Shadowing Practice: The Hunt for America's Smartest Killer - Learn English Speaking with Video
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My motive for doing what I am going to do is simply personal revenge.
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I do not expect to accomplish anything by it.
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Lincoln, Montana, 1996.
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This cabin is the chosen home of Theodore J.
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Kaczynski, more commonly known as the Unabomber.
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He's long been feared as America's smartest criminal, a serial bomber who's killed and wounded targets across the country with no clear connection.
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For 17 years, he's eluded the FBI.
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It's the largest, most expensive manhunt in the Bureau's history.
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He's the evil genius they simply can't catch, likely history's most intellectual serial killer.
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He's terrorized the nation, instilling fear in Americans about opening their mail and getting on planes.
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And he did it all from his cabin.
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Here is where he built his bombs, where he wrote his manifesto, and where he evaded capture for nearly two decades.
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It's where he turned from off -the -grid recluse to world -famous murderer.
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This cabin contains all the evidence the FBI will need to convict him.
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It's located deep in the Montana wilderness.
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Back in 1969, Ted moved here from California, where he left behind a shining career as a a math professor at UC Berkeley.
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He wanted to get closer to nature and far, far away from everyone who pisses him off, which is most people.
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He built this cabin with his brother back when Ted still talked to him.
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It's got no electricity, no plumbing, just a wood stove, a bed, and a whole lot of books.
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Right now, Ted is building another bomb.
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They're meticulously crafted, and he's continuously improving his technique.
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Every year, they become more lethal.
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In fact, he's got another one under his bed, wrapped and ready to go but he won't get a chance to send it
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because despite his intellect he made some pretty dumb mistakes
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Set your sail for a long train,
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goodbye it's ticking, call it me,
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read the tale, you've got me, you've got me, you've got me.
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This video is largely based on these two books.
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Links are in the description.
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We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact
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that that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved.
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Born in 1942, Ted grows up in a pretty average family in the suburbs of Chicago.
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They're working -class Polish -Americans.
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His parents are politically progressive, bookish and intellectual, and really into the outdoors.
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They're strict but loving.
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At least, that's how they remember it.
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It becomes obvious at a young age that Ted is exceptionally gifted, so his parents push him to succeed.
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He skips two grades and easily aces every class.
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He's a pretty normal kid for someone with an IQ of 168.
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Sure, Ted is quiet, shy around girls, and arrogant, but he has a core circle of friends and plenty of hobbies.
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Like his parents and brother, he loves playing music, reading, and camping.
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People like Ted.
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They'll later remember him as a sensitive, respectful kid.
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All that starts to change when Ted enrolls at Harvard University at just 16 years old.
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Like many college freshmen, Ted struggles to adjust.
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Here he no longer feels like the smartest person in every room, and as a working -class kid thrown into the world of America's elite, he's a fish out of water.
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Other students and even faculty mock his shabby clothes and blue -collar background.
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He's deeply bothered by their snobbery, pain that will follow him through life.
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Ted's also just really young, younger than almost everyone else on campus.
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As an adult, Ted will write his mother furious letters about this.
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He demands apologies for pushing him out of the house before he was ready.
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Ted becomes depressed, and his grades suffer.
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His classmates describe him as a total loner, Moody, rude, and virtually mute.
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He's that guy on the dorm floor who only leaves his room to go to class, who ignores everyone else, who slams doors.
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There's a stench of rotting food wafting from his room.
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Ted doesn't know it yet but his withdrawn and alienated demeanor has caught the eye of a psychology professor.
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Dr. Henry A.
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Murray is very famous, with an on -campus research center named after him.
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He's basically a god in the social sciences.
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Murray is looking out for particular types of students, those who will make excellent guinea pigs for an experiment.
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His final, most elaborate experiment, the capstone of a long and illustrious career.
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It also happens to be a CIA -funded project designed to cause extreme distress and break down the subject's sense of self.
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Clearly, we are in a position to do a great deal of damage, and it does appear that the FBI is not going to catch us anytime soon.
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The FBI is a joke.
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It's the 1970s in San Francisco.
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The city is a hotbed of anti -government activity.
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There's outrage over the Vietnam War.
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Protest bombings are a regular occurrence.
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Explosions happen every week up through the mid -80s.
