Shadowing Practice: Why Pornography Is Basically Modern Mythology - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Porn addiction is apparently one of the biggest problems of the internet age.

They can't stop watching porn.

Did the dirty eight times in one single day.

Pornography addiction is one of the worst addictions in the world today.

I don't think so.

Or at least I think we're missing the point.

If you look at the most popular search terms on The Hub, hentai has been dominating for almost 10 years now.

Which, okay, weird, but probably doesn't mean anything.

Until we break down the elements of hentai.

Hyper exaggerated body parts, fantastical creatures, humans with animal parts, futanari,

and of course, this is just ancient mythology on steroids.

And it's not just hentai, it's good old regular porn too.

Maybe I've been reading too much mythological interpretation or watching too much porn, but the similarities between the two are staggering.

And trust me, once you see it, you will not be able to unsee it anymore.

It was only when I saw adult content from this peculiar your angle

that I understood really what's happening behind the scenes of this addiction.

I'm here to say that mythology is alive and affects us more than we think.

To make it even harder for myself, I won't even talk about hentai.

Too easy.

Rather, I will tackle the most infamous, oldest, vanilla adult content trope out there and its 3,000 year old mythological origin.

And what it all says about the addictive ritual you do when you watch it.

Before we begin, And as you can imagine, I will have to do my best to navigate around the terms associated with this topic to not get censored by YouTube,

so bear with me when I formulate things in PG baby talk terms.

Most of you are familiar with the infamous sub-genre of the stepmother, though I hope we all understand step is only there for legality.

For our purposes, we can also include the figures of the stepsister and MILF in general.

This setup is obviously an Oedipal mommy issue galore, right?

No. If you're unfamiliar, the Oedipus story goes

that he was born to a king and queen but was carried away at birth.

However, he survived and when returning to his kingdom, he unknowingly killed his father, the king and upon return married his mother, the queen.

However, when he realized what he'd done, he blinded himself.

All normal things you do in life.

As far as I'm concerned, the Freudian literal reading of the Oedipus myth is nonsense that misses the point of a much wiser mythological meaning.

And herein lies the essence.

Mythology is transpersonal.

In other words, it doesn't focus on any specific object or person, but rather shapes and forms as such.

Since mythology is obviously pre-scientific, it is narrative-driven because how else will you efficiently share it back then?

and super abstract because it attempts the monumental task of depicting being itself.

All of this makes it hard for us moderns to comprehend it.

Yet, it would be wrong to assume

that thousands of years of human history condensed into narrative form wouldn't have anything useful to say.

So when Oedipus unknowingly murders his father and marries his mother then blinds himself,

you can observe how almost every word in that summary is not literal.

Rather, between the quotation marks are symbols which represents what it means to develop as a conscious human being.

Now I'm not saying that adult content is that profound,

but it quite brilliantly plays into these transpersonal symbols which is why so many young men are inescapably attracted to it.

We have our roadmap with this summary

and by decoding the words in quotations we will unravel the actual meaning of this genre.

And it is only natural that we start with the father and mother.

To unlock the meaning of despair, we must look at it psychologically.

Our psyche is not only consciousness, that part which plants, wants and does.

Consciousness is also enveloped like a nucleus in the unconscious, so everything beyond our awareness.

Symbolically, consciousness rises like an island from the ocean of unconsciousness.

Makes sense, right?

And also note the power dynamic in this metaphor.

Just like our bodies, consciousness develops and matures over time.

Nobody will deny that what any adult is conscious of is no match for any 3 year old.

So consciousness is like a tree that grows upwards despite gravity, or one might even say in opposition.

That is because these two forces are naturally in constant tension.

Just like electricity needs voltage, so potential difference, the same goes for the human psyche.

You could say in this view, this me, this you and I is the electric charge between the conscious and the unconscious.

Just like to be born, one needs a male and a female.

Obviously, right?

So, getting back to Oedipus, the symbol of the mother represents the unconscious, naturally.

Where do we rise from?

And the father represents consciousness, who separates us from the embrace of the mother.

So when the hero of the explicit video is engaging with the stepmother, it is actually a consciousness facing the unconscious.

Usually the fantasies portrayed involve being seduced by a feminine figure

which has been represented in mythology for ages as the ultimate failure of the hero.

In adult content, it's when the stepmother for one ridiculous reason

or another takes care of the stepson or in normal stories like Finding Nemo it is being swallowed by the whale.

This intuitively makes sense to us even though it's a drawing of a fish with a face inside a whale

because our monumental human drive is to increase and expand our conscious powers.

Think science.

Or as Jung put it, to be the light shining in the dark.

So when Oedipus unknowingly does what he does, that means his consciousness was still too weak he wasn't ready to become a hero,

to become mature.

And it's why usually the stepson is quite childish.

The problem is that becoming mature or developing a consciousness that can withstand unconscious forces is the problem.

Yet it is perfectly natural because contrary to what we might think, the unconscious is status quo.

It is gravity itself.

Defying it, flying a rocket to the moon, that's what's truly extraordinary.

So an adolescent person is faced with many challenges along their

way from being one with the mother to becoming one with the father, which is the narrative motif of many major religions.

That is why Oedipus is a failed hero, because by murdering his father, he kills his consciousness, and by marrying his mother,

he fails the challenges of maturation and gives into infantile unconscious dependency on others, which could be people or substances.

The stepmother genre plays exactly into the symbolical universal temptation of adolescence.

Yet we still have the blinding that Oedipus does once he becomes conscious of his failure.

This blinding is in the same narrative lane as castration, which the Freudians were obsessed with and took literally, which again is wrong.

To be passively castrated from without means symbolically to lose your consciousness and be swallowed up by either nature or culture.

Here, feminine castration differs from masculine.

Feminine castration is usually orgiastic, one loses their individuality to death or chaos.

The equivalent group genre is probably obvious.

Masculine castration, though, manifests itself through ascetism or impotence.

One becomes detached from body and thus nature.

Naturally, this type is rarely found in pornography except for the Quackle trope.

The failed hero of that type of video is the one being held in submission by a dominant masculine figure.

As Oedipus shows, the hero of the story does not necessarily have to be successful.

Anyway, the crucial detail in the Oedipus story is that he does it to himself, which most of you probably feel is the most tragic and disturbing part of it,

and not without reason.

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You see, we actually have the story backwards.

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The real tragedy of the story is only at the very end.

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That is because to develop as a person, you must murder your father and marry your mother.

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I know how backwards that sounds, which is why I said understanding mythology today is complicated.

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But what if we forget the father for a second and I just put it like this.

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To marry the mother symbols that the hero's task is to enter a creative union,

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marry, With their given destiny or with the random chaos of existence and master it.

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Sounds quite different, right?

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And while we're at it, to defeat the father symbols to not become a slave to conformity and to the mass but become a true individual.

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And again, in adult content, that is what's being portrayed when the stepson takes the stepmother from the father.

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The key is that Oedipus was active in doing so.

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The interpretation we'd had before would be right only if he was passive, so murdered by and married by.

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Oedipus is a failed hero because he unknowingly did the journey, which is funnily represented in adult content when the women switched unbeknown to the guy.

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Anyway, once Oedipus realized what he'd done, he was so shocked that he willingly sacrificed his consciousness, his eyes and regressed to infantility.

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This is the symbolical meaning behind the infamous warning to not touch yourself or you will go blind.

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It warns us to not fall prey to our unconscious desires, but of course, when taken literally, loses all its meaning.

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The connection is there because the body is naturally associated with the unconscious.

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It is out of our conscious control, at least for the most part.

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And imagine before medicine and physical science.

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The body is a strange thing that just dies randomly, right?

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You get it.

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Anyway, pornography is much more obsessed with the passive regression into oblivion of individuality, hence the inescapable objectification of the actors.

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Again, since adult content is so close to mythology, just like with its characters, the actors are also playing a transpersonal role.

