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In rural El Salvador, a family living on $1.90 a day might live in a makeshift house with dirt floors, thin walls, and no running water. But next year, dozens of those families will move into one of the world's first communities of 3D-printed homes.

New Story, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit whose leaders have spent the last few years rethinking how to build safe housing for those living in extreme poverty, worked with Icon, a construction tech company, to create a 3D printer that can build a house in a day for roughly $4,000. The printer, called the Vulcan, will be unveiled at SXSW today, along with a 3D-printed home that now stands in an Austin backyard.

New Story previously worked to quickly build low-cost houses in places like Haiti, where other construction efforts faltered after the 2010 earthquake, and El Salvador. But the nonprofit realized that even the most efficient process of traditional building couldn't address the number of homes needed. "We thought, what would it look like to have more of an exponential breakthrough for such a big challenge?" says CEO Brett Hagler.

The team laid out three goals. First, they wanted to significantly decrease the cost of building a house, though the homes they were currently building-with concrete walls and a simple design-were already very low-cost, at $6,500. They also wanted to make construction faster, while improving the quality of the final home.

After seven months of research into various ways to solve the design challenge, they landed on 3D printing. When they first heard about the technology, Hagler says, "We were very skeptical of the viability of this. It took doing a lot of research and a lot of due diligence to figure out that it could actually solve for those three design questions."

The 3D-printed house could eventually cost as little as $3,500. While the organization's current human-built design takes between 13 and 20 days to build, the 3D-printed version will take 12 to 24 hours. Because it is built using software, it's possible to offer families options for different designs, depending on family size. It will also be possible to quickly iterate on the design by making changes in the software.

While other startups are working on 3D-printing technology for home-building, others are targeting higher-income consumers, not people living in the poorest conditions in the world. "We thought, okay, what if the bottom billion weren't the last ones to get this, but the first ones to get this?" says Hagler. "It made sense for us to try to leapfrog what's happening domestically, because our homes are so simple."

The hardware for the new 3D printer is similar to other equipment in development, but built to fit on a truck, so it can be easily transported to rural locations, and durable, so it can survive long trips and harsh conditions. The printer uses a mortar that can be found anywhere, and the concrete foundation is the same as ones New Story has been installing in remote areas for its original houses. "The big difference, between a developed world and developing world context is you have a much more limited set of materials to work with," says Jason Ballard, cofounder of Icon Technologies. "Number one, just because of access, you want to restrict your material mix to things that you could find very ubiquitously around the globe. And you also want to avoid expensive materials."

The printer, set on tracks, squirts out the concrete material in layers to build floors and walls, which harden as it goes, to build a 600- to 800-square-foot single-story home, with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. (The roof is not 3D-printed.) The result is both energy-efficient and resilient in storms. "There are fundamental problems with conventional stick-building that 3D printing solves, besides affordability," says Ballard. "You get a high thermal mass, thermal envelope, which makes it far more energy-efficient. It's far more resilient."

The process requires less labor, of course, than traditional construction: Each house can be put together by two to four workers. For New Story, which has used construction as a way to provide local jobs in the past, that was "something we had to wrestle with a little bit," Hagler says. "But we have to be true to our primary mission, which is to work with families that are living in the worst conditions without safe shelter and changing that." They also realized that if they can hit their target cost, they can double or triple the number of homes they build; even though each house will require less individual labor, the process will still supply jobs.

"You're also supplying an advanced kind of technical job, which right now we don't really do," he says. "We think that will better position [workers] for what's going to come in the next 10, 20 years with AI and robotics. It would be amazing if the people in our communities already knew how to work with all that stuff."

In Austin, the team 3D-printed the first home in the backyard of a converted house that serves as shared office space for Icon and an architect and developer. Icon's staff plans to use it as an office, so they can experience spending long periods of time in the space, and tweak the design as needed. The team will also make some engineering improvements to the printer, and test it for earthquake safety (the Austin house is already the first to be permitted to U.S. building standards). Later this year, they'll bring the printer to El Salvador, print some test homes, and finally print a community of 50 houses.

Assuming all goes as planned, New Story plans to fully shift to 3D printing. The team envisions plotting routes to bring the printers from community to community in countries around the world. It also plans to share the technology with others. "Ideally we can move from thousands of people to millions of people around the world by allowing other nonprofits and governments to use this technology," says Hagler. "That's the big goal, because our goal is impacting the most families possible." The team is aiming to have the printer available for a low cost-perhaps less than $100,000. Though the longevity of the technology is not yet proven, they estimate that a single printer can produce at least 1,000 homes.

The R&D that led to the 3D-printed house is rare in the nonprofit world. But New Story has a unique funding structure; donations from most donors go solely to construction costs, while a small group of larger donors funds other expenses-including the innovation process. "We had that private group of donors that understands in order to really try to make a dent in this issue, we have to take risks," Hagler says. "We have to innovate. There's just there's no other way to try to do it using the traditional and linear methods. In the future . . . we kind of see ourselves as the R&D arm to the global social housing sector. We can prove out these innovations in our communities, and then the big idea is actually not to keep it for New Story. The big idea is to democratize the innovation to the rest of other nonprofits and governments that are working on this issue."

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In rural El Salvador, a family living on $1.90 a day might live in a makeshift house with dirt floors, thin walls, and no running water. But next year, dozens of those families will move into one of the world's first communities of 3D-printed homes.

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One of the less obvious products being unveiled this week at SXSW is a small concrete house. On the outside, it doesn't look like anything particularly special, although the covered patio and spacious windows are less common on tiny poured-concrete buildings.

That's because the innovation isn't in the structure or materials - it's in the design and building. ICON, the company that builds the 650-square-foot house, claims it costs just $10,000 to build, and can be 3-D printed by a Vulcan printer in 12 to 24 hours using the most common building material on Earth.

ICON is has built a model at SXSW, which features a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and curved porch. The company's co-founders told The Verge that it will be using the model as an office for the immediate future to see how it performs. "We are going to install air quality monitors. How does it look, and how does it smell?" founder Jason Ballard told The Verge.

In the longer term, ICON has partnered with housing nonprofit New Story to take its technology to the developing world. The plan is for ICON and New Story to build a community of 100 homes in El Salvador next year using the Vulcan printer. Although 3-D printing has been used in building fabrication before, printing on-site using a universally available building material is a new step.

That said, ICON's structures still presumably rely on a goodly supply of available labor and talent, and a structure won't be taken from bare earth to habitability with no human interaction. Excavation still has to happen for concrete foundations, and the windows, roof, and interior mechanicals like electricity and plumbing can't be poured by a printer.

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This $10,000 3D printed house can be built in 24 hours and is bigger than a studio apartment

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One of the less obvious products being unveiled this week at SXSW is a small concrete house. On the outside, it doesn't look like anything particularly special, although the covered patio and spacious windows are less common on tiny poured-concrete buildings.

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Turns out great minds don't think alike. Discover how some of the world's most original artists, writers and musicians structured their day, based on ' Daily Rituals ' by Mason Currey. Filter the different categories by toggling on or off, and hover over the colored bars to learn more about the daily routines.

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The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People | Podio

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Discover how some of the world's greatest minds organized their daily routines. We delved into their diaries and other documents to see how they worked, slept and exercised their way to success.

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Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work

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Work-life balance, says Nigel Marsh, is too important to be left in the hands of your employer. Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity -- and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.

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Right to repair

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AS DEVICES go, smartphones and tractors are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. And an owner of a chain of mobile-device repair shops and a farmer of corn and soyabeans do not usually have much in common. But Jason DeWater and Guy Mills are upset for the same reason. "Even we can no longer fix the home button of an iPhone," says Mr DeWater, a former musician who has turned his hobby of tinkering into a business based in Omaha, Nebraska. "If we had a problem with our John Deere, we could fix it ourselves. No longer," explains Mr Mills whose farm in Ansley, a three-hour drive to the west, spreads over nearly 4,000 acres.

Messrs DeWater and Mills have more and more company. It includes not just fellow repairmen and farmers, but owners of all kinds of gear, including washing machines, coffee makers and even toys. All are becoming exceedingly difficult to fix-which has given rise to a movement fighting for a "right to repair". In America the movement has already managed to get relevant bills on the agenda of legislatures in a dozen states, including Nebraska. Across the Atlantic, the European Parliament recently passed a motion calling for regulation to force manufacturers to make their products more easily repairable.

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Some types of gear, such as photocopiers and medical equipment, have always been hard to mend because of their internal complexity. But what has been the exception is now becoming the rule, says Nabil Nasr of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Even a John Deere tractor comes with millions of lines of software code, controlling everything from the engine to the armrests. Mobile devices, for their part, are getting ever more densely packed to make them smaller and able to accommodate new components. When iFixit, a website for repair information, analysed Samsung's Galaxy Note 8, which started shipping on September 15th, it found that the device was mainly held together with glue. This gets rid of fasteners, but makes repairs more difficult.

Manufacturers are also increasingly erecting less tangible barriers to mending. Leased equipment and devices under warranty have always been out of bounds, but firms now regularly ban tinkering with a product's software. In its "License Agreement for John Deere Embedded Software", for instance, the company retains ownership of the software programs. It also refers to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial piece of legislation that makes it illegal for customers to circumvent copy protection. But dodging it can be necessary to develop diagnostic tools for electronic devices.

Firms also withhold technical information, proprietary repair tools and spare parts. Mr DeWater has to rely on manuals from iFixit, on self-made tools and on refurbished or copied parts. He can also tap into a global network of repair shops which exchange information about how to fix the latest mobile devices. "We sometimes even ship a device to China if we know that a shop there can fix it," he says.

In the future, repairability is likely to become even more of an issue, says Kyle Wiens, iFixit's chief executive. Not only do firms want customers to use authorised dealers, but a growing number of products are also no longer stand-alone devices, but rather delivery vehicles for services that generate additional revenues. Smart speakers such as Amazon's Echo are a case in point. The e-commerce giant may even lose money with the device, but it helps to sell other products and collects reams of data about users. These can be used for additional services or to target advertising.

Strings attached

Similarly, wearable technology such as fitness trackers would be much more expensive to consumers if manufacturers did not believe they could monetise the data they collect. If owners could easily tinker with such devices, that could sever the profitable links between product, service and data, which may make manufacturers' guard them even more jealously.

In their defence, firms say that restricting repairs, whether by individual consumers or businesses, helps protect their intellectual property and works on behalf of buyers. Apple, for instance, wants to ensure that consumers do not get hurt by breaking glass from badly installed screens, for instance. If Apple alone can replace the home button, it is to stop hackers from getting familiar with the system that reads people's fingerprints to unlock the phone. Highlighting the dangers, researchers in Israel recently managed to fit smartphones with booby-trapped screens, which could be used to log keyboard input and install malicious apps.

