full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Sebastian Junger: Our lonely society makes it hard to come home from war

Unscramble the Blue Letters


I wkroed as a war reporter for 15 years before I realized that I really had a problem. There was something really wrong with me.

This was about a year before 9/11, and America wasn't at war yet. We weren't tklanig about PTSD. We were not yet talking about the effect of trauma and war on the human psyche. I'd been in Afghanistan for a couple of months with the Northern Alliance as they were fighting the taialbn. And at that point the Taliban had an air force, they had fighter palnes, they had tknas, they had artillery, and we really got hammered pretty badly a clpuoe of times. We saw some very ugly things. But I didn't really think it affected me. I didn't think much about it.

Open Cloze


I ______ as a war reporter for 15 years before I realized that I really had a problem. There was something really wrong with me.

This was about a year before 9/11, and America wasn't at war yet. We weren't _______ about PTSD. We were not yet talking about the effect of trauma and war on the human psyche. I'd been in Afghanistan for a couple of months with the Northern Alliance as they were fighting the _______. And at that point the Taliban had an air force, they had fighter ______, they had _____, they had artillery, and we really got hammered pretty badly a ______ of times. We saw some very ugly things. But I didn't really think it affected me. I didn't think much about it.

Solution


  1. planes
  2. tanks
  3. talking
  4. couple
  5. worked
  6. taliban

Original Text


I worked as a war reporter for 15 years before I realized that I really had a problem. There was something really wrong with me.

This was about a year before 9/11, and America wasn't at war yet. We weren't talking about PTSD. We were not yet talking about the effect of trauma and war on the human psyche. I'd been in Afghanistan for a couple of months with the Northern Alliance as they were fighting the Taliban. And at that point the Taliban had an air force, they had fighter planes, they had tanks, they had artillery, and we really got hammered pretty badly a couple of times. We saw some very ugly things. But I didn't really think it affected me. I didn't think much about it.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
human psyche 2
pretty quickly 2
disability rates 2
ptsd compensation 2
modern society 2
suicide rate 2
highest rates 2
north america 2
lab rat 2


Important Words


  1. affected
  2. afghanistan
  3. air
  4. alliance
  5. america
  6. artillery
  7. badly
  8. couple
  9. effect
  10. fighter
  11. fighting
  12. force
  13. hammered
  14. human
  15. months
  16. northern
  17. planes
  18. point
  19. pretty
  20. problem
  21. psyche
  22. ptsd
  23. realized
  24. reporter
  25. taliban
  26. talking
  27. tanks
  28. times
  29. trauma
  30. ugly
  31. war
  32. worked
  33. wrong
  34. year
  35. years