Speaker 1: Pushkin. According to survey, seventy one percent of Republicans and
Speaker 1: fifty five percent of Democrats now regard the opposition party
Speaker 1: as a force leading to national decline. In a world
Speaker 1: gone haywire, sometimes art is the only thing that can
Speaker 1: make sense of it all. Survey after survey has shown
Speaker 1: that Republicans and Democrats now view each other not simply
Speaker 1: as wrong, but as malevolent. This is the Chronicles of Now,
Speaker 1: where we ask writers to dream up short stories inspired
Speaker 1: by the news. I'm Ashley Ford. This family ordinarily does
Speaker 1: not talk about politics, but this campaign in election were different,
Speaker 1: and that's adding a whole other, thick, viscous layer of stress.
Speaker 1: Polarization is nothing new in America, and in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: between pandemic, the recession, and the coming election, things are
Speaker 1: getting really tense out there. Even the simple gesture wearing
Speaker 1: a mosque has become passes on marriages where partners don't
Speaker 1: share well the same political views. There is some treacherous times.
Speaker 1: We are a country divided, and oftentimes that division can
Speaker 1: be seen within one family. That's j Courtney Sullivan. She's
Speaker 1: the author of five novels, and her latest Friends and
Speaker 1: Strangers just hit the New York Times bestseller List. I'm
Speaker 1: always interested in how are the bigger political and world
Speaker 1: events sort of playing out in the lives of everyday people.
Speaker 1: When she turned her attention to America's polarization, her way
Speaker 1: into the topic was through birds. Scientists are out with
Speaker 1: a stark new warning about the disappearance of billions of
Speaker 1: birds in the US and Canada nine, which works out
Speaker 1: to almost three billion birds in less than fifty years.
Speaker 1: Scientists say habitat reduction, pesticides, and cats are the likely
Speaker 1: culprits us. In other words, but like all news today,
Speaker 1: your take on the missing birds likely depends on where
Speaker 1: you heard about it, Fox or CNN, the New York Times,
Speaker 1: or the Daily Caller Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson, which
Speaker 1: got Courtney thinking, you can't know what you are not seeing,
Speaker 1: And I don't think many people in this country are
Speaker 1: getting the full picture, including people in our own families.
Speaker 1: My oldest, clearest memory dates back to the summer my
Speaker 1: sister and I turn mine and our mother brought down
Speaker 1: her mother's copy of the Birds of North America. It
Speaker 1: was not some child's plaything, but a guide for serious
Speaker 1: adult enthusiasts, beautiful with hand painted watercolor illustrations. The book
Speaker 1: was a bribe, and we knew it. It could be
Speaker 1: ours mine and my sisters if we promised not to fight.
Speaker 1: Door and I could never get along. We shared the
Speaker 1: room with the pink wallpaper at the top of the stairs,
Speaker 1: and in that room we bickered, we hollered. She tore
Speaker 1: out a chunk of my hair, and I put a
Speaker 1: pillow over her face while she slept. But our grandmother's
Speaker 1: book intrigued us into behaving, at least for a time.
Speaker 1: We wrote our names inside, right under the spot where
Speaker 1: she had done the same. She died before we were born.
Speaker 1: Our mother had told us how she loved the birds,
Speaker 1: the way they flew free, darting around cows in their
Speaker 1: pens and pastures, lounging on fence posts, asking nothing of her.
Speaker 1: Whenever our mother saw a cardinal through the kitchen window,
Speaker 1: she'd say it was her mother stopping by to say hello.
Speaker 1: Dora and I memorize the birds of North America like
Speaker 1: a book of prayers. Starlings and sparrows and robins, blue jays, blackbirds,
Speaker 1: and warblers. By September we knew them all on site
Speaker 1: ever since. Birds are what we have in common, birds
Speaker 1: and not much else. My sister and I have never
Speaker 1: lived more than three miles apart, but we've gone whole
Speaker 1: years without speaking. Dora started watching what she calls the
Speaker 1: news after Harold died. Among the things, she now believes
Speaker 1: that there is a floor at Mercy Hospital just for
Speaker 1: Mexicans where they get their treatment for free, that Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton runs a sex trafficking ring out of a pizza
Speaker 1: shop in Washington, DC, That people all over this country
Speaker 1: are somehow aborting babies after they're born. Last Thanksgiving, she
Speaker 1: told some whopper and I said that's not true, and
Speaker 1: she said it is. I saw it on the news
Speaker 1: and I said, that's not the news, it's propaganda for
Speaker 1: people who don't know how to think. She walked right
Speaker 1: out of my house, then came back in to get
Speaker 1: the pie she'd brought, and walked out again. I initiated
Speaker 1: the truce stop talking about it, so we don't have
Speaker 1: to stop talking king altogether. But even polite conversation, if
Speaker 1: you make it long enough, comes back around to the
Speaker 1: question of how to be a person in this world.
