Shadowing Practice: Discussing My Beliefs.. (Nihilism) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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202 sentences
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He would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice, nor return to the colony.
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Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight towards the mountains some 70 kilometers away. But why?
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Alrighty, chat.
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Today we're going to talk about the nihilistic penguin.
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So this is a case of a penguin
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that instead of staying safe with like all of the other nesting penguins
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or traveling to the ocean where it will presumably get food, it looks towards the mountains and takes off.
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And there's something like incredibly noble about this, right?
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So people watch this and they're sort of like, wow, this is like the triumph of the human spirit.
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I think a great example of epic meaning being epic failure is into the wild.
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So this is a story of someone who went into the wilderness and then basically starved to death.
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He started to eat something I think called potato berries, which are, he was so hungry that he found these things that looked like potatoes,
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but are actually toxic when ingested in large quantities.
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And then he ends up sort of dying alone, poisoning himself.
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And this is what we turn into movies.
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And if we want to understand why people are so into this, we got to understand the basic problem that human beings face in today's world.
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We no longer have the capacity for self -determination.
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So the world on a macroscopic level, there's inflation, there's war, there's the existential threat of AI.
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I recently talked to a buddy of mine who's in a PhD or teaches in a PhD program.
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And she was telling me how hard it is for like new PhD graduates to find entry -level jobs
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because they're all being taken by AI.
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So we're like fundamentally like losing control.
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And it's not just the macroscopic forces.
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This is also a situation where I've worked with so many people who can't even control themselves.
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Their day -to -day experience of life is there are
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so many things that I know would be good for me that have a high probability of success.
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If I just did this, everything would be great.
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Simplest example of this is emailing my professor just to let them know, hey, I won't be able to turn in my paper on time.
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Can I have an extension?
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It's like 30 seconds of work.
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And yet, even though there's so much stuff that we could do that would be good for us, we cannot bring ourselves to do it.
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Cue dopamine addiction, social media addiction, video game addiction, porn addiction, take your pick.
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And so what we see with this nihilistic penguin is exactly what we wish we could do.
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The penguin is faced with a situation where there is no chance of success,
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no chance of survival, and yet it is able to muster up the energy to give everything
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that it's got for some impossible task.
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And this is the basic thing that I see in the majority of people today is like, they just can't give life their effort, right?
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This idea of like, give me liberty or give me death, going all in, giving everything you've got, this thing that we love as human beings,
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this thing that we respect as human beings, like the ultimate respect that we give human beings are people who give it their all.
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And I can't even give it 25%.
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And when people watch this video, like the comments are like, this penguin may not survive, but he'll certainly live.
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Ah, what nobility.
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And then here's what's really scary about this is like, when we look at this penguin, a lot of people will say like, there's no purpose.
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There's no triumph of the human spirit or the penguin spirit.
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This is just like a biological error.
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Like there's nothing going on here that like the brain is malfunctioning.
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The penguin is running towards the mountains.
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It'll certainly die there.
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There's like no chance of survival.
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It's not accomplished anything like this triumph of the penguin spirit is just a bug.
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And there's actually good, like, scientific evidence to support this, not just in penguins, but in humans as well.
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And then we get to this really scary thought
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because here we are as human beings striving for meaning and striving for purpose.
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But there's a lot of biological evidence that this crap doesn't exist.
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We're great at wanting things and even making some progress, but we usually struggle with follow -through or have some kind of setback.
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Just let us know what your goals are,
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Check out the link in the description below to see if coaching is right for you.
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A really good example of this is more from the field of psychology, but in something called Terror Management Theory.
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So here's basically what
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Terror Management Theory says.
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So as living organisms, we have one goal, which is survival.
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There's also one thing that is guaranteed when an organism becomes born in the world, which is that it is going to die.
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So everything in our wiring is wired to survive.
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Death is inevitable.
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Now, this is not a problem for most organisms.
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If I'm a bacteria, I have no sense of my mortality.
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If I'm a frog, if I'm a deer, if I'm a lion, we have really no evidence that primates
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or lions or any kinds of organisms are aware that they will die one day, except for humans, because we as humans are different.
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We know that we're going to die, right?
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We have we've reached this cognitive plateau, which creates a problem because here we are wired to survive, but we have the knowledge of certain death.
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So how does an organism fix this fundamentally irreconcilable thing?
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And that's where terror management theory comes in.
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What terror management theory says is that we're human beings.
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We all are afraid of death.
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So organisms are wired for survival and all organisms die.
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So this is not a problem if you're like an amoeba.
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It's not a problem if you're a frog, because frogs don't have a clear sense of their mortality.
