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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Imagine there's a place someone like a window open.

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Speaker 1: Imagine there's a place in our world where the known

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Speaker 1: things go. A corridor of the mind lined with metal

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Speaker 1: file cases, stocked with dead birds, lined up in rows, yellow, lime, green, blue,

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Speaker 1: flame red like gems in a jewel case. This place,

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Speaker 1: this aviary, stores the facts that matter and matters of fact.

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Speaker 1: It lies in a time between now and then. The

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Speaker 1: sign on the door reads the last Archive. Step outside

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Speaker 1: to a house in Silver Spring, Maryland, in the year

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, Rachel Carson, a nature writer, had just

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Speaker 1: started work on a new book. She hadn't decided what

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Speaker 1: to call it yet, but she knew what she wanted

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Speaker 1: to say. People all over the country bird lovers noticed

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Speaker 1: something in nineteen fifty eight. When spring came, the birds

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Speaker 1: didn't come. The robins didn't come. The tufted titmis didn't come,

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Speaker 1: the songbirds, the shore birds. There were just very few birds.

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Speaker 1: Carson threw herself into a world of research, even though

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Speaker 1: she was busy, exhausted. She was taking care of both

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Speaker 1: her adopted son, a six year old boy named Roger,

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Speaker 1: and her eighty nine year old mother, who was dying.

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Speaker 1: Carson read and she researched all summer. That fall, the

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Speaker 1: postman brought a package to her door, a gift for Roger.

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Speaker 1: It was a vinyl record, American Bird Songs, Volume one.

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Speaker 1: Here are the songs and calls of sixty familiar birds

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Speaker 1: as recorded in the woods, fields and gardens of North

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Speaker 1: America the Laboratory of Ornithology at Carnell University. Some of

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Speaker 1: the birds are widely distributed, others are restricted to special habitat.

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Speaker 1: Roger listened to this record over and over. Carson sat

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Speaker 1: down to write a thank you note to the sender.

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Speaker 1: One of our actors is going to read it. But

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Speaker 1: let me just say first that I've listened to recordings

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Speaker 1: of the actual Rachel Carson, who has sort of an

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Speaker 1: odd voice, and this really is what she sounds like,

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Speaker 1: so much so that it gives me the chills. The

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Speaker 1: record of bird Song that came Friday gave Roger the

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Speaker 1: greatest delight, First the thrill of receiving a package by mail,

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Speaker 1: then the pleasure in the record itself. He has a

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Speaker 1: very sweet feeling for all living things and loves to

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Speaker 1: go out with me and look and listen to all

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Speaker 1: that goes on. I know he will have great pleasure

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Speaker 1: in recognizing the song from this record, First the mocking

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Speaker 1: bird that still pours his song down our chimney, then

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Speaker 1: the cardinals that begin to whistle in January, and all

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Speaker 1: the rest. There was a special and unheralded thrill for

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Speaker 1: me in the record. During the song of the wood peewee,

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Speaker 1: I heard in the background the unmistakable voice of the veery,

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Speaker 1: not once, but several times. Of all, the bird song

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Speaker 1: that has the quality of purest magic for me, considered

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Speaker 1: America's foremost songbird is the hermit thrush, now singing from

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Speaker 1: a balsam spire in the Adirondack Mountains. How do you

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Speaker 1: even record a hermit thrush atop a balsam spire in

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Speaker 1: the Adirondack Mountains? And what happened to the birds in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight? Welcome to the last Archive, the show

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Speaker 1: about how we know what we know and why it

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Speaker 1: seems lately as if we don't know anything anymore. A

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Speaker 1: while ago, when I was researching an essay about Rachel

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Speaker 1: Carson for The New Yorker, I got completely lost in

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Speaker 1: these recordings of bird songs. Carson was writing a book

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Speaker 1: while Roger played these thirty threes, over and over again.

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Speaker 1: It was called Silent Spring, and it changed the world.

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Speaker 1: But I can't shake the feeling that if you're writing

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Speaker 1: sound Spring now, nothing would change. Carson is to me

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Speaker 1: a kind of canary in a coal mine, a warning.

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Speaker 1: People were able to listen to her then and to

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Speaker 1: act on what she said in a way that people

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Speaker 1: don't listen to warnings and act on them these days

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Speaker 1: until it seems it's too late. This season, we've been

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Speaker 1: trying to solve a Who've done it? Who killed Truth?

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Speaker 1: And this might sound nuts, but I decided to do

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Speaker 1: what I thought maybe Carson would do. She would ask

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Speaker 1: the birds next, the veries descending spirals. Rachel Carson was

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Speaker 1: born in western Pennsylvania in nineteen oh seven on a

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Speaker 1: sixty five acre farm along the Allegheny River. Her mother

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Speaker 1: took her for long walks, teaching her the names and

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Speaker 1: songs of all the birds. This is almost always how

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Speaker 1: it works, parent to child, the passing on of a

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Speaker 1: body of knowledge. All her life, Carson was fascinated by birds.

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Speaker 1: Wherever Carson went, she'd listen, and then there were the

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Speaker 1: sounds of other smaller birds, the rattling call of the

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Speaker 1: kingfisher that perched between forays after fish on the posts

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Speaker 1: of the dock, the call of the phoebe that nested

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Speaker 1: under the eaves of the cabin, the red starts that

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Speaker 1: foraged in the birches on the hill behind the cabin,

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Speaker 1: and forever, it seemed to me asked each other the

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Speaker 1: way to wiscast it, for I could easily twist their

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Speaker 1: syllables into the witch's wiscassette witch's wiscassette. The oven bird

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Speaker 1: sometimes called teacher bird from its song. People have always

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Speaker 1: listened to birds, and they've been trying to write down

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Speaker 1: their songs for thousands of years. A lot of birds,

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Speaker 1: like the cuckoo or the chickadee, are named after the

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Speaker 1: songs they sing. The first person to try to render

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Speaker 1: birdsong in musical notation did that in the year sixteen fifty.

