Animated What Makes Me, Me? And Other Interesting Questions

-This is Dave.

-Hi.

-Dave owns a wooden ship called the Theseus.

And that's Dave's wife. She doesn't like goodbyes. Dave and his crew...

Ooh-arr!

Yup, thank you. Dave and his crew are setting off on a long voyage.

It's a tough voyage, with many storms and mishaps.

And it gets really quite hard to keep the ship sailing

and to stop bits of it falling into the water.

Every time the ship is damaged,

Dave takes the Theseus to George's shipyard.

And George replaces the broken wooden bits

with shiny, new metal ones.

Bye!

But there are many dangers, like Ollie the octopus,

who does like a bit of fish and chips.

And so, every few months of his journey, Dave heads back

to see George and has any broken wooden bits replaced with metal.

-Bye bye!

-Bye!

HE HUMS

And each time the ship gets damaged, more metal parts are added.

And so on and so on until eventually,

every part of the Theseus has been replaced.

The ship is now entirely metal, inside and out.

When Dave gets home, his wife,

who's been really missing Dave a great deal, is surprised.

She wants to know why he's got a new ship.

"I haven't got a new ship," says Dave.

Dave's wife insists that it can't be the same ship.

Dave insists that it is.

This goes back and forth for what seems like an eternity.

But Dave's wife won't budge.

Your ship was wooden, and this ship is metal!

-Nothing of the old ship remains.

-What do you think?

Dave and his wife haven't stopped arguing about whether

it's the same ship when suddenly, over the horizon,

a familiar shape appears.

It's the Theseus, only made of wood! How did this happen?

It turns out George always wanted his own ship.

So, rather cleverly, he kept all the wooden bits

that fell off the original Theseus and decided to rebuild it.

It needed a lot of hard work and an awful lot of nails.

But it looks very good, now he's finished.

The minute she sees the ship, Dave's wife thinks it's Dave's ship,

the Theseus. So what does this mean?

They're both called the Theseus, and they both look the same.

Well, except that one's made of wood and one's made of metal.

It's all getting a bit confusing. Oh, dear!

Now, this is all very well with ancient ships and whatnot,

but what happens if we think about something a little closer to

home, like... I don't know, you?

You see, like Dave's ship,

our bodies change and grow throughout our lives.

We're born, we grow up into toddlers, then children...

Hi!

..And we keep growing into teenagers, then adults.

And we continue changing our whole lives.

Our hair grows and falls out, and more grows without us even noticing.

We get a whole new set of teeth. Everything changes.

So if every part of us gets replaced, too, like Dave's ship,

then that raises a big question.

Along a great river, there are two villages.

The first one, way up river, is a farming village full of, well,

farmers. Now, this village isn't a very happy place.

There's never enough water to feed the crops,

and the people are very hungry.

Rotten crops, rumbling tums, bad tempers. You get the idea.

However, some way down river, there's a fishing village full of,

well, fisher-people.

Now, they depend on the river for all their food,

and they have lots of lovely fish to eat. But one day...

Oh, no!

They discover that their lovely fish-filled river

has dried up completely.

No water, nothing. No fish at all, not even a goldfish!

With no fish to eat, people start to go hungry.

And so, a fearless fisher-girl from the village sets off

to find out why the river has dried up.

Packing the last of the fish paste sandwiches,

she follows the dry river all the way to the farmers' village.

There, she meets a farmer boy. "Welcome to our village," he says.

"It's a great place.

"We have plenty to eat and our crops have lots of water,

"all thanks to our dam."

The fisher-girl is horrified. "You've stolen our water," she says.

What do you think?

The fisher-girl explains to the farmer boy how the dam

has stopped the river flowing down to their village.

She tells him all about her village going hungry

because they have no more fish. The farmer boy feels bad.

He hadn't thought about how this would affect his neighbours.

And then he has an idea.

Why don't the fisher-people just come and live with us?

The fisher-girl isn't sure this will solve the problem.

After all,

the fisher-people have lived in their village for hundreds of years.

Everything they do is based around fish and fishing.

If the fisher-people come and live with the farmers,

they'll have to change their entire way of life. Not only that -

even if the fisher-people come to the farming village,

will the farmers welcome them?

It's an awful lot of new mouths to feed, for a start.

Well, there are a lot of things to consider here.

This is Ben. He's just walking along when...

Oh, hang on!

He's found something. It's a ring. It's not just any ring, though.

It's a magic ring, a real,

proper magic ring that makes you disappear when you put it on.

So now... Ben? Err... is he still there?

Ah!

So now, Ben starts imagining the awesome things

he can do with his new power.

He could use the ring to help people,

like stopping nasty burglars before they get away.

-So kind of like a real superhero.

-Hmm.

-Maybe he needs a name.

But then, he could also use it to play tricks on people,

which might not be helpful, but it could be quite funny.

Oooooo!

