Shadowing Practice: Prof Robert Pape: THE FIRE SEASON BEGINS - Learn English Speaking with Video

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This is happening, and we're going to talk about it.

Good morning.

I am Professor Robert Pape.

Your world changes today, and that's literally true, because today is Election Day.

That's the day that the voting for the midterm elections stops and fire season begins.

Today is the day we're going to see the beginning of a wildfire season.

We are going to see three potential escalations, and they could all converge.

That's escalation of violent populism in the United States.

That's escalation in the Iran war.

And that's escalation in Putin's war in Europe.

Now, all three of these feed on each other,

and today is the key pivotal day where the escalation clock begins on all three.

Now, what is violent populism?

I like to use an analogy.

I like to explain that violent populism is like a wildfire, where there are mass combustible material.

Think of this as the mass dry wood.

That's predictable.

It's measurable.

But that mass of combustible material doesn't set itself off.

It needs a spark.

And those sparks are unpredictable.

In a wildfire, they can come from a cigar butt.

They can come from a down power line.

And how we know we're in wildfire season is because we can measure the size of the dry combustible material.

What we can't do is predict the sparks.

Will there be that lightning strike.

However, once that strike and spark occurs, that is a focal point moment,

and the fire spreads from there.

Now, in the United States today, our recent polls at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats show,

we have a tremendous amount of fuel.

There are over 60 million

Americans on the left and over 40 million

Americans on the right who support political violence for their side.

Now, the grand total of all of this together is 31 percent of all American adults.

That's about 80 million American adults support political violence.

And why is the number just a little smaller than adding up 60 and 40?

It's because independents actually support violence against both sides.

And this is very important because the size of this fuel has doubled in the last two years.

Now, we've seen violent populism recently in Europe.

Over the last few weeks, we've seen violent populism rage.

We saw a spark turn into a focal point,

turn into a fire that has been spreading in France and in other European countries for weeks.

And what was the spark in this case?

In this case, there was a spark on October 5th, right in the middle of peaceful protests in Lens,

France, when a 15 -year -old lost his hand to a police stun grenade.

His classmates were filming at the time, and that video went viral.

He lost a hand.

A continent raised a fist.

Now, what is America's spark?

As I said, the sparks are unpredictable.

But we know that just one video, as we saw with the George Floyd protests, as we just saw in Lens France,

one video can be a tremendous spark with all that combustible material.

And it could occur at any point from today all the way through January 3rd.

And you'll say, well, wait, I thought the election is over today.

The voting ends today, but the counting begins tonight

and the transfer of power goes on over the next two months

because you see the Congress is not seated until the first week in January.

And that's the pivotal moment that matters for violent populism,

which is why we are in effectively wildfire season from this day on for the next several months.

Now, who's going to win tonight?

And how can you trust America's polls?

Well, if you look at the most recent polls, you will see the Democrats have what appears to be an insurmountable advantage.

The generic ballot it's called has

Democrats winning by nine points.

However, we don't vote for generic

Democrats in this country.

We vote for actual people and in real races.

And one of the things we know over the last 10 years since Donald Trump began his political career is

that there is a phenomenon called the shy Trump voter.

Well, I got to know something about shy

Trump voters because, you see, in my book, which has 20 national surveys of Americans,

I wanted to know more about this shy Trump voter.

So for the book, Our Own Worst Enemies, I did something unusual.

I asked the polling agency not just to tell me about their methodology, but I wanted to literally meet, and we did this over Zoom,

the canvassers that are called.

These are the people who go to the hard -to -reach areas, the rural areas.

They go door -to -door to try to fill in for phenomenon like a shy Trump voter.

And I got to meet them.

I got to meet them from Georgia and also from Tennessee.

And in that 90 minute session, I was able to ask them,

what's it like when you go door to door in MAGA country in these rural areas?

And they had a clear answer.

Shotguns, dogs being sicked on them, being run off the property.