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The FBI dubs it the Belfast of North America.
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Radical far -left groups like the Weather Underground and the Simbiani's Liberation Army claim credit for many of the bombings.
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So most of the cases are pretty straightforward in terms of understanding motive and perpetrator.
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But amidst all of this, the FBI's San Francisco bomb squad makes a shocking discovery.
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Twelve mysterious, similarly built bombs can be linked to one elusive killer or group.
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They have next to nothing to go on.
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Just for whatever unknown reason, this string of explosives seems to target universities and airlines.
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Whoever is building these bombs is an expert crafter and careful to not leave any DNA behind.
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Not a hair.
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Not a fiber.
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They're encased in beautiful, handmade wooden boxes.
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There are no eyewitnesses to the bombings and no letters from organizations claiming credit.
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The victims appear to be scattershot of random people.
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The unknown perpetrator is referred to by the code Unabomb for university and airline bomber.
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So far, his bombs have killed one person and injured 20 others across five different states.
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Unlucky recipients of the Unabomber's early packages include a campus security guard, a handful of graduate students and professors, a secretary, an airline executive,
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and passengers on a flight from Chicago to DC.
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Some are injured quite badly.
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The first death is in 1985, Hugh Scruton, a guy who owned a computer store in Sacramento and was about to get married.
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What does he have to do with anything at all?
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Far away in his cabin, Ted reads about his death and chuckles to himself.
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He hears that the FBI offers a $25 ,000 award for any information.
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He's flattered.
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The Unabomber is making waves.
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Not bad for the actions of one man in a 10 by 12 foot shack with no electricity, running water, or phone service.
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Pretty hard to imagine now.
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These days, connection isn't optional.
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It's how we get around, check in, look stuff up, call for help, all of it.
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That's where Saley comes in.
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With affordable global data in over 200 destinations in eight regions, Saley is the eSIM provider that keeps you online while abroad.
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Forget hunting down local SIM cards
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and use code fern tv to get an exclusive 15 discount
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on your first purchase money -back guarantee in case your device
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is not compatible back to ted here in his cabin he's got everything he needs.
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Snowshoes, maps, a homemade chair, a cot, a typewriter, and hundreds of books.
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Scraps from junkyards and jars of chemicals for making his bombs.
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Binders and binders full of notes.
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All kinds of disguises for delivering the bombs, like wigs and sunglasses, and shoes with fake soles.
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It's cramped to the gills, but meticulously organized.
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At this point, the FBI has zero promising leads, and by the end of it all, they'll never actually find the perpetrator themselves.
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The bomber is always several steps ahead of them.
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They'll pursue thousands of dead ends, spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, and pour countless man -hours into this case.
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They have no idea why he's targeting the people that he is, but the bombs are so precise, so well -crafted, there's got to be a motive.
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Right?
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In 1987, there's finally a break in the case.
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The Unabomber plants a package outside a Salt Lake City computer store, and a lady spots him.
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He's wearing a gray hoodie, sunglasses, and sporting a mustache.
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The police create a sketch and post it all around the country.
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The bombings immediately stop, and for five years, nobody hears anything from the Unabomber.
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All kinds of people call in with tips.
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but the leads go nowhere, the case pretty much goes cold, but the FBI know that it's only a matter of time before he'll strike again.
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They're sure he's using the time to perfect his bombs.
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And they're right.
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In his cabin, Ted is finessing his technique.
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The upcoming bombs will be a whole lot more lethal.
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But, as the world will soon find out, he is also busy writing.
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He doesn't just want his explosives to do the talking, he's crafting a manifesto, one that claims to explain what the mysterious string of bombings is all about.
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The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown.
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Back at Harvard in 1958, the United States is experiencing huge shifts in culture.
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The buttoned -up 50s are drawing to a close, and the nation becomes swept up in the space race, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, the environmental movement, the explosion of drug culture,
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and all the while, the Cold War is escalating.
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The American military is paranoid that communists have developed mind -control drugs and brainwashing techniques, and they're eager to catch up,
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so they're covertly experimenting with ways to manipulate behavior.
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U .S.
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intelligence officials are especially interested in developing a perfect truth drug for interrogating enemies, and they believe LSD might be it.
