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 huamn biabes, so with big, forward-facing eyes and circular fcaes, kind of a roly-poly posture. This is why, if you get a cthsamris card from, like, your great aunt in Minnesota, there's usually a fzuzy penguin ccihk 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 aialmns, 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 rincoimazte 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 cclye pianlyg out again and again with all kinds of animals. It seems like we're always stuck between demonizing a species and wnitang to wipe it out, and then when we get very cosle 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.

Open Cloze

So some of this is physical, right? We tend to sympathize more with animals that look like us, and especially that resemble _____ ______, so with big, forward-facing eyes and circular _____, kind of a roly-poly posture. This is why, if you get a _________ card from, like, your great aunt in Minnesota, there's usually a _____ penguin _____ 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 _______, 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 ___________ 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 _____ _______ out again and again with all kinds of animals. It seems like we're always stuck between demonizing a species and _______ to wipe it out, and then when we get very _____ 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.

Solution

  1. romanticize
  2. cycle
  3. animals
  4. close
  5. fuzzy
  6. playing
  7. christmas
  8. wanting
  9. babies
  10. human
  11. faces
  12. chick

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

  1. adorable
  2. afraid
  3. america
  4. animals
  5. anymore
  6. aunt
  7. babies
  8. bay
  9. bear
  10. big
  11. card
  12. chick
  13. christmas
  14. circular
  15. cities
  16. close
  17. compassion
  18. context
  19. cultural
  20. cycle
  21. demonizing
  22. dimension
  23. distance
  24. empathizing
  25. exert
  26. eyes
  27. faces
  28. ferocious
  29. fuzzy
  30. glacier
  31. great
  32. growing
  33. human
  34. kind
  35. kinds
  36. lived
  37. majority
  38. minnesota
  39. moment
  40. nature
  41. penguin
  42. people
  43. physical
  44. places
  45. playing
  46. posture
  47. power
  48. powerful
  49. pure
  50. reconsider
  51. resemble
  52. romanticize
  53. safe
  54. shaped
  55. show
  56. space
  57. species
  58. spider
  59. start
  60. stories
  61. stuck
  62. sympathize
  63. teddy
  64. telling
  65. tend
  66. time
  67. times
  68. underdog
  69. unsettled
  70. urbanizing
  71. wanting
  72. wipe
  73. wolf