Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Get the Truth From Anyone & Fascinating Bird Facts

Episode Date: July 23, 2022

If you took driver’s education, you probably remember being told to keep your hands at 10:00 o’clock and 2:00 o’clock on the steering wheel. That may have been some really bad advice. We begin this episode with a discussion on the best way to steer your car. http://www.thedrive.com/start-finish/9882/team-oneil-shows-how-to-position-your-hands-on-the-wheel Is it possible to get someone to tell you the truth when they don’t want to? Jack Schafer says it is. As a former FBI agent, he has developed a technique based on some simple psychological principles that will get people to tell you things they never meant to. Jack is author of the book The Truth Detector: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide for Getting People to Reveal the Truth (https://amzn.to/30we8WU) and he joins me to discuss how you can use this technique and the reasons why it is so effective. I bet you see and hear birds every day. Yet, you probably don’t think about them very much. Still, they are fascinating creatures and they have some extraordinary characteristics. For example, did you know that all birds are actually dinosaurs? Science writer Jennifer Ackerman has written articles for Scientific American, National Geographic and The New York Times. She is also author of a book called The Bird Way (https://amzn.to/2ZOvQpw) and she joins me to offer up some fascinating facts that will give you a new appreciation for birds. You have to be careful what you say in a job interview. For instance, it’s difficult to brag about how humble you are because, well, how humble can you be if you are bragging about it? There are other words besides humble that are best left out of your self-description when you go on a job interview. Listen as I reveal what they are. https://www.themuse.com/advice/5-words-you-should-never-use-to-describe-yourself-in-an-interview PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Go to: https://actnow.climeworks.com/SomethingYouShouldKnow to start removing CO2 from the air today! For the first 500 people to use the code SYSK20, Climeworks will cover 20% of your first installment for monthly and yearly subscriptions. For a limited time, SAVE 35% on Cozy Earth Bedding.  Check out their awesome loungewear, too.  Go to https://CozyEarth.com and enter SOMETHING at checkout to SAVE 35% now! Hometap is the smart new way to access your home’s equity and pay for life’s expenses without a loan! Learn more and get a personalized estimate at https://HomeTap.com Helix Sleep is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners at https://helixsleep.com/sysk.  Go to Amazon and search for Conair Turbo Extreme to get your 2-in-1 steam and iron steamer today! Go to https://Shopify.com/sysk for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features! Redeem your rewards for cash in any amount, at any time, with Discover Card! Learn more at https://Discover.com/RedeemRewards Go to the App Store or Google play to download Best Fiends for free. Plus, earn even more with $5 worth of in-game rewards when you reach level 5. That’s Friends, without the r—Best Fiends! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. Today on Something You Should Know, where do you hold your hands on the steering wheel? I'll tell you why it matters. Then meet a guy who has a technique that will get you to tell him almost any truth. I mean, you'd like to think you wouldn't tell him your social security number, right? Yeah, you'd like to think that, but it's going to happen.

I told the student, I'll get your social security number. He says, no you wouldn't. I would never give that up to anybody. Over the course of the class session, I was able to slowly elicit his social security number. Then, when you go on a job interview, there are some words you should probably never say. And you see a lot of them every day. They're fascinating. They're birds. All birds are dinosaurs, which is always a surprise to people.

But all birds descend from a line of dinosaurs that somehow made it through whatever cataclysmic event killed off their cousins. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations.

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hi and welcome to something you should know we just recently in a previous episode talked about why we drive, but it's also interesting how we drive. When you drive, question for you, where are your hands on the steering wheel? New Hampshire-based Team O'Neill Rally School, which teaches race car drivers how to drive and stay safe, has some suggestions. First of all, both hands need to be on the wheel when you're driving. One-handed driving only works if there is no sudden emergency. When there is one, one-handed driving isn't going to be enough. Also, forget putting your hands at 10 and 2 o'clock, despite what your driver's ed teacher told you.

It makes turning much more difficult. Having your hands at 9 and 3 o'clock is much safer. They also compared making a turn using steering wheel shuffling versus arm-over-arm control. Shuffling, where you feed the steering wheel from one hand into the other, is safer in cars with airbags, but significantly slower. Arm over arm is quicker, but can position your hands and arms between your head and the airbag, which can have serious consequences

during a collision. And that is something you should know. On earlier episodes of Something You Should Know, we've discussed how to tell if somebody is lying to you or if they're telling the truth. What are the signs to look for? Well, today we're going to explore how to get someone to tell you the truth, even if they don't want to. Jack Schaefer is a former FBI agent who has interrogated some pretty unsavory characters over the years and gotten them to tell him things they didn't mean to.

