full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Karen Thompson Walker: What fear can teach us

Unscramble the Blue Letters

As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates. And I think it's no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually sowhn that human bgnies are hard-wired to be osiipttms. So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. "Don't worry," we like to say to one another. "Don't panic." In English, fear is something we conquer. It's something we fgiht. It's something we overcome. But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and ifsuhtginl as storytelling itself?

Open Cloze

As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates. And I think it's no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually _____ that human ______ are hard-wired to be _________. So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. "Don't worry," we like to say to one another. "Don't panic." In English, fear is something we conquer. It's something we _____. It's something we overcome. But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and __________ as storytelling itself?

Solution

  1. optimists
  2. insightful
  3. shown
  4. beings
  5. fight

Original Text

As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates. And I think it's no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings are hard-wired to be optimists. So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. "Don't worry," we like to say to one another. "Don't panic." In English, fear is something we conquer. It's something we fight. It's something we overcome. But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and insightful as storytelling itself?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
whaleship essex 3
south america 2
worst fears 2

Important Words

  1. accident
  2. act
  3. amazing
  4. baby
  5. beings
  6. childish
  7. conquer
  8. danger
  9. discard
  10. encouraged
  11. english
  12. fear
  13. fight
  14. fresh
  15. grow
  16. human
  17. imagination
  18. insightful
  19. looked
  20. neuroscientists
  21. optimists
  22. overcome
  23. panic
  24. profound
  25. roller
  26. shown
  27. skates
  28. storytelling
  29. teeth
  30. thought
  31. weakness
  32. worry