Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature the show where we look at
Speaker 1: the intersection of human and animal behaviors, finding the beasts
Speaker 1: inside of us and the humanity hidden inside animals. I'm
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology at Harvard
Speaker 1: and I pretend to be a bird on Twitter. Today
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about outlaws, animals and people who have
Speaker 1: turned to the life of crime. Will answer questions like
Speaker 1: dragons exist in West Rows, but can you also find
Speaker 1: them in Australia? What fishy business are aquatic connartists up to?
Speaker 1: And of course the age old question, oh you good boy?
Speaker 1: With me? Today is Alec Schmidt, comedian and host of
Speaker 1: the Cracked podcast. Alex and I are going to look
Speaker 1: at a couple of the most unlikely paramaniacs from both
Speaker 1: the natural and human world. So I live and I
Speaker 1: grew up in southern California, UM, where we don't have
Speaker 1: snow days, we have fire days. And instead of looking
Speaker 1: outside at this white winter wonderland, you see this orange
Speaker 1: sun in a red sky and ash raining down and
Speaker 1: it was really scary. Uh. And I think it was
Speaker 1: this idea that you can have this relatively small fire
Speaker 1: that starts to burn out of control, and no matter
Speaker 1: how much we try to contain it, it just has
Speaker 1: this will of its own that that can't really be stopped.
Speaker 1: And I think the reason I'm afraid of fire, those
Speaker 1: same reasons might be why a paramaniac is actually attracted
Speaker 1: to it, the idea of this uncontrollable, huge event that
Speaker 1: just spirals into this massive inferno. So Alex and I
Speaker 1: are going to look at a couple of the most
Speaker 1: unlikely paramaniacs from both the natural and human all and
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to find out what makes them want
Speaker 1: to watch the world burn. So, Alex, have you have
Speaker 1: you done crimes? You're gonna the jinx right now. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever done any crimes that I can
Speaker 1: think of. Yeah, like not like not a crime, crime
Speaker 1: for sure, Well, you know, crimes. We feel like crimes
Speaker 1: is sort of a human only phenomenon um, and it's
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm here to challenge that notion that
Speaker 1: only yeah catching up to us. There, they're the animals
Speaker 1: and the probably you know, bacteria also are catching up.
Speaker 1: I don't think bacteria isn't anyways, They're they're catching up
Speaker 1: to us competition, right they're barging into the organized crime
Speaker 1: of humans. Uh so I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: few crimes. Let's get into it. I want to start with,
Speaker 1: to me, one of the scariest kinds of things, which
Speaker 1: is um pyromania. Like I've always had an enormous respect
Speaker 1: for fire because it's very frightening. Yeah, Like there's a
Speaker 1: fire and you like tip your cap to it. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're like, good dave, Mr Fire, please don't burn me.
Speaker 1: I always call fire by its last name. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so pyromania is this fascination with fire. So, you know,
Speaker 1: most people kind of like you see a camp fire,
Speaker 1: it's like neat, but this goes far beyond that. It's
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it is exciting, even at a really young age.
Speaker 1: Like I was part of Y m C, a Indian
Speaker 1: guides as a kid, and so we would go camping
Speaker 1: and do campouts, and like the dads would all be
Speaker 1: trying to start the fire, but we'd be all like,
Speaker 1: let me start the fire. I want to be you know.
Speaker 1: And my family didn't do it, but a lot of
Speaker 1: families I knew would drive I grew up around Chicago,
Speaker 1: and they would drive over the border to Indiana just
Speaker 1: to get fireworks because they didn't sell them in Illinois,
Speaker 1: so they sold them at exit one of every Indiana
Speaker 1: Highway and you would buy them there and truck them
Speaker 1: all back and then just like lite them off in
Speaker 1: a driveway because they're illegal. Yeah, you weren't allowed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I've heard there's other states like that, Like I
Speaker 1: think New Hampshire it's legal and Misachusetts it isn't. There's
Speaker 1: a but there's a bunch of like symbiotic relationships where
Speaker 1: one state sells it to two states. You know, I
Speaker 1: lived in a very sort of in a tinder box
Speaker 1: because I lived in southern California and Sandy Yes, um
Speaker 1: so fireworks were super not not cool and also just
Speaker 1: not really socially accepted because it was just like, don't
Speaker 1: don't burn us all down, please. Oh yeah. I remember
Speaker 1: one time my mom got us sparklers, which is not
Speaker 1: an illegal firework, but like I thought it was, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I was just dizzy with excitement. I
Speaker 1: was like, we're committing arson crime before the jewel, Why
Speaker 1: we're breaking California law right, the strongest law, the most
Speaker 1: exciting moment of my life, and it's all been pretty plateaued.
Speaker 1: From there. But I mean it's interesting because pyromania is
Speaker 1: it's not like Arson where you're setting a fire too
Speaker 1: clean evidence of your misdeeds. It's like you the feeling
Speaker 1: of setting that fire and watching the fire and it's
Speaker 1: like it's a thrill. Um. Yeah, you're like that narration
Speaker 1: from fahrekneight. But all the time, if the whole book
Speaker 1: was just look at the fire, look at it, like
Speaker 1: there's no plot or nothing. Yeah, exactly. Can even be
Speaker 1: kind of like it can be a fetish, which is
Speaker 1: weird to me because it's like, you know, typically it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it can kill you. To me, it's like
Speaker 1: having a fetish of like the ocean and drowning. Wait wait,
Speaker 1: so you're kink shaming people who drown or burden to death?
Speaker 1: Is death sex positive? This is an extremely uh death
Speaker 1: sex positive show. So this is a crazy story. Um there,
Speaker 1: we're a bunch of Arson's in l a and uh
Speaker 1: this is in the I think in the eighties, and
Speaker 1: the fire investigators are kind of stumped and you know,
Speaker 1: they're chasing all these leads not really fine in anything,
Speaker 1: and they had their that old corkboard next to my
Speaker 1: broccoli crimes. They're like, we gotta get these fire crimes.
Speaker 1: They probably they should have just let the broccoli crimes
Speaker 1: go and then you know, combine the task forces. But
Speaker 1: is there a connection? But yeah, I mean there were
Speaker 1: serious fires. About four people died, um, because you know
Speaker 1: that's the arsonist was setting fire to stores and while
Speaker 1: people were in sights. It was very very scary stores
Speaker 1: in Metro l A Like yeah yeah, um. And he
Speaker 1: would like put like set up incendiary devices and then
Speaker 1: like those would like slowly kind of go off so
Speaker 1: he could leave and escape. And I guess watched from
Speaker 1: afar um and this one investigator was like, this is weird.
Speaker 1: There's like a string of arson's between the arson investigation conventions,
Speaker 1: like the conventions for fire investigators, like because like they
Speaker 1: have conventions, Yeah they do. Oh man, that sounds really fun.
Speaker 1: It's just a room full of people like carefully watching
Speaker 1: the room they're in, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: someone's like cosplaying is a fire and they're like, dude,
Speaker 1: not appropriate. Um. Yeah, And so he's saying like maybe
Speaker 1: the arsonist is a fire investigator, and like nobody believed him.