Not by threatening them or torturing them. No, this is a different, more subtle technique that you can use as well. Jack is the author of the book The Truth Detector, an ex-FBI agent's guide for getting people to reveal the truth. Hi Jack, welcome. Well, it's nice to be with you. So first give me a little history, a little background here about this technique, about you, where it all comes from, so get us all up to speed. Well, I spent 20 years in the FBI, and the last seven years I spent as a behavioral analyst,

and I worked for the FBI's National Security Division, which we primarily investigated spies, counterintelligence, and terrorism. And during the course of my tenure at the FBI, I had an occasion to talk to a lot of spies and terrorists, and those people are real reluctant to give out a lot of information when you ask them questions. So we developed and enhanced a technique called elicitation. That is, you want to get people to tell the truth, and they don't realize they're telling the truth when they're telling it. What happened is I ended up getting a lot of information from people in espionage, spies and terrorists,

just by having general conversations with them. And then I started looking into the psychological principles that cause people to want to tell the truth and then not realize that they're giving up sensitive information. And I thought to myself, you know, these are great techniques that we can use in normal life outside of the job as a spy catcher in negotiations and when you're buying a car, when you're buying a house, when you're talking to your kids, you're talking to a person of interest. And you want to get information from them, but you don't want to put them on guard or make it seem as though you're nosy. So give me an example of how you would use this technique, say, you know, not in a talking to a terrorist, but in real life. Well, in one instance, my wife and I were looking at houses and we went into the basement of one home and it was completely redone. And I couldn't see the telltale flooding line that if there's a flood in the basement you see a telltale line around the the walls I couldn't see it because they redid the

basement and I just casually mentioned to the guy I said geez they did a nice job fixing it up after the flood and he just casually said yeah they did a really good job and I thought to myself he just casually said, yeah, they did a really good job. And I thought to myself, he just told me the house floods. If I was to ask him if it flooded directly, he would have been very reluctant to let me know that it flooded. So explain the steps in this technique that you use. How does it work? What are the inner workings of it? There's basically several steps. The first thing you want to do is get the person comfortable, build rapport with the person. It takes several

minutes to build rapport. And then you want to use one of the elicitation tools, and they're based on human psychological principles, one being the need to correct others. People have a tremendous need to correct others. In other words, if I were to tell you something false, you'd have this real want to tell me the truth or correct me. And I do this in, I teach at Western Illinois University, and I do this with my students a lot when I'm demonstrating these techniques in my behavioral analysis class. What I teach, the need to correct others is powerful, and they don't believe me. And then a student, I'll ask a student a question, and I'll say, that's tremendous insight for a sophomore. And typically, this one particular girl looked at me and said, I know what you're up to.

I'm not a sophomore. I know what you're up to, and I don a sophomore. I know what you're up to, and I don't want to tell you. And I said, well, that's fine. And then I waited a couple seconds, and she finally blurted out, look, I'm a senior. And I just felt this overwhelming need to tell you that because I wanted to correct you. It's that kind of psychological principles that are the basis of elicitation. And so if you were trying to get somebody to tell you something that you think they're keeping from you, how would you use that? I get the sophomore-senior thing, but how would you use that as an example to pull somebody out and get them to say what you want

them to say? Well, there's another elicitation technique called the internal-external foci. And if I ask a person a direct question, say I ask you a question, what do you think about cheating? Most people will go to the external social norms and say, well, obviously cheating is bad. I would never cheated on her. What's your take on that? Then that person then tends to go from the inside and say what they really mean. So what you can do with with I did this with my kids. I wanted to know if they were on, wanted to know if they were smoking marijuana.