I think it really startled not only me,

but a lot of the other people at the polling agency who didn't quite really understand that this term shy

Trump voter might be a little too gentle.

What's really happening as they explained it is, although they were not a party,

they didn't identify themselves with a party in that part of the, in that part of the country.

And in these rural areas, it was just assumed that these pollsters are agents of the democratic party.

And that was something they didn't want to have anything to do with.

So that told me that we need to adjust our counts.

And so what do I do myself?

This is just me, Professor Robert Pape.

What do I do?

I take the very best counts that exist, and I try to subtract two points from any Democratic League.

I did this in the run -up to the 2024 election turned out to be pretty accurate.

And that's what I'd like to just share with you right now.

So what I did is I took what I think is really the best count, Harry Enten's count from CNN.

He's really quite a straight shooter.

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If you follow his, he is sometimes showing

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Republicans ahead, Democrats ahead, quite a straight shooter.

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However, what I'm doing here is I'm showing that it's not just an issue of what's the margin of error.

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See, many people don't know, Harry certainly knows this, but many people don't know,

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that in any poll, there is a margin of error of two to three percentage points, which means that in any poll,

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unless the candidate is four points ahead, it's a tie.

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So in this case, I went further.

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I went further and I said, let's subtract another two points from any Democratic lead.

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And what does that lead to?

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That leads to a count of about 230 seats for Democrats tonight.

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Now, you only need 218 to control the House.

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But where it really matters is with the Senate.

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You see, instead of the polls showing a lead, 52, 53 seats for the Democrats in the Senate,

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this approach shows essentially a coin flip.

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And it's important to know that in the U .S.

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Senate, a 50 -50 tie, it goes to the vice president to break the tie.

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In this case, that would mean the Republican vice president, J .D.

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Vance.

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This would produce quite a tense result, given the tinderbox of a country that we are in.

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Now, what should you watch tonight?

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I'm going to be watching this, too.

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First thing is Georgia.

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Polls close in Georgia, 7 p .m.

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Then we have a string of very important polls closing, North Carolina, Ohio.

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By 8 o 'clock, Maine, Michigan, Texas, those two volatile Senate contests.

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By 9 p .m., we have Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska closing.

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Somewhere around 8 to 9 p .m., we're going to understand the early trends.

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And those early trends, they may not be resolved for hours, maybe not even for days, who controls each

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House of Congress.

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But those early trends, they're going to matter because,

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you see, all the key players are all going to be basing their decisions not just on watching those early trends,

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but they'll start acting on those early trends.

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This is a critical thing to observe as well.

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Now, where might there be a spark?

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Even though it's unpredictable, can we say something about where it might occur?

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Keep your eye on Georgia.

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Right now, there are federal monitors inside of Fulton County.

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That's the county around Atlanta.

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This has been a very controversial move by the Trump administration to put those federal monitors there.

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President Trump has gone further than put the monitors there.

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He's framed Fulton County as that disaster, he calls it.

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And what could be a spark?

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There could be a clash at any counting center, any voting center caught on video between

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Trump's agents and Democratic protesters.

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And President Trump has already told us what he plans to do if such a spark occurs.

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He says he's fully expecting, quote, a call to send in the National Guard.

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That's what he's already anticipated.

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Now, while America votes, we have two other potential fires underway.

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One is escalation in the Iran war.

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Just recently at rallies yesterday, President Trump said, we can do it in 10 minutes,

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referring to taking out this target called Pickaxe Mountain,

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which is a nuclear facility that's under hundreds of feet of granite in Iran, where our biggest conventional bombs just can't touch them.

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And what has just happened today?

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Reports are that Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is pressuring Trump right now, just in the last several,

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in the last 24 hours, to use a nuclear weapon on Pickaxe Mountain.

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And the reports further say that that pressure is to do it before November 7th, just in the next few days.

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Now, at the same time, we have a fire in Europe.

