2025-01-22
39 分钟Foreign.
Hi everybody.
My name is Shauna, and this is the American English Podcast.
My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories.
I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting.
Let's do it.
A few weeks ago, my daughters and I were cuddled up in bed with blankets pulled up to our chests and a nightlight shining on a new book we'd borrowed from the library.
It was called the Girl who Rode a Shark and Other Stories of Daring Women by Elisa Ross.
Every page of that book was filled with short stories of women who did incredible things, from Teuta, a pirate queen who resisted ancient Rome, to Ada Blackjack, a castaway who survived on an Arctic island by herself.
The stories were unbelievable.
Then I landed on a story about Diana Nyad, the woman who swam from Cuba to Florida.
The idea sucked me in.
My first thought was, well, are Cuba and Florida that close?
I mean, close enough to swim to?
The short answer is no.
The shortest distance from Cuba to key west is 103 miles, which in the ocean can take anywhere from 50 to 70 hours of swimming.
And that's if the strong Gulf Stream isn't working too hard against you.
Diana swam it in roughly 53 hours.
53 hours?
How in the world?