs softly] Ugh, choosing a place for a group dinner is exhausting. [轻轻叹气] 呃，为集体聚餐选地方真是太累人了。 Last night, my friends and I spent an hour looking at menus. 昨晚，我和朋友们花了一个小时看菜单。 Thai food, burgers, sushi... we just kept going back and forth. 泰国菜、汉堡、寿司……我们就是不停地来回纠结。 By the time we finally made a choice, I felt so relieved. 等到我们终于做出选择时，我感到如释重负。 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another session of Beyond English. I'm Mandy. 大家早安。欢迎来到新一期的 Beyond English 不止英语。我是 Mandy。 That feeling of finally picking an option after a messy discussion is very unique. 那种在漫长混乱的讨论后终于选定一个方案的感觉，是非常独特的。 Saying "we decided" feels a bit flat. It misses the struggle. 仅仅说“我们决定了”感觉有点干瘪。它漏掉了纠结的过程。 The perfect phrase to capture that exact moment of relief is: Settle on. We settled on sushi. 捕捉那种解脱瞬间的最完美的短语是：Settle on（最终敲定）。我们最终敲定了吃寿司。 Imagine a room full of dust floating in the air. 想象一个房间里飘满了灰尘。 The dust represents all those different, chaotic ideas flying around. 这些灰尘代表着四处乱飞的、各种混乱的想法。 Eventually, the wind stops. The dust falls and rests quietly on the ground. It settles. 最终，风停了。灰尘落下来，安静地停留在地面上。它“沉淀 (settles)”了。 When you settle on a choice, the chaotic debate ends, and your mind rests on one final answer. Peace is restored. 当你 settle on 一个选择时，混乱的争论结束了，你的思绪停留在一个最终答案上。平静恢复了。 In our daily lives, this perfectly describes group decisions. 在我们的日常生活中，这完美地描述了群体决策。 You will often hear people say things like, "After touring five apartments, we finally settled on the one near the park." 你会经常听到人们说类似这样的话：“在看了五套公寓后，我们最终敲定了公园附近的那套。” This phrase is also incredibly powerful in a professional setting. 这个短语在专业职场环境中同样极具力量。 During a tough business negotiation, an executive might announce, "We spent all morning negotiating, and we have settled on a fair price." 在一场艰难的商业谈判中，高管可能会宣布：“我们花了一上午的时间谈判，并且我们已经最终敲定了一个公平的价格。” It shows that the hard work of discussing is officially over. 这表明讨论的艰苦工作已经正式结束了。 It is important to note the difference between settling on and settling for. Just one preposition changes everything. 值得注意的是 settle on（敲定）和 settle for（将就）之间的区别。仅仅一个介词就改变了一切。 Settle on means you reached a solid, happy conclusion. Settle on意味着你得出了一个可靠、令人满意的结论。 Settle for means you gave up your dream and accepted something worse because you had no other choice. Settle for 意味着你放弃了梦想，接受了更差的东西，因为你别无选择。 Like wanting a big office, but having to settle for a small desk. 就像想要一间大办公室，却不得不将就一张小办公桌。 We never want to settle for less, but it is always nice to settle on a good plan. 我们永远不想将就于更差的选择，但最终敲定一个好计划总是令人愉快的。 Every decision is the end of a little storm. What is a big choice you have settled on recently? 每一个决定都是一场小风暴的结束。你最近最终敲定的一项重大选择是什么？ Let me know in the comments. 在评论区告诉我吧。 Grab your coffee, enjoy the fresh morning air, and have a wonderful day ahead, everyone. Go beyond words. 拿起你的咖啡，享受清新的晨风，祝大家接下来度过美好的一天。超越词汇，探索更多。

🎧 节目导读 (Show Notes) 在这个凡事都讲求效率和“回报率”的时代，我们对于“等待”的容忍度似乎降到了冰点。如果发出的消息两小时没收到回复，我们会焦虑；如果一段感情需要漫长的磨合，我们会果断“左滑”寻找下一个。我们太害怕浪费时间，太害怕错付真心，以至于我们将爱情变成了一场追求“即时满足”的快餐游戏。 但在时间面前，人类的情感究竟能有多坚韧？ 今晚，Mandy 陪你走进加西亚·马尔克斯的魔幻现实主义巅峰之作《霍乱时期的爱情》（Love in the Time of Cholera）。让我们登上那艘挂着霍乱黄色隔离旗的内河船，去见证那个为了一段没有承诺的爱，固执地等待了五十一年九个月零四天的男人。去看看当青春老去、容颜衰败时，那份跨越了半个世纪的深情，将如何震撼人心。 ✨ Highlight 金句 "Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-one years, nine months, and four days. 'Forever,' he said." “弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨为这个答案已经准备了五十一年九个月零四天。‘一生一世。’他说。” 📖 Core Vocabulary 核心词表 - Invincible:[不可战胜的 / 无法摧毁的] Too powerful to be defeated or overcome; representing the relentless endurance of Florentino's love. - Intrepid: [无畏的 / 勇敢的] Fearless; adventurous. It shows a courage that refuses to surrender to the passage of time or societal norms. - Overwhelm: [淹没 / 压倒] To have a strong emotional effect on someone. - Belated: [迟来的 / 晚期的] Coming or happening later than should have been the case. 🎙️ Full English Script 纯英沉浸 Hello, my dear friends. Welcome back to the quiet sanctuary of Literary Glimmer. I am Mandy. In our modern world, we measure almost everything by speed and efficiency. We measure love by response times. If a text message isn't answered within a few hours, we feel anxious. If a relationship hits a rough patch, we are often quick to walk away, to swipe to the next option, terrified of "wasting our time." We want guarantees. We want instant gratification. Waiting, to us, feels like a punishment. It feels like a loss of control. But what if waiting wasn't a tragedy? What if waiting was not an empty space between two events, but the very essence of a profoundly lived life? This brings us to our journey tonight. We are opening the pages of Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, Love in the Time of Cholera. It is the story of Florentino Ariza, a man who falls madly, irreversibly in love with Fermina Daza when they are just teenagers. Due to misunderstandings and the cruel realities of life, she marries a wealthy, respectable doctor. She builds a family, grows old, and lives an entire lifetime without him. But Florentino does not move on. He waits. He lives his own life, yes, but in the deepest corner of his soul, he keeps the fire burning for her. He waits for over half a century, not with bitterness, but with a quiet, unshakable certainty. When we meet them in the final pages of the book, they are in their seventies. Fermina’s husband has passed away. Florentino has finally stepped forward to claim the love of his life. To escape the judgmental eyes of society, they board a riverboat. To ensure no one disturbs them, Florentino orders the captain to raise the yellow flag of cholera, forcing the ship into a permanent quarantine. They sail up and down the Magdalena River, isolated from the rest of humanity, finally together. Now, close your eyes. Imagine the slow, rhythmic movement of the boat on the dark river. Imagine the wrinkles on their faces, and the absolute peace in their hearts. The journey cannot go on forever, or so the captain thinks. Let's listen to the final, breathtaking moments of this epic love story. It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They passed their time in silence, watching the slow movement of the river, the decaying towns, the dense green of the jungle. They did not speak, because they had said everything there was to say. They understood each other with the quiet intuition of two people who have waited a lifetime for this very moment. The Captain of the ship, however, was growing anxious. They were running out of fuel. They were running out of excuses to keep sailing up and down the river with the yellow flag flying. The illusion could not last. He approached Florentino Ariza, his face drawn with worry and disbelief at what these two elderly lovers were emanding of him. The Captain looked at Fermina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glint of wintry frost. Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits. "And how long do you think we can keep up this goddamn coming and going?" he asked. Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-one years, nine months, and four days. "Forever," he said. "Forever." Just one word, delivered by an old man on a boat that has nowhere left to go. But it is arguably the most powerful word in the history of literature. We often think of romance as something belonging only to the young—something fiery, impatient, and fleeting. But Márquez shows us that the most invincible, intrepid love is the kind that survives the winter frost on our eyelashes. It is the kind of devotion that defies logic, defies society, and ultimately defies time itself. "It is life, more than death, that has no limits." This realization hits us like a tidal wave. We are so afraid of death, but perhaps we should be more in awe of the limitless capacity of life, and the limitless capacity of the human heart to love, to endure, and to wait. Tonight, in a world that rushes past you, I hope you find the courage to hold onto the things that truly matter. Whether it is a dream, a belief, or a love. May you have the strength to let your own quiet fires burn, no matter how long the wait. Goodnight, my friends, and let the glimmer light your way. Beyond English | 不止英语 Go beyond words. Master the mindset.

