Learn English With News: Exploring English Vocabulary, Idioms, and Phrases With Bill Gates

82,679 views ・ 2021-05-25

Rachel's English


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hi! I’m Rachel from Rachel’s English and  today I’m going to teach you some of the  
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more advanced vocabulary and idioms that were  used in an interview early this year. Anderson  
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Cooper interviewing Bill Gates on innovation and  global warming. Some pretty interesting phrases  
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came up. As a non-native speaker, learning  these words, phrases and idioms will help  
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you sound more sophisticated in your everyday  English. We’ll help you express yourself better.  
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So helpful in English conversations but also  preparing to take the IELTS or TOEFL exam.  
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Let’s learn these vocabulary  words and phrases together today.
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To start, Bill Gates is talking about what  needs to happen to stop global warming.  
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You’ll see on-screen texts like this:
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This will highlight words or phrases that we’ll  learn about at the end of this 13-second clip.
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And it needs a level of cooperation  that would be unprecedented.
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That doesn’t sound feasible.
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No, it’s not easy but hey,
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That sounds impossible.
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In 30 years, we have more  educated people than ever,  
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we have a generation that's  speaking out on this topic.
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Unprecedented is a great vocabulary word.  
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It’s an adjective and it means never done  before, never known before. Gates thinks to  
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stop global warming it’s about cooperation.  And a level of cooperation around the world  
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that we’ve never seen before that’s never  happen before. Unprecedented cooperation.
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And it needs a level of cooperation  that would be unprecedented.
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That doesn’t sound feasible.
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No, that’s not easy.
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That doesn’t sound feasible. What do you  think this word means? It’s another adjective  
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and it means possible to do easily  or conveniently, likely or probable.
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Anderson Cooper doesn’t think this  kind of cooperation will be easy  
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and he’s right. I mean we just heard Bill Gates  describe it as unprecedented. But not feasible  
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doesn’t necessarily mean it  can’t happen. It just means  
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very hard to make happen.  Will we be able to do it?
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That doesn’t sound feasible.
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No, it’s not easy.
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We’ll, Gates points out that we have a  generation that’s speaking out on this  
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topic. Speaking out is a phrasal verb and  it means to express your feelings or opinion  
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usually publicly. If you don’t like  to policies of government, speak out.  
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This is similar to speak up. Speak up has  2 different definitions and one of them  
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is this one. Just like speak out. To express one’s  opinions frankly and openly. But more frequently,  
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we use speak up to mean speak louder. Speak up.  I can’t hear you. The opposite of that is not  
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speak down, it’s quiet down. Quiet down, you're  being way too loud. Gates said a generation is  
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speaking out, is voicing their opinions that  we need to do more to address global warming.
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We have more educated people than ever, we have  a generation that's speaking out on this topic.
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Let’s keep going.
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You know I got to participate in the miracle  of the personal computer and the internet.
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Participate in the miracle. I love  this way of describing his life.  
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He’s not taking credit. He’s saying  he participated in what happened.  
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He’s saying he got to take part in it. In  the amazing creation. The miracle of personal  
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computers and the internet. 2 things that  absolutely changed, transformed human life.
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You know I got to participate in the miracle of  the personal computer and the internet and so  
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yes, I have a bias to believe  innovation can do these things.
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Bias has a couple of different definitions.  Here it means prejudiced. In favor of or  
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against something usually considered to be  unfair. For example, as a parent I have a  
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bias to think of my kids are the cutest kids  on Earth. I’m not neutral. I have a bias. Bill  
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Gates has a bias to believe that innovation  is the answer because of his background.
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So I have a bias to believe  innovation can do these things.
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Now we’ll skip ahead in the  interview. To see the whole interview,  
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see the link in the video description.
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This next clip we’ll study is 15 seconds long.
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He supports President Biden’s decision  to rejoin the Paris climate agreement  
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but is asking the administration to  massively increase the budget for  
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climate and clean energy research  to 35 billion dollars a year.
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You’ve said that government need to do the hard  stuff but not just go after the low-hanging  
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fruit. Massively is an adverb and it means on  a vast scale, a very great extent extremely.  