And I asked them directly, do you smoke marijuana? And he said, well, of course not, Dad. I don't do that. Well, that's the obvious answer. That's the social norm. And then I asked him, a couple days later, I asked him, I said, you know, a friend of mine has a son about your age. And he got caught smoking marijuana in high school. And my son said, well, he shouldn't have brought it to school. It's only marijuana, Dad. Answers like that. That means it's coming from his heart, the answer. So when you ask about a

third person, they talk about in the heart. And when you ask a direct question, they go to social norms and provide the answer what you were talking about a moment ago that need to correct that as i think about it that is that's really a thing because i mean just in thinking about it in my life i mean there i i see when people need to correct me if i make a mistake or say something wrong and i've also corrected people who have made statements that are incorrect. And I'm not sure what that, why I do that or where that need comes from, but it's amazing. The need to correct is powerful. And the way you can tap into that is

to use a presumptive. In other words, you make a true statement or a false statement, and people will have a tendency to correct you. If you casually just throw out a statement, true or false, people are going to correct you and then add information. So my co-author Marvin wanted to find out if one of his colleagues received a raise, an incentive raise for teaching. And if he was to ask her, did you receive a raise? She'll say, of course not. You know, that's confidential. But he said, congratulations on your raise. He didn't know that she got an incentive raise or not. He just said, congratulations on your incentive raise. She said, oh yeah, I got one the other day. Oh.

And then he said, you want to know how much? He said, oh, it must have been like, you know, four or $5,000. And she says, no, it's more like six. And so she's correcting this. And then for him to get out of the, you know, the conversation, he said, well, you deserve it. And he got her to reveal that information. It seems a little manipulative, doesn't it? And maybe, you know, when you're trying to get information from a criminal, that's fine. But it really was none of his business whether she got a raise or not. No, but we do want to know things, don't we? Doctors use it all the time. If a doctor asks a person, do you take your medication every day?

What's the patient likely to say? Of course I do, doc. I take it religiously. And the doctor needs to know if they're taking their medication because he can't do a procedure unless he knows that person's been on medication for so many weeks. So a better way to do that is to say, yeah, you know, it's hard for people to take their medication regularly. I know it's normal for people to miss it. And then the patient will say, yeah, it know, it's hard for people to take their medication regularly. I know it's normal for people to miss it. And then the patient will say, yeah, it is kind of hard. Or no, it isn't. I take it every day. So you can either confirm that they take it, or you can find out that they don't take

their medication regularly. And you're not asking them the direct question to put them on a defensive. And these are just basic human tendencies that we're tapping into. So, I mean, you know, you say, is it manipulative? I say, well, anything's manipulative. You know, I'm often asked that when I give lectures and I always ask the person, either male or female, I said, have you ever been out on a first date? Yeah. Well, sir, do you make strange bodily noises on your first date? Well, no, I don't. Ma'am, do you put on a little extra makeup and make sure that you're on your best behavior and you look the best you can? Well, yes, I do. Of course I do. I say, well, isn't that manipulation? Absolutely, that's manipulation. But what you're not, you're not

trying to manipulate somebody. You're trying to put your best foot forward. And what you're trying to do with elicitation techniques is you want to make sure that you have all the information that you need to make a knowledgeable decision. If you do it properly, the person will not know that you're using elicitation techniques on them. They won't know, they don't realize it. It would seem though that, and especially after listening to you or reading your book, that if you know this goes on, that you can defend yourself. You can be on guard against your elicitation techniques so they won't work on me. It's hard to believe, but I can walk into a mall and I can teach my students in a four-hour block of instruction about elicitation.

Then we leave the classroom, we go to the mall, and within three to five minutes of meeting a stranger, they can get their social security number, computer passwords, bank accounts, information, passwords for their computer, their work computer, home computer, everything. And the good thing about this, if we teach people how people get information like that from others, then at least they'll be able to recognize, hey, something's wrong. I recognize this technique as somebody trying to take and get information from me. And that puts the end to it. That inoculates you from being taken advantage of. We're discussing how to get the truth from people, even if they don't think they want to tell you. My guest is Jack Schaefer.

He's a former FBI agent, and the name of his book is The Truth Detector, an ex-FBI agent's guide for getting people to reveal the truth. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

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get your podcasts. So Jack, I would like to think that you would have a hard time getting me to give up my social security number. Yeah, you'd like to think that, but it's going to happen. I doubt it. I told the, you know, I told the student in class, I said, I can get – he was skeptical like you were. And I said, I'll get your social security number. He says, no, you wouldn't. I would never give that up to anybody. Over the course of the class session, I was able to slowly elicit his social security number. And right before we left for the exercise in the mall, I wrote a social security number up on the board. And he says, well, you cheated. I said,

well, in espionage, that's part of the game. How'd you do it? And I was like, well, first thing I told them, you realize that your last four digits of social security number are duplicates. One out of 10,000 people have the same last four social security numbers as you do. So those last four really don't mean much. And so then I told them, you're not going to be too reluctant to give those up because there's five more left. And he readily gave me the last four of his Social Security number. And then we started talking about the first, the middle two, which all they do is state where you got your Social Security number from. It's a holding place.

