YouTube Transcript:
6 Approaches to Synthesizing Sources Like a Pro!
Skip watching entire videos - get the full transcript, search for keywords, and copy with one click.
Share:
Video Transcript
you've done a bunch of research and found a ton of sources but what on earth are you supposed to do with it all my name is lucia zaitseva and i teach writing at harvard university i'm also the founder of ivyride.com and in today's video i'm going to give you six tools you can use to wrap your head around new information so you can do something of your own with it rather than just repackaging what other people have said these are tools that people working at the very highest levels of their respective fields use every day whether they're investigative reporters professors and scientists of all stripes and you name it and today these tools can be yours for only 99.99 just kidding they're free so grab a notebook and let's get started writing a paper that uses multiple sources whether it's a research paper or some kind of synthesis can be truly daunting and all too often students fall into the trap of sort of showing and telling or writing a book report about what other people have already said and done but that's like the intellectual equivalent of drop shipping and you're not putting anything new out into the world instead you're just repackaging what someone else has taken the time to ingeniously create he recycled this gift he's a re-gifter as you'll remember from the previous video when it comes to analyzing a single source be it historical literary scientific or otherwise there's basically three things we can do you can explain something that doesn't add up we can demonstrate that something small or seemingly insignificant and the source is actually important or we can challenge a common way of understanding the source or show how that common approach leads somewhere surprising today's video is basically an extension of that list because even though humans are brilliant and we've managed to do things like put a man on the moon or invent the selfie spoon we're also not all that original and we tend to use and reuse the same conceptual tools no matter what problem we're trying to tackle or i guess another more generous way to put it is that over the course of millennia humans have honed their approach to synthesizing information and tackling complex problems so when it comes time for you to do your assignment to practice those skills you're not alone you have the tools developed by countless people who came before you to count on so let's dive in and see what they are and to keep things simple we're going to do this just by zooming into the original three tools you have from the previous video starting with the very first one explaining something that doesn't add up when something doesn't add up it could be for any number of reasons like for example it's puzzling that people who fundamentally want the same thing like a green new deal to solve the looming climate crisis disagree on the best means to get there one side thinks that it's impossible to accomplish our goals without nuclear power and the other side thinks that nuclear power is a non-starter the world is full of these examples of people who want the same thing but disagree about the best means for getting there or people who just want different things entirely and that's so-so news for the human race because we can't seem to agree on anything but it's great news for you as a thinker and writer because it gives you a conversation to contribute to and that brings us to the first possible motive for writing when you're dealing with multiple sources you could intervene in a debate or attempt to resolve a controversy you could be really helpful here by explaining how or why they disagree maybe even showing how they're not as dissimilar as they think and attempting to reconcile them and another great thing you can do when something doesn't add up is just ask a good incisive analytical question and attempt to answer it by collecting your own data of course this works best when your question is not something other people already know the answer to so you're not just in the position of playing catch-up but actually trying to figure out something no one else has understood before so for example we could ask a great analytical question like what beliefs shaped the attitudes of american housewives toward their soviet counterparts during the cold war and even though people already know some things about this we'd have to do archival research and gather other secondary sources in order to really do it justice yet another great move that you'll see high level thinkers and writers making all the time is putting something in context in order to explain its importance or help us understand its roots origins and causes you can really think about this as being closely related to the second motive for writing that we talked about in the previous video because in this case too you're relating something small to something larger but that larger thing is no longer a single source but in this case multiple to take an example that'll be familiar to you from a previous video in literary studies scholars often put a work into the context of that author's corpus as a whole or their influences predecessors even contemporaries and in the sciences and social sciences this could look like defending a policy by putting it into the context of a respected antecedent or even showing us the limits of a current approach to a problem by contextualizing the problematic origins of that approach and relatedly you might point out that in an ongoing debate or controversy everyone seems to be paying attention to a certain set of facts at the expense of others for instance for a long time scholars of history and literature focused explicitly on works labeled travelogues and ignored other works that talked about the experience of travel but didn't fall under that category as a result they missed entire swaths of texts that would have been really helpful in understanding people's changing perspective toward travel over the centuries and they tended to focus on men