Speaker 1: I called Dora this morning when I saw the headline,
Speaker 1: three billion fewer birds on this continent now than fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, three billion. Reading it felt like reaching the
Speaker 1: end of a mystery novel and looking back at the
Speaker 1: clues you missed. Anyone who has lived long enough will
Speaker 1: tell you it isn't like it used to be. Remember
Speaker 1: the bats, how they swooped down at sunset? Dora and
Speaker 1: I have asked one another, Remember bird's song in springtime,
Speaker 1: so loud you had to cover your ears to think.
Speaker 1: Remember when a flow of crows flying overhead would dark
Speaker 1: in the afternoon sky. Of course, Dora was horrified when
Speaker 1: I told her about the three billion birds. But when
Speaker 1: I mentioned, not for the first time, the little Swedish
Speaker 1: girl demanding that we fix it all now, or else
Speaker 1: the legacy we leave will be destruction. Dora said, why
Speaker 1: do you make everything political? Some things just are I
Speaker 1: hung up on her. I won't be the one to
Speaker 1: smooth things over this time either. The city of Des
Speaker 1: Moines used to be just that, beyond it, farmland punctuated
Speaker 1: it every here and there by, a tiny town. Now
Speaker 1: the space between places is full of big box stores
Speaker 1: and big identical houses. Either on. My grandson and his
Speaker 1: wife live in I can never remember which driveway is theirs.
Speaker 1: There are no trees anywhere. The lawns are an unnatural
Speaker 1: chemical green cuts short like military haircuts. My grandson's wife
Speaker 1: sends pictures of deer and wild turkeys wandering lost down
Speaker 1: the street. I can't miss what you've never seen. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's why they're not as angry as they should be.
Speaker 1: Makes me want to chain myself to a bulldozer before
Speaker 1: they can plow under one more field. Old age has
Speaker 1: turned me into a radical. Some afternoons, the Cardinal alights
Speaker 1: on a tree branch outside my kitchen window. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of my grandmother, my mother on a good day,
Speaker 1: Dora too. What will happen when the proof that any
Speaker 1: of us was ever here only exists between the pages
Speaker 1: of an old book, the provenance of which no one
Speaker 1: alive can recall. Then later on not even that that
Speaker 1: was proof. By j Courtney Sullivan, the narrator with Cindy
Speaker 1: Catz Hi Courtney Hi Ashley. The first thing I want
Speaker 1: to say, honestly, it is just damn girl. You start
Speaker 1: with a story about sisters bonding over birds, but it
Speaker 1: very quickly morphs into a story about political polarization. And
Speaker 1: then you work in our own oblivion right there at
Speaker 1: the end, and it's about two pages. I'm still recovering. Ah,
Speaker 1: thank you. One of the things that I love about
Speaker 1: this story is that the sisters you know, never really
Speaker 1: did get along, yeah by growing up in the same
Speaker 1: environment except for this bond over birds, and their political
Speaker 1: differences actually seem to have a lot more to do
Speaker 1: with the media. Dora consumes, how much blame do you
Speaker 1: put on media for our extreme political polarization in this country?
Speaker 1: Right now? I want to be fair, you know, fair
Speaker 1: and balanced, as Fox News would say, And I actually
Speaker 1: listen to a lot of conservative talk radio and I
Speaker 1: watch Fox News even though it's probably going to take
Speaker 1: years off my life, because I want to see what
Speaker 1: are both sides saying and what are people hearing. But
Speaker 1: I really believe this, not just because I am a
Speaker 1: left leaning individual, but I truly think that Fox News
Speaker 1: has created so much damage to this culture and continues
Speaker 1: to do so. And I have conservative people in my
Speaker 1: own life whom I love, who are very smart, well
Speaker 1: educated people, and they are still kind of reciting talking
Speaker 1: points that they hear on Fox News, and it's terrifying
Speaker 1: to me. One of the things that I loved about
Speaker 1: this story, you know, beyond the sisters and their relationship,
Speaker 1: is the mention of birds. I'll be honest, I'm a
Speaker 1: bird person, but are you a fellow bird person? When
Speaker 1: this news story came out about three billion fewer birds
Speaker 1: for some reason, I was reading the news stories, but
Speaker 1: I also was reading the comments. They say, never read
Speaker 1: the comments, but when you didn't write it, you can.