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But they're also testing a wide range of ways
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that psychological manipulation could bend the will of anyone to do whatever the U .S military wants.
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They've even enlisted help from the Nazi scientists who experimented on Dachau inmates with hallucinogens and interrogation methods.
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The military illegally smuggles these war criminals over to get their advice on brainwashing, as part of Operation Paperclip.
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Over the course of at least 11 years, thousands of Americans are subjected to unethical psychological experiments that include sensory deprivation, hallucinogenic drugs dosed without consent,
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subliminal messaging, hypnosis, electroshock therapy, and even ice -pick lobotomies.
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And that's just the stuff we know about.
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When the project becomes public knowledge in the 1970s, the CIA director orders most of the records to be destroyed.
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The program is codenamed MKUltra.
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Many of the test subjects are vulnerable populations, like prisoners and hospital inmates, but also students.
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Students are prime subjects for these experiments because of their frequent contact with professors who play a big part in MKUltra.
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Some of the professors know the role they play, many don't.
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During the post -war period, the CIA becomes the largest employer of college professors
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and the military is by far the biggest source of funding for psychological research.
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Professors acted as consultants and researchers for military -backed projects.
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They used their status to encourage their students to participate in experiments, often involving drugs like LSD.
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Afterwards, they reported back to the government.
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Harvard becomes heavily involved in army -sponsored studies.
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One of the CIA's main men on campus is the superstar psych professor Henry Murray.
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Murray is well known for his studies of personality, and since the CIA's beginnings, his theories have influenced how they recruit new agents, and how they interrogate suspects.
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When Murray and young Ted Kaczynski cross paths, Murray is at the end of his career, and he recruits Ted for his final, most elaborate experiments.
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They're meant to assess the effects of stress and harsh interrogation on gifted male students.
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Murray wants to know what it will take to break an educated, intelligent man.
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The setup is simple.
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Ted and 21 other students are asked to write an essay about their most deep -seated beliefs.
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Then they're told they'll discuss their beliefs with a fellow undergrad.
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The experiment aims to compare the effects of stress on college men who seem psychologically healthy and well -adjusted, with students who seem alienated, pessimistic, and lacking in identity.
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Ted is most likely recruited for the second group because he's showing signs of depression.
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Ted's personal essay stands out as the most pessimistic of them all.
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It suggests that he was already vulnerable before the abusive tests began.
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He is also the youngest and the poorest in the group.
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The students are told this exercise is just to study different personalities.
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In truth, now the real experiment begins.
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The essays are handed to lawyers trained in manipulation, who are instructed to attack the values expressed in them.
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The students endure harsh interrogations in brightly lit rooms.
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They face calculated personal critiques designed to humiliate and erode their sense of self.
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All the while, electrodes monitor their stress responses.
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Later, they have to watch these stressful and humiliating moments on video.
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Over and over again.
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For three years.
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As Murrow himself describes it, the tests were designed to be abusive.
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He's had a lifelong fascination with pain and stress and is known to have a sadistic streak.
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Plenty of participants will later report the experience to be deeply unpleasant with lasting trauma.
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But Ted's responses are the most extreme in every category.
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Murray's team identifies him as the most traumatized of all.
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Yes, Ted Kaczynski got MKUltrad.
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You can read all about it at CIA .gov. In consequence, many claim the CIA created the Unabomber.
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But that's an oversimplification.
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It's not so easy to prove how much effect the experiments had on Ted's turn to terrorism.
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None of the other students in the experiment are known to have become killers.
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Some psychologists believe the experiments were stressful enough to create anger problems in Ted or even aggravate latent schizophrenia.
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But other psychologists evaluate him as undeniably sane.
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Ted himself He himself dismissed the idea that the tests were anything resembling psychological torture.
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He was very invested in being seen as psychologically healthy until the bitter end.
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He's taken great pains to not be painted as damaged or crazy.
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He wanted his murders to be understood in the context of his beliefs, not his personal history.
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If people saw his actions as a result of trauma or madness, it would invalidate his ideas.
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Ideas that formed his last year at Harvard.
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Ted becomes increasingly disillusioned with the industrial, technological system.
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He comes to believe that technology is slowly destroying humanity and eroding our freedom.
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He's horrified by widespread psychological suffering and how industrial technology has severely damaged the planet.