HE CHUCKLES

Soon, Ben gets bored just thinking about what he's going to do

with the ring and decides to have a little bit of fun with it.

HE CHUCKLES

There's Sophie, having a lovely dolls' tea party.

And then along comes Ben to wreak havoc with it!

Woooooo!

SHE SCREAMS

Later on, Ben's just playing ball with Karim when...

Uh-oh!

Enter the magic ring again, which helps him disappear

and cleverly avoid getting caught.

Phew!

Grrr!

So Ben's become quite attached to being invisible,

and he finds himself thinking

he'd like one of those lovely, juicy apples.

Mmmm!

He could just steal one.

And if he's invisible, he can't get caught, can he?

But Sophie has seen what he's up to, and ever so quietly,

she creeps up on him and catches him in the act.

Uh-oh!

Sophie says, "Why don't you use your power to do good things?"

She tells him that doing good things makes her feel happy,

and that we should all do good things because,

well, because it's good.

What do you think?

Sophie, Ben and Karim are going on a quest. Adventure! Excitement! Peril!

You know, all the usual questy stuff.

Their plan is to find the mysterious golden bird which lives

deep in the forest.

BIRD SQUEALS

Unfortunately, they haven't actually set off yet because they've spent

the past two hours arguing about who's going to carry what.

Karim has hurt his arm,

so he doesn't think he should carry too much.

In fact, he's going to struggle to carry anything.

Sophie is the smallest, so she thinks she should carry less

than the others, especially Ben, who's much bigger.

-Yoo hoo! Wa ha!

-Yippee! Yippee!

But Ben is seriously unhappy about carrying more stuff

because he's only brought a tiny amount.

He thinks he can't help being bigger.

Why should he have to carry other people's stuff?

Hmph!

So how are they going to sort it out and actually find the golden bird,

now that they're not even talking to each other?

Hours later, and they've still not decided who's carrying what.

Well, now, it's lunchtime,

and Sophie's tummy is making some rather strange noises.

HER TUMMY RUMBLES

She says they should eat before they carry on,

-and suggests they all share out their lunches.

-Yay!

-Yeah!

-Yeah!

Karim has brought a pretty decent spread,

lots of tasty stuff to keep them going.

But Ben has only brought what he can afford, which isn't as much.

And Sophie's brought, well, loads.

Yay! Woo hoo!

Karim's not sure about sharing when he's brought more than Ben.

But then he has an idea.

Maybe Ben could earn some extra food

if he agrees to carry more on the journey.

But Ben doesn't think it's fair to make him do all the work,

just because he hasn't got as much food.

This is going to be tricky and... Oh, dear!

It looks like they've spent so long arguing,

the bird has flown off on a quest of its own.

Oh, look! He's left them a little present!

On the banks of a river sits a scorpion.

This scorpion has got lost,

and she's separated from her family by a huge river.

Now, you may not know this, but scorpions can't swim.

So she can't cross it. She's stuck.

-Ribbit!

-Ooh!

At that moment, a frog passes by.

Ribbit ribbit!

Now, of course, frogs can swim, so she asks the frog for help.

"Ha ha ha," says the frog. "I don't think so!

"Scorpions and frogs are deadly enemies. Scorpions sting frogs.

"When we're halfway across, you'll sting me."

"Why would I do that?" says the scorpion. "It makes no sense.

"If I sting you, I won't get across the river to my family."

Mmmm...

But the scorpion can see that the frog's still not sure.

And so she says, "I promise I won't sting you." What do you think?

Eventually, after a lot of pleading from the scorpion,

the frog agrees to carry her across the river.

Now, what looks like a short distance to you

is quite a long journey for a frog, especially

when you've got someone your own size on your back

and it's a scorpion.

Woo hoo!

-Halfway across the river, the frog feels sharp pain on his head.

-Ow!

The scorpion has stung him!

"Why did you do that?" screams the frog. "Now we'll both drown!"

"I can't help it," says the scorpion. "Scorpions sting frogs.

"It's in my nature."

And with that, both the scorpion and the frog sink down into the river.

That's all very well for frogs and scorpions,

but what does this have to do with humans?

Well, let's take Karim as an example.

Karim's always been a bit, well, careless with other people's things.

Ah! Yeah!

Karim's best friend, Sophie,

has a telescope that he really wants to borrow.

The thing is, Sophie's not sure. She knows Karim is careless.

But he promises to be careful with it.

So eventually, she decides to lend him the telescope.

Karim heads off, carrying the telescope extra carefully.

Phew!

He spends the evening looking at the stars,

making sure he's being extra careful.

And the next day, on his way to return it to Sophie, he sees a group

of little baby scorpions looking cute on the bank of the river.

Uh-oh! Looks like Karim might not have been extra careful this time.

Hi!

And that means he has broken his promise to Sophie.

She's probably going to be rather upset.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd