Shadowing Practice: Mr. Maher Goes to Washington | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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171 sentences
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And now, for what I know you've all been waiting for, I'd like to give you my book report on my visit to the White House.
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Okay, as you know, 12 days ago, I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock,
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because we share a belief that there's got to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away.
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And let me first say
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that to all the people who treated this like it was some kind of summit meeting, you're ridiculous.
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Like I was gonna sign a treaty or something.
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I have...
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I have no power.
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I'm a fucking comedian.
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And he's the most powerful leader in the world.
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I'm not the leader of anything, except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there's got
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to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute. So...
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Thank you. So...
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Okay, so meet up in person.
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Maybe it'll be different.
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Spoiler alert, it was.
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First good sign, before I left for the Capitol, I had my staff collect and print out
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this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets
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that the president has said about me things like stupid dummy low-life dummy sleazebag sick sad stone-cold crazy
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really a dumb guy fired like a dog his show is dead
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60 I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it which he did
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which he did with good humor and I know as I say that millions of liberal sphincters just tightened
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oh my god bill you gonna say something nice about him
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what I'm gonna do is report exactly what happened you decide what you think about it and if that's not enough
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pure Trump hate for you, I don't give a fuck.
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Yeah! So...
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So, no, I didn't go MAGA.
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And to the president's credit, there was no pressure to.
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After we left the Oval Office, he showed me the little room off the office, you know, the one where Clinton used to...
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Okay.
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The blowjob room, okay?
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Well, not anymore.
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That's where they keep the merch now.
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It is.
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And he gave me a bunch of hats, but he didn't ask me to take a picture in one, which I appreciated.
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The guy I met is not the person who the night
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before the dinner shit-tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how
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he thought how he thought this dinner was a bad idea and what a deranged asshole I was, I read it and thought, oh, what a lovely way to welcome someone to your house.
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But when I got there, that guy wasn't living there.
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Now, does Trump want respect? Of course. Who doesn't?
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My friend said to me, what are you going to wear to the White House?
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I said, I don't know, but I'm not going to dress like Zelensky, I'll tell you that.
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Just for starters, he laughs.
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I've never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including it himself.
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And it's not fake.
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Believe me, as a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it.
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And I thank you for that.
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Uh, no. Okay, example.
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In the Oval Office, he was showing me the portraits of presidents, and he pointed to Reagan and said, in all seriousness, you know the best thing about him?
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His hair.
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I said, well, there was also that whole bringing down communism thing,
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waiting for the button next to the Diet Coke button to get pushed and I go through the trap door.
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But no, he laughed, he got it.
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I said to him at one point, Mr. President, you know the dog, that's unusual in the White House.
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He said, well, a lot of the presidents, they had a dog for political reasons.
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I said, no, people love dogs, that's what that is.
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Oh yeah, okay, that's true.
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I'm telling you what happened.
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At one point, we were walking through his amazing, it is an amazing tour of the whole house.
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And I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but it must have been something with the 2020 election.
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Because I know he used the word lost.
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And I distinctly remember saying, wow, I never thought I'd hear you say that.
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He didn't get mad.
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He's much more self-aware than he lets on in public.
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Look, I get it.
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It doesn't matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian.
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It matters who he is on the world stage.
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I'm just taking it as a positive that this person exists because everything I've ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent,
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at least on this night with this guy.
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Bob Kidrock told me the night before, he said, if you want to get a word in edgewise, you're going to have to cut him off.
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He'll just go on.
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Not at all.
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I've had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected.
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People who don't look you in the eye.
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People who don't really listen because they just want to get to their next thing.
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People whose response to things you say just doesn't track like, what?
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None of that with him.
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And he mostly steered the conversation to, what do you think about this?
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I know, your mind is blown, so is mine.
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There were so many moments when I hit him with a joke or contradicted something and no problem.
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At dinner, he was asking me about the nuclear situation in Iran in a very genuine, hey, I think you're a smart guy, I want your opinion sort of way.
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And I said, well, obviously you're privy to things about it, and I'm not, but for what it's worth,
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I thought the Obama deal was worth letting play out because we made Iran destroy 98% of the uranium, and they were 15 years away from a bomb.
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And then I said to him, but we got rid of that.
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You got rid of that.
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He didn't get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic.
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He took it in.
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I told him I thought parts of his plan for Gaza were wacky, but that I had supported him in the idea that Gaza could be Dubai instead of hell.
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I told him he was wrong when he tweeted the night before that I was critical of all things Trump.
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Not true.
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Check the tapes.
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Moving Israel's embassy to Jerusalem?
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Loved it.
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The border did need to be controlled.
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I'm glad the cops are getting their morale back.
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DEI had gone too far.
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Biological men shouldn't be playing women's sports.
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Europe should pay for their defense.
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And, of course, it makes sense that Arab countries should take in Arab refugees, like the million Syrians who wound up in Germany when Saudi Arabia took none.
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He said to me, you're right, they took none.
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I said, well, you should remind your boyfriend in Saudi Arabia that the next time you see him.
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He laughed.
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I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him.
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And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama.
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but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump.
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That's just how it went down.
