Shadowing Practice: This Is What a Godlike Civilization Would Look Like - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Everything we think about aliens might be completely wrong.
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An expression of how primitive humanity actually is.
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We imagine progress as Dyson Spheres, Interstellar Travel and Galactic Empires.
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But what if this is just how cavemen imagine things?
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Bigger is better.
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We need more energy, more space, more stuff.
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What if the universe is full of old, godlike alien civilizations and we don't even realize it?
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What if real progress doesn't mean expanding outwards, but inwards?
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Controlling the tiniest layers of reality?
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Humans are expansionist and hungry for resources.
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In just a split second, we spread across the entire planet, ate most of the large animals, felled a third of all forests,
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carved canyons for metals, and burned mountains of dead plants for energy.
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And our appetite isn't slowing down, it's accelerating.
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The more we progress, the faster we devour the planet.
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So, the next step seems obvious.
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Head into space, claim new worlds, and devour them too.
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Going big and wide feels natural to us because in the brutal world of our ancestors, conquering more land meant more food and security.
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For most of human history, expansion was key to being richer and living better.
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Big is good.
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This logic should also be true for alien civilizations that expand outwards.
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They eat their planet, then they eat space.
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Based on this idea of more, scientists came up with a system to categorize civilizations by their energy consumption on the macro level.
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The Kardashev scale.
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A Type 1 civilization harnesses its home planet.
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Type 2 controls its star system.
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And Type 3 has taken over its galaxy, becoming a vast empire of engineered stars, terraformed planets and titanic ships among the stars.
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This scale is helpful, but also very limited.
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Growing outwards might have been more important in the past compared to the future.
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Because as our civilization climbed up the tech tree, progress stopped coming from the big and began to emerge from the small.
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Our ancestors built the pyramids, an immense technical achievement on a scale 100 times their own.
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But at a scale 100 times smaller, they created something incomparably more impactful.
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Writing, making knowledge eternal and allowing information to travel through time and space.
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Over the next thousands of years, we gained more and more mastery over the small and our capability and standard of living rose in parallel.
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We learned how to mix metals to get better tools, engineered medicines that saved millions from disease.
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We turned air into fertilizer, feeding billions.
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We pushed all the way down to the quantum level to convert sand into transistors, compressing room -sized computers into tiny machines,
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hundreds of millions of times more powerful.
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Controlling the small world makes you richer, healthier and able to live better.
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So what if we categorize alien civilizations by how deep they can go into the micro level?
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This is the Barrow scale, which measures progress by your level of control of the small world.
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It starts at Type 1 -minus, which covers almost all of human history until the late 19th century.
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We were able to manipulate objects and building structures roughly at our own scale, mining minerals, combining and refining them.
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Type 1 -minus already made us the masters of the planet, but this was just the very start and where things become really exciting.
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Type 2 -minus, the immortal gods of nature.
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Today, humanity might have begun its journey to becoming a Type
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2 -minus civilization achieve complete control over the language of life, DNA.
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It's only been 60 years since we cracked the genetic code, and about 10 since we discovered CRISPR, one of the most powerful tools of genetic engineering to date.
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The reward for completely understanding and controlling DNA is immense.
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The jellyfish Turritopsis donai can revert itself to an earlier stage, making it virtually immortal.
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If evolution stumbled on immortality once, What could a civilization achieve that can tell cells precisely what to do?
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It could heal most, if not all, diseases and enhance or change their bodies at will.
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Better blood, bones or muscles.
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Why not start developing super organs?
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Eyes that see more colors, skin that heals without scarring, brains that sense magnetic fields.
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Or, why not create organ banks where you grow spare hearts, lungs or eyes, so there are always fresh organs ready to implant in case you have an accident.
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And this is just us.
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We could make our pets immortal and modify species that hurt us.
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We could mold the biosphere of the planet however we felt like.
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And we could create new forms of life, either just for vanity or to serve a greater purpose.
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Maybe even creating a new Cambrian explosion on Earth, thanks to genetic engineering.
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Climate change might be laughably easy to fix
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if we engineer super -fast -growing plants that suck CO2 from the atmosphere and trap it in materials that don't rot.
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Hey, Mr. Kurzgesagt, this sounds nice and all, but all those superplants are just science fiction.
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That's right, but there are real and effective ways to help nature recover from the damage humans have caused today.
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That's why we love our friends at Planet Wild.
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They're an online community that crowd -funds nature protection projects worldwide.
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One of our fact -checkers has been a member for almost a year now.
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Every month, over 25 ,000 Planet Wild members fund a new mission to restore nature, all documented on YouTube so you can see what your contributions achieve.
