Shadowing Practice: How To Become Dangerously Self-Educated With AI (for free) - Learn English Speaking with Video

You can now teach yourself anything completely for free.

That's the power of AI.

You can get dangerously self-educated and build your own personal university right about now.

I've been a monk in training, an MIT grad, a tech CEO, and I've seen this one pattern.

The people who unlock real intelligence are almost always relentless and curious and self-driven.

So today, I'm giving you that precise learning system that nobody has shared so far.

I call it the University in a Box.

Genius name, right?

But it's a way to use AI to become a self-taught expert at almost anything.

You'll be able to learn how to build your own personal curriculum from A to Z.

So let's get going.

A few months ago, I was in Los Angeles.

and I had to give a keynote to a class of 120 incoming interns at one of the largest media companies.

And they were all from top universities and schools, very sharp, very hungry, very young.

And I opened my speech with a simple question.

I said, how many of you use AI for at least 30 minutes a day.

And I was expecting each and every hand to go up.

But I was thoroughly surprised.

Less than maybe 30 hands went up.

And then I asked how many use Instagram for more than 30 minutes a day.

Every single hand went up.

Think about the tragedy hidden in this trend.

Here's another surprising finding many of the world-class universities including Harvard

and MIT Stanford IIT Oxford LSE many others they have put

many of their entire courses online the entire semester worth of classes online for free

and 88% of all users who start those courses don't finish them there's almost nine out of ten of us

and it gets even better now because with ai today you're holding

a multi-million dollar university in the same pocket with instagram the

most powerful intelligence engine in human history is waiting for you

and you don't even have to pay 250 000 for that education

and that's the system we want to build today

and i don't mean some new notion template

or anything instead we'll go through five radical roles

that you can give ai one easy way to remember these

five rules is to arrange them by their first letters it spells alter

which kind of fits right because these roles alter the way you think, the way you learn, the way you behave, and the way you graduate.

So let's build them one at a time.

First day in school, you need an advisor.

That's where we begin.

To understand that concept a little better, let's go to Liverpool.

In the 60s, there was a city full of shipyards and docks,

and there were three teenagers who started a band called Johnny and the Moondogs.

They didn't know then that they would change the world of music forever.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison eventually went on to become the Beatles.

But they were lost for a while.

They got turned down by every label in London until they found their creative advisor, the fifth Beatle, George Martin.

He became the music producer for the band and And he was able to hear what the four of them couldn't.

And the band went on to create some of the most loved music ever made.

And this story keeps repeating since the dawn of humanity.

If you don't have Aristotle, you don't get Alexander the Great.

Every great Michael Jordan needs a coach like Phil Jackson.

Because good advisors study you.

And they build a personalized path for you.

If today, all the universities started offering customized courseware for each and every student, they would all go bankrupt.

If you go to a gym and every person walking in gets a personal trainer, they'll never make money.

But here's why things are changing dramatically for all of us.

Today's AI can become your perfect academic advisor when you're ready to learn anything.

And how do you make AI a great advisor?

it for five decisions.

First, destination.

What do you want to know or do at the end when you're done learning it?

Second, baseline.

Where are you on this topic right now?

Basic level, intermediate, nothing.

Third, sequencing.

What order do you learn this topic in?

That's really important.

And fourth, cut list.

What should you ignore for now?

And fifth and final, milestones.

What output from you will show that you mastered the topic and you're ready to move on?

Let's make this concrete.

Let's say if you wanted to learn business finance, obviously you're not going to give a prompt saying, teach me corporate finance.

Instead, type ACT as my elite academic advisor.

We want to build a six-week custom course.

I want to learn about how finance works in business

so I can understand how to use those skills to build my own business.

First, interview me to find my weaknesses, my baseline.

I want to define the destination, build the sequence, list what I should ignore for now,

and also give me weekly milestones so I can prove that I'm ready to move on.

Ask me up to five questions for each of these five steps, one question at a time.

Now, the exact prompt is not that important.

In fact, you can ask AI to make you an even better prompt than the one I just gave you.

The goal is to leverage AI to create the right personal curriculum for you.

This doesn't have to be just business or finance or anything.

What if you wanted to master something grounded in human judgment, in art, in taste, in style?

What if you wanted to master design theory?

You can use the same structure.

In fact, you can use Gemini because it has the multimodal capabilities.

So it's almost like giving a pair of eyes to your advisor.