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Putin has laid out a plan to turn off the electricity,

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turn off the electricity in major cities in Ukraine right in the dead of winter.

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This is more than turning off the lights.

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This is essentially a plan to freeze Kiev.

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Now, these sparks, these fires,

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these fires are occurring simultaneously with the U .S midterms,

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and there will undoubtedly be interaction effects.

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Now, what should you watch over the next 24 hours?

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Tonight, watch the rural turnout, especially in Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas.

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And we'll start to see right away

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when those rural counties start to report in just where those surveys were with the shy

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or you might even call them hostile Trump voters.

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tonight, keep an eye on any armed federal agents at polling or counting sites, especially if they're caught on video.

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And then by tomorrow, we'll start to pay attention to who's refusing to accept any of these results and how loudly.

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We'll also be paying attention to signals about potential strikes on Iran from our carriers, our B2s.

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And also, we'll be keeping an eye on Poland, because Poland is undergoing its own crisis,

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which fits into the wider escalation in Europe.

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Now, this is all complicated.

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That's why what we're going to do is come back tomorrow morning with how your world changes tomorrow.

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I look forward to talking to you again early tomorrow,

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the day after the midterm election vote.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Prof Robert Pape: THE FIRE SEASON BEGINS”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: spark, Trump, poll. This video has 177 sentences and 1927 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:01. The speaker talks at a steady 128 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

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
spark noun	/ˈspɑɹk/	A small particle of glowing matter, either molten or on fire, resulting from an electrical surge or excessive heat created by friction.
poll noun	/poʊl/	A survey of people, usually statistically analyzed to gauge wider public opinion.
violent adjective	/ˈvaɪ.ə.lənt/	Involving extreme force or motion.
voter noun	/ˈvoʊtɚ/	Someone who votes or is entitled to vote.
occur verb	/əˈkɜː/	To happen or take place.
monitor noun	/ˈmɑ.nɪ.tɚ/	Someone who watches over something; a person in charge of something or someone.
unpredictable adjective		Unable to be predicted.
protest noun	/ˈpɹoʊ.tɛst/	A formal objection, especially one by a group.
clock noun	/klɑk/	A chronometer, an instrument that measures time, particularly the time of day.
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…
essentially adverb	/ɪˈsɛnʃəli/	In essence: by nature.
margin noun	/ˈmɑɹ.d͡ʒɪn/	The edge of the paper, typically left blank when printing but sometimes used for annotations etc.
phenomenon noun	/fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/	A thing or being, event or process, perceptible through senses; or a fact or occurrence thereof.
generic adjective	/dʒɪˈnɛɹ.ɪk/	Very broad; pertaining or appropriate to large classes or groups as opposed to specific instances.
tremendous adjective	/tɹɪˈmɛndəs/	Awe-inspiring; terrific.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
turn off verb		To power down, to switch off, to put out of operation, to deactivate (an appliance, light, mechanism, functionality etc.).
add up verb		To take the sum of; to total.
come back verb		To return to a place.
lay out verb	/ˌleɪ ˈaʊt/	To expend or contribute money to an expense or purchase.
look forward to verb		To anticipate, expect, or wait for, especially with a feeling of approval or pleasure; to be excited or eager to.
run off verb		To flee or depart quickly.
take out verb		To remove.
watch over verb		To guard and protect.

Sentences worth repeating

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

What we can't do is predict the sparks.
What do I do?
I'm going to be watching this, too.

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	has doubled · we've seen · has been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is not seated · are called · being sicked
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	book, which has · people who go · points, which means

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 28 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, we'll, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, shooter /ˈʃuːtəː/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, conventional /kənˈvɛnʃənl̩/
Long words — get the stress right: electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, phenomenon /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, 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.
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 spark, poll, violent.

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: Prof Robert Pape: THE FIRE SEASON BEGINS - Learn English Speaking with Video

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