Shadowing Practice: What Happens When You Die? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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What happens when you finally kick the bucket, so to speak?
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Despite our mostly science -grounded views on death these days, it seems many of us believe in life after it.
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In 2014, UK citizens were polled by the Telegraph, and just under 60 % of respondents said they believe some part of us lives on.
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In the US, still a very Christian nation, Pew Research in 2015 asked people what happened after you die.
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The survey found that 72 % of Americans believed you go to heaven,
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which was described as a place where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded.
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54 % of U .S adults replied that they believed in hell,
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which was described as a place where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.
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With that in mind, welcome to this episode of the Infographics Show, What Happens When You Die?
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It seems a lot of people do believe that after death we might be ensconced in some cloud -strewn paradise,
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or conversely, if we haven't adhered to the ethics prescribed to us by our chosen religion or denomination of that religion,
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we might be faced with eternal hellfire
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and the prospect of groveling to a bearded red man who hardly ever puts down his pitchfork.
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But let's start with some empirical realism and what actually happens to the body when we die.
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Physicians know you're dead because the heart stops beating and there is no longer any electrical activity in your brain.
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Brain death equals dead, although machines can keep you going a little bit longer.
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You can also have what's called a cardiac death, which means the heart stops beating and blood no longer flows through your body.
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The strange, even wonderful thing is, people that have suffered cardiac death
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but have been brought back to life have said they were aware of what was going on around them.
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Others have talked about walking towards a light in such a near -death experience.
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You can be brought back from what we call clinical death, but you only have a grace period of about 4 -6 minutes.
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But let's say you get to the light and pass through.
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This is what we call biological death.
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Game over, the final whistle, dead as a dodo.
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This is where it gets kind of undignified, but what do you care, you're dead.
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Once you're definitely no longer with us, your muscles relax, and this means your sphincter will too,
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meaning that triple whopper and large fries you had for lunch will spill out of you.
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The gas you have in you may also leak out and cause a stink.
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The same goes for the pee you've got in your bladder.
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So dying, not surprisingly, is a bit of a messy affair.
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And men, you might even ejaculate.
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As for women, you may give birth after you have died if you were pregnant, which is something called coffin birth.
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It doesn't happen often, though.
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Instead of pushing, it's the gases in the abdomen that squeeze the newborn into the world.
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As the body gets rid of what is trapped inside, noises may be emitted from your mouth as air escapes.
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Nurses and people working close to dead bodies have regularly reported hearing very alive -sounding moans and groans coming from dead bodies.
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You may twitch, but this doesn't mean there is life in you, these are just muscle contractions.
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You could also soon get an erection if you died lying on your stomach and the blood flowed down there.
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All your blood will pool to a certain area of your body.
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This is called liver mortis, and it's the reason parts of you will have that dark purple color you have seen on TV.
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These are the lovely things that can happen quite shortly after you go.
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With no blood flowing through your body, it will begin to cool down, known as algor mortis, or simply death chill.
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It will keep cooling until it is the same temperature as your surroundings, you will become stiff within about 2 -6 hours,
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and this we call rigor mortis.
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This is because calcium is getting into your muscle cells,
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cells break down without blood flow and this leads to bacteria growth and that's why you start to decompose.
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You may look like your hair or your nails have grown, but that isn't the case.
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What is happening is that your skin is receding, giving the impression of growth.
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The skin will loosen too, and blisters will appear on the body.
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The next stage is putrefaction, when bacteria and microorganisms start feasting on you.
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You'll soon start to stink as bad as anything you could have imagined while you were alive.
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One person described the smell as rotten eggs, feces, and a used toilet left out for a month, times 1000.
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It is unholy.
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Soon everything that is soft becomes liquefied, with things like bones, cartilage, and hair remaining strong.
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You're already well on your way to decomposing by the time you are being put in the ground, ground, but if embalmed and buried,
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decomposition could be a slow process.
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Left above ground, you'll be a liquefied mess within about a month, feasted on by insects, maggots, plants and animals.
