A Flock of Two | Radiolab Podcast

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on the increasing use of artificial intelligence in mental health support, highlighting both the potential benefits and limitations of AI-driven therapy tools, which may appear helpful yet lack genuine understanding. It juxtaposes this contemporary phenomenon with a past story about a pet bird that provided emotional support to its owner, exploring themes of connection and the nature of assistance.

Key takeaways

• AI in mental health offers comfort but lacks true understanding, making it the ultimate pep talk without the punch.
• Therapist bots comfort us with words but raise the question: who truly knows us better, algorithms or humans?
• Jim's story shows that trauma can transform lives; sometimes, a simple connection is the saving grace.
• Parroting language may seem artificial, yet it mirrors a deep human need for recognition and empathy.
• Bipolar rage met with avian companionship proves that sometimes, feathered friends can be our best therapists.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Latif Nasser (Guest) · 2 min speaking
• Jad Abumrad (Guest) · 3 min speaking
• Robert Krulwich (Host) · 2 min speaking
• Pat Walters (Guest) · 5 min speaking
• Jim Eggers (Guest) · 6 min speaking
• Irene Pepperberg (Guest) · 2 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Jim Eggers
2. 3:00 – 6:00: Jim Eggers, Raymond Burke
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Jim Eggers, Varietees Bird Shop
4. 9:00 – 12:00: Jim Eggers, Sadie
5. 12:00 – 15:00: Jim Eggers, Sadie
6. 15:00 – 18:00: Irene Pepperberg, Jim Eggers, Flinders University
7. 18:00 – 19:44: Jim Eggers

Notable quotes from "A Flock of Two | Radiolab Podcast"

• JIM EGGERS: I can scream and, go nuts. PAT: Which is kind of a strange gig for a guy like Jim because he has a really hot temper. PAT: What's your—what's technically your…

  about Jim Eggers · at 3:01

• JIM EGGERS: Okay, as far as the... PAT: He'd been reading news reports about sexual abuse in the Catholic church, and for reasons that aren't entirely clear, Jim had become…

  about Raymond Burke · at 5:28

• To a year of probation. Just a few weeks into his probation, something happened that would basically set the story that we're telling about Jim in motion. It's a typical Sunday…

  about Varietees Bird Shop · at 6:28

• A beer, and then she'd ask—tell me stuff Will you get me a beer? made me choke on my coffee. PAT: But a few weeks later, Sadie started imitating Jim. JIM EGGERS: Yeah, she'll…

  about Sadie · at 8:56

• IRENE PEPPERBERG: I'm Dr. Irene Pepperberg, adjunct associate professor at Brandeis University. PAT: She's basically the world's expert on African gray parrots. So I asked…

  about Irene Pepperberg · at 15:19

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Jim Eggers — Person · Main subject (story protagonist) · 28 mentions · first at 2:31
  A St. Louis man with bipolar disorder whose relationship with his African gray parrot (Sadie) appears to help him regulate anger and avoid violent outbursts.
• Irene Pepperberg — Person · Referenced expert (scientist interviewee) · 5 mentions · first at 15:17
  Provides scientific context on African gray parrots, explaining how parrots can learn phrases via association without understanding semantics.
• Raymond Burke — Person · Referenced public figure (incident trigger) · 1 mention · first at 5:31
  Named as the local archbishop whom Jim threatened, leading to police involvement and probation—an important turning point before Jim gets Sadie.

Companies & orgs

• Flinders University — Company · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at 15:17
  The university where Dr. Irene Pepperberg, an expert on African gray parrots, is affiliated.
  IRENE PEPPERBERG: I'm Dr. Irene Pepperberg, adjunct associate professor at Brandeis University. PAT: She's basically the world's expert on African gray parrots. So I asked…
• Varietees Bird Shop — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 6:38
  A bird shop where Jim Eggers acquired his African gray parrot, Sadie.

Products & tech

• Sadie — Product · Case study · 3 mentions · first at 9:08
  An African gray parrot that helps Jim Eggers manage his bipolar disorder by mimicking calming phrases.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 LATIF NASSER: Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser. So recently you may have seen just a rash of headlines about people using artificial intelligence for their mental health. There are all these therapist bots, and just even people using regular chatbots to help them find solutions to their problems, to calm them down, to just looking for somebody even just to listen. And I don't know, I'm not sure what to think of any of it for a lot of different reasons, but partially because the AI doesn't know anything. It's just taking an unimaginable amount of our words, scrambling them up and generating something relevant and helpful, and maybe even intelligent seeming, but it doesn't actually know what any of those words mean. Ultimately, all it's doing is parroting our language back at us, and yet I know a lot of people find it very helpful to talk to.