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Speaker 1: Eighteenth century scholars then tried to understand birdsong not as

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Speaker 1: music but as language, and people started trying to record

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Speaker 1: the sound of birds in eighteen eighty nine, almost as

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Speaker 1: soon as the phonograph was invented. As a little girl,

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Speaker 1: Chursen kept a list of birds, writing them down in

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Speaker 1: a notebook when she spotted them. Counting birds making bird

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Speaker 1: lists had just become a hobby in the United States.

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Speaker 1: Bird enthusiasts hoped this hobby would replace bird hunting because

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Speaker 1: people had begun to notice that certain species of birds

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Speaker 1: were disappearing, especially one, the passenger pigeon a dove. In

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Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, over North America, flocks of passenger pigeons

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Speaker 1: rushing across the sky could block out the sun for

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Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours. The flocks were huge, some

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Speaker 1: estimated more than two hundred miles long. You could knock

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Speaker 1: passenger pigeons out of the sky with a stick by

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Speaker 1: the dozens. People ate pigeon pot pie, broiled pigeons, roast pigeons,

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Speaker 1: stuffed pigeon, you get the idea. They gorged on pigeons.

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Speaker 1: By the middle of the nineteenth century, shooting passenger pigeons

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Speaker 1: had become a sport. In eighteen sixty nine, one hunter

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Speaker 1: made a bet that he could kill five hundred in

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Speaker 1: a single day. Took him only nine hours. Hunters would

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Speaker 1: ride wagons out to pigeon nesting sites and slaughter them

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Speaker 1: by the thousands, then ship the carcass as to cities

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Speaker 1: by train on ice cars. You could make a lot

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Speaker 1: of money shooting passenger pigeons, or you could just do

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Speaker 1: it for practice. Dead birds became a fashion. Like fur coats.

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Speaker 1: Women wore bird feathers on their hats, and sometimes whole birds, terns, herons, gulls, egrets.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty six, an ornithologist in New York counted

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Speaker 1: the birds on women's hats. He spotted one hundred and

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Speaker 1: seventy four birds from forty species in just two days. Finally,

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Speaker 1: by eighteen ninety, people began to notice the passenger pigeons

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Speaker 1: had disappeared. Spring came and the flocks didn't come back.

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Speaker 1: Some people thought they'd migrated to Argentina or something. Those

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Speaker 1: are the bird, declined denialists, but most people weren't denialists.

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Speaker 1: Newspaper writers began to lament this sad passing their children

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Speaker 1: would never know a passenger pigeon. Toronto Globe and Mail,

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Speaker 1: June thirtieth, nineteen hundred. The present generation knows little or

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Speaker 1: nothing of wild pigeons except by hearsay, and is apt

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Speaker 1: to scoff at the stories of old timers when they

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Speaker 1: tell of the enormous flocks of these beautiful birds that

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Speaker 1: numbered millions and fairly darkened the face of the sun

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Speaker 1: in their flight, or actually broke down large lines of

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Speaker 1: trees when they sit on it. Some people tried to

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Speaker 1: do something. They founded the first conservation movements, the Audubon Society,

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Speaker 1: the American Ornithologists Union. I believe you have an announcement

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Speaker 1: to make. They held gatherings like this one. On December ninth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen o nine in New York, someone proposed a reward

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Speaker 1: of one hundred dollars for a freshly killed passenger pigeon.

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Speaker 1: The idea was to preserve it for posterity or for science,

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Speaker 1: or both, but people still had misgivings about killing birds,

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Speaker 1: even for sciences. You have something to say, Indeed, sir,

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Speaker 1: I would not kill a specimen for one thousand dollars,

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Speaker 1: even to prove that I had seen one. And I

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Speaker 1: wish that everyone else feels as I do. All offers

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Speaker 1: for skins or dead birds ought to be withdrawn because

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Speaker 1: at the present crisis, these might result in killing the

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Speaker 1: last pair. Yes, I wish to withdraw my offer of

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Speaker 1: one thousand dollars for a freshly killed passenger pigeon. Well,

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Speaker 1: then why not let your offer stem for the location

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Speaker 1: of a live specimen. I would gladly give two hundred

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Speaker 1: dollars for that. I am authorized to offer the following

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Speaker 1: award three hundred dollars for first information of a nesting

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Speaker 1: pair of wild passenger pigeons undisturbed. Once they finally got organized,

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Speaker 1: bird lovers would go on to have a lot of influence.

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Speaker 1: But for the passenger pigeon, it came to eight Boston Globe,

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Speaker 1: December eighteenth, nineteen ten. One solitary passenger pigeon, ending her

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Speaker 1: life at the Zoological Garden in Cincinnati, is today all

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Speaker 1: that remains of an American species that early in the

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Speaker 1: last century swarmed over the continent in flocks numbering billions.

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Speaker 1: Her name was Martha. When Rachel Carson was seven years old, Martha,

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Speaker 1: the last passenger pigeon, died The next year, eight year

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Speaker 1: old Rachel wrote her very first story. It's about a

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Speaker 1: pair of friends looking for a house. She kept on

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Speaker 1: writing and writing about birds. Countless discoveries made the day memorable.

