What is the topic sentence? 🎡

 I understand that on May 3, 2018 when you were a guest at our restaurant in the Four Hills Plaza, you experienced an unfortunate incident that resulted in a beverage being spilled on your coat.

 Please accept my sincere apology.

 Unfortunately the staff on duty at the time did not reflect our customer service policy.

 I have investigated the situation and scheduled additional customer service training for them.

 We'd like to have you back as a customer so I'm sending you a coupon for two free entrees that can be used at any of our five locations in New Parkland.

 Again, my apologies for the incident.

 I hope you give us the opportunity to make this right.

 What is the topic sentence? 🚖

 Patricia is eager to be the best mom she can be, but she finds parenting a hard task.

 Here's how she put it: "Just when I think I have it down, then something changes, and I have to make major adjustments.

 Parenting well feels like a moving target."

 Patricia is correct.

 In fact, much research has been done on the developmental stages of childhood.

 Babies learn to sit up, then crawl, and finally walk.

 Kids have a greater ability to reason as they get older, and logic makes sense as they move further into preadolescence.

 A logical implication of these developmental changes is that parents will need to make parenting shifts along the way.

 In other words, the one strategy to keep in mind as your children grow and change is that you must also change to meet their new developmental needs and abilities.

 What is the topic sentence? 🏕

 While backpacking through Costa Rica, Masami found herself in a bad situation.

 She had lost all of her belongings, and had only $5 in cash.

 To make matters worse, because of a recent tropical storm, all telephone and Internet services were down.

 She had no way to get money, so decided to go knocking door to door, explaining that she needed a place to stay until she could contact her family back in Japan to send her some money.

 Everybody told her they had no space or extra food and pointed her in the direction of the next house.

 It was already dark when she arrived at a small roadside restaurant.

 The owner of the restaurant heard her story and really empathized.

 Much to her delight, Masami was invited in.

 The owner gave her some food, and allowed her to stay there until she could contact her parents.

 What is the topic sentence? 🏯

 The development of writing was pioneered not by gossips, storytellers, or poets, but by accountants.

 The earliest writing system has its roots in the Neolithic period, when humans first began to switch from hunting and gathering to a settled lifestyle based on agriculture.

 This shift began around 9500 BC in a region known as the Fertile Crescent, which stretches from modern‑day Egypt, up to southeastern Turkey, and down again to the border between Iraq and Iran.

 Writing seems to have evolved in this region from the custom of using small clay pieces to account for transactions involving agricultural goods such as grain, sheep, and cattle.

 The first written documents, which come from the Mesopotamian city of Uruk and date back to around 3400 B.C., record amounts of bread, payment of taxes, and other transactions using simple symbols and marks on clay tablets.

 What is the topic sentence? 🏰

 Why do you go to the library?

 For books, yes — and you like books because they tell stories.

 You hope to get lost in a story or be transported into someone else's life.

 At one type of library, you can do just that — even though there's not a single book.

 At a Human Library, people with unique life stories volunteer to be the "books."

 For a certain amount of time, you can ask them questions and listen to their stories, which are as fascinating and inspiring as any you can find in a book.

 Many of the stories have to do with some kind of stereotype.

 You can speak with a refugee, a soldier suffering from PTSD, and a homeless person.

 The Human Library encourages people to challenge their own existing notions — to truly get to know, and learn from, someone they might otherwise make quick judgements about.

 What is the topic sentence? 🚔

 We create a picture of the world using the examples that most easily come to mind.

 This is foolish, of course, because in reality, things don't happen more frequently just because we can imagine them more easily.

 Thanks to this prejudice, we travel through life with an incorrect risk map in our heads.

 Thus, we overestimate the risk of being the victims of a plane crash, a car accident, or a murder.

 And we underestimate the risk of dying from less spectacular means, such as diabetes or stomach cancer.

 The chances of bomb attacks are much rarer than we think, and the chances of suffering depression are much higher.

 We attach too much likelihood to spectacular, flashy, or loud outcomes.

 Anything silent or invisible we downgrade in our minds.

 Our brains imagine impressive outcomes more readily than ordinary ones.

 What is the topic sentence? 🎢

 After earning her doctorate degree from the University of Istanbul in 1940, Halet Cambel fought tirelessly for the advancement of archaeology.