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He's certain that it'll only get worse the more technology develops.
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So anyone who helps advance technology in any way is the enemy.
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Scientists, engineers, business people, what And Ted calls the technician class.
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Ted starts having revenge fantasies and becomes obsessed with how society enforces obedience with psychological controls.
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He daydreams about breaking away from society and living off the grid.
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Ted graduates Harvard and goes on to get his PhD in math at the University of Michigan.
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He's quickly establishing himself as a brilliant mathematician
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and is offered a tenure -track position at UC Berkeley as their youngest professor ever.
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His students don't like him very much, but he's publishing groundbreaking papers on boundary functions.
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But Ted resigns one day without warning.
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He tells his family that he's done with teaching math to future engineers.
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Engineers who will advance the industrial technological system and continue destroying the planet.
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Ted buys a bit of land near Lincoln, Montana and builds a cabin with his brother.
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He's ready to escape the advanced technology that surrounded him at UC Berkeley.
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He wants to live a simpler life, far away from everyone he's ever known.
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And then he starts to build his first bomb.
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Through our bombings, we hope to promote social instability, an industrial society, propagate anti -industrial ideas, and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial system.
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In 1993, the Unabomber strikes twice after a six -year hiatus.
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Two prominent researchers, a computer scientist and a geneticist, receive packages the size of a VHS tape.
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The bombs detonate upon opening.
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And both professors are badly injured.
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Shortly after, the New York Times receives a typewritten letter.
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It claims credit for the bombs and says the public should expect more to come.
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In 1994 and 1995, the Unabomber succeeds in killing two people with his mail bombs, an advertising executive and a forestry lobbyist.
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As feared, his explosives have become notably more sophisticated.
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Bombings are usually accompanied with demands, demands for money or some kind of action.
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What made the Unabomber so difficult to understand, and to find, is that his bombs never came with any requests.
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They seem to be built only to cause fear, injury, and death.
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17 years after starting his bombing spree, the Unabomber finally makes his demands known.
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He writes the New York Times again, announces that he will permanently desist from terrorist activities if they publish a 56 -page manifesto.
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The request kicks off a fierce debate within the FBI and the newspaper, to publish or not to publish.
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The FBI has a clear policy to not negotiate with terrorists, but they also believe he'll honor his promise and stop killing people.
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After all, this is what the bombs were seemingly for, to force people to pay attention to his views.
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Plus, they still lack leads.
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If the public reads the manifesto, someone might be able to identify the Unabomber.
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So the manifesto is published.
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The FBI decides it should just be the Washington Post, though, because it has fewer readers, and the newspaper's stands will be easier to surveil.
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So they think.
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Interest in the Unabomber is huge.
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Newspaper sales hit a record high that day, with lines snaking around the block.
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Across the country, Americans are eager to finally read what the Unabomber has to say.
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The manifesto opens with an iconic line, The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
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And though the manifesto is an argument that calls for dismantling industrial society, it's also, unwittingly, a self -portrait.
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Within its pages, the Unabomber has accidentally unmasked himself.
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David and Ted, though seven years apart and very different, grew up close loved each other very much.
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As adults, they had impassioned philosophical debates by mail and shared a lot of the same views.
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David also worried about technology's destructive effect on humanity.
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He'd also spent some time living off the grid in a self -made cabin.
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But David wasn't a killer.
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When the manifesto was published, he hasn't spoken to his brother in a long time.
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Ted cut him out when David got married and refused to answer any of his letters.
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David's wife Linda, a philosophy professor, has a funny feeling about Ted, whom she never met.
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As the bombings stack up and some of the timings coincide with Ted's travels, Linda tells David, you've got a screwy brother.
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Maybe he's the Unabomber.
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David doesn't want to hear it.
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Linda doesn't know Ted the way David does.
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He'd never kill anybody.
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As a kid, Ted used to cry at the thought of animals getting hurt.
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But when the manifesto is finally published, David avoids reading it.
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He doesn't want to admit the similarities.
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That, like the Unabomber, Ted is an excellent carpenter, and that he had a lifelong fascination with explosives, and that some of the dates match up perfectly with Ted's travels.
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David only reads it when Linda insists.
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His jaw literally drops from the first few lines.
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The killer, like Ted, also hates technology.