1:01 LATIF: All of that got me to thinking about a very different story that we made here at the show years ago. A story where similarly, a person who needs help is helped by something. And it's unclear if that something really knows how it's helping or whether it's helping. We originally aired this back in 2011, so it was years before ChatGPT, but it's sort of a low tech way of doing the same thing, of parroting your language back to you to help you. LATIF: So today, I want to play that story for you. Here it is, "A Flock of Two."

1:39 [RADIOLAB INTRO] JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich. JAD: This is Radiolab, the podcast. ROBERT: And we're going to St. Louis. JAD: Yeah. Nice. Nice and direct. This comes from our producer Pat Walters. It's the story of a rescue—a double rescue, really. It's one we've been wanting to tell for a while. ROBERT: Pat Walters. PAT WALTERS: So a few months ago I went to St. Louis because I'd heard this story about a guy who had this pet that basically saved his life. And the pet... [whistles] PAT:... is a bird. It's about this guy named Jim Eggers.

2:34 JIM EGGERS: Oh, I'm—you're recording? PAT: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna record. JIM EGGERS: Okay, because I wasn't including him in this. PAT: And in 2005, Jim was living by himself in a little apartment in St. Louis. JIM EGGERS: Working in the Halloween industry. PAT: It was the winter, so Jim had just finished up his latest season at the local haunted house. JIM EGGERS: I've done the Halloween stuff for 19 years. PAT: What do you do? JIM EGGERS: Most of the time I've been in costumes and so forth or wear masks. PAT: You know, like jumping out from behind dark corners and scaring people.

3:01 JIM EGGERS: I can scream and, you know, go nuts. PAT: Which is kind of a strange gig for a guy like Jim because he has a really hot temper. PAT: What's your—what's technically your diagnosis? JIM EGGERS: I have a bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies, and what that pretty much is is when I'm having a mood swing or what not, I can become extremely dangerous and violent. PAT: While I was there he was totally calm, but Jim tells me that once he feels a mood swing start coming on... JIM EGGERS: It feels like real strange and tingly. PAT:... it might just be a few seconds before... JIM EGGERS: All of a sudden— boom! Here you are like the Incredible Hulk. PAT: Yeah. Have you ever—have you ever physically attacked someone and hurt them? JIM EGGERS: Yeah.

3:48 PAT: Jim's known around his neighborhood for just losing it from time to time. He shouts at people on the street, punches dents in people's cars. One time he even poured hot coffee from a second-story window onto his neighbor's head. JIM EGGERS: I'd go off on people. And it's horrible. PAT: And if you ask Jim, he'll tell you this all goes back to when he was seven. JIM EGGERS: At the age of seven I lost my kid brother in the Mississippi River. I saw him drown. And... PAT: You saw—you saw him drown? JIM EGGERS: Yeah. I witnessed him drowning. We wandered away from home. We were not properly supervised by my parents. And I told my brother not to go over into the river because it was deep. He didn't listen to me, and then the currents dragged him down. I saw him bob up and down three times, and the third time he didn't come back up. And I was pleading with God, you know, crying, "Please bring him back. I'm gonna be in trouble." PAT: And when Jim's parents found out,

4:48 they blamed him. JIM EGGERS: You know, it was my fault my brother drowned. I should've been—I should've saved him. And then other times they told me that, you know, they wish it was me that died instead of my brother. PAT: And then when he was 16, Jim's mom threw him out of the house. PAT: She just said one day, "Get out, Jim?" JIM EGGERS: Yeah. And she said she didn't want me over there anymore. Get out. PAT: After that, Jim's life kind of spiraled out of control. He ended up living on the streets for years, and just getting angrier and angrier at everyone around him. And then in 2005, which is where our part of the story begins, Jim did something that got him in very serious trouble. PAT: Tell me about the archbishop situation.

