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Shadowing practice: ABANDONED 5-STAR Prison Pablo Escobar Built For Himself (Revealed by Ex-Drug Dealer)

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  1. We're about to get a tour of all the biggest Escobar buildings by an x -drug dealer.0:00
  2. Is that what's happening?0:04
  3. That's what's happening?0:06
  4. When we told our friends our next trip was going to be to Medellin, Colombia, we were met with more warnings than we expected.0:09
  5. But the confusing part was that some people we know who recently moved there described it as one of the most fascinating and lively city they had ever been to.0:15
  6. The contradicting stories caught our curiosity and without much of a plan, we made it our next destination, but I don't think we expected or about to see.0:23
  7. Medellin has unfortunately gained the global reputation of being violent and unstable, mostly due to the actions of one man, Pablo Escobar.0:31
  8. Escobar ran the Medellin cartel from 1976 to 93 and at the height of his career, supplied 80 % of the cocaine smuggled into the US and was eventually worth0:39
  9. over $30 billion by the 1990s, making him the wealthiest criminal in history.0:48
  10. Unfortunately, this made Colombia one of the most dangerous places in the world and the country fell into a civil war between the narcos and the government.0:54
  11. At the height of the conflict, Escobar actually decided to turn himself in instead of being extradited to the US.1:01
  12. He negotiated to stay in the country in a prison he designed himself called La Catedral, which basically became his own luxury resort.1:06
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  1. And don't you worry, we're about to take you there, or at least, what's left of it.1:13
  2. To understand the city and what it's trying to accomplish today, we felt like we had to get a glimpse into its history and study the man that created the1:17
  3. conflict in the first place.1:24
  4. But beware, hearing what this man has done left us speechless.1:25
  5. So we found this guy, we got a hookup, a friend, he's actually an extra dealer, but he's an amazing guy.1:29
  6. He's got all these stories about all the Escobar buildings, so we thought it'd be better than just showing up on our own.1:35
  7. Finally!1:42
  8. Man, I'm missing the legend.1:43
  9. Oh, good to meet you.1:44
  10. Nice to meet you.1:46
  11. Great to meet you.1:47
  12. I feel like for us, the main thing we want to see is this prison.1:47
  13. We're going to go to the Monaco building, the La Catedral, which is the prison, and the cemetery where they killed it.1:49
  14. They were mass -inclusive, half a billion dollars a month.1:56
  15. Half a billion dollars a month?1:59
  16. A month.2:01
  17. Pablo Escobar, you can give them a gold Rolex, he'll look at it around, man, thanks.2:01
  18. Give them an airplane, and they wouldn't face it too much.2:05
  19. And when they brought him this guy, they told him, hey, this is a prison for you.2:08
  20. And this dude, you had to make remote control bombs.2:11
  21. And they gave him the remote, and they took him to Napoli.2:14
  22. They had a car up there in the field, and they go, they go, smash the button.2:16
  23. And they said when that bomb went off, and that car exploded, that his face looked like a little boy.2:20
  24. It was so exciting, so happy.2:25
  25. He said that was the best present they ever made.2:27
  26. How do you call it?2:29
  27. A freaking car bomb.2:31
  28. A lot of people love them, because they never saw that devil with them that come out, you know.2:31
  29. It's a freaking transformation, you know.2:36
  30. Where that little rail's at, that's a two -story penthouse.2:39
  31. That's where him and the family live.2:42
  32. And on all these other floors, whole families of the bodyguards live there with them.2:44
  33. The bodyguards were here all the time with the family.2:50
  34. All right, the wife was never alone.2:53
  35. That's what probably the sparking was at.2:54
  36. We were poor.2:56
  37. That little rail that sticks out in the middle over there kind of, that's a swimming pool.2:57
  38. He had a 360 -degree view of the whole city.3:01
  39. A Escobar, his name was on there with me on lights.3:04
  40. So when he drove by Popolato Avenue, he was crazy as well.3:07
  41. There was nothing like this building in this whole site of the mountains.3:10
  42. How often would he come to this?3:13
  43. He lived here.3:14
  44. Full time.3:15
  45. He lived here, yeah, with the wife and the kids.3:16
  46. Guys closest to him, Popeye being one, says you can look up Pablo in the eyes and you're gonna see fear in his eyes.3:18
  47. Very, very few people ever heard him say a curse word.3:24
  48. So where are we going right now?3:27
  49. To the La Caterral, the prison, Pablo Bill for himself.3:29
  50. So why did you pick this spot for the prison?3:36
  51. This spot is where he grew up.3:38
  52. He grew up in a house.3:40
  53. One way up, one way down.3:42
  54. Did he ever leave the jail?3:45
  55. Oh yeah, he left whenever he wanted.3:47
  56. He was here for 13 months.3:49
  57. One of the agreements was he wasn't gonna traffic no more.3:51
  58. Of course he kept doing that.3:53
  59. All right, this is his private prison that he built for himself.3:56
  60. It's pretty much like a mansion that he just customized for whatever he needed.3:59
  61. Now, it's kind of a monastery.4:06
  62. We're about to go walk inside and check out what the prison looked like.4:09
  63. You're gonna see right here, a column down there on the ground seat.4:11
  64. There's one over here, you walk over here, there's another one here.4:14
  65. Just right here was the main part of the jail.4:16
  66. After they killed Escobar, people were brave enough to come down from the bottom where he was from with sledgehammers and they practically knocked the whole jail down.4:18
  67. Okay, looking for money, buried stuff, because he got buried a lot of money.4:26
  68. This was a five -star resort.4:29
  69. There was no bars in this jail.4:31
  70. None at all.4:33
  71. This is where they had their parties.4:34
  72. And here?4:36
