full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Rebecca Onie: What Americans agree on when it comes to health

Unscramble the Blue Letters


One of those white Republican women in Charlotte was a waitress struggling to stay awake with an enormous Big Gulp soda. She just looked exaetuhsd. And she was. She told us that she wreokd two jobs but still could not aofrfd a mbeemhisrp to the Y, but it was OK that she couldn't go to the gym, she said, because she also could not afford gas and walked 10 miles to and from work every single day.

Listening to her, I felt this familiar panic rise in me, the residue of my own chhdilood. When I was 10 years old, my father lay on the linvig room floor in the giprs of one of his many desrnpoiess. As I crouched next to him, he told me that he wanted to kill himself. My father lived, but he struggled to work. And my family survived, but we teetered, down one paycheck, rylenig on my mom's schoolteacher salary. Even as a little kid, I knew we lived in the shadow of financial and emotional csloaple. This is really hard to say, because it's taken me 25 yaers to be honest with myself that this is why I do this work: knowing that my father needed health care to recover, but to be healthy, my family needed something else, we needed a decnet income; and knowing, as so many do more than I, that panic when the basics threaten to slip away.

Open Cloze


One of those white Republican women in Charlotte was a waitress struggling to stay awake with an enormous Big Gulp soda. She just looked _________. And she was. She told us that she ______ two jobs but still could not ______ a __________ to the Y, but it was OK that she couldn't go to the gym, she said, because she also could not afford gas and walked 10 miles to and from work every single day.

Listening to her, I felt this familiar panic rise in me, the residue of my own _________. When I was 10 years old, my father lay on the ______ room floor in the _____ of one of his many ___________. As I crouched next to him, he told me that he wanted to kill himself. My father lived, but he struggled to work. And my family survived, but we teetered, down one paycheck, _______ on my mom's schoolteacher salary. Even as a little kid, I knew we lived in the shadow of financial and emotional ________. This is really hard to say, because it's taken me 25 _____ to be honest with myself that this is why I do this work: knowing that my father needed health care to recover, but to be healthy, my family needed something else, we needed a ______ income; and knowing, as so many do more than I, that panic when the basics threaten to slip away.

Solution


  1. decent
  2. grips
  3. worked
  4. years
  5. childhood
  6. afford
  7. living
  8. relying
  9. depressions
  10. exhausted
  11. collapse
  12. membership

Original Text


One of those white Republican women in Charlotte was a waitress struggling to stay awake with an enormous Big Gulp soda. She just looked exhausted. And she was. She told us that she worked two jobs but still could not afford a membership to the Y, but it was OK that she couldn't go to the gym, she said, because she also could not afford gas and walked 10 miles to and from work every single day.

Listening to her, I felt this familiar panic rise in me, the residue of my own childhood. When I was 10 years old, my father lay on the living room floor in the grips of one of his many depressions. As I crouched next to him, he told me that he wanted to kill himself. My father lived, but he struggled to work. And my family survived, but we teetered, down one paycheck, relying on my mom's schoolteacher salary. Even as a little kid, I knew we lived in the shadow of financial and emotional collapse. This is really hard to say, because it's taken me 25 years to be honest with myself that this is why I do this work: knowing that my father needed health care to recover, but to be healthy, my family needed something else, we needed a decent income; and knowing, as so many do more than I, that panic when the basics threaten to slip away.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
health care 17
healthy food 4
social determinants 3
white republican 3
republican women 3
essential resources 2
care executives 2
care system 2
african american 2
american democratic 2
affordable housing 2
safe housing 2
common sense 2
common experience 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
white republican women 3
health care executives 2
health care system 2
african american democratic 2

Important Words


  1. afford
  2. awake
  3. basics
  4. big
  5. care
  6. charlotte
  7. childhood
  8. collapse
  9. crouched
  10. day
  11. decent
  12. depressions
  13. emotional
  14. enormous
  15. exhausted
  16. familiar
  17. family
  18. father
  19. felt
  20. financial
  21. floor
  22. gas
  23. grips
  24. gulp
  25. gym
  26. hard
  27. health
  28. healthy
  29. honest
  30. jobs
  31. kid
  32. kill
  33. knew
  34. knowing
  35. lay
  36. listening
  37. lived
  38. living
  39. looked
  40. membership
  41. miles
  42. needed
  43. panic
  44. paycheck
  45. recover
  46. relying
  47. republican
  48. residue
  49. rise
  50. room
  51. salary
  52. schoolteacher
  53. shadow
  54. single
  55. slip
  56. soda
  57. stay
  58. struggled
  59. struggling
  60. survived
  61. teetered
  62. threaten
  63. told
  64. waitress
  65. walked
  66. wanted
  67. white
  68. women
  69. work
  70. worked
  71. years