Name: 【TED】Elizabeth Streb: My quest to defy gravity and fly (My quest to defy gravity and fly | Elizabeth Streb)
Uploaded: 2018-11-15T18:14:04.000Z
Duration: 9 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I've been obsessed with learning to fly my whole life.

I grew up a feral, adopted child on the northern shore of Lake Ontario,

following my bricklayer/fisherman father around.

I was always fascinated by things that moved,

catching small animals, holding them in my hands,

thrilled and terrified at its unrelenting force,

accidentally burning my father's barn down --

That was my first brush with real danger,

When I was about eight or nine years old, I caught a fly in a mason jar.

it's changing directions in midair with acute angles,

Everywhere I looked, there were things moving.

And these things moved with their very own causal rhythms,

that things move based on their component parts:

worms squirmed, birds flew, kangaroos hopped.

And a human's first bout with flying was falling accidentally, tripping,

Once your ground is dragged out from under you,

For the next 10 years, I did my experiments alone,

I drove my Honda 350 across the United States

I got my degree in modern dance. I mimicked that fly in the box.

I was trying to figure out something about flight.

I found myself in a rat-infested New York City loft,

getting ready to hurl myself off a ladder.

And it occurred to me that people didn't really enjoy getting hurt,

and that maybe the reason that we weren't flying yet

is that we were still attached to that false idea

Birds and butterflies? Minutes, maybe hours.

I really think it has to do with curiosity

Rather than "pain," say, "another rather interesting, foreign sensation."

I realized then that to learn to fly, we were going to have to learn to land.

My hero, Evel Knievel -- one of them -- said,

The trouble begins when you try to land it."

I thought, "Well, why don't we invent an impact technique?

Why don't we just expand our base of support?"

It was a totally different sound than "wham-o."

And I rushed out onto the streets of New York City

In 1985, we started to tour all over the world a little bit,

In 2003, we were invited to go to Kitty Hawk

to celebrate the 100th anniversary of flight with the Wright Brothers.

And like them, we wanted to stay there longer.

"If you are looking for perfect safety, you will do well to sit on a fence

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TED】Elizabeth Streb: My quest to defy gravity and fly (My quest to defy gravity and fly | Elizabeth Streb)

esteem

realize

impact

sensation