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As he continues, David recognizes idiosyncratic word choices and logical arguments that Ted uses all the time.
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There is no escaping the truth.
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Ted is the Unabomber.
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So after some moral qualms about betraying his brother, David alerts the FBI.
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They are bound to make me out to be a sickie
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and to ascribe to me motives of a sordid or sick type.
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Many tame conformist types seem to have a powerful need to depict the enemy of society as sordid, repulsive, or sick.
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Lincoln, Montana, April 1996.
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With a tip from David, the feds are staking out Ted's cabin.
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The investigation is meant to be conducted quietly, but they're interviewing local townspeople, trying to collect more evidence on Ted.
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Right now, all they have is the linguistic similarities in the manifesto and old letters from Ted that David gave the FBI.
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Not exactly cold hard proof, enough for a search warrant, but not an arrest.
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Rumors start to spread around town that Ted Kaczynski, their very own angry hermit, is the Unabomber.
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The plan is to draw Ted out of his cabin and get inside before he can escape or destroy any evidence.
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But they don't know if he has it tricked out with explosives.
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Nobody would be surprised if he did.
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Ted has no idea he's under surveillance, so when someone knocks and says some land surveyors need to talk, he believes them and opens the door.
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He wasn't expecting visitors.
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These days he's busy with a dirty job.
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He's in the middle of rasping aluminum blocks to make powder for more bombs.
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He's covered from head to toe in the dust.
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He's real thin because the rabbit hunting was scarce this season.
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Ted's hair is wild and his clothes are literally rotting off of his body.
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But what does he care?
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He's not trying to impress anyone, and he can clean up fast if he needs to blend into society.
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Too bad for Ted.
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He'll be photographed in this state.
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Filthy, emaciated, and in severe need of a shave.
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The image will circulate around the globe and will not help Ted's desire to seem sane.
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When the feds swoop in, they find 40 ,000 pages of journals and plans, most written in code.
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The code is more complex than anything the FBI had ever seen, more convoluted than codes the KGB used during the Cold War, but Ted also left the key to the code in the cabin.
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Without it, the FBI wouldn't be able to decipher the decades of written confessions that definitively tied Ted to the bombings.
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They also find a bomb under the bed, ready to be mailed to an aerospace company in Dallas.
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Now the FBI has all the evidence they need, they lock up the cabin and take Ted to prison.
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He does not dispute that the journals with the confessions are his.
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In fact, he wrote them partially so that nobody would try to say he was crazy.
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Ted's family and his defense team attempt to convince the jury and the world at large that he is mentally ill.
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They're doing anything they can to avoid the death penalty, which frustrates him.
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He tries to fire his lawyers and defend himself.
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He would rather die than allow his lawyers to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
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Ted pleads guilty to his crimes and is sentenced to life in prison.
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Behind bars, he never stops writing.
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He publishes two books and keeps up a lively correspondence with a wide array of journalists and admirers.
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He also finally makes some human connections.
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He strikes up a friendship with Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who killed 168 people in 1995.
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Ted and McVeigh are briefly on the same prison block and find they have a lot of views in common, before McVeigh is carted off to death row.
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Ted even finds love for the first time in his life.
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After a lifetime of struggling to connect with women and never going beyond a few kisses, Ted suddenly has dozens of women writing him romantic or salacious letters.
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But only one captures his heart, a schoolteacher he calls his lady love.
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They spend thousands of hours talking by mail or in visiting booths, but they are never able to touch.
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He writes classical music for her before she dies of lung cancer.
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Later, Ted also develops cancer.
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When the condition becomes advanced, he dies by suicide in June 2023 at 81 years old.
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This is not to be a political revolution.
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Its object will be to overthrow not governments, but the economic and technological basis of the present society.
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In the decades since his arrest, Ted Kaczynski continues to fascinate and sometimes inspire.
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The manifesto's central argument is that technological advancements since the Industrial Revolution have robbed people of their freedom and well -being.
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These advancements are supposedly responsible for widespread psychological suffering and environmental devastation.
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It's a revolutionary call to dismantle industrial society altogether and warns that technology will inevitably overpower human autonomy.
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Many of Kaczynski's observations in the manifesto are true.
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Some of his predictions are prescient, and a lot of the grievances are understandable.