Speaker 1: But then he was comparing the lists of attendees to
Speaker 1: the like all the ones like where there were sort
Speaker 1: of like he could draw a line like here's a
Speaker 1: Arson Investigator convention, and then a line of these Arsons
Speaker 1: and then another one. And so he he compared the
Speaker 1: lists of attendees to the ones that were the sort
Speaker 1: of the locust points, and he found about like, I
Speaker 1: think they're only handful of people. So it made the
Speaker 1: investigational a lot easier. And they finally caught the sky
Speaker 1: John leonard Or, who was an Arson investigator and he
Speaker 1: was actually briefly being consulted on this very case like
Speaker 1: his own arsening crimes, and uh, it was devastating because
Speaker 1: everyone was like, we had no idea that I mean,
Speaker 1: he seemed like seemed really passionate about stopping fires, not causing. Well,
Speaker 1: he's like fire Dexter, you know the TV Exter where
Speaker 1: he's like solving serial killer. He's fired Exter. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: They should call it fired Exter and make a show
Speaker 1: right copyrighted here, we get to make it. D M. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need fire, Michael C. Hall, we need fire. Whoever
Speaker 1: wrote the show. I know so little about this that
Speaker 1: I cannot contribute to this. Alex, You're going to have
Speaker 1: to carry the bit as you can tell, I do
Speaker 1: one actor's name, so pretty good. Okay, here's the best part.
Speaker 1: I mean, none of this is good. Disclaimer, fire Arson
Speaker 1: is bad pyromania doing it and destroying property and endangering people.
Speaker 1: It's so much shaming on this, but you know it's
Speaker 1: just a little shaming. I just want to commit a
Speaker 1: crime and die a bit um. But okay. He was
Speaker 1: also a novelist, an amateur novelist, perfect, and so he
Speaker 1: could write fired Exter. He wrote fired Exter. No he did, Alex,
Speaker 1: you were joking, but he didn't. He wrote fired Dexter.
Speaker 1: He wrote about an arsonist called Aaron Styles, and uh
Speaker 1: and it was like he described all of his motivations
Speaker 1: and how he got like how he like got a
Speaker 1: boner from starting fires and like and just all this
Speaker 1: insight into this character's psychology, which you know, upon reviewing
Speaker 1: you're like, maybe that's him. And then investigators worked out
Speaker 1: that Aaron Styles, the name of the book's protagonists is
Speaker 1: an anagram for I set l a Arson. This is
Speaker 1: like it's a book where when you would get to
Speaker 1: that point, you'd be like, come on, crime writer, what's
Speaker 1: a crime writer? Who does crime writings and Patricia cornwell, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, like like come on, like two on the nose.
Speaker 1: But it's crazy. It's like, get these guys on the
Speaker 1: Zodiac killer? Why why aren't they on the Zodiac? Right?
Speaker 1: They worked out this like intensely constructed puzzle from where
Speaker 1: the calls coming from inside the police station or like
Speaker 1: okay here like between the fire conventions. It's like a movie,
Speaker 1: and I am shocked and appalled that this movie has
Speaker 1: not been made. Yeah, exact well even not to not
Speaker 1: to celebrate this insane person, but like setting fires in stores?
Speaker 1: Is he doing that because because four people died? I
Speaker 1: assume he's set way more fires than that, Like is
Speaker 1: he burning stores because he thinks no one will be
Speaker 1: in there at night or something and so he can
Speaker 1: like get his fire without a death or something. No,
Speaker 1: I think it was He's probably just a maniac. I
Speaker 1: think I think he's he's set the fires like wild
Speaker 1: people were still in it. It doesn't seem like it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like he necessarily had the motive of killing people.
Speaker 1: But I think he just you know, he was like
Speaker 1: a psychopath and he didn't care whether you know, he
Speaker 1: killed people um, and he just maybe he did it
Speaker 1: during the day because it was more exciting, Like the
Speaker 1: idea of getting caught and doing it in public was
Speaker 1: more Oh these were daytime fires. Yeah, yeah, it could
Speaker 1: be like uh, it was just like people were around.
Speaker 1: He was just like, you know, witness my terrible fires.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's always confused, Like they talk about it
Speaker 1: being really powerful, and it's like it's always kind of
Speaker 1: confused me because like it's really easy to start a
Speaker 1: fire even when you don't want to. Like yeah, well,
Speaker 1: like all these all these people with these compulsions, like
Speaker 1: it makes me glad. I don't like anything, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like there's stuff that's cool, but I'm
Speaker 1: not like that into anything, and it is probably really
Speaker 1: good for my life that I'm not, because like if
Speaker 1: you're that into anything at all, you become an errand
Speaker 1: styles or something, you know. Jeez. I'm actually kind of
Speaker 1: surprised we haven't had like a pyromania horror movie, you know,
Speaker 1: half wey like I don't know, yeah, I'm not a
Speaker 1: horror expert, so I wouldn't know for sure. I mean
Speaker 1: there might be one, but I can't think of one
Speaker 1: that's really like mainstream where the kind of Texas chainsaw
Speaker 1: massacre style, but he has like a flamethrower. Oh that
Speaker 1: would be awesome. Actually, it's like it's a lot scarier
Speaker 1: to me because it's like it's not just him like
Speaker 1: being there, like he's actively modifying the environment to be
Speaker 1: hostile to you. Yeah, I'm assuming it's a heat but
Speaker 1: that's that's sexist. He or she the or anyone this
Speaker 1: fire fire uh fire villain, yeah, a fire persons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they like I guess an Avatar the Last
Speaker 1: Airbender they somewhat did that, but that wasn't really a whore.
Speaker 1: It was sort of oh yeah, yeah, there's that like
Speaker 1: fantasy realm trope of like the classical four elements and
Speaker 1: fire is a kind of magic kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: But it's not really the same thing because it's sort
Speaker 1: of you don't get a sense of foreboding. It's just
Speaker 1: like action. Like I think that I'm curious why we
Speaker 1: haven't Why we I don't. I don't know where I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I've never directed because I'm lazy. I haven't gotten around
Speaker 1: um Alex's horror movie like Snoop. When Snoopy comes, there's
Speaker 1: my wrist, but for doing it. Yeah, you should follow
Speaker 1: Alex's Twitter at Alex at Alex Yeah, where he posts
Speaker 1: snoopies sometimes. Yeah, I don't drum, but I feel like
Speaker 1: a picture of Snoopy playing the saxophone is just generally
Speaker 1: more exciting than most of the tweet, and I encourage
Speaker 1: people to just start posting that. Yeah, I won't you
Speaker 1: won't find an argument here, but yeah, I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just imagine being sort of like
Speaker 1: being chased down a dark halloway and then you run
Speaker 1: to the other end of the hallway, but then that's
Speaker 1: on fire, so you have to go back, and then
Speaker 1: the killer is there. It's like it's such a scary
Speaker 1: because it's like it's they're controlling everything around you and
Speaker 1: you're just sort of hoplessly trying to escape. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: almost feels like it'd be a Batman villain or something,
Speaker 1: because they have that for everything else, like there's a
Speaker 1: guy calendar and everything. You know, they have the Ice guy,
Speaker 1: which is much less scary than fire, Like who's afraid
Speaker 1: of ice? Yeah? Yeah, they basically need a fire version
Speaker 1: of Mr Freeze. That would be great fire to meet
Speaker 1: you just the exact same fun structure, but you put
Speaker 1: in the word fire comedy genius. You all need to
Speaker 1: fire out. It makes sense. I'm going to flame away.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't even think that was a joke
Speaker 1: by the Freeze guy. Schwartzenegger could sell it right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well I've got I've got bad news for small animals
Speaker 1: in Australia. A platypus just dropped its iPhone. What it's
Speaker 1: like one of those news stingers, like bad news for
Speaker 1: animals in Australia, and they're like, oh crap, but after
Speaker 1: the commercials odd damn it. Um. So there are these
Speaker 1: birds of prey that are not just satisfied with screaming
Speaker 1: fiery anger down at the little animals. They're also like, no,
Speaker 1: we'll set actual fires and flush the little mammals out
Speaker 1: and the need them. Yeah, it's this. It's a new
Speaker 1: definitely a new discovery. So there's not been anything that like,
Speaker 1: there's not like solid research behind it, but they're basing
Speaker 1: it on anecdotal evidence of researchers and also, um, the
Speaker 1: indigenous population has long known about this or long documented
Speaker 1: and they call them fire hawks and they have this
Speaker 1: really cool uh, they have this cool ceremony where people
Speaker 1: will act out as birds carrying smoldering branch is and
Speaker 1: you know there, I think it's that's really convincing that
Speaker 1: this is definitely been happening for a long time. And
Speaker 1: so like the birds will it's not that they start
Speaker 1: a fire from nothing. There's like a fire that exists
Speaker 1: because they're not they're not agile enough to like take
Speaker 1: a flint just like they've got like like they're trying
Speaker 1: to do the thing where they get the stick and
Speaker 1: the thing and that you're ribbing the stick really fast,
Speaker 1: so the friction causes the fire like with their little wings, like,
Speaker 1: but they pick up like a smoldering stick from the
Speaker 1: existing fire and then carry it over to a prey
Speaker 1: dense area where they where the hunting is good and
Speaker 1: then like set a fire and then like them and
Speaker 1: all their buddies just kind of like as as like
Speaker 1: the little little lizards and little roads, like they get
Speaker 1: out of the fire like few at least that's over.