In all such self-education adventures, AI no longer remains as your lazy text generator.

It is an intelligence engine that becomes your path builder.

So let's say you build a six-week plan with your AI advisor.

But how do you make it actionable?

This is where an automation tool like Zapier would come in.

They're sponsoring this part of the video

because I wanted to show how you can connect your plans to the apps that you already use.

And Zapier connects to over 9,000 of them.

So let's do it step by step.

100

You need something called Zapier MCP.

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Now, think of MCP as a gateway

102

that gets your AI out of the prompt window

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and lets it actually use your apps like calendars and docs and your emails.

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You set it up once and it takes only a couple of minutes.

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So let's do it.

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Let's go to Zapier and pick a template.

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This is the easiest way to do it.

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The link is in the description.

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Now you connect your AI.

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I'm using Claude for this one.

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and then choose which apps you want to give access to.

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I'm turning on Google Calendar and Google Docs.

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And then you set the permissions.

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And when you head back to Claude, make sure Zapier is toggled on in the connectors list.

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And that's it.

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You're ready.

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The gateway is now open.

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Now your AI has a pair of hands.

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So you go back to the plan that you just built and type a few lines.

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Like take the six-week curriculum that we just built and save it to a Google Doc.

121

Do it in a week-by-week format with the topic, the sources, and the milestone for each week.

122

Then put every study session on my Google Calendar and send me a reminder the day before.

123

That's it.

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And it does all of that.

125

The plan you made a few minutes ago is now sitting in the apps you use every day.

126

That's what tools like Zapier can do for you.

127

And that's the difference between AI that talks to you and AI that actually does the work for you.

128

Now you have an advisor and an assistant together.

129

But even the best paths will break if the sources you learn from are garbage.

130

That's where we go next.

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Once you build your curriculum, the next battle is sticking to it.

132

Stanford researchers tested more than 7,800 students on how well they judged information online.

133

The result was embarrassing.

134

82% of middle schoolers could not tell the difference between sponsored content and real news.

135

Now, these are not some ancient villagers discovering the internet for the first time, right?

136

These were digital natives.

137

They knew how to use the internet.

138

They just didn't know how easily internet could abuse their trust.

139

The algorithm and the feed is not interested in teaching you anything.

140

It only cares about keeping you there.

141

That's why the AI librarian matters.

142

Their job is to defend the curriculum from distraction.

143

It's a triaging function that tells you which 10 sources deserve your attention, your time, and which thousands you can ignore.

144

It helps you figure out this belongs, this doesn't, this is credible, this is too advanced, this is signal, this is noise.

145

So let's see the librarian in action.

146

Let's use Notebook LM.

147

First, build the shelf.

148

Find the three or four sources that actually matter.

149

A textbook, a YouTube course, or a bunch of videos, a podcast, an academic paper,

150

a bunch of newspaper articles, whatever it is that you can find.

151

What if you don't know what sources to look for?

152

Well, you can use deep research on Gemini or Cloud or ChatGPT to find those sources.

153

Then load these documents to Google's Notebook LN.

154

Nowadays, you can create a new notebook from Gemini itself.

155

Now, your AI is not wandering homelessly across the open internet.

156

It is anchored to the ground truth you just gave it.

157

But now, how do you make the most out of these documents?

158

This is where Notebook LM changes the game.

159

You can turn anything into a podcast or a video

160

or a slideshow say you want to educate yourself on building great money habits.

161

Okay, so let's do it live.

162

I love this book called The Psychology of Money.

163

It's by Morgan Housel.

164

And I've read this book.

165

I grabbed a bunch of very good videos from YouTube

166

and the interviews that the author himself has done and I put them into Notebook LM.

167

And now I click on studio and then it's going to start a podcast

168

and you can listen to it during your walk, during your commute, and you can even call in.

169

Welcome to today's deep dive.

170

We have a really fascinating mission ahead of us today, entirely custom tailored for you listening right now.

171

Yeah, it's a great one.

172

We're looking at a huge stack of sources today.

173

And they all point to one specific subject.

174

So we are going to be summarizing the core lessons from Morgan Housel's incredibly popular book, The Psychology of Money.

175

Now you can even call in.

176

Oh, it really is.

177

And the mission of this deep dive is to prove a premise that kind of, oh, hey, I think our listeners got something to say.

178

Yes, I love your podcast.

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I just had a quick question.

