Shadowing Practice: Chills Will Run Down Your Spine When You Hear this Story - Eric Weinstein - Learn English Speaking with Video
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184 sentences
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You met Jeffrey Epstein once.
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Talk to me about what that's like coming face -to -face with somebody of that caliber.
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Whatever that means.
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Well, one thing is that there is a physiological reaction
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that corresponds to this phrase that the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
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That's a real physiological feeling.
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I don't know whether the hair actually does that, but it's exactly what it feels like.
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You're meeting somebody who is unholy.
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And, you know, one of the most interesting things is
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that he was beckoning into a world that didn't seem to exist but for him as the door, as the doorman.
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I think that's one of the things that freaked out a lot of these rich people is that he,
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he felt rich in a movie sense which is not something that you find among actually rich people what do you mean
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well a lot of very wealthy people don't own an island
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islands are really tough to to maintain i'm obsessed with islands
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and you know in general I have to be obsessed with islands
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that have airports run by other people because they have populations on them.
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But every rich person starts to wonder, can I afford an island or how many jets?
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And if you look at Jeffrey Epstein's wealth, it was beaten, it was like gold beaten into gold foil so
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that it could cover a vast area
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and leave the impression of a solid gold life
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but it was really probably a mid nine figure fortune
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that had been used to buy islands and plays
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which is not what any nine figure person is going to do
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so you had a felt sense an embodied sense of discomfort oh hell yeah and where did that come from
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the fact that he had a lipstick camera pointed at me from an art object
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that he laid a table that was preposterously long
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and thin with a tablecloth made of an american flag to make it look like a coffin
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so that i would spill my coffee on the flag of my own country i mean the fact
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that he looked like a mutant ralph loren with this kind of libricious quality
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and He's talking all of the science and market stuff and nothing adds up.
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And there's an heiress bouncing on his knee to get her boobs to jiggle to see whether it can distract.
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I mean, it's like one of these crazy scenes where nothing about it was normal.
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There was just no, there was no trace of a normal world.
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That sounds like a script from a movie.
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Yeah i mean i think part of it uh john travolta is like putting a gun to your head
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and forcing you to drink and break a code in a minute yeah like
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that part of it and then there was some sort of like you know remember
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that that story the most dangerous game where a man invites you to his island
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so he can hunt you you know this was scary
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and it was it was meant to be scary sounds menacing well i think his product was silence people think
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that his product was sex
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or finance but it was silence i'm pretty sure how do you what's
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that mean if you're scary enough look rich people can get sex
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but they can't necessarily get people to shut up afterwards
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so i my take on it and my take on it instantly was this is not an actual human
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this is a construct of someone's someone has created a fake
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human being called jeffrey epstein who's a mysterious currency trading financier with crazy rules
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so that no one would ever invest with him and i think
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that was to keep people from seeking his investment services i mean he you know he's labeled disgraced financier
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but nobody has a record of trading with him he was sitting there he comes into the meeting
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and he says you know well eric i was just doing some currency trading
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and i i thought about that scene that you sometimes see
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and as a meme with steve buscemi with a skateboard over
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his shoulder hello fellow teenagers hello fellow financial traders exactly like
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so i'm thinking you don't really look like a rich guy who trades in markets
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the thing that's interesting that i'm finding myself intrigued by here is
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It takes a moderate amount of cognitive horsepower to be able to piece together this theater
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that you sat down at deployed in a nefarious, malicious, manipulative way. But it's smart.
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What do you mean it's smart?
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Say more.
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It's not something that could be done by a simple mind.