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Make of it what you will.
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Me, I feel it's emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days.
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He was even okay when I checked him on the orangutan...
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...lossuit.
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He was.
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I know.
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He said to Dana White, you know, Bill said my father was an orangutan, and I really love my father.
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And I said, well, Mr. President, I did that because I didn't like what you were doing regarding Obama's birth origins.
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I thought that was low.
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Again, no anger, just a little smile, as if to say, yeah, I get it.
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The most surreal part of the whole night was when I got home.
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I flew back right after the dinner, and I'm in bed watching 60 Minutes from the night before.
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And there's Trump in one of their stories, standing at a podium in a room that looked to me like one of the rooms and places we'd just been in.
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And he's ranting, disgusting, you're a terrible person.
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And I'm like, who's that guy?
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What happened to Glinda the Goodwitch?
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And why can't we get the guy I met to be the public guy?
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And I'm not saying it's our responsibility to do that.
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It's not.
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I'm just reporting exactly what I saw over two and a half hours.
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I went into the mine, and that's what's down there.
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A crazy person doesn't live in the White House.
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A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is fucked up.
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It's just not as fucked up as I thought it was.
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And I have no illusions now that I'm back to work at my job that he might start a new list.
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Because I don't have a good feeling and will be critical about a lot of what he's doing.
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The trade war and disappearing people, ruling by decree, threatening judges, gutting the government with glee.
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But I also think he now understands I have a job to do.
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Or at least he did on this night.
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Because he said to me early on that he'd seen our last episode, which was the Friday before this dinner.
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And he said, I thought maybe you'd be nice, but you hit me really hard.
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I did.
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Because I'm not going to pull my punches that presidents get to propose a third term for themselves.
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He understood that, and without animus.
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That doesn't mean he's not going to try to do it.
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At one point, I said to him, you're scaring people.
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Do you really want to be scaring your own citizens so much?
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And I know now you're all saying, and what did he say to that?
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Honestly, I don't remember.
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But it wasn't, okay, I'll stop.
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So MAGA fans, don't worry.
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Your boy gave me nothing.
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Just hats.
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Hats in a very generous amount of time and a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend, even though I'm not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner.
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My favorite part of the whole night was we were standing in the blowjob room.
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We were.
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And he said, you know, I've heard from a lot of people who really like that we're having this dinner.
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Not all, but a lot.
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And I said, same.
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A lot of people told me they loved it, but not all.
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And we agreed.
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The people who don't even want us to talk, we don't like you.
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don't talk as opposed to what?
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Writing the same editorial for the millionth time and making 25 hour speeches into the wind?
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Really?
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That's what liberals have?
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He takes the piss out of everybody else and we can hold ours?
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Okay, that's my report.
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You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar.
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Trump was gracious and measured.
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And why he isn't that in other settings, I don't know.
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And I can't answer and it's not my place to answer.
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I'm just telling you what I saw, and I wasn't high.
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Damn, missed opportunity.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 171 sentences and 1900 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:08. The speaker talks at a steady 145 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 84% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| comedian noun | /kəˈmiː.di.ən/ | An entertainer who performs in a humorous manner, especially by telling jokes. |
| tweet noun | /ˈtwiːt/ | The sound of a bird; any short high-pitched sound or whistle. |
| scare verb | /skɛɚ/ | To frighten, terrify, startle, especially in a minor way. |
| insult noun | /ɪnˈsʌlt/ | Action or form of speech deliberately intended to be rude; (countable) a particular act or statement having this effect. |
| dummy noun | /ˈdʌmi/ | A stupid person. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| ridiculous adjective | /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/ | Deserving of ridicule; foolish, absurd. |
| unusual adjective | /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/ | Not usual, out of the ordinary. |
| tape noun | /teɪ̯p/ | Flexible material in a roll with a sticky surface on one or both sides; adhesive tape. |
| anger noun | /ˈæŋɡə/ | A strong and unpleasant feeling of displeasure, hostility, or antagonism, usually combined with an urge to yell, curse, damage or destroy things, or harm… |
| citizen noun | /ˈsɪtɪzən/ | A resident of a city or town, especially one with legally recognized rights or duties. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| collect verb | /ˈkɑlɪkt/ | To gather together; amass. |
| cop noun | /kɑp/ | A police officer or prison guard. |
| genuine adjective | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.juˌɪn/ | Belonging to, or proceeding from the original stock; native. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| bring down verb | To make (a ruler or government) lose their position of power. | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| play out verb | To play (a game etc.) to its conclusion. | |
| see over verb | To inspect something fully. | |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
| walk through verb | To explain (something) to (someone), step by step. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who treated · people who think · person who the |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has said · I've never seen · I've ever not liked |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was set · is blown · be controlled |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 72 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, epithet /ˈɛp.ɪˌθɛt/, millionth /ˈmɪljənθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, gracious /ˈɡɹeɪʃəs/, eggshell /ˈɛɡʃɛl/
- Long words — get the stress right: comedian /kəˈmiː.di.ən/, ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, biological /ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, editorial /ˌɛdɪˈtɔːɹɪəl/
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 comedian, tweet, scare.
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.