Speaker 1: Oh No, what's really crazy is like these birds, these
Speaker 1: like pyromaniac birds that are extremely scary for the little rodents, like,
Speaker 1: but they may have actually helped shape the savannah because
Speaker 1: if they're if they're spreading fire, they're they're changing the
Speaker 1: environment of the savannah. They're like, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: a fire expert, but I would assume it has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with you know, you're kind of creating
Speaker 1: new growth and getting rid of old growth, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's the thing in some ecosystems, I think,
Speaker 1: Like I like, growing up in Illinois, we had the
Speaker 1: mostly former prairie. You know, it used to be the
Speaker 1: entire bit west. Now it's just very specific spots. But uh,
Speaker 1: something that we were taught frequently, especially because sometimes we see,
Speaker 1: like I live near one, and there'd be a column
Speaker 1: of smoke coming up from it and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: that seems wrong. But we would be told frequently like
Speaker 1: prairies need to burn with some regularity. You must burn
Speaker 1: to please the prairie gods, which is a prairie dog
Speaker 1: spelled backwards, thank you for celebrating my faith. No, And
Speaker 1: like so a guy with the name that's an anagram
Speaker 1: for I love burning prairies would tell us that you
Speaker 1: need to burn the prairie because, like the plant, there
Speaker 1: will be too many old dead plants and they just
Speaker 1: need to be cleared out and then as soon as
Speaker 1: it burns like that charred stuff becomes very good fertilizer
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of benefits to uh just consistently
Speaker 1: burning down some py and so they would do that,
Speaker 1: and maybe the Australian environment is kind of like that.
Speaker 1: I guess they have a few kinds of Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it. You know, fire has definitely has an impact
Speaker 1: on the Yea in the epic or whatever. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's really I mean, like definitely keep your eyes open
Speaker 1: everybody for research about about these birds because like you know,
Speaker 1: not it's it's all on right on the cusp of
Speaker 1: like finding out what's going on, and it's really exciting,
Speaker 1: uh because I think that'd be crazy if like birds
Speaker 1: setting fires to terrorize rodents like shaped the Australian outback
Speaker 1: just like it's it's like, you know, we think of
Speaker 1: big environmental changes being something like big like a glacier,
Speaker 1: not like this like little falcon with like fire right
Speaker 1: like a very slow period of time, but not like
Speaker 1: just a jerk bird burn it. Well, it's amazing too
Speaker 1: that you said that science is just starting to maybe
Speaker 1: prove this and there's a local tradition where people re
Speaker 1: enact it. Yeah, fully, like we all know this is
Speaker 1: happening and we do it right. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: bet that there's it's probably a new sadly a new
Speaker 1: trend for researchers to actually pay attention to non Western cultures.
Speaker 1: Oh these are sorry, these are like Aboriginal people. Yes,
Speaker 1: indigenous people know what I should call um? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that's that's okay, but like, yeah, so they they've
Speaker 1: had this long doc umented um. So it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. We sometimes you know, don't pay
Speaker 1: as much attention to, uh, non Western histories. But I
Speaker 1: think it's really great that the researchers are working with, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the the native culture and yeah, and against
Speaker 1: the birds. We must unite to defeat the birds. It's
Speaker 1: like how we end all hate is just fighting birds.
Speaker 1: Though pyromanian today's society is destructive behavior. At some point
Speaker 1: early humans had to have an arsonist streak to be
Speaker 1: able to learn to utilize fire. How did we go
Speaker 1: from being fearful of flamed to actively trying to attain it?
Speaker 1: One clue maybe in the behavior of chimpanzees. Primatologist Jill
Speaker 1: Purts witness the strangely calm demeanor of chimps in the
Speaker 1: midst of wildfire. People in the region do controlled burns
Speaker 1: to clear the land and aid in hunting. Though most
Speaker 1: of the animals flee and terror the chimp seemed relatively unflappable.
Speaker 1: Parts observed that quote, they were so calm about it.
Speaker 1: There were a lot better than I was, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: I was surprised at how expert they were handling the fire.
Speaker 1: She also saw male chimps doing a quote fire dance.
Speaker 1: It's a dominance display that was modified to be slower
Speaker 1: and directed towards the fire. This may be an indication
Speaker 1: of how human ancestors began to master their fear of
Speaker 1: fire and a foreshadowing of burning man. Let's take a
Speaker 1: moment to cool off with a few messages. Back soon
Speaker 1: with more lawbreak environments. So cheaters represent a huge conundrum
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and also in human philosophy. Adam Smith,
Speaker 1: the Invisible hand Dude, is a famous economist and author
Speaker 1: of the Wealth of Nations. He's often credited as the
Speaker 1: first opponent of the idea of the free market the
Speaker 1: unrestrained ability to compete. So here's the problem. If nature
Speaker 1: or human society operates in the free market, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: become inundated with stammers and connartists. How can a group
Speaker 1: of social animals remain stable when the rewards of cheating
Speaker 1: are so damn good? Any cooperative society should, in theory,
Speaker 1: crumble because natural selection will always reward swindlers. Steve Frank
Speaker 1: is a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of
Speaker 1: California at Irvine. He studies the problem of cheaters in
Speaker 1: evolutionary genetics, and one of these talks took an unexpected
Speaker 1: turn towards moral philosophy. He pointed out that there's a
Speaker 1: lesser known second part to Adam Smith's work, a book
Speaker 1: called Moral Sentiments. In this work, Smith re examines the
Speaker 1: idea of the free market, pointing out that if it's
Speaker 1: in a collective's interest, they will work together to suppress
Speaker 1: the activity of these is taking the advantage of the group,
Speaker 1: So our free markets never truly free. Alex Schmidt and
Speaker 1: I will discuss whether fish might have the answer. Later,
Speaker 1: we'll find out what your genome has to do with
Speaker 1: moral philosophy. Alex, Yeah, are you ever gullible for things? Yes?
Speaker 1: Just generally, Um, yeah, I don't. I don't have something
Speaker 1: like jump in a mind immediately for it. But I
Speaker 1: feel like I spend a solid chunk of many days
Speaker 1: or weeks just being like do you mean that for real?