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Speaker 1: The bob White's nest tightly packed with eggs, the oriole's

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Speaker 1: aerial cradle, the framework of sticks which the cuckoo calls

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Speaker 1: a nest, and the lichen covered home of the humming

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Speaker 1: bird Carson went to college and then in nineteen thirty

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Speaker 1: two to graduate school, enrolling in a PhD program at

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Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins studying zoology, but after a few years she

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Speaker 1: had to drop out to take a job to feed

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Speaker 1: her family. She never married, but during the depression she

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Speaker 1: supported her parents and her sister and brother and their

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Speaker 1: kids too. She started working for what became the US

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Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service, mainly writing reports and producing a

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Speaker 1: radio program. She kept on thinking about birds, though, and

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Speaker 1: so do a lot of other people. During the Second

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Speaker 1: World War, the BBC tried to keep up its own

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Speaker 1: long standing tradition of broadcasting bird song over the radio

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Speaker 1: to help people keep calm and carry on. But in

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Speaker 1: this recording you can hear the sound of Royal Air

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Speaker 1: Force bombers flying above the birds. After the war, Rachel

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Speaker 1: Carson wrote a beautiful, stirring study of the sea. The

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Speaker 1: Sea Around Us, appeared in The New Yorker as a

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Speaker 1: profile of the Sea, the New Yorker's first ever profile

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Speaker 1: of something other than a person who won a National

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Speaker 1: Book Award, who was on the New York Times bestseller

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Speaker 1: list for a record breaking eighty six weeks. She bought

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Speaker 1: a little summer house in Maine, where she wrote another bestseller,

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Speaker 1: The Edge of the Sea. In nineteen fifty five. She

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Speaker 1: was still taking care of all her family, her mother

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Speaker 1: and niece, and her niece's little boy, Roger. That year,

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Speaker 1: Carson took Roger for a walk in the woods. He

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Speaker 1: was three. Roger went along to listen for veeries, his

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Speaker 1: first bird walk, I guess, and I'd like to have

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Speaker 1: had a movie. He was told we'd have to be quiet,

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Speaker 1: so he tiptoed along the path with elaborate caution, talking

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Speaker 1: in a loud whisper. He seemed to find the whole

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Speaker 1: experience very exciting. Roger's still around. My producer Ben, and

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Speaker 1: I'd drove out to his house to meet him and

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Speaker 1: his wife, Wendy and their old yellow lab. I came

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Speaker 1: to talk about birds and about that album A Bird

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Speaker 1: Song had come in the mail in nineteen fifty eight.

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Speaker 1: And would you any more microphones? Yeah? I see that.

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Speaker 1: I shouldn't have even bothered with the recording. Roger's in

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Speaker 1: the recording business. That's why his house is full of microphones.

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Speaker 1: But as for birds, he never got the bug the

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Speaker 1: way Rachel Carson did. She tried very hard, but you know,

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Speaker 1: the truth is I was a little boy, and you

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Speaker 1: know I appreciated it, and I appreciate the birds. But

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Speaker 1: but you know, I was never the house in Maine

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Speaker 1: had they used to have these stairs that would go

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Speaker 1: down and she could go down there and lie there

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Speaker 1: for three hours listening and looking at the birds, and

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Speaker 1: you know, I'd be lucky to make five minutes. Roger

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Speaker 1: was kind of embarrassed that he didn't turn out to

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Speaker 1: be a bird expert. Carson said that he was as

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Speaker 1: lively as seventeen crickets. He just couldn't sit still long enough,

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Speaker 1: quietly enough to really watch birds. I get that I

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Speaker 1: don't have the bird bug either. I have more of

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Speaker 1: the dog bug. Hi, baby, get a word in here.

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Speaker 1: There were a lot of birds at the bird feeder

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Speaker 1: outside Roger's window. Neither of us had any idea what

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Speaker 1: a single one of them was. Instead, we played with

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Speaker 1: his dog. Something else we have in common. We've both

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Speaker 1: been in love at different times with this album, The

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Speaker 1: mocking Bird is a favorite, singing and ever changing medley,

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Speaker 1: often repeating each phrase three to five times. The spring

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Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty eight, after Roger turned six, that was

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Speaker 1: the Silent Spring when birdwatchers noticed that there just weren't

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Speaker 1: a lot of birds around. It turned out that the

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Speaker 1: birds had been poisoned by DDT, a pesticide the towns

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Speaker 1: had been spraying all over the country. Members of an

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Speaker 1: organization called the Committee Against Mass Poisoning filed a lawsuit

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Speaker 1: in New York to try to stop the spraying. They

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Speaker 1: asked Carson to write about it. They also center that

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Speaker 1: album Birdsong for Roger. Carson wanted to cover the trial,

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Speaker 1: but taking care of Roger and her mother, she really

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Speaker 1: wasn't in much of a position to. She thought, though,

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Speaker 1: that another New Yorker writer maybe ought to cover the trial.

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Speaker 1: It has occurred to me that eb White might be

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Speaker 1: interested for various reasons, and it is the sort of

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Speaker 1: thing he could be devastating about. If he chose, I

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Speaker 1: thought I might write him. Eb White was one of

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Speaker 1: the best loved writers in the country. Dear mister White,

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Speaker 1: it would delight me beyond measure if you should be

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Speaker 1: moved to take up your own pen against this nonsense,

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Speaker 1: though that is far too mild a word. There is

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Speaker 1: an enormous body effect waiting to support anyone who will

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Speaker 1: speak out to the public, and I shall be happy

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Speaker 1: to supply the references. Rachel Carson. White said no, that

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Speaker 1: Carson should write the article. He later told her that

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Speaker 1: he himself didn't know a chlorinated hydrocarbon from a squash bug,

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Speaker 1: and so Carson did write the article. It took her

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Speaker 1: four years and agreed to the size of a book.

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Speaker 1: It's the book she'd always be known for. It reads

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Speaker 1: to me like a eulogy for the last passenger pigeon Martha,

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Speaker 1: as if all the birds were the last of their species,

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Speaker 1: as if all the living things might disappear. There was

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Speaker 1: a strange stillness the birds, for example, where had they gone?

