Shadowing Practice: Evolution FAILS in the Human Body - Learn English Speaking with Video
Les maken...
1
Hey smart people, Joe here.
2
Bodies. We’ve all got ‘em.
3
Couldn’t live without ‘em!
4
But why are they so dumb and unreliable?!
5
I don’t know if it’s because I just got over a sinus infection or because my wife just had knee surgery, or maybe it’s just me getting older and hurting more… I’M A MILLENNIAL!! but I have been noticing lately that the human body… it’s got a lot of problems.
6
And this video is a big long rant about a bunch of ‘em.
7
I mean don’t get me wrong, humans are really awesome.
8
Look at all we can do!
9
It’s just that, there’s so much about our bodies that is flawed.
10
Like, so many of our parts wear down or are easy to break, and others look like Ikea furniture would look if you accidentally threw away the instructions before putting it together… in that it basically functions, but you’re pretty sure something’s backwards and somehow you have like three of those little twisty things left over?!
11
The great American poet John Mayer once said “your body is a wonderland”, but I think he meant “your body is a blunderland”.
12
From eyes that don’t work right and backs that ache to needy diets and extra bones… what I’m saying is… sure, our bodies look cool–especially if they’re wearing an awesome shirt–but who the heck designed these things?!
13
Well, no one did.
14
We’ll get back to that, but first, instead of talking about how great we are, let’s talk about some of our critical weaknesses.
15
The first example… it’s staring right at ya.
16
I mean, I don’t wear these things to look cool and smart.
17
I mean, they do make me look cool and smart, but I wear them because I can’t see!
18
Like nearly half of Americans and Europeans or nearly 7 in 10 people in Asian countries, my peepers don’t peep right.
19
I’ve worn glasses since elementary school.
20
Space shuttle.
21
Nice! Very on brand, younger me.
22
Anyway, before the invention of corrective lenses a few centuries ago, people who couldn’t see just… couldn’t see.
23
And back in our prehistoric hunter-gatherer days, that could’ve meant starvation and death.
24
Bad eyes, empty stomachs, you lose.
25
Thing is, even if you don’t wear glasses, you have eye problems.
26
While looking at this image, cover your left eye, and look at the dot while keeping your face centered in front of the screen.
27
Slowly move closer or farther from your screen and the cross will disappear.
28
Did it work?
29
Around 30 cm or 12 inches away works for me.
30
Pretty weird huh?
31
You can try it with the other eye too.
32
Cover your right one, stare at the cross, and move until the dot disappears.
33
That’s your blind spot, and every animal with a backbone has a blind spot in each eye because of how the eye is built.
34
The light sensitive layer inside your eye is filled with tiny cells called photoreceptors.
35
They’re like little microphones.
36
One end turn photons of light into electrical signals, and the other end’s a wire that carries the signal away.
37
Except our retinas are built so the cables are pointed towards the light, like talking into the back of a microphone.
38
The cables from all those little microphones have to pass through a hole in the retina to get to the brain.
39
And where that hole is, we have a blind spot.
40
We just don’t usually notice it because our brain lies to us and fills in the image.
41
Why do we have it?
42
Because at some point way back in evolution, when our ancestors started to evolve the first light-sensitive tissues, that’s just the direction the cells were facing.
43
And later, when those patches morphed into actual eyes, it was too late.
44
The backwards pattern was already set.
45
Evolution can’t suddenly flip a whole eye around.
46
It can only make tweaks to what’s already there.
47
But cephalopods–like octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish–they don’t have a blind spot.
48
This branch of animals evolved eyes completely on their own, and in early octopus ancestors, the cables on all their microphone-shaped light-sensing cells pointed toward the back, so their retina is unbroken.
49
Am I saying that cephalopods have better eyes than us?
50
Mmm, yes. Point, cephalopods.
51
And another point for having eight legs.
52
Ok, enough about eyes!
53
Why is there so much empty space in our skulls?
54
You know I can take you off the set any time right?
55
Watch it, globie.
56
When we breathe, air enters our nose and passes through four chambers called sinuses where the air gets warmed up, humidified, and filtered by mucous membranes.