5:28 JIM EGGERS: Okay, as far as the... PAT: He'd been reading news reports about sexual abuse in the Catholic church, and for reasons that aren't entirely clear, Jim had become convinced that the local archbishop... JIM EGGERS: Archbishop Raymond Burke. PAT:... was involved in covering this stuff up. JIM EGGERS: Bailing out priests that have sexually assaulted children and so forth. And one day... PAT: He was watching the news and he saw Burke on there... JIM EGGERS: Like on the 12 o'clock news. PAT:... talking about something. Can't remember what. JIM EGGERS: And at that point I snapped, and picked a phone, dialed the archdiocese, asked them to connect me to his office, which like idiots they did. And when they did I told him, you know, I ought to come down and kill you. I said, "I may even do that Sunday." PAT: A couple hours later, Jim went out to run some errands. JIM EGGERS: And when I head out

6:21 the door, here were the police. PAT: Jim ended up getting sentenced to a year of probation. Just a few weeks into his probation, something happened that would basically set the story that we're telling about Jim in motion. It's a typical Sunday morning and Jim's at church, and he runs into this couple. JIM EGGERS: These people that owned Varietees Bird Shop in Valley Park. The husband stopped me and said, "Well, we know where you can get an African gray parrot." And they told me that she came with a cage. I said...

6:51 PAT: Why—why would they approach you? JIM EGGERS: Well, I was putting $100 aside every month to pay for a baby African gray parrot. PAT: And you have to understand that Jim is kind of an animal nut. He's had... JIM EGGERS: Dogs. PAT: And cats. JIM EGGERS: And guinea pigs, and stuff like that. PAT: His whole life. JIM EGGERS: Never a bird. PAT: But when Jim read about these African gray parrots, he became kind of obsessed with getting one. JIM EGGERS: Because I knew they were highly intelligent, and they were a lot of fun. PAT: So when the bird shop people came up to Jim and said, "We can get you an African gray parrot"...

7:22 JIM EGGERS: And she comes with a cage for $550. PAT:... Jim thinks to himself, "That's like half what I was gonna pay." So he says... JIM EGGERS: You know, I'll go ahead and take it. PAT: Yeah. JIM EGGERS: Because it was too good of a deal to pass up. PAT: There was a catch, though. The bird wasn't at the shop. It was being sold by this local kid who was just trying to get rid of her. JIM EGGERS: I went over there and she looked absolutely horrible because this kid didn't take care of her. PAT: She's about a foot tall. JIM EGGERS: You want some peanut butter?

7:50 PAT: Had a black beak. JIM EGGERS: Pretty yellow eyes, too. PAT: Piercing yellow eyes. JIM EGGERS: Bright red tail feathers. PAT: But when Jim first saw her... JIM EGGERS: Oh, she didn't have any flight feathers in her left wing. PAT: Because she'd torn all of them out. JIM EGGERS: Yeah, she was plucking her feathers. PAT: Which is this awful thing birds do when they get really stressed. JIM EGGERS: And I mean, she looked horrible. I almost wanted to say no after I saw her. PAT: But he knew he couldn't just leave her there. So he paid the kid. JIM EGGERS: Took her home and give her lots of loving and care, and within, like, three days she bowed her head.

8:30 That means she pretty much bonded with me. About, like, the third week I owned her, I was in another room on the telephone. And she's like, "Hey, Jim. Do you want a beer?" And it's like, "I don't drink beer." PAT: She would say that to you? JIM EGGERS: Yeah, she asked me if I wanted a beer, and then she'd ask—tell me stuff like, "Will you get me a beer?" You know, made me choke on my coffee. PAT: But a few weeks later, Sadie started imitating Jim. JIM EGGERS: Yeah, she'll impersonate a little chuckle that I do. It's like, "Heh, heh." It's even better than Elmo could laugh.

9:23 PAT: And as Sadie spent more time with Jim, she learned to say words and phrases. And then one day... JIM EGGERS: Several weeks after I had her... PAT:... something kind of wonderful happened. JIM EGGERS: I came home, and I was, like, in a really bad mood. You know, I knew I had to do something. PAT: One of those moments when Jim could just feel he was about to lose control. JIM EGGERS: So I was trying to talk myself into calming down. PAT: What would that—what would that sound like? JIM EGGERS: I was talking to myself and telling myself, "Calm down. You'll be okay. Everything's fine." You know? And, you know, "It's not so bad." PAT: And then...

9:56 JIM EGGERS: She started repeating it. PAT: "Hey, calm down. You'll be okay. Everything's fine." JIM EGGERS: Exactly. PAT: Just like Jim was saying. JIM EGGERS: Word for word. And I was like, "Wow!" And then it's like, that's gives me an idea. PAT: Jim started rewarding Sadie every time she said something that might help calm him down. Like, you know... JIM EGGERS: "You'll you'll be okay." PAT: Treat. JIM EGGERS: "Everything's fine. It's not as bad as you think." PAT: Treat. JIM EGGERS: "Shut up." PAT: Treat. JIM EGGERS: "I don't want to hear it" PAT: Treat. JIM EGGERS: "I love you, Jim." And she'll make a kissing sound. PAT: Treat treat.