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Speaker 1: Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding

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Speaker 1: stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen

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Speaker 1: anywhere were moribund. They trembled violently and could not fly.

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Speaker 1: It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that

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Speaker 1: had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens,

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Speaker 1: and scores of other bird voices. There was now no sound.

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Speaker 1: Only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

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Speaker 1: For a long time, Carson called the book men against

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Speaker 1: the earth. Then she came up with a new title,

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Speaker 1: Silent Spring, was published in The New Yorker in the

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Speaker 1: summer of nineteen sixty two, and as a book a

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Speaker 1: few months later. Afternoon, I have several announcements to make.

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Speaker 1: The President John F. Kennedy was asked about it at

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Speaker 1: a press conference. There appears to be growing concern among

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Speaker 1: scienas such a possibility of dangerous long range side effects

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Speaker 1: from the widespread use of DDT and other pesticides. Have

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Speaker 1: you considered asking the Department of Culture or the Public

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Speaker 1: Health Service to take a closer look at this? Yes,

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Speaker 1: and I know that they already are, I think particularly

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Speaker 1: of course, since Miss Carson's book, But they are examining

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Speaker 1: the matter. A few books have so wholly changed the world.

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Speaker 1: Miss Carson's book led to the passage of the Clean

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Speaker 1: Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Wilderness Act, the

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Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and it

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00:19:45,836 --> 00:19:49,676
Speaker 1: helped establish the Environmental Protection Agency. At least for a

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Speaker 1: while too, the spring of DDT slowed down. Today, It's

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Speaker 1: not just the birds. It's not just DDT. It really

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Speaker 1: is man against the Earth. We've poisoned the entire planet

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Speaker 1: with carbon emissions. We've changed the very climate, clean water,

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Speaker 1: clean air. When it comes to carbon, there is no silence.

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Speaker 1: There's a flood of fossil fuel industry pr great, gushing

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Speaker 1: gobs of it, like Xon touting its clean gas over

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Speaker 1: one million miles to pool that xons advanced clean engine

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00:20:22,156 --> 00:20:28,116
Speaker 1: formula will keep entire fuel systems running clean and intake vowels.

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Speaker 1: When the birds went silent, and Rachel Carson noticed and

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Speaker 1: wrote about it, that changed everything. Now we notice everything,

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Speaker 1: the species extinctions, the rising temperatures, the melting ice, the

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Speaker 1: frightening weather, the floods and fires, the refugees, the spread

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Speaker 1: of diseases, the pandemics. We notice, but we don't do

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Speaker 1: nearly enough. Why I still think the birds have an answer.

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00:21:12,596 --> 00:21:16,316
Speaker 1: The Morse code of the yellow bellied sapsucker is less

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Speaker 1: regular than the drum of other woodbeckers, and it's call

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Speaker 1: note as harsh. I mean, like a collect baseball cards.

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Speaker 1: You have dinosaurs, you count birds. You when you started

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Speaker 1: counting boods three you're kidding. That's Ken Rosenberg and applied

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Speaker 1: conservationist at the Cornell Lab forn Mythology in Ithaca, New York.

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Speaker 1: He's lead author of a huge study published in the

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Speaker 1: journal Science it demonstrated that close to three billion birds

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Speaker 1: have disappeared from the United States and Canada since nineteen seventy.

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Speaker 1: My producer Ben and I went to see him at

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Speaker 1: Cornell and we went for a walk to listen for

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Speaker 1: birds in a sanctuary called sap Sucker Woods. What do

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Speaker 1: we sing over there? Cardinal? I felt haunted there by

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Speaker 1: Rachel Carson. I don't know that she'd ever been to

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Speaker 1: Sapsucker Woods, but it's the place she would have loved.

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Speaker 1: While she was writing Sound Spring, she'd been an unbearable

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Speaker 1: pain from surgery and radiation. She could barely walk. She'd

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00:22:28,476 --> 00:22:31,956
Speaker 1: been treated for tumors on her breasts and cancer had spread.

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Speaker 1: She'd go on TV wearing a wig. She testified before Congress,

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00:22:36,716 --> 00:22:39,356
Speaker 1: hiding from everyone that she'd come in on a wheelchair.

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Speaker 1: She died in nineteen sixty four, only fifty six years old.

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Speaker 1: She had her ashes spread in the sea, her ideas

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00:22:48,476 --> 00:22:55,316
Speaker 1: spread everywhere, in the flight of every bird. Rachel Carson's.

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Speaker 1: One of Rachel Carson's close friends who was Chandler Robbins,

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Speaker 1: who worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and

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Speaker 1: they would go bird watching together. In response to Rachel's work,

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Speaker 1: Chandler Robbins created the Breeding Bird Survey, the North American

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Speaker 1: Breeding Survey, and it was just this vision he had

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Speaker 1: that Wow, we could count birds everywhere, and it is

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Speaker 1: the primary source of all our bird data. That's what

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Speaker 1: our whole paper was really based on, was fifty years

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Speaker 1: of Breeding Bird Survey data. It's as if Carson is

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Speaker 1: one of Rosenberg's co authors. I love that and birds

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00:23:30,836 --> 00:23:33,556
Speaker 1: are a body of evidence. After the disappearance of the

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Speaker 1: passenger pigeon, the Audubon Society had urged people not to

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Speaker 1: hunt birds, but to go out and count them, and

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Speaker 1: they did. Their lists had just kept piling up count

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Speaker 1: after count after count data. Every year. At Christmas, there's

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Speaker 1: this thing called the Christmas Bird Count. All over the country.

