From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer, Alex's code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. The day of the week where you put our money where our mics are and share stories from the best part of this show, you and your fellow listeners. We've got some got some fascinating stuff lined up for you. And I think we've got We've got a couple of voicemails. I've got an email. Uh, you know, Matt. At the risk of editorializing, maybe we should, maybe we should hold yours for a second because it's really important and it's it's deep water. It's yeah, it's deep water. Okay, we can hold for a minute. I'll um, I'll get some floaty is ready for all of us, and then we can we'll take off. Sorry, I yeah, I want the one ship like a hippopotamus. Please, I for some reason to have a water safety kit in my go bag in my car, which is just like, why why do I have that? Where? Where am I going to be? In an ocean? I'm gonna somehow accidentally look around and be like, oh, wow, I drove into the ocean. Again. The only water safety thing you need in your car is one of those hammers that's specifically designed to break the windshield or you know, you're yeah, we're window. I've got a tucked away part in the driver's this has nothing. Yeah, that's that's the best place to put it. Uh. So we also have we also have some stories about non human intelligence. We also have some stories about really about the learning process in the US abroad and what happens when that is standardized or I would say institutionalized, I would say even modified. Uh you know, nobody asked why we go to school five days a week and why the school day is like roughly eight hours long. Has a lot in common with earlier manufacturing jobs that were extant and looking for employees around the time that we instituted that sort of public education. That's all I'm saying. It's a good point then I had to say that I don't know if this is the case across the board for folks, or if it's just like in certain cases. I find it interesting that my daughter is online only school UM gives all the students Wednesdays off from class to catch up on homework, to do tutoring, and to engage in outdoor activity. So I don't know if this is a product of COVID times. It struck me a little odd at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized she really does use that time effectively, and even just the learning curve of of of transitioning to an all online situation has been a lot. So having that extra day to like, ask questions and catch up has been pretty pretty interesting. Are you saying you think of four day work week would be good? I would never say something so extreme as that, And honestly, guys, I think we all know even if that was adopted by the national you know whatever, as I guys, I don't know that would apply to us as content machines. Yeah I don't. I really I can't remember the last time that day off. I was talking to one of my friends. I knew you guys have heard me say this before, but they were asking us to describe life in our weird bubble of of our careers, and I was like, you know, we're kind of we're kind of like very underpaid and enthusiologist because it feels sometimes like we're always on call, you know what I mean. And I get a lot of letters thanking us for helping people go to sleep. So so the comparison works in two ways. But let's add Okay, let's start there. Then we have an anonymous voicemail that is a response to our earlier exploration on some of the questions and dangers surrounding learning and surrounding standardized testing. Yes, um, I was listening to your podcast about standardized testing, and from my personal experience, I had a really um interesting thing happened. Uh. It wasn't until I went to college my freshman year that I read a book on how to read a book which really taught me about how the system, the school system. It would be really good for all kids if they learned how to learn first before they were taught how to learn, if they figured out they were audio or visual learners. And I just thought it would be really important to mention something like that because you know, I'm fifty fifty one now and I went to the school system back when I was called learning disabled and the dumbas and all that stuff. But it wasn't about intelligence, and you know, I'm intelligent, but it wasn't until I was freshman in college that I was finally was given a book on how to read a book. So I figured you guys to get a kick out of that, and uh, I hope you included in the upcoming broadcast about the school systems and how the uh the testing and how the teaching is failing us. So thank you, byebye, thank you Anonymous. This is yeah, we are going to do an episode on this in the future. But I thought, I thought this was a fascinating point. It's one that strikes accord with a lot of people in the audience, maybe with us on the show today. UH. Standardized testing or assumption of learning style. Learning style in particular, it can be a huge stumbling block to people. I'm gonna be honest, I don't know if I mentioned this, but anytime someone mistakes me for a particularly intelligent person or something, I end up having to share the story about how I was held back in kindergarten. It's a true story. If you're not in the u S. We have a thing called kindergarten. It happens before first grade. It's a German word. No one really tells you why. That's the only one that has a German word as the as the name or the grade. Your year zero kindergarten. And part of the reason I was held back was not because I was, you know, like uh like just a complete thunderhead, but it's because I probably had some spectrum esque behaviors. And I also am color deficient, so I couldn't see all the colors, which is a big deal in kindergarten. You're like, you can live and die by what you know about crayola or