180

What's the one line summary of the book?

181

What's the key message?

182

That is a brilliant question.

183

We love it when you jump in like that.

184

Seriously, it is the perfect way to kick things off.

185

If we had to boil it down to one key message, it is this.

186

Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are.

187

Exactly.

188

It has everything to do with how you behave.

189

Financial success is a soft skill, not a hard science.

190

And the ultimate goal of that.

191

This is all AI.

192

This is not some futuristic thing.

193

It's all here, available right now.

194

And by the way, if you love such concepts and ideas, and if you want to go deeper, you can join my newsletter.

195

It shows up in your inbox every Tuesday.

196

It's one insight, one tool, one practice.

197

I have to remember it.

198

And I love writing it.

199

It's completely free.

200

The link is down below.

201

But a good source alone can't guarantee understanding.

202

At some point, the material will stop making sense to you.

203

And this is exactly when you need the tutor.

204

A teacher and a tutor serve two different roles.

205

The teacher explains it.

206

The tutor diagnoses your specific confusion one-on-one.

207

A good tutor makes it harder for you to fake understanding.

208

Tutoring has always been the luxury good of education.

209

Psychologists named Benjamin Bloom wrote about this in the 80s, and it became known as the Two Sigma Problem.

210

And he found that students with one-on-one tutoring performed way better than the rest of the students who sat in conventional classrooms.

211

The average student who got tutored performed above 98% of the students in the control class.

212

That was one of the most important findings in education.

213

And also one of the most frustrating because everybody got to know that tutoring works.

214

But not everyone can afford a private tutor.

215

Until now, that is.

216

AI completely breaks the economics of human intelligence.

217

A world-class tutor can now sit with you at midnight, ask you uncomfortable questions, refine your logic,

218

and refuse to leave until the concept finally clicks.

219

I use AI both as a teacher and a tutor.

220

So here's the tutor in action.

221

I usually use either ChatGPT voice or Gemini voice because tutoring should feel like the office hour.

222

So how do you actually do this?

223

Let's do it live.

224

I have Gemini voice mode on my iPhone right now.

225

I'm going to hit voice mode and say the following.

226

Be my tutor on the idea of enough from the book, The Psychology of Money.

227

Ask me one question at a time.

228

Don't lecture me.

229

Find the gap in my understanding. Be precise.

230

Let's go.

231

How does constantly comparing yourself to others make it difficult to define your own personal version of enough?

232

Okay, you get it.

233

So that was a complete improvisation because I didn't know what the AI tutor was going to ask.

234

But that's what would happen in real life as well.

235

Sometimes you will get questions you don't know the answers to.

236

And you will have to work with the tutor to learn about it.

237

That's the whole point.

238

The two best commands in AI are teach me and test me.

239

I love both of them.

240

But there is still one problem.

241

Learning all the skills is great.

242

But when you have to deliver something, you need honest feedback.

243

You need refinements.

244

That's why the next role is so important, the editor.

245

That's where we go next.

246

A tutor helps you understand.

247

An editor helps you deliver.

248

A typical Formula One race is about 90 minutes, but the difference between winning and losing can be just a few seconds.

249

That's why a large team of engineers for every race car company monitor thousands of data points in real time,

250

constantly feeding tiny corrections back to the driver.

251

Because if you can shave off just a fraction of a second at every turn, you can change the outcome.

252

Real-time feedback is everything in that game.

253

Because excellence lives in feedback.

254

That's why authors have editors.

255

Filmmakers have editors.

256

Journalists have editors too.

257

Even CEOs have boards.

258

They're editors.

259

Your AI can be a great editor.

260

When I write anything nowadays that's important,

261

I usually take time to review it with ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude.

262

And I ask AI to challenge my thinking, my logic, find the weakness in my arguments,

263

cut repetition, tighten the structure, make the language more precise or concrete.

264

AI can be your powerful ally when it comes to editing your work, but you still have to fly the plane.

265

And that brings us to the fifth and final role, the roommate.

266

Because in the future that we're heading into, your depth and your expertise will constantly be challenged.

267

You'll have to renew them all the time.

268

You will need range.

269

And that comes from your roommate.

270

That's where we go next.

271

When I was living in a dorm, my roommate and I had absolutely nothing in common.

272

But our late night conversations were always wonderful.

273

They were eye-opening for me.

274

Because he would constantly talk about the economy of design,

275

the aesthetic trade-offs, the compromises, the craftsmanship.