57
The mucus then drains ure is plenty in YOUR skullout and back down your throat to your stomach.
58
Mmm, gross.
59
That works pretty well for the sinuses on top, they have gravity to help them.
60
But the big ones behind your cheeks?
61
They drain up.
62
Up! And that difficult drainage is why humans get so many head colds and sinus infections.
63
You know who doesn’t get sinus infections?
64
Dogs. Dogs and other animals that rely mainly on smell tend to have elongated nasal cavities, which drain down and back with gravity, the correct way.
65
But as our ancestors became more dependent on vision and less dependent on smell, our snouts got smushed up into our flat faces, and now we have tiny noses and get sick all the time.
66
If you accidentally eat some air, no biggie.
67
You can just burp it out.
68
But if you breathe in your food, you’re gonna choke and maybe die.
69
What’s up with that?
70
It comes down to the fact that like most other vertebrates, we breathe and eat through the same throat hole, another one of evolution’s amazing bright ideas.
71
But I once saw a bird swallow a fish as big as its head.
72
It did not die.
73
If I did that, I would die.
74
But snakes and birds can swallow huge meals whole because their nostrils connect directly to their breathing parts without going through the throat.
75
Like an alternate breathing system.
76
But in every mammal, we’ve just got the one tube, and all that separates the digesting part from the breathing part is a little flap called the epiglottis.
77
Epiglottis open?
78
You’re breathing.
79
Epiglottis closed, you can eat or drink.
80
Mess up that order, here’s how to do the Heimlich maneuver.
81
Now, lots of animals can choke.
82
Even whales can choke if fish get stuck in their blowholes.
83
Yes, that actually happens.
84
But humans are especially prone to choking because our voice box, or larynx, has moved up so high in our throats.
85
I tell ya, these throats were made for talkin’.
86
Some languages even make vocal sounds using the epiglottis, like in some African languages.
87
That higher voice box has squished up the swallowing parts of our throat so there’s not a lot of room for error.
88
But on the plus side, we can yodel.
89
So maybe we can call this bad evolutionary trait a tie.
90
So. Walking upright.
91
Pros: We can run, kick a soccer ball, dunk a basketball, do sports things with all the other balls, ride a pogo stick, surf, ice skate, dance, and dance dance revolution.
92
Cons: So many unique and painful ways to injure ourselves.
93
Some of your body’s joints are beautiful.
94
I’m a huge fan of the jaw.
95
And the hip?
96
That ball, that socket.
97
It’s like Michaelangelo sculpted it.
98
But the human knee and ankle look like an elementary school art project held together by rubber bands.
99
Back when our ancestors walked on all fours, they had twice as many limbs and muscles to carry their weight.
100
But when they transitioned to walking on two legs, it put a lot more stress on our knees and ankles.
101
When you quickly change direction while running, the anterior cruciate ligament is basically the only thing holding the two halves of your leg together.
102
It has basically no blood vessels, and if you tear it, the only way to fix it is surgery, which we only invented like a hundred years ago.
103
I have personally known at least a dozen people who have torn their ACL.
104
If we were hunter gatherers or ancient hominids, every one of them would probably be dead.
105
I don’t even know why I’m laughing, that’s horrible.
106
And right under that is the Achilles tendon.
107
Since we walk on the balls of our feet, that tendon takes basically all the force of the lower leg like a big fleshy rubber band.
108
If you tear that one, you also can’t walk.
109
It’s maybe the most important tendon in your body, so of course it sits there on the back of our leg completely exposed, waiting for the person behind us at the grocery store to ram it with their cart or your mythical arch nemesis to hit you with a poison arrow.
110
This is not how you’d engineer bipedal legs from the ground up.
111
This is way too many weak spots for any crucial structural system.
112
But when the assignment was “turn an animal that walks on all fours into a fancy dancing ape on two legs”, evolution had to work with what it was given.
113
Body parts are one thing, but evolution has messed up our insides too.
114
Like, we are really poorly cut out for eating.
115
Pretty much every animal needs the same nutrients in order to function.