rose art, And so I had to I had to repeat that stuff. And I didn't know for the longest time, because how was a kid that age going to tell you I'm just kind of winging it with green and red or whatever, you know what I mean? Not only that, like how do you even verbalize that? Like when you're just learning what the things are and you realize you can't tell the difference, you maybe you assume it looks the same to everybody, or something like you have to kind of even have the understanding to grasp what you're experiencing to be able to verbalize that, you know, Yeah, I had to what I My trick that I had to do was I wrote out the names of the colors, this is my first attempt at kindergarten. And then I would have someone who could see them show me, like this word is this one. I would see that it was on the side of the crayon, and then I would like take that crayon and color over the word. So it's like, okay, well that's that's red. So I just have to hope that every crayon has a label on it with a name on it. But still that wasn't enough, and I think that's happened. Like, did you guys ever have a more lit where you thought Matt Noel Driver having one more you thought, well, I'm more of an auditory learner. I'm more of a visual learner or experience. Yeah, yeah, I mean I am still to this day. Honestly, Um, I was never particularly great at math. I was more of like a you know, a communicator, but math never did it for me. And even when I did have to get tutoring eventually to like, you know, up my math chops. I did do better with like what you're describing, you know, like a more visual kind of auditory way of learning. Yeah, that's that's interesting. I share that extremely deficient at mathematics. But for me, I always found and I didn't learn this until college as well, very similar to our color that I learned by doing something physically over and over after observing someone um. And you know that that's a lot of a lot of the classrooms in the United States and other countries are designed to have an instructor who will if we're talking about mathematics, you know, show you a formula or something, and here's how you saw for it, and just let like let you see it and visualize it and hear this person doing it and saying it um over and over until you get to try it on your own. But I think there's something more tactile to a lot of learning where um, Like in my career we're talking about careers a little bit here, but as a videographer and as an editor, I didn't. I took a bunch of classes, I got a degree over there, um in doing that stuff, but I didn't truly learn how to do any of that until I physically was doing it and testing and experimenting. There's a quote that my mother shared years ago, She's a career educator, uh, and it's pretty powerful. It's, uh, when I hear, I forget, when I see, I remember, when I do, I understand. It was the same with me for editing, and you know, even like storytelling, like I kind of like got thrown in the deep end with like working for public radio and like literally my boss just didn't want to do it because he was older and nearing retirement age and they needed someone to like do news. And I've never done news. I was in college at the time, and I was in college for broadcast journalism, but I've never actually done an audio news piece. It was not something i'd heard it, I'd heard NPR. So I just kind of copied it, you know, I kind of mimiced it a little bit. And then I gradually, as I did it more and more, I got better at it and it became kind of my skill instead of me just trying to like copy, you know, what I heard on the radio. Um. But it's I've always been that way with with But that's the interesting thing about working with software is it is so like audio visually stimulating. You're literally working with a graphical user interface that allows you to like move things around in time and space, and then you kind of just get like muscle memory for that stuff, and it's a it's very good for I think people that are that are visual learners. Yeah, and this this goes to a twofold thing. So there there's been a tremendous amount of work in what we call learning style, and this is something that's been a problem in education for centuries. Primarily. You know, that's the primary reason you hear so many cognitive rags to richest stories of someone saying like, oh, well, you know, uh, Einstein, for instance, was terrible at math. That example is terrible because it's not true. Einstein is actually really great at math, so he maybe has a different learning style. But a lot of this comes from the fact that people have a way of experiencing the world. Are our phenomenology is pretty much unique. It's distinct on a person by person basis, and we can find stuff that works for the majority of people, but we always have to remember there's there's something else at play there. You know what I mean like there are there are people who feel like they stink at math, but they feel like they're amazing at music. Music is math, you know what I mean. So it's it's um. Sometimes these cognitive uh guide posts and stalls and fences that we put around the idea of learning a given thing are more are do more damage than they do good. And they're all well intentioned, you know what I mean. But this this makes me think how excellent that point is about learning about learning, and of course that goes on to affect you in standardized testing. Standardized testing is made for a certain amount of learning. If you like figuring out how fast the train with twenty apples goes from St. Louis, then you know, standardized testing is your bread and your your bread and brain butter. But the first thing you need to realize is that apples is not nearly enough freight for a train. But you know, if you're if you're to maximize the economy of that train, how long it takes to get