New Media Writing Podcast Assignment

According to the podcast on NPR Shortwaves entitled Crows are They Or Just Scary Samart?  hosted by Maddie Sofia., crows are extremely intelligent. Crows are able to remember faces in both negative and positive circumstances. In a study people were sent out wearing a mask and they captured wild crows. Later on, whenever they sent out anyone wearing the pacific mask, both banded and unbanded Crows were shown to alarm call and begin to dive-bomb the person. To test this, they had people wear an upside-down mask. However even this did not work to distract the crows. The conclusion is that Crows are able to learn from their parents and spread the information that a person is dangerous. Regardless of the context, if you do anything to or for Crows, they have good quality long term memory. Crows can learn if a place or person is associated with predatory behavior. Additionally, New Caledonian Crows are able to make tools which is another sign of intelligence. The name of the podcast episode is Bait and Switch and it is hosted by Ira Glass  of This American Life. The podcast has a conversational format and discusses the life experiences of people based on a theme. This Podcast episode is about people using red herring and how it backfires on them. The podcast episode is informative and also has a bit of humor in it.

Red Herring is presenting something as being one thing, when in reality it is another. For instance, when a food and beverage manager at a Holiday Inn decides to create a fake pizza delivery service and it backfires. The motivation was that the food and beverage manager became frustrated with having to prevent pizza delivery people from going to the elevators. Then one day this food and beverage manager came up with a better plan– to trick the guests. There were two problems with the fake pizza delivery service. The pizzas were the wrong size and the uniform. The food and beverage manager picked the type of clothes that one would expect a rodeo clown to wear. The podcast is interesting to listen to and it shows the unintended consequences of deceiving people.