full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Kwame Anthony Appiah: Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question)

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So imagine someone who's coming out of that world, that late-19th-century world, coming into the country that I grew up in, Ghana, the society that I grew up in, Asante, coinmg into that wolrd at the turn of the 20th century with this question that made the list: what have they got instead of Christianity?

Well, here's one thing he would have noticed, and by the way, there was a person who actually did this. His name was citapan Rattray, he was sent as the British government asohrtgonpiolt, and he wrote a book about Asante religion.

This is a soul disc. There are many of them in the British Museum. I could give you an interesting, different history of how it comes about that many of the things from my society ended up in the British musuem, but we don't have time for that. So this ocbejt is a soul disc. What is a soul disc? It was worn around the necks of the soul-washers of the asatne king. What was their job? To wash the king's soul. It would take a long while to explain how a soul could be the kind of thing that could be washed, but Rattray knew that this was religion because souls were in play.

Open Cloze


So imagine someone who's coming out of that world, that late-19th-century world, coming into the country that I grew up in, Ghana, the society that I grew up in, Asante, ______ into that _____ at the turn of the 20th century with this question that made the list: what have they got instead of Christianity?

Well, here's one thing he would have noticed, and by the way, there was a person who actually did this. His name was _______ Rattray, he was sent as the British government ______________, and he wrote a book about Asante religion.

This is a soul disc. There are many of them in the British Museum. I could give you an interesting, different history of how it comes about that many of the things from my society ended up in the British ______, but we don't have time for that. So this ______ is a soul disc. What is a soul disc? It was worn around the necks of the soul-washers of the ______ king. What was their job? To wash the king's soul. It would take a long while to explain how a soul could be the kind of thing that could be washed, but Rattray knew that this was religion because souls were in play.

Solution


  1. object
  2. world
  3. coming
  4. asante
  5. museum
  6. captain
  7. anthropologist

Original Text


So imagine someone who's coming out of that world, that late-19th-century world, coming into the country that I grew up in, Ghana, the society that I grew up in, Asante, coming into that world at the turn of the 20th century with this question that made the list: what have they got instead of Christianity?

Well, here's one thing he would have noticed, and by the way, there was a person who actually did this. His name was Captain Rattray, he was sent as the British government anthropologist, and he wrote a book about Asante religion.

This is a soul disc. There are many of them in the British Museum. I could give you an interesting, different history of how it comes about that many of the things from my society ended up in the British Museum, but we don't have time for that. So this object is a soul disc. What is a soul disc? It was worn around the necks of the soul-washers of the Asante king. What was their job? To wash the king's soul. It would take a long while to explain how a soul could be the kind of thing that could be washed, but Rattray knew that this was religion because souls were in play.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
large parts 4
religion works 2
natural world 2
creation story 2
intellectual division 2
soul disc 2


Important Words


  1. anthropologist
  2. asante
  3. book
  4. british
  5. captain
  6. century
  7. christianity
  8. coming
  9. country
  10. disc
  11. ended
  12. explain
  13. ghana
  14. give
  15. government
  16. grew
  17. history
  18. imagine
  19. interesting
  20. job
  21. kind
  22. king
  23. knew
  24. long
  25. museum
  26. necks
  27. noticed
  28. object
  29. person
  30. play
  31. question
  32. rattray
  33. religion
  34. society
  35. soul
  36. souls
  37. time
  38. turn
  39. wash
  40. washed
  41. world
  42. worn
  43. wrote