Yet the lack of repairability has large drawbacks. Authorised dealers are often far-flung, much more expensive than independent ones and often cannot fix a problem. Barring owners from tinkering also limits innovation. Many inventions in farming equipment, such as circular irrigation systems, were pioneered by farmers. And not being able to easily mend a device, says Mark Schaffer, a manufacturing consultant, contributes to a problem that already plagues many markets, as more products, from smartphones to washing machines, are thrown away rather than repaired, adding to waste and pollution. The share of new appliances sold to replace defective ones (as opposed to first-time purchases) in Germany increased from 3.5% in 2004 to 8.3% in 2012, according to the Öko-Institut, a think-tank. Washing machines, in particular, are hard to fix. The most common problem is that their bearings fail; when these are sealed away in the drum, repairers cannot access them.

To reverse the trend, but also to defend its industry's turf, the Repair Association, a lobby group funded by repair shops as well as by environmental organisations and other charities, wants states in America to pass "right to repair" laws. These would require firms in all industries to provide consumers and independent repair shops with the same service documentation, tools and spare parts that they make available to authorised service providers. The hope is that once an important state passes such a law, the country will follow-as was the case in the car industry after Massachusetts in 2012 passed a right-to-repair law for cars that led to a national memorandum of understanding between carmakers and repair shops.

If no bill has been passed yet, it is because the Repair Association has faced stiff resistance from manufacturers. Apple's strategy here is two-pronged. It has sent a lobbyist to Nebraska, who reportedly warned local politicians that the legislation would make armies of hackers relocate to the state. At the same time, it has made (largely symbolic) concessions-in June it announced that it would send 400 screen-fixing machines to authorised repair shops, so they no longer have to send broken iPhones to central repair facilities. It is also investing in technology that makes it easier to recycle its products, such as Liam, a robot for disassembling iPhones.

Whether such moves will take some steam out of the right-to-repair movement remains to be seen. More likely, it will gather pace. In France, with its penchant for regulation, "planned obsolescence", meaning designing a product for a limited lifespan, is already an offence punishable by up to €300,000 ($354,000) or up to 5% of the maker's average annual French sales, whichever is higher. Manufacturers must also tell buyers how long their products are likely to last. The government hopes that both rules will push firms to make devices easier to repair.

Spanner in the works

The global assault on repairability highlights a bigger problem, says Jason Schultz of New York University: what it means to own things in the digital age. Together with Aaron Perzanowski of Case Western Reserve University, he has written a book, "The End of Ownership", which describes the many ways in which firms now limit what people can do with the stuff they buy, in particularly the digital sort. "Owners" are often not allowed to resell it, transfer it to another devices or mash it up with other digital goods.

Companies have even started to limit what buyers can do with physical goods. Tesla, for example, does not allow its self-driving cars to be used to make money with ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft (apparently because the firm plans soon to launch its own such service, called "Tesla Network"). It will be interesting to see what happens if Tesla takes steps to enforce this anti-Uber rule.

At any rate, the watering down of ownership appears to hit a nerve both on the left and the right. "Repair isn't a partisan issue," says Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association, pointing out that the right-to-repair bills have both Republican and Democrat sponsors in most states. The two Nebraskans, Messrs DeWater and Mr Wills, give an idea of why this may be. One, a liberal, sees the livelihood of repair shops endangered by big corporations. To the other, more conservative, not being able to repair his tractor amounts to an attack on the "very idea of private property". Together they make a powerful coalition.

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AS DEVICES go, smartphones and tractors are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. And an owner of a chain of mobile-device repair shops and a farmer of corn and soyabeans do not usually have much in common. But Jason DeWater and Guy Mills are upset for the same reason.

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The Right to Repair movement is getting a major opponent in the form of Apple, according to reports from Vice's Motherboard. And while the battle over repairing phones may take the forefront, there's much more at stake.

"Right to Repair" is legislation would require Apple and other electronics manufacturers to sell repair parts to consumers and independent repair shops. On top of that, the laws would require manufacturers to make diagnostic and service manuals available to the public.

Backed by the lobbying group Repair.org, Right to Repair legislation is currently working its way through eight state-level legislatures across the country: Nebraska, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Kansas, Wyoming, Illinois and Tennessee. Apple appears to be focusing its efforts on the Nebraska efforts at first, perhaps because Nebraska's unique unicameral legislature (the state has no House or Senate, just one body known as "the Legislature") makes it easier to consolidate lobbying efforts.

According to Motherboard's source, an Apple representative will testify against the bill, LB 67, at a hearing in Lincoln on March 9, alongside AT&T. Collectively, the two companies will argue against the legislation as a matter of safety, saying that consumers who repair their own phones could cause lithium batteries to catch fire. It's a danger that's been in the news regularly, most recently when a fire broke out in a Samsung factory in China.

"Farmers are falling behind waiting in the queue for someone to work on their equipment."

For Lydia Brasch, who represents the rural eastern 16th Legislative District and introduced LB 67, phones were way down on the list of priorities. "The primary impetus," she tells Popular Mechanics, "is that we are an agricultural state. One out of every four jobs is connected to agriculture. When you are work in farming, you are tied to weather restrictions-planting, harvesting, all have to take place when the weather is holding. When we have an equipment breakdown, sometimes there's a waiting period to get repairs down. At the same time, you're chasing daylight, and you're helpless during that period of time to diagnose, to maintain, or to repair your own equipment as you had in the past. Farmers are falling behind waiting in the queue for someone to work on their equipment."

Brasch owns an iPhone, and she points to the company's exclusive nature as another reason customers should have access to repairs. There's only one Apple store in Nebraska, and it's seventy to eighty miles away from her district.

Apple is not the only one citing safety measures. Tractor company John Deere is adamantly opposed, saying such in a letter such legislation should be voted down "to protect consumers' significant investment in equipment." Writing in the Lincoln Journal-Star, Andy Goodman, the President and CEO of the Iowa-Nebraska Equipment Dealers Association, says that LB 67 would a legal nightmare surrounding inevitable injuries on dangerous equipment. It would "create a situation where third parties injured by an improper repair performed by an unqualified technician are unlikely to recover for the damages they sustained due to the negligence of an equipment owner or third party."

Farmers have been fixing their own equipment for generations.

When read Goodman's comments over the phone, Brasch said that farmers have worked on their own equipment "for decades, generations even." Brasch also pointed to the emerging DIY sources of information in the world as a way that farmers and others who want to make repairs can learn about their equipment: "You can go to a YouTube for something as simple as baking a cake to repairing or operating an item. I think that's the way the market is moving. We'd like this market to move with the rest of the world."

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Apple Doesn't Want You to Have the "Right to Repair"

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The Right to Repair movement is getting a major opponent in the form of Apple, according to reports from Vice's Motherboard. And while the battle over repairing phones may take the forefront, there's much more at stake. "Right to Repair" is legislation would require Apple and other electronics manufacturers to sell repair parts to consumers and independent repair shops.

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By Claire Bates
01 November 2017

The journey

Into the wilderness

Life in captivity

Fighting back

Now living in Johannesburg, Catherine was doing her best to keep going.

"I was starting a speech therapy practice from scratch and this helped me focus on something. It kept me very busy and I got to meet lovely families through my work," she says.

She limited the time she allowed herself to think about her past with Stephen and avoided looking at holiday photos.

She also took up running to cope with the stress and relied on support from her mother and sister and Stephen's parents.

"I was able to cling on to a thin thread of hope even though the situation appeared dismal," she says.

Meanwhile Stephen's father was trying to drive forward the negotiations about his son's release.

"The government were involved but it was cloak and dagger stuff," Malcolm says.

He decided that they needed an independent negotiator but made some "bad turns" trying to find one.

"We paid out money to men who claimed to be influential and have good access when they didn't," he says.

"One even claimed he knew someone in the Red Crescent who had spoken to our son but they needed more money. I said I would pay if they could give me the name of my son's dog. That tripped them up."

Then Malcolm came across a charity called Gift of the Givers, which had successfully negotiated with al-Qaeda in Yemen for the release of the South African, Yolande Korkie.

He approached the charity's founder, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, on behalf of his son.

Sooliman agreed to help. His first attempt to negotiate via the charity's office in Mauritania was unsuccessful, but he was heartened when al-Qaeda released another proof-of-life video of Stephen in June 2015.

"The video was telling me the captors wanted to talk," Sooliman says.

He made a radio appeal in South Africa for a Malian who could act as a negotiator on the ground. A man called Mohamed Ehie Dicko responded and a month later he was sent to Mali.

"I told him to make his presence and purpose known all over Mali," Sooliman says.

Within a week Dicko was contacted by someone who said he'd "come to the right door".

"It's a long process that takes time. Messages are passed from person to person along a chain, not via phone or email," Sooliman says.

In November 2015 a new video was released in which Stephen thanked the charity for working for his release.

"To my wife and my family, I am well and I hope you are all well back home. I understand I may be seeing you soon. I believe there is a South African organisation brokering the release," he said in the video.

Stephen was actually far from well. He had lost 15kg (2st 4lb) and says his muscles had atrophied making him look like an 80-year-old man.

"I was getting joint problems and my legs had weakened. One day my knee just fell out of place and I had to push it back in," he says.

After receiving the new video, Sooliman launched a charm offensive aimed at people living near the al-Qaeda camps in northern Mali.

The charity started buying cattle for the communities as well as providing food and digging wells. Eventually the community leaders agreed to speak to al-Qaeda about releasing the hostages. Then negotiations stalled again.

"The elders were convinced but the youngsters in al-Qaeda said it couldn't be allowed because it would set a precedent," Sooliman says.

Malcolm continued to fight for Stephen's release. At the same time he was caring for his wife, who had a serious lung disease. She was now on oxygen around the clock.

"It was tough but I looked after her the best I could," Malcolm says.

He delivered a letter to the South African President, Jacob Zuma, outlining their case and his wife's ill health and pleading for his assistance.

"I think he read it and realised they had to do something to get him out," Malcolm says.

In December 2016 Stephen received a letter in the desert from the South African government.

"The mujahideen were very excited about this letter arriving and wanted to know what it said," Stephen says.

The letter informed Stephen his mother was very ill and the government was asking al-Qaeda to release him on compassionate grounds. The captors seemed disappointed by the news.

Then in June 2017 Stephen was told, after a day of fasting, that Johan was no longer in the camp. He had been freed.

"I was happy as it showed negotiation could take place and people could be released," Stephen says.

A year earlier he and Johan had heard a rumour that Sjaak had been freed by French soldiers. This meant Stephen was the last in captivity.

Then in July he was told he too would be freed.

"I didn't believe it. I asked them what the chances were and they said 60%. I thought, 'Well I've heard 90% and that's failed,'" Stephen says.

But a few days later he was taken on a two-and-a-half-day car journey across the Sahara.

Eventually the car came to a halt on a tarmac road just short of Gao.

"My driver turned to me and said, 'You are free, you can go,'" Stephen later told a press conference.

Stephen assumed the driver was joking.

"He said, 'Well if you don't believe me you can walk, you can go.' And I thought, 'Maybe he's not just pulling my leg.'"