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They're not there to be human-relatable characters of a novel, let's say, but rather the vessels,

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bodies that hold these archetypal ideas just like dragons, whales or giants do.

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They're there to embody the categories.

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And needless to say, this can get out of hand just as the rituals of ancient tribes did,

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which today we find so impersonal and atrociously grotesque with our increasing individuality.

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So now that we get the story of Oedipus and have a framework for mythological symbols, it might seem that indeed, adult content is pretty grim and infantile obsessed,

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which A lot of it is, but we know already that a lot depends on whether the hero in the video is active or passive.

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By understanding this dynamic, we will now fully unravel the meaning of what you do while watching it.

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I think pornography's forefront symbol should be the Euroboros, a serpent eating its own tail, life and death at once.

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It stands for the ultimate unconscious, so for that which can never be known.

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Euroboros is a paradisal unconscious state of non-differentiation, so infancy, death, sleep, etc. Now,

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we already figured out that one should emancipate from the Euroboros and, by slaying the dragon, become mature.

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But remember, the unconscious is like gravity, so it is natural to long and fall for that paradisal feeling of non-conscious existence.

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Adult content hits the nail exactly on this fantasy and serves as a, hopefully, temporary relief from developing as an individual.

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Especially in the group genre, the Euroboros manifests most prominently, because each person participating loses themselves and becomes one,

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though only in body, with everyone else.

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Becoming one spiritually is also a very powerful mythological trope or symbolism.

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So, the Euroboros is individual-less.

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And very similar group ecstasies happened openly throughout ancient tribal rituals until they became increasingly taboo

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and eventually only done behind closed doors.

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Yet, the Eurobarus is a paradoxical symbol because it comes from an undifferentiated psychology,

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which means that it is not only death but also life at the same time.

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Thus this symbol also represents creativity, the self-generative nature of humans.

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Fascinatingly, this self-generation is symbolically associated with creative masturbation.

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It expresses the autonomy of an individual who gives birth to themselves.

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See, the development of autonomy is just as crucial of a development task as adaptation,

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so in that sense, Eurobarus suddenly becomes a symbol of individuality.

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Again, it is dualistic in nature.

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So, on one hand, detachment from it, entry into the world and encounter with the opposites are essential tasks of development.

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But on the other hand, an equally legitimate development task is self-related, to become the center of your own life.

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In this sense, when you're doing what you're doing while watching adult content, you're engaging in a symbolic ritual of differentiation.

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In other words, by ritual sacrifice, by what happens at the end, you are trying to manifest strength towards self-realization and autonomy.

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The more a person is addicted to this behavior, the more that person wants and needs this independence yet is unable to achieve it.

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It is not without reason that consuming adult content is so closely correlated with adolescence.

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So if you're doing your ritual all day long uncontrollably, it is not that you need to go cold turkey as with some addiction.

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Rather, you need to step out into the world and face the opposites.

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And I'll bet you the ritual will slowly lose its grip.

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But remember I mentioned that whether the hero in the videos is passive or active means a lot.

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is active, the content usually then portrays the overcoming of the unconscious, which is symbolized by the feminine figure in the video.

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Psychologically, this probably means that your unconscious is trying to manifest what it lacks and you should just follow its hints.

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However, the tricky part is that emancipation begins with a negative act of destruction.

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Determinatio est negatio, to discriminate,

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distinguish and isolate oneself from the surrounding context are all marks of a consciousness why experimentation is the scientific principle.

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With it, a natural connection is broken and analyzed in isolation.

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So, the symbolic fight with the dragon Euroborus is

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when the person adopts its destructive attitude and directs it against it and not themselves, which Oedipus failed to do.

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Unfortunately, the deflation of the unconscious is closely connected to depreciation of the female, which is obvious in many religions.

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But the same goes for adult content.

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When it gets out of hand with this symbolic obsession of defeating the unconscious, the content gets strong fast.

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It is one thing if the content depicts someone actively winning the opposite sex.

