Stories we Tell
If you cut open a cocoon you do not find a caterpillar or butterfly, but instead find this surprising thing!
This was talked about in a radiolab podcast episode with this word in the title.
What is goo?
In the film "Captain Fantastic," the main characters are pulled out of their alternative lives in the Pacific North Woods because they have to attend this event. They are actually told not to attend, but they come anyway, disrupting the event.
What is their mom's funeral?
The "Spot the Robot" activity in class had you trying to identify which stories were written by this Large Language Model chatbot, which has since been upgraded to its fourth version.
What is ChatGTP3
In the film "Mean Girls," the titular group is often reffered to by another name, referring to a material that they might as well be made of.
What is plastics?
The Monomyth and the Universal Story are both names of the same theory, popularized by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book.
Carl Sagan had one of the Voyager probes turn around and take a picture of the earth from very very far away. He gave a speech about seeing the earth from this perspective, in which he described Earth in this image as a "________," suspended in a sunbeam. That phrase is now an ocassional rallying cry by environmentalists, who call our planet that in order to remind us of its vulnerability.
What is a Pale Blue Dot?
A black mirror episode, named after this biblical figure, features a protective mother who installs a chip in her daughters head. Like the biblical figure, the chip allows the mother to watch over the child and know where she is and what she's seeing. Unlike the benign title of the episode, the technology turns out to be horrific. This is the name of the episode, the fictional company, and the biblical figure.
What is Arkangel?
While Juior takes Penelope to a school dance, he is reluctant to admit or show her this fact about himself and his family.
What is the fact that they are poor?
Hannah Gadsby's stand-up special, Nanette, is a profound piece in which she describes how her relationship to trauma and to joking about trauma has evolved over time. She uses the example of this famous painter, who people talk about as proof that artists should suffer. Instead, she argues that this painter's greatest art was produces thanks to the fact that he waas medicated and taken care of by psychiatrists and the people around him. The artist famously cut off part of his own ear, and was never financially successful during his life.
Who is Vincent van Gogh?
In Absolutely True Diary, Junior is bullied after starting at the white school, and for a while he just tolerates it, but when Roger says something extremely racist to him, he does this in response. The action is normal where he comes from, but completely abnormal at the whit school. The thing that Junior does is
punch him in the face
Joseph Weizenbaum created a simple chatbot called ELIZA, which did nothing more than mirror back statements as questions, souding like a stereotypical therapist. He was surprised when people had this reaction to it.
What is liking it/wanting to interact with it?
Former president Mr. Donald Trump was initially in favor of banning this app in the USA, but after an investor in the company ByteDance gave him a bunch of money, he began saying that the USA should not ban this app after all, saying that if this app were banned, people would just turn to Facebook instead.
What is TikTok?
In Absolutely True Diary, the main character (Junior) is very excited to start learning, but on his first day of high school, he becomes so angry with an object that he throws it across the room, at the teacher. This is the thing that he throws.
In the film Captain Fantastic, the main characters have a hard time meeting mainstream society. At one point they try to eat at a restaraunt, but they storm out when the father becomes frustrated, exclaiming that there is none of this on the menu.
What is (real) food?
In the Spot the Robot class activity, there were many things that let you recognize the artificially created stories. One of those clues was that the artificial story's grammar was different from people's in this way.
What is the grammar was perfect (but boring)?
We know the Shame Wizard has defeated Andrew Glauberman when he stops saying "I did a bad thing" and instead says this.
What is "I am a bad thing?"
Priscilla Howe wrote an article comparing written and oral storytelling, detailing pros and cons of each. She concludes that this form is the better and more effective of the two.
What is neither (they are equal)?
In Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, the title character leaves the site of the factory, and leaves only a single word behind. The onceler spends a long time figuring out what is meant by this single word, and finally understands it when he tells his story to a young listener.
What is "Unless?"
Science fiction can be a vehicle for social change. One example is that Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on the popular tv show Star Trek, started to effect social change outside of the show. She was eventually asked to work with recruiting for this American governmental organization.
What is NASA?
This British high school banned personal phones on campus.
Crookhorn College