Futility Closet - 228-The Children's Champion

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from Albert Hubbard's last voyage to E.E. Cummings' Retribution. This is episode 228. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Polish educator Janusz Korczak set out to remake the world just as it was falling apart. In the 1930s, his Warsaw Orphanage was an enlightened society run by the children themselves, but he struggled

Starting point is 00:00:39 to keep that ideal alive as Europe descended into darkness. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the children's champion and his sacrifices for the orphans he loved. We'll also visit an incoherent space station and puzzle over why one woman needs two cars. Janusz Korczak was born Henrik Goldsmith in 1878 to a prominent Jewish family in Warsaw. Because of the stark class differences at the time, he was not allowed to play with poor children, and his schooling was harsh. Teachers used the cane and regarded children as subordinate. Worst of all, when Korczak was 11, his father began to descend into a serious mental illness. He'd fly into rages and called his son an idiot and a stupid ass.

Starting point is 00:01:25 Eventually, his father entered a series of breakdowns that consumed the family fortune, and when he died seven years later in a mental hospital, Korczak became the man of the house. He was forced to tutor rich children to support his mother and his younger sister. To escape all this, he read and wrote constantly. When he needed a pseudonym for a literary competition in 1898, he chose Janusz Korczak from a historical novel he saw lying on a library table. He would use that pen name throughout his life, writing articles, essays, and stories while attending medical school, and later applied it to adult stories, children's books, plays, educational studies, and academic

Starting point is 00:02:00 articles. During his medical studies, he treated poor children in the crime-ridden slums of Warsaw, and he worked as a tutor at children's summer camps where he had contact with the poor. And he saw the effects of war on children firsthand as a military doctor. He came to adopt a new view of childhood, one that saw children as full human beings who deserved respect rather than condescension. He wrote, children are not future people because they are people already whose souls contain the seeds of all those thoughts and emotions that we possess. In order to kindle this spark of dignity and moral responsibility, it would be necessary to change adults' perceptions of children. He wrote, to reform the world means reforming the method of

Starting point is 00:02:37 child rearing. He decided to dedicate his life to this project. He'd already resolved not to have children of his own because he thought his father's madness was hereditary. So at age 33, at the height of his success as a doctor and a writer, he accepted the directorship of a Jewish orphanage. In that position, for more than 30 years, he devoted his life to Warsaw's disadvantaged children. In time, he would run two orphanages, one for Jewish children and one for Christian. He divided his time between the two and operated both according to his methods. He lived with children, worked with them, taught them, and learned from them. Their formal education took place in the local schools, but he set out to cultivate their moral growth. He did this through a unique experiment. He set up what he called a children's republic in each orphanage. This was a just society governed

Starting point is 00:03:23 by the children themselves. They ran their own parliament, court, newspaper, and work schedules. In effect, he was giving them first-hand lessons in natural justice, ethical psychology, self-knowledge, and self-discipline. The court had five child judges who were elected each week, and they met every Saturday to consider cases where children had broken rules or wanted to charge each other over some conflict. A lawyer and a prosecutor presented their cases, and judges reached a verdict based on a code of law that the children themselves developed. Korczak believed that children are experts in their own affairs, and he found that they were often much better informed than the grown-ups. He wrote, the power of the educator is greater than his competence. And the court had real authority.

Starting point is 00:04:02 Korczak himself was prosecuted five times and acquitted four. Likewise, the children elected members to a parliament that made general decisions about the orphanage and enacted laws. And the children ran their own newspaper, which was published weekly as a supplement to a Jewish daily called Our Review. In the first edition, Korczak invited children throughout Poland to send letters, write articles, and become correspondents. They received hundreds of responses. The paper gave children a forum to voice their opinions, raise concerns, and ask questions without fear of being ridiculed, and sales of the adult paper soared. The point of all this was to take children seriously, to accord them respect and dignity as

Starting point is 00:04:37 full human beings, and to foster a sense of morality and social responsibility. That meant trusting them with power, but he generally found that if you put trust in children, you got trust in return. Most offenders before the Children's Court were forgiven and told never to do it again. To be sure, it didn't always work. In the Children's Court, some judges could be bribed with sweets or blackmailed with threats, and some matters were too complex for the children to address. But in general, it seemed effective. In 1933, when the orphanage had been running for 20 years, Korczak did a follow-up study and found that only a few of its graduates had turned to crime or prostitution as adults. The overwhelming majority were living normative lives. They had found decent jobs and even established families of their own. All these experiments informed Korczak's writing.