They're not they don't mean that much. And the first three. And I told them, well, the middle two don't mean much. So I went around to the room. I said, you give up your middle two, right? And the student said, yes, I would, and gave it. Yes, I would give, point to another word. And I got into a rhythm.

And then I pointed to him, and he just blurted out his middle two. And then during the break, I asked him where he lived, where he grew up. He told me the town he grew up in the state. I went to the social security website, found out what numbers issued in that state. And then I got a social security number. And my students were very reluctant. You know, in the class at Western, I was telling them the story about this student. And two of the students were in the following class I had, which was behavioral analysis. And they said, we want you to show us how you get somebody's social security number. I said, okay, you pick the person you want me to

get their social security number. And so they named a student. We got into class. I went through the same routine. He gave up a social security number, and the students were breaking out laughing. They couldn't believe it. And the one student looked at them and said, what are you laughing at? He just gave them your social security number. He says, no, I didn't. I'd never give that up. He said, yes, you did. Wow. Because elicitation is, it's painless. And it's also, I imagine, in the way you ask it, too. I mean, listening to you talk, you sound like an easygoing guy. You're not demanding information. You're just chatting, and it's easy for people to let their guard down

when you talk like the way you talk. Yes, it is. And what I'm doing is taking the techniques that I use to get spies to confess, to get terrorists to confess, to tell me who they're working with, how many more bomb makers are out there, where do you get this from, and tell spies, I want you to work with me against your country. We call that a double agent. So what you want to do is use these techniques to get the information you need so that you can do your job. And likewise, in personal life, you want the information you need so you won't get taken advantage of when you buy something. You won't get taken advantage of when a con man calls you on the phone or talks to you in public. And now you're aware of these techniques and go like, aha, I recognize that technique. Danger, danger. I'm not

going to go there. I'm not going to give any information away. If you would, give me another example or circumstance where you could use this technique. Okay, we were sitting, again, we were on a house hunting trip. The house that we were looking at was right across the street from McDonald's. And I thought to myself, boy, if we buy this house, what kind of problems are we going to have at McDonald's? You know, the kids hanging out in the traffic and they're squealing the tires in and out at night. And I asked a real estate lady. So I said, if we ask her, is there a problem with the noise? She's going to say, well, of course not.

There's no problem here. What I decided to use was elicitation. So I said, geez, I bet those kids get pretty wild on the weekends and keep the neighbors up all night. And, you know, she told me, she says, you know, I really don't know, but here's what I would recommend. You come here on the weekend, you sit here, you check it out. And if it's, if it's noisy, we'll look for another house. So we did, we sat there on the weekend, it was noisy and we looked for another house. But what were we able to determine? Number one, that the lady was honest. She told us the truth before she had a chance to lie. And that's kind of the theme, is we want people to tell us the truth before they have a chance to lie. Because once

people start to lie, then is it harder to get them to tell the truth? Oh yeah, because there's something called the psychological principle of consistency. Once we say something out loud, we articulate it, we have a tendency to stick with what we said. Even if we know it's wrong, we have a tendency to stick with what we said. Because if we admit we're wrong, then that opens us up to anxiety and cognitive dissonance, which then causes us to try to resolve that issue. So it's a lot easier to get that information before somebody articulates a lie. So I know there are other techniques in this solicitation process that you talk about. So give me another one. I'll give you one example where things didn't go as well as I thought they

should. I was in the mall and a student was having trouble getting an age, just a date of birth from a person in the store. And so I told him, go in and use bracketing. In other words, say, you look, you know, between 25, 30 years old, 30, 35 years old. And he said, oh, I don't know how to do it. Can you show me? So I went in and I told the lady, I said, wow, you look to be about my age, what, 45 or 50? She says, no, I'm 35. And I went, oh, okay. And I had to walk out of the store because that kind of soured our whole relationship. But we did get to the truth, didn't we? Yeah, I guess you did. But you weren't going to get much further with her, were you? No, no, because the rapport was ruined.