Another car arrived and Stephen moved from one to the other. It was at this point he realised he was free.

"It was quite a moment. It was difficult to comprehend as there had been so many ups and downs over the past five-and-a-half years."

Free at last

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By Claire Bates01 November 2017 The journey Into the wilderness Life in captivity Fighting back Now living in Johannesburg, Catherine was doing her best to keep going. "I was starting a speech therapy practice from scratch and this helped me focus on something.

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Words like ' hygge' (Danish), 'gezelligheid' (Dutch) and ' lagom' (Swedish) have become very popular in recent years. But fans of these fuzzy-sounding concepts often miss the point that Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden are well-off, politically stable countries with excellent social support, education and healthcare systems. Their philosophies can be difficult to apply to other, less-fortunate nations. Learning about happiness from the Scandinavians can feel a little like learning about money from a millionaire when you struggle financially.

Instead, why not learn from a country that has been through hell and back - multiple times - and is still standing?

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Located between Germany and Russia, Poland has always been a focal point of conflict. In 1772, 1793 and 1795, as Poland went through what is known as the three partitions, its size progressively reduced. With the last partition, the country all but disappeared from the map for 123 years and only gained back independence in 1918. World War II left Poland destroyed and its population decimated. As if that wasn't enough, the country then came under Soviet control. In 1981, in response to the rising Solidarity movement, the government introduced martial law, severely restricting normal life and freedom of the Polish population. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Poland joined the ranks of other Western democratic countries, but not without a long and difficult period of transformation. And yet, despite the traumatic history, Polish people remain optimistic.

It's reaching for the impossible - it's taking risks, and not being afraid

Growing up in Poland, I often heard people say ' Jakoś to będzie ' (pronounced 'Ya-kosh toe ben-jay'). My parents said it to me whenever I was worried about something, and I always thought it was very encouraging. Literally, the phrase means 'things will work out in the end' - but it's so much more than that. Rather than sitting around and hoping things will work out by themselves, 'Jakoś to będzie' is acting without worrying about the consequences. It's reaching for the impossible. It's taking risks, and not being afraid.

"It's the unwavering certainty that we can do anything, no matter what obstacles we face along the way," said Beata Chomątowska, co-author of Jakoś to będzie. Szczęście po polsku (Jakoś to będzie, the Polish way of life).

And that makes it the perfect philosophy for tough times.

In fact, Chomątowska and co-author Daniel Lis see the Jakoś to będzie philosophy as the antithesis to hygge.

"For us, [hygge] seems to include isolating yourself from the outside world and its problems; it's staying home with your loved ones and enjoying time with them. But happiness Polish-style is getting out of that comfort zone. It's doing something that doesn't seem to make sense simply for the sake of going against the tide. It's striving for change," Lis said.

Grit, inventiveness and creativity are all part of the Polish mentality

Grit, inventiveness and creativity are all part of the Polish mentality, which can mean moving abroad in search of a better life. Polonia (the Polish diaspora) counts around 20 million people - which amounts to half of the country's population. Poles make the largest foreign group in the UK, and are a noticeable presence in US cities such as New York and Chicago. As Polish singer Wojciech Młynarski said, "Everywhere is wonderful when we're not there. But we're everywhere." While he meant it sarcastically, there is some truth to the ability of Polish people to start over and make a new life.

My personal favourite example of the Jakoś to będzie philosophy is the artificial palm tree that stands in the centre of Warsaw. Called 'Pozdrowienia z Alej Jerozolimskich' (Greetings from Jeruzalem Avenue), it's a surprising sight in the often cold and grey city. When visual artist Joanna Rajkowska first had the idea in 2002, it caused a massive stir. The citizens of Warsaw complained the palm was a foreign element that didn't fit into the city, and the authorities were worried about its maintenance. But following the Jakoś to będzie philosophy, the artist went through with her plan, and, over time, the palm tree has become a symbol of the city as memorable as the Palace of Culture and Science.

"It's either euphoria or despair. We are not a balanced nation and I think it has to do with our geographical location." Lis said.

Wally Olins, an expert on country brands, agrees, writing in a 2006 article for Oxford's Said Business School that Poland draws its personality, power and perpetual motion from a wealth of apparently opposing characteristics. "Poland is part of the West and also understands the East; Polish people are passionate and idealistic and also practical and resourceful; the Polish character is ambitious and also down-to-Earth."

These opposing characteristics produce something Olins calls 'creative tension' - a restlessness that's unsatisfied with the status quo and a boisterousness that is always stimulating and often astonishing. "It's why Poland is constantly changing and evolving, sometimes tumultuously," he writes.

This is highly visible in the capital city. "Warsaw is a city that's abuzz with something. It is constantly changing. It's made from different parts, and that is not always pretty but it's always interesting," Chomątowska said.

These contrasts were obvious to me when I was living there. The city looks as if it's sewn together from pieces that don't really fit together. In the centre, pre-war houses stand next to modern skyscrapers, and the beautiful buildings in Warsaw's Old Town appear in stark contrast to the apartment blocks. Tourists might describe the city as grey and ugly, but it's always pulsing with energy.

This energy plays out in the highly passionate discussions that Poles are known for, especially about difficult topics such as politics. While arguing isn't socially accepted in some cultures, in Poland, it is encouraged. It often even translates into concrete, political action, such as the July demonstrations against the government's plan to impose tighter control over the judicial system. Protests, including the one that started the Solidarność movement in August 1980, are a crucial part of the Polish mentality - and the Jakoś to będzie philosophy - because they require passion, the ability to take action in crisis situations, and a conviction that things will work out, no matter what.

"It's very important to know that people, not the government but the people, can take matters into their hands and get organised. We are resourceful in situations where systems fail. We can make something out of a piece of string," Chomątowska said.

It's always a bit of adventure

'Jakoś to będzie' doesn't require traumatic experiences, though. In our daily lives, it can simply mean doing something out of the ordinary. Taking the unusual route. Going to another city without knowing where to spend the night.

"It's always a bit of adventure," Lis said.

Why We Are What We Are is a BBC Travel series examining the characteristics of a country and investigating whether they are true.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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The Polish phrase that will help you through tough times

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Words like ' hygge' (Danish), 'gezelligheid' (Dutch) and ' lagom' (Swedish) have become very popular in recent years. But fans of these fuzzy-sounding concepts often miss the point that Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden are well-off, politically stable countries with excellent social support, education and healthcare systems. Their philosophies can be difficult to apply to other, less-fortunate nations.

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Growing community through a food co-op: Michelle Lopez-Dohrn at TEDxOjai

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Michelle Lopez-Dohrn speaks about creating a food co-op to help promote progressive change in food, community, economy, environment and as a model for human cooperation. What is a Co-op? "A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise."

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How cooperative businesses can answer tough business challenges: Julia Hutchins at TEDxMileHigh

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Why worker cooperatives don't work (SORTA)

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Twitter - twitter.com/BadMouse101 Many wonder why Cooperatives fail to compete well with Capitalist Businesses. Here's some reasons why. And this isn't their fault.

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An short introduction to worker cooperative theory and structure. Just slides, no audio.

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On October 27th 2012, Meitheal Mid West and The Workers Cooperative Network held a day of seminars on worker cooperatives and cooperative banking, in the University of Limerick Kemmy Business School, with the aim of encouraging and growing a cooperative economy for Limerick and Ireland.

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I sat down with Suma member Jenny Carlyle. In this video, we talk about what Suma are all about.

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Shigeru Ban: Emergency shelters made from paper

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Long before sustainability was a buzzword, architect Shigeru Ban was using ecologically sound building materials such as cardboard tubes. He uses them to build remarkable temporary structures for disaster-struck nations such as Haiti, Rwanda and Japan. Yet often, these buildings remain a beloved part of the landscape long after they have served their intended purpose.

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Pam Warhurst: How we can eat our landscapes

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What should a community do with its unused land? Plant food, of course. With energy and humor, Pam Warhurst tells at the TEDSalon the story of how she and a growing team of volunteers came together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, and to change the narrative of food in their community.

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Those who dabble in learning a new language sometimes find that alcohol - in moderation - helps them speak more fluently. In a way, that makes sense: It's been shown that a beer or a glass of wine can lower inhibitions, which may make it easier for some people to overcome nervousness or hesitation.

But on the other hand, alcohol has also been shown to impair cognitive and motor functions, negatively affect memory and attention, and lead to overconfidence and inflated self-evaluations. So do people really speak non-native languages better after drinking, or is that just their liquid courage talking?

To answer that question, British and Dutch researchers conducted an experiment, published this week in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. And it turns out, people in the study really did speak more fluently after a low dose of alcohol - even when they didn't think so themselves.

The study included 50 native German speakers who were studying at Maastricht University, located in the Netherlands near the border with Germany. All of the people in the study said they drank alcohol at least sometimes, and, because their classes were taught in Dutch, had recently passed an exam demonstrating proficiency in the language.

Each person was asked to have a casual, two-minute conversation with an interviewer in Dutch. Before that chat, half were given water to drink, while the other half were given an alcoholic beverage. The amount of booze varied based on the person's weight, but for a 150-pound man, it was equivalent to just under a pint of beer.

The conversations were recorded and then scored by two native Dutch speakers who weren't aware which people had consumed alcohol. The participants were also asked to self-score their own performances, based on how fluently they felt they'd spoken.

Unexpectedly, alcohol had no effect on the speakers' self-ratings; those who'd had a drink weren't any more confident or pleased with their performances than those who'd had water.

But they did perform better, according to those who listened to the recordings. Overall, the native Dutch speakers rated people in the alcohol group as having better fluency - specifically better pronunciation - than those in the water group. Ratings for grammar, vocabulary and argumentation were similar between groups.

The authors point out that the dose of alcohol tested in the study was low, and that higher levels of consumption might not have these beneficial effects. After all, they write in their paper, drinking too much can have the exact opposite effect on fluency and can even lead to slurred speech.

And because the people in the study knew what they were drinking, it's not possible to know whether their speech improved because of alcohol's biological effects or its psychological ones. (Previous studies have shown that people who think they're drinking alcohol can experience similar levels of impairment as those drinking the real thing.) "Future research on this topic should include an alcohol placebo condition," the authors write, "to disentangle the relative impact of pharmacological vs. expectancy effects."

The study's findings should also be replicated in other groups of people, they add, to show that the results aren't unique to native German speakers or to people learning Dutch. At least one other paper supports this theory, though; in a 1972 study, small doses of alcohol improved Americans' pronunciation of words in Thai.

While the study did not measure people's mental states or emotions, the authors say it's possible that a low-to-moderate dose of alcohol "reduces language anxiety" and therefore increases proficiency. "This might enable foreign language speakers to speak more fluently in the foreign language after drinking a small amount of alcohol," they conclude.

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It's True: Alcohol Helps You Speak a Foreign Language Better

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Those who dabble in learning a new language sometimes find that alcohol - in moderation - helps them speak more fluently. In a way, that makes sense: It's been shown that a beer or a glass of wine can lower inhibitions, which may make it easier for some people to overcome nervousness or hesitation.

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Businesses are being criticised for trying to sell you more than you've asked for.

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Nobel Prize

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Richard Thaler tells Wake Up To Money how his economic theory helps improve people's diets.

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English Grammar: The Prepositions ON, AT, IN, BY

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Phrasal Verbs for TRAVEL: "drop off", "get in", "check out"...

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10 GET Phrasal Verbs: get down, get off, get through, get up, get away...

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BBC

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Our story has got rather dramatic. Anna has realised that Tom is really the man for her so she's on her way to the airport to try and catch him before he boards his flight to Australia and his new life on the other side of the world. But will Anna be able to convince Tom that she's changed her mind?

Language to say you've changed your mind

This episode focuses on the language that you might use to explain that you've changed your mind.

Phrases from the programme:

I've been doing a lot of thinking.

I didn't realise how much I missed you until you had gone.

I've changed my mind, I will marry you!

Listening Challenge
What class does Tom claim he always flies in?

The answer is at the bottom of the transcript below:

Transcript

Narrator
Hello and welcome to English at Work where things have got rather dramatic. Anna is on her way to the airport to try and catch Tom before he boards his flight to Australia and his new life on the other side of the world. But will she get there in time?

Anna
Thanks. Excuse me, do you know where the check in desks for flights to Sydney are?

Man
Yeah, over there luv - desk number 47.

Anna
OK, thanks.

Tom
... yeah, I always fly business class, it's the kind of guy I am... shame you're not available to fly with me but you know...

Anna
Tom, Tom!

Tom
Anna? How... what... what are you doing here?

Anna
Don't go... we need you... I need you.

Tom
But I don't understand... you rejected me.

Anna
Yes but... but...

Narrator
But what Anna? What are you going to say? How can you tell him you were wrong and you've changed your mind?

Anna
Hmm, I don't know.

Passenger 1
Tell him 'I've been doing a lot of thinking'.

Passenger 2
Say, 'I didn't realise how much I missed you until you had gone'.

Passenger 3
And tell him, 'I've changed my mind, I will marry you!'

Tom
Yeah, yeah, I heard all that and that other man who you're always talking to.

Narrator
Oh right!

Anna
I see. Well Tom, will you marry me?

Tom
Why should I after all you've put me through?

Narrator
Yeah why should he?

Anna
Because Tom... you're a funny guy and... I love you and... I can't live without you.

Passengers
Ahhh!

Tom
Let me think about this ... oh if you put it like that then yes, I will marry you!

Anna
Oh Tom!

Narrator
Hooray. At last! We got there in the end but not without using these phrases:
I've been doing a lot of thinking. I didn't realise how much I missed you until you had gone. I've changed my mind, I will marry you!
Narrator
And...
I love you and I can't live without you!
Tom
I won't be needing these anymore.

Narrator
Join us very soon for the English at Work wedding of the year. Bye!

Listening challenge - answer

What class does Tom claim he always flies in?
Business class.

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BBC Learning English - English at Work / Last call for Tom

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Our story has got rather dramatic. Anna has realised that Tom is really the man for her so she's on her way to the airport to try and catch him before he boards his flight to Australia and his new life on the other side of the world.

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Do you want your mobile phone to stand out from the crowd?

Well, here's a device that looks cool and is truly green - that's because some of it is made out of grass.

Its case and internal components are made entirely from recycled, organic materials.

It's hoped in the future this sustainable phone can be mass-produced - helping to reduce the number of mobiles that don't get recycled.

Vocabulary

to stand out from the crowd
to be different from everything else

device
piece of equipment used for a certain purpose

internal components
parts inside a piece of equipment that make it work

organic
coming from living things, not from chemicals

sustainable
not harming the environment, therefore able to continue for a long time

To do

Use one of the words or phrases below to complete each of these sentences from news reports.

Note that you may have to change the form of a word to complete the sentence correctly.
to stand out from the crowd / device / internal components / organic / sustainable
1.The piano is now back to professional recording standard, with all of its __________ - including soundboard, keys, hammers, pins and strings - restored.

2.Dubai now has just over five years to build what it calls "a monument to the green economy, a landmark in __________ development", when it hosts Expo 2020.

3.Visiting a big technology show such as Berlin's IFA is an exhausting experience. Actually, despite the mayhem, it is worth coming because there are always a few products which __________ and give a hint of where technology is heading.

4.The culinary difference between bushmeat and farmed animals in Sierra Leone is like the difference in Europe between expensive, __________ sirloin steak and tasteless frozen battery chicken.

5. Children are also now multi-screening - using more than one __________ at the same time, for example, watching TV while surfing the internet on a tablet or mobile so some of the screen time will be concurrent.

Answers

1.The piano is now back to professional recording standard, with all of its internal components - including soundboard, keys, hammers, pins and strings - restored.

2.Dubai now has just over five years to build what it calls "a monument to the green economy, a landmark in sustainable development", when it hosts Expo 2020.

3.Visiting a big technology show such as Berlin's IFA is an exhausting experience. Actually, despite the mayhem, it is worth coming because there are always a few products which stand out from the crowd and give a hint of where technology is heading.

4.The culinary difference between bushmeat and farmed animals in Sierra Leone is like the difference in Europe between expensive, organic sirloin steak and tasteless frozen battery chicken.

5. Children are also now multi-screening - using more than one device at the same time, for example, watching TV while surfing the internet on a tablet or mobile so some of the screen time will be concurrent.

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BBC Learning English - Words in the News / Grass phone

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Do you want your mobile phone to stand out from the crowd? Well, here's a device that looks cool and is truly green - that's because some of it is made out of grass. Its case and internal components are made entirely from recycled, organic materials.

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It may look delicious but this fruit's pungent smell makes it an acquired taste.

Durians, the so-called "king of fruits", are something of a national obsession in Singapore.

And 2015 is shaping up to be a very good year for durian lovers, with a bumper crop in neighbouring Malaysia.

That means prices are coming down and sales are going up - much to the delight of buyers and sellers alike.

That's it from me. I'll leave you with today's words and phrases once again.

Vocabulary

pungent
strong and unpleasant taste or smell

an acquired taste
something you start liking the more you try it

is shaping up
developing into

bumper crop
larger amount of fruit than normally grows

delight
great pleasure/ happiness

To do

Use one of the words or phrases below to complete each of these sentences from news reports.

Note that you may have to change the form of a word to complete the sentence correctly.
pungent/ an acquired taste/ is shaping up/ bumper crop/ delight
1. Apple growers in Worcestershire say they are harvesting a __________ due to almost perfect weather conditions.

2. Residents in Ryde, Isle of Wight, have been living with a stench from rotting seaweed which smells like raw sewage. The warm weather has made the odour from the seaweed so __________ it is making people feel sick.

3. More than 330 people were arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences in the UK in the year to April 2015 - a third more than the previous year. Crucially, the average age of those being arrested has been falling, with almost a fifth under 20. In other words, given that the self-proclaimed caliphate isn't going away anytime soon, this ____________ to be an enduring security problem.

4. With more than half the ballots in, results from the Greek referendum suggest voters have decisively rejected the terms of an international bailout.For "No" voters, as these pictures show, there was __________ at the result.

5. Higgs' vocals are something of __________. They flit flamboyantly between a raspy alto and the keening siren of his falsetto. One review of the new album called it "almost unlistenable" as a result - although the vast majority of critics awarded it five star ratings.

Answers

1. Apple growers in Worcestershire say they are harvesting a bumper crop due to almost perfect weather conditions.

2. Residents in Ryde, Isle of Wight, have been living with a stench from rotting seaweed which smells like raw sewage. The warm weather has made the odour from the seaweed so pungent it is making people feel sick.

3. More than 330 people were arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences in the UK in the year to April 2015 - a third more than the previous year. Crucially, the average age of those being arrested has been falling, with almost a fifth under 20. In other words, given that the self-proclaimed caliphate isn't going away anytime soon, this is shaping up to be an enduring security problem.

4. With more than half the ballots in, results from the Greek referendum suggest voters have decisively rejected the terms of an international bailout.For "No" voters, as these pictures show, there was delight at the result.

5. Higgs' vocals are something of an acquired taste. They flit flamboyantly between a raspy alto and the keening siren of his falsetto. One review of the new album called it "almost unlistenable" as a result - although the vast majority of critics awarded it five star ratings.

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BBC Learning English - Words in the News / A good year for smelly fruit

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It may look delicious but this fruit's pungent smell makes it an acquired taste. Durians, the so-called "king of fruits", are something of a national obsession in Singapore. And 2015 is shaping up to be a very good year for durian lovers, with a bumper crop in neighbouring Malaysia.

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It's a familiar scene, a busy metro carriage with people pushing and shoving but never saying hello or even making eye contact. Catherine and Neil discuss why cities make us act this way.

This week's question

When we have a positive interaction with somebody, our body releases a chemical. What's the name of this chemical? Is it...

a) melatonin?

You'll hear the answer at the end of the programme.

Vocabulary

hyper vigilance
being extremely watchful of what's going on around you

insular
inward looking

claustrophobic
not having enough space to feel comfortable

nosey
somebody who shows too much interest in other people's business

quotient
the result you get by dividing one number by another

hustle
work aggressively to make money

chitchat
unimportant conversation

Transcript

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Wow! I should perhaps point out that talking to someone you don't know on the Tube is quite unusual behaviour in London! So, Neil, what did they say?

Well, they said what a lovely day it was, great to see the sun shining in London - something along those lines. But it was actually nice to chat instead of sitting there with a frown on my face, fiddling with my phone.

Well, that's a good question, Neil, and maybe we'll find some answers in the show, because today we're talking about why cities make us so rude. And I have a question for you: when we have a positive interaction with somebody, our body releases a chemical. But what's the name of this chemical? Is it...a) melatonin?

Or c) thyroxin?

Well, we'll see if you were right or not later on in the show. But did you know, Neil, that an organisation called 'Talk to me London' has created these 'Tubechat' badges that you can wear to show that you're happy to talk to a stranger. Maybe you should get one!
Yeah, maybe I should. But the thing is, people in big cities are often scared to start a conversation with a stranger because, well, you don't know what might happen.

Dr Elle Boag, social psychologist, Birmingham City University in the UK
When we step off the metro or onto a crowded city street our brain becomes hyper vigilant to the perception of threats around us - we're just one small person in a very large set of other people, in a large body of people. This then leads to behaviours that are insular and defensive. We're persistently looking for potential threats around us, and this then makes us not give eye contact, this will reduce the likelihood that anybody will say hello. It's a protective mechanism by which we can survive our journey to whence we're going, which makes us all sound really really rude to one other.

Dr Elle Boag there. And means being extremely watchful of what's going on around you. People can behave unpredictably, and like Dr Boag says, you're just one person in a crowd of others and you just don't know who might be dangerous. hyper vigilance

Yeah, I see what you mean. And the fact we are constantly on the lookout for potential threats, well, it affects our behaviour.

Thomas Farley, writer and broadcaster
The cost of living in cities is higher, the success quotient is higher, it's a place where you hustle to survive, and if you are not hustling, and I mean that literally and figuratively, you are not able to survive and thrive. So we often don't have much time for chitchat. I think we just all need to be mindful that it's not a deliberate disregard or somebody trying to be rude on purpose - it's simply that people have a destination to be.

Success quotient means your ability to be successful in work, relative to the average person, and Thomas Farley is saying that in cities people have higher success quotients.

What we do isn't chitchat, Neil! It's highly informative and instructional! Now, I think it must be time to hear the answer to today's quiz. Do you remember, I asked: when we have a positive interaction with someone, our body releases a chemical. What's the name of this chemical? Is it...a) melatonin?

Or c) thyroxin?

Sorry! The correct answer is b) oxytocin - a hormone commonly known as the 'love drug'. It reduces fear, increases trust between people, and evokes feelings of contentment.

That's the end of today's 6 Minute English. Don't forget to join us again soon!

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BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / Why do cities make us rude?

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It's a familiar scene, a busy metro carriage with people pushing and shoving but never saying hello or even making eye contact. Catherine and Neil discuss why cities make us act this way. When we have a positive interaction with somebody, our body releases a chemical. What's the name of this chemical?

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BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / What your lunch says about you

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What do you eat for lunch? Sandwiches are the most popular lunchtime meal in the UK, but why?

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In this programme, Dan and Neil discuss the trend for having more than one career. They also teach you six items of useful vocabulary. (Image: Getty)

This week's question:

If the surname Baker was originally given to people who worked as bakers, what about those with the surname Bond, as in James Bond? Were they:

a) Farmers

b) Spies

c) Guards

Listen to the programme to find out the answer.

Vocabulary

portfolio
a group or collection of things

make ends meet
make enough money to live

serial
used to describe a repeated act, especially a criminal act

entrepreneur
someone who starts and runs businesses

add another string to my bow
learn a new skill

corporate
relating to a large company

Transcript
This is not a word for word transcript
Neil
Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English - the programme where we bring you an interesting topic and six items of vocabulary. I'm Neil. Today we're talking about jobs.

Dan
And I'm Dan. And specifically, we're looking at the trend for having more than one job...

Neil
Yes. On that note - Dan, were you ever asked this question as a kid? "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Do you remember your answer?

Dan
I wanted to be a ninja turtle. And you?

Dan
Sounds like a good combination. First, let's do today's question - it's job-related. Many surnames in English originally come from professions. The surname Baker, for example, was originally given to people who worked as... bakers! What about the surname Bond, as in double-oh-seven, James Bond? Who had this surname? Was it?

a) Farmers
b) Spies
c) Guards

Neil
It can't be spies, can it? So I'm going to guess guards. C.

Dan
Great, well let's find out at the end of the programme.

Emily Wapnick, Author
More and more people are doing multiple things and multiple jobs - and it's not just to make ends meet. A lot of people are choosing this kind of lifestyle. They've got, you know, three different businesses that are just thriving. Or they're a serial entrepreneur. Or they've got a career in two different areas. There's a guy that I mention who is a psychotherapist and a luthier - he makes violins - and he's very successful in both.

Neil
Emily is clearly a fan of this kind of working. She says she knows a man who's both a psychotherapist and a luthier - someone who makes violins.

She says this trend is more than just about working to make ends meet - in other words, working to make enough money to live. And she used another interesting expression - a serial entrepreneur - what's that exactly?

Well, an entrepreneur is someone who starts and runs businesses - and the use of serial here as an adjective describes someone who does the same thing again and again. Though we should say, the adjective is more often used for criminal activity - such as a serial killer or serial murderer.

Not the kind of portfolio career I had in mind. A serial entrepreneur, on the other hand, starts and runs business after business.

Charles Handy, writer
80% of the people in corporate jobs hate them, or are dissatisfied with them. Whereas if you're doing your own thing, 80% of them really like the freedom and the entrepreneurial spirit, even if they're not making an awful lot of money. It's a balancing job really, you're free but you're poor. Or you're slaved but you're richer.

Neil
Sounds like a difficult choice - be poor or be a slave. What would you choose, Dan?

Dan
I'd rather be poor and free, thank you very much.

Well, let's explain a term he used - a corporate job. What does corporate mean?

Dan
Yes, I guess so! And thank you for reminding me to answer today's question: which profession does the surname Bond come from?

Neil
And I said the Bonds were guards.

Dan
I'm afraid you were wrong. Bonds were originally peasant farmers who were bound to work for a particular lord. This word goes back over 1,000 years... the spying game came much later!

Indeed! Let's spy today's words once more. We had portfolio - which can be used in different ways. There's a portfolio career, as well as the original meaning of a portfolio of art. Any others?

Talking of money, we had to make ends meet. People often work a number of different part-time jobs to make ends meet - to make enough money to live on.

Though having a lot of part-time jobs is not the same as being a serial entrepreneur. Serial means doing something repeatedly, usually a crime!

Dan
OK, but then you can come to my yoga classes after work!

Alright.

Dan
And that's the end of today's 6 Minute English. Please join us again soon.

Neil
And we are on social media of course. Make sure to visit our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube pages.

Both
Bye!

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BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / Multiple Careers

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In this programme, Dan and Neil discuss the trend for having more than one career. They also teach you six items of useful vocabulary. (Image: Getty) If the surname Baker was originally given to people who worked as bakers, what about those with the surname Bond, as in James Bond?

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In this programme, Neil and Dan talk about a tragic fall and a miraculous survival, all while teaching you six items of vocabulary.

This week's question:

According to the BBC, what chance of survival does a human have when falling to the ground from around 3 storeys?

a) 30%

b) 50%

c) 70%

Listen to the programme to find out the answer.

Vocabulary

a near-death experience
an experience where a person very nearly, or could easily have died

scaffold
a structure of interconnected pipes and boards that creates a frame or shape

clutching
holding extremely tightly to something

unprecedented
never happened or done before

miracle
an unexplainable positive outcome to a bad situation that people say was the intervention of a god

Transcript
Note: This is not a word for word transcript
Dan
Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English- the show that brings you an interesting topic, authentic listening practice and six new items of vocabulary. I'm Dan...

Neil
And I'm Neil. In this episode we'll be discussing miraculous survivals.

Dan
Well, I recently heard a story about Alcides Moreno.

Neil
Who's that?

He's a window cleaner. He cleaned the windows on the sky scrapers in New York. Except one day, he fell.

Dan
Yes. And what's more is. He survived.

Neil
Wow! How far did he fall?

Dan
Ah, well, all will be revealed after this week's question. According to the BBC, what chance of survival does a human have when falling to the ground from around 3 storeys?

a) 30%

b) 50%

c) 70%

Neil
And by storeys, you mean the entire floor of a building including all its rooms. Well, I think it's got to be b) 50%

Dan
Well, we'll find out if you're right or not later. So, do you want to hear the story?

Neil
Of course!

Dan
Well, on the 7th of December, Ecuadorians Alcides Moreno, and his brother, Edgar, went up to the top of the Solow Tower in New York to clean the windows like they did every day.

Neil
And how tall is that building?

Dan
It's 47 storeys.

Neil
And how did they usually clean it?

Neil
Ah, so in this case there was a platform which was attached by cables, or large metal ropes, and hung over the edge of the building and which the window cleaners could raise and lower.

Neil
And...

Dan
Well, unfortunately the cables were loose, and the scaffold fell from the building. Both brothers fell 47 storeys.

Neil
That's terrible! What happened next?

Dan
I'll let Jo Fidgen, presenter of the BBC show Outlook, explain

Jo Fidgen - BBC Outlook presenter
When firefighters arrived on the scene, they found a crowd of distraught onlookers pointing towards an alleyway. Edgar had landed on a fence and couldn't be helped, but Alcides was found crouching in a pile of twisted metal still clutching the controls of the scaffold. He was breathing...even trying to stand up...

Neil
So, firefighters arrived to find a group of distraught, which means extremely worried and upset, people showing them where the two men had come down.

Neil
I'm speechless. I don't understand how he lived.

Dan
You aren't the only one. Listen to what Dr. Philip Barie, from New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said about the whole incident.

I don't know what adjective you'd care to use: unprecedented, extraordinary... if you are a believer in miracles, this would be one.

Neil
I guess we'll never know. But one thing I can know is the answer to this week's question.

Dan
Ah, yes. I asked you what chance of survival does a human have when falling to the ground from around 3 storeys?

a) 30%

b) 50%

c) 70%

Neil
And I said b) 50%

Dan
And you were exactly right. Well done.

Neil
Wow! It's a first!

Dan
Shall we look at the vocabulary then?

Dan
When I was 14 I fell out of a canoe into a river and got stuck between the boat and a rock with my head underwater. I thought it was the end. But, some people pulled me out. Then we had scaffold. A scaffold is a structure of interconnected pipes and boards that creates a frame or shape. Name a place that you might see scaffolding, Neil.

They are usually put up around houses when builders are working on the roof. Then we had clutching. If you clutch something, it means you hold it extremely tightly. There is a well-known idiom that uses this word. Sound familiar, Dan?

After that we had unscathed. If you are unscathed, you are uninjured. We often talk about escaping something unscathed. Have you ever escaped an accident unscathed?

Well, when I was 6, I fell through a hole that some builders had made while doing rennovation. I hit the ground in the garage, but somehow I escaped unscathed. Maybe, I bounced? Then we heard unprecedented. If something is unprecedented, it has never happened or been done before. Can you think of an example, Neil?

Neil Armstrong walking on the moon was unprecedented in 1969. And, finally, we had miracle. A miracle is an unexplainable positive outcome to a bad situation that people say was the intervention of a god. The adjectives is miraculous.

Do you believe in miracles, Dan?

Dan
Well, I've never seen or experienced one, but when you hear a story like this, it's difficult not to. And, that's the end of today's 6 Minute English. Please join us again soon!

Neil
And we are on social media too - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. See you there.

Both
Bye!

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BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / Miraculous survival

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In this programme, Neil and Dan talk about a tragic fall and a miraculous survival, all while teaching you six items of vocabulary. According to the BBC, what chance of survival does a human have when falling to the ground from around 3 storeys?

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In this programme, Neil and Catherine discuss why the super rich like to spend money on yachts. And they teach you six items of useful vocabulary

This week's question:

In which country is the percentage of super rich expected to grow fastest over the next 10 years?

a) China

b) Brazil

c) Vietnam

Listen to the programme to find out the answer.

