full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Jon Mooallem: How the teddy bear taught us compassion
Unscramble the Blue Letters
So some of this is physical, right? We tend to sympathize more with animals that look like us, and especially that resemble human beaibs, so with big, forward-facing eyes and circular fceas, kind of a roly-poly posture. This is why, if you get a Christmas card from, like, your great aunt in mnstinoea, there's usually a fzuzy penguin chick on it, and not something like a gcleair Bay wolf spider. But it's not all physical, right? There's a cultural dimension to how we think about animals, and we're telilng stories about these anilams, and like all stories, they are shaped by the times and the places in which we're telling them. So think about that moment back in 1902 again where a ferocious bear became a teddy bear. What was the context? Well, America was urbanizing. For the first time, nearly a majority of polepe lived in ciiets, so there was a growing distance between us and nature. There was a safe space where we could reconsider the bear and romanticize it. Nature could only start to seem this pure and adorable because we didn't have to be ariafd of it anymore. And you can see that cycle playing out again and again with all kinds of animals. It seems like we're always stuck between demonizing a spciees and wanting to wipe it out, and then when we get very close to doing that, empathizing with it as an underdog and wanting to show it compassion. So we exert our power, but then we're ueltstned by how powerful we are.
Open Cloze
So some of this is physical, right? We tend to sympathize more with animals that look like us, and especially that resemble human ______, so with big, forward-facing eyes and circular _____, kind of a roly-poly posture. This is why, if you get a Christmas card from, like, your great aunt in _________, there's usually a _____ penguin chick on it, and not something like a _______ Bay wolf spider. But it's not all physical, right? There's a cultural dimension to how we think about animals, and we're _______ stories about these _______, and like all stories, they are shaped by the times and the places in which we're telling them. So think about that moment back in 1902 again where a ferocious bear became a teddy bear. What was the context? Well, America was urbanizing. For the first time, nearly a majority of ______ lived in ______, so there was a growing distance between us and nature. There was a safe space where we could reconsider the bear and romanticize it. Nature could only start to seem this pure and adorable because we didn't have to be ______ of it anymore. And you can see that cycle playing out again and again with all kinds of animals. It seems like we're always stuck between demonizing a _______ and wanting to wipe it out, and then when we get very close to doing that, empathizing with it as an underdog and wanting to show it compassion. So we exert our power, but then we're _________ by how powerful we are.
Solution
- cities
- glacier
- minnesota
- animals
- people
- afraid
- species
- telling
- fuzzy
- unsettled
- babies
- faces
Original Text
So some of this is physical, right? We tend to sympathize more with animals that look like us, and especially that resemble human babies, so with big, forward-facing eyes and circular faces, kind of a roly-poly posture. This is why, if you get a Christmas card from, like, your great aunt in Minnesota, there's usually a fuzzy penguin chick on it, and not something like a Glacier Bay wolf spider. But it's not all physical, right? There's a cultural dimension to how we think about animals, and we're telling stories about these animals, and like all stories, they are shaped by the times and the places in which we're telling them. So think about that moment back in 1902 again where a ferocious bear became a teddy bear. What was the context? Well, America was urbanizing. For the first time, nearly a majority of people lived in cities, so there was a growing distance between us and nature. There was a safe space where we could reconsider the bear and romanticize it. Nature could only start to seem this pure and adorable because we didn't have to be afraid of it anymore. And you can see that cycle playing out again and again with all kinds of animals. It seems like we're always stuck between demonizing a species and wanting to wipe it out, and then when we get very close to doing that, empathizing with it as an underdog and wanting to show it compassion. So we exert our power, but then we're unsettled by how powerful we are.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
teddy bear |
11 |
billy possum |
7 |
polar bear |
5 |
endangered species |
3 |
climate change |
3 |
polar bears |
3 |
black bear |
2 |
united states |
2 |
Important Words
- adorable
- afraid
- america
- animals
- anymore
- aunt
- babies
- bay
- bear
- big
- card
- chick
- christmas
- circular
- cities
- close
- compassion
- context
- cultural
- cycle
- demonizing
- dimension
- distance
- empathizing
- exert
- eyes
- faces
- ferocious
- fuzzy
- glacier
- great
- growing
- human
- kind
- kinds
- lived
- majority
- minnesota
- moment
- nature
- penguin
- people
- physical
- places
- playing
- posture
- power
- powerful
- pure
- reconsider
- resemble
- romanticize
- safe
- shaped
- show
- space
- species
- spider
- start
- stories
- stuck
- sympathize
- teddy
- telling
- tend
- time
- times
- underdog
- unsettled
- urbanizing
- wanting
- wipe
- wolf