276

In fact, he taught me as much about entrepreneurship and taste and strategy as a business professor would.

277

This is exactly what Pixar did when they started building their own in-house training school.

278

The company put all of its animators in sculpting class and the accountants and security guards were put in drawing classes.

279

Why?

280

Because when you get a perspective from a world that's different than yours, it helps you understand your own world a little better.

281

So the question is, how do you make AI that roommate that brings you that fresh perspective?

282

Well, ask it to talk about things that are completely outside of your field.

283

What's the connection between cooking and finance?

284

How does a jazz musician think about playing with others?

285

And how does that relate to building teams?

286

Roommates help you ask questions you would never ask on your own.

287

They hand you a stranger's lens so you can see the world for the first time again.

288

So that's your university in a box.

289

The whole altar framework.

290

Advisor, librarian, tutor, editor, and your roommate.

291

And it's all just one prompt away.

292

Something you can start using tonight.

293

So, what comes next?

294

Let me leave you with one last story.

295

A young, eager student arrived at the riverside.

296

And she was in a real rush, a real hurry to go across the river.

297

But there was no bridge.

298

Just some boats lying around.

299

All shapes and sizes.

300

So she asked the old boatman who was just standing there, Sir, which boat would get me across the river fastest?

301

And the boatman smiled and said, The one you get into and start rowing.

302

I'll see you next week.

303

Thank you and I love you.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How To Become Dangerously Self-Educated With AI”. This video has 303 sentences and 3069 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:22. The speaker talks at a steady 144 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 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

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
tutor noun	/ˈtjuːtəː/	One who teaches another (usually called a student, learner, or tutee) in a one-on-one or small-group interaction.
advisor noun	/ædˈvaɪ.zə(ɹ)/	One who offers advice.
notebook noun	/ˈnoʊtˌbʊk/	A book (physical or digital) in which notes or memoranda are written.
roommate noun	/ˈɹu(m)ˌmeɪt/	A person with whom one shares a room, as in a dormitory, barracks, rooming house, or apartment.
prompt verb	/pɹɑmpt/	To lead (someone) toward what they should say or do.
curriculum noun	/kəˈɹɪk.jə.ləm/	The set of courses, coursework, and content offered at a school or university.
podcast noun	/ˈpɑdˌkæst/	A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
librarian noun	/laɪˈbɹɛə̯ɹi.ən/	The keeper, manager of a library.
milestone noun	/ˈmaɪlˌstoʊn/	A stone milepost (or by extension in other materials), one of a series of numbered markers placed along a road at regular intervals, typically at the side of…
altar noun	/ˈɔl.tɚ/	A table or similar flat-topped structure used for religious rites.
precise adjective	/pɹɪˈsaɪs/	Both exact and accurate.
boatman noun	/ˈbəʊt.mən/	A sailor on a small vessel (boat), particularly its captain.
baseline noun	/ˈbeɪslaɪn/	A line that is a base for measurement or for construction.
template noun	/ˈtɛm.plɪt/	A physical object whose shape is used as a guide to make other objects.
gateway noun	/ˈɡeɪtˌweɪ/	A passage that can be closed by use of a gate.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
go up verb	To move upwards.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
go back to verb	To stem from; to originate in.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
turn down verb	To refuse, decline, or deny.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Where are you on this topic right now?
What order do you learn this topic in?
What should you ignore for now?
What if you wanted to master design theory?
What if you don't know what sources to look for?

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 been · has shared · have put
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were lost · is toggled · is anchored
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who unlock · students who sat · student who got

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 38 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, aesthetic /ɛsˈθɛ.tɪk/, thoroughly /ˈθʌɹ.ə.li/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: actionable /ˈæk.ʃə.nə.bəl/, craftsmanship /ˈkɹæfts.mən.ʃɪp/, entrepreneurship /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ.ʃɪp/, corrections /kəˈɹɛkʃənz/, distraction /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: curriculum /kəˈɹɪk.jə.ləm/, librarian /laɪˈbɹɛə̯ɹi.ən/, actionable /ˈæk.ʃə.nə.bəl/, animator /ˈænɪˌmeɪtə(ɹ)/, dormitory /ˈdɔɹ.mɪˌtɔɹ.i/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like tutor, advisor, notebook.

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 To Become Dangerously Self-Educated With AI (for free) - 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

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?