Shadowing Practice: Our Minds Are Weirder than You Think - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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You exist in a truly secret place  nobody but you can enter: Your mind.
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You exist in a truly secret place  nobody but you can enter: Your mind.
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When we say mind we mean the place  where you, whatever you are, exist.
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It's the totality of your inner world, the location of your consciousness and  memories, the toolset of your intelligence.
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It’s the place where all of your  wants, thoughts and emotions happen, where you think, learn, dream and imagine  things – consciously and unconsciously.
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Your mind is truly your own, a universe  only directly accessible and inhabited by you – and inaccessible to  anyone else in the universe.
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And your mind is probably unique to you.
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Probably, because how would we  know if two minds are the same?
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What do you see when you imagine an apple?
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A detailed scenery, a crisp image  with clear details and colour?
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Is the apple hanging in a void?
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Can you rotate it?
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Is it a 2D shape?
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Is it colorless or transparent or very vague?
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Or don’t you see anything at all but  feel what an apple feels like to you?
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Maybe a weird mix?
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Do you have an internal voice  that narrates your life?
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Do you have an inner monologue?
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Is there silence inside your mind?
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Do you only hear voices when you read?
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Or do you process thoughts nonverbally  or even just feel the world around you?
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It is a bit stunning how many  variations of inner universes humans have and how different our minds must be.
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Humans have arguably the most complex  minds on earth but today it is widely accepted that minds are not exclusive to us.
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There are trillions of animal minds out in the world, uncountable little secret  universes, forever locked to us.
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And by looking at them and their  evolution we may be able to learn why our minds are as stunning as they are today.
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A pretty wild idea is that minds might have  originally evolved to control your movements.
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To create a gap between all of your sensory input, and your motor output, how you react  to information by moving your body.
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A Tool To Deal with the World When life emerged it was without any minds but  just cells, able to eat, poop and reproduce.
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They already had to navigate a  complex and dangerous world and to process sensory input – but  they were extremely inflexible.
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If a cell had the inner state “hungry” and  sensed “food” it automatically moved in that direction – or it flapped around randomly  until it ran into a meal by accident.
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This worked well enough for  billions of years and still does.
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But as life exploded in complexity and became multicellular, cells began to dedicate  themselves to processing information.
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The first very simple “minds”  emerged: little more than tiny gaps.
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Virtual spaces in which sensory  information could be processed for a short moment before these  early animals had to react.
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Roundworms only have 302 neurons in total, yet  they are already able to learn things like “this thing is bad” and retain a memory that changes  behavior for a few hours before they forget again.
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Minds on this level most  likely don’t reason or think, but use simple rules that work  well in their environments.
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Scientists still debate whether  this counts as mind or are still just preprogrammed automated reflexes.
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With more neurons, animals  can “freeze” before they act.
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Process and interpret information and make decisions for what is the  best option at that moment.
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This is arguably where a true inner  space, a mind begins to emerge.
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And some insects may have something  like it, like our buddy the bee.
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With a brain smaller than a sesame  seed and about one million neurons, a bee has a much larger mind gap.
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And it is filled with information about the world.
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It builds and remembers a huge mental map of  flowers over square kilometers of terrain, cross referencing it with the  position of the sun to find its way.
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Bees can take shortcuts, so they  can’t be simply following reflexes but are actually navigating their internal maps.
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In extreme cases when resources are  scarce, bees can move up to 10km from their hives to collect food – the equivalent  of going from Paris to Rome for groceries.
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And they teach the location  of the food by dancing.
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Minds have emerged a few times in evolutionary  history and evolved in different directions, so while we are telling this story by  increasing complexity, in reality minds are more like a weird mix of different experiments,  depending on what niches the animals fill.
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If your mind wants to experiment with a business  idea, our partner Odoo has got you covered.
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Odoo is an all-in-one management software  that helps you run your business every day.
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Every business idea starts simple,  but things can get complex fast.
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That’s where Odoo comes in: with more than 45  user-friendly apps, you can handle everything from accounting and inventory to CRM and much  more – all centralized on a single platform.
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For example, you can create and send invoices  in seconds: just select your customer, add your products and quantities, define the  billing terms, and send everything via email.
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Plus, the built-in chatter gives  you an overview of your emails, notes and activities – all in one place.
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Tracking your payments, with clear  statuses and deadlines, is just as simple.
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You can try all these features for free –  because your first Odoo app is free forever, with unlimited support and hosting included.
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When you’re ready to scale up, Odoo adapts  to your needs – you can simply add more apps.
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And you get access to all applications  starting at just $24.90 a month.
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With Odoo, your business mind knows no limits.
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And now back to the video!
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Mind complexity probably increases  dramatically as we add more neurons, like the octopus that has  about 500 million of them.
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Only 40% of their neurons are in their central  brain, while each of their arms has their own mini nerve centers that taste, process information  locally at the same time and act on their own.
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The central brain does still coordinate them  for complex behavior, like catching prey, because imagine 8 arms doing  their own thing all the time.
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But different arms are specialized and  used primarily for different tasks, like exploring or movement.
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And we know their arms can  make decisions independently to some degree and have some autonomy.
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Octopuses are very intelligent animals, able to do loads of complex things, so  their minds should be somewhat complex.
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But how does their mind experience things?
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Is it distributed over their whole body?
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Does an Octopus feel like multiple  smaller minds interacting as one thing?
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If octopuses show how strange minds can be, birds show how sophisticated they can become  if it develops in a different direction.
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Some bird species with billions of neurons  probably have surprisingly sophisticated minds, where they can go one step further: While minds  may have started as a gap to delay action, bird minds are able to simulate a map  of reality, including other players.
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Scrub Jays are hoarders that catch and hide all sorts of food in different  places, from worms to nuts.
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Inside their mind they keep track of time  and are aware that fresh food goes bad.
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So after a few days have passed they  will ignore the hiding places of dead worms and instead go for  the nuts that are still good.
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Probably more impressive, they might  be able to simulate the minds of other birds – If a scrub jay is hiding  food and notices another jay watching, they will return later and re-hide  their stash so it doesn’t get stolen.
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Which is a perfect transition to what  makes the minds of humans so special: While we are probably not the only animals  that can simulate other minds inside our mind – humans with our 86 billion neurons  have taken it to extraordinary depths.
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The Internal Universe When humans are born they are cute but selfish  blobs of meat, solely focused on their own needs.
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But around 18–24 months a baby becomes  able to recognise itself in a mirror.
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It realizes that something that  seems to be “other” is actually itself – which is usually a delightful  experience for the human larvae.
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But it is also the first step  of a powerful realization: You are not just an observer in the world –  there are also others that can observe you.
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You see and you are seen.
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And if you are seen… well then you  can’t just behave egoistically all the time – because you need the  goodwill of others to stay alive.
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We humans are not just simulating  other minds in our minds.
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We simulate minds, simulating minds.
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We think about what others think.
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We think about what they think about  us thinking about what they think.
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And so on. There are a lot of layers.
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This awareness of the minds of others may be one  of the origins of our moral conscience and a huge reason why we are able to live in large societies,  with other humans we are not related to.
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And may have spawned one of our most  charming obsessions: storytelling.
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We don’t just remember that an event  happened, we imagine what the people that were part of it were thinking, what  we think they should have been thinking, what might have happened if they  acted and thought differently.
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Combined with our ability to create fictional  universes to plan ahead we have created countless fictional worlds, with people that  don’t exist but that we deeply relate to.
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That are real to us.
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Every movie, novel or comic is humans sharing  their internal simulations with each other.
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Whether you see a photorealistic apple in  your mind or feel the concept of an apple, in the storytelling space we are all able  to come together and understand each other.
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This is how we transport information  about morality and our values, about what we think is good or bad.
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So maybe the most amazing thing about  human minds is that they're fundamentally social - filled with voices, ideas,  and perspectives from countless others.
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Your thoughts and feelings have been  shaped by stories that never happened but that you've absorbed and simulated in  your mind in a way that is unique to you.
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In a very real sense, your  secret mind isn't just yours, but a collaborative creation between you  and all the human minds that came before.
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And if you want you can add your stories as well.
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For the ones that come after.
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Our latest Limited Edition Pin is here –  kicking off the new Cosmic Time Collection.
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It’s an homage to Halley’s Comet, the cosmic traveler that has been  visiting Earth for millennia.
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It only returns around every 75 years but we  captured it in a super sparkly, rotating pin.
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Only 10,000 exist, and each  one is individually numbered.
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Wear it to complete your outfit,  add it to your collection, or make it the first piece of a brand new one.
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Over the years we’ve created quite a tradition of these tiny sculptures – and  you’ve loved collecting them.
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So we decided to take it one step further.
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Meet the first ever kurzgesagt figurines – small  collectible scenes from the kurzgesagt universe.
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If you’ve been around the channel for a  while, these might look a little familiar.
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Mission Control, meet Duck – always  ready for another trip through space.
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Never stare directly into a deadly ray from  space – this birb learned the hard way.
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And whatever you do… never  press the big red button.
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Get one – or all of them – for your desk,  bookshelf, or honestly … your life in general.
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We had a blast designing them, packing  each one with love and tiny details.
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Head over to our shop, we’ve  put together a few deals for you.
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Get your special piece of kurzgesagt now.
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Why practice speaking with this video?

