Ted Talk for Listening

Website for task: http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_wright_on_optimism.html

Cloze:

Ted Talk – Optimism by Robert Wright

I’ve got apparently 18 minutes to ___________ you that history has a direction—______ arrow. That in some fundamental sense, _________ good; that the arrow points to ______________ positive. Now, when the TED people __________ approached me about giving this upbeat _________— that was before the cartoon of Muhammad ___________ triggered global rioting. It was before the _______ flu had reached Europe. It was __________ Hamas had won the Palestinian election, _____________ various counter-measures by Israel. And ________ be honest, if I had known __________ I was asked to give this ___________ talk that even as I was ____________the upbeat talk, the apocalypse would _________ unfolding I might have said, “Is ________ okay if I talk about something _________?” But I didn’t, OK. So we’re _________. I’ll do what I can. I’ll ___________ what I can.

I’ve got to ___________ you: the sense in which my ____________ is upbeat has always been kind __________subtle, sometimes even elusive.  The sense _________ which I can be uplifting and ____________—I mean, there’s always been a _________ of a certain grim dimension to the _________ I try to uplift, so if ____________ inspiration—if grim inspiration is not a ______________ in terms, that is, I’m afraid, ___________ most you can hope for. OK, _____________—that’s if I succeed. I’ll see ______________ I can do. OK?

Now, in ____________ sense, the claim that history has a _______________is not that controversial. If you’re ________________ talking about social structure, OK, clearly __________________ gotten more complex a little over the ______________ 10 thousand years—has reached higher ___________ higher levels. And in fact, that’s ________________ sustaining a long-standing trend that ______________________ human beings, OK, that biological evolution _________ doing for us. Because what happened ___________ the beginning, this stuff encases itself in a ____________, then cells start hanging out together in ________________. Eventually they get so close, they ___________ multicellular organisms, then you get complex _______________ organisms; they form societies.

But then ________ some point, one of these multicellular _______________ does something completely amazing with this ___________, which is it launches a whole _____________ kind of evolution: cultural evolution. And ________________, that evolution sustains the trajectory that ________________ evolution had established toward greater complexity. By _____________ evolution we mean the evolution of _____________. A lot of you have heard the term “______________.” The evolution of technology, I pay a ___________ of attention to, so, you know, ___________ of the first things you got ___________ a little hand axe. Generations go __________, somebody says, hey, why don’t we _____________ it on a stick?  Just absolutely _______________ the little ones. Next best thing to a ____________ game.