Instead of seeing urban animals like crows as vermin, Josh Klein proposes training them to work with us to improve our environment. He built a “crow vending machine” that rewards crows with food if they deposit a coin, trash, or whatever the vending machine is set up to accept. Imagine using crows to clean up an entire stadium after a football game.

I emailed Josh after watching this video and he said he’d love to come speak at the BIL Conference, the conference I organize as a free and open alternative to TED (more on BIL in a later post).