跟讀練習: What's The Most Expensive Thing Ever? - 通過影片學習英語口語
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106 句
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If you saved a billion dollars every single day for your entire life,
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you still wouldn't come close to affording the most expensive thing ever.
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But to find out what that is, we'll be going on a journey through the most valuable things in existence, all starting with you.
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The raw ingredients needed to make a human cost only $152,000, but if that's out of budget you could just boil down a pig,
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because chemically you're pretty much the same, they're just slightly tastier.
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Since you're already fully assembled, the government officially values you at 14.2 million.
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And they're lowballing you, because if someone hypothetically harvested all your organs, they could make 45 million.
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You're pretty expensive.
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But to find the most expensive thing ever, we need to look at much costlier items, with the next being a well-known painting that became famous for all the wrong reasons.
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It's 1503 in Italy.
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A rich silk merchant goes up to a painter and says, Could you make me a painting of my wife?
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Sure.
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Give me like, uh, like two weeks.
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Leonardo da Vinci never fully finished that painting, but he actually sold it right before he died to the king of France.
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And it stayed in the bedrooms of powerful guys until ending up at a museum where no one cared.
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Until it got stolen, then found, then taken on a PR campaign, and now this 30-inch plank of wood smeared with colored oil is valued at $1 billion.
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But nature's greatest work of art was found by complete accident.
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Sir Thomas Major Cullinan dug a hole in the ground and filled it with Africans to mine rocks for him.
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And in 1905, a diamond was found.
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And it happened to be the biggest diamond ever.
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colorless, zero imperfections, the most chemically perfect rock produced by the planet.
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And the guy who found it was this guy, the mine's manager.
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He was just going for a stroll
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when he randomly saw it in the wall and he got a nice check for it.
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Then the rock got cut up and shipped in a literal postal box to more white people.
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The total value of this rock is estimated at $2 billion, making it the most expensive luxury item ever thanks to its rarity and prestige.
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But the most expensive land ever is something you would never expect.
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France.
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Owned all this land in 1803, and the United States wanted a little piece of it.
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So they went over to France with 10 million dollars and said, Can we buy a little piece of your land?
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France's leader and conqueror of Europe, Napoleon, was like, How about you pay me 15 million?
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For the whole thing.
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Y-yes?
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The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States at the cost of 4 cents per acre.
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This land today is worth thousands per acre, making it widely considered the single greatest land purchase in history.
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As long as you don't ask the people originally living there.
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But the Louisiana Purchase wasn't the most expensive in history.
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There was a piece of land that cost way more than the entire American Midwest, and it's this.
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This plot of land with a parking lot that cost 3 billion dollars.
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Why did this parking lot cost more than a fifth of the United States?
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Well back then, the Louisiana Purchase was a gamble on an uncharted frontier.
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This modern-day plot of land in the center of one of
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the most valuable financial districts on earth where the government artificially restricts the land supply was just a much safer investment.
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Land is valued for its potential, but the houses we put on top of the land are somehow even more expensive.
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In 2019, a finance guy spent $240 million on a high-altitude hollow brick in New York City that he doesn't even live in.
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All these buildings are half empty
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because the rich people buying them are just treating them as investments
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If they actually needed a place to stay they would just do what the richest guy in India did
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and spend two billion dollars Erecting their own personal monument
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that has a dark secret This is Antilia the most expensive
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private residence in the world valued today at 4.6 billion It
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has a 168 car garage three helipads a snow room
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and the entire thing was built on an orphanage And if you're wondering where the orphans went, the house also has 600 servants.
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There are investments, there are status symbols, but the most expensive house ever is the hardest to truly value.
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Its purchase price?
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21,000 pounds in 1761.
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When King George III bought Buckingham House, it was just a little shack for him to store his wife.
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But after a few hundred years of renovations and millions in state funding, it became a 775 room palace.
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Its value is estimated at 4.9 billion pounds, but this is just a guess based on its prime location and historical significance.
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To find something more valuable than any house, we just need to scale up to the most impressive and disastrous structures in the world.
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Megaprojects The US Interstate Highway System is the most expensive megaproject in history, costing an inflation adjusted $634 billion.
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But it was worth it.
