Shadowing Practice: The Last Human – A Glimpse Into The Far Future - Learn English Speaking with Video
Elige un modo de práctica
Cada modo abre una sala de práctica a pantalla completa.
133 oraciones
Si las oraciones son demasiado cortas o largas, haz clic en Editar para ajustarlas.
1
The future of humanity seems insecure.
2
Rapid climate change, political division, our greed and failings make it hard to look at our species with a lot of optimism
3
and so many people think our end is in sight.
4
But humans have always thought they lived in the end times.
5
Every generation assumes they're important enough to witness the apocalypse and then life just goes on.
6
This is a problem because it leads to short-term thinking
7
and prevents us from creating the best world for ourselves and our descendants.
8
What makes this worse is that we may actually be living at an extremely critical moment in human history.
9
To understand why, let's look at the temporal window of humanity and ask,
10
when will the last human be born and how many people will there ever be?
11
These sorts of estimates come with a lot of uncertainties, so please take them with a gigantic grain of salt.
12
To get a sense of how many people there will be, let's see how many people have already lived.
13
Modern humans arose some 200,000 years ago.
14
They were uniquely good at making tools, telling stories, thinking abstractly, planning and working together in large groups beyond their close family.
15
Still, there were not that many of us.
16
Supplices of food were scarce, survival was hard, life expectancy was low.
17
It took us 150,000 years to grow to a population of 2 million.
18
Improvements were gradual and eventually led to the agricultural revolution, arguably the biggest change in our history.
19
This was when our numbers really started growing.
20
It took 10,000 more years to get to 300 million.
21
But that increase was dwarfed by the industrial revolution.
22
1800 there were a billion of us.
23
The human population doubled in just 120 years and then again in 50.
24
Today we number around 8 billion.
25
In total, over the last 200,000 years, about 117 billion humans were born and lived and 109 billion also died.
26
Which means that about 7% of all humans that ever lived are alive right now.
27
As many as were born in the first 150,000 years of human history.
28
Every minute, 270 babies join the party.
29
But there aren't just more people, never before have we been as healthy and well-off, or lived longer.
30
With growing living standards, our birth rates collapsed.
31
The UN estimates that around the year 2100, we will hit our population peak and there will be 125 million people born each year.
32
It's pretty unlikely that birth rates will stay stable forever, but let's pretend to make our thought experiment simpler.
33
How many people there will be in the future depends on when our species will die out.
34
And here, we find a lot of uncertainties.
35
We are able to destroy ourselves through our own inventions, but we are also able to find solutions to avert catastrophic risk.
36
We can change the direction of planet killer asteroids, but we've also invented nuclear weapons.
37
We discovered antibiotics, but also carry diseases across the globe in a matter of days.
38
Our industrial system gives us an incredible standard of living, but also change the atmosphere in the process.
39
It's very hard to say if human ingenuity will prolong or shorten our species lifespan.
40
If things go badly, our end could come suddenly.
41
But if we manage to avoid that, we could conceivably stick around for a long time.
42
So every day we don't destroy ourselves may mean life for an unfathomable number of humans.
43
How many people are we talking about?
44
It depends on how far our species is going to expand.
45
Scenario 1.
46
Humans will never leave Earth.
47
If we stay on our home planet, a good metric to look at is the extinction rate of animals that we get from the fossil record.
48
The average lifespan of mammalian species is in the region of 1 million years, with some surviving up to 10 million years.
49
Our close relative Homo erectus survived for about 1.9 million years.
50
Let's be conservative and assume that humans will survive for a million years, which leaves us 800,000 more years to dawdle away.
51
Assuming a stable birth rate of 125 million people each year, this means there are roughly 100 trillion humans waiting to be born.
52
850 times greater than the number of people that have ever lived.
53
This would make everybody alive today only 0.008% of all people that will ever live.
54
Think about where this leaves you.
55
Instead of putting you at the end of the chaotic mess that was our past, it would mean you live at the very beginning of something big.
56
The start of the human story rather than the end.
57
Doesn't this feel incredibly different?
58
And now, consider that this may be an extremely pessimistic estimate.
59
If we match the survival time of the most successful mammals, then our future numbers rise to 1.2 quadrillion people that have yet to be born.
60
And even this seems far from our potential.
61
As the Sun slowly gets hotter and brighter, Earth will remain habitable for about 500 million years,
62
giving so many more potential people the chance to become actual people.
63
And now, let's begin to think big.
64
Scenario 2.
65
Humans will leave Earth.
66
We went from humans worshipping the Moon to humans walking on it, so who knows how much further we can go.
67
If we don't die out within the next few hundred years, ideas that seem outlandish right now become serious considerations.
68
If we believe that we have a chance of surviving for maybe millions of years, then we could expand onto the other planets or into our own artificial worlds.