116
Stuff like amino acids, vitamins, a few minerals.
117
But most animals make most of these things for themselves.
118
But we have to get a literal grocery list of nutrients from our diet.
119
Take “vitamins”.
120
That’s what we call essential macronutrients that we have to get from our diet to survive.
121
Vitamin C, for example.
122
More than half a dozen proteins need vitamin C around to do their job.
123
Without it, your bones get brittle, your tissue breaks down, you just bleed.
124
Oh, and your teeth fall out.
125
Scurvy is no fun.
126
Pretty important stuff, this Vitamin C!
127
So of course, we can’t make any.
128
At all. We have to get every bit we need from our diet.
129
Almost every animal on Earth makes their own Vitamin C. My dog never has to drink orange juice.
130
Neither does a cow, or a cat.
131
But I do. Strangely, humans have all the genes necessary to make vitamin C in our DNA.
132
Yet somewhere in our evolutionary history, in some ancestor of all primates, one piece of the vitamin C machinery mutated and broke, and now we have to eat it or die, along with all these.
133
Of the 20 amino acids we need to build proteins, our bodies only make 11.
134
Many animals can make all twenty, but we have to get almost half from our diet.
135
Needing to have ready sources of these essential nutrients has placed restrictions on where and how our species could live, at least before we could walk into any pharmacy and get them all in pill form.
136
Pretty much everywhere you look, it seems like our body has room for evolutionary improvement.
137
Our teeth? Most people grow a third set of molars–wisdom teeth–that won’t fit in their mouth and have to be removed.
138
Do I need to mention the fact that a male’s gamete producing organs sit dangerously exposed outside the body?
139
And the pelvis?
140
Most women can’t deliver a baby without medical assistance because the human head is so large.
141
Who came up with all these bad ideas?
142
The answer, of course, is no one.
143
Thanks to science, we know that the human body isn’t engineered, or designed.
144
It’s evolved.
145
Everything is the way it is because it got that way, making tiny tweaks to what was there before.
146
That means that our backs hurt because we’re walking upright with a spine that used to be horizontal.
147
We get fooled and we fool ourselves because our brains evolved in a different world than the one we invented in the past few decades.
148
Sure, our bodies are full of parts that barely get the job done, full of things that could be built way better.
149
And that can be frustrating, sometimes even painful.
150
But nobody, and I literally mean “no body”, is perfect.
151
Because surviving isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being good enough.
152
It’s about being imperfect in the perfect way.
153
If you’re watching this today, then you are good enough.
154
Because you’re a survivor of a 4 billion year story.
155
Our flaws make us who we are, because evolution and natural selection made us who we are.
156
Flaws and all.
157
Stay curious.
📺 Zelfde Kanaal
B27
Why don't you remember being a baby?
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B24
Mars Used to Be Blue... Then Something Happened
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
Scientists Finally Figured Out What Love Is For
American AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
Why Is Blue So Rare In Nature?
American AccentDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B28
How Habits Can Change Your Life (and Your Brain)
American AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C15
The Strange Science of Why We Dream
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
The Unbelievable Science of How We Read
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B25 Weird Involuntary Behaviors Explained!
American AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1How Feathered Dinosaurs Accidentally Invented Flight (We Tested It!)
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
✨ Aanbevolen Video
B23
114 zinnen
why doesn’t life feel the same anymore?
American AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
25 zinnen
How to Maintain Eye Health
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
57 zinnen
Why We’re Scared of Things That Look Too Human (Uncanny Valley)
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
396 zinnen
Training W/ Real Life Vampire (Anti-aging)
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
226 zinnen
Why Pandas Are Impressively Bad at Existing
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
67 zinnen
Elon Musk on Education
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
193 zinnen
What Did Ancient Humans Actually Do All Day?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B23
668 zinnen
Why Translation Is Destroying Your English Fluency 🔥 | Think & Speak English Faster
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B28
32 zinnen
How Is Your Phone Changing You?
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
70 zinnen
Sexist Design - Living in a World Designed for the Reference Man - BTN High
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1112
15 zinnen
Could Humans Evolve Flight?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B23
91 zinnen
7 Signs You Might Be Less Intelligent Than You Think
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les
Deze video bevat 157 zinnen en 2099 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 11:46. De spreker praat in een natuurlijk tempo van ongeveer 178 woorden per minuut, dicht bij een alledaags gesprek. Slechts 80% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden, dus de woordenschat is pittig.
Belangrijke woorden in deze video
15 minder gangbare woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:
- vitamin /ˈvɪt.ə.mɪn/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — vitamine. Any of a specific group of organic compounds essential in small quantities for healthy human growth, metabolism, development, and body function. They are found…
- breathe /bɹiːð/ (werkwoord) — ademen, ademhalen. To draw air into (inhale), and expel air from (exhale), the lungs in order to extract oxygen and excrete waste gases.
- throat /ˈθɹoʊt/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — keel. The front part of the neck.
- evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — evolutie. A manoeuvre of troops or ships.
- evolve /ɪˈvɑlv/ (werkwoord) — ontwikkelen. To move (something) in regular procession through a system.
- choke /t͡ʃoʊk/ (werkwoord) — verstikken, stikken. To be unable to breathe because of obstruction of the windpipe (for instance food or other objects that go down the wrong way, or fumes or particles in the air…
- microphone /ˈmaɪ.kɹəˌfəʊn/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — microfoon. A device (transducer) used to convert sound waves into a varying electric current; normally fed into an amplifier and either recorded or transmitted over radio.
- tear /tɛɹ/ (werkwoord) — scheuren. To rend (a solid material) by holding or restraining in two places and pulling apart, whether intentionally or not; to destroy or separate.
- infection /ɪnˈfɛkʃən/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — infectie, infectering. The act or process of infecting.
- knee /ni/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — knie. In humans, the joint or the region of the joint in the middle part of the leg between the thigh and the shank.
- drain /dɹiːn/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — afvoer. A conduit allowing liquid to flow out of an otherwise contained volume; a plughole (UK)
- evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/ (bijvoeglijk naamwoord) — evolutionair. Of or relating to the biological theory of evolution.
- nutrient /ˈnuː.tɹi.ənt/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — voedingsstof, nutriënt. A source of nourishment, such as food, that can be metabolized by an organism to give energy and build tissue.
- bone /boʊn/ (zelfstandig naamwoord) — been. A composite material consisting largely of calcium phosphate and collagen and making up the skeleton of most vertebrates.
- sensitive /ˈsɛn.sɪt.ɪv/ (bijvoeglijk naamwoord) — gevoelig, prikkelbaar. Having the faculty of sensation; pertaining to the senses.
Phrasal verbs die je zult horen
- mess up (werkwoord) — verrommelen, in de war brengen. To make a mess of; to untidy, disorder, soil, or muss.
- break down (werkwoord) — stukgaan, kapot gaan. To stop functioning.
- come up with (werkwoord) — bedenken, verzinnen. To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
- fall out (werkwoord) — in onmin raken. To come out of something by falling.
- fill in (werkwoord) — vervangen. To fill; to replace material that is absent or has been removed.
- throw away (werkwoord) — weggooien. To discard (trash, garbage, or the like), to toss out, to put in the trash.
Uitspraak om op te letten
De spreker gebruikt 40 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals don't, can't, you're. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.
- De “th”-klanken: breathe /bɹiːð/, throat /ˈθɹoʊt/
- De klanken “sh” en “zh”: evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, infection /ɪnˈfɛkʃən/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, tissue /ˈtɪʃ.(j)u/, crucial /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/
- Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, elementary /ˌɛləˈmɛntəɹi/, accidentally /ˌæk.sɪˈdɛnt(ə)li/, electrical /ɪˈlɛktɹɪkəl/
Zo oefen je met deze video
- Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
- Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
- Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als vitamin, breathe, throat.
Grammatica in deze video
De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:
| Structuur | In de video |
|---|---|
| Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet | is flawed · is built · is filled |
| Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt | I've worn · could've meant · has moved |
| Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding | people who couldn · people who have |
Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?
Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.