Speaker 1: And I was really amazed because there were so many
Speaker 1: commenters telling stories about the birds of their youth, and
Speaker 1: one detail in particular, which I think ended up in
Speaker 1: the story. You know, someone said, remember when the sky
Speaker 1: would just be darkened by a flock of birds going overhead?
Speaker 1: And I thought, I've no, I don't remember that. This
Speaker 1: person is obviously much older than I am. I never
Speaker 1: I never saw that. But I think this idea that
Speaker 1: we can't miss what we don't know exists, we can't
Speaker 1: miss what we've never seen, is very scary when it
Speaker 1: comes to issues of animals and the planet in general.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't fight against what you don't know
Speaker 1: as a problem. Right when I wrote it, I was
Speaker 1: living in Brooklyn, and I guess birds weren't a huge
Speaker 1: part of my life. And we've since moved to the Albany,
Speaker 1: New York area, which is very green, and we have
Speaker 1: so many birds in our yards. Once you start seeing
Speaker 1: them and seeing the variety, it makes you wonder, you know,
Speaker 1: what more there might have been to see. It's immeasurable.
Speaker 1: I think what we lose just by not knowing it
Speaker 1: was there for us, yes, and not knowing it was
Speaker 1: there for us to enjoy. Yes. The sisters seem to
Speaker 1: have suffered a permanent sure in this story, like we
Speaker 1: don't know if they're ever going to talk to each
Speaker 1: other again, but don't we need to be talking to
Speaker 1: the doors of the world? Like that is the position
Speaker 1: of quite a few people, is that if we give
Speaker 1: up on the doras we lose everything. Do you think
Speaker 1: it's too late for that? Are we too divide it
Speaker 1: to come back together? I guess I probably have kind
Speaker 1: of a pessimistic take on this, you know. I do
Speaker 1: often see this sentiment expressed maybe on Twitter, and you know,
Speaker 1: the sense of like, if you have these conservative people
Speaker 1: in your life, you must convince them. And it's really
Speaker 1: difficult because personally I have those people in my life,
Speaker 1: and if you said to my conservative uncle, don't talk
Speaker 1: to Courtney anymore unless she agrees to vote for Trump.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to He's never going to convince me.
Speaker 1: It's really hard because I want to believe that we
Speaker 1: can talk our way to agreement on a lot of
Speaker 1: these things. But honestly, I don't believe it. I mean,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't mean that there aren't important conversations to
Speaker 1: be had. You know, in my own family, even there
Speaker 1: are people who are conservative, but they're young, much younger
Speaker 1: than I am, and they are reasonable, and I see
Speaker 1: hope there. I see hope in having conversations with them,
Speaker 1: because even though they identify as conservative, there's so much
Speaker 1: common ground and they're not okay with what's happening in
Speaker 1: this country in a lot of ways. So to my mind, yes,
Speaker 1: there are conversations to be had, there's common ground to
Speaker 1: be found, and there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: we shouldn't like, let go of or just say forget it.
Speaker 1: We're never going to get there. But there are also
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are just there. They're fully baked,
Speaker 1: and I don't think we're going to get them, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: much as they will never get us. We like the truth.
Speaker 1: I dare on the Chronicles of Now. We enjoy good Courtney,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for that story, and thank you
Speaker 1: for coming on the Chronicles of Now. I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: this common versation me too, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: You can read my full interview with Jay Courtney Sullivan
Speaker 1: on our website Chronicles dot Fm, where you can also
Speaker 1: read the story you just heard and other short fiction
Speaker 1: torn from today's headlines. Our sound designer and composer is
Speaker 1: Bart Warshaw, our producer is Curtis Fox, and our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Emily Rostick. Tyler Cabott is the executive producer
Speaker 1: and founder of Chronicles of NAP for Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Leetel Malaud. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Carly Migliori, Heather Faine, and Eric Sandler for the Chronicles
Speaker 1: of Now podcast. I'm Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening.