BBC 英语学习 News Review 我们能活到140岁吗

Will you live to 140? Scientists think you might.

This is news review

from BBC Learning English. I'm Beth, and I'm Phil.

Make sure you watch to the end to learn the vocabulary you need to talk about this story.

And remember, subscribe to our channel, like this video and try

to quiz on our website. Now, the story Humans alive today could live to 140.

That's according to a new study into life expectancy by the University of Georgia.

The researchers say people are living longer because of modern medicine, better public health and the safer world.

But many are concerned about the effects of an aging population.

You ve been looking at the headlines.

What's the vocabulary? We have 5050 golden oldies and groans.

This is news review from BBC, learning English.

Let's have a look at our 1st headline.

Yes, this one is from The Mirror.

Humans born after 1940 have a 5050 chance of living until 125, scientists claim.

So. This headline says that humans born after 1940 have a 5050 chance of reaching 125.

Now we're looking at 5050, 50 and 50 make a hundred, right?

Well, 5050 means 50% should not 100 %.

There's a 50% chance that something happened, or a 50% chance that something else happened.

Here, if you were born after 1940, there is a 50% chance that you will live until 125.

That's according to this headline. Okay, now, it is common to use 5050 before the words chance, like we saw in the headline.

But can you give us some other examples?

Phil OK Maybe you took an exam.

You studied lots and lots for this exam, but it was quite hard.

So you think you had a 5050 chance of passing?

That means there was a 50% chance you passed, but also a 50% chance you failed.

Or maybe you're invited to a party you really want to attend, but you have a headache, so you say there's a 5050 chance that you'll go, OK, let's look at that again.

Let's have our next headline. Yes, this one is from the Sun Golden Oldies.

People could live to be 140 before the centuries over in 19 countries, including the UK, so people could live to 140 before this century is over.

According to this headline, that's the year 2100.

But we are looking at golden oldies.

Now, there's two parts to this phrase, and I know them, both golden and old.

But what's the sense here? Okay?

A golden oldie is someone who's old but still doing well.

Here it's talking about people living a very long life.

But we also use it to talk about people who are successful or healthy in old age.

OK? So that's why it's golden.

That's the adjective of gold, which is a precious metal.

Of course, we don't mean that here.

Golden just means good. But the word oldie, isn't that a bit offensive?

Well, yes, it would be rude to call someone an oldie, but golden oldie is a lot more friendly.

It's used for people who are respected.

Now, beth, it's not just people who we call golden oldies, is it?

No, it's not. It's even more popular to call a song or a film a golden old day, e.g., star Wars.

It's quite old, but it's still really well known and popular today.

Okay, let's look at that again.

Next headline, please. Okay, this one is from the Boston Globe.

Our planet groans.

And you want to live to 150 and go planet hopping.

So this headline is talking about the planet groaning if people live to 150.

Now, I know the word groan, phil it's this Oh, so why is the planet groaning?

You

didn't sound happy when you made that sound better.

And actually the planet wouldn't be happy if there were even more people on it, so it might, metaphorically make that sound a groan.

So basically, this headline is saying that if people live longer, it wouldn't be good for the planet.

Now, in this sense, we can use groan to say that there is too much on something, e.g.

a table might groan if you put too much food on it.

But remember, this is metaphorical. It's not actually making a noise.

Yes, people literally grow make that sound when they're not happy.

So I groaned this morning when my alarm went off.

It was too early, and I groaned because my train was late again.

Let's look at that one more time.

We've had 50, 5050 cent golden all these old and respected groans makes an unhappy sound.

Now, although not everyone will live to 140, the world's population is still growing, and in another news review program, we talked about the population hitting 8 billion.

Click here to watch it now, and make sure you subscribe to our channel so you never MS.

another video. Thanks for joining us.

Bye bye.

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