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you think he did it oh he has a team of manipulators no
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when i say i think he was a construct i literally mean
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that i think he was constructed like fitted with a story
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oh so you think he was a plant no i think he was a construct what's
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that okay you're gonna have to dig into i think jeffrey epstein super genius financier was not a thing
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that existed where did the money come from you're gonna mumble lex wexner okay
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so that's what you mumble but then you know there's this missing fortune of robert maxwell
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and this fortune of jeffrey epstein
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that we don't can't explain are those the same fortune now it's like a conservation of uh of money principle
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that if you have a fortune that's missing and you have a fortune
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that can't be explained and they're connected by Ghislaine Maxwell I don't know I why is it
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that no hedge funds what is it they file form I forget it's 13f there's certain forms
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that you have to file um nobody's ever asked for these
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things where who's his prime broker where somebody gone over the
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prime brokerage uh his what are his trades he would have to move the market
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if he was you know doing a yard of euros
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or swiss francs or who knows what as like a billion um
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that would move the market
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so there's no way you can fake retroactively a hedge fund of immeasurable size
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that trades currencies i don't think he was a currency trader he told me it was a currency trader so
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when you say a construct who constructs who's the builder i
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don't know i would imagine some version of the intelligence community
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you know sometimes somebody's cover gets blown um we have we
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have a very famous unfortunate story of ellie cone with the
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mossad where ellie cone was an egyptian jew who was fitted with a backstory that he was an Argentinian playboy
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who'd made a fortune in Argentina, but was Arabic in origin.
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And then he moves to Damascus and he takes out an apartment where he holds orgies
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and becomes the best friend of Hafez al -Assad, right?
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And so that's an example of a story we know.
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We know how the intelligence communities of the world create people who don't really exist.
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construction of i know that this is just a one uh time thing here
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that you got to see
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but the construction of the coffin looking american flag the spilling
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of the coffee this weird power play thing that's going on
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that seems now that you say
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that uh it wasn't him even pulling his own strings perhaps it makes a lot more sense
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but even that that degree of sophistication i learned this from daniel schmachtenberger we sat down
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and he spent some time with particularly powerful people yeah
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and he told me this really harrowing story of somebody who has both the desire
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and the means to treat themselves like an apex predator against their own kind
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and they said so they broke the fourth wall about this
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and said apex predators don't care about the prey
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but they saw their own kind as prey
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and i asked daniel how does it feel to sit opposite
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somebody who isn't rate limited by the resources who can not only dream to have this
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plus uh have the motivation or lack of virtue
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or integrity to go ahead and consider doing it
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and then has the capacity the assets to be able to enact it sure
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and it's reminding me it's giving me this same something it
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feels like it feels like it's up on the top of
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my head it's giving me some sort of a sense like
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that this was intended to be terrifying it wasn't an accident
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it was intended to be as fascinating as it could possibly be which it was
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and terrifying at the same time and it achieved both it achieved both objectives I mean, I was given an opportunity to meet him again.
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I didn't know what to do.
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The other thing that I just found really weird is that he knew about my research, and it turned out that he was connected to my graduate department at Harvard.
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So he had a connection to the Harvard math department unbeknownst to me.
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I don't know when that began.
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I know two of the professors he was connected through.
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But this is some unholy story.
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It has nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.
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It has to do with whatever this thing was.
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We tripped over a thing.
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We tripped over a structure.
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We named the structure Jeffrey Epstein.
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It must be very unfortunate in some regards for whoever it was,
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if that's true, that was in charge of this construction, that it became that people got t -shirts with his name printed on them.
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This was already going wrong in the early 2000s.
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You see, my sense of this is that this was a pre -internet plan
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that lived into the internet age and couldn't survive contact with the internet age.
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what did the internet bring in
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that didn't allow it to survive eyeballs discussion level of surveillance well you know there's a claim
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that nobody cares about jeffrey epstein because it's this many years later
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and we've all moved on yeah that's completely untrue and we know
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that it's true because if you start talking about jeffrey epstein the the engagement goes up
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so you have these fictions like you know
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that are put out by mainstream media or traditional news desks
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which is nobody cares about that story well
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that you can see from social media that that's not true from the internet
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so the internet is constantly providing an ability to check whether
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or not these claims from inside the structure true
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and jeffrey epstein is an example of what i called an an anti -interesting phenomenon.
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What's that?
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Well, an anti -interesting thing is something that would normally be fascinating.
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Imagine, for example, you had a story where you could get a Pulitzer Prize for breaking it.
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Everybody cares.
