full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Brett Hennig: What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Very interestingly, random selection was a key part of how democracy was done in ancient Athens. This machine, this diceve, is called a kleroteria. It's an ancient Athenian random-selection device. The aicnnet Athenians randomly selected citizens to fill the vast majority of their political posts. They knew that elections were aristocratic devcies. They knew that career politicians were a thing to be avoided. And I think we know these things as well. But more interesting than the ancient use of random siocetlen is its modern resurgence. The rircoedsvey of the legitimacy of random selection in politics has become so common lately, that there's slmipy too many examples to talk about.

Open Cloze

Very interestingly, random selection was a key part of how democracy was done in ancient Athens. This machine, this ______, is called a kleroteria. It's an ancient Athenian random-selection device. The _______ Athenians randomly selected citizens to fill the vast majority of their political posts. They knew that elections were aristocratic _______. They knew that career politicians were a thing to be avoided. And I think we know these things as well. But more interesting than the ancient use of random _________ is its modern resurgence. The ___________ of the legitimacy of random selection in politics has become so common lately, that there's ______ too many examples to talk about.

Solution

  1. rediscovery
  2. device
  3. ancient
  4. simply
  5. selection
  6. devices

Original Text

Very interestingly, random selection was a key part of how democracy was done in ancient Athens. This machine, this device, is called a kleroteria. It's an ancient Athenian random-selection device. The ancient Athenians randomly selected citizens to fill the vast majority of their political posts. They knew that elections were aristocratic devices. They knew that career politicians were a thing to be avoided. And I think we know these things as well. But more interesting than the ancient use of random selection is its modern resurgence. The rediscovery of the legitimacy of random selection in politics has become so common lately, that there's simply too many examples to talk about.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
random selection 3
randomly selected 3
liberal democracy 2
public opinion 2

Important Words

  1. ancient
  2. aristocratic
  3. athenian
  4. athenians
  5. athens
  6. avoided
  7. called
  8. career
  9. citizens
  10. common
  11. democracy
  12. device
  13. devices
  14. elections
  15. examples
  16. fill
  17. interesting
  18. interestingly
  19. key
  20. kleroteria
  21. knew
  22. legitimacy
  23. machine
  24. majority
  25. modern
  26. part
  27. political
  28. politicians
  29. politics
  30. posts
  31. random
  32. randomly
  33. rediscovery
  34. resurgence
  35. selected
  36. selection
  37. simply
  38. talk
  39. vast