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The problem is when you achieve a certain cognitive layer, a cognitive capability, you're wired for survival and you know you're going to die.
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So how does our biology reconcile that we're wired to survive and we're definitely going to die?
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So the main goal, the main game we are trying to win, we will definitely lose.
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And that's where terror management theory basically says that the way
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that we reconcile this fear of death is by like inventing some sense of like immortality.
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The sense of meaning and purpose and self -esteem and all of these like good things in life,
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all of these triumphs of the human spirit are basically biological copium to reconcile against this idea of death.
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We've evolved the delusion of purpose to keep the terror of our certain death,
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which is like runs contrary to our basic instincts of survival at bay.
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And this is what I think is
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so scary about the nihilistic penguin is like all of us
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are sort of sitting in this situation where we wish we could be doing more.
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We want to live life more.
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We want to find purpose.
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We want to find meaning.
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But then on the flip side, there is so much evidence.
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There's no proof of life after death.
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There's no proof of the existence of God.
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Maybe there is.
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You can leave a comment if you want.
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Right.
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We don't know if we're all like all we have proof of is
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that we're like sacks of meat with electrical activity in this particular skull that gives us a sense of purpose and meaning.
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And then we're kind of stuck because it's like, do I live life?
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Do I look for meaning?
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Do I look for purpose?
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Or is it all a scam?
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And this is what's so scary is that the thing that we strive for could be a biological delusion.
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So how do we resolve this?
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What many people will say is like, oh, like life is a journey and you have to like figure out for yourself,
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which is like sort of a great answer, but honestly, it's a really crappy answer.
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It's sort of like a non -answer.
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There is no answer.
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You have to figure it out for yourself.
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Like, you know, reminds me of the hand clapping meme when someone is drowning, where it's like, okay, you have to figure it out yourself,
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but how do you figure it out?
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And this is where I don't have any profound guidance.
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I'm not like enlightened or divine or anything like that.
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The best that I can give you is sort of my take on this.
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So my parents, you know, raised me in a religious kind of household, kind of culturally religious.
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I would go to temple and things like that, but I didn't really like believe this stuff.
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I remember going to a summer camp when I was like 14 years old
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that my mom really wanted me to go to for this religious organization.
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People would say these things about God and, you know, this is what you should do in reincarnation.
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And I was like, where's your proof, bro?
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I started asking questions and I didn't get any sufficient answers.
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And I was like, okay, like these people don't know what they're talking about.
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I was basically an atheist.
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And then I went to India and I started studying meditation.
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And originally the reason I studied meditation was not about spirituality.
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It was like, okay, I'm going to focus on the neuroscience.
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I'm going to focus on improving my physiology, gaining willpower.
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I wanted observable benefits in the real world through meditation.
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So that's why I moved away from Reiki and started to move towards other kinds of meditation,
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which are scientifically valid because I didn't believe any of this crap.
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And then as I started to meditate, I started to have these weird spiritual experiences.
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And I'll just share one with you that I don't know if I've talked about before.
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But the first time I got an interview for medical school and I went home and I meditated and then I prayed,
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which is not something that I do usually.
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So I prayed and I was like, please, universe, God, whatever, whatever the fuck is out there, please let me get accepted to medical school.
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I've been trying really hard.
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I don't know if it's going to work or not.
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My GPA sucks.
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Please, please, please, please, please let me get accepted to medical school.
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And then I had something called a knowing.
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So this is something that I don't talk about publicly, but I talk about with my patients sometimes,
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which is like, sometimes when you meditate, you know things.
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So it's not a belief.
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It's not an understanding.
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It's not even an aha moment
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The best word I can use to describe it is a knowing
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Maybe you've experienced it and you kind of know what i'm talking about if you haven't it sounds like kooky, right?
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So I just knew
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Like it's not like a voice like I didn't hear something I knew
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that I would not get accepted that year and I knew that it would take me two more years
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And it was like I knew that I had to go through this
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And that it was like the price that I had to pay.
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But it was also kind of reassuring because it was like, I knew that things were going to work out in the end,
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but there would be a lot of pain that was necessary to get me to where I want to go.
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And I was sitting there meditating and I had this profound experience of knowing.
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I started crying and I felt both loved and I felt a lot of pity towards myself.
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Since that moment, I've really appreciated this part of the Bible in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus says, please, Lord,
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let this cup pass from me to like somebody else.
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Like, I don't want to do this.
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If there's any way that you can give me a pass, please let me know.
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And that's something that really resonates with me to this day.
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So when you meditate and you do this kind of stuff, like weird stuff happens.