🎧 节目简介 早安！在工作或生活中，我们总会遇到与人意见相左的时候。如果只会说 "I disagree" 或者 "We are fighting"，不仅显得语言单调，有时还会让原本可以沟通的氛围变得剑拔弩张。 如何用地道且体面的方式表达“我们想法不同”？ 本期 Beyond English 不止英语，Mandy 陪你一边喝晨间咖啡，一边通过观察人们交流的姿态，深度拆解 "See eye to eye" 这个短语背后的深意，助你在任何场合都能高情商地表达立场。 📖 CORE VOCABULARY • See eye to eye: [看法一致/达成共识] - To share the same views or opinions about something • On the same page: [达成共识/进度一致] - To have the same understanding of a situation • At odds: [有分歧/不和] - In conflict or disagreement 🗣️ BILINGUAL SCRIPT (中英对照 · 辅助理解) [Sighs deeply] Ugh, I had such a tiring conversation yesterday. [深深叹气] 呃，我昨天进行了一场非常令人疲惫的谈话。 My best friend and I were trying to plan a summer holiday. 我和我最好的朋友正试图计划一个暑假。 She wanted a busy city tour, and I just wanted a quiet beach. 她想要繁忙的城市游，而我只想要一个安静的海滩。 We talked for two hours, but we just couldn't reach an answer. We were completely stuck. 我们聊了两个小时，但就是得不出一个结果。我们完全僵持住了。 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another session of Beyond English. I'm Mandy. 大家早安。欢迎来到新一期的 Beyond English 不止英语。我是 Mandy。 Sometimes, saying "we didn't agree" feels too cold for a close relationship. 有时候，对于亲密关系来说，说“我们没达成一致”感觉太冷漠了。 I wanted a softer way to describe this situation. 我想要一种更柔和的方式来描述这种情况。 To figure out this social puzzle, we can explore a perfect phrase: See eye to eye. 为了解开这个社交谜题，我们可以探索一个完美的短语：See eye to eye（看法一致）。 My friend and I didn't see eye to eye. 我和我朋友看法不一致。 Imagine this in your head. Two people are standing face to face. 在你的脑海中想象一下这个画面。两个人面对面站着。 If they look directly into each other's eyes, their eye levels are exactly the same. Their vision is perfectly aligned. 如果他们直视对方的眼睛，他们的视平线是完全一样的。他们的视野完美地对齐了。 They are looking at the world from the exact same height and angle. 他们正在从完全相同的高度和角度看世界。 That is what it means to share a perspective. 这就是分享同一种视角的含义。 In our daily lives, you can use this for any relationship. 在我们的日常生活中，你可以将它用于任何关系。 You might say, "My brother and I rarely see eye to eye on politics." It means your viewpoints are totally different. 你可能会说，“我和我哥哥在政治上很少看法一致。”意思是你们的观点完全不同。 This phrase is also incredibly powerful in a professional setting. 这个短语在专业职场环境中同样极具力量。 If you have a disagreement with your manager, saying "we fight" is a bad idea. 如果你和你的经理有分歧，说“我们吵架了”是个糟糕的主意。 Instead, you can say, "My boss and I don't see eye to eye on the new marketing strategy." It sounds polite and respectful. 相反，你可以说，“我和老板在新的营销策略上看法不一致。”这听起来礼貌且尊重。 It is important to unpack a very key detail about this phrase. 拆解关于这个短语的一个非常关键的细节很重要。 Native speakers almost always use it in the negative form. 母语人士几乎总是以否定形式使用它。 We rarely say "we see eye to eye." We usually only mention it when the alignment is missing. 我们很少说“我们看法一致”。我们通常只在缺乏一致性的时候才提到它。 We say "we don't see eye to eye." 我们说“我们看法不一致”。 Also, "see eye to eye" is much deeper than just saying "agree." 另外，“see eye to eye”比仅仅说“同意”要深得多。 You can agree on a basic fact, like the time of a meeting. 你可以在一个基本事实上同意，比如开会的时间。 But "see eye to eye" is about sharing a core mindset or philosophy. 但“see eye to eye”关乎分享核心的思维模式或理念。 So, "agree" is for the surface, and "see eye to eye" is for the soul. 所以，“agree”是表面的，而“see eye to eye”是灵魂层面的。 We don't always have to see eye to eye with everyone in life, but understanding each other is what truly matters. 在生活中，我们不必总是和每个人的看法完全一致，但互相理解才是真正重要的。 Tell us in the comments, who is someone you don't always see eye to eye with, but you still love dearly? 在评论区告诉我们，有谁是你并不总是看法一致，但你依然深爱着的人？ Have a wonderful day ahead, everyone. Go beyond words. 祝大家接下来度过美好的一天。超越词汇，探索更多。

🎧 节目导读 (Show Notes) 在这个充斥着情绪表达和“政治正确”的时代，我们似乎总被要求对一切做出恰如其分的反应：悲伤时要热泪盈眶，喜悦时要欢呼雀跃，甚至面对远方的灾难也要表现出合群的义愤填膺。如果我不哭，是不是就代表我冷血？如果我不配合演出，是不是就代表我是一个危险的怪人？ 我们都在疲于奔命地扮演一个“正常人”，这让你感到窒息吗？ 今晚，Mandy 陪你走进阿尔贝·加缪的荒诞主义文学巅峰之作《局外人》（The Stranger）。让我们透过主人公默尔索那双极度诚实、毫无波澜的眼睛，去审视这个充满表演的人间。或许，接受世界的无意义，捍卫自己不表露虚假情感的权利，也是一种终极的自由。 ✨ Highlight 金句 "I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe." “我向这个世界温柔的冷漠敞开了心扉。” 🎙️ Full English Script 纯英沉浸 Have you ever sat in a room full of people—perhaps at a farewell party, a wedding, or even while watching a tragic news story unfold on a screen—and felt an immense pressure to display a certain emotion? You look around and see everyone crying, or cheering, or radiating anger. You look inside yourself, searching for that same storm of feeling, but all you find is a quiet, empty room. You feel nothing. And then, almost immediately, the guilt sets in. You wonder: Is there something wrong with me? Am I cold? Am I broken? Hello, my dear friends. Welcome back to the quiet sanctuary of Literary Glimmer. I am Mandy. We live in a world that demands a constant performance of emotion. We are handed a script the moment we are born. We are told exactly how to grieve, how to love, how to react to success and failure. If we deviate from that script, society judges us. We are labeled as outsiders, simply because our internal weather doesn't match the forecast everyone else agreed upon. It is exhausting to constantly curate your feelings for an audience. This profound exhaustion, this feeling of being an alien in a world of performers, brings us to the masterpiece we are opening tonight: The Stranger by Albert Camus. The protagonist, Meursault, is a man who commits the ultimate social sin. He refuses to lie. When his mother dies, he does not weep, simply because he does not feel the urge to. When his girlfriend asks if he loves her, he says it doesn't mean anything, but probably not. He is ultimately condemned to death by society, not merely for a crime he committed, but because he didn't cry at his mother's funeral. He is the ultimate outsider. Tonight, let's step into his prison cell on the night before his execution. An angry priest has just left his room. Meursault is finally alone with the night sky. Listen to his final, breathtaking realization of freedom. With him gone, I recovered my calmness. I was exhausted, and I threw myself on my bed. I must have fallen asleep, for I woke with the stars shining in my face. Sounds of the countryside came faintly in, and the cool night air, veined with smells of earth and salt, fanned my cheeks. The marvelous peace of the sleepbound summer night tided through me like a flood. Then, just on the edge of daybreak, I heard a steamer's siren. People were starting on a voyage to a world which had ceased to concern me forever. Almost for the first time in many months I thought of my mother. And now, it seemed to me, I understood why at her life's end she had taken on a fiancé; why she'd played at making a fresh start. There, too, in that asylum where lives were flickering out, the dusk came as a mournful solace. With death so near, Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration. "I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe." There is something so profoundly liberating in those words. For our entire lives, we are burdened by the belief that the universe is watching us, keeping score, demanding meaning and purpose from our every action. We carry the heavy illusion that our suffering, our milestones, and our social performances matter on some cosmic scale. But Camus offers us a beautifully stark alternative: the universe is silent. It does not judge. It simply exists. And in that vast, empty indifference, we are finally set free. We don't have to perform. We don't have to force tears when our eyes are dry, or fake laughter when our hearts are quiet. We are allowed to just be. To embrace the absurdity of it all. So tonight, if the world feels too loud and demanding, grant yourself the right to be indifferent. Drop the script. You don't owe anyone a performance. Goodnight, and let the glimmer light your way. Beyond English | 不止英语 Go beyond words. Master the mindset.

