Shadowing Practice: Why humans believe “everything happens for a reason” | Clay Routledge - Learn English Speaking with Video
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If you're a critic of religion or if you're someone who champions yourself as a strong believer in the power of rationality,
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you probably think supernatural thinking is bad.
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But I take the perspective that supernatural thinking is actually an important part of being a complete human being.
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From a scientific point of view, all we know is what we have in this life.
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But if we're open to supernatural possibilities, that allows us to at least explore or have hope that there's something about our existence,
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something about the human spirit that transcends the material.
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And when we are dealing with anxieties about mortality, when we're dealing with questions about purpose,
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when we're dealing with just trying to understand our place in a large universe,
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our minds naturally drift towards at least curiosities about the supernatural, if not outright belief.
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My name is Clay Rutledge.
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I'm an existential psychologist and I'm the director of the Human Flourishing Lab at the Archbridge Institute.
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Supernatural thinking is really any type of idea or concept that stands outside of our scientific understanding of the material world.
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The most common one that people are familiar with, of course, involves religion.
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People want to make sense out of their lives and their environment and seeking a connection with the divine is one way.
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But religion also has a very strong social component.
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And when people in a community or in a family or even in a broader group share a supernatural belief system,
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they have an invisible thread that helps connect them, that helps them feel like their social nature transcends the biological,
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transcends the material, and that in a way makes their connections even that much richer.
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But we're experiencing right now what many commentators refer to as the great decline when it comes to religion.
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People are becoming less traditionally religious, but if you look at the reasons people are religious,
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if you look at the nature of the human brain and the human mind, you'll find that the human quest for meaning,
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the human orientation towards the supernatural, towards the transcendent, hasn't disappeared just because religion has declined.
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So the question becomes, what are people doing with their spiritual nature?
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What are they seeking?
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What are they looking for?
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And how are they meeting their existential needs if they're not doing so through the traditional religious practices that they once were?
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You can see people engaging more in practices such as yoga, meditation, even martial arts, which by themselves aren't necessarily spiritual,
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but they're often infused with the spiritual quality that people feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves ideally something transcendent.
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And so in a lot of ways, supernatural beliefs are a form of psychological medicine,
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and that they help us deal with some of the difficulties in life
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and our need to grapple with the big existential questions.
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So humans believe things like everything happens for a reason because we're an existential species.
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We're a species that, in a lot of ways, is very goal-driven or very agentic.
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We plan our own lives, we pursue things that we want to pursue, and so when we make things happen we see purpose in it.
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And as a result we often just populate the world with that same type of thinking.
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We assume there's purpose everywhere and we we tend to exaggerate that sometimes.
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Teleological thinking is our attempt to impose design on experiences, events, or just anything we see in the world.
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So that would be something like the sun exists to keep us warm, which from a scientific point of view is considered an error,
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but from a non-scientific point of view, from a more psychological point of view, it seems to just be an aspect of the human condition
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that we like to see the world in terms of design and in terms of purpose.
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So lots of organisms are social.
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Other organisms are even potentially political, but humans are more sophisticated than that.
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We don't just look around us and try to fit in.
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We try to have significance.
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We want our lives to matter.
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There are at least three distinct cognitive capacities that make humans intellectually unique.
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One, we're very self-reflective.
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We spend a lot of time turning inward, thinking about the nature of our existence.
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In addition to that, we're able to mentally time travel.
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So when I think about myself, I don't just think about myself in the present, I think about myself in the future.
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I think about my goals, my hopes, and also my fears.
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And finally, we have a capacity for high-level abstract thought.
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In other words, we have imaginations.
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You know, landing a rover on Mars would have seemed like total fiction,
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and thanks to our imaginative capacities and our intellect we've been able to make that possible.
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So those three things have really contributed to our existential nature, our ability to seek a life of meaning and purpose.
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When we think of human cognition, we can think about two general categories.
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And of course, I'm oversimplifying a little bit, but you can break things down into rational versus intuitive cognitive processes.
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There's a metaphorical representation for this that we call heart versus head.
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Of course, all these processes are taking place within the brain,
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but these metaphors showcase that people understand that there's a difference between following your intuitions versus just following rational processes.
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So yes, rationality is important.
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When we're trying to solve problems, we need to approach it systematically using the scientific method, using logic.
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But part of what makes humans inspired to improve the world, to improve their own lives,
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to help others, to take on projects that advance civilization but they might not see complete in their own lifetime
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isn't rational thinking necessarily it's intuitive thinking
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and often it's supernatural thinking
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it's feeling like they have a reason to be here regardless
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of how people approach the question meaning the critical ingredient is
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that you feel like you're an agent of meaning and
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that is that you feel like you have the power within you to pursue a meaningful life.
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And it's when we're making meaning that we're often at our best, that we're often the most inspired, the most creative, the most generous,
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the most hopeful, the most optimistic, and the most willing to make sacrifices for others to advance society and to improve the world.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why humans believe “everything happens for a reason””. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: supernatural, thinking, existential, scientific, religion. This video has 46 sentences and 1077 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:52. The speaker talks at a natural 157 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| supernatural adjective | /ˌsu.pəɹˈnæ.tʃə.ɹəl/ | Above nature; beyond or added to nature, often so considered because it is given by a deity or some force beyond that with which humans are born. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| spiritual adjective | /ˈspɪɹɪt͡ʃuəl/ | Of or pertaining to the spirit or the soul. |
| versus | /ˈvɝsəs/ | Against; in opposition to. |
| pursue verb | /pɚˈsu/ | To follow urgently, originally with intent to capture or harm; to chase. |
| rational adjective | /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/ | Capable of reasoning. |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| psychological adjective | /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/ | Of or pertaining to psychology. |
| cognitive adjective | /ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/ | Relating to the part of mental functions that deals with logic, as opposed to affective which deals with emotions. |
| inspire verb | /ɪnˈspaɪə(ɹ)/ | To infuse into the mind; to communicate to the spirit; to convey, as by a divine or supernatural influence; to disclose preternaturally; to produce in, as by… |
| organism noun | /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/ | A discrete and complete living thing, such as animal, plant, fungus or microorganism. |
| intuitive adjective | /ɪnˈtjuːɪtɪv/ | Spontaneous, without requiring conscious thought. |
| naturally adverb | /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ | In a natural manner. |
| regardless adverb | /ɹɪˈɡɑɹd.lɪs/ | Without attention to warnings or indications of bad consequences. |
| anxiety noun | /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/ | An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| look around verb | To inspect a building or area. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 30 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, I'm, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/, imagination /ɪˌmæd͡ʒəˈneɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: supernatural /ˌsu.pəɹˈnæ.tʃə.ɹəl/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, psychological /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/, organism /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/, intuitive /ɪnˈtjuːɪtɪv/
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 supernatural, belief, spiritual.
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.