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Take their wildlife crossing mission in Canada.
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Grizzly bears need lots of space to survive, but highways have carved up their habitat.
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Planet Wild funded crucial infrastructure to reconnect protected areas and help create one huge wildlife corridor.
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To protect our planet's ecosystems and help keep our channel going, join us at Planet Wild.
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You can give any amount that feels right to you and cancel at any time.
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The first 100 people to sign up using our code KURZKZAK9 will get their first month paid for by us.
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Just scan the QR code or click the link in the description.
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If you want to see them in action first, check out their wildlife crossings video linked below.
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And now, back to custom plants and animals.
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Type 2 - is already on the level of science fiction, but humanity reasonably might get there in the next decades to centuries.
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The further down we move on the Barrow scale, the more surreal things become.
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Type 3 - to 5 - the invincible gods of matter and energy.
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Beneath the basic bricks of life lie those of ordinary matter, molecules and atoms.
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Today we can manipulate them through chemistry, but Type 3 - and Type 4 - civilizations have the ability to move and combine individual molecules,
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and eventually atoms with the same ease we stack bricks to build a house.
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Achieving this fundamentally transforms what a civilization is able to do.
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Just to be clear, at this point we can only speculate and you can really only look dumb predicting future progress.
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After all, manipulating matter at very small scales takes a lot of energy.
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But just as our ancestors could never have imagined the internet, genetic engineering or drone warfare, we can't know what our distant descendants might achieve.
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But if we push the known laws of physics to their utter limits, several astonishing possibilities appear.
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It could begin with new materials that are more durable and versatile than anything we have today.
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Fabrics that shift texture with the weather, or a coating that can turn into a screen.
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Roads and bridges that self -repair before cracks spread.
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Buildings able to react to light, sound or stress by opening, insulating or reinforcing themselves.
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As this control over the small expands, matter itself becomes programmable.
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Today, the densest information storage system on Earth is DNA.
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But DNA is not magic, it's just atoms arranged so precisely
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that the enormous amount of information needed to run a cell can fit inside the cell itself.
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If we could pack information with that level of efficiency, we might be able to build microscopic nanobots that perform all kinds of tasks,
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from cleaning polluted water to performing surgery inside our bodies.
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Utility fogs, swarms of billions of nanobots could gather into everyday objects like tools or furniture.
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Matter might turn into hardware that we could guide with software.
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If this all sounds incredibly dangerous, that's because it probably is.
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But it also offers incredible riches.
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Every object is just atoms arranged in a specific way.
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So if you can control those arrangements, the word waste begins to lose its meaning.
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Old, broken or rotten stuff becomes poorly assembled atoms waiting to be rearranged again.
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Scarcity largely disappears because a lot of stuff in your planet can be reused again and again.
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This might eliminate the need to expand outwards to gather resources.
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Why travel light years to conquer other planets when most resources we could ever wish for are already here?
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A civilization that can pack information into matter as efficiently as biology does could also build incredibly powerful computers.
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The capacity of all present -day data centers might fit into a device as big as your fist,
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like the world's largest computers of a few decades ago are dwarfed by your iPhone.
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What kind of AIs could we build?
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What kind of simulation could we run?
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What kind of science could we do?
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All of this only escalates with control of the next layer of reality, transitioning into type 5 -minus.
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10 ,000 times smaller than atoms are atomic nuclei.
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Tiny cores that define what atoms are and the fuel that lights up the universe.
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Fusing the hydrogen of a mid -sized lake could sustain present -day humanity for millions of years.
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So a civilization that can control atomic nuclei has access to all the energy they can ever need.
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Dyson spheres or other macro -engineering projects may be entirely unnecessary on that level.
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For a civilization where health, matter and energy are abundant, the true source of progress,
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the only frontier left to chase isn't space or land, it's information.
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The ability to design and redesign your virtually endless resources. To compute.
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Inside nuclei, protons and neutrons pulse with heartbeats, sextillions of times per second, billions of times faster than any transistor can flip a bit today.
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So if it was somehow possible to harness them for computation, nuclei would give rise to an entirely new class of machines.
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Computers powerful enough to design entire new forms of life and matter and start unveiling the ultimate secrets of the universe.
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From here on, there's just one final step.
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Six minus to omega minus.
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The bottom of reality.
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At this point, we're getting
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so far out of our reach from what we can do today that scientists can really only speculate what might be possible.
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Deep below atomic nuclei are elementary particles like electrons, neutrinos and quarks, and here, reality itself begins to dissolve.
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Fundamental particles are like ghosts emerging in a quantum vacuum, an omnipresent cosmic fluid whose tiny vibrations give rise to everything that exists.
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We can't even begin to guess what a type 6 -minus civilization capable of manipulating reality at this scale might achieve.
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Perhaps it will uncover and use new dimensions of space for fancy stuff.
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Perhaps it can locally reshape physics or slow down time for their whole planet or even star system.
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But one idea that scientists have considered for decades is even stranger.
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Full control of the quantum vacuum could enable the creation of new universes.
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Our own cosmos might have started as a tiny instability of the quantum vacuum that inflated into everything we see today.
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If that's true, then mastering the vacuum could give you the power to seed entirely new universes inside test tubes.
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At that point, you'd become an Omega Minus civilization, an actual cosmic god of the infinitely small.
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Do advanced civilizations retreat into smaller and smaller layers of reality?
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We can't say.
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It is possible that to do all the great things we've described at the small scales, they might still need to exploit resources at larger scales.
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So maybe they do a bit of both.
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But for all its speculation, exploring the Barrow scale reveals something deep.
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The path to becoming as immortal
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and powerful as the laws of physics allow doesn't always seem to lead us to the other side of the galaxy.
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It can also guide us into the small world around us.
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This may be the final stage of all advanced civilizations.
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Not becoming huge and visible, shooting through the void of space, but quiet gods of the gigantic small universe in their own corner of the galaxy.
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Our shop is turning ten.
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It's become one of our most important sources of income, so we can keep our videos free for everyone.
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The Human Era Calendar is the product you always look for the most, and the new edition is dropping very soon.
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But there's more.
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To thank all the burbs visiting our shop, we launched a rewards program,
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the Cosmic Expedition, where you can earn XP and unlock special rewards like discounts and exclusive products.
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Be the first to know when the calendar drops, stay in the loop on all things Kutzkzucked, and subscribe to our newsletter.
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You want to listen to the beautiful soundtrack without my annoying voice?
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Well, it's up to you just select the audio track Interlingua down here and watch the video again as a music video.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “This Is What a Godlike Civilization Would Look Like”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: civilization, planet, type, scale, minus. This video has 160 sentences and 2234 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:07. The speaker talks at a natural 158 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| civilization noun | /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ | An organized culture encompassing many communities, often on the scale of a nation or a people; a stage or system of social, political, or technical… |
| minus | /ˈmaɪ.nəs/ | Made less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity). |
| atom noun | /ˈætəm/ | The smallest possible amount of matter which still retains its identity as a chemical element, now known to consist of a nucleus surrounded by electrons. |
| nucleus noun | /ˈnuː.kli.əs/ | The core, central part of something, around which other elements are assembled. |
| outwards adverb | /ˈaʊtwɚdz/ | From the interior toward the exterior; in an outward direction. |
| manipulate verb | /məˈnɪp.jʊ.leɪt/ | To move, arrange or operate something using the hands |
| immortal adjective | /ɪˈmɔɹtəl/ | Not susceptible to death; living forever; never dying. |
| quantum noun | /ˈkwɑntəm/ | The total amount of something; quantity. |
| vacuum noun | /ˈvæ.kjuːm/ | A region of space that contains no matter. |
| ancestor noun | /ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/ | One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather; a forebear. |
| cosmic adjective | /ˈkɑz.mɪk/ | Of or from or pertaining to the cosmos or universe. |
| atomic adjective | /əˈtɑː.mɪk/ | Of or relating to atoms; composed of atoms; monatomic. |
| carve verb | /kɑɹv/ | To cut meat in order to serve it. |
| categorize verb | /ˈkætɪɡəˌɹaɪz/ | To assign a category; to divide into classes. |
| devour verb | /dɪˈvaʊɚ/ | To eat quickly, greedily, hungrily, or ravenously. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| slow down verb | To decelerate. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| light up verb | To illuminate, to bring light to something, to brighten. |
| sign up verb | To add a name to the list of people who are participating in something. |
| take over verb | To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- What kind of simulation could we run?
- What kind of science could we do?
- You want to listen to the beautiful soundtrack without my annoying voice?
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 taken · It's only been · have caused |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be rearranged · can be reused · are dwarfed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 13 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, doesn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, simulation /ˌsɪm.jəˈleɪ.ʃn̩/, speculation /ˌspɛk.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/, dimension /daɪˈmɛn.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, manipulate /məˈnɪp.jʊ.leɪt/, categorize /ˈkætɪɡəˌɹaɪz/, macroeconomics /ˌmæk.ɹoʊˌiː.kəˈnɒ.mɪks/, speculation /ˌspɛk.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/
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 civilization, minus, atom.
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.