  73. And let's take a peek inside.4:37
  74. But yeah, that was like the ballroom in there.4:38
  75. They had casino games too.4:40
  76. They saved.4:41
  77. Frank Sinatra came up here one time to play for him.4:42
  78. Wow.4:51
  79. What do you think?4:56
  80. It's pretty insane that we are where this man is.4:59
  81. This is his helipad right there.5:02
  82. What's this over here?5:05
  83. It doesn't look like a pleasant place to be.5:06
  84. This side over here is on him.5:10
  85. That's why they used to kill the people.5:15
  86. They would kill the people in here?5:17
  87. So we kill the people.5:18
  88. I'm gonna get my hand here and kill them.5:20
  89. Because on the other side, there's the jail inside the jail.5:22
  90. Uh -huh.5:26
  91. You would bring them over here and kill them.5:27
  92. Wow.5:28
  93. I know.5:29
  94. They'd shop them up in pieces and burn them.5:30
  95. They never found nothing.5:31
  96. Why did they send up money?5:33
  97. No bones, none of these.5:34
  98. They're just gonna trade everything.5:36
  99. That's weird.5:44
  100. They wanna be somewhere where people used to get chopped.5:45
  101. These are the whole thing.5:48
  102. This one.5:49
  103. Really?5:50
  104. This is a whole thing sell to?5:52
  105. Let me show you something over here.5:53
  106. A lot of these people knew that Pablo was gonna kill them.5:55
  107. They thought like them coming, they're sacrificing themselves for the whole family.6:00
  108. Because Pablo killed your family alone.6:04
  109. Okay, you don't come, you kill everybody.6:06
  110. And like when you jam it up, your man begin to die.6:08
  111. They would have brought you up themselves.6:10
  112. I'm gonna go get some food.6:20
  113. I'll be right back.6:22
  114. No way.6:23
  115. What?6:25
  116. Kind of wandering off track a little bit here.6:27
  117. See what else we got.6:30
  118. Okay.6:36
  119. Okay.6:38
  120. Okay.6:39
  121. Okay.6:39
  122. Okay.6:40
  123. Okay.6:42
  124. Okay.6:43
  125. Okay.6:43
  126. Okay.6:44
  127. If I was coming here or Matt was coming here to visit Pablo, Pablo would be right here waiting for me.6:45
  128. It's fun, you get that candle.6:50
  129. It's an uneasy feeling being here.6:51
  130. You get in that two there.6:53
  131. Yeah.6:55
  132. Yeah.6:55
  133. We're gonna go now to where Pablo broke out.7:02
  134. When Pablo had the contractors built this part, he told them built it with plaster.7:08
  135. Don't put motor cement.7:12
  136. Pablo probably got here and kicked the door down.7:14
  137. I mean, the walk and they took off.7:17
  138. Ten of them.7:18
  139. Okay, here?7:19
  140. Yep.7:20
  141. This is the path?7:20
  142. This is where we're going.7:20
  143. So this is where Pablo Escobar escaped on the night that he escaped.7:25
  144. I don't know.7:30
  145. Like ten dudes, he just walked through here.7:31
  146. Two in the morning.7:34
  147. It's so freezing.7:36
  148. They jumped across here, jumped over that ridge and right behind that last little ridge we see there is where it goes down and right on the top there there7:40
  149. was more men, money, more weapons and they kept going.7:48
  150. Pablo had a cell phone with him.7:51
  151. He decides he's gonna make a phone call while he's up there.7:52
  152. I saw the helicopters start coming around that picked up the phone call.7:54
  153. Poppite kept telling him they're gonna catch us with these phones and he told them, man, I need these phones to contact my families.7:58
  154. If you're scared, turn yourself in.8:04
  155. And that's when Poppite turned himself in.8:05
  156. And shortly after they killed Pablo.8:07
  157. In the signal here, he sees Pablo Escobar looking out the window, talking on the phone.8:09
  158. He calls the dad and he says, dad, we got him.8:15
  159. He goes, son, are you sure he goes dad?8:18
  160. I made eye contact with him.8:20
  161. It's him.8:22
  162. He goes, where's everybody at?8:23
  163. Dad, I'm alone.8:24
  164. He goes, park around here.8:24
  165. He's parked here and just waiting.8:26
  166. So Pablo kept telling them, dad, hang up the phone.8:27
  167. They're gonna kill you.8:29
  168. No, no, no, keep writing down.8:30
  169. He was writing down the new propositions that Pablo Escobar wanted to propose to the government to turn himself back in.8:31
  170. But there was gonna be no turning himself back in.8:38
  171. They wanted him dead.8:40
  172. Remember the guys already parked here.8:41
  173. They're surrounding the area.8:42
  174. He told his son, son, hold on, I hear something.8:44
  175. Those are the last words he said on the phone call.8:46
  176. But when he put the phone down and he walked to the rail, he seen the cops coming in.8:48
  177. They shot Limon right there because Limon was on the first floor.8:51
  178. He managed to jump out that window, land on that roof.8:54
  179. There was cops over here shooting at him.8:57
  180. He was shooting at them.8:58
  181. But the guys that had gotten was two snipers that were up here.9:00
  182. One shot him in the shoulder, another one shot him in the hip.9:02
  183. And that's when he fell towards the middle of the roof.9:04
  184. And that's when I say he got the gun and killed himself.9:07
  185. They showed a lot of scenes that the guy ran up to him and boom, shot him.9:10
  186. Could have been.9:13
  187. I wasn't here.9:15
  188. Pablo Emilio Escobar -Geverria.9:24
  189. His younger brother Luis, December 25th, 1977.9:26
  190. He told Escobar, I'm gonna be with you to the end boss.9:30
  191. No matter what happens, I'm gonna be with you.9:33
  192. And that's how he went down.9:35
  193. He was with Pablo till the last day.9:36
  194. After a few days in Medellin, all we had really noticed was the kind, generous, and proud people of Colombia.9:39
  195. So hearing the story of what this man once did was such a shock.9:45
  196. Colombians say God made our land so beautiful it was unfair to the rest of the world.9:48
  197. So to even the score, God populated the land with a race of evil men.9:53
  198. But Medellin can happily say today that things are changing.9:58
  199. See you on Tuesday for The House Show and on Sunday for part two of our trip to Colombia.10:02