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Massively increase the budget. This  means you can’t just add a little bit  
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more money to this project. It has  to be greatly, extremely increased.
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He supports President Biden’s decision to  rejoin the Paris climate agreement but is  
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asking the administration to massively increase  the budget for climate and clean energy research.
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Low-hanging fruit. This idiom  has nothing to do with fruit or  
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food. See if its definition becomes  clearer as they discuss it further.
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You’ve said that the government  need to do the hard stuff  
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but not just go after the low hanging  fruit. What’s the low-hanging fruit?
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Passenger cars, part of the electric generation with renewables. The things that everybody knows about  
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that’s getting almost all the money not the  hard parts which is the industrial piece  
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including the steel and cement. Those  pieces we've hardly started to work on.
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Low-hanging fruit. The things that are the easiest  to do first. The things you’ll be able to get with  
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little effort. Gates says we have to go beyond  that. Not just do the easy things but tackle the big  
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difficult parts of carbon emissions as well.  
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We’ll skip ahead again as they discuss  the research Gates is funding.
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It kind of blows my mind, you know  what’s the cost of making that stuff?
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Gates regularly consults with a funds  team of top scientists and entrepreneurs  
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which so far invested in 50 companies with  cutting edge ideas to reduce carbon emissions.
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Blows my mind. Ouch! Do you know this  phrase? It basically means to amaze someone.  
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If you blow someone’s mind, it’s like  
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Wow! They never thought of that. They had no idea  that was possible. It’s usually a good thing.
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It kind of blows my mind, you know  what’s the cost of making that stuff?
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We also heard Gates regularly consults. To consult  is a verb. It means to ask the opinion of advice  
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of someone usually an expert. I’m going to consult  a lawyer before I sign this contract. For example.
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Gates regularly consults with a funds  team of top scientists and entrepreneurs  
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which so far invested in 50 companies with  cutting edge ideas to reduce carbon emissions.
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In the clip, we also heard the phrase “cutting  edge ideas.” Cutting edge means the most advanced.  
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Cutting edge ideas, notice that flap T in cutting.  Cutting, cutting edge. These are ideas that are  
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at the forefront, ahead of everything else, the  most advanced ideas on how to solve this problem.
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Gates regularly consults with a funds team of  top scientists and entrepreneurs which so far  
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invested in 50 companies with cutting  edge ideas to reduce carbon emissions.
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Cutting edge ideas. Sometimes, they are far-flung.
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What’s like to most far-flung idea you've backed?
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Far-flung means distant or remote. He’s moving to  some far-flung town and I’ll never see him again.  
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A far-flung idea is one that seems so crazy. We’re  just not sure it could work. You could also say  
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far-fetched. A far-fetched idea or an outlandish  idea. Let’s see how they talk about it.
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What’s like to most far-flung idea you've backed?
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There’s one that’s so crazy  it’s even hard to describe.
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(laughing) Wait a minute. It’s so crazy it’s hard to describe.
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Yeah. How do you pitch that to investors?
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How do you pitch that to investors? Pitch is a  word with a lot of meanings but the one that’s  
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most known is the US is probably the verb.  Pitching a baseball to a batter. But we also  
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use it to pitch an idea. To introduce an idea  that we hope someone will like. Let’s say you’re  
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renovating your house. The contractor ran into a  problem. There was a pipe where it wasn’t expected  
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and you’re trying to figure out what to do. You’ve  looked at a couple of options and your designer  
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could say “Let me pitch another option to you.”  If you pitch investors that means you’re telling  
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them about a business you hope they want to invest  in. Have you ever seen the show “Shark Tank”? In  
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each episode, several small business owners pitch  their businesses to a panel of investors hoping  
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that someone will think their business is good  enough to invest in. When you invest in  
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something, you’re backing it. Listen to  how that verb, to back a company is used.
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But forming the vegetables used to make  many meat alternatives emits gases as well.  
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So Gates is also backing a company that’s  created an entirely new food source.
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If you back a company, you’re investing in that  company. You’re giving it money to help it grow  
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and you hope to make money from that investment.
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is also backing a company that’s  created an entirely new food source.
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So how does Gates decide what companies to back,  what companies to pitch to other investors.