10:26 JIM EGGERS: It just goes on and on and on. PAT: So Jim went online and actually found this special kind of cage that you can carry around on your back. JIM EGGERS: Then I took her with me just everywhere. PAT: He even got her registered as a service animal, kind of like a seeing-eye dog. JIM EGGERS: I mean, everywhere. PAT: Wait, where would you go with her? JIM EGGERS: I've taken her into churches. I've taken her aboard the public buses. Take her to the gym, yes. I've even taken her into, like, a couple of casinos through here. PAT: And Jim and Sadie had a pretty good situation. When Jim started feeling himself get mad, he'd tell himself, "Calm down," and Sadie would repeat him. But then one day a few years ago, Sadie did something that went beyond mimicry. LATIF: That's right after this break.

11:15 LATIF: Just before the break, Jim and his parrot Sadie were developing this relationship where she would help him calm down when he was about to lose control. PAT: A few years ago, Sadie did something that went beyond mimicry. Jim says he doesn't exactly remember the first time it happened... JIM EGGERS: I can't think of anything right now because I'm, like, blanking out. PAT:... but it probably went something like this: Jim's just out in the neighborhood one day. He's got Sadie in her little backpack cage. JAD: Uh-huh. PAT: And something happens that sets Jim off. I don't know, a car cuts him off at the crosswalk. And immediately, Jim starts getting that tingly feeling.

11:53 JAD: Yeah. PAT: And then in this split second fraction of a moment before Jim starts to talk himself down like he does... JAD: Calm down, Jim. Calm down. PAT:... he hears, "Calm down, Jim" from Sadie. JIM EGGERS: Exactly. JAD: She says it first? PAT: Yeah. JAD: Wow! PAT: Like, she—she knew what was in his mind or inside him, like, before he even did anything. JIM EGGERS: Yeah, she knows. She—she can sense that. JAD: How do you suppose that was happening? I mean, was she... PAT: I don't know. I mean, Jim thinks maybe she can, like, feel a change in the way he's moving. JIM EGGERS: You know, I have, like, body tremors when I'm starting to really get furious. PAT: Maybe Sadie can pick up on those tremors.

12:35 And Jim says this just kept happening. JIM EGGERS: She does it all the time. And, you know, it makes you stop to think. If I would go off on a person or something like that, you know, I wouldn't have any remorse or anything. But I mean, it's just a little innocent animal. PAT: That seemed to know him in this really intimate way. Which kind of blew my mind. JAD: Yeah. PAT: But Sadie didn't do it while I was there, so I left Jim this tape recorder and I asked him to try to get something like this on tape just so I could prove it to people. JIM EGGERS: Hello, my name is James Eggers, and I'm standing here with my parrot, Sadie. She's standing here right next to me on her little perch. Sadie, say something. You gonna say something to the—you gonna say something to the microphone, huh? PAT: A week or so later I got the tape back.

13:30 JIM EGGERS: What do you have to say? PAT: And Sadie was on there saying all kinds of things like, "Hello." JIM EGGERS: Hello. SADIE: Hello. PAT: She said her name. SADIE: Sadie. PAT: She said, "Good girl." SADIE: Good girl. PAT: Things that I could imagine Jim saying to her. SADIE: Cootchie cootchie cootchie cootchie. JAD: But did you ever get a sense from anything she said that there was a kind of weird intuitive exchange happening or something? PAT: Not really. But I thought if it happens as often as Jim says it happens that someone in his neighborhood must have seen it.

13:59 JAD: Yeah. PAT: So I called this woman who runs a coffee shop around the corner from his house, asked her if she'd seen it. She hadn't. JAD: Oh. PAT: And then I figured I could call the company that runs the buses and the trains that Jim rides every day, thinking that maybe one of their drivers would've seen him get upset about something. JAD: And? PAT: Nothing. And then I called Jim's best friend Larry, and I figured if anyone has seen this it would be Larry because he's around him, like, all the time. And he hadn't either. JAD: Huh.

14:22 PAT: So I called Jim to ask if I was, like, missing anybody. He didn't answer, so I left a message. Left another message. And then finally... JIM EGGERS: Hello? PAT: Hi, Jim! PAT:... I got him on the phone. PAT: It's Pat again. JIM EGGERS: [sighs] Yeah, go ahead. PAT: Um, it seems like nobody else has ever seen her or heard her say those kinds of things to you. JIM EGGERS: No. She definitely has said those, but I mean, she's not gonna say the same thing every time she talks to me. PAT: Right. But has anyone ever seen her talk you down from being mad? JIM EGGERS: No, because most of the time people aren't around me when I'm having a mood swing.