 She helped preserve some of Turkey's most important archaeological sites near the Ceyhan River and established an outdoor museum at Karatepe.

 There, she broke ground on one of humanity's oldest known civilizations by discovering a Phoenician alphabet tablet.

 Her work preserving Turkey's cultural heritage won her a Prince Claus Award.

 But as well as revealing the secrets of the past, she also firmly addressed the political atmosphere of her present.

 As just a 20yearold archaeology student, Cambel went to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, becoming the first Muslim woman to compete in the Games.

 She was later invited to meet Adolf Hitler but she rejected the offer on political grounds.

 What is the topic sentence? 🚏

 Getting in the habit of asking questions transforms you into an active listener.

 This practice forces you to have a different inner life experience, since you will, in fact, be listening more effectively.

 You know that sometimes when you are supposed to be listening to someone, your mind starts to wander.

 All teachers know that this happens frequently with students in classes.

 It's what goes on inside your head that makes all the difference in how well you will convert what you hear into something you learn.

 Listening is not enough.

 If you are constantly engaged in asking yourself questions about things you are hearing, you will find that even boring lecturers become a bit more interesting, because much of the interest will be coming from what you are generating rather than what the lecturer is offering.

 When someone else speaks, you need to be thought provoking!

 What is the topic sentence? 🛳

 Allowing people to influence each other reduces the precision of a group's estimate.

 To derive the most useful information from multiple sources of evidence, you should always try to make these sources independent of each other.

 This rule is part of good police procedure.

 When there are multiple witnesses to an event, they are not allowed to discuss it before giving their testimony.

 The goal is not only to prevent collusion by hostile witnesses, it is also to prevent witnesses from influencing each other.

 Witnesses who exchange their experiences will tend to make similar errors in their testimony, reducing the total value of the information they provide.

 The standard practice of open discussion gives too much weight to the opinions of those who speak early and confidently, causing others to line up behind them.

 What is the topic sentence? ⛲

 Loneliness can creep into your life as you get older, which is why it's nice to find some ways to not be lonely.

 Patrick Arbore knows this, and it's why he values meaningful conversation.

 Director and founder of Elderly Suicide Prevention, Arbore, founded the Friendship Line, a 24hour hotline whose volunteers reach out to potentially suicidal seniors.

 He says, "What brings me joy is when I can be the listener when someone is hungry for connection."

 Arbore remembers one man in particular who was feeling suicidal in his 70's after his wife's death.

 The man spoke with him on the Friendship Line at a stage when he wanted to end his life.

 After some time he said to him "I am no longer thinking about suicide because people care about me."

 Arbore found this exchange profound.

 "All we did was express caring," he says.

 "Our work is really quite simple.

 It's connection and care."

 What is the topic sentence? ⛲

 Do you advise your kids to keep away from strangers?

 That's a tall order for adults.

 After all, you expand your network of friends and create potential business partners by meeting strangers.

 Throughout this process, however, analyzing people to understand their personalities is not all about potential economic or social benefit.

 There is your safety to think about, as well as the safety of your loved ones.

 For that reason, Mary Ellen O'Toole, who is a retired FBI profiler, emphasizes the need to go beyond a person's superficial qualities in order to understand them.

 It is not safe, for instance, to assume that a stranger is a good neighbor, just because they're polite.

 Seeing them follow a routine of going out every morning well‑dressed doesn't mean that's the whole story.

 In fact, O'Toole says that when you are dealing with a criminal, even your feelings may fail you.

 That's because criminals have perfected the art of manipulation and deceit.

 What is the topic sentence? 🚘

 "Survivorship bias" is a common logical fallacy.

 We're prone to listen to the success stories from survivors because the others aren't around to tell the tale.

 A dramatic example from history is the case of statistician Abraham Wald who, during World War Ⅱ, was hired by the U.S・ Air Force to determine how to make their bomber planes safer.

 The planes that returned tended to have bullet holes along the wings, body, and tail, and commanders wanted to reinforce those areas because they seemed to get hit most often.

 Wald, however, saw that the important thing was that these bullet holes had not destroyed the planes, and what needed more protection were the areas that were not hit.