Speaker 1: Because I'm like, I'm like earnestly interested. People will joke
Speaker 1: about like, yeah, I guess i'd like go to the
Speaker 1: moon or something, and I'm like, so you're interested in
Speaker 1: being an astronaut for really, but that'll pretty frequently happen
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: put you on the spot because I'm very glible to
Speaker 1: like I um, sometimes I don't pick up on sarcasm
Speaker 1: or like someone will say something and cry do ble
Speaker 1: and like really because like I like to think of
Speaker 1: it as just being very open minded. Uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: like I would be very excited to be surprised by
Speaker 1: life just all of the time. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of times people will think they've nailed being completely over
Speaker 1: the top with something crazy and then no they haven't.
Speaker 1: I want to find out if that's true. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: do it. I've always like whenever people say I have
Speaker 1: a bridge to sell you, you know, like you fall
Speaker 1: for fall for someone someone's prank and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have a bridge to sell you. I don't get
Speaker 1: it because it's like, okay, I don't why would I
Speaker 1: want a bridge? Why would you be selling me a bridge? Um?
Speaker 1: But I just found out that Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I found out what it means, which is a you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that you would trick someone into thinking that
Speaker 1: person would own the bridge and then we would sell
Speaker 1: it to you. Um. But it was based on an
Speaker 1: actual con artist. His name was George Parker. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was criminally active around the turn of the century, and
Speaker 1: he would he would literally sell people the Brooklyn Bridge.
Speaker 1: And I mean this is a new fact to me.
Speaker 1: I apologize if like everybody knows this, but me, I'm
Speaker 1: just like, do you guys know this? Because I think
Speaker 1: I know a bridge sales story, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's the same thing where like somebody sold the
Speaker 1: London Bridge to some town in the US something like that. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know that one. But they also thought they
Speaker 1: were buying what's actually called Tower Bridge in London. That's
Speaker 1: the famous one that's has very tall towers on it.
Speaker 1: And then every other bridge across the Thames is like
Speaker 1: just kind of a regular bridge, and so they moved
Speaker 1: this enormous regular bridge to this town. Yeah, that's crazy
Speaker 1: that there's like more than one bridge scams, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know who's buying them, no, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like like when you're trying to be a connorist, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: what what would be a good conical bridge? Right? The
Speaker 1: class maneuver of selling infrastructure sexy infrastructure. Infrastructure is hot
Speaker 1: right now, that is a con I'm different from just
Speaker 1: getting a job. Yes, yes, um so George Parker. He
Speaker 1: would also sell things like the Statue of Liberty, um,
Speaker 1: just landmarks and pieces of property he definitely did not own,
Speaker 1: but he had like he forged documents as it was
Speaker 1: like like see here on this paper it says I
Speaker 1: own the bridge, I will sell it to you and
Speaker 1: like and some people would like actually go up and
Speaker 1: set up tolls on the bridge, thinking they were now
Speaker 1: the owners, and police would be like ha, buddy, no
Speaker 1: or what like I guess it was a turn of
Speaker 1: the centuries. Like listen, guy got squeezed. They just kick
Speaker 1: him out. Yeah, well so I have I want you
Speaker 1: to go on an imagination journey with me. Alex oh
Speaker 1: about is about a very strange scam. Uh So, imagine
Speaker 1: you're going in. Well, first of all, you gotta imagine
Speaker 1: you have really long hair, uh like like Jesus levels
Speaker 1: of of of great hair. Yeah, okay, you're there, good um,
Speaker 1: and you just kind of want general trim, you maybe
Speaker 1: want some layering and styling Alla Jesus um. And you know,
Speaker 1: you're just kind of relaxing, and then you tear around
Speaker 1: and you know it's like all your hair is on
Speaker 1: the floor and big piles. You're like, what the heck
Speaker 1: did you just do? I don't look like Jesus anymore?
Speaker 1: I look like you know, John Stoffel. Wait, wait, so
Speaker 1: they gave me an incredible mustache. The hair has fallen
Speaker 1: onto your upper lip um and the hair stylist apologist saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I misunderstood. I thought you wanted a
Speaker 1: big and you're you're just you're fuming because you know
Speaker 1: you had been oiling and conditioning this hair for months
Speaker 1: and it was great, and and you leave in a
Speaker 1: huff and then you return. Um, hey, look in the window,
Speaker 1: and there's a wig that looks suspiciously similar to your hair.
Speaker 1: You're wonderful Christ like locks. Yeah, and then I go
Speaker 1: on TV and starstle them out of business, go on
Speaker 1: yelp and go like this, John Stoffel is unhappy. Um,
Speaker 1: there is this is an actual thing. But in fish Land.
Speaker 1: So fish land does that clarify to it? Where we
Speaker 1: are society, un sometown, sometown, sometown, ocean, oceansburg. Um. So
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're saying, like, well, fish don't have hair, haitie,
Speaker 1: you're dumb. Good point. Um Yeah, yeah, calm the heck down,
Speaker 1: Alex god. Um. So, uh they're a little these really
Speaker 1: pretty little fish called cleaner rass, and uh, they do
Speaker 1: this incredibly important function for coral reef communities because like
Speaker 1: the coral reefs, which are all dying, um have are
Speaker 1: so cared about not just because they're pretty, but because
Speaker 1: they are the homes of a huge variety of fish
Speaker 1: and they all kind of congregate there like a little,
Speaker 1: just like in Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo is like basically
Speaker 1: a documentary. They're the big cities of swim down right right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the it's the Chicago. But I mean that wasn't
Speaker 1: the best best word play I could have done. But
Speaker 1: Alex is from Chicago. That was the one closest to
Speaker 1: my heart. I really appreciate it. You should have said
Speaker 1: ship cargo. But also, fish don't do chips. They don't
Speaker 1: need them, right, right, so never mind. That was fine.
Speaker 1: So fish have this um mucus membrane covering them and
Speaker 1: it protects them. It's it's like if you've ever had
Speaker 1: a fish tank, sometimes you put in stuff like stress coat,
Speaker 1: and that's that's sort of like it's to keep this
Speaker 1: membrane healthy and it protects their skin. But they also
Speaker 1: get little parasites which are really bothersome for fish because
Speaker 1: they can't scratch um. So the little cleaner else go
Speaker 1: up to the fish and he's like, hey, buddy, you
Speaker 1: want your body detail, and uh. They will go all
Speaker 1: over the fish and pick off these little parasites. And
Speaker 1: fish will lineup for this like they're at a little
Speaker 1: car wash and just be like just patiently waiting, like
Speaker 1: oh boy, it's my turn x right, like a like
Speaker 1: an enormous barbershop situation, right right, but there's only one
Speaker 1: barber um, So yeah, it's and you'd think, like that's perfect.
Speaker 1: Fish are wonderful. We could learn a lot from fish.
Speaker 1: But here's the here's the problem is that slimy muca
Speaker 1: see stress coat that I was talking about. It's apparently
Speaker 1: real good. It's a real good tasting, it's super delicious.
Speaker 1: I'm going to need a second opinion. Um well in
Speaker 1: in uh in fish land, it is like it is
Speaker 1: the prime for a little clean arounds. It is like
Speaker 1: their crack. So they really want to nibble on this
Speaker 1: this sweet sweet snot coat and uh they but the
Speaker 1: fish don't want that because it's like must slime give
Speaker 1: me back by slime. It's it's bad for them to
Speaker 1: get their slime chewed off. There's their key, their protective
Speaker 1: bugs gotta have it. And so this is where it
Speaker 1: gets like really interesting because this is like economics in fish. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make economics sound really fun because it's fish. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the cleaner grass, which are the little little conmon
Speaker 1: sometimes are you know, they want to get at that mucus.