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For every $1 of that cost, it's returned $6 in economic output.
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This project had a clear problem, a clear plan, and a clear result.
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Pretty straightforward.
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In 2021, Saudi Arabia started building a 110-mile line-shaped city made out of Empire State building tall glass mirrors.
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It was supposed to cost $500 billion and be done by 2030.
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But now the date is maybe 2080, and the cost is maybe 8.8 trillion.
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The line will be the most expensive megaproject ever, if it actually gets built. If.
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45 Mount Everest's above all of this is the International Space Station, the most expensive single object ever built by humans.
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But its cost is the least impressive thing about it.
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See legendary megaprojects like the pyramids represent what one civilization could do.
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The ISS represents what every civilization together could do.
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It took hundreds of thousands of experts from all over the world to manufacture parts
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that fit together perfectly when assembled in an empty void that would kill a human in 90 seconds.
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This is the greatest masterpiece ever built by humans, and it shows what can be accomplished when the world comes together.
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But it's way more costly when the world comes apart.
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War is pretty expensive.
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The American Civil War cost so much that to fund it, the government had to invent paper money and the federal income tax.
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God damn it!
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World War I cost so much that Germany was still paying it off until 2010, and World War II was the most expensive conflict in history.
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The full global cost of this war has never been calculated, but it involved every major power devoting a majority of their entire economy to destruction.
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By the end of the war, 70 million were dead, a majority being civilians, and most of the involved countries were in shambles.
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Military spending as a percentage of GDP has never come close to World War 2 level since, and if it ever does, we probably won't be aware.
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War is pretty expensive.
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World War 2 military spending was 25 trillion in today's dollars, but the cost of its destruction is unknown.
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All the things in this video have value for different reasons, but the most expensive thing ever is the most unusual.
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Every single particle has an antiparticle with an opposite charge.
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When they touch, they annihilate and release energy.
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A single gram of antimatter could release more energy than three Hiroshima bombs.
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Bananas.
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Every 75 minutes, an atom in a banana decays, producing one single particle of antimatter.
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But the particle is so small that if you had one banana for every human that has ever existed,
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you would have to wait 97 times the age of the universe to produce one gram of antimatter.
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But that still wouldn't work, because the banana antimatter particles only exist for 125 picoseconds, which is one billionth of a blink.
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The only way to make a meaningful amount of antimatter is
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by firing tiny particles at almost the speed of light into a metal rod, then catching the debris in a vacuum.
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There's currently only one facility that does this, and in its entire existence, it's made less than 10 billionths of a gram of antimatter,
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which would make enough energy to power a light bulb for 4 hours.
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Antimatter could be the most efficient energy source ever, and studying it could answer questions about how the universe was formed.
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But it's so difficult to make that NASA estimates one gram would cost 62.5 trillion.
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But if we ever somehow managed to get a gram of antimatter, wouldn't the most expensive thing be whoever owns the antimatter?
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Which would probably be a country, maybe the United States, which is already worth 180 trillion.
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But then, the Earth is worth 5 quadrillion.
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And now that we're in space, there are asteroids floating around with quintillions worth of gold and platinum, and the sun is made of gas worth 30 no-nillion.
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The universe is filled with an infinite amount of wealth, all of which we got for free.