 Those were the parts where, if a plane was struck by a bullet, it would never be seen again.

 His calculations based on that logic are still in use today, and they have saved many pilots.

 What is the topic sentence? 🏯

 In the early 2000s, British psychologist Richard Wiseman performed a series of experiments with people who viewed themselves as either 'lucky'(they were successful and happy, and events in their lives seemed to favor them) or 'unlucky'(life just seemed to go wrong for them).

 What he found was that the 'lucky' people were good at spotting opportunities.

 In one experiment he told both groups to count the number of pictures in a newspaper.

 The 'unlucky' diligently ground their way through the task; the 'lucky' usually noticed that the second page contained an announcement that said: "Stop counting — there are 43 photographs in this newspaper."

 On a later page, the 'unlucky' were also too busy counting images to spot a note reading: "Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this, and win $250."

 Wiseman's conclusion was that, when faced with a challenge, 'unlucky' people were less flexible.

 They focused on a specific goal, and failed to notice that other options were passing them by.

 What is the topic sentence? 🎢

 Appreciating the collective nature of knowledge can correct our false notions of how we see the world.

 People love heroes.

 Individuals are given credit for major breakthroughs.

 Marie Curie is treated as if she worked alone to discover radioactivity and Newton as if he discovered the laws of motion by himself.

 The truth is that in the real world, nobody operates alone.

 Scientists not only have labs with students who contribute critical ideas, but also have colleagues who are doing similar work, thinking similar thoughts, and without whom the scientist would get nowhere.

 And then there are other scientists who are working on different problems, sometimes in different fields, but nevertheless set the stage through their own findings and ideas.

 Once we start understanding that knowledge isn't all in the head, that it's shared within a community, our heroes change.

 Instead of focusing on the individual, we begin to focus on a larger group.

 What is the topic sentence? 🎡

 Your story is what makes you special.

 But the tricky part is showing how special you are without talking about yourself.

 Effective personal branding isn't about talking about yourself all the time.

 Although everyone would like to think that friends and family are eagerly waiting by their computers hoping to hear some news about what you're doing, they're not.

 Actually, they're hoping you're sitting by your computer, waiting for news about them.

 The best way to build your personal brand is to talk more about other people, events, and ideas than you talk about yourself.

 By doing so, you promote their victories and their ideas, and you become an influencer.

 You are seen as someone who is not only helpful, but is also a valuable resource.

 That helps your brand more than if you just talk about yourself over and over.

 What is the topic sentence? 🎡

 Many years ago I visited the chief investment officer of a large financial firm, who had just invested some tens of millions of dollars in the stock of the ABC Motor Company.

 When I asked how he had made that decision, he replied that he had recently attended an automobile show and had been impressed.

 He said, "Boy, they do know how to make a car!"

 His response made it very clear that he trusted his gut feeling and was satisfied with himself and with his decision.

 I found it remarkable that he had apparently not considered the one question that an economist would call relevant: Is the ABC stock currently underpriced?

 Instead, he had listened to his intuition; he liked the cars, he liked the company, and he liked the idea of owning its stock.

 From what we know about the accuracy of stock picking, it is reasonable to believe that he did not know what he was doing.

 What is the topic sentence? 🏕

 You may be wondering why people prefer to prioritize internal disposition over external situations when seeking causes to explain behaviour.

 One answer is simplicity.

 Thinking of an internal cause for a person's behaviour is easy — the strict teacher is a stubborn person, the devoted parents just love their kids.

 In contrast, situational explanations can be complex.

 Perhaps the teacher appears stubborn because she's seen the consequences of not trying hard in generations of students and wants to develop self‑discipline in them.

 Perhaps the parents who're boasting of the achievements of their children are anxious about their failures, and conscious of the cost of their school fees.

 These situational factors require knowledge, insight, and time to think through.

 Whereas, jumping to a dispositional attribution is far easier.

 What is the topic sentence? 🚏

 A child bounces up to you holding her school work; perhaps she's your daughter, cousin, or neighbour.

 She proudly shows you a big red A at the bottom of her test paper.

 How do you praise her?

 For decades, people have been told that praise is vital for happy and healthy children and that the most important job in raising a child is nurturing her self‑esteem.

