Shadowing Practice: How I Survived Late-Stage Cancer (A Fun Story) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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This is not a sad story.

Going through chemotherapy was one of the most interesting experiences of my life, and my most vivid memory is very funny.

In 2018, I was being treated for stage 3b testicular cancer that had metastasized into a few lymph nodes in my lung.

Very serious business, unfortunately.

Boys and men, check your testicles tonight.

One day, my doctor was about to punish my body with a fresh dose of cisplatin, a cytotoxic hazardous chemotherapy agent,

one of the absolutely worst ones.

Controlled medical violence.

The villain and hero of this story.

My buddy cisplatin came in a green, opaque 2 -liter bag directly from the fridge.

The doctor connected the infusion to the central venous access in my chest, a tube that led directly to my heart.

But then… A short moment of inattention and disaster struck.

A single drop of the icy liquid escaped.

She panicked for a second, checking frantically if the liquid had landed on her doubly -gloved hands or her skin.

But luckily, it had missed.

I had to laugh at the scene.

My doctor, who I trusted deeply, was terrified of a single drop of cisplatin.

And I was about to have a whole bag flushed directly into my heart

so it would spread to every last nook and cranny of my body.

And then again tomorrow.

Yeah, sure, let's go.

But seriously, how absurd is it that this stuff is medicine?

So let me tell you the story of a revolutionary chemical

that was almost discarded as a failure because it was too brutal, too toxic, too dangerous.

A molecule that punched me in the face and wrecked my body, and then saved my life and millions more.

Cisplatin, the super toxic wonder drug.

Cisplatin is a heavy metal compound, a tiny molecule with a platinum atom at its center that looks like a quadcopter.

Its success story, like many medical breakthroughs, began with an accident.

In the 1960s, physicist Barnett Rosenberg wanted to see if he could manipulate living beings with electricity and learn interesting things,

because why not?

Well, it turns out electricity did nothing, but instead he found something huge.

The bacteria in a solution with platinum electrodes turned into spaghetti, 300 times longer, but way more important, they stopped multiplying.

It turned out platinum molecules did that.

At the time, chemotherapy was gaining popularity as a treatment for cancer.

Any chemical that stopped cell division was a potential candidate.

Rosenberg felt like he should inject cisplatin into mice with cancer to see what happened, because why not?

And, oh boy, did things happen.

While high doses turned out to be deadly to the poor rodents, On lower doses, their tumors shrank, didn't come back, and the mice survived.

Until they were cut open to make sure, of course.

But it would be a pretty rocky path from mice to human medical trials.

Many experts were skeptical.

Heavy metals are notoriously toxic and not worth the risk.

But Rosenberg kept pushing and lobbying, at one point calling drug developers weakly until cisplatin was finally tested in humans.

And, well, things went horribly.

Cisplatin was used on a wide variety of patients with different cancer types.

Not only did the heavy metal not really slow down most cancers, it kind of killed some patients.

In early studies, up to 75 % of patients got severe kidney damage.

It's hard to prove if that's what killed them, though, as they were already dying of cancer.

And then, an astonishing study rocked the medical world.

11 patients with advanced testicular cancer, the most common cancer among young men, received cisplatin.

Six responded somewhat and three went into complete remission.

In more human words, they were cured.

This was unheard of.

Until this moment, metastatic testicular cancer was super deadly.

95 % of all men who got it died.

Three out of 11 recoveries, from the very late stage no less, was a medical breakthrough.

Another one made cisplatin finally bearable.

A new protocol of massive over -hydration.

Basically, the patient would be flooded with liters and liters of fluid to flush the cisplatin out of the kidneys.

If you're wondering, yes, this means that you pee all day and night.

The game for test it.

Cancer flipped.

Today it has a 95 % survival rate, even when it's spread widely across the body already.

And platinum drugs are a backbone of a large fraction of chemotherapies of all kinds.

Okay, but what does cisplatin actually do that makes it so effective against testicular cancer in particular?

What cisplatin actually does inside your body?

Cisplatin can be injected into a central venous access, a sort of hub that can be inserted easily and leads straight into the heart,

which means that it's immediately and rapidly distributed.

Because cisplatin is served ice cold, you feel it spread all over your body, cooling you from the inside.

Pretty weird sensation.

The immediate effect is nothing much.

In the first few hours, about 90 % of the cisplatin molecule binds to the plasma of your blood and is for now inactive.

Over the next few days, it's slowly being released from the plasma and showers your body with a constant barrage of poison.

All while your kidneys are working at maximum capacity to remove it from your body as quickly as they can

so you can pee it out.

The 10 % cisplatin that doesn't bind to plasma passes from your blood into your tissue and organs, where it finally enters your cells.