rather than women ignoring of course that women have a really different experience of travel and certainly did the further back in time we go [Applause] and in a case like that you can imagine your whole inquiry starting from just an inkling of wondering why a certain text by a woman that seems pertinent to this topic isn't talked about anywhere and so a really common motive for writing that you'll encounter across all disciplines is people attempting to fill a gap and explaining why what they're bringing to the table deserves further consideration and finally we come to common or accepted arguments and what we can do with them when we've got more than one source to work with healthy skepticism is a great habit of mind to cultivate and you can really contribute a lot to a conversation by bringing something new to someone's argument in order to build on it or applying their argument to a new dataset that they hadn't thought to do for example i might agree with someone's overall argument that modern life is to blame for things like the increased incidence of misaligned teeth in humans but i could disagree about the mechanism instead of blaming soft foods i could simply say that for modern humans natural selection isn't as much of a pressure or not in the same way as it is in the animal kingdom and of course someone could rebut that with a counter-argument of their own but that's a story for another day or i could apply an argument or theoretical lens from one domain to a completely new one and see what insights that yields people have quite literally won the nobel prize for doing this like for example the economists who applied the insights of psychology to their field and created a brand new field called behavioral economics when a lawyer argues a case she might invoke a legal precedent which is just another way of saying that she's using a previously argued and settled case as a lens onto the present in order to better understand it and hopefully you're starting to get the idea but plenty of popular apps are just the result of applying a concept from one domain to another like for example the popular car rental app turo is called the airbnb of car rental and i would challenge you at the end of this video to try to think up for yourself a few examples of real-life cases where applying a model from one field or domain to another yields novel insights and there you have it six different tools that you can use to put multiple sources into conversation and actually do something interesting you could intervene in a debate or attempt to resolve a controversy you could pose a question and set out to find the answer to it by collecting your own sources and data you could put a text into context to help us better understand it you could fill a gap or point out something that's being overlooked or you could test someone's theory by challenging an argument and finally you might just use someone's theory or argument as a lens to understand something new isn't that so much better than just summarizing what other people have said so next time you're staring at a pile of library books and contemplating the existential abyss try asking yourself which of these approaches could be useful for your material and as i've mentioned before you could literally put in the header of your document i'm filling a gap or i'm challenging an argument and let it follow you on every page that way you're so much more likely to avoid pointless meandering and stay on topic if you found this helpful please like the video subscribe to the channel and share it with a friend and next time we'll dive deeper into how to work with sources at the college level i'll see you then [Music] you
Share:
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
How It Works
Copy YouTube Link
Grab any YouTube video URL from your browser
Paste & Extract
Paste the URL and we'll fetch the transcript
Use the Text
Search, copy, or save the transcript
Why you need YouTube Transcript?
Extract value from videos without watching every second - save time and work smarter
YouTube videos contain valuable information for learning and entertainment, but watching entire videos is time-consuming. This transcript tool helps you quickly access, search, and repurpose video content in text format.
For Note Takers
- Copy text directly into your study notes
- Get podcast transcripts for better retention
- Translate content to your native language
For Content Creators
- Create blog posts from video content
- Extract quotes for social media posts
- Add SEO-rich descriptions to videos
With AI Tools
- Generate concise summaries instantly
- Create quiz questions from content
- Extract key information automatically
Creative Ways to Use YouTube Transcripts
For Learning & Research
- Generate study guides from educational videos
- Extract key points from lectures and tutorials
- Ask AI tools specific questions about video content
For Content Creation
- Create engaging infographics from video content
- Extract quotes for newsletters and email campaigns
- Create shareable memes using memorable quotes
Power Up with AI Integration
Combine YouTube transcripts with AI tools like ChatGPT for powerful content analysis and creation:
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this tool really free?
Yes! YouTubeToText is completely free. No hidden fees, no registration needed, and no credit card required.
Can I translate the transcript to other languages?
Absolutely! You can translate subtitles to over 125 languages. After generating the transcript, simply select your desired language from the options.
Is there a limit to video length?
Nope, you can transcribe videos of any length - from short clips to multi-hour lectures.
How do I use the transcript with AI tools?
Simply use the one-click copy button to copy the transcript, then paste it into ChatGPT or your favorite AI tool. Ask the AI to summarize content, extract key points, or create notes.
Timestamp Navigation
Soon you'll be able to click any part of the transcript to jump to that exact moment in the video.
Have a feature suggestion? Let me know!Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.