there and the amount of fuel, you're really gonna need to put some more stuff on there, probably cars. I used to print. I used to prank people by writing uh nonsensical word problems. There was a forum where there were there were a couple of people who would just try to answer them like they needed more information, and it was it was nonsense. It was a great time. Uh So, but there's another issue here that I think we should spend a little time on, and again we are we're going to go into this in our episode on standardized testing, and we want your experience as well. Educators or people who experience something like uh like Matt or Noel or I experience. We want to hear your stories, so do share them. We'll tell you how at the end of the show. But as always conspiracy and I heart radio dot com. Uh, this is the thing we need to mention. We need to give just a little bit of a spotlight to our children over medicated. What it means specifically, is our children and given things like antidepressants, anti psychotics, stimulants. Are are they given those too often at an early age? Are they? Or are they not over medicated? It's an interesting problem and I found I found arguments on both sides. Um I mean, really quickly, do you think kids are getting prescribed like riddling the way they used to or is that tapered off? It seems to have gotten a bit of a bad rap um, but I know that I was, uh, and then I stopped taking it because it didn't seem to do what it was supposed to do. But it just seemed like that stuff was way overprescribed, you know, for a d D back when we were in school. And I just wonder, if you guys didn't know anything or seen any studies, if that's still a thing that's happening. That's one of the go two examples always thought of to the prevalence of riddling prescriptions, especially because the way that the way that substance functions, it is it a great idea to give that to a line that is not fully developed. Also, let me point out to another thing, another example of how legislation doesn't always keep track with technology. The human brain is not fully like in its Pokemon esque final four by age eighteen or even aged one. You know, it's still forming. So if we have someone consistently taking medication with the best of intentions, how does that affect them later in life? Does it do something to that cognitive formation period of adolescents, puberty and so on? I So I found I found some folks saying that it's largely a myth that children are over prescribed psychiatric medication. And I found stuff even statements by this c d C back in saying that children are over prescribed certain things. So to map it out, like the most conspiratorial aspect would be something like big Pharma put the pressure on medical professionals, right and somehow incentivize them to prescribe name brand medications even if those were not necessarily the first solution they should have looked for. That's most conspiratorial. The other idea, on the other side of the spectrum here, just to be fair, is that we don't have an over medication epidemic. We have a lack of diagnosis medication. It seems like we're prescribing too much because we're just starting to realize it's important to figure out if someone has, you know, chronic depression or a d h D. So maybe we're finding more skeletons in the closet because we have a flashlight and we're looking in the closets, you know what I mean. Yeah, Yeah, there there's a lot to that. Um. Anyone who listened, who's listening to the show for a long enough time knows that my amazing wife is a school psychologist and deals with children and trying to diagnose or test to give a better idea for a diagnosis UM on perhaps what a child needs as far as medication or needs as far as therapy, behavioral therapy, things like that, and it is. You know, I can't speak to her experience, but I can just speak to conversations we've had before and a lot of times kind of what you're saying there been the easiest route is to give a child medication. For the parent A lot of times, UM, for the UM staff that are working with a child within a school system, medication becomes like an answer. I guess too, maybe this will curb some of the behavior issues that we are seeing UM and it is. I don't know how prevalent it is, just to your point, NOL, but I do know that that is certainly something that everyone in the whole system, including the parents, the staff, the child, even grapple with because at times it seems to be extremely beneficial for something like riddling or another you know, similar drug for a child, but other times it has devastating consequences and there's no there's no real way to know until something like that as administered over a period of time. I want to explore this more deeply with you guys, because this is this is intense stuff and it's the brains of, like you said, of developing children that we're we're playing with. And not to spoil any anything for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, but I've been watching the new Netflix show The Queen's gambit Um, which is really great if if you haven't seen it, but it deals with addiction UM in children or like how you know, being prescribed a drug at an early age can carry on with you for your entire life. And I as we know with it is a fictionalized universe like this, it's not based on true story. And even the sedative drug that the children in this particular orphanage are given as a made up name, but it's UM. It's it's meant to be sort of stand in for a drug called Librium that's a benzo diazepine much like xan x which would be prescribed today, or um another one called that valuum. I guess things like that that are meant to like anti anxiety drugs UM. But in the show it becomes a through line as this young woman you know, becomes older, and I would argue that, you know, like prescribing a child something as powerful as a drug that is often abused by adults like riddlin or what what is the other other one, riddlin or um adderall um and used as an as an upper like you know, to study for tests, or just like as a as a way of staying up late, or people use it to you know, keep drinking alcohol or party, much like you would cocaine or something. To prescribe that for a child, even though the effects are different, I can't imagine it wouldn't have a significant effect on the mind of that child, at least at the very least the receptors that lead to addiction, or the fact that you're like addicted to something, you don't call it addiction. I guess if you're using it as a medicine, it's not right. Like if I if I take something for my thyroid, I'm not addicted to that pill, but it it does a thing for me. But if I stopped taking it, then that thyroid could go you know, hog wild, and horrible things could happen. So it's just an interesting discussion. The idea of addiction versus you know, efficacy and like treating a symptom. If the other side of the coin there is opioids though, right, I mean they kind of fit. They fit both bills there. There, you're taking it for a reason, but you're also probably addicted to it as well. Um, that's a good point. The AP found that to your point, Matt, preschoolers with a d h D are often given drugs before therapy, and so we see a compounding issue here, right, we have a before we continue to the next story. Do you want to say, if you're an educator and you're listening to this show, in my mind, you are a national treasure. You're a hero. It is bizarre that, like trick Daddy said, we live in a country where judges are paid more than the teachers. That's nuts. That's kind of topsy turvy. Uh, teachers should say somebody. I've never really thought of it that way, Ben, But that's a very very good dichotomy there. That is absolutely out of whack. And I credit people when they say stuff. I'm a big fan of credit where it's due. So, like the the idea here, I first heard it from Trick Daddy. Yes, that's true. I didn't make it up. Somebody else may have written written it before, but that's how I encountered it. And I think we have a lot of questions to answer for you here, anonymous one. Thank you so much for reaching out to us with your personal experience. Uh too, thank you to the educators who are listening to this. While I am sure if you are in the US, you are doing uh, far far more work than you're being paid to do. You're you're probably going home uh and still working. Right. You may be buying materials out of pocket, and you're doing it because you believe it's the right thing to do. So we want to hear your thoughts on the system. You want to hear your thoughts on standardized test, and we want to hear your thoughts on learning styles, learning about learning. Uh. Tell us give us your war stories too, but keep him anonymous. We don't want to talk trash about kids we never met, even if the story is hilarious. Uh. So let us know. In the meantime, we're gonna pause for word from our sponsor, and we'll be back with more listener mail. And we're back. Uh. This will be like we'll call the section of listener mail today story Time with Dave, because this email comes from Dave and it's a couple of stories surrounding the intelligence of Ben's favorite animals corvids or crows favorite thank you excuse me? You probably okay, all right, let's let's do the the test real quick. Man, if you had to pick between a corvid that did your that was undyingly loyal to you and would do your bidding and like go get stuff for you and bring you like presence and you could command it to do things, or your your your precious prized cat, Dr Bankman, what would you? What would you? What would you choose? WHOA I do appreciate the way that that question is weirdly, let me walk that back. Another cat that you don't already love and and and you wouldn't have to like, you know, abandon or exile your existing cat. Uh well, I would say, let's see, um uh, you know, I don't know if I I don't know if I want to be in some kind of boss employee relationship with it with a course okay, you know, like commanded. I don't know, and I don't really practice favorite What what if it was more of an adoption thing like this cort needs you know, yeah, you're helping out. Well, uh, that would be that would be super cool. But with Corvet's it's really like, you know how you get a price break when you have more stuff, you order more of the same thing. Yeah, murderer and unkindness, But I I appreciate, Like, what would you guys do if you saw if you saw a bird like that and needed help, would you help it? I feel like that's a little bladed rudder. The turtle is on its back, it's trying to get up and you can't. I would not help. I would It would take an awful lot for me to muster the a courage, be wherewithal to even like touch the filthy thing. Sorry, oh my god, it's hard for me. Guys. Birds really freaking out. They just really free. I say it like it's a joke. But and I don't like I don't see birds and like run the other way or anything. Um but I was once chased by a very aggressive chicken and it did it wasn't a good experience. Oh no, no, no, no, no, yeah, hey sorry I was I was cleaning something up. Yeah, forget chickens, they're terrible, Okay, as long as we're on the same same page about chickens. But no, it's true. But based on everything we've discussed on this show and outside this show, I am fascinated by crows. Big fan of the movie The Crow Unrelated, but I think that movie doesn't doesn't get enough credit where credit to do. The second one not as good, but the first one pretty cool. Movie holds up. But Dave wrote in to give us a few real world, firsthand examples of crow intelligence. I'm gonna read you a couple of these because there's only two, so that's those are the ones I'm gonna read you first one. It goes dust Lee. When I was in late elementary or early junior high school, my family went on a weekend outing to a lake in southwestern Ohio. At some point, I went alone on a walk to blore the area. While walking along the side of a road near the lake, I encountered a crow standing in front of me. I was used to crows always keeping a great distance from humans, so surprised when this one had looked right at me and stood its ground as I got closer and closer. Finally I was only two or three feet from it as we both checked one another out. Then a cat came walking from the lake in our direction. The crow saw it and said clearly and excitedly, uh, here comes the kiddie. He She then flew onto the roof of a nearby house. This was the first time I learned that crows could be taught to talk, and I surmised that it had already been likely raised as a pet. It was a very cool experience. Upon returning to where my family was, I told my parents what had happened. I don't remember them responding with the interest I expected, as I don't think they believe me. I have since imagined my father saying to my mother, something just ain't right with that boy, like in the hank Kill type boys. I've been interested in crows ever since. Years later, as an adult, I recited the event to my siblings, and one of my sisters claimed it was a story created by my childhood imagination. It was not pretty cool story story one. Oh here comes the kiddie. Yeah, story one from from Dave hanging out in Dayton, Ohio. I'm assuming, uh, it's probably not dating, but that'll be hilarious if it was. Oh, here comes the kid, Here comes the kidding. So do you guys, do you guys think it was a trained like it really was a trained pack. I don't know. I just don't know, Like I don't know anybody with indoor outdoor birds, because you would you think if you let a bird out, it would just be gone. But but then to your point, Ben, with corvids, they come back. So maybe this is one of the rare situations like with a falcon or something where you can let it out, but the falcon at least have to have that like big leather glove that it's attracted to with a piece of steak on it or something. Yeah. The thing with the corvids here's they can talk, but your odds of finding one that speaks. Of course, it's mimicking human speech, and it has to have some sort of human speech to hear right to mimic, otherwise it would just be mimicking other animals or perhaps increasingly and sadly, traffic and stuff like that. This probably means Dave, the corvet you're talking about in story number one, had interacted with humans before, and it'd probably been rewarded for learning to mimic our version of cause and so on, because that's what the crow thinks. Right, there's this old folklore myth that crows had to have us their tongue split and then they could use human speech. Luckily, luckily that's not true. Uh to me, one of the big questions is the same question that comes up with Alex the gray parrot. Yes, this bird is mimicking human speech, but doesn't understand what it's say. It appears to understand at least, Oh here comes Kitty is associated with that cat? Like, I'd be interested to know of the cat and the crow. No one another, you know what I mean? Are they like co workers in some kind of Disney film. No, he's he's clearly taunting the cat like he's he's sarcastically saying, oh here comes, Well that's pretty good. Um, yeah, it's interesting. Like, but Ben, I'm sorry you caught my interest when you mentioned this idea, that the misconception that crows have to have their tongue split to uh in order to speak. Um, And I look it up and it is obviously you know, you're absolutely right, it is a myth. But there's a term for it. It's the idea. It's called freeing the tongue of the crows. And there's a lot of posts and and things out there that say that you can't have a talking crow unless you go through this process of splitting their tongue, which I can't imagine anyone would ever do that, Like what do you like, I can't imagine that a veterinarian would even look at that as ethical. It's from the days before a ntredary science, Like it's an old it's the old thing. I imagine it could have come about when someone said, like holy holy crow, talking talking braven or talking crow or something. However, did you teach it to say? Down with the atoms administration or whatever? And then the person says, well, it's an old secret I learned. You just gotta free their tongue, Like what do you mean free their tongues? Like, well, you know, cut it in half, just sort of starts talking like that's that's I could see it happening. I don't know where it came from, though, I don't know the etymology of the folk or the origin of the folklore, but yeah, I wish I had seen that. I've never seen a crew. I've watched a live videos, but I've never talked to a crow. In the one Wait wait, wait, No, I've never had a crow reply to me, or nor Ray even nor Magpie in human speech. Well, Ben, it's never too late, um for something great to happen or for you either. No, you know, think about it like, uh oh, I don't want to scare you to come up to me and just say, hey, man, everything's chill. We're not out to get you, you know, mellow out. Yeah, yeah, but he would say it in crow speak, so it'd be like like I'm out. But all along it was just trying to come from me. You know. It's unfortunate that we're just gonna always exist at odds, me and me and the corvids. Then when you get your murder though, maybe I don't know, maybe I'll come check it out. I'll come. I'll come for like a safe distance. Yeah, or super producer code named dot Holiday just just returned from from some adventures that will not spoil and uh, code named dot Holiday. You were telling us that you also had to run in with some corve It's I remember I I pay attention to this stuff obsessively. Maybe, but this again, I don't know. I'll be honest with you guys. No, man, doc, I would freak out. I love the idea, but I would still freak out if I were at my house, maybe like recording where you guys are recording now, And I heard of pecking on the window and I turned round and it was like a raven, and the raven just said what I would I would lose my I would run. I might run. I might run. It would be way worse for you too, because you're like, what three or four doors into the building. I've got a window right here, so I would make sense for me. But he was on your window. Yeah, I wouldn't have anywhere to run. Well, let's jump into another quick Corvid story um right now, also from Dave. In today's story Time with Dave, segment um story number two. A few years ago, I was in the kitchen of my upstate New York home watching two crows walking around the backyard. They found something they were clearly interested in, which I assumed was some sort of food. Apparently not hungry at the time, they buried it together. Afterwards, one crow walked away, continuing to explore the yard. While it's back was turned. The other crow quickly removed the stash quotes here from where they had jointly placed it and moved it to another location a few feet away, then caught up to its comrade as if nothing had happened. It was cool to see the clever deception transpire before my very eyes. I later saw a documentary which showed researchers recording similar behaviors of crows being studied. Feel free to mention my email on your show if you wish. Regards Dave Wow deceptive behavior. It applies some really cool things about intelligence. Not ethics, but it applies some cool things about intelligence. Right, So, uh, Dave, from your story, we see object permanence, right, We also see, uh, the ability of empathy, or assuming at least not empathy, excuse me, assuming the viewpoint of another creature and reasoning that that creature is also possessed of reasoning ability. Right. So there's a lot of there's a lot of pretty impressive cognitive stuff going on in this weird you know, this this very like party foul con. You know what I mean. I was, I've been looking in that too, you know. We we we see that, weirdly enough, the ability to deceive or attempt to deceive through your actions rather than your appearance is a mark of really high intelligence. And I mean, like the reason I say through action rather than through appearance is think of something like the gecko. So the ritofors on a geck, right, they can alter the color, right, alter the pigment, But the gecko is not gonna win a nobel price. You can't like teach a get out, go out and bring stuff to you or or you know, talk to you. Really On the other side, you have the octopus, right, and it has cramatophores and those help it change its shape, color and texture, but the crow doesn't have that. The crow is changing its behavior to deceive someone. We know that primates do that too, but not a ton of other animals honestly are able to improvise this kind of behavior. And then I mean it's a ding on crows too. Are they too smart to hang out with because clearly they're gonna steal from you if they think there's an opportunity. I mean, you just go ahead and walk walk ahead. No, that's no problem. I mean hashtag not all crows, but still I mean, I I don't know. And and people with pets can ensure you. You know, dogs are intelligent enough to try to deceive people, or they're at least reacting to that tone in the voice where you say where did it go? Fido? Where is it? And then Fido is like, I don't what, I got nothing. I don't know when your kids? When did kids start learning deception? Human children? So it's weird for me to say when when do human children learn to? I don't know if I've got one example and it was immediate, so I yeah, what about you knowl do you remember anything where with human kids where you're like, okay, this one is this kid's pulled out a cog. They figured out deception. It's like all the time, you know, like it's I don't know, like it's sort of maybe like the most obvious one. It's sort of like when you tell a kid not to do a thing and then they think that if they do it in a little bit different way, then it's not, you know, going against what you said. Um My, my daughter's baby sister does stuff like that all the time where I'll be like, don't throw that at at me, and then she'll just throw something else at me. Um, that's sort of a con it's too short con admittedly, but it's definitely trying to skirt the rules in some way, you know that the letter of the law. Yeah. One thing that one other thing that crows have in common or corvettes have in common with humans and human children is that they play. They deceive when they play, like you can find so you can have multitudes of videos freely available online where there's a crow who's just decided to mess with an animal. And a lot of times it's like they go and they like bite the tail of a cat or whatever and they walk away. They're not trying to uh distract the cat. Actually often they're not trying to scare it. They literally think it's funny to bite something on the butt and then watch a freak out, which I think is maybe a mark of intelligence. I didn't know. That's what the point where we get to in today's listener mail. Well, now I'm just going to search for videos of crows messing with people and that's going to be the rest of my night. All right, I guess we'll go to commercial. Sounds good to me, man, This is two bird stories in a row for me today. I didn't ocur to me until just now. We just for you know, we recorded our Strange News episode a minute ago, and that was a bird story about the bird of the year. Uh, and now we're talking about Corvid's and stuff, and I'm a little triggered, so I do need a little moment to comport myself. And then we're