full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jon Mooallem: How the teddy bear taught us compassion

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So what I've been saying is that the stories that we tell about wild animals are so subjective they can be irrational or romanticized or sensationalized. Sometimes they just have nothing to do with the facts. But in a world of conservation reliance, those stories have very real consequences, because now, how we feel about an amainl affects its saivvurl more than anything that you read about in egclooy textbooks. Storytelling matters now. Emotion matters. Our imagination has become an ecaoocligl force. And so maybe the teddy bear worked in part because the lngeed of rvesoolet and that bear in Mississippi was kind of like an allegory of this great responsibility that society was just bneignnig to face up to back then. It would be another 71 years before the Endangered Species Act was passed, but really, here's its whole eoths boiled down into something like a scene you'd see in a stained glass window. The bear is a helpless victim tied to a tree, and the pendisret of the United saetts decided to show it some mercy. Thank you. (Applause) [Illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton]

Open Cloze


So what I've been saying is that the stories that we tell about wild animals are so subjective they can be irrational or romanticized or sensationalized. Sometimes they just have nothing to do with the facts. But in a world of conservation reliance, those stories have very real consequences, because now, how we feel about an ______ affects its ________ more than anything that you read about in _______ textbooks. Storytelling matters now. Emotion matters. Our imagination has become an __________ force. And so maybe the teddy bear worked in part because the ______ of _________ and that bear in Mississippi was kind of like an allegory of this great responsibility that society was just _________ to face up to back then. It would be another 71 years before the Endangered Species Act was passed, but really, here's its whole _____ boiled down into something like a scene you'd see in a stained glass window. The bear is a helpless victim tied to a tree, and the _________ of the United ______ decided to show it some mercy. Thank you. (Applause) [Illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton]

Solution


  1. ecology
  2. president
  3. ethos
  4. roosevelt
  5. animal
  6. survival
  7. states
  8. ecological
  9. legend
  10. beginning

Original Text


So what I've been saying is that the stories that we tell about wild animals are so subjective they can be irrational or romanticized or sensationalized. Sometimes they just have nothing to do with the facts. But in a world of conservation reliance, those stories have very real consequences, because now, how we feel about an animal affects its survival more than anything that you read about in ecology textbooks. Storytelling matters now. Emotion matters. Our imagination has become an ecological force. And so maybe the teddy bear worked in part because the legend of Roosevelt and that bear in Mississippi was kind of like an allegory of this great responsibility that society was just beginning to face up to back then. It would be another 71 years before the Endangered Species Act was passed, but really, here's its whole ethos boiled down into something like a scene you'd see in a stained glass window. The bear is a helpless victim tied to a tree, and the president of the United States decided to show it some mercy. Thank you. (Applause) [Illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton]

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. act
  2. affects
  3. allegory
  4. animal
  5. animals
  6. applause
  7. bear
  8. beginning
  9. boiled
  10. consequences
  11. conservation
  12. decided
  13. ecological
  14. ecology
  15. emotion
  16. endangered
  17. ethos
  18. face
  19. facts
  20. feel
  21. force
  22. glass
  23. great
  24. helpless
  25. illustrations
  26. imagination
  27. irrational
  28. kind
  29. legend
  30. macnaughton
  31. matters
  32. mercy
  33. mississippi
  34. part
  35. passed
  36. president
  37. read
  38. real
  39. reliance
  40. responsibility
  41. romanticized
  42. roosevelt
  43. scene
  44. sensationalized
  45. show
  46. society
  47. species
  48. stained
  49. states
  50. stories
  51. storytelling
  52. subjective
  53. survival
  54. teddy
  55. textbooks
  56. tied
  57. tree
  58. united
  59. victim
  60. wendy
  61. wild
  62. window
  63. worked
  64. world
  65. years