Speaker 1: But they will um, they'll try a little nibble every
Speaker 1: once in a while, and the fish are like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do it. And then the fish, if they're noticing
Speaker 1: that the cleaner rass is nibbling too much on their
Speaker 1: their cool slime, like they boycott them. They stopped going
Speaker 1: to their business and and it's it's like they get
Speaker 1: on fish yelp and they're like, don't go here, he'll
Speaker 1: eat your slime. I didn't come in to get my
Speaker 1: slime eaten, just just the bugs on my skin. Um
Speaker 1: and uh. And they'll actually the cleaner mouths if like
Speaker 1: the fish shows anger, which I'm not I guess fish
Speaker 1: show anger by kind of chasing them around and like
Speaker 1: making a real like oh you face. They don't yell
Speaker 1: like Albert Press why I oughta um. But but then
Speaker 1: they'll kind of like they'll try to play Kate the
Speaker 1: angry cuffed Stomer by kind of like giving them a
Speaker 1: little massage like I'm sorry, buddy, a massage. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like I am so glad we are a
Speaker 1: species that can like deal with our own self cleaning
Speaker 1: and like has hands and arms and stuff. Like so
Speaker 1: much of the animal kingdom just goes around waiting for
Speaker 1: another animal to clean it up, like those rhinos with
Speaker 1: little birds on them, just like somebody hell, like what
Speaker 1: a what a nightmare? We're the best, really great, but
Speaker 1: there is that like the blind the blind zone, like right,
Speaker 1: sort of like that one spot on your act. That's
Speaker 1: the blind zone. But then we can also we're like
Speaker 1: we can you can do the bear thing where you
Speaker 1: like you know, get like a nice jagged wall and
Speaker 1: get that blind spot. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so we're the
Speaker 1: perfect animal. Yeah. And I also I didn't know if
Speaker 1: fish could give the equivalent of a massage because they're
Speaker 1: handless and they're freaky. Well I it's kind of like, um,
Speaker 1: they sort of like go up to them and kind
Speaker 1: of rub their rub their like dorsal fins against them
Speaker 1: or something. It's kind of it's sort of weird. It's
Speaker 1: like the back scratch with the wall. Yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 1: little bit like like it's not they're not quite like
Speaker 1: getting in there and like you know actually sort of
Speaker 1: like doing the doing a whole like like doing a
Speaker 1: little chopping motions on the back. Um. But uh and
Speaker 1: then here and then like they're like market forces. So
Speaker 1: when there are plenty of clients, um, the clean arounds
Speaker 1: will take more chances and do more do more crimes,
Speaker 1: which you know, it is kind of like similar like
Speaker 1: when there are companies that have no competition and lots
Speaker 1: of customers, they'll try to get away this stuff like
Speaker 1: offshore bank accounts are like, you know, eating people's mucus.
Speaker 1: Now I have a new thing to compare the cable
Speaker 1: company to perfect time. Ward are always eating my slime.
Speaker 1: They also cheat less when they noticed that they're being
Speaker 1: watched by potential future clients, so they're they're like they're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, I'm I'm I might get yelped. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: do we we need? Can we call it kelp yelped?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I could have just had kelped. God
Speaker 1: damn it. But that's great. Yes, that's excellent. I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of a pillar of stown community, you know, keep
Speaker 1: it going. Um, the sou They also this is like
Speaker 1: it gets really sophisticated. So the cleaners will perform extra
Speaker 1: services for big fish that are sort of from outside
Speaker 1: the reef literal big fish. Yeah. So like it's sort
Speaker 1: of like if you've ever I don't know people who
Speaker 1: have ever had office jobs or something where you have like, um,
Speaker 1: you have like people flown in, important people kind of
Speaker 1: coming from like corporate and then like they get to
Speaker 1: cut in front of the gosh darn lunchline because they've
Speaker 1: been flown in and they're important, I guess, um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so they'll they're trying to reward these fish for choosing
Speaker 1: their particular reef, and they're like, hey, come on back
Speaker 1: to Joe's reef because we give you dorsal fin massages.
Speaker 1: That's such a I'm just realizing that as humans, we
Speaker 1: have so many idioms for like somebody being a big fish,
Speaker 1: or even like oh, whale, you know, they're very importan
Speaker 1: shark tank. Yes, we used the ocean to describe most business,
Speaker 1: and the ocean has business going. It's like it's it's
Speaker 1: sa capitalism. Let's revisit Steve Frank, the evolutionary biologists with
Speaker 1: a fondness for moral philosophy. Frank has an interesting idea
Speaker 1: on rals and ethics explaining the human genome. John Rawls
Speaker 1: was a twentieth century moral philosopher who spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about fairness. One of his theories was
Speaker 1: the veil of ignorance. It's the idea that in order
Speaker 1: to create a truly just and fair society, you should
Speaker 1: make the rules while still naive about your place in
Speaker 1: that society, so you don't know if you're rich or
Speaker 1: poorer men or women. So when you craft the laws,
Speaker 1: you want them to be equitable and fair to as
Speaker 1: many people as possible, since you don't know which one
Speaker 1: of those people you're going to be. It's like if
Speaker 1: you have a pizza and you're tasked with slicing it,
Speaker 1: but you don't know which slice you'll be given. You'll
Speaker 1: try to make the slices as even as possible so
Speaker 1: you'll be given a fair portion no matter which random
Speaker 1: piece you'll get. On the genetic level, you're doing this
Speaker 1: all the time when you're creating sperm or egg cells,
Speaker 1: because you have paternal and maternal genes that they both
Speaker 1: want to get in that sperm or that egg, and
Speaker 1: in order to do that without competing with each other,
Speaker 1: there's a randomized process called fair myosis, where essentially you're
Speaker 1: slicing up that pizza at random, and the maternal and
Speaker 1: paternal genes have an equal chance of getting into one
Speaker 1: of those baby slices, which means that as long as
Speaker 1: they're working together to make you really fit and make
Speaker 1: your egg and sperm really fit, unless your offspring really healthy,
Speaker 1: then they have a good chance at winning that bottery
Speaker 1: and getting passed down well that we will be right back.
Speaker 1: We're gonna hear a message from some of our awesome,
Speaker 1: awesome sponsors. One of the earliest lessons we learned as children,
Speaker 1: other than don't touch fire, don't hit your sister, and
Speaker 1: don't feed forks to Mr Toaster, is that stealing is wrong.
Speaker 1: Stealing so undermines a society of rules and laws. Historically,
Speaker 1: there have been some pretty gruesome penalties for theft. Cutting
Speaker 1: off ears, hands, and noses were common in ancient Egypt
Speaker 1: and medieval Europe. In England during the seventeen hundreds, pirates
Speaker 1: were killed and their bodies were hung up on gibbets,
Speaker 1: which are tall wooden beans that held cages which were
Speaker 1: used to display the decaying corpses of criminals. Even worse,
Speaker 1: sometimes live pirates would be displayed in the cages, left
Speaker 1: to die of exposure thirst. In seventy three there was
Speaker 1: the simultaneous hangings of twenty six young pirates whose bodies
Speaker 1: were buried between the high and the low tidal water marks,
Speaker 1: which was thought to ensure their souls would never be
Speaker 1: at pressed. So what is it in the life of
Speaker 1: a vagabond that's so appealing? A longitudin will study found
Speaker 1: that sixteen percent of people pulled recorded having stolen something
Speaker 1: worth more than fifty dollars in the last year. Most
Speaker 1: thieves aren't career criminals. Their flirtation with the pirates life
Speaker 1: typically only last for about a year. Alex and I
Speaker 1: will discuss the motives behind human kleptomaniacs and why the
Speaker 1: life of a pirate calls to seabirds and land birds alike.
Speaker 1: Uh So, there is an English comedian who sadly he
Speaker 1: just passed away. Um his name was Kin DoD and
Speaker 1: uh he I don't know his stuff now, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't. I actually didn't hear about him
Speaker 1: until I was doing research for this. And he has
Speaker 1: this excellent quote. Uh he says, Um, I have kleptomania,
Speaker 1: but when it gets bad, it takes something for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: got him. Ums, such a classic joke. I know, it's great.
Speaker 1: It's like a million dad's all cried out at once. Um.
Speaker 1: So clepto mania. As you may know, it's an impulse
Speaker 1: control disorder. And it's different from stealing because they're not
Speaker 1: actually taking things they want. They're just like stealing things
Speaker 1: almost for the thrill of stealing it. And it's right,
Speaker 1: like the broccoli was there, Yeah, Like I don't want broccoli.
Speaker 1: I just want to do broccoli crime. So it's something
Speaker 1: where it's I feel a lot of sympathy with people
Speaker 1: who have cleptomania because it's it's kind more of a
Speaker 1: control thing, like like maybe they feel like something has
Speaker 1: happened in their life where they've lost control, like a
Speaker 1: family member dies, and like that can be a trigger
Speaker 1: for kleptomania because there it's actually it's kind of like
Speaker 1: it's like having control over a certain thing, like I
Speaker 1: can take that item, like I can be sort of
Speaker 1: completely autonomous and get that thing that. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: also like the thrill of it, and it's completely irrespective
Speaker 1: of class, economic class. It's like rich people will be
Speaker 1: you know, the most famous of which when not on
Speaker 1: a writer um back in Beetle Juice Times or a
Speaker 1: little after Beetle Juice Times. Yeah, there was a whole
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about that. There was a whole in
Speaker 1: between where she was mostly being joked about on LATENTV
Speaker 1: for which you know, and I when you think about
Speaker 1: it in retrospect, it's kind of a little crummy, like um,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, well yeah, because in particular it's if
Speaker 1: it's being done by people who have plenty of money,
Speaker 1: or at least have earned money at something like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it must be some kind of compulsion. And again, like
Speaker 1: I said, I don't like anything very much served me,
Speaker 1: Well I'm very lucky. Yeah. Um. But what's interesting is
Speaker 1: so like there's in evolutionary biology. We don't call it kleptomania.
Speaker 1: We call it a I say we as if I am.
Speaker 1: I am evolutionary biology and I direct horror movies. But
Speaker 1: they call it um clepto clepto parasites, uh, which sounds
Speaker 1: a lot grosser. Yeah, that's terrifying. It sounds like like
Speaker 1: an alien parasite that like goes right in your eyeball
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. Well I'm imagining like a shark with
Speaker 1: a remora on it, and the remora has like a
Speaker 1: bunch of bags of luten, you know, like I stole
Speaker 1: your for a one K plan. It's a capital it
Speaker 1: um corporator pirate capitalism um. So it's it's parasitic behavior
Speaker 1: where one one party is benefiting at the expense of
Speaker 1: another party. And uh, and it's so cute. It's the
Speaker 1: cutest parasite in the animal world. So especially when it's
Speaker 1: done by birds. So another bird crime. Here we go
Speaker 1: this is this is a bird crime heavy episode because
Speaker 1: there are so many bird crimes. Yeah, they're just well
Speaker 1: you keep hearing about like, oh, crows. It turns out
Speaker 1: are brilliant, like they should be writing books or something
Speaker 1: because they have such brilliant brains and it's like they're
Speaker 1: using it for evil though you can't trust them anyway.
Speaker 1: Go on with these birds. Yeah, well, well there's a
Speaker 1: bower birds, which, uh, they're really pretty birds that developed
Speaker 1: these um elaborate bowers, like kind of a grassy area
Speaker 1: that they've constructed, and then they put little decorations in it,
Speaker 1: like here's some blue flowers and here's some colorful rocks,
Speaker 1: and and they they're like very they're very particular. They
Speaker 1: pick out certain colors and really bright colors like reds
Speaker 1: and blues and violets, and like put big chunks of
Speaker 1: colors in and the hope is that that will attract
Speaker 1: a female to come to their little little grass grass
Speaker 1: cave that they made on the ground because they put
Speaker 1: a bunch of pretty flowers. And it's kind of great
Speaker 1: because when they live near civilization, they will steal things
Speaker 1: like bottle caps and little little pieces of like colored glass,
Speaker 1: and uh, so they just like have this little junk heep,
Speaker 1: but it's all color coordinated, so it's really cool looking.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I would. I think I would come across
Speaker 1: and imagine it was like a weird kid did it right,
Speaker 1: right right? You know that's amazing that um. But then
Speaker 1: they also they also do thief crimes because they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of just finding their own bottle caps
Speaker 1: and colored piece of dirt, like, they gotta take someone else's.
Speaker 1: There's this great uh segment of I think it's It's
Speaker 1: Either Life or Planet Earth where David Attenborough is narrating
Speaker 1: and this uh, this uh little barrow bird is like
Speaker 1: trying to present these colorful objects to this other bird
Speaker 1: that he thinks is a female bird. He's like, would
Speaker 1: you like this? What about this toy? Heart? What about this?
Speaker 1: And like the bird is like, yeah, it's pretty good,
Speaker 1: and he like just takes it. And it's a juvenile male,
Speaker 1: not a female, because the juveniles have coloration similar to females,
Speaker 1: they haven't developed their their pretty little crests yet. So
Speaker 1: like the bird was like trying to it's just like
Speaker 1: some teenager like oh yeah, sure, bro, and you like
Speaker 1: just steals it from even the teen birds are untrustworthy.
Speaker 1: No teens. And then um, chin strap penguins, which their
Speaker 1: names are already great because it makes me think they're
Speaker 1: wearing little hats of little chitten straps right on. Keep
Speaker 1: them on because like their heads are small and it's
Speaker 1: hard for the hat to stay on, so they gotta
Speaker 1: gotta secure it down. You think Pittsburgh penguins they do
Speaker 1: something very similar where they will steal rocks from each other. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's really sad because one penguin will be like
Speaker 1: being honest. So they build these big rock nests too,
Speaker 1: and then the females are like, hey, is your rock
Speaker 1: nest the best one? If so, I will mate with you.
Speaker 1: For more information see the documentary um The Pebble and
Speaker 1: the Penguin and the Penguin Right, directed by Donald Bluth.
Speaker 1: I believe it's a it's a cartoon. Remember what you
Speaker 1: asked if I was gullible before I watched a lot
Speaker 1: of non Disney movies like Troll and Central Park and
Speaker 1: The Pebble and the Penguin and oh, I don't know anything.
Speaker 1: I think I saw like no down Kid. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's a it's a movie. It slightly misunderstands the real
Speaker 1: penguin behavior the rock economy, because they have they're like
Speaker 1: finding pretty rocks or nice stones for the females, like
Speaker 1: just one of them, which is like, I guess you
Speaker 1: know how much of the animal king to do you
Speaker 1: think has some kind of capitalism because apparently the sea does,
Speaker 1: and penguins do, and these weird bower birds do, and like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe capitalism is like throughout animal species
Speaker 1: and we just think we're the only ones. I think
Speaker 1: there's a strong possibility except for like you have bees
Speaker 1: which are which are communists down COMI bees they should
Speaker 1: go extinct. Wait don't no, no, I take it back.
Speaker 1: There's no more earth. Um. So, so the while the
Speaker 1: kind of hard working penguins are going like I'm going
Speaker 1: out to collect my rocks, like the evil penguins going
Speaker 1: on just putting in a solid in the rock mines,
Speaker 1: I'm going to steal like the Seven Dwarves and Disney
Speaker 1: you know, just you mind it, you bring it back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of really interesting science felt like, well,
Speaker 1: how how can you have like a cheater and not
Speaker 1: have society collapse? Um? Because you would think like like
Speaker 1: as soon as penguins would catch on like oh there's
Speaker 1: someone stealing. Then they would just be like, well I'm
Speaker 1: gonna steal too, um right, But there there are certain
Speaker 1: forces that seem to like you know, there's definitely like
Speaker 1: with the cleaner rounds. That's really interesting because in that
Speaker 1: case you have direct punishment for stealing. And certainly when
Speaker 1: penguins catch another penguin stealing, like honk at him and
Speaker 1: like the wise guy, that's penguin kelpielpa is just hunky.