Starting point is 00:05:19 In 1923, he published a children's book called King Matt I about a boy who has the misfortune to be born a king and tries to build a society that's equally just for children and adults. Under a green flag, his children's parliament decrees that children should not be kissed routinely and that pants should have more pockets. Ultimately, it falls apart because the children only imitate the grown-ups. During the 1930s, Korczak started his own radio program, promoting the rights of children and dispensing folksy wisdom, somewhat like Will Rogers. But by the middle of the decade, the right wing was rising in Poland, and with it, anti-Semitism. He lost the radio job and was forced to resign from the Christian orphanage. He visited Palestine and considered emigrating there, but he was getting

Starting point is 00:05:57 old, his health was poor, and he knew no Hebrew. In the end, he decided to stay at the orphanage. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Korczak tried to rejoin the Polish military, but was rejected due to age. But they invited him to return to Polish radio, urging the people to keep up their spirits. By the eighth day of the invasion, the Germans had reached the gates of Warsaw. He hurried around the city, helping the wounded and dying, and periodically broadcasting messages of hope. When the Nazis entered the city, they were peaceful at first, offering soup kitchens and bread, but then they began rounding up Jews for work details and

Starting point is 00:06:28 shipping Poles to Germany as forced labor. They appropriated Jewish businesses and factories and closed Jewish schools. This put even more pressure on the orphanage. The philanthropists who had supported it had fled and their businesses were confiscated, so Korczak had to scour the city for food and supplies. He wore his Polish army uniform as a symbol of protest, and he refused to wear the blue Star of David that the Nazis required. The first winter of the German occupation was very cold, but former apprentices and orphans helped him to repair shattered windows, donated mattresses and sweaters, and offered dental care for the children.

Starting point is 00:06:59 Korczak appealed for donations, noting that there were 150 children in the orphanage now, and signing his appeals, The Old Doctor, from the radio. In October 1940, the Nazis created a ghetto for the city's Jews. Korczak hoped at first that they might allow his orphanage to remain outside its walls, but his request was denied. He was loved by the Polish people as a doctor, an author, and a broadcaster, and his friends offered to get him false identity papers and to hide as many children as possible in monasteries and private homes. But he was responsible for 170 children now. Korchak asked his friends, can you guarantee me that every child will be safe? And then said, my friend,

Starting point is 00:07:33 it is best that I keep the children with me. He didn't want the children to be frightened by the move to the ghetto, so he treated the household as if it were a theatrical troupe and arranged a procession like an advertisement for a performance, a parade in which the children carried lamps, paintings, bedding, and pets in cages. When the little parade arrived at the new quarters, the Germans confiscated the last wagon, which was full of potatoes. When Korczak complained the next day, they asked why he wasn't wearing his armband and threw him in prison. He survived, only because a few of his former orphans raised the money needed to release him. In his diary, Korczak called the ghetto the district of the damned. He spent all his time searching for resources to keep the orphanage

Starting point is 00:08:08 going. Each day he asked the governing council for extra food and coal, asked former patrons for money, asked hospitals for drugs, and asked the post office for unclaimed food packages that had arrived for the dead. In the orphanage itself, he tried to maintain a sense of order, still trying to foster sanity and moral purpose in the midst of this madness. The orphans maintained their court of peers, their right of self-government, a school newspaper, and a schedule of daily chores. Classes were held surreptitiously in morning and afternoon shifts, and they made Hebrew one of the main subjects in case it was decided to move the children to Palestine when the

Starting point is 00:08:40 war was over. Korczak hired actors and musicians to perform and raise funds. He sent postcards to everyone he knew overseas begging for food packages. A former orphan living in Canada received one that read, please, if possible, send food packages to the orphan home at 33 Hwadna Street for our sick children and those recuperating from recent illness. And please alert others to our need, in particular those who remember their youth. A Nazi censor had stamped the card with a German eagle. In June 1941, Korczak was encouraged by news that Germany would be invading Russia. He felt sure they'd be repelled and Poland would soon be free. But they heard only of German victories.