A fast paced Medellin travel conversation for B2 english speaking practice

This clip opens a Yes Theory episode about Pablo Escobar's old buildings in Medellin, told partly as narration and partly as a conversation with a guide the hosts describe as "actually an extra dealer, but he's an amazing guy." The pace sits at 253 words per minute, faster than 95 percent of the catalogue, so the sentences run into each other the way real explainer talk does, not the slower cadence of a scripted lesson.

It is rated B2, which fits the mix of everyday phrasing and denser facts, dates, dollar figures, the name Medellin, that show up as the history gets laid out. The accent is mixed rather than a single regional voice, so your ear has to track more than one speaker across the 211 lines, which is closer to what listening in the real world actually demands.

The colloquial turns in this ex drug dealer's Escobar story

A few lines are worth slowing down on before you try to speak english fluently at this speed.

  • "We're about to get a tour of all the biggest Escobar buildings by an x -drug dealer." The stress falls on "tour" and "biggest", and the whole clause is said in one breath, which is exactly the kind of run on delivery this pace produces.
  • "over $30 billion by the 1990s, making him the wealthiest criminal in history." Notice how the number and the year get thrown away quickly while "the wealthiest criminal in history" gets the weight, that shift in stress is worth copying.
  • "He negotiated to stay in the country in a prison he designed himself called La Catedral, which basically became his own luxury resort." One long sentence carries the whole twist of the story, and "basically" is dropped in casually the way it is in unscripted speech.
  • The transcript also carries 14 instances of "gonna" and one of "wanna" across the full clip, so this is a good recording for hearing how those reductions sit inside fast, connected narration rather than in isolated example sentences.

How to shadow this Yes Theory clip for daily english conversation practice

Treat this as everyday english rather than a textbook dialogue, because that is what it is, two friends talking and a guide answering.

  • Start with line 4, "When we told our friends our next trip was going to be to Medellin, Colombia, we were met with more warnings than we expected," and repeat it until the clause boundaries feel natural, this is the sentence shape the rest of the clip keeps reusing.
  • Move to line 9 and isolate just "the wealthiest criminal in history", say it on its own five times before putting the number back in front of it.
  • Take the guide's line, "he's actually an extra dealer, but he's an amazing guy," and shadow the contrast between the two halves, that is where the sentence's whole humour sits.
  • Finish on line 16, "But beware, hearing what this man has done left us speechless," which slows down slightly and is a good line for checking your score before you move on to the next section of the video.
  • Because the accent is mixed, do a second pass after your first attempt and listen only for who is speaking each line, this is useful daily english conversation practice for following a group of speakers rather than one narrator.
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