69
Life needs three things, a surface, resources and energy.
70
Our Sun provides energy for billions of years, and there is so much water and material floating in the asteroid
71
and Kuiper belt that we could sustain many times our current population.
72
Instead of living on planets, we could decide to construct our own artificial worlds and habitats.
73
With resources and energy so abundant, we could try out different types of society and ways of life.
74
An interconnected civilization spanning the solar system would create the basis of existence for an absurd number of individuals, orders of magnitude more than if we stick to Earth,
75
even if we only existed for a few million years.
76
This future doesn't have to be grim and dark as science fiction likes to paint it.
77
With quadrillions of people waiting to be born, we will have billions of doctors working on curing cancer, billions of problem solvers working on ending poverty,
78
and billions of video game developers making life fun.
79
humans may actually mean more progress.
80
Another upside of leaving Earth and spreading out is
81
that it becomes much harder for us to become extinct as you need a solar system-wide catastrophe to catch everybody.
82
So aside from nearby supernovae or gamma-ray bursts, humanity would be relatively safe from extinction, maybe for billions of years.
83
If we managed to survive for that long, slow evolution or genetic engineering might split us into multiple species,
84
or we might intentionally keep ourselves the same as we are now.
85
So to account for that, we'll just talk about people from now on, instead of humans.
86
Ok, now let's think really big.
87
Scenario 3.
88
People leave the solar system.
89
As enormous as the solar system is, it is just one star system among billions in the Milky Way.
90
If future people can colonize say 100 billion stars and live there for 10 billion years, with each generating 100 million births per year,
91
then we can expect something like a 100 octillion lives to be lived in the future.
92
This is a one with 29 zeros.
93
100,000 trillion trillion.
94
We can spin this up as much as we like.
95
The Andromeda galaxy will merge with the Milky Way, adding another trillion stars for us to settle.
96
Dwarfs stay active for up to a trillion years, and future civilizations might even find energy for their habitats around black holes.
97
A sufficiently advanced civilization of our descendants might even try to reach other galaxy groups.
98
While these numbers are mind-blowing, they may underestimate the number of unborn people by many orders of magnitude.
99
If we divide the total energy available in a galaxy by the average energy needs of a single person, then we get a tridicillion potential lives.
100
A million, trillion, trillion, trillion potential people.
101
Hopefully what's become evident is that if we don't kill ourselves in the next few centuries or millennia, almost all humans that will ever exist will live in the future.
102
Which brings us back to us in the present.
103
We exist at a high point in human history, with incredible possibilities at our grasp.
104
Technological, environmental, and societal.
105
What we do matters for all the people who do not exist yet.
106
So while it's not en vogue to think about humanity's long-term future with optimism, or to think about it at all, maybe this has given you a bit of perspective.
107
If we screw up the present, so many people may never come to exist.
108
quadrillions of unborn humans are at our mercy.
109
Even if we go with fairly conservative estimates, the unborn are by far the largest group of people and the most disenfranchised.
110
Somebody who might be born in a thousand or even a million years deeply depends on us today for their existence.
111
This is why it's important to think about the distant future and why our presence is so crucial, why it matters what we do today.
112
One day the last human will be born.
113
We don't know when. But
114
if we change our perspective from us living at the end of the human story to us living at the very beginning, we can not only build a wonderful world for us and for them,
115
but also for countless numbers of others.
116
Huge announcement!
117
We're launching Kurzgesagt in six more languages.
118
Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Hindi, Japanese and Korean on top of our English, German and Spanish channels.
119
Bringing new perspectives and a love for science to as many people as possible.
120
Especially to some languages that are underserved because it's not profitable to translate to.
121
If enough people watch our new channels, we can hopefully run them for many years to come.
122
This is where we need your help.
123
It takes us a lot of time, effort and yes, money to translate our videos properly and run so many channels.
124
So to make this sustainable, please help us spread the word.
125
If you're native in one of these languages, share our videos on social media and tell your friends and family.
126
Make people in your native language aware that it exists.
127
This multi-language expansion is supported by Open Philanthropy, an organization that tries to do as much good as possible.
128
They want to help us spread awareness of science and ideas for how you can help humanity thrive.
129
Their values align with ours in many fundamental ways, so we are going to work with them on more projects in the future.
130
So please help us spread the word.
131
And thank you for watching.
132
We'll see
133
you next time.