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Speaker 1: People get up in the morning, go meet up in

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Speaker 1: assigned spot with other birders, and fan out to count birds.

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Speaker 1: It's like the US Census, except not every ten years

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Speaker 1: every year, and not done by a government agency, but

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Speaker 1: just by regular people. Bird counting is probably the richest

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Speaker 1: kind of citizen science ever known. We had a data

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Speaker 1: set from nineteen seventy to twenty seventeen, forty eight year

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Speaker 1: data set, and that was the primary data set we

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Speaker 1: also we also used the Christmas Bird Count, which dates

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Speaker 1: back even farther, so we were pretty blown away when

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00:24:24,916 --> 00:24:29,996
Speaker 1: we ran those numbers and found this net loss of

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Speaker 1: three billion birds across five hundred and twenty nine species.

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Speaker 1: So that's the big story, is that not only are

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Speaker 1: a lot of species declining in their population, but we

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00:24:40,956 --> 00:24:46,756
Speaker 1: are seeing this tremendous total overall loss of abundance of birds,

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Speaker 1: which is what's going to have bigger effects on the ecosystems.

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Speaker 1: The abundant red eyed bureos in the tree tops can

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Speaker 1: become monotonous and the regularity of their short, robin like phrases.

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Speaker 1: I started asking Rosenberg about how they made those recordings

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Speaker 1: decades ago, and he said he really didn't know anything

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Speaker 1: about them. But then, just at that moment, a guy

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Speaker 1: just happened to walk past on this little wooden bridge

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00:25:18,196 --> 00:25:20,996
Speaker 1: we were on, and Rosenberg called him over. Actually, Leo

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00:25:21,116 --> 00:25:24,156
Speaker 1: probably narrow spit because he has tourist of the lab.

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Speaker 1: Leo Sack, a public program's assistant and librarian as a

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Speaker 1: lab I'm not I'm not a historic expert on this. Yes,

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00:25:35,996 --> 00:25:38,276
Speaker 1: I'm on the visitor center team. I do some tourist

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00:25:38,276 --> 00:25:41,716
Speaker 1: of the building. So my understanding is that in nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty nine, Fox Movie Tone approached Arthur Allen and said,

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Speaker 1: we have a new technology that we're trying out putting

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Speaker 1: sound into movies instead of having silent films, and we

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Speaker 1: want to show off this new technology using birdsong, and

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Speaker 1: can you help us get some recordings of birdsong. Arthur A.

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Speaker 1: Allen was the guy who started the lab here. Also

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Speaker 1: he is the voice on that old Cornell Birdsong album.

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00:26:07,436 --> 00:26:11,436
Speaker 1: This is him ros livers and shorter phrases from Canada

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00:26:11,636 --> 00:26:15,836
Speaker 1: to Florida. In nineteen fifteen, the year after Martha the

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00:26:15,876 --> 00:26:19,196
Speaker 1: Passenger pigeon died, Professor Allen taped up a sign on

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Speaker 1: his office door. It said Laboratory of Warnithology. The door

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00:26:23,636 --> 00:26:26,116
Speaker 1: was just a door to his office, but he planted

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00:26:26,116 --> 00:26:28,476
Speaker 1: his flag. I like to think of that lab is

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00:26:28,516 --> 00:26:31,836
Speaker 1: a little like the last archive. Imagine there's a place

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00:26:31,836 --> 00:26:35,116
Speaker 1: in our world where the birds go. So when Fox

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00:26:35,196 --> 00:26:38,276
Speaker 1: Movie Tone came to Arthur Allen about recording birds, of

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00:26:38,316 --> 00:26:41,476
Speaker 1: course he said yes. And the story is I've heard

387
00:26:41,516 --> 00:26:44,396
Speaker 1: it is that they started out chasing the birds around

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Speaker 1: with their big, heavy equipment, and songbirds being songbirds, flew away.

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00:26:49,156 --> 00:26:54,156
Speaker 1: But Fortunately, doctor Allen was very interested in the behaviors

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00:26:54,676 --> 00:26:59,076
Speaker 1: of birds, and so could figure out things like where

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00:26:59,196 --> 00:27:01,796
Speaker 1: was the bird likely to perch on its own and sing?

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00:27:01,836 --> 00:27:05,756
Speaker 1: And so they set up their equipment, pointed at a

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00:27:05,796 --> 00:27:09,476
Speaker 1: likely spot, walked away from it, and sure enough, Uh,

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00:27:09,636 --> 00:27:14,236
Speaker 1: some of the birds came and sang into their microphones.

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00:27:14,276 --> 00:27:18,356
Speaker 1: Who's excellent? I can't believe you're just that was the

396
00:27:18,396 --> 00:27:22,116
Speaker 1: most fortuitous. I think you swooped down and dropped out

397
00:27:22,116 --> 00:27:24,916
Speaker 1: of the sky may be rarer than catching a songbird.

398
00:27:25,396 --> 00:27:30,876
Speaker 1: The recording device that album American Bird Songs that a

399
00:27:30,916 --> 00:27:33,756
Speaker 1: friend of Carson's had mailed to Roger in nineteen fifty eight,

400
00:27:34,396 --> 00:27:37,556
Speaker 1: Much of it was recorded in these very woods. Here

401
00:27:37,596 --> 00:27:41,436
Speaker 1: are the songs and calls of sixty familiar birds as

402
00:27:41,516 --> 00:27:44,836
Speaker 1: recorded in the woods, fields and gardens of North America

403
00:27:45,396 --> 00:27:49,716
Speaker 1: the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University. Unless otherwise stated,

404
00:27:50,156 --> 00:28:04,116
Speaker 1: they were recorded in central New York State. There are

405
00:28:04,196 --> 00:28:06,996
Speaker 1: three billion fewer birds in the US and Canada now

406
00:28:07,036 --> 00:28:09,476
Speaker 1: than there were then, and we wouldn't even know if

407
00:28:09,476 --> 00:28:11,596
Speaker 1: it weren't for all the bird counting that people do.

408
00:28:12,276 --> 00:28:15,316
Speaker 1: Ken Rosenberg study doesn't make an argument about what's causing

409
00:28:15,316 --> 00:28:17,916
Speaker 1: this decline, but a lot of other research points to

410
00:28:17,956 --> 00:28:21,916
Speaker 1: climate change, and as Rosenberg study says, all other threats

411
00:28:21,956 --> 00:28:26,716
Speaker 1: to birds are exacerbated by climate change within one human lifetime,

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00:28:27,156 --> 00:28:31,116
Speaker 1: within my lifetime, we've lost more than a quarter of

413
00:28:31,156 --> 00:28:39,996
Speaker 1: our birds. Silent spring, silent century, through the night, the

414
00:28:40,036 --> 00:28:42,756
Speaker 1: incessant cause of the purple whale can be heard from

415
00:28:42,756 --> 00:28:55,276
Speaker 1: New Brunswick to northern Georgia. Once I started looking for

416
00:28:55,356 --> 00:29:00,476
Speaker 1: people obsessed with recorded birds, I found them everywhere. John Fitzpatrick,

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00:29:00,596 --> 00:29:03,716
Speaker 1: director of the Cornell Lab Befornathology, was eight when he

418
00:29:03,716 --> 00:29:07,316
Speaker 1: first heard an LP of North American bird songs, because

419
00:29:07,316 --> 00:29:11,436
Speaker 1: that was a bird geek and I wanted to understand

420
00:29:11,476 --> 00:29:13,436
Speaker 1: what the bird songs were that I was listening to,

421
00:29:13,476 --> 00:29:16,236
Speaker 1: and so I memorized all the bird songs of Minnesota

422
00:29:16,316 --> 00:29:19,436
Speaker 1: from that record, and that was the first time I'd

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00:29:19,436 --> 00:29:22,716
Speaker 1: ever heard of this place. I love that Arthur Allen

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00:29:22,756 --> 00:29:25,436
Speaker 1: created the lab, and his voice on that record of

425
00:29:25,436 --> 00:29:30,196
Speaker 1: bird song taught young John Fitzpatrick to love birds. Everyone

426
00:29:30,236 --> 00:29:33,396
Speaker 1: calls him fits and now fitz is the man behind eBird,

427
00:29:33,516 --> 00:29:37,916
Speaker 1: an online crowdsourced bird database. The lab does all kinds

428
00:29:37,916 --> 00:29:39,916
Speaker 1: of different things. Fitz has a whole room in the

429
00:29:39,996 --> 00:29:43,316
Speaker 1: lab basement with drawers filled with stuffed birds. They even

430
00:29:43,316 --> 00:29:46,516
Speaker 1: had a passenger pigeon. But of all the things they

431
00:29:46,556 --> 00:29:49,156
Speaker 1: do at the lab, the place where Fits really lit

432
00:29:49,276 --> 00:29:51,956
Speaker 1: up was when he showed us the collection of bird song.

433
00:29:53,236 --> 00:29:58,036
Speaker 1: So this is the the archive, this is like this

434
00:29:58,116 --> 00:30:04,116
Speaker 1: is like Mecca. This is like day in the largest

435
00:30:05,196 --> 00:30:10,916
Speaker 1: physical repository of natural sounds in the world. Here hundreds

436
00:30:10,916 --> 00:30:15,756
Speaker 1: of thousands of recordings in this room. You can lock

437
00:30:15,796 --> 00:30:18,196
Speaker 1: the door behind you and leave it to her. Yeah,

438
00:30:18,196 --> 00:30:22,716
Speaker 1: it's fun. Every bird you can imagine across decades and decades.

439
00:30:23,116 --> 00:30:24,836
Speaker 1: I guess if you love a thing, you want to

440
00:30:24,836 --> 00:30:27,636
Speaker 1: hold onto every detail about it. Put it in a lab,

441
00:30:27,796 --> 00:30:31,156
Speaker 1: keep it in a drawer, recorded on wax, lock it

442
00:30:31,196 --> 00:30:34,636
Speaker 1: in an archive. But these bird songs aren't just sitting here.

443
00:30:35,316 --> 00:30:38,356
Speaker 1: Fits is on a mission, a mission to change Hollywood's

444
00:30:38,396 --> 00:30:44,036
Speaker 1: bird illiteracy. So most moviemakers don't know that a lot

445
00:30:44,116 --> 00:30:46,556
Speaker 1: of us can actually tell what that bird is, and

446
00:30:46,636 --> 00:30:49,476
Speaker 1: that that's in the wrong continent. You know, you hear

447
00:30:49,556 --> 00:30:55,116
Speaker 1: loons in Africa, and you hear morning warblers in South

448
00:30:55,156 --> 00:31:02,356
Speaker 1: American rainforests, and it's crazy. The good filmmakers Lucas, Terry Malick,

449
00:31:02,556 --> 00:31:07,276
Speaker 1: El Spielberg. These guys when they need a track, they

450
00:31:07,476 --> 00:31:10,356
Speaker 1: actually they want to get a tract from the authorities

451
00:31:10,396 --> 00:31:12,156
Speaker 1: who know what birds are there, and they can get

452
00:31:12,156 --> 00:31:14,676
Speaker 1: the best recordings possible. They come here, Yeah, and they

453
00:31:14,716 --> 00:31:17,796
Speaker 1: come here. So let's see Harry Potter movies. They use

454
00:31:17,956 --> 00:31:23,116
Speaker 1: sounds from here, the owls, the griffin say hello tou.

