Prática de Shadowing: Eating Death Row Inmates Last Meals - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

These are the craziest last meals ever eaten by death row inmates.

From a luxury feast to a dessert that almost stopped in execution.

I'm eating them all to find out what these final choices say about the criminals who ordered them.

Starting with a meal eaten by one of the most dangerous death row inmates of all time.

Whoa, we got a dozen fried shrimp.

Mmm, french fries.

Dip it in this ketchup.

Mmm, yum, who doesn't like french fries?

And a pound of strawberries.

These are sweet and fresh.

Inside this bucket is something that scared the prison guards.

Fried chicken.

Prisons avoid serving meat on the bone because it can be sharpened into a weapon.

Mmm, sure is tasty.

Imagine this being a weapon.

But there's something else.

It's from KFC.

That's because before prison, the inmate John Wayne Gacy actually managed three KFC restaurants.

Which means the last meal he ever ate...

Came from his old job.

Weird.

But not every inmate is this lucky.

In Japan, prisoners don't know when they'll be executed, so their final meal is often decided by chance.

This is what a typical Japanese prison meal looks like.

Rice, miso soup, grilled fish, and pickled vegetables.

Gotta have chopsticks.

Let's try this fish.

Try it with some rice and pickled vegetables.

Mmm.

When you combine all three of them, they actually taste pretty good together.

You gotta take a sip of miso soup too.

I've had miso soup before.

This is pretty good.

Now the execution in Japan is even stranger.

It happens in a room with three buttons.

Three officers press them at the same time, but only one opens the trap door that hangs the prisoner.

That way none of them know who caused the execution.

That's crazy.

There's 11 more last meals I'm going to show you, and next is one that's different because the death row inmate didn't just get one last meal, he got three.

The first was a Wendy's Baconator burger and a milkshake.

Mmm, strawberry.

That's good.

Alright, let's check out this Wendy's Baconator.

I've never eaten one of these.

This is a lot of meat.

Alright, let's try this out.

It's salty, cheesy.

That's a good last meal.

After he ate this meal, the prison was about to carry out the execution.

But minutes before, the prison staff discovered the lethal injection drug was the wrong one.

So they rescheduled his execution.

On the next execution date, he ordered the same meal again.

And that execution was also canceled, this time because of his lawyers.

But the third meal is different.

Was fish and chips.

This looks amazing.

Around this time, Glossop's lawyer said that the main witness who testified against him had lied.

Mmm.

Oh wow.

Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside.

This is good fish and chips.

I feel like I'm in England.

So anyway, the case got pushed to the highest court in the United States, and the judges agreed.

Now Glossop is no longer on death row.

Mmm.

This is the best food so far.

And he got three meals out of it.

But at Ellis Prison, one inmate's last meal became a ritual instead of a redemption story.

Because a death row inmate named James Edward Smith asked for a small bottle of dirt from Ratacunda, a sacred pond in India.

Smith believed that if he ate it before his execution, it would help his spirit to be reborn.

So here's dirt from the sacred pond in India.

And this is dirt from my backyard in Los Angeles.

They look pretty similar.

I want to be respectful, so let's try the dirt from my backyard.

Mmm, tastes like dirt.

I don't recommend that.

This might be the worst tasting choice for a last meal.

Tonight, we have a three course meal for you sir.

To start, lobster tail with drawn butter.

Ooh, whoa.

This was the last meal of a death row inmate named Ronnie Lee Gardner.

Thank you.

Mmm, man, that's good.

And it's only the starter?

And now for the main.

A New York strip steak, aged 30 days, cooked for your liking.

Oh, steak and soda?

That's a weird combo.

It's a nice piece of steak.

You can taste that it was aged.

I like my steak medium rare.

Mmm.

Apparently wine's not allowed in jail.

Dessert.

Apple pie and ice cream?

Mmm, vanilla, my favorite.

And finally sir, the entertainment.

The movie marathon you requested.

Gardner asked to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

100

That's about nine hours of movies.

101

Ooh.

102

Watch out Frodo!

103

Schmiegels behind you!

104

This is one of my favorite movies.

105

Now we have seven meals left to try, and that's not all.

106

We'll try a meal from the future too, because some prisons will be implementing artificial intelligence that personalizes an inmate's last meals so the prison can save money.

107

But next is a last meal that barely passes as food.

108

Ugh, what is this?

109

Ugh, gross.

110

It's called skilling.

111

Prisoners were served this almost every day in Victorian England, even on their execution day.

112

Oh, it's like extremely watery oatmeal.

113

Is there a fly floating in there?

114

We made it as realistic as possible.

115

I don't think that's gonna help with the flavor.

116

The goal of the meal is to make prison feel way worse than life outside.

117

And the bread?

118

It's like a rock, it's so stale.

119

Yeah, that's terrible.

120

Worst thing so far.

