WE ARE ALL MADE OF STARS
DEEP ENGLISH

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How to use this lesson to improve your English listening

1. Start with the slow speed lesson.
2. Don’t read the text first. Listen to it only few times.
3. Listen to it again while reading.
4. Challenge yourself with the normal speed and the fast speed.

TRANSCRIPT

We may not like thinking about it, but we are all on a limited journey on this earth. Regardless of what you believe happens after death, you will leave a body behind.

While burial beneath the ground and cremation are the most popular ways to go, some people are literally and metaphorically thinking outside the box. One company will have your remains turned into a diamond. For between $5,000 and $22,000, they will take the carbon from your ashes and compress it under high heat and pressure in a machine. After three weeks, a diamond will be created. Family members will sometimes have these diamonds turned into rings and wear them. One Swiss company churns out 800 to 900 of these human diamonds a year.

Others seek to travel to space after death. This is a fitting place to return to since the elements of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen within all of us were created inside stars billions of years ago. The famous astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.”

The company Celestis will return your body to deep space for $12,500. This is the same company that sent Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, and Tim Leary, the famous psychedelic explorer, into space after they died. If Celestis is too steep for you, the new startup Elysium Space will send you on a shorter trip to space and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. For just $1990, your remains will circle the earth for a few months before returning to earth. Your loved ones will be able to monitor the view from your spaceship as it travels around the planet from a smartphone app.

If you would prefer to honor your place in the continuous cycle of life and death here on earth, how about becoming a tree? A Spanish company sells biodegradable urns that combine your ashes with the seed of a tree. As the urn breaks down, the roots from the seed grow into you, and from your remains, new life rises.

What about you? When the grim reaper comes knocking, how do you want to end your journey on planet earth?

VOCABULARY TIPS

think outside the box: to think in an innovative way, beyond what is normal or conventional
(price) is too steep: price is too expensive
cost an arm and a leg: be expensive
break down: decompose
grim reaper: a scary-looking figure representing death