Shadowing Practice: ENGLISH SPEECH | ELON MUSK: Think Big & Dream Even Bigger (English Subtitles) - Learn English Speaking with Video

Thank you.

I'd like to thank you for leaving crazy person out of the description.

So, I thought, I was trying to think what is the most useful thing that I could

What can I say that could actually be helpful or useful to you in the future?

and I thought perhaps tell the story of how I sort of came to be here.

How did some of these things happen?

And maybe there's some lessons there, because I often find myself wondering how did this happen.

So, When I was young, I I didn't really know what I was going to do when I got older.

People kept asking me and But then eventually I thought that the idea of inventing things would be really cool.

and The reason I thought that was because

I read a quote from Othsy Clark which said that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And that's really true.

If you go back say 300 years, The things that we take for granted today, you'd be burned at the stake for.

being able to fly.

That's crazy.

Being able to see over long distances,

being able to communicate, having effectively with the internet a group mind of sorts,

and having access to all the world's information, instantly from almost anywhere on the earth, This is stuff that really would be magic,

that would be considered magic in times past.

I think it actually goes beyond that, because there are many things that we take for granted today.

that weren't even imagined.

in times past.

They weren't even in the realm of magic.

So it actually goes beyond that.

So I thought, well, If I can do Some of those things, basically, if I can advance technology, then that's like magic, and that would be really cool.

And-- The...

I was at sort of a slight existential crisis, because I was trying to figure out What does it all mean?

What's the purpose of things?

I came to the conclusion that If we can advance the the knowledge of the world,

if we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness,

then we're better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened and And that's really the only way forward.

So, Thank you. So I studied

physics and business

because I figured in order to do a lot of these things you need to know how the universe works

and you need to know how how the economy works.

And you also need to be able to bring a lot of people together to work with you to create something.

Because it's very difficult to do something as an individual if it's a significant technology. So I...

I originally came out to California to try to figure out how to improve the energy density of electric vehicles,

basically to try to figure out if there was an advanced capacitor that could serve as an alternative to batteries.

And that was in '95.

Thank you.

That's also when the internet started to happen.

And I thought, well, I can either pursue this technology where Success may not be one of the possible outcomes.

which is always tricky.

Um, or participate in the internet and be part of it.

So I decided to drop out Now, fortunately, we're past graduation, so I can't be accused of recommending that to you.

And-- Um.

So, Did some internet stuff.

Um. Did a few things.

here and there.

One of which was PayPal.

And I think maybe it's helpful to say one of the things

that was important then in the creation of PayPal was kind of how it started,

because initially, the initial thought was with PayPal was to create an agglomeration of financial services.

So, to have one place where all your financial services needs would be seamlessly integrated and work smoothly.

And then we had like a little feature which was to do email payments.

And whenever we'd show the system off to someone, We'd show the hard part,

which was the-- the agglomeration of financial services which is quite difficult to put together nobody was interested.

Then we'd show people email payments which was actually quite easy, and everybody was interested.

This is-- I think it's important to take feedback from your environment.

You know, you want to be as closed loop as possible. and

So we focus on email payments and really try to make

that work and that's what really got things to take off and Um.

But if we hadn't responded to what people said, then we're probably would not have been successful.

So it's important to look for things like that.

and focus on them when you see them and get correct your prior assumptions.

And then, what else? for it.

going from PayPal I thought,

well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity.

It really wasn't from the perspective of what's the rancor best way to make money, which is okay.

It was really what I think is going to most affect the future of humanity.

I think the biggest terrestrial problem we've got is sustainable energy, but the production and consumption of energy in a sustainable manner.

If we don't solve that this century, we're in deep trouble.

And then the other one being the extension of life beyond Earth to make life multi -planetary, And so,

That's the basis for The latter is the basis for SpaceX and the former is the basis for Tesla and SolarCity.

And when I started SpaceX, it actually, Initially, I thought that Well, there's no way one could possibly start a rocket company.

I wasn't that crazy.

Um, But then I thought, well, what is a way to increase NASA's budget.

That was actually my initial goal.

So I thought, well, if we could do a low cost mission to Mars,

something called Mars Oasis, which would land seeds with dehydrated nutrient gel, and you hydrate them upon landing,

and then you'd have this great-- sort of money shot of green plants and a red background

And the public tends to respond to precedents and superlatives.

And this would be the first life on Mars, the furthest that life's ever traveled as far as we know.

And I thought, well, that would get people really and therefore increase NASA's budget.

So obviously, the financial outcome from such a mission would probably be zero.

So anything better than that was on the upside.

So I actually went to Russia three times to look at buying refurbished ICBM.

Because that was the best deal.

And I can tell you it was very weird going there in late 2001, 2002.

going to the Russian rocket forces and saying I'd like to buy two of your biggest rockets.

But you can keep the nuke.

That's a lot more.

And that was 10 years ago, I guess, so...

I'm They thought I was crazy, but I did have money, so that was okay.

And after making several trips to Russia,

I came to the conclusion that that actually my initial impression was wrong about Because my initial thought was,

well, that there's not enough will to explore and expand beyond Earth and have a Mars base and that kind of thing.

But I can't conclusion that that was wrong.

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In fact, there's plenty of will, particularly in the United States, because the United States is a nation of explorers, of people who came here from from other parts of the world.

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I think the United States is really a distillation of the spirit of human exploration.

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So, But if people think it's impossible, then or it's going to completely break the federal budget, then they're not going to do it.

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- Thank you.

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So-- But after my third trip, I said, OK, What we really need to do here is try to solve the space transport problem.

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and started SpaceX.

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And this was against the advice of pretty much everyone I talked to.

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One friend made me sit down and watch a bunch of videos of rockets blowing up.

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Let me tell you, he wasn't far wrong.

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It was tough going there in the beginning, because I'd never built anything physical.

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I mean, I'd built like.. little model rockets as a kid and that kind of thing, but I never had a company that built any physical

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So I had to figure out how to do all these things and bring together the right team of people.

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and And so we did all that and then failed three times.

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It was tough.

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Tough going.

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Um, Because the thing about a rocket is that the passing grade is 100%.

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You don't get to actually test the rocket in the real environment that it's going to be in.

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So I think the best analogy for rocket engineering is

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It's like if you want to create a really complicated bit of software, you can't run the software as an integrated whole, and you can't run it on the computer it's intended to run on,

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But the first time you put it all together and run it on that computer, it must run with no bugs.

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That's basically the essence of it.

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So we missed the mark there.

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Um, The first launch, I was picking up bits of rocket near the launch site, it was a bit .

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Um, and We learnt with each successive flight and were able to with Eventually with the fourth flight in 2008,

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reach orbit, Um.

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And that was also with the last bit of money that we had.

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So-- Thank goodness that that happened.

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I think the saying is fourth time's the charm.

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So we got the Falcon 1 tool, but Okay.

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and then I began to scale that up to the Falcon 9, which is but an order of magnitude more a thrust,

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it's around a million pounds of thrust.

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And We managed to get that to orbit and then I developed Dragon spacecraft.

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which recently was able to dock and return to Earth from the space station.

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Um... That was-- Thanks.

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That was a white knuckled event.

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So, yeah, it's a huge relief.

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Still can't quite believe it actually happened.

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But there's a lot more that must happen beyond this in order for humanity to become a spacefaring civilization and ultimately

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a multi -planet species.

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And that's something I think it's vitally important and I hope...

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that some of you will participate in that, either at SpaceX or at other companies, because it's just really one of the the most important things for the preservation and extension of consciousness.

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It's worth noting, as I'm sure people are aware, the Earth has been around for 4 billion years.

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And Civilization, at least in terms of writing, has been around for 10 ,000 years, and that's being generous.

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So it's it's really It's somewhat of a tenuous existence that civilization and consciousness as we know it has been on Earth.

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And I think, I'm actually, I'm actually fairly optimistic about the future of Earth, so I don't want to I don't want people to have the wrong impression that I think we're all about to die.

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Um...

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I think things will most likely be OK for a long time on Earth.

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But not for sure, but most likely.

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But even if it's sort of 99 % likely, a 1 % chance is still worth

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spending a fair bit of effort to ensure that we have who have backed up the biosphere, planetary redundancy, if you will.

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And so I think it's really quite important.

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Amen.

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And in order to do that, There's a breakthrough that needs to occur, which is to create a rapidly and completely reusable transport system to Mars.

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which is one of those things that's right on the borderline of of if impossible.

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But that's sort of the thing that we're we're going to try to achieve that with with SpaceX.

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And then on the Tesla front, the goal with Tesla was really to try to show what electric cars can do, because people had the wrong impression.

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We had to change people's perception of an electric vehicle, because You think of it as something that was slow and Ugly and had low range,

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kind of like a golf cart.

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So that's why we created the Tesla Roadster to show that you can be fast, attractive and long range.

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And it's amazing how even though you can show that something works on paper, you know, and the calculations are very clear,

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until you actually have the physical object and they can drive it, it doesn't really sink in for people.

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So that I think is something worth noting.

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If you're going to create a company, the first thing you should try to do is create a working prototype.

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Everything looks great on PowerPoint.

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You can make anything work on PowerPoint.

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But if you have an actual demonstration article, even if it's in primitive form, that's much, much more effective for convincing people.

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So, we made the Tesla Roadster and now we're coming out soon with the Model S, which is a four -door sedan.

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Because after we made the Tesla Roadster, people said, oh, sure.

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Sure.

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We always knew you could make a car like that.

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It's an expensive car.

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And it's low volume, and it's small, and all that.

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But you couldn't make a real car.

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Like, OK, fine.

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We've got to make that, too.

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So that's coming out soon.

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and Yeah, so that's That's the...

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I think where things are, and hopefully there are some lessons to be drawn there.

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but I think the overarching point I want to make is that you guys are the magicians of the 21st century.

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You know, don't like anything to hold you back.

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Imagination is the limit.

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And Let's go out there and create some magic.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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you

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.

Shadowing Practice: ENGLISH SPEECH | ELON MUSK: Think Big & Dream Even Bigger (English Subtitles) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?