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So 15 years ago, Gates started  educating himself on climate change,  
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bringing scientists and engineers to his office in Seattle for what he calls learning  
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sessions. He also reads voraciously. Books  and binders full of scientific research.
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He knows by educating himself by reading  voraciously. Voracious is an adjective  
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that means having a huge appetite. A kid going  through a growth spurt might eat voraciously.  
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But we also use it for books. He’s a voracious  reader, always in a middle of several books.
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He also reads voraciously. Books and  binders full of scientific research.
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He describes new technologies  that he’s helping fund.  
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Here, he’s talking about a new kind of nuclear powerplant.
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Nuclear power can be done in a way  that none of those failures of the past  
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would recur because just the  physics of how it’s built.
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Recur is a verb that means to come up again, to  occur again in an interval of time. For example,  
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my online school, Rachel’s  English Academy is a subscription.  
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That means every month you pay. Unless you cancel  of course. It’s a recurring payment. Gates says  
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problems of the past would not  recur, would not happen again.
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none of those failures of the past would recur
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In the meantime, how is Gates solving the  problem of his own gigantic carbon footprint?
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And so I’m offsetting my personal emissions.
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Those are called carbon offset.
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Right. You know, so it’s causing $400  a ton, it’s like seven million dollars.
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So you’re paying seven million dollars  a year to offset your carbon footprint?
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Yup.
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Offsetting and offset. Offset has a couple  of different meanings. Here it means  
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a counterbalance. To counteract something  with an opposing force or effect. He puts  
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all those carbon into the atmosphere by for  example, flying in a plane and he offsets that  
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by doing things that reduce carbon in the  atmosphere by planting trees. Offset can also mean  
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to bring something out of line.  For example, this mark is offset.
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So you’re paying seven million dollars  a year to offset your carbon footprint?
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Yup.
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Of course, most people can afford to offset  their carbon footprint. Where does that leave us?
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It just seems overwhelming if every  aspect of our daily life has to change
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It can seem overwhelming.
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But you were optimistic.
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Yeah. There are days when it looks very hard.  
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If people think it’s easy, they’re wrong. If  people think it’s impossible, they’re wrong.
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It’s possible.
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It’s possible but it’ll be the most  amazing thing mankind has ever done.
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If something is overwhelming, that means there’s  so much of something, you can’t really deal with it. 
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There’s an overwhelming amount of sick people  needing care. The hospitals are overwhelmed. That  
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happens driving Covid-19. Many hospitals  where overwhelmed. There were more patients  
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than the hospitals could really handle. It’s used  a lot with your emotions too or state of mind.  
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I have so much work to do, I am overwhelmed. I’m  having problems starting any of my projects.  
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In this case, it can be overwhelming. Thinking  about all the things we needed to do to change,  
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to reduce carbon emissions. There  are so many things to change,  
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it can be hard taking it all in and  figuring out what specifically to do.
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It just seems overwhelming if every  aspect of our daily life has to change
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It can seem overwhelming.
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But you were optimistic.
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Yeah.
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If you’re optimistic, you’re hopeful  and confident about the future.  
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In this case, Bill Gates does think that we can  do, what we need to do to stop global warming.
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It’s possible but it’ll be the most  amazing thing mankind has ever done.
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That’s what it has to be.
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Yeah, it’s an all-out effort. You know, like a  world war but it’s us against greenhouse gases.  
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All-out means using all of one’s strength  or resources. In an all-out effort,  
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you use everything you have, every resource,  
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you don’t hold anything back. You don’t  save anything or reserve anything.
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It’s an all-out effort. You know, like a world  war but it’s us against greenhouse gases.
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I appreciate the optimism that Bill  Gates has and the investment he’s  
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making by researching and backing companies  who are looking into far-flung ideas that may  
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transform our future. I hope you learn  some new vocabulary and enjoyed this lesson  
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learning English through interviews,  through news. This is from the news show  
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“60 Minutes” and you can find the link to  the whole interview in the video description.
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I make new videos on the  English language every Tuesday,  
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please subscribe and keep your learning  right now with this video, I love having  
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you as my student. That’s it and thanks so  much for using Rachel’s English.
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