Speaker 1: It's just making noises like the batman villa in the
Speaker 1: penguin like one win out of five wint um so
Speaker 1: and then another bird crime, just a real brief one quick,
Speaker 1: almost too many to count. Don't trust Seagulls will steal
Speaker 1: fish right out of pelicans beaks in broad daylight. Oh man,
Speaker 1: for real? Well are you really surprised, Like do you
Speaker 1: feel like open? Well, man, I don't think they can
Speaker 1: do much prying, but like I think they just slip
Speaker 1: in there while the doors ajar. It looks like a
Speaker 1: loose set up right right, He's kind of like they
Speaker 1: just like get right in there. Well, did you did
Speaker 1: you see this story? Like just hit Facebook and on
Speaker 1: the wider media. This Canadian guy who he stayed at
Speaker 1: a hotel in like British Columbia about twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: and it's based on this crazy, insane, elaborate story of
Speaker 1: him trying to bring pounds and pounds of pepperoni to
Speaker 1: his navy friends already nuts, and then he was in
Speaker 1: a hotel room where like there wasn't a place to
Speaker 1: keep it cool, and so he left it in an
Speaker 1: open window and basically he came back to his room
Speaker 1: and it was a sea of seagulls eating the pepperoni
Speaker 1: and like violently pooping the pepper And then he got
Speaker 1: a lifetime band from the hotel, but then appealed it
Speaker 1: recently and they were like, this is such a funny story.
Speaker 1: You can come back. The seagulls have gone the band.
Speaker 1: You know, you would think yeah, but he it was
Speaker 1: like such a freakas the room was demolished, like there
Speaker 1: was no it was just covered in because also apparently
Speaker 1: it was like a spicy pepperoni that seagulls can't digest
Speaker 1: very well, so they weren't harmed, but they were just
Speaker 1: like really cool pooping caustic poops. Yes, yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 1: then he like tried to throw a shoe at one
Speaker 1: and both the shoe and gull went out of the
Speaker 1: window down into a crowd that was meeting for like
Speaker 1: high tea or hit them. And then yeah, it was
Speaker 1: just like dignitaries from several countries where we have tenuous
Speaker 1: diplomatic relations with. Yeah, right right, like that's how a
Speaker 1: war happened yet, But yeah, it's like seagulls apparently just
Speaker 1: go for it. Yeah, like shoot or shoot, you know,
Speaker 1: they just they want it. Yeah. Yeah, they will like
Speaker 1: grab the food out of your hands if they think
Speaker 1: they can get away with it. Yeah, which is not
Speaker 1: really that's not usually the style, Like like usually animals
Speaker 1: are in people are a little more like subtle about it,
Speaker 1: Like you kind of You're like, I realize you can't
Speaker 1: see me, So I'm gonna sneakily take your pizza, not
Speaker 1: just like we're coming in. We're gonna eat this pizza,
Speaker 1: poop all the floor and charge you like seven dar
Speaker 1: Worth movies eat everything in a mini fridge and the
Speaker 1: little little balls of water are like twenty dollars each.
Speaker 1: But like do you remember, Like I don't know. Actually
Speaker 1: I wonder if like you were the perfect child, But
Speaker 1: like when you were a kid, did you ever try
Speaker 1: to get away with stuff? And like, do you remember
Speaker 1: that realization where it's like, if I'm not being watched,
Speaker 1: I can do a thing. I can do bad things
Speaker 1: and not get in trouble. I Yeah, I don't remember
Speaker 1: like a mental transition, but that certainly becomes a thing
Speaker 1: pretty pretty early. Yeah, of like there are times when
Speaker 1: I'm being watched, there's times when I'm not. Also there's
Speaker 1: heaven and hell and my Catholic upbringing, but we're going
Speaker 1: to figure it out. Yeah, yeah, I mean, like children
Speaker 1: do actually kind of go through this learning of It's
Speaker 1: it's like this theory of mind where they understand other
Speaker 1: people have a different perspective of the world than they do.
Speaker 1: They have their own distinct mind, their own distinct sort
Speaker 1: of perception. And so there's this really mean child study
Speaker 1: where it's like they have, um, they present these children
Speaker 1: with stickers, and they have three really like lame stickers
Speaker 1: and one like awesome race car sticker, like the other
Speaker 1: ones are like bland flowers, are creepy porcelain dolls dolls,
Speaker 1: and like ones like like Lightning the Queen, and like
Speaker 1: the kids are like, oh, man, I want that one.
Speaker 1: But the rules of the game are when the kid
Speaker 1: points out, and the rules aren't explained, I don't think
Speaker 1: very much. The kids kind of have to figure it
Speaker 1: out where whenever they pick a sticker, mean monkey, this
Speaker 1: little toy will steal that sticker from them because mean
Speaker 1: monkey gets to pick first, and then they get to pick,
Speaker 1: and mean monkey always picks the sticker that they want,
Speaker 1: the race car one that that they wanted, and so
Speaker 1: they're really sad. And that's around age, you know, like
Speaker 1: like a little bit older than toddler, and then like
Speaker 1: I was hoping if only teenagers were so easy to
Speaker 1: fool stickers. But then when they get a little older,
Speaker 1: just like about a year older, like once they reach
Speaker 1: about four years old, they're like they figure out how
Speaker 1: to like kind of be deceitful, and they they like
Speaker 1: when they're like, okay, now, cheese a sticker, they pick
Speaker 1: one that they don't want, one of the non race
Speaker 1: car ones, and the expressions on their little faces are
Speaker 1: so funny because they're like grinning from ear to ear,
Speaker 1: like knowing what they're getting away from away with, but
Speaker 1: like they realized that okay, he's can see me doing
Speaker 1: this thing, and so I'm going to trick him. Uh.
Speaker 1: I Also I want a child veloment study on when
Speaker 1: poker face because because like, yeah, they're probably they probably
Speaker 1: learned it, but they I imagine like it's when a
Speaker 1: parents says like it's like did you do this and
Speaker 1: they're like no. Um. But like I remember when I
Speaker 1: was I was in uh the first grade, I was
Speaker 1: like startled at my own intelligence because I was like
Speaker 1: I found the secret system, Like if I want to
Speaker 1: play with toys and us, I just do it out
Speaker 1: of the desk and the teacher can't see. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is incredible. It's like it's like discovering the alchemist
Speaker 1: Stone of misbehavior. It's like, oh my god, I can
Speaker 1: turn boring time into gold. Um. And then when I
Speaker 1: got caught, I was like stunned because it was like, well,
Speaker 1: she can't she can't see my hands, Like what how
Speaker 1: is that even possible? She has X ray vision? My
Speaker 1: teacher is a mutant. Yeah, but she actually saw like
Speaker 1: your shoulders moving or like you going right doing a
Speaker 1: little voices like I'm Mrs Planchet, I'm really really stupid.