Vocabulary

assets
things you can buy and sell

status symbol
something you own to show off your wealth and social position

to make business sense
to be good for business

black hole
somewhere impossible to escape

pecking order
the informal social system from most to least powerful

conspicuous consumption
spending a lot of money so other people notice your wealth

Transcript
Note: This is not a word for word transcript
Neil
Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English - the programme where we bring you an interesting topic and six items of vocabulary. I'm Neil.

Catherine
And I'm Catherine. Today we're taking a look into the lives of the super rich - and we're going to look at one of their favourite pastimes.

Neil
Expensive toys. First things first, let's do our question, Catherine. In which country is the percentage of super rich expected to grow fastest over the next 10 years?

a) China

b) Brazil

c) Vietnam?

Catherine
I'm going to go for Vietnam. I think, that's an up and coming country and I think there is going to be a lot of growth in wealth in the future.

Neil
Ok, well we'll find out if you are right or wrong later. The number of super rich are expected to increase by 43% over the next decade.

Catherine
Now, this doesn't mean income is rising at the same speed for everyone. You might remember a report last year which said the world's richest 62 individuals owned as much as the poorest 50% of people in the whole world.

Neil
So, my question is - what on earth do people with so much money spend it on?

Catherine
One academic in the UK has been researching just that. And her answer is ..., Neil?

Catherine
Let's listen to Emma Spence from Cardiff University in the UK. What's so unusual about yachts?

Emma Spence, PhD researcher, Cardiff University
If you have an exclusive wine collection or art collection or even the purchase of a business jet - these are investable assets - something that you can retain value on or accrue value on. A business jet, a private jet, can cut costs - and make businesses more convenient by running faster, more comfortably than commercial airlines. So these purchases, they make good, sound business sense. Whereas a superyacht is essentially a black hole.

Before we get to the yacht, Emma talked about certain assets like planes and wine that made business sense.

Neil
It's also used conversationally to mean 'a place where things go missing'.

Catherine
These superyachts are big. The world's longest is 180m in length. And they require a professional crew. Which is how Emma began her study - she used to work on the yachts.

Neil
She's now spent six years studying the world of superyachts and the super rich.

Catherine
So, what else did she learn?

Apparently, so. It's all about seeing and being seen. You could actually say that yachts are the ultimate form of conspicuous consumption. Now that's another great term - conspicuous means 'visible or noticeable' and consumption means 'spending'. So, the phrase conspicuous consumption refers to the kind of buying you do so that other people notice your money.

Neil
Before we sail off into the sunset Catherine, how about we answer today's question.

Catherine
I said that Vietnam is the country in which the percentage of super rich is expected to grow fastest over the next 10 years.

Neil
Well, I'm very pleased to say that you were right. It was in fact Vietnam - according to the same report by Knight Frank - the population of ultra wealthy is expected to grow by a staggering 170% in the next decade.

Catherine
Now, how about we have another look at the wealth of vocabulary in this programme?

And finally, the phrase conspicuous consumption. For example, you could say that dining at the finest restaurants wearing expensive clothes is conspicuous consumption.

And to clear up two similar phrases: a status symbol refers to the object itself, like a luxury car; whereas conspicuous consumption refers to the act of spending money on things like expensive cars but you're spending money so that other people notice.

Neil
Do check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Neil & Catherine
Bye!

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BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / The super rich

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In this programme, Neil and Catherine discuss why the super rich like to spend money on yachts. And they teach you six items of useful vocabulary In which country is the percentage of super rich expected to grow fastest over the next 10 years?

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Airbnb, the accommodation website, paid less than £200,000 in UK corporation tax last year despite collecting £657m of rental payments for property owners.

The commissions the company earns in the UK are booked by its Irish subsidiary, but it also has two UK subsidiaries.

One unit made a pre-tax profit, but the other did not incur UK corporation tax because deductions resulted in a loss.

Airbnb said in a statement: "We follow the rules and pay all the tax we owe."

One of the British subsidiaries, Airbnb Payments UK, handles payments between landlords and travellers for countries other than the United States, China and India.

That unit made a pre-tax profit of £960,000 and paid £188,000 in UK corporation tax - £8,000 less than in 2015.

The other British subsidiary, Airbnb UK, markets the website and app to British consumers. It reported a £463,000 pre-tax profit last year but because it gave shares to staff, which are tax-deductable, there was no corporation tax bill.

Airbnb said: "Our UK office provides marketing services and pays all applicable taxes, including VAT. The Airbnb model is unique and boosted the UK economy by £3.46bn last year alone."

The tax arrangements of other technology giants have come under under closer scrutiny in recent years.

One of the most vocal critics has been EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. She has taken aim at the likes of Apple, Amazon and others for where they book the revenues and profits of their European activities.

The company, founded in San Francisco in 2008, has disrupted the hotel industry by linking travellers with landlords who generally want to rent out a spare room or an entire property for short-term stays.

It has become one of the most successful examples of the digital economy, with an estimated value of about $24bn.

However, Airbnb has faced a growing backlash in cities including Barcelona, Berlin and Paris, where politicians have taken steps to stop landlords renting properties to tourists rather than local residents.

While Airbnb has long been linked with a stock market listing, it remains privately owned.

It takes a 3% commission from landlords for each booking, and also charges fees to travellers.

In the UK last year Airbnb catered for 5.9m travellers and had 168,000 listings.

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Airbnb paid £188,000 in UK tax last year

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Airbnb, the accommodation website, paid less than £200,000 in UK corporation tax last year despite collecting £657m of rental payments for property owners. The commissions the company earns in the UK are booked by its Irish subsidiary, but it also has two UK subsidiaries.

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As I've wandered through the business landscape over the past 4 decades, I've often observed people making business decisions that I was pretty sure were going to end up somewhere between bad and appallingly, astronomically bad. And I've certainly been guilty of making a few of those kinds of decisions myself.

Almost without exception, my bad decisions and those I've seen others make resulted from one of three things. The decision-maker: 1) didn't bother to get all the relevant facts; 2) made invalid assumptions based on ego, wishful thinking, or fear; and/or 3) didn't trust the input of their own advisors.

As you read through the following, feel free to be entertained and feel superior - but I'd suggest you also take them as cautionary tales; great examples of what not to do:

1) How many zeros? In 1977, the senior execs at 20th Century made an astonishingly short-sighted decision. They signed over all product merchandising rights for any and all Star Wars films to George Lucas - in exchange for a mere $20,000 cut in Lucas' studio paycheck. The combined revenue from merchandising is estimated to have exceeded three billion dollars, and continues to grow annually, making it the most lucrative deal ever struck between an individual and a corporate studio in entertainment history. (This one is courtesy of my wonderful reader Dr. Ilona Jerabek, from an article on her website.)

2) And your hair's weird, too. In 1962, the Beatles auditioned at the London office of Decca Records. The executive in charge of talent rejected them: he thought they sounded too much like a currently popular group called The Shadows (who?), and he told Brian Epstein, their manager, "We don't like your boys' sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitars particularly are finished." Well over 2 billion Beatles albums have since sold worldwide.

3) We're a serious business, thank you very much. In 1876, William Orten was President of Western Union, which had a monopoly on the most advanced communications technology available, the telegraph. Orten was offered the patent on a new invention, the telephone, for $100,000 (worth about $2M in current dollars). He considered the whole idea ridiculous, and wrote directly to Alexander Graham Bell, saying, "After careful consideration of your invention, while it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities... What use could this company make of an electrical toy?" Two years later, after the telephone began to take off, Orten realized the magnitude of his mistake, and spent years (unsuccessfully) challenging Bell's patents.

4) Say cheese! The Eastman Kodak company developed the first digital camera in 1975, then proceeded to sit on it (and the core technology for the cell phone, as well). They decided not to develop it because they were afraid it would cannibalize their film business (at one point they had a 90% share of the US film market.)

5) Say cheese, part II. In the early '80s, Fuji entered the US film marketplace with lower-priced film and supplies, but Kodak management believed that US consumers would never abandon their homegrown brand. In 1984, Kodak passed on the chance to be the official film of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Fuji won the rights, which gave them the strong foothold they needed to catalyze their growth in the US marketplace.

Kodak never fully recovered from these and other poor decisions; in 2012 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

6) Did anybody phone home? In 1981 Amblin Productions called the Mars Company and offered a simple cross-promotional opportunity: How about if we use M&Ms in our new film, giving you free publicity, and in return, you can promote our film in your packaging? The advertising and marketing folks at Mars said "No." The film was ET the Extra-Terrestrial, and the rest is history. Reeses Pieces, the not-nearly-as-well-known M&M competitor, saw sales jump 65% in the months after the film was released featuring their product.

7) Hot under the collar. In 2000, Gerald Levin, the chairman of Time Warner, was so confident in the deal he had made to merge with America Online, that he decided to forego placing a collar on the transaction. A collar enables the seller-in this case Time Warner-to revisit the terms of the transaction if the buyer's stock falls below a certain price. Almost as soon as the merger was announced, and before it was completed, the Internet bubble burst and AOL shares plunged 50%. Without a collar, Time Warner wouldn't be able to renegotiate the deal. Time Warner execs urged Levin to re-think the deal, but he didn't. The rest is history, and Time Warner shareholders are still paying for his stubbornness.

Of course, it's easy to see the folly of these decisions in retrospect; hindsight is 20/20, and no one can make the right decision all the time. But I suspect if each of these unfortunate executives had approached these decisions with a little more curiosity, a little more open-mindedness, and a little less certainty about the rightness of their position....we might all be using Western Union Kodak smartphones.

_______________

Check out Erika Andersen's latest book, Leading So People Will Follow, and discover how to be a followable leader. Booklist called it "a book to read more than once and to consult many times."

Want to know what Erika and her colleagues at Proteus do? Find out here.

Join our conversation about leadership on LinkedIn.

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It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time: 7 Of The Worst Business Decisions Ever Made

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As I've wandered through the business landscape over the past 4 decades, I've often observed people making business decisions that I was pretty sure were going to end up somewhere between bad and appallingly, astronomically bad. And I've certainly been guilty of making a few of those kinds of decisions myself.

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Amanda Burden: How public spaces make cities work

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More than 8 million people are crowded together to live in New York City. What makes it possible? In part, it's the city's great public spaces - from tiny pocket parks to long waterfront promenades - where people can stroll and play.

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Jeanne Gang: Buildings that blend nature and city

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A skyscraper that channels the breeze ... a building that creates community around a hearth ... Jeanne Gang uses architecture to build relationships. In this engaging tour of her work, Gang invites us into buildings large and small, from a surprising local community center to a landmark Chicago skyscraper.

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Christiane Amanpour: How to seek truth in the era of fake news

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Known worldwide for her courage and clarity, Christiane Amanpour has spent the past three decades interviewing business, cultural and political leaders who have shaped history. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Amanpour discusses fake news, objectivity in journalism, the leadership vacuum in global politics and more, sharing her wisdom along the way.

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A Chinese mall has introduced "husband storage" facilities for wives to leave their spouse while they shop, it's reported.

According to The Paper, the Global Harbour mall in Shanghai has erected a number of glass pods for wives to leave any disgruntled husbands that don't want to be dragged around the shops.

Inside each individual pod is a chair, monitor, computer and gamepad, and men can sit and play retro 1990s games. Currently, the service is free, but staff told the newspaper that in future months, users will be able to scan a QR code and pay a small sum for the service using their mobile phones.

A few men that tried out the pods told The Paper that they thought they were a novel idea.

Mr Yang said he thinks the pods are "Really great. I've just played Tekken 3 and felt like I was back at school!"

Another man, Mr Wu, agreed, but said that that he thought there were areas for improvement. "There's no ventilation or air conditioning, I sat playing for five minutes and was drenched in sweat."

Incentive to go shopping

The pods have been the source of much humour on Chinese social media, and have sparked debate about whether they could be rolled out even wider.

One user approves the decision, saying that the pods "give these men an incentive to go shopping, and to pick up the bill" for their wives shopping.

But others disagree. "If my husband just wants to go out and play games, what's the point of bringing him out?"
Reporting by Kerry Allen
Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter.

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A Chinese mall has introduced "husband storage" facilities for wives to leave their spouse while they shop, it's reported. According to The Paper, the Global Harbour mall in Shanghai has erected a number of glass pods for wives to leave any disgruntled husbands that don't want to be dragged around the shops.

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Uber

LONDON - Jo Bertram, the top Uber executive in London, has quit.

The company is embroiled in multiple legal battles over everything from its license in London to the legal status of its drivers, and on Monday the news broke that Bertram - the regional general manager for Northern Europe - is departing.

"While I would like to have announced my move in smoother circumstances, I'm proud of the team we've built here and am very confident in their abilities to lead the business into the next chapter," she wrote in an email to staff. "I'll work with you in the coming weeks on the best possible transition."

Uber

Bertram has worked at Uber in London for the past four years, originally as the general manager in London. The company grew fast during her tenure - it now has 40,000 drivers in the British capital - but also caused controversy.

In September, London's transport regulator TfL (Transport for London) refused to renew Uber's license to operate, saying the firm is not "fit and proper" to operate. Uber is appealing the decision, and new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is now flying over to meet with regulators in London on Tuesday to discuss the license.

Jo will "remain with us over the next few weeks to help with a smooth transition," head of EMEA Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty wrote in a follow-up email to staff. Meanwhile, Tom Elvidge - the general manager for London - will be the acting general manager for the UK.

Here's the full email Jo Bertram sent to Uber employees:

Subject Line: Thank you for a brilliant journey

As many of you have just heard at our All Hands meeting, I've decided to move on to something new and exciting. I'm leaving Uber with great memories, friendships and many amazing experiences, and I'll never forget the great things that we've achieved together as a team.

When I showed up on my first day four years ago, at our tiny serviced office in Baker Street, I quickly realised that this company was special - not only in its ambitions, but also in the way we all pulled together. Whether responding to all sorts of customer questions, buying our own laptops, or distributing mobile phones to our early partner drivers, we all had to roll up our sleeves and figure out how to build a business. I had wanted to experience the pace and craziness of life at a start-up, and Uber certainly delivered!

I'm tremendously lucky to have spent the last four years with you, and it has been breathtaking to see the team grow so quickly. When I joined as General Manager for London, we had just three team members in the city and a few hundred drivers. Together, we then rolled out our services to more than 40 towns and cities across the United Kingdom, where we now serve almost 5 million riders and more than 50,000 drivers.

Since I became Regional General Manager for Northern Europe, I've been proud to lead what is now a team of 300 people across 10 countries. I've learned a lot during this rapid expansion and, in every market we entered, you could quickly see the impact we had on the way people travelled and lived their lives.

While we often talk about the growth we've seen, we can also be proud of the progress our team has made in improving the service for both drivers and riders. Though there's always more to be done, we've taken big strides for a young company. From the introduction of discounted illness and injury cover for drivers, to the roll out of ACCESS for wheelchair users and most recently our Clean Air Plan, there are many initiatives we can be proud of. I know there are many more exciting things to come.

Over the course of this year, I've been reflecting on these incredible last four years and what might come next for me. I've also discussed this with Pierre and I'm proud that we've built this business into more than we ever thought possible. And I've realised that taking a nascent company and helping it scale into a major international operation is what I've enjoyed most. An exciting new opportunity has arisen that will allow me to apply what I've learnt here and I'll be able to share more details with you soon.

Given some of our current challenges, I'm also convinced that now is the right time to have a change of face, and to hand over to someone who will be here for the long haul and take us into the next phase.

While I would like to have announced my move in smoother circumstances, I'm proud of the team we've built here and am very confident in their abilities to lead the business into the next chapter. I'll work with you in the coming weeks on the best possible transition.

I'm grateful for everything I've learned in the last four years. This company and its people will always have a very special place in my heart.

Jo

And here's the response from Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, head of EMEA:

As I just told everyone at the All Hands meeting, we're all really sad to be losing such a remarkable colleague and friend.

Jo is certainly one the most impressive people I've had the pleasure to work with and the success of our business in Northern Europe is in large part down to her leadership. The passion, energy and commitment she puts into her work has made her an inspiring role model and a fantastic leader since she joined Uber four years ago.

Jo will remain with us over the next few weeks in order to help with a smooth transition, and I look forward to working closely with the excellent team she leaves behind.

Tom Elvidge will now report into me and be our acting UK GM while we undergo an internal and external hiring process for that role. Niek Van Leeuwen, GM for the Nordics, Baltics & Benelux, will report into me.

On behalf of everyone at Uber, I wish Jo all the best for her exciting new role and the next stage of her career.

Thanks so much for your contribution over the years, Jo!

Pierre

NOW WATCH: Here are all the major changes coming to your iPhone September 19

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Top UK Uber exec Jo Bertram has quit - here's her full email to staff

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LONDON - Jo Bertram, the top Uber executive in London, has quit. The company is embroiled in multiple legal battles over everything from its license in London to the legal status of its drivers, and on Monday the news broke that Bertram - the regional general manager for Northern Europe - is departing.

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If you're a double for a Disney star, Mickey and Co want to hear from you!

That's because Disney have just announced they're recruiting for the roles of Princes and Princesses.

They're looking for "enthusiastic and energetic people to animate the famous Disney characters".

So if you've ever fancied yourself as a bit of a Prince Charming from Snow White or Belle from Beauty and the Beast , this could be for you.

But before you go storming into your boss's office to slam down your resignation letter while humming your favourite Disney show tune, be aware: this job involves packing up and moving to DisneylandParis in France, writes Glasgow Live .

And there are some strict guidelines candidates need to tick off to be in with a chance of nailing a part.

The job ads - which have been published in French - read: "We are looking for enthusiastic and energetic people to animate the famous Disney characters. If you have a good level of dance, you can participate in our parade and our cavalcades!'

"We are also looking for people who look like our famous Princesses and Princes to meet our visitors on a daily basis. A good level of dance and distinctive criteria of resemblance are required."

But even if you can do all that, there's also another hurdle.

Just like their theme park rides, you need to be a certain height to be considered - between 137cm and 193cm tall (that's 4 foot 5 and 6 foot 3).

For the application form in English click here.
Asda Partnership
Fear not if you don't fit the bill - you can still bring your Disney Princess dream to life with one of these outfits from Asda.

They stock a huge range of the most popular characters for adults and kids alike, featuring favourites like Frozen's Anna and Elsa , Snow White and Cinderella .

Child outfits start at £10 while those for grown-up princesses begin at £20.

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Disney is hiring new Princesses - but there are strict rules on who can apply

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If you're a double for a Disney star, Mickey and Co want to hear from you! That's because Disney have just announced they're recruiting for the roles of Princes and Princesses. They're looking for "enthusiastic and energetic people to animate the famous Disney characters".

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Here are some of my favourite phrasal verbs with GET.

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an article on a film by A. Jolie

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They must have made quite a pair: the statuesque film star from Los Angeles, and the small, slight returnee, cycling together through rural Cambodia. Angelina Jolie was in the country shooting "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider", her first starring role in a blockbuster, though she had won an Oscar the year before for her supporting role in "Girl, Interrupted". Loung Ung was travelling in Cambodia 20 years after she had escaped with her family; her memoir of surviving the Khmer Rouge, "First They Killed My Father", had just been published.

They came together, says Loung Ung, because Jolie bought a pirated copy of her book on the street and wanted to meet her. An unlikely friendship formed. "We stopped somewhere," says Loung Ung. "Not a restaurant - just a Cambodian house. We were offered some food, some chicken with ginger. We saw a scrawny chicken run by, and then we heard this crack, and that was dinner. The owner of the house saved the best parts for Angie - the gizzards and intestines. And she ate them. She knew how to be respectful." When Jolie expressed an interest in turning her memoir into a film, Loung Ung did not hesitate, though she says she would not have readily trusted it to any other non-Cambodian. But Jolie, she says, "is Cambodian in her spirit, in her connection to the country and in her family".

"First They Killed My Father" is the opposite of Jolie's usual blockbusters. It is modestly budgeted, with few special effects, despite being the biggest film ever shot in Cambodia. Instead of big Hollywood names, it stars Khmer-speaking non-professional actors. Instead of escapist popcorn fun, Jolie presents viewers with atrocities that took place decades ago in a country that most Western viewers would struggle to find on a map.

Yet from this grim subject-matter Jolie has made a quietly revelatory film that shows war and genocide through a child's eyes without a single false or cloying note. Most of the film is doggedly realistic but Jolie makes outstanding use of dream sequences and bursts of surrealism: when the Khmer Rouge complete their first march through Phnom Penh, the camera suddenly turns upside down, as a Khmer dancer in a lion-head mask moves sinuously among the soldiers. These occasional breaks with reality highlight how bizarre the events must have seemed to someone too young to understand - too young, at first, to be as frightened as the adults. Suddenly Loung Ung has to flee her home and abandon her possessions. Her parents have to work in the fields; the family eats insects to survive.

In the wood-panelled library of her elegant, sprawling Los Angeles estate, Jolie admits it's a hard sell. On screen her defining trait is her chilly poise; in person she has an ethereal, swan-like grace and a lively mind. Her home feels warm and inhabited, though she admits she's still in the process of moving in ("You may have heard there's been a sudden split," she says, her only reference to her recent, much-publicised separation from Brad Pitt), and echoing through the house are the quick footsteps of some of her six children. "This isn't the kind of movie people rush out to see," she says. "I tried to make it a film not just for people who are interested in history: I tried to make it visually interesting. I want to help people sit through something that's hard for them to sit through."

In that she succeeded, for two main reasons. First, she elicited extraordinary performances from her actors, particularly Srey Moch Sareum, the nine-year-old lead, whom Jolie and her casting team found in a charity school in Phnom Penh; and Komphaek Phoeung, an interpreter, author and occasional actor who plays the family's father. In his face viewers can see bewilderment, fear and his heroic efforts to maintain a brave face for his children.

