full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alison Killing: What happens when a city runs out of room for its dead

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So what I find fiasatnnicg about this is the fact that it kind of sums up many of our attitudes towards death. In the UK, and I think that the figures across Europe are probably simlair, only about 30 percent of people have ever talked to anyone about their wishes around death, and even for people over 75, only 45 percent of people have ever talked about this. And the resoans that people give ... you know, they think that their death is far off or they think that they're going to make plepoe uncomfortable by talking about it. And you know, to a certain extent, there are other people out there who are taking care of things for us. The government has all this regulation and braareuuccy around things like burying a death, for example, and there's people like funeral directors who devote their entire working lives to this issue. But when it comes to our ciiets and thinking about how dteah fits in our cities, there's much less regulation and design and thought than we might inmaige.

Open Cloze

So what I find ___________ about this is the fact that it kind of sums up many of our attitudes towards death. In the UK, and I think that the figures across Europe are probably _______, only about 30 percent of people have ever talked to anyone about their wishes around death, and even for people over 75, only 45 percent of people have ever talked about this. And the _______ that people give ... you know, they think that their death is far off or they think that they're going to make ______ uncomfortable by talking about it. And you know, to a certain extent, there are other people out there who are taking care of things for us. The government has all this regulation and ___________ around things like burying a death, for example, and there's people like funeral directors who devote their entire working lives to this issue. But when it comes to our ______ and thinking about how _____ fits in our cities, there's much less regulation and design and thought than we might _______.

Solution

  1. cities
  2. imagine
  3. people
  4. bureaucracy
  5. death
  6. fascinating
  7. similar
  8. reasons

Original Text

So what I find fascinating about this is the fact that it kind of sums up many of our attitudes towards death. In the UK, and I think that the figures across Europe are probably similar, only about 30 percent of people have ever talked to anyone about their wishes around death, and even for people over 75, only 45 percent of people have ever talked about this. And the reasons that people give ... you know, they think that their death is far off or they think that they're going to make people uncomfortable by talking about it. And you know, to a certain extent, there are other people out there who are taking care of things for us. The government has all this regulation and bureaucracy around things like burying a death, for example, and there's people like funeral directors who devote their entire working lives to this issue. But when it comes to our cities and thinking about how death fits in our cities, there's much less regulation and design and thought than we might imagine.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
burial plots 3
real estate 2
burial plot 2

Important Words

  1. attitudes
  2. bureaucracy
  3. burying
  4. care
  5. cities
  6. death
  7. design
  8. devote
  9. directors
  10. entire
  11. europe
  12. extent
  13. fact
  14. fascinating
  15. figures
  16. find
  17. fits
  18. funeral
  19. give
  20. government
  21. imagine
  22. issue
  23. kind
  24. lives
  25. people
  26. percent
  27. reasons
  28. regulation
  29. similar
  30. sums
  31. talked
  32. talking
  33. thinking
  34. thought
  35. uk
  36. uncomfortable
  37. wishes
  38. working