back with another listener mail. I'm gonna put on the raven costume. Real awesome exposure therapy is working, Ben, good job, all right, and we are back. And now we're going to jump to a voicemail that was left by Krista and uh, she just has some very interesting things to say, so we're going to jump to that right now. Hi. UM, my name is Krista. I actually live in Atlanta. UM. I was listening to your Recia episode about like orphan hitches, stuffs and foster kids, and I was wondering if you've ever heard of Georgia Tum and she was over the Tennessee's Children Home Society orphanage back in the nineteen thirties and how she used to just kidnap children and sell them to rich your people who had money, um to buy them. And yeah, it's just really messed up. My dad was foster child in the nineteen sixties, so it's just kind of plod phone, but thought it would be something interesting for y'all too look into and you can use my information. It's time. Wow. Yeah, this is not something that I thought I had ever heard of until I realized that Georgia Tan. It's g E O R G I A and then T A N N for anyone listening, you just couldn't quite hear it. Um. I realized Georgia Tan was an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that I most assuredly have seen. It's just been all long, long time. I think it was nineteen eighty nine when yeah, an episode came out December thirteenth nine, right back when it was coming out right after ALF. Yeah, I was a little bit too young, and uh yeah, it's a little too young for the Unsolved Mysteries at that time. But uh, you know, once they became available to watch, they have all been seen, including again, if you're out there looking for stuff to watch, if you haven't seen the two Netflix exclusive seasons of Unsolved Mysteries, we can't recommend more that you go and watch that whenever you get a chance. So let's let's jump to Georgia Tan. Have you had you, guys, ever heard of this person before I had heard, But that's I don't know how much of that is just having family in Tennessee or something, you know, I could totally see that. This feels like some thing that at the time would have been a big story. But I don't know, maybe maybe a little more local than we'd care to think. Even with the severity of what was occurring and what her full name is, Beulah George Georgia tan that she went by Georgia. Um, sorry, Beulah. She's named after her I believe her father, her grandfather or something. I remember reading about this. Anyway, Um, the severity of what she was doing was intense and horrifying. She was just as our as Krista from a t L said she was stealing. She and a network of people were stealing children like literally literally at times stealing children, at other times negotiating essentially the taking of a child and then sell them. Uh, turning around and selling these children two people who were desperately looking for a child. There's a to on of eugenics that was fueling a lot of what was going down at this place called the Tennessee Children's Home Society. According to multiple sources, there were over or around five thousand children that were stolen at some point throughout the years that that Georgia Tan was working in both the Mississippi Children's Home Society as well as the Tennessee Children's Home Society, And like that is that's an incredible number, five thousand children. And you just think of of all the mothers that lost children. Man, that is that is rough. Yeah, you know, the most horrific thing about this, about this case of trafficking, in my mind, is that it was not technically illegal. It's just considered highly unethical and quote frowned a pod. Uh. We know a little about Georgia Tan's personal life that I don't want to you know, I don't want to spoil it. We have to approach it in a nuanced way. But from what I understand, the laws of the time gave great agency and latitude to what we would call child protection welfare services today. There are documented cases, for instance, of parents stable parents by the way, dropping their kids off at nursery schools, you know, daycare, and then later they're coming to pick the kids up after work and they're told that welfare agents had taken the children. Imagine that makes you reconsider daycare. You know. Um, sometimes someone in the family would be ill or unemployed and their kids would be briefly placed in a group home or in an orphanage, and then you know, they would get over the illness, they would get a new job. They would find out later that the orphanage had either adopted them or simply had no record of where the child went. Yeah, they just vanished. I mean that and that is the worst I'm telling you, that is the worst nightmare for for any parents, for a child to just vanish, like no closure, no answer. One of one particularly insidious thing they did, and this is definitely illegal. Uh. They would take children born to unwed mothers, which was a big deal at the time, a huge social mark. They would take children who were born to unwed mothers. Uh. And then it would take a spirit these kids away at birth and then they would say, you know, well, the newborn's okay, but it needs medical care, so we're gonna put it somewhere or we can make sure that that your child is well. And then they would uh sell or traffic those infants and they would say, oh, yeah, sorry, the baby died. You shouldn't have to see it. Um. They destroyed records and records and in a lot of is the babies were so young when they were kidnapped, they would die because the people at the at the home where they were kept, we're attempting to keep all these children alive, to feed them all, to protect them all, and some of them did die, and um like the in in a lot of the reporting, there's been so much written about Georgia tan and this whole thing, because again we're talking about a woman who was