Srey Moch Sareum, says Jolie, "figured out what some actors never figure out. Her job was to think of things. Her job was to watch things...I told her I never need to see tears. I don't want you to laugh if you don't feel like laughing. She did it all naturally." The average viewer may know little about Cambodia or the Khmer Rouge, but by keeping the focus on Loung Ung and her family, she makes the film their story: the viewer is invested in their fate.

Second, the world in which these actors move is fully realised, thanks to meticulously designed sets, interiors and costumes. For this Jolie credits the hundreds of Cambodians who made up the cast and crew. Many of them remembered the war, she says, and "they tell you exactly what it was like...Everything [in the film] is based on someone's experience. They talked us through everything."

But at the centre of the film is Loung Ung's experience. She was five years old when the Khmer Rouge took over and ten when she escaped to Thailand with her brother and sister-in-law. The regime killed both of her parents, two sisters and 20 other relatives. Eventually she resettled in Vermont, and today runs a restaurant and brewery in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband. Jolie says she was taken by the way that Loung Ung's memoir "invites you into the experience of being a family in a time of war. She writes beautifully and honestly, and never tries to be more intellectual than her readers." The two jointly adapted it for the screen.

Jolie's involvement with Cambodia stretches back almost two decades. She was granted citizenship in 2005. Raised in Los Angeles, coming off a wild youth and heading into the peak of her career, she learned in Cambodia the tribulations of refugees and the dire poverty of the developing world. When she talks about Cambodia, her cool persona turns to genuine warmth. Cambodia, she says, "connected me" to the world: "I had my awakening there."

She adopted her eldest son, Maddox, from a Cambodian orphanage 15 years ago. He is listed as an executive producer of "First They Killed My Father", and gave his name to her Cambodian charity, the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, housed on her property in the country's remote north-west. The foundation focuses on education, health care and the conservation of forests and wildlife.

She has of course come in for a fair amount of criticism for her work in Cambodia - a film star using a poor country as a prop to make herself look generous and involved - but almost none of it comes from Cambodians themselves. In conversation she is realistic and humble about what an outsider like her is able to accomplish. She financed her foundation, but Cambodians run it: she has a career elsewhere, after all.

Like experienced NGO-types, she understands how difficult it is to solve problems discretely: success in de-mining a forest, for instance, produces an increase in poaching and deforestation. Conservation activists must also persuade people to act against their own immediate interests. "We see people come in with immediate cash, which solves a short-term need but is harmful longer-term. What we need to do is make a case for the steady long-term view."

One of her co-producers, Rithy Panh, perhaps Cambodia's best-known film-maker, says, "I'm used to producing when people just show up, shoot and go home. Angelina is not like that. She has a strong, intimate relationship with Cambodia...It gave her a bright view of what people can become."

That may seem odd for a country best known for having survived a genocide, but Cambodia is resilient: travellers will find few more forward-looking, pragmatic, optimistic countries. Four decades after the Khmer Rouge's fall, it is less hesitant to confront its past than it once was. And yet, the subject still makes the government jumpy. When Jolie was trying to get permission to make the film, she told government officials that "this isn't a film about politics. We don't want to bring up the horrors of the past. We want to help move the country forward: it's just a story about a Cambodian family."

Rithy Panh says they plan to take the film to every province (few Cambodians live in villages with movie theatres, and even fewer subscribe to Netflix, which produced the film). Most Cambodians were born after the Khmer Rouge's fall; Rithy Panh says that the film will help them understand a past which people are still reluctant to discuss. "People will watch and they can talk. They can say to their children, 'That's how we lived'...[Jolie] directed the film, but it's a Cambodian story."

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They must have made quite a pair: the statuesque film star from Los Angeles, and the small, slight returnee, cycling together through rural Cambodia. Angelina Jolie was in the country shooting "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider", her first starring role in a blockbuster, though she had won an Oscar the year before for her supporting role in "Girl, Interrupted".

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At what point did Tom Price, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who was forced to resign on Friday after a series of Politico stories on his flights on private-charter and military planes, become too much for Donald Trump? Perhaps it was when Price proved inept at bluffing his way out of a scandal. On Thursday, Price had said, in a statement, "The taxpayers won't pay a dime for my seat on those planes." He would, he said, write a personal check immediately. By then, Politico had uncovered twenty-six private flights that together cost taxpayers more than four hundred thousand dollars. That included a trip between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, and one between D.C. and Nashville (where Price's son lives, coincidentally). But the check Price wrote was only for fifty-one thousand dollars and change, which he had, by some means, decided was his fair "portion." In other words, "won't pay a dime" meant that taxpayers would get about a dime back for every dollar spent. That didn't sound like much of a bargain.

And that was before Politico reported, on Thursday night, that Price had apparently spent another half a million dollars taking military planes. One of his predecessors, Kathleen Sebelius, told Politico that, during her five years in the job, she never flew military aircraft, and took only commercial flights. Sylvia Burwell, another former H.H.S. secretary, seems to have used a military plane only for trips to Cuba. Price used a military plane between Berlin and Geneva, at a cost of sixteen thousand dollars, for an hour-and-a-half trip. Would many people in the business-class section of a commercial flight between those two cities even have known who he was? He would have been more likely to be recognized boarding the private plane that, according to Politico, he booked to take himself and his wife from North Carolina to St. Simons Island, Georgia, where they have some real estate, on a Friday afternoon in August. There was, he explained, a medical conference in the area at which he spoke that Sunday-two days after the private flight.

If the "won't pay a dime" offer was a gambit to keep his job, Price's bid was much too low. Trump, who named Don J. Wright, the director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, as the acting Secretary, never appeared to be behind Price. When asked on Wednesday about Price's flights, the President said, "I will tell you, personally, I'm not happy about it. I am not happy." When Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, was asked if Price's job was secure, she demurred, saying that an inspector general's review was under way; she also said that the President was "not thrilled." Price, meanwhile, kept repeating that all the trips had been approved in advance-which only made the whole story more embarrassing for the Administration. When Bret Baier, of Fox News, asked Price on Thursday if he was worried about losing his job, Price said that he knew that he would have to work to "not only regain the trust of the American people but gain the trust of the Administration and the President."

But what does it mean to have this President's trust? Trump is not a man who has a philosophical problem with private indulgences, or with financial self-dealing. He hired Price even though, as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee's health subcommitee, he had traded in the stocks of companies whose drugs he helped regulate. As with the flights, his defense was that this was normal behavior in Washington. Maybe the offense was Price's presumption, as much as his profligacy. Perhaps the failure of the Obamacare repeal, which Price was supposed to help make the case for, left him with too little in the bank with Trump. Price's lavish spending is particularly notable given that he has pushed for deep cuts in Medicaid and for reducing the H.H.S. budget by nearly a fifth. But those are the President's positions, and his hypocrisies, too. In the end, Trump may have just recognized how easy it was to beat up on Price on this point, and wanted to get in on the action.

It is not as though the plane escapade is out of character for members of this Administration. The Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who is a very wealthy man, asked for a military jet for his honeymoon, though he later withdrew the request. He did take a government plane to Kentucky, something that came to light when his wife, Louise Linton, posted a picture on Instagram of them disembarking. The timing also suggested that Mnuchin and Linton had taken the plane to catch this summer's solar eclipse at the point of totality. Mnuchin brushed that idea away by saying that he wasn't interested in the eclipse because "I'm a New Yorker" (thereby proving that he's not one anymore, really), and because the available eclipse glasses struck him as alarmingly down-market. ("They're like paper glasses. I'm, like, 'I'm worried I'm going to get my eyes burned out,' " he said.) Politico also found that the Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, and Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, took a number of private and military flights. Zinke spent twelve thousand dollars getting from Las Vegas to an airport near his home in Montana. According to Politico, his public business in Montana consisted of stopping by a meeting of Western governors; he was then "the subject of a photo shoot with GQ magazine at Lake McDonald and fished while being interviewed by Outside Magazine." Another one of his flights, in March, was between two Caribbean islands.

"What were you thinking?" Baier asked Price about, specifically, the D.C.-Philadelphia flight. "We had a meeting that morning on the hurricanes," Price said. Had the winds closed the roads to Philadelphia? In any event, that meeting doesn't seem to have yielded much for the millions of American citizens in Puerto Rico. Price also said that the opioid crisis justified a number of his private-plane trips, but the Administration has still not delivered an emergency declaration on the issue, which it promised to do nearly two months ago. There is something shameless about using real crises to justify personal extravagances. When Mnuchin was asked, amid the Price tumult this week, if he would continue to use military planes, he said that he might if it were a matter of "national security." That sounds conservative, except that Mnuchin has said that more than half his time is spent on national security-and that the honeymoon request was " purely about national security "-because the Treasury Department deals with things like sanctions and money laundering. Mnuchin needs to avoid commercial flights, in other words, so that he is available to fight terrorists.

Mnuchin, Zinke, and Pruitt all still have their jobs. One effect of the Price firing, though, may be to create the sort of situation that Trump seems to like best, in which those around him are uncertain about their futures and their statuses. An appealing aspect of such an environment, for Trump, is that it is a hothouse for flattery. Mnuchin spent part of Sunday praising Trump's attacks on the N.F.L. Price's other explanation, to Baier, for his private flights was that he had been caught up in "trying our doggonedest to be able to accomplish the mission, to make certain that we did all we could do to advance the President's agenda." Trump was, he said, "a remarkable leader." In his resignation letter, he said that he had become a "distraction." Maybe, if he sounds sorry enough, Price can get a ride out of Washington on his ex-boss's plane.

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Tom Price Resigns: A Private-Plane Flight Into Trump Oblivion

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At what point did Tom Price, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who was forced to resign on Friday after a series of Politico stories on his flights on private-charter and military planes, become too much for Donald Trump? Perhaps it was when Price proved inept at bluffing his way out of a scandal.

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Present Simple - The Daily Routine of the Queen

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In between emails and calls, I catch up on the news - which normally leads me to writing blogs. I find myself speaking out more and more about the things I cannot accept - like the failed war on drugs, mistreatment of refugees, prejudice against the LGBT community, or the fact that the death penalty still exists despite being proven to not deter crime.

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Present simple revision

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Morning Routine Rap - The Kids' Picture Show (Fun & Educational Learning Video)

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Traditional homes and living no more! Experience the different ways people exist in harmony with one another and their surroundings.

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Amazing, creative houses from all over the world

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management video

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Management tutorial: Pick the right management style | lynda.com

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There's no single perfect way to manage, but there IS a management style that works best for your situation and team. Do you know how to choose the right one? Watch more at http://www.lynda.com/Business-Business-Skills-tutorials/Management-Fundamentals/142070-2.html?utm_campaign=five-manager-tips-g1r5vBJnJAE&utm_medium=viral&utm_source=youtube. The way you manage your projects and employees affects the productivity of your department-and company.