Descargar app
Todo lo que necesitas para hablar con fluidez
Pronunciación con IAEvalúa cada oración
Práctica de IPADomina cada sonido
VocabularioConstruye tu banco de palabras
Juego de vocabularioAprende mientras juegas
📺 Mismo canal
B229
Your Skeleton Is Electric
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B234
Your Brain Peaked at Birth
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1116
Could Humans Evolve Flight?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C135
Why Ebola Keeps Coming Back
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2135
Can Earth Run Out of Water?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C110
Would You Upload Your Mind?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B264
What the Flu Does to Your Body
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2559
What If You Never Slept?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
The Rise of the Machines – Why Automation is Different this Time
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
Your Brain on Magic Mushrooms
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
The Most Complex Language in the World
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B25
Let’s Steal a New Moon
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2759
How Stress Changes Your Brain
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B23
What Happens AFTER Nuclear War?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Awesome! 3/3
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B252
Can We Stop the Extinction?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B26
YOU Own the Moon. And Mars. And Venus.
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2209
The True Cost of War
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B23
What Is Life? Is Death Real?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1149
How Antidepressants Work
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
✨ Recomendar Video
C19
65 oraciones
What Happened Before History? Human Origins
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B23
12 oraciones
Bill Gates - Population - Vaccines
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C113
61 oraciones
The Last Star in the Universe – Red Dwarfs Explained
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C113
5 oraciones
Kevin Surace: 1 Minute Ted Talk
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
59 oraciones
Cambridge Ielts 16 Reading test 2 Passage 2
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
C13
404 oraciones
We're 99.9% sure this pattern is true, but no one can prove it
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C15
224 oraciones
We're Not Ready for Biocomputing
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B23
622 oraciones
Do we need more kids? A research showdown.
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
53 oraciones
LAST MAN (2022) | Short Film
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C19
65 oraciones
Benedict Cumberbatch reads Kurt Vonnegut's letter to the future
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
22 oraciones
How The Universe Could Destroy Life On Earth
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C110
168 oraciones
The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Esta lección de conversación de nivel C1 se basa en el vídeo “The Last Human – A Glimpse Into The Far Future”. Las palabras que más se repiten: billion, born, trillion, lived. Este vídeo tiene 133 frases y 1840 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 12:30. El hablante mantiene un ritmo constante de unas 147 palabras por minuto, cómodo para el shadowing. El 86 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| civilization sustantivo | /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ | civilización |
| descendant sustantivo | /dɪˈsɛndənt/ | descendiente |
| lifespan sustantivo | /ˈlaɪf.spæn/ | ciclo de vida, ciclo vital |
| asteroid sustantivo | /ˈæst(ə)ɹɔɪd/ | asteroide, planetoide |
| optimism sustantivo | /ˈɑptɪmɪzəm/ | optimismo |
| extinction sustantivo | /ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən/ | extinción |
| translate verbo | /tɹænzˈleɪt/ | traducir, trasladar |
| magnitude sustantivo | /ˈmæɡnɪtjuːd/ | magnitud |
| uncertainty sustantivo | /ʌnˈsɜːtənti/ | incertidumbre, incerteza |
| abstractly adverbio | /æbˈstɹækt.li/ | abstractamente |
| colonize verbo | /ˈkɑlənaɪz/ | colonizar |
| dawdle verbo | /ˈdɔdl̩/ | pelotearse |
| habitable adjetivo | /ˈhæbɪtəbəl/ | habitable |
| ingenuity sustantivo | /ˌɪnd͡ʒəˈn(j)uːəti/ | ingenuidad |
| mammal sustantivo | /ˈmæməl/ | mamífero |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Significado |
|---|---|
| die out verbo | extinguirse |
| try out verbo | probar, ensayar |
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | be born · was dwarfed · were born |
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | have always thought · have already lived · we've also invented |
| Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa | people who do · Somebody who might |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 13 contracciones y formas reducidas, como don't, doesn't, we'll. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “th”: unfathomable /ˌʌnˈfæð(ə)məb(ə)l/, thrive /θɹajv/
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, extinction /ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən/, outlandish /ˌaʊtˈlændɪʃ/, shorten /ˈʃɔɹtn̩/, sufficiently /səˈfɪʃəntli/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, optimism /ˈɑptɪmɪzəm/, uncertainty /ʌnˈsɜːtənti/, disenfranchise /ˌdɪs.ɪnˈfɹæn.t͡ʃaɪz/, expectancy /ɪkˈspɛktənsi/
Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:
- s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: scarce /ˈskɛɚs/, span /spæn/
- /v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, supernova /ˌsuː.pə(ɹ)ˈnəʊ.və/, underserved /ˌʌndəˈsɜːvd/, invent /ɪnˈvɛnt/, vogue /vəʊɡ/
- /z/ — sonora, no /s/: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, optimism /ˈɑptɪmɪzəm/, translate /tɹænzˈleɪt/, colonize /ˈkɑlənaɪz/, disenfranchise /ˌdɪs.ɪnˈfɹæn.t͡ʃaɪz/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Haz shadowing frase por frase a velocidad normal, repitiendo cada una hasta que tu ritmo coincida con el del hablante.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como civilization, descendant, lifespan.
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.