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And then I was in a, then I had a problem because I was like, what the hell is that?
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Right?
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Is this a delusion?
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Is this some kind of psychological copium?
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Like what's going on here?
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And this explains like why I read all of this stuff, right?
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So I have this paper on terror management theory.
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I read a bunch of other papers about the nature of nihilism
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and human meaning and human existence and psychology and neuroscience and all this kind of crap, because I'm looking for answers.
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So I've read probably about 3 ,000 peer -reviewed publications since I started
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Healthy Gamer looking for answers.
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And so through a series of 20 years of meditative experiences and getting married and having kids, I kind of found purpose,
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believed in dharma, believed in karma and all this stuff.
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And I was like, great, I figured it out.
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Now here's the really scary thing, I'm sliding back towards atheism.
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And I got dragged into not theism, but the idea that there is more in this world than is materially visible.
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So I had enough experiences and they kept happening once every like two or three years or so.
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That was really profound.
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And when this happens to you for 20 years and you get like hit with these things, you get dragged into believing there is more.
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The really scary thing is over the last year or two, I'm being dragged in the opposite direction.
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As I learn more about biology, as I learn more about neuroscience, as I learn more about psychology, about things like adaptive misbelief,
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I'm starting to really wonder whether all of the stuff that I learned is just delusions in my brain, that I've evolved.
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The biology of my system is designed to give me copium, is designed to give me something called adaptive misbelief,
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which are things that are not true, but are adaptive for the organism.
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So is all of this stuff that I experienced real, or is it just the highest level of copium?
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I don't know.
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At the end of the day, it's incredibly fascinating, but I don't know.
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And I think this is where y 'all have to tell us, right?
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So do you think this is something noble?
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Do you think that there's some kind of atma or soul that has inhabited the penguin, that the penguin is exploring the frontiers of its environment,
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just like human beings did when they were like thousands of years ago?
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Or is it all just a biological malfunction?
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Discussing My Beliefs.”. This video has 202 sentences and 2598 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:53. The speaker talks fast, about 202 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| penguin noun | /ˈpɛŋ.ɡwɪn/ | Any of several flightless sea birds, of the family Spheniscidae within the order Sphenisciformes, found in the Southern Hemisphere, marked by their usual… |
| organism noun | /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/ | A discrete and complete living thing, such as animal, plant, fungus or microorganism. |
| terror noun | /ˈtɛɹɚ/ | Intense dread, fright, or fear. |
| wire noun | /ˈwaɪɚ/ | Metal formed into a thin, even thread, now usually by being drawn through a hole in a steel die. |
| scary adjective | /ˈskɛə.ɹi/ | Causing fear or anxiety |
| survival noun | /sɚˈvaɪ.vəl/ | The fact or act of surviving; continued existence or life. |
| biological adjective | /ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/ | Of or relating to biology. |
| addiction noun | /əˈdɪkˌʃən/ | A state that is characterized by compulsive drug use or compulsive engagement in rewarding behavior, despite negative consequences. |
| triumph noun | /ˈtɹaɪ̯əmf/ | A conclusive success following an effort, conflict, or confrontation of obstacles; victory; conquest. |
| meditation noun | /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/ | A devotional exercise of, or leading to, contemplation. |
| psychology noun | /saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/ | The study of the human mind. |
| drag verb | /dɹæɡ/ | To pull along a surface or through a medium, sometimes with difficulty. |
| biology noun | /baɪˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/ | The study of all life or living matter. |
| cognitive adjective | /ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/ | Relating to the part of mental functions that deals with logic, as opposed to affective which deals with emotions. |
| profound adjective | /pɹəˈfaʊnd/ | Descending far below the surface; opening or reaching to great depth; deep. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| follow through verb | To execute or complete a commitment. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| take off verb | To remove. |
| work through verb | To get past a difficult or stressful situation by thinking or talking about it. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Today we're going to talk about the nihilistic penguin.
- Can I have an extension?
- Do I look for meaning?
- Do I look for purpose?
- And I was like, where's your proof, bro?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've worked · we've reached · We've evolved |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being taken · is faced · is guaranteed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who went · berries, which are · people who can |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 64 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: atheist /ˈeɪ.θi.ɪst/, atheism /ˈeɪ.θi.ɪ.zəm/, theism /ˈθiː.ɪz.əm/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: addiction /əˈdɪkˌʃən/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/, shortly /ˈʃɔɹtli/, extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, publication /ˌpʌblɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: organism /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/, biological /ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, psychology /saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, biology /baɪˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/
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 penguin, organism, terror.
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.