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Underground, some experts say it might take 8 -12 years before you are reduced to nothing but a skeleton.
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After around 50 years, even your bones will become part of the earth.
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We should add the rate of decomposition depends on all manner of factors, too many to list here, but we think you get the picture.
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While some people report that their near -death experience was a scene to behold, that's That's not always the case.
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One person writing on Reddit said his experience was as follows, it was just black emptiness, no thoughts, no consciousness, nothing.
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Is there really something else?
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French philosopher René Descartes believed the soul was separate from the body, as many religions will tell you, and perhaps when we die, something lingers on.
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Friedrich Nietzsche talked about the concept of eternal recurrence,
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or eternal return, meaning all existence or energy in the universe has forever and will forever keep repeating itself ad infinitum.
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You live the same life again and again forever.
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Now doesn't that make you want to live well?
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Here we can make similarities to the Buddhist belief of the Wheel of Samsara wherein all souls
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or lives will begin a cycle again after death, except not the same exact life,
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something we call reincarnation, which some people say is connected to what we sometimes call deja vu.
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Buddhists believe we can end this vicious cycle if we can become truly enlightened, therefore achieving nirvana.
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Or do we make our way to heaven after our bodies stop working,
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tipping our cap to St. Peter at the pearly gates hoping he won't deny us entrance for stealing
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that candy bar when we went on a school trip to Niagara Falls.
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Will we be taken into paradise, a place replete with excellent foods and gorgeous maidens that make your dead knees go weak?
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Or will we simply seed the earth, our souls nothing more than a worldly fancy
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that took our minds off our cosmic insignificance and the feeling of futility that we sometimes experience here on Terra Firma?
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While this video was pretty grim, let's for a second step away and think about your life now and how you can make it better.
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If you are one of the many living people who are running a business or thinking of starting one, you probably need a website.
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But since we all have limited time on earth,
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “What Happens When You Die?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: die, dead, blood, happen. This video has 69 sentences and 1374 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:16. The speaker talks fast, about 219 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| muscle noun | /ˈmʌs.əl/ | A contractile form of tissue which animals use to effect movement. |
| eternal adjective | /ɪˈtɝ.nl̩/ | Lasting forever; unending. |
| bone noun | /boʊn/ | A composite material consisting largely of calcium phosphate and collagen and making up the skeleton of most vertebrates. |
| paradise noun | /ˈpæɹədaɪs/ | The place where sanctified souls are believed to live after death. |
| subscribe verb | /səbˈskɹaɪb/ | To write (one’s name) at the bottom of a document; to sign (one's name). |
| feast noun | /ˈfiːst/ | A holiday, festival, especially a religious one |
| cardiac adjective | /ˈkɑɹdiˌæk/ | Pertaining to the heart. |
| shortly adverb | /ˈʃɔɹtli/ | In a short or brief time or manner; quickly. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| cloud noun | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air. |
| egg noun | /ɛɡ/ | An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, often housing an embryo within a membrane or shell… |
| suffer verb | /ˈsʌfɚ/ | To undergo hardship. |
| electrical adjective | /ɪˈlɛktɹɪkəl/ | Related to electricity (or electronics) |
| stomach noun | /ˈstʌmək/ | An organ in animals that stores food in the process of digestion. |
| steal verb | /stiːl/ | To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| cool down verb | /kuːl ˈdaʊn/ | To become cooler; to be reduced in temperature. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| pass through verb | To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another. | |
| put down verb | To insult, belittle, or demean. |
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 | were polled · was described · might be ensconced |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have led · haven't adhered · have suffered |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who have · man who hardly · death, which means |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 17 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, doesn't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shortly /ˈʃɔɹtli/, impression /ɪmˈpɹɛʃn̩/, physician /fəˈzɪʃən/, consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, punish /ˈpʌnɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: electrical /ɪˈlɛktɹɪkəl/, biological /ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, surprisingly /səˈpɹaɪzɪŋli/, philosopher /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/, realism /ˈɹi.əlɪzəm/
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 muscle, eternal, bone.
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.