Shadowing Practice: Evolution explains kindness—even when it kills us | Paul Bloom - Learn English Speaking with Video
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There's an incorrect view of evolution, which is that evolution would drive animals to be selfish,
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to be uncaring, to be unloving towards others.
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And any sort of kindness you see, either in the animal kingdom or for humans, is a mystery from an evolutionary standpoint.
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But that's just wrong.
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We now know that there's all sorts of ways in which kindness can evolve through natural selection.
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One way is kin selection.
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Basically, to the extent other creatures share your genes, it is beneficial for you to help them, to share food with them,
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to save them if they're in trouble.
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In any sort of community where everybody's sort of closely related, it's to the animal's benefit to be kind.
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A second mechanism is called reciprocal altruism.
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What this means is that if you're in constant contact with somebody else,
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it can evolve a sort of practical kindness where you help them and they help you in return.
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And so long as that deal goes back and forth, from a whole-blooded genetic standpoint, it's the sort of thing that could sustain and survive.
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So it's no mystery for a Darwinian how we can have a sort of circle of kindness
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that contains those in our family and slightly greater those we are in constant interaction with.
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But our kindness is bigger than that.
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Stand on a city street, look confused.
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If you pick the right city, some people come up to you and say, are you lost?
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Can I give you a hand?
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We help strangers.
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We take care of strangers.
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We worry about people not merely in our community, but in places thousands of miles away.
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Many people, many of you, give your resources, your money, your time to help people you aren't related to.
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Maybe you aren't in your community, but people who need help.
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There's one puzzle that often comes up, which I think is less of a puzzle than people think it is.
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And this concerns cases where people say risked your life for a stranger, even sacrificed your life for a stranger.
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People say, oh, that's not Darwinian, that's not evolutionary, because we should want to reproduce our own genes
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and why would you destroy your own body to help that body of a stranger who doesn't share your same genes?
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But I think the thing to keep in mind is what we've evolved isn't behaviors.
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behaviors, single behaviors that we choose are not the product of evolution.
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What we've evolved is brains, brains that think certain ways and have certain inclinations.
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We've evolved the capacity to think of things that evolution could have never anticipated.
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We're in a world of middle-sized objects like trees and rocks, but we can think of subatomic particles or galaxies.
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Similarly, we've evolved a morality that's close and that's narrow, that's small.
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But we're smart enough to have come to the principle of impartiality, some version of the golden rule,
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some notion that from the standpoint of the universe one person's life is just as valuable as another.
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From a gut level an injustice done to me is so much worse than an injustice for people I've never heard of.
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But when I think about it I can appreciate that at the level of principles there's no difference.
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The injustice done far away is just as severe injustice as if it were done to me.
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It makes us realize that selfishness and parochialness and racism and sexism and all sorts of biases like that are not inevitable.
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We have the capacity to override them.
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I think this is the lesson we learn when we see one person being kind to another,
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when we see tremendous examples of extraordinary altruism throughout the world.
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It teaches us that this is not beyond our biological capacity.
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And armed with this mode of and partial thinking, we've transformed our moral universe.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Evolution explains kindness—even when it kills us”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: kindness, stranger, injustice, evolved, evolution. This video has 30 sentences and 652 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:07. The speaker talks at a natural 158 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| evolve verb | /ɪˈvɑlv/ | To move (something) in regular procession through a system. |
| kindness noun | /ˈkaɪnd.nəs/ | The state of being kind. |
| evolution noun | /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/ | A manoeuvre of troops or ships. |
| injustice noun | /ɪnˈd͡ʒʌs.tɪs/ | Absence of justice; unjustice. |
| gene noun | /d͡ʒiːn/ | A theoretical unit of heredity of living organisms which may take several values and (in principle) predetermines a precise trait of an organism's form… |
| standpoint noun | /ˈstændpɔɪnt/ | A point of view; a perspective. |
| mystery noun | /ˈmɪs.t(ə.)ɹi/ | Something secret or unexplainable; an unknown. |
| principle noun | /ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/ | A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief. |
| stranger noun | /ˈstɹeɪnd͡ʒɚ/ | A person whom one does not know; a person who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance. |
| puzzle noun | /ˈpʌzəl/ | The state of feeling confused or mystified because one cannot understand a complicated matter, a problem, etc.; bewilderment, confusion; (countable) often in… |
| evolutionary adjective | /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/ | Of or relating to the biological theory of evolution. |
| practical adjective | /ˈpɹæk.tɪ.kəl/ | Relating to, or based on, practice or action rather than theory or hypothesis. |
| confused adjective | /kənˈfjuːzd/ | unable to think clearly or understand |
| extent noun | /ɪkˈstɛnt/ | A range of values or locations. |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. |
| come up to verb | To approach. |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. |
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 | we've evolved · I've never heard · we've transformed |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · were done |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | evolution, which is · people who need |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 14 contractions and reduced forms, such as we've, aren't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, notion /ˈnoʊʃən/, selfish /ˈsɛlf.ɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, extraordinary /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/, biological /ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, similarly /ˈsɪm.ə.lə.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 evolve, kindness, evolution.
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.