full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jake Barton: The museum of you

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Anna Deavere Smith flumosay said that there's a literature inside of each of us, and three generations later, I was part of a project clelad srroctypos, which set out to crutpae the stories of ordinary Americans by setting up a soundproof booth in public sepcas. The idea is very, very simple. You go into these bhotos, you ienvertiw your grandmother or relative, you leave with a copy of the interview and an interview goes into the Library of Congress. It's essentially a way to make a national oral histories ahicvre one conversation at a time. And the question is, who do you want to rmeeembr — if you had just 45 minutes with your grandmother? What's interesting, in conversations with the founder, Dave Isay, we always actually talked about this as a little bit of a subversive project, because when you think about it, it's actually not really about the stories that are being told, it's about listening, and it's about the questions that you get to ask, questions that you may not have permission to on any other day. I'm going to play you just a cploue of quick excerpts from the project.

Open Cloze

Anna Deavere Smith ________ said that there's a literature inside of each of us, and three generations later, I was part of a project ______ __________, which set out to _______ the stories of ordinary Americans by setting up a soundproof booth in public ______. The idea is very, very simple. You go into these ______, you _________ your grandmother or relative, you leave with a copy of the interview and an interview goes into the Library of Congress. It's essentially a way to make a national oral histories _______ one conversation at a time. And the question is, who do you want to ________ — if you had just 45 minutes with your grandmother? What's interesting, in conversations with the founder, Dave Isay, we always actually talked about this as a little bit of a subversive project, because when you think about it, it's actually not really about the stories that are being told, it's about listening, and it's about the questions that you get to ask, questions that you may not have permission to on any other day. I'm going to play you just a ______ of quick excerpts from the project.

Solution

  1. famously
  2. booths
  3. spaces
  4. couple
  5. called
  6. remember
  7. archive
  8. capture
  9. interview
  10. storycorps

Original Text

Anna Deavere Smith famously said that there's a literature inside of each of us, and three generations later, I was part of a project called StoryCorps, which set out to capture the stories of ordinary Americans by setting up a soundproof booth in public spaces. The idea is very, very simple. You go into these booths, you interview your grandmother or relative, you leave with a copy of the interview and an interview goes into the Library of Congress. It's essentially a way to make a national oral histories archive one conversation at a time. And the question is, who do you want to remember — if you had just 45 minutes with your grandmother? What's interesting, in conversations with the founder, Dave Isay, we always actually talked about this as a little bit of a subversive project, because when you think about it, it's actually not really about the stories that are being told, it's about listening, and it's about the questions that you get to ask, questions that you may not have permission to on any other day. I'm going to play you just a couple of quick excerpts from the project.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
oral histories 3
ordinary americans 2
project called 2
public spaces 2
media design 2
broad array 2
cleveland museum 2
individual artwork 2
huge challenge 2
world trade 2
television voice 2
twin towers 2

Important Words

  1. americans
  2. anna
  3. archive
  4. bit
  5. booth
  6. booths
  7. called
  8. capture
  9. congress
  10. conversation
  11. conversations
  12. copy
  13. couple
  14. dave
  15. day
  16. deavere
  17. essentially
  18. excerpts
  19. famously
  20. founder
  21. generations
  22. grandmother
  23. histories
  24. idea
  25. interesting
  26. interview
  27. isay
  28. leave
  29. library
  30. listening
  31. literature
  32. minutes
  33. national
  34. oral
  35. ordinary
  36. part
  37. permission
  38. play
  39. project
  40. public
  41. question
  42. questions
  43. quick
  44. relative
  45. remember
  46. set
  47. setting
  48. simple
  49. smith
  50. soundproof
  51. spaces
  52. stories
  53. storycorps
  54. subversive
  55. talked
  56. time
  57. told