You know, you could quickly build rapport with people by using three simple techniques. One of them is an eyebrow flash, and that lasts about 1 64th of a second. It's a long-distance signal that says, I'm not a threat. So when we pass one another, we eyebrow flash one another between five to six feet of approaching. And if we eyebrow flash that person, the other person's eyebrow flash one another between five to six feet of approaching. And if we eyebrow flash that person, the other person's eyebrow flashes us. And that signals that we're not a threat. The second thing is a head tilt. You want to tilt your head to the right or to the left. And when you do that, you expose your carotid artery, which is a very sensitive part of your

anatomy. So by doing so, you're saying that I trust that, you know, you will not attack my carotid artery. And if you have dogs, dogs do that when you open the door and they sit there and they tilt their head. All they're doing is saying, you know, I'm not a threat. The other one is a smile. If you smile, people have a tendency to like you because when you do smile, you release endorphins and endorphins

make you feel good so if you smile at somebody they make they make you you know you make them feel good about themselves so they have a tendency to like you so those three non-verbal things you can do to enhance the rapport building process at the beginning of your encounter with people. It is interesting, really, how predictable we are, how we easily fall victim to these techniques. Well, maybe victim isn't the right word, but how we're easily maneuvered by these techniques to give up information. Yeah. And you know, another thing, you know, I read on the internet and then you quote some facts. You say, I read it in the newspaper, I read an article, I read it on the internet. People have a tendency to believe that. So if I'm talking to a salesperson

and I want to know if their problems with the assembly line is going to affect their distribution. Will I get my product on time? So all I'll do is go up to the salesman during the course of the sales pitch and say, geez, I read somewhere on the Internet that you guys are having problems with your assembly line and you're running a little late on your deliveries. And then the person will come back and either say, yes, we are having problems, but deliveries aren't affected, or yes, yeah, we're having a few problems, you know, but we'll get over it.

The quickest way to defend yourself against that is say, where did you read it? Bring me the article. Let me see it. Then I'll comment. So you see how you can use this to defend yourself as well as to get the truth? I think both of those are extremely valuable skills. When you think about these techniques, I mean, they're very unobtrusive in the sense that you're not yelling at people. you're not demanding the truth, you're not, it's very easy, it's very under the radar. You know, and I demonstrate this in my classroom, you know, I teach a bunch of guys, you know,

students that want to be police officers, and they'll say, well, do it like on TV, and yell at them, and threaten them, and confess. I say, no, it doesn't work that way. So I walk up to them, I walk right in front of their desks, and I start yelling at them, say, it doesn't work that way. So I walk up to them. I walk right in front of their desk and I start yelling at them, say, you don't belong in this class. You don't deserve it. You slipped through the cracks. You make a lousy cop. So they get really angry with me. Then about 10 minutes later, I say, hey, can you can you answer this question for me? And they look at me, go like, I'm not answering any more questions for you. What do you think I am? I said, oh, let's stop for a teaching moment here. You start talking to one of your suspects like

that, what's going to happen? They're going to do the same thing you did to me. Shields up and you won't cooperate. And they went, oh, now I get it. Well, now I know next time I want to get the truth out of somebody and I don't think I'm getting it, I can try these techniques rather than, you know, demand the truth and be interesting to see what happens. Jack Schaefer has been my guest. He's a former FBI agent and he is author of the book, The Truth Detector, an ex-FBI agent's guide for getting people to reveal the truth. And you'll find a link to the book in the show notes. Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing that, Jack. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure.

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So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you you get your podcasts. Unless you live in a big city, and maybe even then, when you walk out of your house, you see or hear birds. They're everywhere, doing what birds do, sharing the world with you. Often we don't even notice them, and

mostly they probably don't bother you very much, even though there are probably birds very close to you right now. Birds are fascinating. Some of them are very smart. Why do they seemingly coexist so well with humans? Someone who knows a lot about this is Jennifer Ackerman. She's been writing about science and nature for three decades.