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I use that word since it's a fantasy, no one wins anyone in real life.

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But it is completely another thing if it depicts a ridiculous domination of the opposite.

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On the other hand though, if the narratives you're attracted to are passive, so where the guy gets lucky without doing anything,

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then most likely your consciousness desires to give in to regression and become overpowered by the unconscious.

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This can become a problem and eventually, one can end up a kumer.

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Horrible joke.

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I'm sorry.

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My main point with this video is that in those rarer cases

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when the content depicts the successful overcoming of the fear of the feminine, which is one of the main tasks of adolescence,

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it is simply doing the job of mythology which we have brushed under the carpet.

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Yes, pornography can be a problem, but the bigger issue is that we're getting disorientated by our lack of a cultural compass,

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which allows such places as The Hub to get so many young men addicted.

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Young men just need some mythology, that's all.

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54 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Pornography Is Basically Modern Mythology”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: unconscious, content, Oedipus, consciousness, adult. This video has 185 sentences and 2647 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:23. The speaker talks at a natural 162 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
unconscious adjective	/ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəs/	Not awake; having no awareness (usually as the result of a head injury).
mythology noun	/mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/	The collection of myths of a people, concerning the origin of the people, history, deities, ancestors and heroes.
ritual noun	/ˈɹɪt͡ʃ.u.əl/	A rite; a repeated set of actions, especially in religious contexts.
mythological adjective	/ˌmɪθəˈlɒd͡ʒɪkəl/	Of, or relating to myths or mythology.
stepmother noun	/ˈstɛpmʌðə/	A person or thing likened to a stereotypical stepmother, having cold, cruel, or ungenerous qualities.
feminine adjective	/ˈfɛmɪnɪn/	Of or pertaining to the female gender.
passive adjective	/ˈpæs.ɪv/	Being subjected to an action without producing a reaction.
castration noun	/kæˈstɹeɪ.ʃən/	The act of removing the testicles.
individuality noun	/ˌɪndɪvɪd͡ʒuˈælɪti/	The characteristics that contribute to the differentiation or distinction of someone or something from a group of otherwise comparable identity.
unknowingly adverb	/ʌnˈnəʊ.ɪŋ.li/	Without awareness, without intent.
pornography noun	/pɔɹˈnɑ.ɡɹə.fi/	The graphic, detailed, often gratuitous depiction of something.
manifest noun	/ˈmæn.ɪ.fɛst/	A list or invoice of the passengers or goods being carried by a commercial vehicle or ship.
adolescence noun	/ˌædəˈlɛsəns/	The transitional period of physical and psychological development between childhood and maturity, beginning at the onset of puberty and with an endpoint…
depict verb	/dɪˈpɪkt/	To render a representation of something, using words, sounds, images, or other means.
obsess verb	/əbˈsɛs/	To be preoccupied with a single topic or emotion.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
get out of verb	To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of.
break down verb	To stop functioning.
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
get back to verb	Return to (an activity)

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	has been dominating · I've been reading
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	was born · is also enveloped · be born
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	symbols which is · father, which is · sounds, which is
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has been represented · have brushed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 27 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, mythological /ˌmɪθəˈlɒd͡ʒɪkəl/, stepmother /ˈstɛpmʌðə/, withstand /wɪðˈstænd/, myth /mɪθ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: unconscious /ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəs/, castration /kæˈstɹeɪ.ʃən/, differentiation /dɪf.əˌɹɛn.ʃiˈeɪ.ʃən/, regression /ɹiːˈɡɹɛʃ.ən/, domination /ˌdɑːməˈneɪʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, mythological /ˌmɪθəˈlɒd͡ʒɪkəl/, individuality /ˌɪndɪvɪd͡ʒuˈælɪti/, unknowingly /ʌnˈnəʊ.ɪŋ.li/, pornography /pɔɹˈnɑ.ɡɹə.fi/

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 unconscious, mythology, ritual.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Why Pornography Is Basically Modern Mythology - Learn English Speaking with Video

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