Hi! We’re two IB graduates from Hong Kong. “The Uncommon Senses” Podcast revolves around the Theory of Knowledge(TOK), where we reflect on how we know what we claim to know. We believe that the critical thinking skills we gained from our TOK course have become increasingly vital in the 21st century, and therefore we would like to continue our TOK explorations here!

Primarily, we aim to help the current IBDP students learn more about TOK based on our own experiences and research. Hopefully, we can also reach out to other people who’s interested in our philosophical, psychological and social discussions to see the world beyond our so-called common senses, and reconsider: to what extent are our common senses ‘common’?

Timestamps for Episode #9:

0:00 Opening

0:27 TWE does language shape our reality? The Himba Tribe

4:14 Discussion on colors — Chinese and English

8:49 Discussion on language preservation

14:13 TWE does reality shape our language? — Chinese and English cultures

20:44 Language’s development throughout China

26:19 Gendered vocabulary

Resources:

1. Himba tribe and language: https://gondwana-collection.com/blog/how-do-namibian-himbas-see-colour
2. instagram “color blind” filter: https://tracebites.com/the-filter-to-identify-colors-that-sweeps-instagram/
3. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/sapir-whorf-hypothesis
4. Little Mermaid, Part of Your World lyrics: https://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/classicdisney/partofyourworld.htm
5. ways to say “you” in Japanese: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/japanese/you-in-japanese/
6. Confucianism philosophy (from Asia Society, New York) : https://asiasociety.org/education/confucianism#:~:text=The%20imperial%20family%20and%20other,practice%20the%20ethics%20of%20farming.
7. The benefits and drawbacks of Confucianism in reality (from China’s National Bureau of Statistics): http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjzs/tjsj/tjcb/zggqgl/201008/t20100818_37709.html
8. Huang He Valley https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/huang-he-valley

Music Credit:

aeseaes – all in blue, Chimera