Starting point is 00:09:15 Near the end of 1941, the Germans announced that they would be reducing the ghetto in size even as they crowded it even further. The orphanage was given four days' notice to move. They managed to find a new building, smaller than the first, and established a routine even there, with a choir, a drama and sewing circle, a doll corner, and a puppet workshop. The kitchen was tiny, and one bathroom had to serve everyone. The restrictions kept getting tighter. The Gestapo had now started executing people who left the ghetto without permits, or who tried to smuggle food inside. But word came that the Germans were finally meeting resistance at the gates of Moscow, and America entered the war in December. They didn't know that the Germans had set up their first extermination camp at Helmno.

Starting point is 00:09:54 When the holiday season arrived, the children celebrated Hanukkah, and a truck arrived carrying clandestine presents from Korczak's friends on the outside. They'd even cut down a small pine tree on the way to the ghetto. One of them later wrote, Korczak asked the children to gather around the tree which he set up on a table in the middle of the room. Our parcels were lying under it. The children stood quietly, just staring. What surprised me was that they were not like children. They were like smiling old people. Their eyes were full of sorrow, even though they were happy. I started to cry as we serenaded them with a Christmas carol. Korczak slipped the visitors a postcard to take back with them to the world outside the ghetto. It said the Jews will never forget their brothers and sisters on the other side of the wall. Around this time, despite all his other

Starting point is 00:10:32 commitments, Korczak requested directorship of a public shelter that housed a thousand children. Children there were dying at the rate of 10 or 12 a day. He soon came to see that he wouldn't be able to save all the children. Even after his efforts, the mortality rate among the orphans was 60%. There just wasn't enough food or medical supplies. On April 17th, the SS went door-to-door shooting people. It turned out that these men had been putting out an illegal political bulletin. There were rumors now that there would be deportations from Warsaw. It was said that in Lublin, 40,000 people had been set away on freight cars.

Starting point is 00:11:02 No one knew where. Numbly, Korczak kept going. His kidneys were almost gone now. His legs were swollen, and his heart was weak. He was living on 800 calories a day. He begged his Christian friends to send plants because there were now children in the ghetto who could not remember ever having seen a tree or a flower. In July, to help the children transcend their suffering, he had them put on a play, The Post Office, by the Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. It's about Amal, a boy who is confined to his room with a serious illness. He longs to fly to a land that no one knows, one that he's been told a great doctor will lead him to. The village headman pretends to read a letter from

Starting point is 00:11:37 the king, promising to arrive soon with this great doctor. The grown-ups are surprised when the king's doctor suddenly does appear in the darkened room. He says, what's this? How close it is in here? Open wide all the doors and windows. With the night breeze streaming in, Amal says that his pain has disappeared and he can see the stars twinkling on the other side of the darkness. He falls asleep waiting for the arrival of the king himself as the doctor sits by his bed in the starlight. A girl asks when he will awaken and the doctor says as soon as the king comes and calls him. Asked why he had chosen that play, Korczak is reported to have said he wanted to help the children accept the prospect of death. Rumors were increasing that they would be deported soon. There was no organized Jewish intelligence network through which they could learn what was

