【推荐2】Chocolate––there’s nothing quite like it, is there? Chocolate is simply delicious. What is chocolate? Where does it come from?

The history of chocolate goes back to the discovery of cacao beans (可可豆). About 4000 years ago, the Americans made cacao beans into a drink and they took it as a gift from nature.

In 1519, the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortex visited Mexico in America. He saw people drank cacao mixed with spices (香料). Cortex took some cacao home as a gift to the Spanish King Charles. Since then, people in Spain began to drink cacao. However, the natural taste of cacao was too bitter for most people. To sweeten it, Spanish added sugar and honey to it. As a sweet drink, it became popular in Europe. By the 17th century, rich people in Europe began drinking cacao drink as a fashion.

In 1828, a Dutch chemist, Conrad J. van Houten started using a new process to remove the fat from cacao beans. He made a machine that pressed the fat from the beans. The resulting powder (粉末) mixed better with water than cacao did. People called van Houten’s cacao powder “Dutch chocolate”—it is the beginning of modern chocolate.

After that, chocolate makers started trying new recipes (配方) with Dutch chocolate. First it was mixed with sugar. Then butter was added to the sweetened chocolate to make chocolate bars. In 1849, an English chocolate maker successfully made the first chocolate bar. In the 19th century, the Swiss started making milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk. Milk chocolate has not changed much since this process was invented.

Today, the United States buys most of the chocolate in the world, but the Swiss eat the most chocolate per person. The most chocolate eaten today is sweet milk chocolate, but people also eat white chocolate and dark chocolate. Chocolate has become a worldwide snack and also a popular holiday gift.

【推荐2】When we think about pirates (海盗), there is a nearly universal image that comes to mind, which has been made to continue throughout pop culture. Pirates have developed quite the reputation for saying things such as “Shiver me timbers!” and “Arrr!” and for having a fake leg—maybe even sporting a parrot on their shoulder. This idea of pirates, both in the way they speak and the way they look, develops mostly from the popular novel Treasure Island and one of its movie adaptations. Unfortunately, it probably doesn’t have much bearing in reality.

Treasure Island was serialized in a magazine from October 1881 to January 1882 and published in a book form 1883. It was written by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson under the pseudonym pen-name “Captain George North.” The novel follows teenager Jim Hawkins, who finds himself in possession of a map that leads to buried treasure. Sounds familiar, right? Jim leads the reader on a wild adventure, encountering pirates such as the one-legged Captain Long John Silver and Israel Hands, who want to take the treasure for themselves.

While the novel Treasure Island certainly influenced the way we think of pirates—and especially their imaginary tendency for burying treasure and marking it on secret maps—it’s the 1950 movie adaptation of the book, directed by Byron Haskin, that gave us the typical image of pirates and pirate talk. It’s in this movie where audiences first heard pirates employ words such as “matey” and say “arrrr” instead of “yes.” Long John Silver always has a parrot on his shoulder, and other pirates in the movie wear eye patches and have hooks for hands, bringing together some existing piratical stereotypes. Subsequent pirate films, from The Goonies (1985) to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), show influence of the mannerisms, speech, and even costuming established by Treasure Island.

【推荐3】In 2009, Kevin Pearce was at the height of his professional snowboarding career and was preparing for the Winter Olympics. But during training, he struck his head on the edge of a halfpipe. It changed the course of the then 22-year-old’s life. He had to relearn how to walk and talk and basically start over. His older brother Adam gave up his job and moved across the country to help him through recovery. Kevin eventually started doing yoga, and his family saw how it positively changed him and gave him a sense of hope.

“I remember so clearly I came out of the first yoga class with Kevin and just saw in his face this new expression, this new person,” Adam Pearce said. “We would like to figure out why and how that just happened.”

Brain injury affects the lives of millions of Americans each year, including many who are living with long-term brain-injury-related disabilities (残疾). Wanting to bring hope and cure to others through yoga, Adam and Kevin co-founded the LoveYourBrain Foundation in 2014. The nonprofit offers week-long retreats (静修) and community-based yoga classes across the United States for people who have brain injury as well as their caregivers. The organization aims to finally make a safe space and a supportive community where people with brain injury can be treated together.

The organization also trains yoga teachers, giving them knowledge on how to work with those who have brain injury, and works with hospitals to add yoga into recovery treatments early on. To date, LoveYourBrain has reached more than 35,000 people.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought we’d be here almost 13 years after Kevin’s accident,” Adam said. “What this has taught me is that injury and unpleasant situations can be a powerful pathway for deeper learning and growth.”