455
00:31:25,516 --> 00:31:30,036
Speaker 1: In fact, this is a true story. That griffin which

456
00:31:30,116 --> 00:31:33,116
Speaker 1: makes this sort of weird screeching sound that is flying.

457
00:31:33,156 --> 00:31:38,756
Speaker 1: That screeching sound is a limpkin. It's an American snail

458
00:31:38,836 --> 00:31:41,636
Speaker 1: eating bird that looks like a heron, and it's got

459
00:31:41,636 --> 00:31:45,156
Speaker 1: a very wild sound, And they used the limpkin sound.

460
00:31:45,196 --> 00:31:48,076
Speaker 1: The particular recording they used was recorded by Arthur Allen.

461
00:31:48,476 --> 00:31:51,236
Speaker 1: Most fascinating of all the sounds that come from the

462
00:31:51,316 --> 00:31:55,396
Speaker 1: larger Southern swamplands are the weird cries of the lympkins.

463
00:31:56,836 --> 00:31:59,596
Speaker 1: Perhaps they have given rise to some of the superstitions

464
00:31:59,636 --> 00:32:08,276
Speaker 1: that haunt our fast disappearing marshes. After explaining to us

465
00:32:08,276 --> 00:32:10,876
Speaker 1: about hippogriffs, Fitz took us to see a machine that

466
00:32:10,916 --> 00:32:13,996
Speaker 1: the labit invented, some AI gizmo that's supposed to be

467
00:32:14,036 --> 00:32:17,036
Speaker 1: able to name birds by listening to bird songs, and

468
00:32:17,196 --> 00:32:19,236
Speaker 1: one day it's supposed to be able to count birds

469
00:32:19,316 --> 00:32:22,236
Speaker 1: by listening to those songs. It's not citizen science, it's

470
00:32:22,316 --> 00:32:27,076
Speaker 1: computer science. But Fitz is way better than the machine.

471
00:32:27,556 --> 00:32:33,036
Speaker 1: The gold correct watching fits try to beat the AI machine.

472
00:32:33,516 --> 00:32:35,676
Speaker 1: I found as if wondering about other ways that we

473
00:32:35,716 --> 00:32:39,596
Speaker 1: can know about change over time, aside from birds. I

474
00:32:39,796 --> 00:32:41,916
Speaker 1: was getting a little tired of listening to birds, to

475
00:32:41,916 --> 00:32:45,716
Speaker 1: be honest, and then okay, stick with me. I started

476
00:32:45,716 --> 00:32:50,556
Speaker 1: thinking about another kind of bird song, tweets. You can

477
00:32:50,556 --> 00:32:54,316
Speaker 1: count tweets human tweets on Twitter, sort of like the

478
00:32:54,356 --> 00:32:58,636
Speaker 1: way you can count bird calls and someone has friend.

479
00:32:58,676 --> 00:33:01,316
Speaker 1: Moore is an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department

480
00:33:01,316 --> 00:33:04,156
Speaker 1: of Environmental Science and Policy, and she's the lead author

481
00:33:04,236 --> 00:33:06,916
Speaker 1: of a study of tweets. She and her team collected

482
00:33:06,916 --> 00:33:09,916
Speaker 1: more than two billion Twitter posts about the weather. The

483
00:33:09,956 --> 00:33:14,316
Speaker 1: idea for this payback came from the observation that everyone

484
00:33:14,356 --> 00:33:16,476
Speaker 1: talks about the weather, the kind of almost a kind

485
00:33:16,476 --> 00:33:21,556
Speaker 1: of universal phenomenon that wherever you go you can chat yeah,

486
00:33:21,596 --> 00:33:25,796
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. American Tweets, Volume one. Here are the tweets

487
00:33:25,796 --> 00:33:28,796
Speaker 1: and posts of several high volume Twitter accounts has recorded

488
00:33:28,836 --> 00:33:32,476
Speaker 1: on smartphones and laptops across North America. It's so hot

489
00:33:32,556 --> 00:33:38,796
Speaker 1: dog something about a rainy day, so cozy, it's pretty warmth.

490
00:33:39,596 --> 00:33:43,876
Speaker 1: I'm so mad about the snow outside. Oh MG, I

491
00:33:43,916 --> 00:33:46,196
Speaker 1: swear when it comes to driving in the rain, people

492
00:33:46,196 --> 00:33:48,956
Speaker 1: in southern California are idiots on the road. The weather

493
00:33:49,196 --> 00:33:54,996
Speaker 1: is nuts. Okay, so I'd rather listen to bird song.

494
00:33:55,676 --> 00:33:59,236
Speaker 1: But more study, it's genius. What I thought was cool

495
00:33:59,276 --> 00:34:01,436
Speaker 1: about the study was, you know, how do you how

496
00:34:01,476 --> 00:34:04,836
Speaker 1: do you measure the phenomenon of you know, the remarkability

497
00:34:04,836 --> 00:34:08,596
Speaker 1: of temperature? And with these new large social media data

498
00:34:08,596 --> 00:34:11,556
Speaker 1: their it can allow us to get at these questions

499
00:34:11,596 --> 00:34:15,076
Speaker 1: than to measure the phenomenon in a really kind of

500
00:34:15,116 --> 00:34:18,756
Speaker 1: comprehensive way. More designed to study to measure the remarkability

501
00:34:18,796 --> 00:34:23,036
Speaker 1: of climate based on geolocated tweets about the weather. Her

502
00:34:23,076 --> 00:34:25,996
Speaker 1: study is actually weirdly a lot like Ken Rosenberg's bird study,

503
00:34:26,116 --> 00:34:28,796
Speaker 1: kind of mixed up with Fitz's lab study of bird song.