Starting point is 00:12:18 coming, but they'd heard rumors of the shooting of old people and children and the gassing of thousands at camps outside Lublin. Korczak's friends on the outside were still urging him to flee. He told them, you do not leave a sick child in the night and you do not leave children at a time like this. On July 22, 1942, Korczak's 64th birthday, the SS began to liquidate the ghetto. All Jews, regardless of sex or age, were to be deported to the east. By four o'clock that afternoon, 6,000 people would have to be at the Umschlagplatz, a large loading area north of the ghetto. Freight trains were waiting to transport them to their destination. On the second day, 9,000 were wanted. Deportation notices appeared on walls throughout the ghetto. Each deportee could carry seven pounds of luggage,

Starting point is 00:12:58 including cash, valuables, and provisions for three days. No one knew where they were going. At first, it was said that those working in German factories could stay, and there was a frantic rush to get work permits. The Germans offered three kilograms of bread and one of marmalade to anyone who volunteered for the trains. When that failed to work, they put increasing pressure on the ghetto police to fill the cars. The work permits were no longer enough. Families were dragged from hiding places. On the morning of August 6, 1942, Korczak could still see hope. A Nazi soldier was stationed outside his window, and he wrote in his diary, perhaps he was a village teacher in civilian life, a notary, a street sweeper in Leipzig, a waiter in Cologne. What would he do

Starting point is 00:13:35 if I nodded to him, waved my hand in a friendly gesture? Perhaps he does not know that things are as they are. But just as they were clearing the table, they heard two blasts of a whistle and the words, alle Juden raus, all Jews out. The teachers worked quickly to help the children gather their things. Outside, Korczak asked a policeman for time. They were given 15 minutes. He asked the orphans to line up quietly in rows of four. They did so carrying flasks of water, favorite books, diaries, and toys. The Germans took a roll call. There were 192 children and 10 adults. At last it was time to go. A witness wrote, rows of children holding each other by their little hands began to walk out of

Starting point is 00:14:10 the doorway. There were tiny tots of two or three years among them, while the oldest ones were perhaps 13. Each child carried the little bundle in its hand. One of the older boys carried the green flag of King Matt, the blue star of David set against a field of white on one side. The older children passed the flag among them on the two-mile walk. Another witness wrote, Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by 200 children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared-for clothes. The youngest children stumbled on the cobblestones and were pushed up the steps of the Hvadna Street Bridge. Some fell or were pushed down to the other side. The police kept them moving forward. Korchak was carrying one child and leading another by the

Starting point is 00:14:53 hand. Another witness said he seemed to be talking to them, occasionally turning his head to encourage the children behind. They passed through a gate at the end of the ghetto, passed squadrons of SS and Ukrainians with whips, guns, and dogs, and entered the Umschlagplatz, a large dirt field by the railway siding. It was crowded with people. An official of the Judenrat, the ghetto's Jewish council, saw them and seated them against a low wall. The official, Nahum Remba, took Korczak aside and urged him to accompany him to the council to ask them to intervene. Korczak refused. He said that if he left the children alone, they might panic or be taken away in his absence. At last, the order came to load the box cars, and Korczak signaled the orphans to rise. Remba wrote, the children marched in groups,

Starting point is 00:15:34 with Korczak in the lead, holding two little ones by their hands. Even the ghetto police stood at attention and saluted as they passed. Germans who witnessed the scene asked, Wer ist dieser Mann? Who is that man? A wail went up from those still left on the square, and Remba burst into tears. In the 1970s, clubs dedicated to translating the work of Janusz Korczak and preserving his ideas spread over Europe, and today there are active Korczak institutions around the world. Emily Logan, former chair of the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children, said that what sets Korczak apart from other defenders of children's rights is that his analysis of the world is perceived through the lens of a child.