🎧 节目简介 早安！在生活中，我们经常经历一些“慢慢褪去”的感觉：早上喝的咖啡，到了下午提神效果就没了；吃下的止痛药，几个小时后渐渐失去了作用；或者刚入职一份新工作时充满激情，几个月后新鲜感却消失殆尽。 当我们想表达这种“效果或感觉慢慢消失”的过程时，如果用 disappear 会显得太突然，用 stop 又不够精准。 本期 Beyond English 不止英语，陪你一边喝着晨间咖啡，一边探索 Wear off 这个充满画面感的地道短语，让你轻松谈论生活与职场中那些逐渐平息的瞬间。 📖 CORE VOCABULARY • Wear off: [逐渐消退/失去效用] - To gradually disappear or stop having an effect • Fade away: [逐渐消失/变淡] - To slowly disappear, lose color or strength • Die down: [逐渐平息/减弱] - To become gradually less strong, loud, or noticeable 🗣️ BILINGUAL SCRIPT (中英对照 · 辅助理解) [Yawns softly] Ugh, I really need this coffee today. [轻轻打哈欠] 呃，我今天真的太需要这杯咖啡了。 I had a huge cup yesterday morning, and I felt like a superhero. 我昨天早上喝了一大杯，感觉自己像个超级英雄。 But by 3 PM, my energy was completely gone. I crashed hard. 但到了下午三点，我的精力就完全耗尽了。我困得不行。 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another session of Beyond English. I'm Mandy. 大家早安。欢迎来到新一期的 Beyond English 不止英语。我是 Mandy。 I wanted to say the coffee stopped working, but it didn't stop suddenly. 我当时想说这咖啡不起作用了，但它不是突然停止的。 It happened slowly over the afternoon. 它是整个下午慢慢发生的。 We need a phrase to describe a slow reduction in an effect. 我们需要一个短语来描述这种效果的缓慢减弱。 The perfect phrasal verb to explore today is: Wear off. The caffeine was wearing off. 今天我们要探索的最完美的动词短语是：Wear off（逐渐消退/失去效用）。咖啡因的作用正在慢慢消退。 How can we figure out the logic here? 我们该如何理清这里的逻辑呢？ Imagine a dark blue pair of jeans. 想象一条深蓝色的牛仔裤。 When you first buy them, the color is deep and fresh. 你刚买的时候，颜色很深很新。 But over time, with washing and walking, the color slowly rubs away. 但随着时间的推移，经过洗涤和走动，颜色慢慢磨掉了。 It wears off. It is a gradual loss of intensity. 它“褪色 (wears off)”了。这是一种强度的逐渐丧失。 In our daily lives, this perfectly describes things that lose their physical effect. 在我们的日常生活中，这完美地描述了那些失去物理效用的事物。 If you are at the dentist, you might notice the painkiller is wearing off, and your tooth starts to hurt again. 如果你在看牙医，你可能会注意到止痛药的药效正在消退，你的牙又开始疼了。 Or maybe you apply your favorite perfume in the morning, and the scent wears off by dinner time. 或者你早上喷了最喜欢的香水，到了晚饭时间香味就散去了。 This phrase is also incredibly powerful in a professional setting. 这个短语在专业职场环境中同样极具力量。 We can use it to describe emotions or excitement. 我们可以用它来描述情绪或兴奋感。 You might notice that the excitement of a new project wears off after a month. 你可能会发现，对新项目的兴奋感在一个月后就逐渐消退了。 The team's motivation slowly goes away. 团队的动力慢慢流失了。 It is very important to notice the difference between wearing off and disappearing. 注意到 wear off 和 disappear 之间的区别非常重要。 Disappear can be instant. A magician makes a rabbit disappear in one second. Disappear（消失）可以是瞬间的。魔术师一秒钟就能让一只兔子消失。 But wear off is always a slow, steady decline. It takes time. 但 wear off 永远是一个缓慢、稳定的下降过程。它需要时间。 And remember, we only use it for effects, feelings, or sensations. 还要记住，我们只用它来形容效果、感觉或知觉。 You cannot say my keys wore off when you lose them. 当你弄丢钥匙时，你不能说我的钥匙 wore off。 Understanding this helps us accept that feelings and effects are temporary. 理解这一点能帮助我们接受感觉和效果都是暂时的。 I hope your motivation to explore English with me never wears off. 我希望你和我一起探索英语的动力永远不会消退。 Grab your coffee, enjoy the fresh air, and have a wonderful day ahead, everyone. Go beyond words. 拿起你的咖啡，享受清新的空气，祝大家接下来度过美好的一天。超越词汇，探索更多。

Here is the full transcript (Edited version) and summary of Actor Denzel Washington’s Famous “Fall Forward” Speech at University of Pennsylvania. The event occurred on Monday, May 16, 2011. TRANSCRIPT: President Gutmann: Please join me in welcoming Denzel Washington. Denzel Washington – Academy Award-winning and Tony Award-winning actor and director. Thank you. Thank you very much. I am obviously the most unorganized; everybody else has nice boxes when they’re script up and I just kind of got all my stuff here and put inside of a magazine, so. So in fact, I don’t even have it in the right order, wait a minute. Let me get it in the right order here…. So if it starts like flying around the stage, just run around and grab it for me, bring it back up here for me. I’ll keep going as I can. President Gutmann; Provost Price; Board Chair Cohen; fellow honorees; beautiful honorees and today’s graduates. I’m honored and grateful for the invitation today. It’s always been great to be on the Penn campus. I’ve been here before a lot of times for basketball games. My son played at the Palestra, played on the basketball team. Coach didn’t give him enough playing time, but we’ll talk about that later. No, I’m really pleased with the progress that Coach Allen has made and no, I do. I am, I really am. And I hope him the best success in the future. I’d always get a warm welcome when I come to Pennsylvania, when I come to Philadelphia — except on the few occasions when I’d wear my Yankees cap. It’s like taking your life in your hands around it when you wear Yankee cap, I am telling you. I met a couple of guys and they were like: “Hey, we love you Denzel. But you walking around with that hat on…we don’t care who you are.” So you’ll be happy to see that I’m not wearing my Yankees cap today. But I am wearing my Yankees socks, my Yankees t-shirt, and my Yankees jock shirts, my Yankee underwear. Not my Yankee cap. Still, I’ll be honest with you: I’m a little nervous. I am not used to speaking at a graduation of this magnitude, it’s a little overwhelming. This is out of my comfort zone. Dress me up in army fatigues. Or throw me on top of a moving train, someone said unstoppable or ask me to play Malcolm X, Rubin Hurricane Carter, Alonzo from Training Day: I can do all that. But a commencement speech? It’s a very serious affair and it’s a different ballgame. There are literally thousands and thousands of people here. And for those who say— well you’re a movie star, millions of people watch you speak all the time…… Yes, that’s technically true. But I’m not actually there in the theater — watching them watching me. I think that makes sense. I mean I’m not there when they cough… or fidget… or pull out their iPhone and text their boyfriend or scratch their behinds. But from up here: I can see every single one of you. And that makes me uncomfortable. So please, don’t pull out your iPhones and don’t text your boyfriend until after I’m done. Please. But if you need to scratch your behinds, go right ahead. I’ll understand. I was thinking about the speech, which I should say. I figured the best way to keep your attention would be to talk about something really, juicy Hollywood stuff. I thought I could start with me and Russell Crowe getting into some arguments on the set of American Gangster…but no. You’re a group of high-minded intellectuals. You’re not interested in that. I thought about “private” moment I had backstage with Angelina Jolie in her dressing room at the Oscars?… I said no, I don’t think so. This is an Ivy League school. Angelina Jolie half-naked in her dressing room…? Who wants to hear about that? No one, no one, this is Penn. That stuff wouldn’t go over well here. Maybe at Drexel—but not over here. I’m in trouble now. I was back to square one feeling the pressure. So now you’re probably thinking — if it was going to be this difficult, why’d I even accept today’s invitation in the first place? Well, you know my son goes here. That’s number one. That’s a good reason. And I always like to check to see how my money’s being spent. And I’m sure there’s some parents out there who can relate to what I’m talking about! And there were other good reasons for me to show up. Sure, I got an Academy Award… but I never had something called “Magic Meatballs” after waiting in line for half an hour at a food truck. Yes, I’ve talked face-to-face with President Obama… but I never talked face to face with a guy named “Kweeder” who sings bad songs at Smokes on a Tuesday night. Yes, I’ve played a detective battling demons… but I’ve never been to a school in my life where the squirrel population has gone bananas. I mean they break into the dorm rooms and they’re walking around campus. I think I saw some carrying books on the way to class. So I had to be here. I had to come… even though I was afraid I might make a fool of myself. In fact, if you really want to know the truth: I had to come exactly because I might make a fool of myself. What am I talking about? Well, here it is: I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Nothing. Nelson Mandela said: “There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that’s less than the one you’re capable of living.” I’m sure in your experiences in school… in applying to college… in picking your major… in deciding what you want to do with life, people have told you to make sure you have something to “fall back on.” Make sure you got something to fall back on, honey. But I never understood that concept, having something to fall back on. If I’m going to fall, I don’t want to fall back on anything, except my faith. I want to fall forward. At least I figure that way I’ll see what I’m about to hit. Fall forward. Here’s what I mean: Reggie Jackson struck out twenty-six-hundred times in his career — the most in the history of baseball. But you don’t hear about the strikeouts. People remember the home runs. Fall forward. Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments. Did you know that? I didn’t either, because 1,001 was the light bulb. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success. You’ve got to take risks. And I’m sure you’ve probably heard that before. But I want to talk about why it’s so important. I’ve got three reasons and then you can pick up your iPhones. First… you will fail at some point in your life. Accept it. You will lose. You will embarrass yourself. You will suck at something. There is no doubt about it. That’s probably not a traditional message for a graduation ceremony. But, hey, I’m telling you—embrace it. Because it’s inevitable. And I should know: In the acting business, you fail all the time. Early in my career, I auditioned for a part in a Broadway musical. A perfect role for me, I thought—except for the fact that I can’t sing. So I’m in the wings, I am about to go on stage but the guy in front of me is singing like Pavarotti and I am just shrinking getting smaller and smaller… So I come out with my little sheet music and it was “Just My Imagination” by the Temptations, that’s what I came up with. So I hand it to the accompanist, and she looks at it and looks at me and looks at the director, so I start to sing and they’re not saying anything. I think I must be getting better, so I start getting into it. But after the first verse, the director cuts me off: “Thank you. Thank you very much, you’ll be hearing from me.” I assumed I didn’t get the job. But the next part of the audition, he called me back. The next part of the audition is the acting part. I figure, I can’t sing, but I know I can act. So they paired me with this guy and again I didn’t know about musical theater. In musical theater it’s big, so they can reach everyone all the way in the back. And I am more from a realistic naturalistic kind of acting where you actually talk to the person next to you. So I got to know what my line was. My line was, “Well, hand me the cup.” His line was: “Well, I will hand you the cup, my dear. The cup will be there to be handed to you.” I said OK. “Should I give you the cup back?” Yes, he said, give it back to me, because you know that is my cup, that it should be given back to me. I didn’t get the job. But here’s the thing: I didn’t quit. I didn’t fall back. I walked out of there to prepare for the next audition, and the next audition, and the next one. I prayed and I prayed, but I continued to fail, and failed, and failed. But it didn’t matter. Because you know what? There is an old saying: You hang around a barbershop long enough — sooner or later you will get a haircut. So you will catch your break. And I did catch a break. Last year I did a play called Fences on Broadway and I won a Tony Award. And I didn’t have to sing for it, by the way. And here’s the kicker—it was at the Court Theater, the same theater where I failed that first audition 30 years prior. The point is, and I will pick up the pace… the point is every graduate here today has the training and the talent to succeed. But do you have guts to fail? Here’s my second point about failure: If you don’t fail… you’re not even trying. My wife told me this great expression: “To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.” Les Brown, a motivational speaker, made an analogy about this. He says, “Imagine you’re on your deathbed—and standing around your bed are the ghosts representing your unfilled potential. The ghosts of the ideas you never acted on. The ghosts of the talents you didn’t use. And they’re standing around your bed. Angry. Disappointed. Upset. They say “We came to you because you could have brought us to life,” they say. “And now we have to go to the grave together.” So I ask you today: How many ghosts are going to be around your bed when your time comes? You invested a lot in your education. And people have invested in you. And let me tell you, the world needs your talents. Man, does it ever. I just got back from Africa like two days ago, so I am rambling with a jetlag. I just got back from South Africa, it’s a beautiful country, but there are places with terrible poverty that need help. And Africa is just the tip of the iceberg. The Middle East needs your help. Japan needs your help. Alabama needs your help. Tennessee need your help. Louisiana needs your help. Philadelphia needs your help. The world needs a lot—and we need it from you, the young people. So you got to get out there. You got to give it everything you’ve got—whether it’s your time, your talent, your prayers, or your treasures. Because remember this: You’ll never see a U-haul behind a hearse. You can’t take it with you. The Egyptians tried it—and all they got was robbed! So the question: What are you going to do with what you have? And I’m not talking how much you have. Some of you are business majors. Some of you are theologians, nurses, sociologists. Some of you have money. Some of you have patience. Some of you have kindness. Some of you have love. Some of you have the gift of long-suffering. Whatever it is… whatever your gift is. What are you going to do with what you have? Now here’s my last point about failure: Sometimes it’s the best way to figure out where you’re going. Your life will never be a straight path. I began at Fordham University as a pre-med student. I took a course called “Cardiac Morphogenesis.” I couldn’t it, I couldn’t say it… and I couldn’t pass it. Then I decided to go pre-law. Then journalism. And with no academic focus, my grades took off in their own direction: down. I was a 1.8 GPA one semester, and the university very politely suggested that it might be better to take some time off. I was 20 years old, I was at my lowest point. And then one day—and I remember the exact day: March 27th, 1975—I was helping my mother in her beauty shop; my mother owned a beauty shop up in Mount Vernon. There was this older woman who was considered one of the elders in the town, I didn’t know her personally but I was looking in the mirror. And every time I looked to the mirror I could see her behind me and she was staring at me. Every time I looked at her she kept giving me these strange looks. She finally took the drier off her head and said something to me I’ll never forget: First of all, she