She's the author of eight books, including the bestseller The Genius of Birds, which has been translated into 20 languages. Her articles and essays have appeared in Scientific American, National Geographic, The New York Times, and her latest book is called The Bird Way. Hi, Jennifer. Thank you. It's a real delight to be here. So I know you've been a big fan of birds really since you were very young, yes? I started birdwatching with my father when I was about seven or eight years old. We would go birdwatching on the C&O Canal in Washington, D.C. It was really later as a science writer that I grew curious about what makes birds tick.

How do they communicate? You know, why do they sing so gloriously? And how do they learn their songs? How do they make decisions? What's going on in their minds? And what are they thinking? Are they thinking? And so all of this led me down a path to explore bird intelligence and bird cognition.

Well, it's interesting to me how birds are, I mean, they're everywhere. They're everywhere. And so we hardly notice them because they're everywhere. Yes. You know, they are the most visible form of wildlife around us. But really, you have to pay attention in order to see them. And it's very rewarding. Once you do start to pay attention, the behaviors are

fascinating and they're so diverse. I think that's one of the things that I love about birds is that, you know, there's just an incredible diversity of species, you know, there are more than 10,500 species in the world. And then there's also this incredible diversity of behavior. You know, there are just a whole range of birds that can dance and drum and, you know, build fantastical bowers from sticks. And birds that can literally speak foreign languages and birds that can sing, you know, so beautifully that some of their songs are woven into musical compositions. Are they all related? Yes, and all birds are dinosaurs, which is always a surprise to people because we think of dinosaurs as these big lumbering creatures. But all birds descend from a line of dinosaurs that somehow made it through whatever cataclysmic

event killed off their cousins. So talk about some birds. I mean, I know birds are regional to some extent, but talk about some specific birds that are fairly common that people see and what's so interesting about them. Well, one of my favorite examples is the chickadee, which is pretty common for many of us in the United States. And I think what's remarkable about these birds is that they communicate in ways that resemble language. So the calls of these little birds, these little chickadees, they are considered by scientists to be among the most sophisticated and precise systems of communication in any land animal. You know, like other birds, chickadees, they use certain calls to maintain contact with a mate or announce a nearby food source. But the remarkable language-like calls they use are the ones they use to warn of predators.

And these alarm calls, they specify both the type of predator, whether it's coming from the air or from the land, and also the degree of threat that that predator represents. So for example, a soft high pitched seat alarm call, that signals a threat in the air like a flying shrike or a hawk. And the chickadee-dee-dee call that gives the bird its name, that warns of a perched predator like an owl sitting on a limb. And here's the kicker. The number of those little dee-dee-dees at the end of its call, those indicate the predator's size and hence the degree of threat that it represents. So more DDDs actually means a smaller, more agile, and therefore more dangerous predator. And the really cool thing is that these alarm calls

recruit birds nearby to mob the predator. And other species seem to understand the chickadee's language and they join in the mobbing. So what's it like to be a bird? I mean, you know, when you see birds, they seem pretty happy, but they also seem like they have to work pretty hard to stay hunting to courting, mating, bringing up their young, and also in their travel, in the migrations that they do. They work together. They collaborate. And I think that's a remarkable phenomenon in the natural world. Is most of their behavior driven by instinct or are they smart? Yeah, that's a really good question. And until quite recently, we thought birds were

simple-minded flying automatons, you know, driven solely by instinct and that their brains were so small and primitive, they were really capable of only the simplest mental processes. But we've learned in the last 10 or 15 years that a bird's brain, it's small and it's built in a different way than ours is, but it really is, in fact, a kind of miracle of miniaturization. It's dense with neurons. It's super efficient and it's capable of far more intelligent behavior than we ever imagined, using not instinct, but cognitive skills that are in many ways closer to our primate relatives, like chimps and orangutans, than to their reptilian relatives.

Well, I have some experience with birds in the parrot family, and, you know, parrots can talk. And generally, I think people believe, and I guess it's mostly true, that when parrots talk, they're just mimicking. They don't know what they're saying, which can be pretty funny at times, but they're just mimicking. Yes, and actually there are birds, such as the African gray parrot, that use language and words in meaningful ways, not just in mimicry. The bird that Irene Pepperberg, who's at Harvard, she worked with an African gray parrot named Alex.