Starting point is 00:16:12 UNESCO declared 1978 the year of Janusz Korczak to coincide with the centenary of his birth and the international year of the child, and his writings directly influenced the genesis of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote, If giving up one's life so that those one cares for will not feel deserted is heroism, if sacrificing one's life for one's convictions, even though one could easily have saved it without betraying them, is martyrdom, then Dr. Janusz Korczak is one of the greatest martyrs and heroes of our age. The developmental psychologist and moral philosopher Lawrence Kohlberg places Korczak with Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Socrates at the highest possible stage of moral development. His books for children have been translated into more than

Starting point is 00:16:54 20 languages. A former student of Korczak, Maria Falkowska, said, to him, all children were special and good. All children were human beings, and because of that were granted certain rights, the right to be respected, to play, to study, to make decisions, above all, to be happy. In 1919, when all of this still lay far in the future, Korchak gave an address to the children graduating from his orphanage. He said, we give you only one thing to take with you, a longing for a better life, a life that does not exist today, but which will someday come into being, a life of justice and truth. Our podcast really relies on the support of our listeners. So if you value learning about stories like those of Janusz Korczak, please consider becoming a patron to help support the show.

Starting point is 00:17:50 You can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link in our show notes. And thanks so much to all of our supporters who help us to be able to tell these stories. We've enjoyed the interesting outputs of neural networks in a few episodes now, most recently in episode 214. John Curtis wrote, someone made a science fiction film using a script generated by a neural network. Thanks for the podcast and all your hard work. And John sent a link to a 2016 Ars Technica article entitled, Movie Written by Algorithm Turns Out to be Hilar be hilarious and intense, that describes the nine-minute movie Sunspring like this. It's about three people living in a weird future,

Starting point is 00:18:51 possibly on a space station, probably in a love triangle. You know it's the future because H, played with neurotic gravity by Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch, is wearing a shiny gold jacket. Middleditch, is wearing a shiny gold jacket. H2, Elizabeth Grey, is playing with computers. And C, Humphrey Kerr, announces that he has to go to the skull before sticking his face into a bunch of green lights. It sounds like your typical sci-fi B-movie complete with an incoherent plot. The author of Sunspring was an LSTM recurrent neural network, like the kind that tries to guess what you'll want to type next in a text or an email. It was developed by Ross Goodwin, an AI researcher at New York University, who originally called his program Jetson.

Starting point is 00:19:37 However, during an interview, in which most of the AI's answers to questions could be seen as either rather poetic or kind of gibberish, or maybe both. It said quite clearly that its name was Benjamin. This was an answer to the question, what's next for you? The program's answer was, here we go. The staff is divided by the train of the burning machine building with sweat. No one will see your face. The children reach into the furnace, but the light

Starting point is 00:20:05 is still slipping to the floor. The world is still embarrassed. The party is with your staff. My name is Benjamin. That couldn't be clearer. So what are you going to do? You have to call Benjamin now. Director Oscar Schart made Sunspring for the 48-hour film challenge at Sci-Fi London. Contestants were given a set of prompts, a title, a line of dialogue, and a prop that they had to use in a movie that they made over the next two days. A number of mostly sci-fi TV and movie scripts were fed into Benjamin, along with the prompts, and Benjamin supplied the screenplay, complete with stage directions such as he is standing in the stars and sitting on the floor, and he sees a black hole on the floor leading to the man on the roof. Excellent stage directions. Sharp randomly assigned the movie's roles to the three actors,

Starting point is 00:20:59 who are said to have laughed their heads off when they read through the script. Benjamin had learned what words and phrases tend to occur together so that it could generate original sentences and eventually imitate the structure of a screenplay, but it wasn't able to learn to produce names, other than for itself apparently, because names aren't used in the same ways as other words are and can be much more unpredictable. So Goodwin changed all the characters' names in Benjamin's script database to single letters, which led to the characters in Sunspring being named H, H, and C. Sharp ended up having to dub one of the characters H2 for clarity. Given that Benjamin's database had all the names

Starting point is 00:21:38 replaced, I didn't see an explanation for how it came up with its own name. That's kind of creepy. The acting, directing, editing, and effects in the film really are impressive, given what they had to work with, and really do make the movie. And when I say given what they had to work with, in my mind, that includes the line of dialogue they were given as a prompt, as I wasn't able to guess which line it was

Starting point is 00:22:00 when I watched the film. I mean, okay, I didn't think it was lines such as, you should see the boy and shut up. I was the one who was going to be 100 years old. Or, I think I could have been my life. And I certainly didn't think it was, I just wanted to tell you that I was much better than he did. But the line supplied by the humans,

Starting point is 00:22:22 it may never be forgiven, but that is just too bad, was really not much better than some of Benjamin's memorable lines, such as, I am not a bright light. Nothing is going to be a thing. Or, I have to leave, but I'm not free of the world. Oh, that's good. That's nice and poetic. It is.

