Pratica di Shadowing: What's The Most Expensive Thing Ever? - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
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If you saved a billion dollars every single day for your entire life,
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you still wouldn't come close to affording the most expensive thing ever.
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But to find out what that is, we'll be going on a journey through the most valuable things in existence, all starting with you.
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The raw ingredients needed to make a human cost only $152,000, but if that's out of budget you could just boil down a pig,
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because chemically you're pretty much the same, they're just slightly tastier.
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Since you're already fully assembled, the government officially values you at 14.2 million.
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And they're lowballing you, because if someone hypothetically harvested all your organs, they could make 45 million.
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You're pretty expensive.
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But to find the most expensive thing ever, we need to look at much costlier items, with the next being a well-known painting that became famous for all the wrong reasons.
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It's 1503 in Italy.
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A rich silk merchant goes up to a painter and says, Could you make me a painting of my wife?
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Sure.
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Give me like, uh, like two weeks.
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Leonardo da Vinci never fully finished that painting, but he actually sold it right before he died to the king of France.
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And it stayed in the bedrooms of powerful guys until ending up at a museum where no one cared.
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Until it got stolen, then found, then taken on a PR campaign, and now this 30-inch plank of wood smeared with colored oil is valued at $1 billion.
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But nature's greatest work of art was found by complete accident.
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Sir Thomas Major Cullinan dug a hole in the ground and filled it with Africans to mine rocks for him.
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And in 1905, a diamond was found.
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And it happened to be the biggest diamond ever.
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colorless, zero imperfections, the most chemically perfect rock produced by the planet.
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And the guy who found it was this guy, the mine's manager.
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He was just going for a stroll
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when he randomly saw it in the wall and he got a nice check for it.
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Then the rock got cut up and shipped in a literal postal box to more white people.
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The total value of this rock is estimated at $2 billion, making it the most expensive luxury item ever thanks to its rarity and prestige.
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But the most expensive land ever is something you would never expect.
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France.
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Owned all this land in 1803, and the United States wanted a little piece of it.
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So they went over to France with 10 million dollars and said, Can we buy a little piece of your land?
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France's leader and conqueror of Europe, Napoleon, was like, How about you pay me 15 million?
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For the whole thing.
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Y-yes?
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The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States at the cost of 4 cents per acre.
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This land today is worth thousands per acre, making it widely considered the single greatest land purchase in history.
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As long as you don't ask the people originally living there.
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But the Louisiana Purchase wasn't the most expensive in history.
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There was a piece of land that cost way more than the entire American Midwest, and it's this.
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This plot of land with a parking lot that cost 3 billion dollars.
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Why did this parking lot cost more than a fifth of the United States?
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Well back then, the Louisiana Purchase was a gamble on an uncharted frontier.
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This modern-day plot of land in the center of one of
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the most valuable financial districts on earth where the government artificially restricts the land supply was just a much safer investment.
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Land is valued for its potential, but the houses we put on top of the land are somehow even more expensive.
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In 2019, a finance guy spent $240 million on a high-altitude hollow brick in New York City that he doesn't even live in.
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All these buildings are half empty
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because the rich people buying them are just treating them as investments
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If they actually needed a place to stay they would just do what the richest guy in India did
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and spend two billion dollars Erecting their own personal monument
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that has a dark secret This is Antilia the most expensive
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private residence in the world valued today at 4.6 billion It
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has a 168 car garage three helipads a snow room
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and the entire thing was built on an orphanage And if you're wondering where the orphans went, the house also has 600 servants.
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There are investments, there are status symbols, but the most expensive house ever is the hardest to truly value.
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Its purchase price?
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21,000 pounds in 1761.
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When King George III bought Buckingham House, it was just a little shack for him to store his wife.
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But after a few hundred years of renovations and millions in state funding, it became a 775 room palace.
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Its value is estimated at 4.9 billion pounds, but this is just a guess based on its prime location and historical significance.
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To find something more valuable than any house, we just need to scale up to the most impressive and disastrous structures in the world.
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Megaprojects The US Interstate Highway System is the most expensive megaproject in history, costing an inflation adjusted $634 billion.
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But it was worth it.
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For every $1 of that cost, it's returned $6 in economic output.
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This project had a clear problem, a clear plan, and a clear result.
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Pretty straightforward.
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In 2021, Saudi Arabia started building a 110-mile line-shaped city made out of Empire State building tall glass mirrors.
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It was supposed to cost $500 billion and be done by 2030.
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But now the date is maybe 2080, and the cost is maybe 8.8 trillion.
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The line will be the most expensive megaproject ever, if it actually gets built. If.
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45 Mount Everest's above all of this is the International Space Station, the most expensive single object ever built by humans.
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But its cost is the least impressive thing about it.
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See legendary megaprojects like the pyramids represent what one civilization could do.
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The ISS represents what every civilization together could do.
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It took hundreds of thousands of experts from all over the world to manufacture parts
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that fit together perfectly when assembled in an empty void that would kill a human in 90 seconds.
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This is the greatest masterpiece ever built by humans, and it shows what can be accomplished when the world comes together.
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But it's way more costly when the world comes apart.
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War is pretty expensive.
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The American Civil War cost so much that to fund it, the government had to invent paper money and the federal income tax.
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God damn it!