The membranes of cells are well -protected fortresses that carefully monitor who's allowed in, but they can't stop cisplatin.

It simply diffuses into the cell, with some of it even actively hauled in.

Inside the cell, it sheds its chloride ions and connects to water molecules, like a grenade ejecting its safety.

Cisplatin is now chemically active.

Again, this should trigger emergency protocols, but thanks to its tininess, the poison escapes detection and passes through another line of defense,

the nucleus, home of your DNA.

Here, it finally causes catastrophic damage.

Your DNA is a 2 -meter -long zipper, bundled up neatly and orderly.

Cisplatin is like chewing gum that gets inside zipper teeth and hardens, clumping up parts that don't belong together.

This is an emergency because it critically interrupts the cell's ability to read and copy DNA.

Your cell is now on an urgent timer.

Fix this or die.

Repair molecules spring into action but the chaos and damage is severe and very hard to fix.

Cells that don't need to divide quickly, say in your muscles, can slow down their metabolism, stop replicating and start repairing.

Bit by bit they fix the genetic damage, removing the cisplatin.

They'll mostly be fine.

But there are cells that need to replicate quickly.

The cells that make your hair grow, the lining of your gut, the taste buds of your tongue,

your bone marrow that makes red and white blood cells.

All of them are factories producing new cells constantly and they now have a fundamental problem.

Their internal replication clock doesn't stop.

Their DNA needs to be copied, and right now, this is not possible.

So if the damage is too heavy, apoptosis is triggered.

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Programmed cell death.

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If a cell thinks it's damaged too much and destroys itself, this means it's working as intended.

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It sacrifices itself to protect the larger whole.

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And now, this is happening all over your body.

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Billions of cells start dying, creating all the side effects of chemotherapy therapy.

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Which is the point, because your cancer cells are extremely not ready for any of this.

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As we have explained in detail before, cancer cells are broken cells.

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In a nutshell, their self -destruction button is broken, they are really bad at fixing their own genetic damage and they literally can't slow down.

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The reason cisplatin is so incredibly effective against testicular cancer is

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because it has an unusual vulnerability that other cancer types don't have.

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Most testicular cancer cells are born from germ cells.

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Specialists made for the reproduction of the whole gigantic organism.

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Reproduction is the whole point for all living things so the responsibility is huge.

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For germ cells the integrity of their DNA is a critical priority.

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Even small mistakes could introduce genetic damage into the bloodline and weaken it.

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So they constantly scan themselves and tolerate almost no errors.

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When cisplatin wrecks their DNA, testicular cancer cells still remember their original purpose of protecting genetic integrity and destroy themselves,

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thinking they're preventing damaged material being passed on to the next generation.

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Your tumors collapse no matter where in the body cancer cells have escaped to.

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And this is what happened inside my body.

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Over the span of just six weeks, the chemo completely eliminated a cancer that would have been a death sentence a few decades earlier.

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The lymph nodes full of cancer were completely dissolved.

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A bit of scar tissue remains in my lung.

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The side effects were not fun, and I'll spare you the details.

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But I want you to know that just in the last few years, drugs against chemo side effects have improved massively.

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They made the experience bearable.

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The anti -nausea drugs worked so well, I didn't have to vomit once.

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If you ever have to go through the same treatment for testicular cancer, please know that you can do it.

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Just take it day by day.

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My cancer has not returned since.

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Final thoughts At no point of this entire ordeal did I hate my cancer cells.

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It wasn't their fault that they were broken, and they didn't know better.

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But it also didn't matter.

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Cancer never wins because it can't live without you.

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Either you both die, or you live.

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Eight years have passed since my meeting with Cisplatin.

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Human brains determine your happiness by comparing your life to your past.

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I remember one specific day in early fall, sitting in a cafe in Munich.

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My hair was coming back, and my sense of taste had finally fully returned.

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Feeling the sun while having the most delicious croissant and cappuccino of my life, waiting for a close friend to join me.

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A sensation of immense gratitude filled my body and has remained with me ever since.

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I'm not grateful for having had cancer, not even a little, But I'm grateful for how it changed my outlook on life.

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For me, the best way to process this extreme emotional whiplash was to learn more about my body.

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This is why Kurzgesagt is obsessed with disease videos.

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Why I wrote a book about the immune system.

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To make disease and medicine less mysterious.

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To learn how we're inching relentlessly towards a world where we will be able to cure all diseases.

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Cisplatin did cure me.

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It would have been nice if it could have done so without kicking me in the face repeatedly.

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But oh well, it did save my life.

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This strange, wonderful, horrible substance.

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Thanks, Sisplatin.

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I hope we never meet again.

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Kurzgesagt isn't just a YouTube channel.