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It's not hard to find people who are also frustrated with surveillance, or sad about environmental destruction.
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At the time of his capture, Time magazine wrote, Nowadays, Ted Kaczynski continues to find admirers online.
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From teens on TikTok, depressed about climate change, half -ironically saluting Uncle Ted, to the extreme right mass murderer,
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Anders Breivik, who heavily quoted Kaczynski's industrial society in his own manifesto.
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But even if most people can find parts of the manifesto they agree with, most people are not willing to kill.
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Kaczynski knew that most people would be repelled by his crimes, but committed them anyway.
332
Those who find the ideas compelling might want to check out Jacques Ellul, the thinker whose ideas most inspired the manifesto.
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The philosopher never advocated killing.
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They also should check out Ted Kaczynski's diaries.
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They lay bare the personal motivations that drove the Unabomber, beyond the manifesto that was polished for public consumption.
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Technological society really did seem to anger Ted.
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But Ted was also very, very angry. In general.
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In his diary, Ted Kaczynski writes that he was happy to kill innocent civilians.
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He took pleasure in causing people pain.
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He killed at least nine dogs just because they barked too loud.
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He hated leftists.
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He hated doctors.
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He hated women.
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He fantasized about killing them just for rejecting him.
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He fantasized about killing his neighbors just because they annoyed him, including a toddler.
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He condemned technology as slavery and glorified simpler times that ran on, actual slavery.
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Kaczynski wasn't even much of an environmentalist.
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He made fun of them in his diaries.
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He littered proudly.
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He poached illegally.
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He logged on protected lands.
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You might get the sense that he only used environmentalism as a post -hoc justification for his murders.
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A cynic who identified ecological concerns as the most acceptable excuse for killing.
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C11
179 sentences
Cicada 3301: An Internet Mystery
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 353 sentences and 4547 words to shadow. The speech runs for 27:54. The speaker talks at a natural 163 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 75% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| manifesto noun | /ˌmæn.əˈfɛs.toʊ/ | A public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, especially that of a political party. |
| cabin noun | /ˈkæbɪn/ | A small dwelling characteristic of the frontier, especially when built from logs with simple tools and not constructed by professional builders, but by those… |
| experiment noun | /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/ | A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of… |
| bombing noun | /ˈbɒmɪŋ/ | The action of dropping bombs from the air. |
| psychological adjective | /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/ | Of or pertaining to psychology. |
| technological adjective | /ˌtɛk.nəˈlɑ.dʒɪ.kəl/ | Of, relating to, or involving technology, especially modern scientific technology. |
| explosive adjective | /ɛkˈspləʊsɪv/ | Able to, or likely to, explode. |
| killer noun | /ˈkɪlɚ/ | One who or that which kills. |
| publish verb | /ˈpʌblɪʃ/ | To issue (something, such as printed work) for distribution and/or sale. |
| bomber noun | /ˈbɑmɚ/ | A military aircraft designed to carry and drop bombs. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| package noun | /ˈpæk.ɪd͡ʒ/ | Something which is packed, a parcel, a box, an envelope. |
| grid noun | /ɡɹɪd/ | A rectangular array of squares or rectangles of equal size, such as in a crossword puzzle. |
| mathematics noun | /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/ | An abstract representational system studying numbers, shapes, structures, quantitative change and relationships between them. |
| motive noun | /ˈmoʊtɪv/ | An incentive to act in a particular way; a reason or emotion that makes one want to do something; anything that prompts a choice of action. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| live off verb | To depend on financially. |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. |
| catch up verb | To pick up suddenly. |
| clean up verb | To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| get around verb | To move to the other side of (something, such as an obstruction) by deviating from a direct course or following a curved path. |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. |
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 | been feared · can be linked · is referred |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has caught · have killed · have developed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | everyone who pisses · those who will · guy who owned |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 46 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, doesn't, they'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, lethal /ˈliː.θəl/, thin /ˈθɪn/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, destination /dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/, harsh /ˈhɑɹʃ/, confession /kənˈfɛʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: manifesto /ˌmæn.əˈfɛs.toʊ/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, psychological /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/, technological /ˌtɛk.nəˈlɑ.dʒɪ.kəl/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/
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 manifesto, cabin, experiment.
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.