said, somebody give me a piece of paper. Give me a piece of paper. She said “Young boy, I have a spiritual prophecy: you are going to travel the world and speak to millions of people.” Like a wise-ass, I’m thinking to myself: “Does she got anything in that crystal ball about me getting back to college in the fall?” But maybe she was on to something. Because later that summer, while working as a counselor at a YMCA camp in Connecticut, we put on a talent show for the campers. After the show, another counselor came up to me and asked: “Have you ever thought of acting? You should. You’re good at that.” When I got back to Fordham that fall I changed my major once again —for the last time. And in the years that followed—just as that woman prophesied, I have traveled the world and I have spoken to millions of people through my movies. Millions who—up ‘till today—I couldn’t see while I was talking to them. But I do see you today. And I’m encouraged by what I see. I’m strengthened by what I see. I love what I see. One more page, then I will shut up. Let me conclude with one final point. Many years ago I did this movie called Philadelphia. We actually filmed some scenes right here on campus. Philadelphia came out in 1993, when most of you were probably still crawling around in diapers. Some of the professors, too. But it’s a good movie. Rent it on Netflix. I get 23 cents every time you do. Tell your friends, too! It’s about a man, played by Tom Hanks, who’s fired from his law firm because he has AIDS. He wants to sue the firm, but no one’s willing to represent him until a homophobic, ambulance-chasing lawyer—played by yours truly—takes on the case. In a way, if you watch the movie, you’ll see everything I’m talking abou

🎧 节目导读 (Show Notes) “你好吗？” “我很好。” 这段对话在我们的日常生活中每天都在上演。但在这个最简单的“我很好”背后，究竟藏着多少说不出口的孤独？ 在这个原子化的现代社会里，我们学会了极度独立，学会了不给任何人添麻烦，学会了把生活过成精准的程序。我们以为这就是“成熟”，这就是“正常”。但当周末来临，房门紧闭，两天没有和任何人说过一句话时，我们是否真的“好极了”？ 今晚，Mandy 陪你走进盖尔·霍尼曼的现象级小说《艾莉诺好极了》。让我们去认识那个有些古怪、有些刻薄，却让人无比心疼的艾莉诺。看看她是如何用孤独筑起一座看似坚不可摧的城堡，又是如何等待那一丝裂缝，让属于人间的微光慢慢照进来。 ✨ Highlight 金句 "These days, loneliness is the new cancer—a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way." “如今，孤独就是新型的癌症——一种可耻、尴尬的东西，不知怎么就降临到了自己身上。” 🎙️ Full English Script 纯英沉浸 Hello, my dear friends. Welcome back to the quiet sanctuary of Literary Glimmer. I am Mandy. How many times this week have you told someone, "I'm fine"? It is perhaps the easiest, most frequent lie we tell in our adult lives. A reflex. A shield. Someone asks how we are doing, and before we even check in with our own hearts, the words slip out effortlessly: "I'm completely fine." We use it to stop people from asking more questions. We use it to protect our fragile dignity. But sometimes, when the door clicks shut at the end of a long week, and you are left completely alone in your room, that "fine" shatters into a million pieces of deafening silence. We live in a hyper-connected era. We carry the whole world in our pockets. Yet, paradoxically, we have perfected the art of isolation. We order groceries on our phones so we don't have to look a cashier in the eye. We text instead of calling, editing out all the messy human emotions from our words. We can go an entire weekend without uttering a single syllable out loud. We package this isolation nicely and call it "independence" or "recharging our social battery." But if we are truly honest with ourselves, in the darkest hours of the night, sometimes it is just profound, aching loneliness disguised as self-sufficiency. This precise, quiet ache brings us to the woman we are visiting tonight. Her name is Eleanor Oliphant. She is the unforgettable protagonist of Gail Honeyman’s deeply moving novel, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Eleanor is a master of survival. She works a simple office job, pays her bills on time, and maintains a meticulously structured routine designed to keep the unpredictable, chaotic world of human relationships at bay. She believes she needs absolutely no one. But beneath her eccentric, sharply guarded exterior lies a profound truth about how we weaponize routine against our own pain. Let's step into her quiet, heavily fortified world. Let's listen. "I get up, I go to work, I go home, I eat my dinner, I go to bed. It’s an unbroken routine. On Fridays, I don’t get the bus straight home. I go to Tesco Metro and buy a Margherita pizza, some Chianti, and two bottles of Glen’s vodka. I drink the vodka over the weekend. I don’t speak to anyone between leaving the office on Friday at 5:30 p.m. and arriving back there on Monday at 8:30 a.m. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to it are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock. The threads tighten slightly from Monday to Friday. When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only to hear my own voice. You can get used to anything, I suppose. These days, loneliness is the new cancer—a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them. I am a self-contained entity. That is what I have always told myself, at any rate." "Loneliness is the new cancer." What a brutally honest observation. Eleanor’s weekend routine with the pizza and the vodka isn't a celebration of freedom; it is anesthesia. She is numbing herself against the sheer terror of being unseen and unfelt by the universe. She desperately convinces herself that she is a self-contained entity, because believing that lie is much safer than risking the terrifying vulnerability of needing someone. But we are human. We are not designed to be self-sufficient islands floating in a vast sea. We need connection just as much as we need oxygen in our lungs. When loneliness becomes a deeply ingrained habit, it stops being a temporary feeling and transforms into a permanent identity. It builds an invisible wall around us that keeps the pain in and the light out. The beautiful, redeeming truth of Eleanor's journey, however, is that even the thickest walls of isolation can be breached. Not by grand, dramatic gestures, but by small, ordinary acts of kindness. A shared cup of coffee. A genuine, unforced smile. A hand reaching out across the divide. If you are listening to my voice tonight and feeling like you only exist in the gaps between the days, floating like a dandelion seed, please know this: you are not a burden, and you are not invisible. It takes immense bravery to drop the armor and admit that we are not completely fine. So tonight, forgive yourself for needing others. Have the courage to reach out. Break the silence before it breaks you, and let that glimmer light your way. Goodnight. Beyond English | 不止英语 Go beyond words. Master the mindset.

