Shadowing Practice: World's Tallest Elephant Toothpaste Volcano - Learn English Speaking with Video

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This is what it looks like to close out a year

of your life trying to answer one of life's most basic questions.

Exactly how high can elephant toothpaste actually be launched into space?

Now if this looks sort of familiar, it's because this isn't my first attempt.

Last year my buddy

Fletcher and I were here with this monster of a flask, but with one critical oversight.

We didn't make the floor stiff enough

because I just didn't consider the forces would be so high they'd lift a one -ton structure five feet into the air.

And so while that attempt did yield a new Guinness World Record of 60 feet,

I couldn't stop thinking about just how high it could have gone

if only all that stuff that came out of the bottom

Was actually forced to come out through the top

Like what would happen if I spent the year designing and building something that weighed five tons and was basically bomb proof?

And then what

if we could just go on to make the world's most

epic surprise party by building a massive slip -and -slide Skateboard

ramp along with the 26 million Orbeez pool plus a devil's toothpaste explosion two and a half times bigger than previously

Then the only thing that would be missing would be someone to throw the surprise party for

and that's where my new friend Brody comes in Now to understand who Brody is all

you really need to know is that as him and his family were going through an incredibly

Difficult time in their lives as he narrowly fought through his

battle against blood cancer for three years Brody used his one

and only make -a -wish chance to buy a brand new ATV for another kid with cancer

He didn't even know when he heard

that kid had his ATV stolen by the way I told my friend Mr. Beast this story

and he had some thoughts on what we should do about this situation

So now that we had a plan for the surprise party and a kid who definitely

Deserved the world's most epic surprise party

It was time to return to my buddy

Dale's walnut farm in the small town of Gridley,

California And get to work and while I'd love to take credit for single -handedly digging out the entire Orbeez pit

The truth was as word got out about Brody's story the good people of Gridley came out to help in droves

So Arnie here who's been operating a backhoe for 60 years volunteered to dig the Orbeez pool, while Dave, the town master carpenter,

started working on the skateboard ramp.

I even harnessed some child labor to prep the devil's toothpaste troughs.

Although it sort of backfired when they began to protest against their harsh working conditions.

Which just left my nemesis, the giant elephant's toothpaste flask.

And this time I was taking no chances, and so for the base we laid a concrete pad,

which would be attached to the flask with 33 quarter inch bolts with a total clamping force of 80 tons.

And then instead of a structure made of 2x4s, the plan was to use 5 tons of steel all fused together by the town welder Jeff.

On top of that, we designed the flask to be 20 % bigger.

So now all we needed was a 20 second build montage to get it all done.

And so as the party construction continued on for several days in the 105 degree heat,

let me take a moment to try and debunk a myth about elephant toothpaste floating around on the internet.

There are some wildly popular videos on YouTube, some with over 30 million views and hundreds of thousands of likes,

which demonstrate that when you simply add a bunch of soda to some Orbeez,

and then create a Mentos Sprite solution and pour it over the top, you get this.

Which is pretty impressive.

Look at that!

This also works with Mentos?

Why didn't Mark Rober tell us that?

Maybe he didn't want us to break his record.

True.

Now I had a slightly different hypothesis, which was that these guys were faking the science and lying to people for YouTube views.

So as firm believers in the scientific method, Science Bob and I tested that hypothesis.

And as it turns out, if you follow their exact methodology, then combine the mixtures and run real fast, exactly nothing happens.

And even if you don't trust our demonstration, well then you're gonna have to explain how the balloon shadow

somehow stops right here at the edge of the hole and where these orange globs are splashing up from,

and how the hole itself completely changes shape from this frame to this one once they've removed their layer mask.

The way they actually did that is the same way elephant toothpaste is always made, and that's to mix the correct amounts of hydrogen peroxide,

soap, and food coloring.

Then you just add a catalyst like potassium iodide.

And in preparation for this year's party, we also played around with the devil's toothpaste formula we discovered last year, with at times...

Very interesting results

Now as a reminder, this is normal elephants toothpaste and this is devil's toothpaste

It reacts insanely fast and I don't give out the formula because it's super dangerous

Even if you are for example wearing some very nice protective gloves

And so back in Gridley with Brody's arrival slated for the next morning

The afternoon turned into the evening as the feverish pace of work continued late for the third night in a row

If this dang mega flask somehow bested me again, at least I could console myself in the fact that it wouldn't be from lack of effort.

And so when morning came, with only a few last minute bits of preparation left to go,

I headed to a doctor's office about an hour and a half away,

where Brody thought he'd pull out to see some more specialists for a day filled with medical tests.

Okay, you'll be right in.

Okay?

Okay, thank you.

Fletcher and his incredible hair also came back out to help with the surprise.

And I just want to preemptively say I know I'm quite possibly the world's suckiest actor.