Speaker 1: Well it's super cute, is that dogs and Chimps also
Speaker 1: have this understanding and it's really cute, like so they
Speaker 1: know that when they're being watched by an authority figure
Speaker 1: and they know that there are consequences to something like
Speaker 1: stealing food, uh, and and they wait until they're not
Speaker 1: being watched. So in chimps, they test it with like
Speaker 1: a dominant chimp versus a subordinate, and the subordinate like
Speaker 1: it's shown like where some food is hidden and it's
Speaker 1: shown that the dominant like can't see it, and they
Speaker 1: go in the like run up really quickly, like grab
Speaker 1: it and then run. Really, so somebody's just studying like
Speaker 1: chimp schemes. Yeah, chimp schemes. The chimp going um, like
Speaker 1: chimps ten of them in a room like this is
Speaker 1: how we get to the It's like five feet away
Speaker 1: and they're like here's the plan. Um. But like, animal
Speaker 1: behavior experts are starting to study dogs more because the
Speaker 1: realizations dogs have this really good social intelligence and it's
Speaker 1: really funny because they uh in dog's case, like the
Speaker 1: authority figures the human and they'll put like a piece
Speaker 1: of food on the floor and the dogs like looking
Speaker 1: at it like oh my god, and then the humans
Speaker 1: like like no, you can't have that, and the dog
Speaker 1: looks devastated and it's like no, and then the researcher
Speaker 1: either sits like in a chair and faces the dog
Speaker 1: or faces away from the dog, or like these are
Speaker 1: the different experiment conditions, Like there's one where they kind
Speaker 1: of look a little distracted in one where they just
Speaker 1: completely leave the room. When they leave the room, almost
Speaker 1: the time, the dogs just immediately take the take the
Speaker 1: food and eat it um when they're still in the room,
Speaker 1: but like, uh, facing or facing away from the dog,
Speaker 1: they'll still try to steal it once in a while
Speaker 1: because they're like, you can't see me, you can't see
Speaker 1: the food. You know mine as well, And when the
Speaker 1: person is facing the dog much less often do they
Speaker 1: try to steal it, but sometimes they do, and it's
Speaker 1: really funny when they do, because like one of them
Speaker 1: walked like there's the food in the researcher in the chair,
Speaker 1: and then the dog walked around in a big circle
Speaker 1: behind the researcher, went under the chair and then like
Speaker 1: took the food as if like somehow he's like, you
Speaker 1: weren't expecting me to come from this direction. I hope
Speaker 1: he did. Like the tap the opposite shoulder. To people,
Speaker 1: he's the pen and teller of dogs. What did the
Speaker 1: dog do when the scientist leaves the room and then
Speaker 1: watches them from through the eye holes of like an
Speaker 1: old timey painting to the dogs suspect it's haunted dogs
Speaker 1: kind of like walk through a background that keeps looping
Speaker 1: and like like what it's like because like my dog,
Speaker 1: like I can see it a little bit in my dog,
Speaker 1: Like she knows she's not supposed to go in the
Speaker 1: bathroom because she always reads the trash and like if
Speaker 1: if she can tell him like watching her, she won't
Speaker 1: go in because she knows, I'll just close the door.
Speaker 1: But other crimes she'll just do right in front of me,
Speaker 1: Like she she sees me looking at her, and she
Speaker 1: very slowly like reaches over and then grabs my glasses
Speaker 1: and then runs away. And it's like yeah, like I
Speaker 1: know dogs can't laugh, but it seems like she's laughing
Speaker 1: because she's like um and she's she's using it as
Speaker 1: like a hostage because and she wants me to uh
Speaker 1: give her treats in exchange. Because I thought I may
Speaker 1: be a bad dog trainer, because I thought like okay,
Speaker 1: like you teach your dog to drop it, and then
Speaker 1: you reward them. I've just rewarded her for finding items
Speaker 1: that I don't want her to have and then dropping it.
Speaker 1: Like actually, just last night I dropped like I was
Speaker 1: doing some chopping in the kitchen and I dropped a
Speaker 1: knife and all the time, all the time with the
Speaker 1: just chopped broccoli up into little pieces and threw it
Speaker 1: right in the trash um. And I dropped the knife
Speaker 1: on the floor and like she like started, she like
Speaker 1: tries to grab it and has it. Was just like
Speaker 1: so funny, Like I mean, she didn't, she didn't get it.
Speaker 1: We we got it away from her, but just like
Speaker 1: she she was so close to like becoming armed and
Speaker 1: being like that primate in two thousand one Space Odyssey
Speaker 1: where he's like, oh this bone can kill right from now?
Speaker 1: What I am knife dog? I only respond to knife duck. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: I think on knife dog, I think we are going
Speaker 1: to Even though it turns out all dogs aren't going
Speaker 1: to Heaven, do they at least feel guilty about their shenanigans.
Speaker 1: Dog owners are probably familiar with that sheepish look on
Speaker 1: your pet's expression after a naughty incident. The eyes look
Speaker 1: up the head, lowers tail, me even go between the legs.
Speaker 1: So is this a form of doggie conscience? Researchers think
Speaker 1: that regardless of those big puppy eyes, your dog doesn't
Speaker 1: have an ounce of remorse. Dog owners were asked to
Speaker 1: leave the room while their dog was presented a biscuit,
Speaker 1: but told not to take it. The owners returned unaware
Speaker 1: of whether their dog was naughty and took the biscuit
Speaker 1: or was obedient. Asked to rank their dogs and how
Speaker 1: guilty their expressions were, the owners were completely hopeless. They
Speaker 1: couldn't tell which dogs were bolonious and which were innocent.
Speaker 1: So this research suggests that the look of guilt and
Speaker 1: a dog's expression may merely be a reaction to her
Speaker 1: visible anger at them. They may not know why you're mad,
Speaker 1: but they know they're in the doghouse, and they'll make
Speaker 1: sure to look pathetic until it all blows over. In fact,
Speaker 1: dogs may have us figured out more than you would give.
Speaker 1: According to studies, we express emotion more strongly on the
Speaker 1: right half of our faces. What's really interesting is that
Speaker 1: dogs have a preference for gazing towards the right more strongly.
Speaker 1: A motive half of the human space, even though they
Speaker 1: show no such preference towards any other animal. This means
Speaker 1: that dogs may have an ability to walk onto the
Speaker 1: most expressive part of our faces to better judge what
Speaker 1: emotional state we're in. In fact, they may be better
Speaker 1: at it than humans. Unlike people, dogs will still walk
Speaker 1: onto the right half the human face even when it's
Speaker 1: upside down. So if you ever find yourself dangling upside
Speaker 1: down from an inconveniently placed rope trap, your dog will
Speaker 1: be able to make the astute observation that you are upset.
Speaker 1: Truly man's best friend. So, Alex, do you have anything
Speaker 1: else to plug up? Even your new movie Knife Dog?
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I mean just people see that in theaters.
Speaker 1: Get take a certain dango, put that like and subscribe
Speaker 1: like and subscribe to Knife Dog. Um no, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad to be on the show. Thank you for having.
Speaker 1: My Twitter account is at Alex trimitty. And then on Cracked,
Speaker 1: it's environment not on Crack. Drugs are a problem. Drugs
Speaker 1: don't do them. Don't do them. Drugs don't do them. Um,
Speaker 1: so you can find dog is tough on drugs. Dog,
Speaker 1: I'll cut you if you do drugs like a criminal
Speaker 1: McGrath the crime Doug. Yeah, like I will. I will
Speaker 1: hurt you if you try to do jobs. So you
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at pro bird writes my
Speaker 1: Twitter for birds, but not only for birds, for people
Speaker 1: who are it's the best, like birds too, in politics
Speaker 1: and birds, birds and politics. If people are still sleeping
Speaker 1: on that account, get on it, uh. And also at
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. Same for that account where there's some pictures
Speaker 1: of a muscular Garfield on it. I don't want you
Speaker 1: to be alarmed, just giving your heads up. They'll like it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you join
Speaker 1: us next Wednesday on Creature Feature m