And Alex, he knew hundreds of words and he could use them in a meaningful way. So, for example, you could ask Alex, how many green objects are there on this tray full of colored objects? And Alex could tell you two or four or six. And if you asked him what an object was made of, he would pick it up with his beak and feel it with his tongue. And he would say and correctly answer wood or plastic, whatever the object was made of. So this goes way beyond mere mimicry. But that's behavior that's taught. That's not, you know, you can't go to an African gray parrot in the wild and say how many green objects on this tray and get much of an answer. No, that is correct. But the ability to learn in that way is evidence of a very intelligent mind and a flexible mind. You know, the ability to learn

is one of the foundations of cognition. And birds are very good at it. They learn everything from, they learn their songs in the same way that we learn language. They learn how to build their nest. We used to think that nest building was just a hardwired behavior. But birds actually get better at it over time. They learn how to use the right materials, how to pick a good location. And so all of those things are using their minds in ways that are very similar to the way that we use to learn skills ourselves. When birds are singing, and I'm sitting in the backyard listening and hearing all these wonderful musical songs from birds, are they just singing to sing or is every time you hear one, they're communicating with other birds or attempting to send a message? Or do they just sing to sing?

Well, I think the answer is both. It's very interesting. When they sing matters. So birds that sing in the spring are often looking for a mate and they're also establishing their territory. So it's a very direct message to a male to females saying, I'm here. You know, I'd like to mate with you. Come, come check me out. And and saying often to other males, no, this is my territory. You stay out. You know, this is where I'm going to be raising my family and feeding. But there are also other times of year in, and I'm talking really about the northern hemisphere here, things are a little bit different in the southern

hemisphere. But in the northern hemisphere, in the fall, some birds sing, it seems, just for the sheer pleasure of it. You know, I've come across a mockingbird once singing in the middle of a bush. And mockingbirds are wonderful mimics, and they can do many different imitations of different birds. And I thought there were all these different birds in this bush, but it was just a mockingbird, and it was singing really at the top of its lungs for no apparent good reason. There is some evidence that birds actually feel rewarded when they sing a good song. So they have reward pathways in the brain that are very similar to ours, and when they do something well, they experience something related to pleasure. I just saw on Facebook the other day, somebody posted a video of, it looked like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, of zillions of crows descending on a Walmart parking lot.

I don't know if you saw that or not. No, but that's fascinating. You know, crows are among the most intelligent birds. They're a member of the corvid family. And these birds, they have twice as many neurons as primate brains of the same size and four times as many neurons as mammal brains of the same size. So these birds have a lot going on upstairs. And when they, you know, they're very social birds, and they often will, will flock together. And people have told me stories about crows actually gathering in what looks like a funeral or a vigil, because there's a crow that has died for some reason or another. And these birds, you know, gather around it. And it looks a lot like a funeral, but it may just be a way for them to share information about, well, how did this bird die? How do we have a way to similar fate?

So one of the characteristics of birds that we learn from a very early age is that birds fly south for the winter. So talk about that whole thing. Migration and navigation, I think, are one of those fascinating areas in the bird world. You know, many birds migrate huge distances. And they are able to navigate in a way that, you know, is really astonishing when you think about that, you know, they're traveling with a very small brain and no mobile phone. So how do they find their way from one point to another? Well, it turns out that they have a collection of mental tools that are actually the the equivalent of our gps compasses satellite navigation and they use all kinds of information from the environment for they use sun and stars magnetic fields landmark, landmarks, sounds, even smells, all funneled into their brain and

then used to navigate to a particular location. And they can travel from one point in the far northern hemisphere to the far southern hemisphere and arrive just where they want to be within a distance of inches. It's really astonishing. So if you're say in the northeast and the weather starts to get colder and the birds, a lot of the birds disappear, when they come back in the spring, is it the same specific birds coming back to the same specific place most of the time? Absolutely. They return to the same nesting grounds and they winter in the same area. So yes, those birds are likely the same birds that you see coming and going.

Obviously there are changes in generation and that sort of thing, but they may be the very same birds. And one way that we know this is because of birds like hummingbirds actually remember the locations of feeders that people put out. And if they return in April and the feeder isn't hung, they'll just hover around that area waiting until the owner puts the feeder out. So it's clear that this bird has been there before, remembers that there was a food source here and has returned to feed there. Hummingbirds seem to be really different compared to all the other birds in the neighborhood in the sense that I know they're the only bird that can fly backwards. They flap their wings so fast they seem really nervous.