 Recently, however, some researchers found that how people are praised is very important.

 They discovered that if you say "What a very clever girl you are" to the child showing you an A, you may cause her more harm than good.

 For your children to succeed and be happy, you need to convince them that success comes from effort, not from some talent that they're born with or without.

 What is the topic sentence? 🚔

 The body has an effective system of natural defence against parasites, called the immune system.

 The immune system is so complicated that it would take a whole book to explain it.

 Briefly, when it senses a dangerous parasite, the body is mobilized to produce special cells, which are carried by the blood into battle like a kind of army.

 Usually the immune system wins, and the person recovers.

 After that, the immune system remembers the molecular equipment that it developed for that particular battle, and any following infection by the same kind of parasite is beaten off so quickly that we don't notice it.

 That is why, once you have had a disease like the measles or chicken pox, you're unlikely to get it again.

 What is the topic sentence? 🎢

 The wife of American physiologist Hudson Hoagland became sick with a severe flu.

 Dr・ Hoagland was curious enough to notice that whenever he left his wife's room for a short while, she complained that he had been gone for a long time.

 In the interest of scientific investigation, he asked his wife to count to 60, with each count corresponding to what she felt was one second, while he kept a record of her temperature.

 His wife reluctantly accepted and he quickly noticed that the hotter she was, the faster she counted.

 When her temperature was 38 degrees Celsius, for instance, she counted to 60 in 45 seconds.

 He repeated the experiment a few more times, and found that when her temperature reached 39_5 degrees Celsius, she counted one minute in just 37 seconds.

 The doctor thought that his wife must have some kind of 'internal clock' inside her brain that ran faster as the fever went up.

 What is the topic sentence? 🏯

 David Stenbill, Monica Bigoutski, Shana Tirana.

 I just made up these names.

 If you encounter any of them within the next few minutes, you are likely to remember where you saw them.

 You know, and will know for a while, that these are not the names of minor celebrities.

 But suppose that a few days from now you are shown a long list of names, including those of some minor celebrities and "new" names of people that you have never heard of; your task will be to check every name of a celebrity on the list.

 There is a substantial probability that you will identify David Stenbill as a well‑known person, although you will not know whether you encountered his name in the context of movies, sports, or politics.

 Larry Jacoby, the psychologist who first demonstrated this memory illusion in the laboratory, titled his article "Becoming Famous Overnight".

 How does this happen?

 Start by asking yourself how you know whether or not someone is famous.

 In some cases of truly famous people, you have a mental file with rich information about a person — think Albert Einstein, Michael Jackson, or Hillary Clinton.

 But you will have no file of information about David Stenbill if you encounter his name in a few days.

 All you will have is a sense of familiarity.

 What is the topic sentence? 🚏

 Is it possible that two words can change someone's day, someone's life?

 What if those same two words could change the world?

 Well, Cheryl Rice is on a quest to find out.

 This quest accidentally began in November, 2016 in a grocery store.

 She was standing in the checkout line behind a woman who looked to be in her 60's.

 When it was the woman's turn to pay, the cashier greeted her by name and asked her how she was doing.

 The woman looked down, shook her head and said, "Not so good.

 My husband just lost his job.

 I don't know how I'm going to get through the holidays.

 "Then she gave the cashier some food stamps.

 Cheryl's heart ached.

 She wanted to help but didn't know how.

 "Should I offer to pay for her groceries, ask for her husband's resume?"

 She did nothing — yet.

 And the woman left the store.

 As Cheryl walked into the parking lot, she spotted the woman returning her shopping cart, and she remembered something in her purse that could help her.

 She approached the woman and said, "Excuse me, I couldn't help overhearing what you said to the cashier.

 It sounds like you're going through a really hard time right now.

 I'm so sorry.

 I'd like to give you something.

 "And she handed her a small card.

 When the woman read the card's only two words, she began to cry.

 And through her tears, she said, "You have no idea how much this means to me.

 "She was a little startled by her reply.

 Having never done anything like this before, Cheryl hadn't anticipated the reaction she might receive.

 All she could think to respond was, "Oh, my.

 Would it be OK to give you a hug?

 "After they embraced, she walked back to her car and began to cry too.

 The words on the card?

 "You Matter."