Starting point is 00:22:41 I would have guessed that one. Yeah. Actually, now that I think about it, I would have guessed that one too, maybe. When Sunspring was entered into the Sci-Fi London contest, the judges actually placed it in the top 10 out of the hundreds of entries. One of the judges, sci-fi author Pat Cadigan, said, I'll give them top marks if they promise never to do this again. Sharp likes to call Benjamin's screenplay the average version of everything that was fed into the AI,

Starting point is 00:23:10 and thought that one of the most interesting parts of the project was seeing the patterns that emerged from that, such as people frequently questioning what was going on, which made him realize that that is a common theme in science fiction. Although Benjamin's database was a bit biased by including only scripts that Goodwin could find on the internet, so it may not be really representative of the whole genre. The Corpus Fed to Benjamin, for example, contained every episode of X-Files and the animated sitcom Futurama, as well as some slightly more oddball choices such as Airplane 2 the sequel, which I thought may have not helped Benjamin in learning to produce a more coherent plot.

Starting point is 00:23:48 Another aspect of seeing patterns actually came from the actors themselves, as they apparently overlaid the somewhat incoherent script with common movie themes. For example, interpreting Sunspring's plot as a love triangle, even though there wasn't actually anything specifying that in the script. Given how incoherent the script is at times, I thought it was kind of ironic that the characters frequently say, I don't know what you're talking about, and what do you mean? The movie becomes a bit of a Rorschach test for the audience, judging from the different summaries of it that I read. Ars Technica said, a slightly garbled series of sentences became a tale of romance and murder, though they were the only ones I saw that seemed to think there was a murder in it.

Starting point is 00:24:29 I couldn't honestly tell you if there was or wasn't. The Guardian called it a weirdly entertaining, strangely moving, dark sci-fi story of love and despair, adding that the dialogue doesn't really make sense, but if you were half watching while doing something else, you would definitely get the feeling that something just happened. Slate said of the film, you keep getting the sense that there might be something meaningful here, but mostly because you're looking for meaning, not because it's actually available. And CNET likened it to an avant-garde art house short and said, it feels like David Lynch and Ridley Scott got drunk together and wrote a movie while blindfolded.

Starting point is 00:25:09 That kind of is an interesting idea. Like you could sort of imagine if the whole process were a lot smarter. Something like that could work. Sure. In principle. Sure. And maybe it will in a few more years. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:23 And Jason Cutler sent us a tweet by Max Wolf, a self-described data scientist at BuzzFeed, who wrote, I trained an actual AI on the titles of BuzzFeed YouTube videos, and it generated some interesting results. So some of the AI-generated video titles that Wolf got were, We Competed to Become American Food, The First 10 Days of All Time, 10 Secret Mermaids Throughout History, The Insane Way I Cheated with a Cat, Things You Do After Life, and People Get Transformed into Their Own Shoes. I'd read that. As with the other examples we've looked at of neural net outputs, the results can tell you a fair amount about the input. So BuzzFeed videos must include many of people doing things for the first time,

Starting point is 00:26:18 as there are quite a number of AI-generated ones like BuzzFeed employees read for the first time, couples try leggings for the first time, people try rubber for the first time, and I tried a $5,500 Star Wars pillow. It's very specific. There also must be many, many food videos as Wolf's results contain so many of those, such as people try turkey cheesecake brownie bake, chocolate hummus behind tasty, chicken parm breakfast cake, crunchy chocolate covered heroes, what it's like to be a perfect beef stroganoff, when you can't tell she's the ultimate ice cream bites, ramen holiday slime soft bake,

Starting point is 00:27:10 and the angriest Thanksgiving snack. Which kind of made me want to stay away from that. There are also several adult-themed ones, such as Lesbians Review Sexy Football for the First time and guys review sexy NFL first week. Apparently BuzzFeed is into sexy football. I don't know. And some that managed to combine both food and adult themes such as the worst things about sex on your food and 16 ways to have the sex talk with ramen. So thanks so much to everyone who writes to us.

