【推荐1】Will Smith jumped into a live volcano and kayaked (划皮艇) down an Icelandic whitewater river for his latest project. But he wasn’t making an action movie. It was personal.

Smith, a Hollywood leading man who admits that he’s far from enjoying outdoor activities, has put himself in danger while filming Welcome to Earth, a Disney original series from National Geographic. He was afraid at that time, but he says “It’s really difficult to enjoy things if you’re scared. I think the ability to see how beautiful things are is directly connected to your openness to them and fear closes you down.”

Smith says he was once scared of everything and hated water, but he learns to read the rapids (急流) while whitewater kayaking, rescues turtles near the Great Barrier Reef and goes 3,000 feet below the sea in a deep-water submarine.

Dr. Albert Lin, an engineer and explorer who has uncovered lost cities previously for National Geographic,was astonished to find that Smith was able to control his fears even in the face of real danger. While diving in the underground lake in Namibia, Smith got into trouble and Lin watched him “dropping at a rate that felt like maybe we wouldn’t see him again. “But Smith was able to control his mind and deal with the situation. “I respected Will Smith, the actor, before, but now I definitely have grown to truly respect Will Smith, the human being,” says Lin.

Produced by famous filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, the series carries on the tradition of National Geographic pushing the exploring envelope (极限) and employing the latest technology to help us understand our world. “I hope this can help people out there get a sense of how absolutely incredible our planet is,” says Lin.

The experts Smith has paired with teach him about speed, smell and sound and the colors out there he might miss. “You can’t really want to protect something that you don’t understand. And you can’t want to protect something that you can’t recognize as beautiful,” Smith says.

【推荐3】Shan Tianfang was a leading performer of the traditional Chinese art form pingshu, which translates as "storytelling".

Pingshu dates from the Song Dynasty when performers entertained villagers by telling stories in a particularly emotive style. It remains particularly popular in Northeast China. Performers wear traditional dress and use very basic props - often a folded fan and a gavel. Pingshu is sometimes performed in teahouses and   small theatres, but many Chinese associate the art form with radio. And in a country where sleeping problems are common, pingshu is still popular as a way of helping people to wind down at bedtime.

Shan Tianfang was born in 1934. His family introduced him to folk arts from a young age and he began learning pingshu when he was 19. He became known in Liaoning for his work on stage and in local teahouses during the 1950s and 1960s, and performed in an art troupe around the region. During the 1980s, Shan made the transition （转型） to state - run radio, and his attractive storytelling became comfort listening for people across the country. By the 1990s, Shan had become a well-known face on state TV. He has died aged 83 following a long illness.

Shan performed over 12, 000 stories on TV and radio. His stories attracted people of all ages. One of his most praised performances is The Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. He also gave countless performances of the " Four Classic Novels" （四大名著） and helped to bring lesser-known classical Chinese literature to the new audience.

He was able to use the media to attract his audience and in the process he helped to popularise classical Chinese literature. But in his later years, the growth of online and digital media exposed the challenges of keeping his art form alive. Shan turned his   efforts   towards   writing books and   opening performance schools to teach pingshu to young people. They included the Shan Tianfang Culture and Media Academy in Beijing, a Shan Tianfang teahouse and storytelling base in Anshan, Liaoning Province. Meanwhile, modern productions of pingshu reference（参考）contemporary culture to draw in new performers and audiences. Performers like Guo Heming have appeared, putting a modern spin on pingshu by adapting popular works, including the Harry Potter stories.

Although he wasn't particularly active on social media, he had more than one million fans on the Sina Weibo platform. A memorial service was held for him on 15 September, 2018, but millions of Chinese will miss his voice.

【推荐1】Researchers at Georgia Tech have been working to improve a musical robot called Shimon. Shimon is a four-armed robot with a ball-like head. He holds small mallets (tools like hammers) in his “hands” to play a kind of xylophone. As Shimon plays, his head moves around in time to the music.

Shimon has been around for quite a while as a musical robot. Even back in 2015, he played with other musicians at the Kennedy Center in New York. What Shimon could do back then was already pretty cool.

Shimon was taught to write his own music by using “deep learning”. Deep learning, also known as Artificial Intelligence (AI), means that computer programs sort deeply through huge amounts of information. This allows them to find patterns humans may not have noticed. The programs can then use those patterns in new and surprising ways. For Shimon, that meant he could not only make up his own music, but also do it in real time while playing with other musicians. This is called “improvising”.

Now Shimon is back with a whole bunch of new tricks. He can write the words to his own songs, and sing them. Shimon learned to write the words for the songs in the same way he learned to write music.

Professor Gil Weinberg in Georgia Tech, who leads the Shimon project, gets Shimon going with a starting idea. Shimon then writes the lyrics based around that idea.

To give Shimon a voice, the Georgia Tech team worked with experts at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain. The voice was created by AI and sounds like a man very much. Shimon’s face has also gotten new features. Shimon’s mouth now moves smoothly in time as he sings. He also has eyebrows, which allow his face to show more emotions. For Mr. Weinberg, that’s the main goal behind the Shimon project — not to have robots take over, but to have robots and humans make something beautiful together.

【推荐3】Nikki Santiago paused on the steps of the San Francisco Unified School District’s headquarters in early June, feeling for the notes in her pocket, before taking the microphone. In front of her, a small crowd of parents and young children held colorful handmade signs that read “Save Filipino Language Program at Longfellow”.