Hello, I'm Dr. Fletcher.

We got a lot of stuff to look at, tests.

Because today, there actually isn't a doctor appointment at all.

And while I think I'm being all tricky here,

he later said he figured out it was me as soon as he heard my terrible doctor accent.

What up, buddy?

I actually brought someone to help us out today, too.

This is Fletcher.

Fletcher here.

He was with us last year.

We did a big party.

So today we're gonna do another party and it's gonna be fun.

You brought someone with you?

Gavin.

Let's go meet Gavin.

How's it going, buddy?

I saw you when I was like six.

I've known you for so long.

Oh, this is...

I've known you for videos.

100

Oh, thank you.

101

This is Fletcher.

102

Hi, I'm so cute.

103

Hi, nice to meet you.

104

And that's Isla, Fletcher's sister.

105

Hi, nice to meet you.

106

All right, let's bounce.

107

Here we go.

108

So step one is to get the Tesla.

109

So we actually have, and I'll leave this guy's up to you guys, we have two ways to get to Gridley.

110

Option one is to take the Tesla.

111

Does everyone want to prematurely just say they want option one or do you want to hear option two?

112

You want to hear option two.

113

Are you sure?

114

It's a Tesla!

115

Okay, option two, and again, you guys get a vote on this.

116

Uh, private jet.

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Option two.

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Option two.

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Have you guys ever ridden on a private jet?

120

No. Let's ride on a private jet.

121

Your guys' private jets ready?

122

Private jets ready.

123

Remember guys, act like we've done this before.

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And the private jet was definitely out of my budget, but a generous benefactor caught wind of what we were doing and let us use his,

125

which actually helped because it cut the one and a half hour drive down to just 12 short minutes.

126

So guys, we just landed.

127

I knew it.

128

I knew it.

129

I knew it was on my bum!

130

I'll leave the finest.

131

We don't even luxury.

132

And so after a short trip and a sweet ride, Brody had arrived. so So

133

now that the party was rolling and we were feeling refreshed,

134

it was time to head over to see some explosive chemistry in the form of six massive

135

Devil's Toothpaste troughs.

136

Now I need to pause here to make two points.

137

The first is that because each trough holds two and a half times more volume than the barrels last year

138

We couldn't just dump it on the top because it reacts so fast

139

The catalyst wouldn't even make it to the bottom before it was launched out

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So each trough that contained the mixture of the hydrogen peroxide soap and food coloring

141

Basically has a massive syringe attached to the side that contains the catalyst

142

Then we put a big fat pressurized air tank here

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So when you open this butterfly valve the air would rush into this chamber

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Thereby sliding the piston over and causing everything to mix really well

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And as you can see in real life

146

This happens pretty fast.

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And the second is you might notice it looks like one of the troughs already kind of went off.

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And the truth is, when I walked up, things looked like this.

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We tested for so many different things to prepare for this.

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But one thing we didn't think to test was

151

if the food coloring manufacturer added some new ingredient only to the purple color.

152

So now it randomly reacts with hydrogen peroxide all on its own.

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So after a bit of leaf blowing we were ready to power through even

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if we did lose two of our six troughs to that little mishap

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Here we go, here we go, here we go

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Three, two, one

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Oh my god

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Look at the house!

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You can't even see it!

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That was crazy!

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It's coming for us!

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Oh no!

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Let's check it out.

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Yes!

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Oh my goodness.

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Oh, you can feel the heat.

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Ooh, it's hot.

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We have a camera.

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Go get the cameras.

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Where are they?

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Right in the middle.

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I got it.

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What'd you guys think?

174

That was crazy.

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And so while I helped clean up like a bonafide Ghostbuster,

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we had to get all hands on deck to prepare for the grand finale mega flask.

177

Like last year, the idea was to start the reaction by having these troughs dump the catalyst into the hydrogen peroxide pool below.

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So chemicals had to be loaded in super carefully because even if a small amount splashed out prematurely

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We'd have an even more disastrous situation on our hands than with the purple food coloring

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But Brody still had no idea that was coming

181

So we distracted him with a different surprise first in the form of some quality time in 26 million orgies

182

Oh Subversing

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yourself in millions of Orbeez is such a wild feeling because it's like having a squishy,

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slippery weighted blanket compressing all around you no matter where you move.

185

And while we could have stayed there for a few more hours, soon enough we got the message that the flask was in its final preparations,

186

so we all headed back over.

187

And word apparently had spread at this point, so quite a crowd had gathered, including the mayor of Gridley.

188

So the pressure was really on for me to finally avenge that elf from last year, and to get Brody a dang world record.

189

Look at this.

190

Huh?

191

Hi, YouTube.

192

And so with that, all that was left now was to place all our hopes and dreams on our engineering abilities, and dump the troughs.

193

Five, four, three, two, one.

194

Oh We

195

actually had a pressure sensor in the flask

196

and it turns out the force pushing all the elephant toothpaste out the top is about 50 times the force

197

you feel when pushing against a fully inflated football That was so cool.

198

The mannequin, the mannequin's still there.

199

Wow.

200

Oh, look at that.

201

It's like a volcano.

202

Whoa.

203

See, it's still like barfing out the top.

204

Oh, my gosh.

205

Is that better than going to the doctor's office?

206

Yeah.

207

Look how far over it went.

208

Wow.

209

The flask, stay together.

210

You got me once, elephant's toothpaste.

211

You don't get me twice.

212

And in fact

213

when you do a side -by -side comparison of the max height from last year to this year

214

I'm happy to report we absolutely destroyed the previous record by nearly a factor of five

215

Rising to the height of a 25 -story building at 250 feet.

216

And so with a new Guinness World Record under his belt, I still had one grand final surprise for Brody.

217

So back at the house, while Science Bob distracted the crowd with liquid nitrogen powered exploding watermelons and trash can rockets,

218

nearly taking out our drone pilot, Nurk, in the process, I called up a friend of mine.

219

What up, buddy?

220

Hi.

221

What up, Mr. Beast?

222

This is my friend Brody.

223

We've been hanging out all day today.

224

How's it going?

225

Did he do the Orbeez thing?

226

He's only got 25 million Orbeez.

227

Yeah, yeah.

228

Is that more Orbeez than you did?

229

No. We had a pool though.

230

I think Mr. Beast has one more surprise.

231

Do me a favor and turn around real quick.

232

Oh my gosh!

233

That's your vlog right there.

234

Delivered by none other than Dale himself.

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Well, get on, buddy.

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It's not mine.

237

It's yours.

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And what's cool here is this is the exact model

239

he wanted to get for himself before he gave it away to someone else.

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And he didn't do that expecting to get something back in return,

241

just like those who worked so hard to put this party together for him didn't expect anything either.

242

Which is why I believe when you try to be a good person, it may not always come back to you immediately,

243

but somehow it always comes back.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “World's Tallest Elephant Toothpaste Volcano”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: toothpaste, Brody, Orbeez. This video has 160 sentences and 2366 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:16. The speaker talks at a steady 146 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 81% 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
buddy	/ˈbʌdi/	A person far removed from the conversation.
elephant noun	/ˈɛlɪfənt/	A large mammal of the family Elephantidae in the order Proboscidea, having a trunk, and native to Africa and Asia.
hydrogen noun	/ˈhaɪdɹəd͡ʒ(ə)n/	The lightest chemical element (symbol H), with an atomic number of 1 and atomic weight of 1.008.
catalyst noun	/ˈkæt.ɪ.lɪst/	A substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process.
preparation noun	/ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/	The act of preparing or getting ready.
ton noun	/tʌn/	The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds avoirdupois each.
react verb	/ɹiːˈækt/	To act in response.
dump verb	/dʌmp/	To release, especially in large quantities and chaotic manner.
upbeat adjective	/ʌpˈbit/	Having a fast pace, tempo, or beat.
formula noun	/ˈfɔː.mjʊ.lə/	Any mathematical rule expressed symbolically.
epic noun	/ˈɛp.ɪk/	An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a deity, demigod (heroic epic), other legend or traditional hero.
purple noun	/ˈpɝ.pl̩/	A colour between red and blue; violet, though often closer to magenta.
slide noun	/ˈslaɪ̯d/	An item of play equipment that children can climb up and then slide down again.
mixture noun	/ˈmɪkst͡ʃɚ/	The act of mixing.
soap noun	/soʊp/	A metallic salt derived from a fatty acid, commonly used in cleaning products.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
turn out verb		To end up; to result.
call up verb		To retrieve from personal or computer memory.
clean up verb		To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.
close out verb		To terminate; to call the end of.
come back verb		To return to a place.
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
give out verb		To utter, publish; to announce, proclaim, report.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

You brought someone with you?
I've known you for so long.
Remember guys, act like we've done this before.
You got me once, elephant's toothpaste.
You don't get me twice.

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	who's been operating · We've been hanging
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	be launched · Was actually forced · would be attached
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	they've removed · I've known · we've done
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	kid who definitely · hypothesis, which was · those who worked

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 37 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, myth /mɪθ/, thereby /ðɛɹˈbaɪ/, methodology /ˌmɛθ.əˈdɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/, splash /splæʃ/, rush /ɹʌʃ/, flash /flæʃ/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/
Long words — get the stress right: preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, manufacturer /ˌmænjʊˈfæktʃəɹə/, demonstration /dɛmənˈstɹeɪʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like buddy, elephant, hydrogen.

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: World's Tallest Elephant Toothpaste Volcano - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?