Starting point is 00:27:48 We always appreciate your updates and comments. And if you have any you'd like to send, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and I have to see if I can work out what is going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener B. Van. Danielle is an unmarried woman and lives alone.

Starting point is 00:28:15 She owns a car that only she drives, but for convenience, she got a second car. Why? Oh, no. I was going to say, does this have something to do with saving herself parking spaces somehow like putting one car and that doesn't make any sense though because you can't fit two cars in a parking space um uh for convenience she got a second car that that she's planning to drive yes does it have anything to do with parking and saving parking spaces or because she can't find parking spaces? Not really.

Starting point is 00:28:50 Not really. Okay. Would this be more likely to happen in an urban environment? Yes. Rather than like rural or less densely populated? Does population density have anything to do with it? I'm thinking about that. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:08 Does where it takes place matter at all? Do I need to figure out something about the location? Yes. Not the specific geographic location, but sort of the... Something about the location. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:23 So it doesn't matter what the name of the city is, but there's some feature or characteristic of the location that I need to work out. That would help to investigate. Okay. Does it matter what kind of a building she lives in? Like if it's an apartment building versus a freestanding house or anything like that? No. No. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:41 And does it have anything to do with the number of cars in the area that are in that area? Oh, is this, this is like, uh, shoot. That's something about license plates and you need even number license plates and odd number license plates.

Starting point is 00:30:00 And I can't remember why there's, that does ring a bell. No, that's not it. Some city somewhere where I don't remember what it is. You can only drive certain cars on certain days of the week or something. Yeah, no, I think that's a real thing. That's not it.

Starting point is 00:30:11 Oh, shoot. But that would make a good puzzle now that you mention it. Yeah, I think we had a puzzle about that like years ago. Okay, never mind. Thought I had it. But is it something like that? This is an area with a lot of cars. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:26 And that's important that there's a lot of cars here. Yes, let's say that. When you say she got a second car, is it what I think of as an automobile? Yes. And both of them are? Mm-hmm. Are they the same kind of car or it doesn't matter? It doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:30:41 Okay, so they could or might not be and it doesn't matter either way. That's right. Okay, and she's intending to drive both cars? Yes. Okay, and she's intending to drive both cars. Is there any characteristic about either car that I need to know? No, there isn't. She's intending to drive both cars.

Starting point is 00:31:00 Is she intending to park both cars in the same place? No. Okay. Does this have something to do with other modes of transportation? So, like, she takes a train someplace and she wants a car parked there for her? Yes. Yes? I don't quite see it, but I'm...

Starting point is 00:31:19 Okay, so, like, she wants to leave a car in each parking lot of a train station. I'm not quite sure how that would work. Is it trains specifically? Yes. Okay. You're doing very well. She commutes to work by train. Just her, not the car.

Starting point is 00:31:42 The car doesn't go on the train also. That's right. Because you know there's so many trains that carry cars, but there might be. So she wants to drive to the train station, leave the car in that parking lot. Right. And then, oh, take the train and have a second car waiting at the far end, right, of the commute,

Starting point is 00:32:03 and then drives the rest of the way to work. Oh, I see. And then drives home from work and parks at the train station. Yeah, I got it. So that's cool. That's very cool. I don't even have to read the answer. Yes, that's exactly it. Thank you, for sending that. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you would like to become one of our wonderful patrons who help support the show and get bonus material such as extra discussions, outtakes, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on Sasha, the Futility Closet podcast, then check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset

Starting point is 00:32:45 or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. At the website, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 10,000 concise curiosities. Browse the Futility Closet store, check out the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for any of us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by my very special brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 228-The Children's Champion

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