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World War I cost so much that Germany was still paying it off until 2010, and World War II was the most expensive conflict in history.
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The full global cost of this war has never been calculated, but it involved every major power devoting a majority of their entire economy to destruction.
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By the end of the war, 70 million were dead, a majority being civilians, and most of the involved countries were in shambles.
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Military spending as a percentage of GDP has never come close to World War 2 level since, and if it ever does, we probably won't be aware.
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War is pretty expensive.
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World War 2 military spending was 25 trillion in today's dollars, but the cost of its destruction is unknown.
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All the things in this video have value for different reasons, but the most expensive thing ever is the most unusual.
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Every single particle has an antiparticle with an opposite charge.
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When they touch, they annihilate and release energy.
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A single gram of antimatter could release more energy than three Hiroshima bombs.
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Bananas.
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Every 75 minutes, an atom in a banana decays, producing one single particle of antimatter.
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But the particle is so small that if you had one banana for every human that has ever existed,
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you would have to wait 97 times the age of the universe to produce one gram of antimatter.
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But that still wouldn't work, because the banana antimatter particles only exist for 125 picoseconds, which is one billionth of a blink.
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The only way to make a meaningful amount of antimatter is
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by firing tiny particles at almost the speed of light into a metal rod, then catching the debris in a vacuum.
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There's currently only one facility that does this, and in its entire existence, it's made less than 10 billionths of a gram of antimatter,
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which would make enough energy to power a light bulb for 4 hours.
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Antimatter could be the most efficient energy source ever, and studying it could answer questions about how the universe was formed.
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But it's so difficult to make that NASA estimates one gram would cost 62.5 trillion.
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But if we ever somehow managed to get a gram of antimatter, wouldn't the most expensive thing be whoever owns the antimatter?
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Which would probably be a country, maybe the United States, which is already worth 180 trillion.
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But then, the Earth is worth 5 quadrillion.
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And now that we're in space, there are asteroids floating around with quintillions worth of gold and platinum, and the sun is made of gas worth 30 no-nillion.
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The universe is filled with an infinite amount of wealth, all of which we got for free.
📺 Stesso Canale
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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questa lezione di conversazione di livello B2 si basa sul video “What's The Most Expensive Thing Ever?”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: expensive, cost, land, antimatter, billion. Questo video contiene 106 frasi e 1526 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 9:28. Chi parla ha un ritmo naturale di circa 161 parole al minuto, vicino a una conversazione quotidiana. Il 84% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese; conviene studiare le altre prima di iniziare.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
Le 15 parole più avanzate del video, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| antimatter sostantivo | /ˈæn.tiˌmæt.ɚ/ | antimateria |
| gram sostantivo | /ˈɡɹæm/ | grammo |
| particle sostantivo | /ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/ | granello, pezzetto |
| banana sostantivo | /bəˈnænə/ | banana, banano |
| billionth sostantivo | /ˈbɪl.i.ənθ/ | miliardesimo |
| chemically avverbio | /ˈkɛm.ɪ.kli/ | chimicamente |
| assemble verbo | /əˈsɛm.bəl/ | assemblare, montare |
| costly aggettivo | /ˈkɒst.li/ | costoso, caro |
| acre sostantivo | /ˈeɪ.kɚ/ | acro |
| civilization sostantivo | /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ | civiltà |
| annihilate verbo | /əˈnaɪ.ə.leɪt/ | annichilire, annientare |
| antiparticle sostantivo | /ˈæntiˌpɑ(ɹ)tɪkəl/ | antiparticella |
| artificially avverbio | artificialmente | |
| colourless aggettivo | /ˈkʌlə(ɹ).ləs/ | incolore |
| conqueror sostantivo | /ˈkɑŋˌkɚ.ɚ/ | conquistatore |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Significato |
|---|---|
| boil down verbo | condensare, ridurre |
| find out verbo | scoprire |
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Frasi condizionali if + frase, will/would + verbo — una condizione e il suo risultato | if it ever does, we probably won't be |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | is valued · was found · is estimated |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | has never been calculated · has never come · has ever existed |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | guy who found · picoseconds, which is · States, which is |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 15 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come you're, wouldn't, they're. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, imperfection /ɪmpɚˈfɛkʃən/, shambles /ˈʃæmbəlz/, renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: antimatter /ˈæn.tiˌmæt.ɚ/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, annihilate /əˈnaɪ.ə.leɪt/, antiparticle /ˈæntiˌpɑ(ɹ)tɪkəl/, imperfection /ɪmpɚˈfɛkʃən/
I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:
- /h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: helipad /ˈhɛ.liˌpæd/, hollow /ˈhɑloʊ/, harvest /ˈhɑɹ.vəst/
- Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: billionth /ˈbɪl.i.ənθ/, annihilate /əˈnaɪ.ə.leɪt/, colourless /ˈkʌlə(ɹ).ləs/, helipad /ˈhɛ.liˌpæd/, orphanage /ˈɔː(ɹ)fənɪd͡ʒ/
- /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: antimatter /ˈæn.tiˌmæt.ɚ/, gram /ˈɡɹæm/, banana /bəˈnænə/, antiparticle /ˈæntiˌpɑ(ɹ)tɪkəl/, helipad /ˈhɛ.liˌpæd/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come antimatter, gram, particle.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.