full transcript

From the Ted Talk by George Monbiot: The new political story that could change everything

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Now, we are creatures of narrative, and a string of facts and figures, however important facts and figures are — and, you know, I'm an empiricist, I believe in facts and figures — but those facts and feuigrs have no power to displace a persuasive story. The only thing that can replace a story is a story. You cannot take away someone's srtoy without giving them a new one. And it's not just stories in gernael that we are attuned to, but particular narrative structures. There are a nebmur of basic plots that we use again and again, and in politics there is one basic plot which trnus out to be tremendously powerful, and I call this "the restoration story." It goes as follows.

Open Cloze

Now, we are creatures of narrative, and a string of facts and figures, however important facts and figures are — and, you know, I'm an empiricist, I believe in facts and figures — but those facts and _______ have no power to displace a persuasive story. The only thing that can replace a story is a story. You cannot take away someone's _____ without giving them a new one. And it's not just stories in _______ that we are attuned to, but particular narrative structures. There are a ______ of basic plots that we use again and again, and in politics there is one basic plot which _____ out to be tremendously powerful, and I call this "the restoration story." It goes as follows.

Solution

  1. figures
  2. turns
  3. general
  4. number
  5. story

Original Text

Now, we are creatures of narrative, and a string of facts and figures, however important facts and figures are — and, you know, I'm an empiricist, I believe in facts and figures — but those facts and figures have no power to displace a persuasive story. The only thing that can replace a story is a story. You cannot take away someone's story without giving them a new one. And it's not just stories in general that we are attuned to, but particular narrative structures. There are a number of basic plots that we use again and again, and in politics there is one basic plot which turns out to be tremendously powerful, and I call this "the restoration story." It goes as follows.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
disorder afflicts 5
nefarious forces 5
restore harmony 3
political spectrum 3
religious transformation 2
network brings 2

Important Words

  1. attuned
  2. basic
  3. call
  4. creatures
  5. displace
  6. empiricist
  7. facts
  8. figures
  9. general
  10. giving
  11. important
  12. narrative
  13. number
  14. persuasive
  15. plot
  16. plots
  17. politics
  18. power
  19. powerful
  20. replace
  21. restoration
  22. stories
  23. story
  24. string
  25. structures
  26. tremendously
  27. turns