A green book (kind of a short review) ‘A green book’ is an American movie, filmed in 2018, and awarded ‘Oscar’ as the best movie of the year. It tells a story about two men: a bouncer from New-York, Tony, who is a rough, rude and rather ignorant, and a refined, world-class black musician - Dr. Don Shirley. The action of the movie happens in 1960-s (presumably - I’m not good with the history of the States), meaning that black people are in the middle of the fighting for their rights. Dr. Shirley hires Tony as a bodyguard, and they go on a concert tour in southern states of the country, where African-Americans in that period are treated as inferior citizens (BTW, ‘a green book’ is a guide for black travelers in southern states). Initially, Tony agreed to perform this job only because of a decent salary, and he is rather hostile to the employer. Indeed, highly educated, affluent and slightly arrogant musician barely can evoke positive emotions from a low-educated guy that (probably) has been working hard to support his family. As well as that, it seems that Dr. Shirley looks down at Tony, so the beginning of the story doesn’t suggest these two men are able to become friends. However, as the story evolves and they go through various difficulties together, they start to sympathize with each other and fight together against racism and segregation.

a podcast episode One of my favorite podcasts is "Freakonomics radio". Today's podcast's episode is about an economist Al Roth who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his researches on "non-money" markets. Money is working pretty well in most markets, but there are some specific cases where money cannot play the main role. For instance, if someone in the States needs to find a kidney for transplantation, he (or she) can not just buy it because of legal reasons and has to wait an appropriate donor, which takes time and often resulting in many years of low-quality life or even death (12 people die every day while waiting for life-saving transplant). Unfortunately, chances that a spouse is the fitting donor are quite low. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands couples that need donors and spouse from one couple can be an appropriate donor for another one. So, Al Roth designed a sophisticated algorithm and an entire system for facilitating the process of match donors. The system has already saved thousands of lives and will do even more since more people are becoming aware of it and ready to participate. Not only that, nowadays there are more and more incredible generous people who are willing to donate one of their kidneys without a necessity to take something back. By doing that, these people often start a long chain of exchanges and save many lives.

what is the difference between longevity and lifespan? Recently, I read this phrase: "Fasting increases your longevity and lifespan." Could you explain please, what is the difference between "longevity" and "lifespan"?

How to learn How can I learn faster? I read the advice: make more mistakes and don’t care about them. But when I make mistake, I feel really bad. As far as I know, human brain avoids unpleasant emotionals, and procrastination is just way to escape it. This is simple chain: firstly, make mistakes, secondly feel bad, then procrastinate and finally I am in one step away from giving up:)) But at the same time, hundreds of millions people learn English as second language and can speak. What am I missing?

retell articles I know that writing is very good way to improve English and prepare myself for real conversation. But whenever I try to write something, I can’t decide, what would I have to write? In the result, I don’t write anything (of course! Writing is difficult and my brain doesn’t want to work hard. Moves with subtitles is much more interesting and easier.). So, I am going to put articles from the Internet into my own words. Today’s article is about how to make language lessons a habit. The author claims that staying consistent is the most important thing, and I absolutely agree. It’s too easy to give up, especially after another busy day: crazy customers, traffic jams, cleaning the house, etc. And no one can force me to continue learning… The author proposes the decision – make consistent schedule. It worked in the school and at the university, and I think that I should try it. The next advice is “commit to the long-term”. It can help when you (or me) ready to give up. I had better continue learning, otherwise my previous efforts were not worth anything -)