They're very exceptional. You know, they have astonishing flight capacities. You know, they hover like helicopters. They can fly backwards. And the other stunning thing about some hummingbirds is their spatial memory skills. There's a bird called the rufous hummingbird that lives in western North America. And this bird can recall not only the location of a particular flower

that it has fed on, you know, in a vast field of flowers, but it can remember when it fed on that particular flower and returns to it only after the flower has had time to replenish its nectar. So this little hummingbird stores this where and when information about hundreds of flowers in a brain only about the size of a grain of rice. So a question I have about when I lived in the northeast and every winter the birds would disappear because it get it i assumed it gets so cold there that you know they'd freeze to death if they stayed but they don't all go some birds didn't go they there were still birds around in the winter and theoretically they must not have frozen so how come some go and some don't well it's really about food sources. It's, I think, less about temperature

and more about food availability. And there's some species of birds that can find food, like chickadees, for instance. You know, I used to find them in Vermont and New Hampshire in the snow, you know, and they have a way of assessing out food sources in difficult climates. And they, you know, they often operate at high elevations, too. So they're used to finding food in very cold places. There are other species that, you know, they just can't do that. They're not evolved to feed in that way. So they go south to find a more abundant food source in a warmer climate. But in places like Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine, where I have spent time, it can get down to 20 below zero. But the birds don't, I mean, I don't see a lot of dead frozen birds on the highway.

So why don't they freeze? Well, for one thing, they have very high metabolisms. These birds are generating a lot of body heat. And, you know, they live very fast, birds do. And so, you know, they do generate heat. And they expend a lot of energy and generate heat in flight. So that's one thing. You know, there are birds that in their migrations, they cross the Himalayas. So they're

traveling at 20,000 feet at altitude, and it's very cold there. And the air is very thin. And yet these birds are doing, you know, flapping flight up there. Are birds monogamous? Do they stick with one for their life? Well, that has been a misconception for a long time. You know, we used to think that birds were monogamous, you know, they were loyal to their partners. And it turns out that there, yes, there's a handful of species, bald eagles are one that are mute swans or another that are loyal to their mates for a lifetime. But DNA studies show that most birds know they are not loyal to their mates.

A nest will often have eggs that are fertilized by different fathers, even if there's one social father who's tending the nest. What else about birds do I likely not know and that I would probably find pretty fascinating? One of them is that birds, for instance, see color in a completely different way than we do. Their capacity to perceive ultraviolet light enhances their experience of color. So they're really experiencing a whole different dimension of color than we are. And the scientist who studies this told me that compared with birds, we humans are virtually colorblind. So it's a really interesting idea. And, you know, we always thought birds didn't smell, that they had no sense of smell. Well, it turns out that every bird tested so far can detect odors. All the finches and wrens and jays, they can all smell things.

Well, I guess just about everybody has looked up in the sky and seen a bird and thought, I wonder what I wonder what it's like to be a bird. A flying thing seems pretty cool. And now we have a little more insight into what it is like to be a bird. Jennifer Ackerman has been my guest. She is a science writer, and her latest book is called The Bird Way. You'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Jennifer. All right. Thanks so much, Mike. I appreciate the interest. Anyone who's been on a job interview knows it can be tough to talk about yourself.

It can just feel weird. But everybody has to do it. And when you do, there are some words you might want to avoid using, according to the job website The Muse. For example, intelligent. This is one of those words that you want people to say about you, but that you don't really want to say about yourself. Instead, words like logical, quantitative, fast learner, or big picture thinker

might be better. Likeable. For the same reason you don't want to describe yourself as intelligent, you want to avoid words like likeable. That, plus it's tricky to find supporting examples of why you're likeable without sounding weirdly desperate. Instead, use words that you can back up like team player, outgoing, enthusiastic. Successful. You can successfully do something, but you can't just call yourself successful. It's like saying in an interview that you're rich and good-looking. Narrow the focus down from success on a global scale

to success on a more specific skill. Obsessive. Even if you're immensely passionate about your work, you still want to avoid describing this trait or any trait with words that have a negative connotation, like obsessive. Humble It's weird to brag about how humble you are. It just doesn't work.

The more you try to explain how humble you are, the more you wear down your interviewer's trust. And that is something you should know. You know, my mama told me that it's polite and kind to share, and that's certainly true for podcasts. So if you know someone who would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group.

Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family.

But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce.

That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.