15:08 PAT: Hmm. PAT: I started to wonder, like, is this the kind of thing a parrot is even capable of? So I decided to check. IRENE PEPPERBERG: Hello. PAT: I called a scientist. IRENE PEPPERBERG: I'm Dr. Irene Pepperberg, adjunct associate professor at Brandeis University. PAT: She's basically the world's expert on African gray parrots. So I asked her... PAT: Have you—have you ever heard of anything like this before? IRENE PEPPERBERG: Not exactly, but it doesn't surprise me. PAT: In fact, Irene told me that something kind of similar had happened to her once with this parrot named Alex that she worked with for, like, decades. Irene told me that whenever Alex would get out of line...

15:48 IRENE PEPPERBERG: Preening instead of working, or butting in with the other birds when he should be quiet so that we could train them, we'd say to him, "Calm down. Just calm down." And one time I come storming into the laboratory because I've just come from a horrible faculty meeting when I was in Tucson. PAT: Uh-huh. IRENE PEPPERBERG: And Alex takes one look at me and he says, "Calm down." PAT: Really? IRENE PEPPERBERG: Yeah. And I actually stormed off and I said something to the effect of, "Don't you tell me to calm down," and I went into my office and slammed the door. PAT: And Irene says that a parrot like Alex or Sadie probably doesn't know... IRENE PEPPERBERG: What "calm down" means or "You'll be okay, Jim." She may not know what each of those little phrases mean...

16:28 PAT: But she knows that when she says "calm down" Jim calms down. IRENE PEPPERBERG: So she has learned from association that that will bring her flock mate back to normal. PAT: Which is a big deal for parrots, Irene says, because they're prey, so they're constantly looking out for each other, trying to keep from getting eaten. And in Sadie's case... IRENE PEPPERBERG: She's in a flock of two at this point, so if she wants to feel comfortable while preening or eating, she needs to know that he's gonna be watching out for her. PAT: Mm-hmm.

16:57 IRENE PEPPERBERG: Remember, she doesn't have a big flock. She just has him. JAD: Wow. So in the end, what do you make of all this? PAT: Well I mean, I can't prove that she does the things Jim says she does, but on the other hand, everyone I talked to around Jim says that whatever is happening between them is keeping him from threatening people on the street, from punching dents in people's cars. It's just keeping him a better guy. JAD: Yeah. PAT: So maybe it doesn't matter. JIM EGGERS: I don't care if anybody believes me or not, you know? It's not—I'm not here to prove anything to anybody. That's not the point. The point is I know what she does and that is that.

17:54 JIM EGGERS: Say "Hello." Not burp. No, don't eat. No eat. SADIE: Cootchie cootchie cootchie cootchie. Cootchie cootchie cootchie coo. ROBERT: Thanks to Pat Walters. JIM EGGERS: Come on, fly home. JAD: And to Sadie. SADIE: Hello! JIM EGGERS: Good girl. JAD: And to Jim. ROBERT: Yep. JIM EGGERS: Sadie, what you looking at, huh? She's got her eyes focused on me and trying to figure out what you—what you're doing with the mic. PAT: I bet, yeah.

18:34 [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Jonathan, and I'm from St. Louis, Missouri. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Rebecca Laks, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Anisa Vitsa, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, Jessica Yung. With help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujol-Mazini and Natalie Middleton.]

19:25 [LISTENER: Hi, I'm Danielle from Madrid. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "A Flock of Two | Radiolab Podcast"?

Latif Nasser (Guest), Jad Abumrad (Guest), Robert Krulwich (Host), Pat Walters (Guest), Jim Eggers (Guest), Irene Pepperberg (Guest).

What is "A Flock of Two | Radiolab Podcast" about?

The discussion centers on the increasing use of artificial intelligence in mental health support, highlighting both the potential benefits and limitations of AI-driven therapy tools, which may appear helpful yet lack genuine understanding. It juxtaposes this contemporary phenomenon with a past story about a pet bird that provided emotional support to its owner, exploring themes of connection and…

What is mentioned in this Radiolab episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Jim Eggers, Irene Pepperberg, Sadie, Raymond Burke, Flinders University, Varietees Bird Shop. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "A Flock of Two | Radiolab Podcast"?

The episode runs 20 min; the transcript is about 3,533 words in 29 timestamped sections.

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