Today's story: A new analysis of Beethoven's hair has found elevated levels of lead, mercury, and arsenic. And while these don't explain the famous composer's death, they may explain some of his many ailments, including gastrointestinal issues, kidney disease, and, yes, hearing loss.

Learn this English expression: Use 'suffer from' when someone experiences a specific, negative condition

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/683

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• New stories every week
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Today's story: Most homes in cold-weather places have furnaces or boilers to provide heat indoors. These are effective and are relatively cheap to install, but they run on fossil fuels. A greener option is heat pumps. But like electric cars, heat pumps face barriers to wider adoption. In this lesson, learn how a heat pump works and why it might be the future of heat in cold-weather climates.

Learn this English expression: To 'heat up' is to get hotter

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/682

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

• Learn about the world and improve your English
• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
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Mentioned in this episode:

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Today's story: The Mona Lisa is the most famous portrait in the world, but much is not known about it. The background shows a lake, rock formations, and a stone arch bridge, but the location has never been known definitively. Now, a geologist and art historian says she has identified the background: Lecco, near Lake Colmo in Italy.

Learn this English expression: To 'stand up to scrutiny' is to be valid even after close analysis

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/681

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

• Learn about the world and improve your English
• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
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Today's story: Dengue fever is a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes. Though it's not deadly in the vast majority of cases, about five percent of patients require hospitalization. And cases are surging in Latin America. There have been more dengue cases in four months of 2024 than in all of 2023. Governments are trying to stop the spread, but the tools for doing so are imperfect.

Learn this English expression: To 'buy something up' is to buy large quantities (maybe all that is available)

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/680

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

• Learn about the world and improve your English
• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
• Learn even more at PlainEnglish.com

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Mentioned in this episode:

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Today's story: Impressionism, the art movement that celebrates bright colors, thick brushstrokes, and outdoor settings, turns 150 years old this month. Though Monet, Degas, Renoir, and others are celebrated in museums and art schools around the world, their work was initially rejected by the art establishment.

Learn this English expression: Use 'fall into' to describe how things fit into categories

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/679

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

• Learn about the world and improve your English
• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
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Today's story: "Behavioral science" is the field of studying how humans behave in the real world. Today, take a look at three groundbreaking findings from the career of Daniel Kahneman. First, we feel pain more intensely than we feel pleasure. Second, we make decisions using two different systems. And finally, our judgment is often far worse than we think it is.

Learn this English expression: If something 'sticks with you,' it makes a lasting impression

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/678

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

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• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
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Today's story: Daniel Kahneman was a trained psychologist who became the ""grandfather of behavioral economics"" with his experiments on human behavior and decision-making. Though he never took an economics class as a student, he won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences for his work on how humans make decisions. He died in March at age 90.

Learn this English expression: 'Pass away' is a gentle way of saying someone has died

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/677

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

• Learn about the world and improve your English
• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
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Mentioned in this episode:

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Today's story: A corridor of magma below the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland burst to the surface through a series of volcanic eruptions. The Golden Bachelor couple is getting a divorce. Trump is nodding off at his first criminal trial. You'll hear the latest on these stories and more in our semi-annual update episode.

Learn this English expression: To 'nod off' is to fall asleep momentarily

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/676

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

• Learn about the world and improve your English
• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
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Mentioned in this episode:

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Today's story: Quebec, Canada's only French-speaking province, has long protected its language. But now, some English speakers say the province has gone too far. New policies by the provincial government restrict the use of English in certain circumstances. And Quebec recently raised tuition for out-of-province students by 33%, a direct hit at Montreal's two biggest international universities.

Learn this English expression: To be squeezed out is to be forced out by the actions of others

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/675

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

• Learn about the world and improve your English
• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
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Mentioned in this episode:

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Today's story: Canada is a bilingual country, offering government services in both English and French. But the balance isn't 50-50. French is the dominant language in just one province, Quebec. Only 20 percent of Canadians speak French natively. And francophones are more likely to be bilingual than anglophones. Here's how French and English coexist in Canada and Quebec.

Learn this English expression: To be in a pinch is to have a problem that needs a quick solution

Full lesson: https://plainenglish.com/674

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Plain English helps you improve your English:

• Learn about the world and improve your English
• Clear, natural English at a speed you can understand
• New stories every week
• Learn even more at PlainEnglish.com

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Mentioned in this episode:

Ready to improve your listening?

Ready to listen fast? Improve your listening with the fast version of this and every episode. The full-speed version is a fresh recording and it sounds just like someone speaking to a native speaker (with no AI or computer manipulation!) You can even listen on a podcast app