Have your ever tried podcasts(播客)? If you wish to feel happier, or just learn random things, click here. Here are some of the most exciting podcast series that can help you through your learning journey.

Ten percent happier

It was created after Dan Harris, a journalist, had a panic attack on live national television. This led him to try meditation to heal. During this journey, he wrote the book 10% Happier, which talks about the stages of his development. After the book became a best-seller, Dan Harris created the podcast, inviting special guests, such as meditation teachers and scientists to talk about personal development.

Delicious ways to feel better

Ella Woodward is known as a writer and businesswoman who owns the blog “Deliciously Ella”. She approaches a sensitive subject about our relationship with food. This podcast can help you fix your negative food experiences with positive ones, which can result in enjoying all types of food in moderation and respecting your body’s natural hunger cues.

Power hour

Sometimes, it’s challenging to see our true value within ourselves, which stops us from improving. If you’ve been down lately, you may want to check out this podcast. “Power Hour” was created by Adrienne Herbert, a wellness professional. She talks about motivation, trends, career paths and anything about self-improvement. Professionals are invited to discuss important matters.

Routines and ruts

Sometimes, keeping your habits in place when life is putting you down is not that easy. “Routines and Ruts” can help you make a significant change in your life. The podcast is produced by Madeleine Dore, a writer who likes to explore how we can spend our days in a balanced way that includes both productivity and relaxation. She also has some interesting guests.

In Silent Spring, a book that she referred to as her “poison book”, Rachel Carson revealed the damaging effects of the abuse of chemical pesticides on the environment. She focused mainly on the insecticide DDT, which had been considered “one of the greatest discoveries of World War II” for its ability to kill insects and was routinely used in homes and on crops. 

Carson called for much greater caution against this great discovery. Though the scientific community already knew of the dangers, Carson was the first to make the information accessible to a mass audience in her book. “She wrote for the general public, not the scientific community,” says Linda Lear, author of Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. “Readers, including housewives who used a lot of these chemicals, were shocked at what they learned.”

The public’s first taste of Silent Spring actually came in June 1962 when The New Yorker ran three excerpts(节选). By the time it was published that fall, it was in such high demand that it became an instant bestseller.

As expected, the reaction from the chemical companies was severe. One industry spokesperson dismissed Carson’s claims as “absurd”. Others accused her of being a terrible woman. The president of the company that made DDT said Carson wrote “not as a scientist, but as a crazy defender of the balance of nature.”

Fortunately, Carson decided the personal risks were worth it. Shortly after her book was published, President Kennedy was asked at a conference if the government would look into the long-term effects of pesticides. He responded, “Yes, and I know they already are. I think, particularly, of course, since Miss Carson’s book.” Just as William Souder, author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, says, “Carson changed the conversation about the environment, thinking of humankind as part of nature, not above it.”

One key element of human language is the connection of words with meanings. Scientists had long thought that unlike our words, animal vocalizations(发出的声音) were involuntary, showing the feelings of the animal without communicating any other information. However, over the last forty years, many studies have shown that different animals have different calls with specific meanings. Interestingly, the most impressive are birds.

Many bird species use different alarm calls for different predators(捕食性动物). Japanese tits, which nest in tree holes, have one call that causes their young to lower down to avoid being pulled out of the nest by crows, and another call for tree snakes that sends the young jumping out of the nest completely. And black-capped chickadees change the number of “dees” in their calls to indicate the size and threat of predators.

Besides alarm calls, many bird species use recruitment calls that gather other members of their species. Japanese tits add alarm calls to recruitment calls to create a sort of call to arm, gathering their partner members to attack and drive off a predator. When the birds hear this call, they approach the caller while scanning for danger.

Scientists led by Professor Toshitaka Suzuki of Kyoto University discovered that the order of the combined calls matters to the Japanese tits. When Suzuki’s team played a recorded “alarm + recruitment” call to tits, it gets a much stronger response than a “recruitment + alarm” call. However, this could simply be explained by the birds responding to the combined calls without knowing the parts of the combination, but the scientists tried to clarify this question from different angles.