“This program has really helped my child blossom into the person that she is,” Santiago told the crowd, referring to her older daughter, who had just graduated from the program. “She used to be very, very reserved and now she’s a proud Filipino,” Santiago added. “And that is really important for an immigrant like me — to be able to represent my Filipinoness outside my country and be proud and stand tall in a city that eats us up in the United States.”

A few weeks earlier, the families here had learned the district was planning to diminish the Filipino language program at Longfellow Elementary School by combining its kindergarten and first-grade classes, decreasing the number of spots available by roughly half. Located in San Francisco’s Excelsior neighborhood, the school hosts a large Filipino student body. Its full-day language program is one of just a handful of programs throughout the country offering an elementary school-level ethnic studies curriculum.

Santiago immigrated here from the Philippines when she was 18. She says growing up as a first-generation immigrant without the validation (认可) of her culture affected herself-confidence and made it harder for her to succeed. The language program, she says, offers that validation, while also helping to strengthen the bond between children and their Filipino-born parents.

And it’s not just Filipino students who benefit from the program, says Laurie Hughes, whose two grandsons attend the same program. “What my grandsons have learned totally makes sense for ethnic studies and high school. None of their background is Filipino. It doesn’t make any difference. They’re learning this amazing language and culture and history that is part of San Francisco in the district.”

【推荐1】On June 12,1942,Anne Frank’s parents gave her a small diary for her 13th birthday.She and her family had been living in Amsterdam for nine years after fleeing their native country in 1933.They could not escape the influence of the war sweeping across Europe.

On July 6,1942,her family was forced to go into hiding.For the next two years,Anne put down her innermost thoughts and feelings to her diary.Her reports of daily life painted a picture of a bright girl.She described her love of writing and her desire to make a career of it one day,saying,“I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people,even those I’ve never met.I want to go on living even after my death.”

She got her wish far too soon.Her diary came to an abrupt end in August of 1944,when she and others hiding in the“Secret Annex”were discovered,arrested,and sent to prison.Tragically,Anne,her sister and her mother,all died there.

Her father,Otto,the only survivor among those who hid in Annex,returned to Amsterdam after the war.He was deeply moved by his daughter’descriptions of life in Annex and her feelings about her family and other residents.He devoted the rest of his life to sharing her story with the world so that the same tragedy that happened to his family might never be repeated.Through her courage,her hope,and her unshakable faith in the goodness of people,her short life left a long legacy(遗产),touching and inspiring generation after generation of people she never met.

I would never forget visiting the Anne Frank House when I was just 23 and thought that I had already been alive eight years longer than she had been.Like millions of people moved by Anne Frank’s story,I have tried my best since then to live my life.We all would do well to remember the wisdom of a young girl who taught us that our differences make life more interesting,but our common men matter more.

【推荐2】Children whose fathers make time to play with them from a very young age may find it easier to control their behaviour and emotions as they grow up, research suggests.

Although there are many similarities between fathers and mothers, the findings suggest that fathers participate in more physical play even with the youngest children. This seems to help children learn to control their feelings. It may also make them better at supervising their own behaviour later on.

Paul Ramchandani, professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning at the University of Cambridge, said, “It’ s important not to overstate the influence of father-child play as there are limits to what the research can tell us, but it does seem that children who get a reasonable amount of playtime with their father benefit as a group.”

Parent-child play in the first years of life is known to support basic social, cognitive and communication skills, but most research focuses on mothers and babies. The Cambridge review used data from 78 studies, undertaken between 1977 and 2017—most of them in Europe or North America. The researchers analysed the combined information for patterns about how often fathers and children play together, the nature of that play, and any possible link with children’ s development.

In almost all the studies surveyed, there was a consistent relation between father-child play and children’ s subsequent ability to control their feelings. Children who enjoyed high-quality playtime with their fathers were less likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems. They also appeared to be better at controlling their aggression, and less likely to attack other children during disagreements at school.

“Physical play creates fun, exciting situations in which children have to apply self-control,” Ramchandani said. “You might have to control your strength. It’ s a safe environment in which children can practise how to respond. If they react the wrong way, they might get told off, but it’ s not the end of the world—and next time they might remember to behave differently.”

【推荐3】Owen Williams and his wife befriended their eighty-year-old neighbor, Ken Watson, when they moved into their home in Wales three years ago. When their daughter, Cadi, was born a year later, Watson became a grandfather figure, taking the time to drop off Christmas presents for the child. Watson died in October.

On Monday, Watson’s daughter stopped by the Williams home with a large bag containing 14 wrapped Christmas presents her father had bought and wrapped for Cadi.

Williams posted notes about what happened on Twitter to spread some Christmas spirit. He wrote that he wasn’t sure whether he should give his daughter all the presents now, or hold onto them and give her one a year. Twitter responded in a big way, with many saying the story brought them to tears. So many people weighed in about the gifts, in fact, that Williams made a Twitter poll. So far, more than 55,000 people have voted on how he should distribute the gifts.

Williams, who is a social-media consultant, said the majority of people are voting for giving Cadi one present a year. He said he has no idea what is in the packages, but he’s leaning toward listening to the will of the voters.“I think we’re going to turn it into a Christmas story for our daughter,” he said. “We’ll do one a year for the next 14 years. It feels like the right thing to do now. If she opens a box of Lego when she’s 16 then so be it.”

He said he was struck by how many people have responded by saying their neighbors are virtual strangers to them.“The thing that stands out to me is how few people know their neighbors,” Williams said. “People are saying, ‘That’s so lovely. I don’t even know my neighbors.’ … This Christmas, take your neighbors a bottle of wine or a small gift, a token. Just say, ‘Hi.’ You can open a new world like we did.”