This video delves into the fascinating complexities of the human mind and how it shapes our experiences, making it an intriguing subject for English learners. Engaging with topics like the mind opens up a wealth of vocabulary and expressions that can enhance your conversational skills. By practicing speaking about such captivating subjects, you not only improve your English pronunciation but also learn to articulate complex ideas clearly. Utilizing resources such as a shadowing app can help you emulate the speaker’s tone and rhythm, allowing you to develop a more natural speaking style. This engaging content encourages learners to actively participate in discussions, thereby enhancing their linguistic confidence and fluency.

Grammar & Expressions in Context

As you analyze the transcript of this video, you’ll encounter several key structures that can be beneficial for your own speaking practice:

  • “You exist in a truly secret place” - This structure demonstrates the use of present simple tense to describe facts or truths, useful for making general statements.
  • “What do you see when you imagine an apple?” - The speaker uses present tense questions effectively here, emphasizing inquiry and prompting reflective responses, making it a great pattern to practice when discussing personal experiences.
  • “A Tool To Deal with the World” - Notice the noun phrase structure, which can help you learn to craft effective titles or summaries of your own thoughts and presentations.
  • “It was without any minds but just cells” - This showcases the past simple tense and offers a historical context; it's a strong example of conveying narratives.

Common Pronunciation Traps

When practicing with this video, pay close attention to the following words and sounds that might pose challenges:

  • “Complex” - The pronunciation may vary; ensure you emphasize the second syllable correctly as com-PLEX.
  • “Navigate” - This word can be tricky; practice the soft 'g' sound followed by the short 'ate' ending to improve clarity.
  • “Consciousness” - A multi-syllabic word often pronounced incorrectly; focus on breaking it down to con-scious-ness to articulate it smoothly.

By addressing these pronunciation traps, you'll enhance your ability to communicate effectively, which is crucial in the context of shadowing technique. Integrating this into your daily practice can significantly improve your English pronunciation and verbal fluency.

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.

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