Once A Satirical Conspiracy, Bird Drones Could Soon Be A Reality

Short Wave

NPR

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🗓️ 21 December 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

Millions of people in the U.S. are bird watchers. But a couple of years ago a satirical conspiracy theory gained popularity because of an absurd claim: That those birds were also watching people.

Now, rather than being the stuff of internet memes, some engineers are, in fact, trying to reverse engineer how birds fly to eventually take what they learn to create more efficient bird-like drones.

Today on the show, host Regina G. Barber talks to reporter Anil Oza about how scientists are using real birds to make fake ones.

Want to learn more about innovations in science? Email us at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hey Short Waver's, Regina Barbara here and today we're welcoming back reporter and shortwaiver
0:10.2	Anil Oza.
0:11.2	Hey Anil.
0:11.8	Hi Gina. Okay, what do you got for us today? Today I have a story about some high-tech birds.
0:17.0	Oh, Nil, you and your critters. I love critters, but it's not just me. So many people love birds.
0:23.0	According to the government, somewhere around one in five people in the US are bird
0:26.2	watchers. But a couple of years ago, birds kind of got a bad name and were
0:30.4	getting attention for all the wrong reasons. We're not going to live. If it flies and spies.
0:44.0	If it flies and spies.
0:47.0	Wait, what was that?
0:49.0	This is from what's called a bird truther protest.
0:51.0	It comes from the satirical conspiracy theory that has a pretty provocative
0:55.0	claim that birds aren't real. It was created as a commentary on how misinformation spreads
1:00.8	nowadays, but I know someone that can explain it a lot better than I can.
1:04.0	I've been running a fake conspiracy theory called Birds Aren't Real for the past five years or so,
1:10.0	which posits that the US government killed over 12 billion birds in the
1:14.8	American skies and replaced them with surveillance drone replicas that watch
1:18.7	you and me every day.
1:19.8	Peter Mackin' Do's fake conspiracy theory caught a lot of people's attention,
1:24.0	including news outlets like CBS and Fox,
1:26.3	because of how absurd it was, which was kind of the whole point.
	...

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