“在大家都以同样方式思考的地方，没有人会思考得很深刻。” 我们为这一专栏创建了一档独立的播客节目「DeepLog」，欢迎感兴趣的朋友前往订阅收听 。 ________________________________________ 你是否曾经莫名其妙地答应过别人的请求，事后又懊恼地问自己：“我刚才到底为什么会同意？”真相是：那并不是你经过深思熟虑后做出的选择，而是你的心智操作系统被“黑客”入侵了。 本期节目，我们将解构社会心理学泰斗 罗伯特·西奥迪尼（Robert Cialdini） 的殿堂级著作——《影响力》（Influence）。 请不要把它仅仅当成一本营销或销售指南，这是一本关于人类大脑漏洞的“网络安全手册”。我们将带你识别那些被营销人员、政客和谈判专家用来绕过我们理性防线的隐形心理武器。学会防御这些武器，否则你的心智就会沦为他人操纵的提线木偶。 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🧠 核心思维模型 | Mental Models 本期节目中，我们将重点解构以下认知框架，帮助你给直觉大脑（系统1）打上安全补丁： 1. 咔哒，哔——：固定行为模式 ("Click, Whirr") 动物学实验表明，雌火鸡会因为听到小火鸡“叽叽”的叫声而自动触发哺育行为；哪怕发出叫声的是它的天敌臭鼬玩具。人类的大脑里也内置了同样的“录音带”——当特定的触发按钮被按下时（咔哒），我们的理性思考就会直接关闭，开始盲目、机械地执行顺从反应（哔——）。 2. 互惠原理 (The Rule of Reciprocity) 人类社会建立在“知恩图报”的基因之上，这产生了一种极其强大的压迫感。即使是一个不请自来的小恩小惠（比如超市里的免费试吃，或陌生人硬塞给你的一朵花），都会在你的潜意识里制造“负债感”，最终迫使你用大得多的利益来作为回报，从而掉入不对等交换的陷阱。 3. 承诺与一致 (Commitment and Consistency) 一旦我们做出了某个选择或表明了立场，我们就会立刻受到来自内心和外部的压力，迫使我们的言行与它保持一致。这就是可怕的“登门槛效应”（Foot-in-the-Door）：一旦有人诱导你答应了一个微不足道的小请求，你的自我认知就会发生改变，进而让你在未来不知不觉地答应极其离谱的巨大要求。 4. 社会认同与多元无知 (Social Proof) 当我们在极度不确定时，我们往往会根据别人的行为来判断自己该怎么做。这导致了可怕的羊群效应和“多元无知”（Bystander Effect）：在紧急情况下，每个人都在观察别人的反应，因为大家都表现得很镇定，于是每个人都得出了“没有危险”的错误结论，最终导致了集体的无所作为。 5. 稀缺原则 (Scarcity) “机会越少见，价值似乎就越高。”这直接利用了我们大脑底层的“损失厌恶（Loss Aversion）”。“限时抢购”或“仅剩最后2件”会直接唤醒我们对错失的恐惧，这种生理上的焦躁感会彻底阻断系统2的理性分析，迫使我们为根本不需要的东西买单。 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 本期金句 | Golden Quotes 【关于自动反应】 “文明的进步，就是人们在不假思索中可以做的事情越来越多。” "Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them." 【关于盲从】 “在大家都以同样方式思考的地方，没有人会思考得很深刻。” "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." 【关于稀缺】 “渴望拥有一件稀缺物品的冲动，极大地阻碍了我们的思考能力。” "The joy is not in experiencing a scarce commodity but in possessing it. It is important that we not confuse the two." 【关于拒绝】 “一开始拒绝，比最后反悔要容易得多。” "It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📢 延伸阅读 | Reading More 罗伯特·西奥迪尼《影响力》：你点头的那些瞬间，从来不是你以为的“自己说了算” 罗伯特·西奥迪尼《影响力》：当“亏欠感”变成你内心最隐秘的开关 罗伯特·西奥迪尼《影响力》：为什么你一旦做出选择，就再也停不下来？ 罗伯特·西奥迪尼《影响力》：当所有人都往一个方向跑，你也会不自觉地跟上 罗伯特·西奥迪尼《影响力》：当你喜欢一个人，你就已经准备点头了 罗伯特·西奥迪尼《影响力》：当白大褂开口时，你已经准备服从了 | DeepLog： 解码全球智慧，记录底层认知。 | 虚舸笔记： 虚舸之上，笔记全球深见。

🎧 节目简介 早安！在办公室开会或者和朋友聚餐时，突然需要接个紧急电话，或者去一趟洗手间。如果你直接站起来说 I am leaving 或 I am going out，大家可能会以为你要直接下班回家了，气氛瞬间变得非常尴尬。 如何得体、轻巧地表达“我暂时离开一下，马上就回来”？ 本期 Beyond English 不止英语，陪你一边喝晨间咖啡，一边通过空间画面的想象，解锁一个超级实用的高情商短语，让你在职场和社交中进退自如。 📖 CORE VOCABULARY • Step out: [暂时离开/走开一下] - To leave a place for a short time • Pop out:[快速出去一下] - To leave a room or building for a quick task • Excuse oneself:[请求离席/失陪] - To politely say you are leaving temporarily • Temporary: [暂时的] - Lasting for only a limited period of time 🗣️ BILINGUAL SCRIPT (中英对照 · 辅助理解) Ugh, I had the most awkward moment in a morning meeting yesterday. 呃，昨天早会的时候我经历了一个无比尴尬的时刻。 I really needed to grab some more coffee to wake up. 我真的需要再去倒点咖啡提提神。 So, I stood up and said, I am going out. 所以我站起来说，我要出去了。 Everyone stopped talking and stared at me, looking completely shocked, like I was going home at 10 AM. 所有人都不说话了，齐刷刷地盯着我，看起来非常震惊，好像我早上十点就要回家了一样。 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another session of Beyond English. I am Mandy. 大家早安。欢迎来到新一期的 Beyond English 不止英语。我是 Mandy。 After that embarrassment, I realized going out sounds like a long absence. 经历那次尴尬后，我意识到 going out 听起来像是要离开很久。 I needed a better expression to show I was just leaving for a second. 我需要一个更好的表达，来表明我只是离开一小会儿。 The perfect phrase to explore today is: Step out. I just needed to step out. 今天我们要探索的最完美的短语是：Step out（暂时离开）。我只是需要 step out 一下。 Imagine this in your head. You are standing inside a circle. 在你的脑海中想象一下。你正站在一个圆圈里。 The circle is your meeting room or your office desk. 这个圆圈就是你的会议室或者你的办公桌。 To step out means you take one physical step outside that circle to handle something quickly. Step out 的意思是你往圈外只迈出一步，去快速处理点事情。 And because it is just one step, everyone knows you will step right back in. It is short and temporary. 正因为只是一步的距离，大家都知道你马上就会迈回来。它是短暂且临时的。 In our daily lives, this perfectly describes taking a quick break from a dinner table to answer a phone call. 在我们的日常生活中，这完美地描述了从餐桌旁短暂离开去接个电话的场景。 You just whisper to your friends that you need to step out for a second. It is very polite. 你只需悄悄跟朋友们说你需要离开一下。这非常礼貌。 This phrase is also incredibly powerful in a professional setting. 这个短语在专业职场环境中同样极具力量。 During a formal presentation, saying "Please excuse me, I need to step out to take this call" shows deep respect for the room. 在正式演讲中，说“请原谅，我需要离席一下接个电话”显示了对在场所有人的深深尊重。 It is important to notice the difference between stepping out and leaving. 注意到 step out 和 leave 之间的区别很重要。 Leave is permanent. When you leave the office at 5 PM, you are gone. Leave 是永久性的。当你下午五点下班离开办公室，你就是走了。 When you step out, your jacket is still on your chair. You are coming back. 当你 step out 时，你的外套还在椅子上。你还会回来的。 Oh, and for an even quicker action, like buying a sandwich, you can also use "pop out." 噢，对于更快速的动作，比如去买个三明治，你也可以用 pop out（快速出去一下）。 Sometimes a short pause helps us focus better when we return. 有时候，短暂的抽离能帮我们在回来时更好地专注。 I hope you can step out for a moment today and enjoy some fresh morning air. 希望你今天也能暂时离开一下手头的事，去享受一点清新的晨风。 Have a wonderful day ahead, everyone. Go beyond words. 祝大家接下来度过美好的一天。超越词汇。

Here is the full transcript (Edited version) and summary of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Commencement Speech titled “Magicians of the 21st Century” at Caltech. The event occurred on Friday, June 15, 2012. TRANSCRIPT: Elon Musk – Tesla CEO All right. I’d like to thank you for leaving ‘crazy person’ out of the introduction. So I thought — I was trying to think what’s the most useful thing that I – what I can say that can actually be helpful and useful to you in the future. And I thought, perhaps tell the story of how I sort of came to be here. How did these things happen? And maybe there are lessons there. I often find myself wondering, how did this happen. When I was young, I didn’t really know what I was going to do when I got older. People kept asking me. But then eventually, I thought the idea of inventing things would be really cool. And the reason I thought that was because I read a quote from Arthur C. Clark which said that, “A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ And that’s really true. If you go back say, 300 years, the things we take for granted today, you’d be burned at stake for. Being able to fly. That’s crazy. Being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, having effectively with the Internet as a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the world’s information instantly from almost anywhere on the earth. This stuff that really would be magic – that would be considered magic in times past. In fact, I think it actually goes beyond that, there are many things that we take for granted today that weren’t even imagined in times past, that weren’t even in the realm of magic. So it actually goes beyond that. So I thought, well if I can do some of those things – basically if I can advance technology, then that is like magic and that would be really cool. I always had an existential crisis, because I was trying to figure out ‘what does it all mean?’ Like what’s the purpose of things? And I came to the conclusion that if we can advance the knowledge of the world, if we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we’re better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened. And that’s the only way forward. So, I studied physics and business, because I figured in order to do a lot of these things you need to know how the universe works and you need to know how the economy works. And you also need to be able to bring a lot of people together to work with you to create something. Because it’s very difficult to do something as individuals if it’s a significant technology. So, I originally came out to California to try to figure out how to improve the energy density of electric vehicles – basically to try to figure out if there was an advanced capacitor that could serve as an alternative to batteries. And that was in 1995. That’s also when the Internet started to happen. And I thought well I could either pursue this technology, where success may not be one of the possible outcomes, which is always tricky, or participate in the Internet and be part of it. So, I decided to drop out. Fortunately, we’re past graduation, so, I can’t be accused of recommending that to you. And I did some Internet stuff, you know. I’ve done a few things here and there. One of which is PayPal. Maybe it’s helpful to say, one of the things that was important then in the creation of PayPal was how it started. Because initially – the initial thought with PayPal was to create a conglomeration of financial services, so if you have one place where all of your financial services needs could be seamlessly integrated and works smoothly. And we had a little feature, which was through e-mail payments. Whenever we’d show the system off to someone, we’d show the hard part, which was the conglomeration of financial services, which is quite difficult to put together. Nobody was interested. Then we showed people e-mail payments, which was quite easy and everybody was interested. So, I think it’s important to take feedback from your environment. You want to be as closed-loop as possible. So, we focused on e-mail payments and tried to make that work. And that’s what really got things to take off. But, if we hadn’t responded to what people said, then we probably would not have been successful. So, it’s important to look for things like that and focus on them when you seem them, and you correct your prior assumptions. Going from PayPal, I thought well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity? It really wasn’t from the perspective of, ‘what’s the best way to make money,’ which is okay, but, it was really ‘what do I think is going to most affect the future of humanity.’ So the biggest terrestrial problem we’ve got is sustainable energy. But the production and consumption of energy in a sustainable manner. If we don’t solve that in this century, we’re in deep trouble. And the other one being the extension of life beyond earth to make life multi-planetary. So that’s the basis for — the latter is the basis for SpaceX and the former is the basis for Tesla and SolarCity. When I started SpaceX, initially, I thought that well, there’s no way one could start a rocket company. I wasn’t that crazy. But, then, I thought, well, what is a way to increase NASA’s budget? That was actually my initial goal. I thought well if we could do a low cost mission to Mars, Oasis, which would land with seeds in dehydrated nutrient gel, then hydrate them upon landing. And you’d have this great photo of green plants in a red background. The public tends to respond to precedence and superlatives. And this would be the first life on Mars and the furthest life had ever traveled as far as we know. And I thought well that would get people really excited and increase NASA’s budget. So obviously the financial outcome from such a mission would probably be zero. So anything better than that was on the upside. So, I went to Russia three times to look at buying a refurbished ICBM… because that was the best deal. And I can tell you it was very weird going there in late 2001-2002 going to the Russian rocket forces and saying ‘I’d like to buy two of your biggest rockets, but you can keep the nukes.’ That’s a lot more. That was 10 years ago, I guess. They thought I was crazy, but I did have money. So, that was okay. After making several trips to Russia, I came to the conclusion that, my initial impression was wrong about – because my initial thought was, well, that there is not enough will to explore and expand beyond earth and have a Mars base, that kind of thing. That was wrong. In fact, there’s plenty of will, particularly in the United States. Because United States is a nation of explorers, so people who came here from other parts of the world. I think the United States is really a distillation of the spirit of human exploration. But if people think it’s impossible, then well it’s going to completely break the federal budget, then they’re not going to do it. So, after my third trip, I said, okay, what we really need to do here is try to solve the space transport problem and started SpaceX. And this was against the advice of pretty much everyone I talked to. One friend made me watch a bunch of videos of rockets blowing up. Let me tell you he wasn’t far wrong. It was tough going there in the beginning. Because I never built anything physical. I mean I built like a model rocket as a kid and that kind of thing. But I never had a company that built any physical. So, I had to figure out how to do all these things and bring together the right team of people. And we did all that, and then, failed three times. It was tough, tough going. Think about a rocket, the passing grade is 100%. And you don’t get to actually test the rocket in the real environment that is going to be in. So, I think the best analogy for rocket engineers is, if you want to create a really complicated software, you can’t run the software as an integrated whole, and you can’t run it on the computer, it’s intended to run on, but, the first time you run it on the computer, it must run with no bugs. That’s basically the essence of it. So, we missed the mark there. The first launch, I was picking up bits of rocket near the launch site. And we learned with each successive flight. And we were able to, eventually with the fourth flight in 2008, reach orbit. That was also with the last bit of money that we had. Thank goodness that happened. I think the saying is fourth time is the charm? So, we got the Falcon 1 to orbit. And then, began to scale it up to the Falcon 9, with an order of magnitude more thrust, it’s around a million pounds of thrust. We managed to get that to orbit, and then developed the Dragon spacecraft, which recently docked to the space station and returned to earth from the space station. That was a white-knuckle event. It was a huge relief. I still can’t believe it actually happened. But there’s lot more that must happen beyond for humanity to become a space ranked civilization and ultimately a multi-planet species. And that’s something I think it’s vitally important. And I hope that some of you will participate in that either at SpaceX or other companies. Because it’s just really one of the most important things for the preservation and extension of consciousness. It’s worth noting that Earth has been around for 4 billion years, but civilization in terms of having writing has been about 10,000 years, and that’s being generous. So, it’s really somewhat of a tenuous existence that civilization and consciousness has been on earth. And I’m actually fairly optimistic about the future of earth. So I don’t want to people sort of have the wrong impression like we’re all about to die. I think things will most likely be okay for a long time on earth. Not for sure, but, most likely. But even if it’s 99% likely, a 1% chance is still worth spending a fair bit of effort to ensure that we have — back up the biosphere, and planetary redundancy if you will. And I think it’s really quite important. And in order to do that, there’s breakthrough that needs to occur which is to create a rapidly and completely reusable transport system to Mars, which is one of those things that’s right on the borderline of impossible. But, that’s the sort of the thing that we’re going to try to achieve with SpaceX. And then, on the Tesla front, the goal with Tesla was really to try to show what electric cars can do. Because people had the wrong impression, and we had to change people’s perceptions of electric vehicle. Because they used to think of it as something that was slow and ugly, with low range, like a golf cart. So, that’s why we created the Tesla Roadster, to show that it can be fast, attractive and long range. And it’s amazing how — even though you can show that something works on paper, and the calculations are very clear, until you actually have the physical object, and they can drive it, it doesn’t really sink in for people. So that I think is something worth nothing. If you’re going to create a company, the first thing you should try to do is create a working prototype. Everything looks great on PowerPoint. You can make anything work on PowerPoint. If you have an actual demonstration article, even if it’s in primitive form, that’s much more effective in convincing people. So we made the Tesla Roadster, and now we’re coming out soon with model S, which is a 4-door sedan. Because we made the Tesla Roadster people said, ‘Sure we always knew you could make a car like that, it’s an expensive car and it’s low volume and small and all that but can you make a real car?’ Okay, fine, we’re going to make that, too. So, that’s coming out soon. And so that’s where things are and hopefully, there are lessons to be drawn there. I think the overreaching point I want to make is you guys are the magicians of the 21th century, don’t let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit. Go out there and create some magic. Thank you.

“为什么你要把时间浪费在一次次证明自己有多优秀上，而不是去让自己变得更好呢？” 我们为这一专栏创建了一档独立的播客节目「DeepLog」，欢迎感兴趣的朋友前往订阅收听 。 ________________________________________ 从小到大，我们总是因为“聪明”、“有天赋”而受到赞美。但如果“天赋异禀”这个标签，实际上是一个限制你人生上限的陷阱呢？ 本期节目，我们将解构斯坦福大学心理学教授 卡罗尔·德韦克（Carol Dweck） 的奠基之作——《终身成长》（Mindset）。 请忘掉那些关于“你要努力”的陈词滥调，我们今天要把“思维模式”当作一套大脑的底层操作系统来拆解。我们将探讨为什么夸奖一个人聪明反而会毁了他，为什么对失败的恐惧是源于我们在拼命保护自己的“自尊”，以及如何通过极其微小的算法调整，手动覆盖大脑里的“固定型思维”Bug。 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🧠 核心思维模型 | Mental Models 本期节目中，我们将重点解构以下认知框架，帮助你从“证明自己”切换到“提升自己”： 1. 两种心智操作系统 (Fixed vs. Growth Mindset) 人类的大脑通常运行着两种截然不同的底层逻辑： * 固定型思维模式 (Fixed Mindset): 认为智力和才能是天生的、恒定不变的（就像一手发好的牌）。这种系统下，人生的唯一目标就是“看起来很聪明”，并极力避免暴露自己的无知。 * 成长型思维模式 (Growth Mindset): 认为能力是可以通过努力、策略和外部反馈来培养的。这种系统下，人生的首要目标是“学习和成长”。 2. 赞美的陷阱与天才神话 (The Talent Myth & How We Praise) 这是全书最反直觉的洞见。当我们称赞一个人“你真聪明”时，实际上是在给他们植入固定型思维。这会让他们在未来对具有挑战性的任务感到恐惧——因为一旦遇到困难或失败，就意味着他们“不再聪明”了。 正确的做法：永远不要赞美智力或天赋，只赞美“过程”、“策略”和“努力”。 3. 重塑对“努力”与“失败”的定义 (Redefining Effort and Failure) * 在固定型思维中，“努力”是一件极其丢脸的事，因为只有笨鸟才需要先飞；“失败”则直接定义了你的身份（我失败了 = 我是一个失败者）。 * 在成长型思维中，“努力”是激活能力的唯一开关；“失败”仅仅是一个数据反馈（我这次没有做对，我需要换个策略）。 4. “尚未”的魔力 (The Power of "YET") 这是破解固定型思维最简单、也最强大的代码。当你在评判自己时，试着在句尾加上“尚未”两个字。从“我不擅长数学”切换到“我尚未掌握数学”。这个微小的词汇变动，能瞬间激活大脑的神经可塑性，为你打开通向未来的大门。 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 本期金句 | Golden Quotes 【关于成长】 “‘成为’好过‘原本就是’。” "Becoming is better than being." 【关于目标】 “在固定型思维模式中，一切都关乎结果。如果失败了，或者如果你不是最好的，那么一切都是白费力气。而在成长型思维模式中，无论结果如何，这个过程本身就让你获得了成长。” "In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome." 【关于挫折】 “固定型思维模式者不会从失败中吸取教训并修复问题，相反，他们可能试图通过寻找比他们更差的人来修复自己的自尊心。” "Instead of learning from and repairing their failures, people with the fixed mindset may simply try to repair their self-esteem... by looking for people who are worse off than they are." 【关于潜能】 “只有当你迎接挑战并努力学习时，你的大脑才会形成新的连接。” "Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📢 延伸阅读 | Reading More 《终身成长》卡罗尔·德韦克：你以为的天赋，其实是你的枷锁 卡罗尔·德韦克《终身成长》：固定型思维的人，到底在怕什么？ 卡罗尔·德韦克《终身成长》：三步，把固定思维变成成长思维 卡罗尔·德韦克《终身成长》：把"还没"这个词，装进你的字典 卡罗尔·德韦克《终身成长》：被失败定义，还是被失败塑造？ 卡罗尔·德韦克《终身成长》：一个人改变，一群人也可以 卡罗尔·德韦克《终身成长》：知道和做到之间，只差这四步 | DeepLog： 解码全球智慧，记录底层认知。 | 虚舸笔记： 虚舸之上，笔记全球深见。

🎧 节目简介 在工作和学习中，我们常常会经历一段漫长且痛苦的积累期。当你想感叹“所有的努力和辛苦最终都得到了回报”，或者想说“这事儿没白干”时，只说 "My work is successful" 会显得有些干瘪，缺乏那种“守得云开见月明”的成就感。 本期 Beyond English 不止英语，Mandy 和 Patrick 带你深挖 "Pay off" 背后的商业隐喻，并分享另外两个关于“回报”与“值得”的地道表达，让你的英语更有深度。 📖 CORE VOCABULARY • Pay off: [得到回报/见效] - To result in success or profit after a period of time or effort • Worth it: [值得的] - Enjoyable or useful despite the effort or cost • Bear fruit: [结出果实/奏效] - To have a successful result • Investment: [投资] - The action of giving time or energy to something for a future benefit • Transactional:[交易性的] - Relating to the exchange of things, like money or favors ________________________________________ 🗣️ BILINGUAL SCRIPT (中英对照 · 辅助理解) Patrick: Hello everyone. Good to see you. How has your week been, Mandy? Patrick: 嗨，大家好。很高兴见到你们。你这周过得怎么样，Mandy？ Mandy: It has been exhausting, honestly. I stayed up late every night to prepare for a certification exam. Mandy: 老实说，真是让人精疲力尽。我每天晚上都熬夜准备一项资格认证考试。 Patrick: That sounds tough. Welcome to another session of Beyond English. Did you pass the exam? Patrick: 听起来很辛苦。欢迎来到 Beyond English 不止英语的新一期节目。你通过考试了吗？ Mandy: I did! I just got the result this morning. I feel so relieved. But during those late nights, I kept asking myself, "Is all this suffering really going to result in something good?" Mandy: 通过了！我今天早上刚拿到结果。我感觉如释重负。但在那些熬夜的晚上，我不断问自己，“所有的这些痛苦真的会带来好的结果吗？” Patrick: That is a very human feeling. When we put in a lot of hard work, we want to know that the sacrifice means something. Patrick: 这是非常真实的人之常情。当我们投入大量努力时，我们希望知道这些牺牲是有意义的。 Patrick: The perfect phrasal verb to describe that feeling of ultimate success is: Pay off. Your hard work paid off. Patrick: 形容那种最终获得成功的完美动词短语是：Pay off（得到回报/见效）。你的努力工作得到了回报。 Mandy: Pay off. I know we "pay off" a debt to the bank. Is it the same idea? Mandy: Pay off。我知道我们会“还清 (pay off)”银行的债务。是同一个意思吗？ Patrick: Yes. Think of your time and sweat as an investment. You are giving your energy to this exam, just like putting money into a business. Patrick: 是的。把你的时间和汗水想象成一种投资。你把精力投入到这次考试中，就像把钱投入到生意中一样。 Patrick: For a long time, you see nothing. But eventually, the investment returns to you with a profit. That is the moment it "pays off." The reward is bigger than the cost. Patrick: 很长一段时间里，你什么也看不到。但最终，这项投资带着利润回到了你身边。那就是它“得到回报 (pays off)”的时刻。回报大于成本。 Mandy: I love that metaphor. The effort is an investment, and the result is the profit. Are there other ways to express this feeling? Mandy: 我喜欢这个比喻。努力是投资，结果是利润。还有其他方式来表达这种感觉吗？ Patrick: Definitely. A very natural expression is: Worth it. "I lost a lot of sleep, but passing the exam made it totally worth it." Patrick: 当然有。一个非常自然的表达是：Worth it（值得的）。“我少睡了很多觉，但通过考试让这一切都完全值得了。” Mandy: Worth it. That is very common. What about a more poetic phrase? Mandy: Worth it。这个很常见。有没有更诗意一点的短语？ Patrick: You could use the idiom: Bear fruit. Think of planting a tree. You water it for years, and finally, it produces apples. Your patience bears fruit. Patrick: 你可以用这个习语：Bear fruit（结出果实/奏效）。想象种一棵树。你浇水好几年，最后它结出了苹果。你的耐心结出了果实。 Mandy: Bear fruit. That is a beautiful image. So, Patrick, can I use "pay off" at work? Mandy: Bear fruit。那是个很美的画面。那么，Patrick，我能在工作中使用 "pay off" 吗？ Patrick: Absolutely. It is highly professional. You can say to your team: "This new strategy is difficult now, but it will pay off in the next quarter." Patrick: 绝对可以。这非常专业。你可以对你的团队说：“这个新策略现在执行起来很难，但它在下个季度会见效的。” Mandy: That sounds very encouraging for a team. Now, is there any situation where I should avoid using "pay off"? Mandy: 这对团队来说听起来很鼓舞人心。现在，有没有什么情况我应该避免使用 "pay off"？ Patrick: Be careful not to use it when talking about simple, everyday purchases. You pay off a loan, but you don't say "Buying this coffee paid off." Patrick: 注意不要在谈论简单的日常购物时使用它。你还清贷款，但你不会说“买这杯咖啡得到了回报”。 Mandy: Ah, I see. You would just say "It was a good coffee." Mandy: 啊，我明白了。你只会说“这咖啡不错”。 Patrick: Exactly. "Pay off" is for long-term efforts, risks, or investments. Patrick: 没错。"Pay off" 是用于长期的努力、风险或投资的。 Mandy: Got it. It is for abstract effort. So, what is the difference between "Pay off" and "Repay"? Mandy: 懂了。是用于抽象的努力。那么，"Pay off" 和 "Repay"（偿还/报答）有什么区别？ Patrick: "Repay" is transactional. If you buy me lunch, I repay you tomorrow. It involves an exchange between two people. Patrick: "Repay" 是交易性的。如果你请我吃午饭，我明天偿还给你。它涉及两个人之间的交换。 Mandy: And pay off? Mandy: 那 pay off 呢？ Patrick: "Pay off" is about the result of a process. Your hard work paid off. The work doesn't write you a check; the success itself is the payment. Patrick: "Pay off" 是关于一个过程的结果。你的努力得到了回报。工作本身不会给你开支票；成功本身就是给你的报酬。 Mandy: That makes so much sense. Process versus transaction. Listeners, is there a goal you are working hard on right now? Mandy: 这太有道理了。过程对比交易。听众朋友们，你们现在有什么正在努力实现的目标吗？ Patrick: Keep going. Good things take time to grow. Your patience will pay off in the end. Go beyond words. Patrick: 继续前进。美好的事物需要时间来成长。你的耐心最终会得到回报的。超越词汇。