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You'd sell papers like hotcakes, blah, blah, blah, and nobody wants to report on it.
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And it's like right there.
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You could just ask the dumbest questions
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and it would like new york times says disgraced financier well
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tell me did you find his prime broker did you find
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the forms did you go to his offices in villard house no nobody does ever
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the story is anti -interesting and it's very different than being uninteresting which would suggest more collusion more coordination
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hello i mean see this is what this is one of
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the most uncomfortable things i think there was a time
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when mostly when people said collusion
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or coordination their presumption was well that's kind of that's pretty
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far out there we now know like post elon musk's 44 billion dollar adventure at twitter
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that there are these coordinating groups coordinating coordinating social media with the intelligence community
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or with the department of homeland security
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or with the state department we now know
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that we're living in an orchestrated court you know curated choreographed world
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and we can't know it officially but we all know it
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if we want to know
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which is hysterical now we have to talk about well are
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you a conspiracy theorist like i i read i read the slack messages I read the emails.
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What are you even talking about now?
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That's drinkag1 .com slash modernwisdom.
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Thank you very much for tuning in.
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If you enjoyed that clip with Eric, then press here for the full -length three -hour episode.
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Go on.
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Press it.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Chills Will Run Down Your Spine When You Hear this Story - Eric Weinstein”. This video has 184 sentences and 2297 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:15. The speaker talks at a natural 151 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| fortune noun | /ˈfɔːtjuːn/ | Destiny, especially favorable. |
| construct verb | /ˈkɑn.stɹʌkt/ | To build or form (something) by assembling parts. |
| currency noun | /ˈkʌɹ.ən.si/ | Money or other items used to facilitate transactions. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| scary adjective | /ˈskɛə.ɹi/ | Causing fear or anxiety |
| coordinate verb | /koʊˈɔɹ.dəˌneɪt/ | To place in the same order or rank. |
| trader noun | /ˈtɹeɪdɚ/ | One who earns a living by trading goods or securities. |
| silence noun | /ˈsaɪ̯ləns/ | The absence of any sound. |
| guarantee noun | /ˌɡæɹ.ənˈtiː/ | Anything that assures a certain outcome. |
| unfortunate adjective | /ʌnˈfɔː.t͡ʃə.nɪt/ | Not favored by fortune. |
| nutrition noun | /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/ | The organic process by which an organism assimilates food and uses it for growth and maintenance. |
| supplement noun | /ˈsʌp.lɪ.mənt/ | Something added; especially, such an addition added to make up for a deficiency. |
| prey noun | /pɹeɪ/ | That which is or may be seized by animals to be devoured. |
| coordination noun | /kəʊˌɔːdɪˈneɪʃən/ | The act of coordinating, making different people or things work together for a goal or effect. |
| broker noun | /ˈbɹoʊkɚ/ | A mediator between a buyer and seller. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| add up verb | To take the sum of; to total. | |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| go over verb | To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze. | |
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| put out verb | To blind (eyes). | |
| shut up | /ʃʌt ʌp/ | Stop talking (usually in the form of making annoying, irrelevant, or false comments, during a period of peace and quiet, or when one is not allowed to talk)… |
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. | |
| take out verb | To remove. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You're meeting somebody who is unholy.
- What do you mean it's smart?
- I didn't know what to do.
- I don't know when that began.
- What are you even talking about now?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be obsessed · was beaten · was meant |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | somebody who is · sense which is · guy who trades |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has created · have been · It's been updated |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 41 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thin /ˈθɪn/, theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/, wealthy /ˈwɛl.θi/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, theorist /ˈθiːəɹəst/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: nutrition /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/, coordination /kəʊˌɔːdɪˈneɪʃən/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, impression /ɪmˈpɹɛʃn̩/, conservation /ˌkɑnsə(ɹ)ˈveɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: coordinate /koʊˈɔɹ.dəˌneɪt/, unfortunate /ʌnˈfɔː.t͡ʃə.nɪt/, coordination /kəʊˌɔːdɪˈneɪʃən/, physiological /ˌfɪz.i.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like fortune, construct, currency.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.