Ira Glass

You know what he's not into?

Space.

Was it cool to float around weightless?

No, no, no.

This American Life, unexpected stories, wherever you get your podcasts.

Rebecca remembers exactly when she learned the astonishing truth.

She was in second grade and ran into her best friend Rachel at school one day.

Now, in his day job, what did Ronnie Loeberfeld do?

So when you would actually run into Ronnie Loeberfeld, what was it like for you?

How would you act?

So it's like meeting a celebrity.

But you knew enough to play it cool.

You did play it cool.

One interesting question in all this, why did both girls come to what seems like the least likely conclusion from the evidence in front of them of a parent swapping money for a tooth under a pillow?

Well, Alison Gopnik studies how children think.

And she says, of course, it's logical for a seven-year-old to conclude that her own dad might be the tooth fairy.

There's a certain kind of story that kids tell, like the Ronnie Oberfeld story, where they look at something going on around them, observe it carefully, think about it logically, how one thing connects to the next thing to the next, and then come to conclusions that are completely incorrect.

Therapist Aileen Goldman in Texas tells this story about a little girl on an airplane.

These stories are like jokes, and they're also like poems.

I think because there's this aha quality to them.