born in and lived until nineteen fifty. This is from Insider. This is an article from Insider's describing a situation where uh, Georgia and a few other people would drive or maybe just Georgia. Sometimes can't confirm it with what's written here. I have no proof, but they're saying that she would drive through impoverished neighborhoods with a black luxury car that was you know, just um just cleaned. It's very shiny, it's very attractive looking, and would just uh like offer kids rides in it, and they would get in and never be seen again by any family member, by any relative, by any you know, anyone living in the area. They would just be gone and it reminded me a lot of this really messed up thing was occurring in Atlanta in the late nineteen seventies early nineteen eighties, where children were vanishing from impoverished neighborhoods. Um. I just I never thought about it in that context. Of course, in you know Lanna child murders, they were murdered. In this case they're being sold. Um. But there are some unsettling parallels. There's like a I don't know, historical fiction based on this real life story called Before We Were Yours UM that you know, has sold quite a lot of units, over two million copies. I cannot, uh, I cannot speak to the quality of the work. I just don't exist by Lisa Wingate. UM. But also apparently um Joan Crawford adopted twins from George jatan In UM. So, I don't know. You're right, Matt, It's it's very perplexing because it's how how did that work? I mean when we say adopted, I mean you know it was she ran a home like an orphanage for all intents and purposes, and I mean you know it. It obviously costs a lot of money to adopt children even today, because you have to go through the paperwork and all of the applications and all of that stuff. But with this had literally been like a cash for children. The situation like, wouldn't that have been a red flag to somebody like Joan Crawford. Well, they had Okay, So the law at the time in Tennessee allowed an agency to place kids with uh people who applied to be adoptive parents. But they wanted to ban the selling of children. So technically agencies could only charge for their service. Right, so, you're like paying us to help keep the lights on at the group home. Uh, you're paying us to help, you know, facilitate the uh, you know, this adoption process. And this doesn't mean that these couples seeking to adopt a child are necessarily bad. People want to be pretty clear about that. There they want to raise a kid, right, Um, But the society, the Tennessee Society at least charged round uh seven dollars for adoptions within this state of Tennessee. But it gets tricky because a lot of these people are very well to do and they're being targeted by tan. UH. TAN would also arrange for outside of Tennessee private adoptions and charge a premium. The majority of these folks, I think came from New York and California, and she would do like they would make a trip every three weeks with several babies, and each couple that they gave a baby to would pay seven hundred dollars directly to Georgia Tan, which means she's taking the money. She's hims to have been lying to some of these people because she said she would overestimate her expenses, like claim she had done background checks as she never did, claim the flights works more expensive than they were, or inflate the cost of paperwork by as much as five times. And then on top of that, the government of Tennessee itself is donating sixty one thousand dollars a year to that agency. So it feels like financial motivation was the key here. And maybe she rationalized this trafficking conspiracy with classism right by saying, hey, giving these kids two what what she called it? And Chad to quote where she said like people of the higher type. Yeah, well yeah, listen, listen to this. This is from an ad from National Home Finding National Home Finding Society. Okay um, this is speaking about adoption in the benefit of it says adoption would reduced divorces, banditry, murder, and control earths, fill all the churches, and do real missionary work at home and abroad, exchanging immigrants for Americans and stopping some of the road leading to war. Wow. It is interesting though, and sort of like a double edged sword to the story. Um. And maybe this is overstayed in the case, but I have seen it said in some of the research into this woman that she did kind of normalize the practice of of adoption or or make it more something that was attractive to more well to do individuals, um, which you know, you could argue is a good thing. And I don't know, like and in the legacy of of her did have that uh impact in some some way. It's something we have to explore more thoroughly. And I really really really want to cover this more thoroughly for sure, and in adoption and all the all these things. We've got several big episodes around some really rough topics coming up. But that's okay. I'm excited about this one because there's ton there's a ton to explore here. Thank you so much, Christoph for for calling in telling us about this. Really appreciate it and Thank you Dave for sharing your corvet stories. Thank you Anonymous for sharing your personal experience with learning how to learn. We've got so much stuff we have to follow up on now. We've we've made supromises in today's listener mail, and we are going to make good on those. But we need the show to continue, and that means we need your help. So if you have a story about Corvid intelligence, we'd love to hear it. If you have a story about anything we explored related to adoption, related to foster homes, related to the school system overall, as well as medicine ascribed to children, we want to hear from you. We try to make it easy to find us. We're on the internet, like all the time. 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