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It's a complex company with multiple departments, an online shop, accounting, logistics, dozens of employees, and a whole lot of unsexy paperwork.

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Even in less eventful times, that's a lot to juggle.

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That's why we recommend Adu to anyone trying to turn their dream into a business.

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Adu is an all -in -one management software that helps you run your business day -to -day.

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We know how crazy things can get when you're just trying to make something.

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And with over 70 user -friendly apps, Adu lets you handle everything from accounting and inventory to website and human resources, all on a single platform.

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For example, you can build a website in just a few minutes.

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Simply choose your business type and positioning, pick your colors and choose a theme, and you're live.

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Plus, all apps are fully integrated.

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Let's take a concrete example.

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If you add e -commerce to your site, every sale automatically generates an invoice and updates your inventory in real time.

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You can use one app for free because your first Adoo app is free forever with unlimited support and hosting included.

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And when your business grows, Adoo grows with you.

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Just add more apps as you need them.

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Access to all applications starts at just $24 .90 a month.

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Spend less time on the tedious stuff and more time on what you love.

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Try it today.

171

Every year we celebrate innovation, ingenuity and life itself with our human era calendar.

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This time we honor the dark tales and legends that helped our ancestors make sense of the world before science.

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Twelve breathtaking artworks of humanity's most curious legends will inspire you throughout the year

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and take you on a journey through forgotten worlds and human imagination.

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It's an eye -catcher for any room and a conversation starter, but also a statement for science and human craft.

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The calendar is our most cherished release every year.

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By buying it and other products from our shop, you fund our independent channels and help us release videos for free for everyone.

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Thank you so much.

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Get your human era calendar from the Kurzgesagt shop.

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You want to listen to the beautiful soundtrack without my annoying voice?

181

Hmm, well it's up to you.

182

Just select the audio track Interlingua down here, and watch the video again as a music video.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “How I Survived Late-Stage Cancer”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: cisplatin, cancer, cell, testicular. This video has 154 sentences and 2199 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:36. The speaker talks at a natural 151 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 79% 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
chemotherapy noun	/ˌkiːməʊˈθɛɹəpi/	Any chemical treatment intended to be therapeutic with respect to a disease state.
molecule noun	/ˈmɑ.lɪ.kjul/	The smallest particle of a specific element or compound that retains the chemical properties of that element or compound; two or more atoms held together by…
genetic adjective	/d͡ʒəˈnɛt.ɪk/	Relating to genetics or genes.
platinum noun	/ˈplæt.ɪn.əm/	The chemical element with atomic number 78 and symbol Pt; a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, silverish-white transition metal of great value.
cure verb	/kjɔː/	To restore to health.
mouse noun	/maʊs/	Any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail.
toxic adjective	/ˈtɒk.sɪk/	Having a chemical nature that is harmful to health or lethal if consumed or otherwise entering into the body in sufficient quantities.
dose noun	/ˈdəʊ̯s/	A measured portion of medicine taken at any one time.
kidney noun	/ˈkɪdni/	An organ in the body that filters the blood, producing urine.
plasma noun	/ˈplæzmə/	A state of matter consisting of partially ionized gas and electrons.
legend noun	/ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ənd/	The life story of a saint (such stories are often embellished, but any kind is called a legend).
electricity noun	/ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/	Originally, a property of amber and certain other nonconducting substances to attract lightweight material when rubbed, or the cause of this property; now…
liquid noun	/ˈlɪk.wɪd/	A substance that is flowing, and keeping no shape, such as water; a substance of which the molecules, while not tending to separate from one another like those…
grateful adjective	/ˈɡɹeɪtf(ə)l/	Of a person or their actions, feelings, etc.: expressing gratitude or appreciation; appreciative, thankful.
tissue noun	/ˈtɪʃ.(j)u/	Thin, woven, gauzelike fabric.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
slow down verb	To decelerate.
come back verb	To return to a place.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
turn out verb	To end up; to result.
pass through verb	To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another.

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	being treated · were cut · was finally tested
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have explained · have escaped · have improved

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 18 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, didn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: chemotherapy /ˌkiːməʊˈθɛɹəpi/, breakthrough /ˈbɹeɪk.θɹuː/, breathtaking /ˈbɹɛθˌteɪ.kɪŋ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: tissue /ˈtɪʃ.(j)u/, sensation /sɛnˈseɪʃən/, flush /ˈflʌʃ/, reproduction /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌkʃən/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/
Long words — get the stress right: chemotherapy /ˌkiːməʊˈθɛɹəpi/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, integrity /ɪnˈtɛɡɹəti/, reproduction /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌkʃən/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/

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 chemotherapy, molecule, genetic.

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 technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: How I Survived Late-Stage Cancer (A Fun Story) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?