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本課的詞彙與口語要點
這節 B2 級別的口語課以影片“What's The Most Expensive Thing Ever?”為素材。 影片中反覆出現的詞有：expensive, cost, land, antimatter, billion。 這段影片共有 106 個句子、1526 個單詞可供跟讀。 講話部分時長為 9:28。 說話人語速自然，每分鐘約 161 個詞，接近日常對話。 84% 的單詞屬於英語最常用的 3,000 詞，其餘的詞建議在練習前先學一下。
影片中的重點詞彙
影片中最難的 15 個單詞，附發音和釋義：
| 單詞 | 發音 | 釋義 |
|---|---|---|
| antimatter 名詞 | /ˈæn.tiˌmæt.ɚ/ | 反物質 /反物質 |
| gram 名詞 | /ˈɡɹæm/ | 克, 公克 |
| particle 名詞 | /ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/ | 粒子 |
| banana 名詞 | /bəˈnænə/ | щёнҗё, баҗё |
| assemble 動詞 | /əˈsɛm.bəl/ | 收集, 組合 /組合 |
| acre 名詞 | /ˈeɪ.kɚ/ | 英畝 /英畝 |
| civilization 名詞 | /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ | 文明 |
| annihilate 動詞 | /əˈnaɪ.ə.leɪt/ | 殲滅 /殲滅, 毀滅 |
| antiparticle 名詞 | /ˈæntiˌpɑ(ɹ)tɪkəl/ | 反粒子 |
| colourless 形容詞 | /ˈkʌlə(ɹ).ləs/ | 無色 /無色 |
| conqueror 名詞 | /ˈkɑŋˌkɚ.ɚ/ | 佔領者 /佔領者, 征服者 |
| orphanage 名詞 | /ˈɔː(ɹ)fənɪd͡ʒ/ | 孤兒院 /孤兒院, 保育院 |
| picosecond 名詞 | /ˈpiː.kəʊˌsɛk.ənd/ | 皮秒, 微微秒 |
| stroll 動詞 | /stɹoʊl/ | 漫步, 散步 |
| asteroid 名詞 | /ˈæst(ə)ɹɔɪd/ | 小行星 |
影片中出現的短語動詞
| 單詞 | 發音 | 釋義 |
|---|---|---|
| come together 動詞 | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | 集合, 聯合 |
| find out 動詞 | 找出, 查明 |
影片中的語法
說話人最常用的結構，並附上影片中的原話：
| 結構 | 影片中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 條件句 if + 從句，will/would + 動詞 — 條件及其結果 | if it ever does, we probably won't be |
| 被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的 | is valued · was found · is estimated |
| 現在完成時 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去發生但與現在仍有關聯的事 | has never been calculated · has never come · has ever existed |
| 定語從句 who / which + 從句 — 補充說明人或事物 | guy who found · picoseconds, which is · States, which is |
需要注意的發音
說話人用了 15 次縮略和弱讀形式，例如 you're, wouldn't, they're。請按聽到的簡短形式來說。
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, imperfection /ɪmpɚˈfɛkʃən/, shambles /ˈʃæmbəlz/, renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/
- 長單詞——注意重音位置: antimatter /ˈæn.tiˌmæt.ɚ/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, annihilate /əˈnaɪ.ə.leɪt/, antiparticle /ˈæntiˌpɑ(ɹ)tɪkəl/, imperfection /ɪmpɚˈfɛkʃən/
中文母語者容易讀錯的音：
- /v/ — 不要讀成 /w/，上齒輕觸下唇: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, devote /dɪˈvəʊt/, invent /ɪnˈvɛnt/, renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, void /vɔɪd/
- 詞尾子音 — 要讀清楚，後面不要加母音: billionth /ˈbɪl.i.ənθ/, annihilate /əˈnaɪ.ə.leɪt/, colourless /ˈkʌlə(ɹ).ləs/, helipad /ˈhɛ.liˌpæd/, orphanage /ˈɔː(ɹ)fənɪd͡ʒ/
- /r/ 和 /l/ 的區別: particle /ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/, antiparticle /ˈæntiˌpɑ(ɹ)tɪkəl/, colourless /ˈkʌlə(ɹ).ləs/, stroll /stɹoʊl/, literal /ˈlɪt(ə)ɹəl/
如何用這段影片練習
- 先完整聽一遍影片，不要開口，記下不認識的單詞。
- 先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟讀，熟練之後再回到正常速度。
- 錄下自己的聲音並與原聲對比，特別注意 antimatter, gram, particle 這類單詞。
什麼是跟讀法？
跟讀法 (Shadowing) 是一種有科學依據的語言學習技巧，最初開發用於專業口譯員的培訓，並由多語言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。這個方法簡單而強大：您在聽英語母語原聲的同時立即大聲重複——就像是一個延遲1-2秒緊跟說話者的影子。與被動聽力或語法練習不同，跟讀法強迫您的大腦和口腔肌肉同時處理並模模擬實的講話模式。研究表明它能顯著提高發音準確性，語調，節奏，連讀，聽力理解和口語流利度——使其成為雅思口語備考和真實英語交流最有效的方法之一。