121

While some prison meals were punishment, This next one was an act of kindness.

122

Before his scheduled execution, a South African prisoner named Duma Kumalo was given this.

123

A whole chicken with no bones, plus seven rand, the official money of South Africa.

124

The money was so he could buy more food before his execution, but Kumalo didn't spend it on himself.

125

He used it to buy food for other inmates that were starving.

126

Let's check out this chicken.

127

The chicken looks normal.

128

Mmm. And tastes like chicken.

129

Kumalo thought that this was his final meal.

130

But before the execution happened, South Africa got rid of the death penalty.

131

Which means his last meal just became another dinner.

132

Now sometimes it's not just about the inmate.

133

The people doing the execution want to eat too.

134

Because in 18th century Germany, a prisoner named Susanna Margarethe Brand took part in ritual feast

135

where the people in charge of her execution actually shared a meal with her.

136

The meal was meant to symbolize forgiveness and the feast kept getting bigger and bigger.

137

Sausages, beef, wine, it got so big that most times it couldn't be finished.

138

But this here shouldn't go to waste.

139

Come on everyone!

140

So what food tastes better?

141

I like the lamb.

142

Beef.

143

The strangest part though?

144

Even with all this food, Susanna Brandt reportedly only drank a single cup of water.

145

And no one knows why.

146

Next, a meal that almost saved a man's life.

147

We got steak and fried chicken again.

148

They look different, but let's see if they taste better than the ones earlier.

149

This steak is way thinner.

150

It's chewy.

151

Definitely not as good.

152

But what about the fried chicken?

153

The crust looks It's mushy.

154

The KFC looked better.

155

And the KFC tastes better.

156

Ah, cherry Kool-Aid.

157

My mom used to make a picture of this every week.

158

This brings back memories.

159

But the most interesting part of this meal is the pecan pie because it was used as evidence in court.

160

You see, years earlier, Rector had suffered a traumatic brain injury

161

and his lawyers found out he asked to save the pie for later, which they used to argue he didn't understand he was about to be executed.

162

But the court said that wasn't enough to stop it, and the pie was never eaten.

163

Mmm, who doesn't like pecan pie?

164

Reminds me of the holidays.

165

Inside my hand is one of the strangest last meals ever eaten.

166

It's an olive, with the pit inside.

167

Victor Feger wanted it because he thought if the pit was buried with him, an olive tree would grow from his grave.

168

But would that actually work?

169

Well, if a pit reaches soil with water and oxygen, it could grow into a tree.

170

But most olives people eat are cured in salt or lime, and that process usually kills the seed inside the pit, which means the olive tree Feger hoped would grow from his grave never had a chance.

171

This is it?

172

Just a bag of Jolly Ranchers?

173

You'd expect a last meal like this to belong to a kid, which in a way, it did.

174

Mitchell was 17 when the crime happened.

175

At the time the state he lived in still allowed the death penalty for crimes committed by people under 18.

176

Mmm.

177

Watermelon watermelon.

178

A few years later, the US Supreme Court banned that, which means Mitchell was executed just a few years before the law changed.

179

Well, where prisons are heading is a lot crazier because recently the news exposed three ways prisons are using new technology.

180

The first is with six-foot-tall sentry robots that patrol jail quarters with 360-degree cameras and heat sensors.

181

Then there's cell feeding, proposals to use robots to deliver medicine and food right into inmates' cells.

182

And the last one is is standardizing death row inmate meals.

183

One prison has already done this to save money, switching inmates' main meals to processed meat patties, their hamburger and hot dog buns to plain white bread,

184

and their milk cartons to powdered milk.

185

I don't know about this one.

186

All right, let's try the processed meat patty.

187

Oh, that does not taste good.

188

Blech, it's got like no flavor.

189

I'm just, I don't even know, it doesn't even taste like real meat.

190

Sorry, we got white bread.

191

This can't be as bad.

192

It's not good either.

193

Again, no flavor.

194

Really bland.

195

And I don't even know what to think about this powdered milk.

196

Ugh.

197

Nope.

198

The future looks terrible.

199

Oh my gosh.

200

Now keep in mind, we're only a couple years into AI.

201

So in five to 10 years, prisons could look completely different.

202

Hopefully they don't have to eat this food.

203

Now finally, we have the greatest last meal request in prison history.

204

It includes a pizza and a birthday cake.

205

The inmate who requested it was named David Woods.

206

He said the reason was because he never had a birthday cake before.

207

So the prison staff baked one for him.

208

Ooh, cake.

209

All right.

210

Mm.

211

Okay, this is pretty good.

212

I hope you learned something.

213

Stay out of trouble, and if you want to watch another video, click here.

O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.

Prática de Shadowing: Eating Death Row Inmates Last Meals - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

Sobre Esta Lição

Vocabulário e Frases-Chave

Dicas de Prática

O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?