504
00:34:29,356 --> 00:34:32,836
Speaker 1: Think about Twitter as human bird song, and then the

505
00:34:32,876 --> 00:34:35,996
Speaker 1: Twitter feed is a kind of citizen science. We are

506
00:34:36,036 --> 00:34:40,156
Speaker 1: the birds, but we're collecting our own data. Worrying about

507
00:34:40,156 --> 00:34:44,236
Speaker 1: our own demise long before coronavirus, because even then there

508
00:34:44,316 --> 00:34:46,276
Speaker 1: was plenty to worry about. You know, I think that

509
00:34:46,476 --> 00:34:50,996
Speaker 1: one theory of change that maybe some people have, which

510
00:34:51,076 --> 00:34:53,836
Speaker 1: is really that eventually climate change will just become so

511
00:34:53,996 --> 00:34:56,076
Speaker 1: bad it will become obvious that we have to do

512
00:34:56,116 --> 00:34:58,916
Speaker 1: something about It will kind of the urgency of it

513
00:34:58,956 --> 00:35:01,676
Speaker 1: will become immediately apparent. It will get everyone on board

514
00:35:01,756 --> 00:35:03,876
Speaker 1: and will kind of collectively come to the sailor that's

515
00:35:03,876 --> 00:35:05,596
Speaker 1: the time by which it's too late to do anything.

516
00:35:08,716 --> 00:35:12,836
Speaker 1: Remark Ability changes rapidly with repeated exposure to unusual temperatures,

517
00:35:13,316 --> 00:35:16,956
Speaker 1: Franmore and her team wrote in their report. In other words,

518
00:35:16,996 --> 00:35:19,156
Speaker 1: we get used to new weather and something between two

519
00:35:19,196 --> 00:35:22,076
Speaker 1: and eight years. You don't compare this year's weather to

520
00:35:22,116 --> 00:35:25,156
Speaker 1: the weather of your childhood. You compare this year's weather

521
00:35:25,436 --> 00:35:28,196
Speaker 1: to last year's weather. It turns out we get used

522
00:35:28,196 --> 00:35:31,676
Speaker 1: to a new climate really fast. Even if it's killing us.

523
00:35:32,916 --> 00:35:38,036
Speaker 1: Really is an epistemological problem, it's not quite an evidentiary problem.

524
00:35:38,156 --> 00:35:41,876
Speaker 1: We have endless evidence. Fossil fuel companies have been suppressing

525
00:35:41,876 --> 00:35:44,596
Speaker 1: that evidence for decades, but I mean, man, the jig

526
00:35:44,836 --> 00:35:47,996
Speaker 1: is up still. It's not easy to pay attention to

527
00:35:48,036 --> 00:35:53,316
Speaker 1: that evidence. For the reasons more study illustrates who killed

528
00:35:53,316 --> 00:35:58,636
Speaker 1: truth Exxon Shell, Yes, God damn it. But also the

529
00:35:58,716 --> 00:36:05,276
Speaker 1: slowness of time it's so hard to notice. That makes

530
00:36:05,276 --> 00:36:12,516
Speaker 1: it even more impressive that Rachel Carson did over increasingly

531
00:36:12,676 --> 00:36:17,436
Speaker 1: large areas of the United States. Spring now comes unheralded

532
00:36:17,596 --> 00:36:20,996
Speaker 1: by the return of the birds, and the early mornings

533
00:36:20,996 --> 00:36:24,876
Speaker 1: are strangely silent, where once they were filled with the

534
00:36:24,916 --> 00:36:30,876
Speaker 1: beauty of bird song. It can be hard to notice

535
00:36:30,956 --> 00:36:33,556
Speaker 1: change that takes place on so long a timescale, a

536
00:36:33,636 --> 00:36:37,916
Speaker 1: human lifetime or even longer, like climate change DDT. That

537
00:36:37,956 --> 00:36:40,036
Speaker 1: stuff was sprayed one day and the next day the

538
00:36:40,116 --> 00:36:43,356
Speaker 1: world seemed quieter. You could notice that, you could follow

539
00:36:43,356 --> 00:36:47,116
Speaker 1: a lawsuit to stop the spraying, you could write a book. Also,

540
00:36:47,276 --> 00:36:52,316
Speaker 1: the DDT industry, the DDT lobby was tiny. The fossil

541
00:36:52,396 --> 00:36:56,036
Speaker 1: fuel industries are gigantic, and they control a massive part

542
00:36:56,076 --> 00:37:00,956
Speaker 1: of the world's economy. Then, too, climate change is slower. Still,

543
00:37:00,996 --> 00:37:02,916
Speaker 1: you can see it, and people have been writing books

544
00:37:02,916 --> 00:37:06,396
Speaker 1: about it for a very long time. Rachel Carson first

545
00:37:06,396 --> 00:37:10,036
Speaker 1: wrote about it in nineteen fifty, twelve years before she

546
00:37:10,116 --> 00:37:15,036
Speaker 1: published Silent Spring. It is now established beyond question that

547
00:37:15,196 --> 00:37:18,676
Speaker 1: a definite change in the Arctic climate set in about

548
00:37:18,836 --> 00:37:24,396
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred, that it became astonishingly marked about nineteen thirty,

549
00:37:24,916 --> 00:37:29,876
Speaker 1: and that it is now spreading into subarctic and temperate regions.

550
00:37:30,636 --> 00:37:35,716
Speaker 1: The frigid top of the world is very clearly warming up.

551
00:37:37,756 --> 00:37:41,196
Speaker 1: After writing about DDT in Silent Spring, Carson started working

552
00:37:41,196 --> 00:37:43,476
Speaker 1: on a new book about the warming of the seas.

553
00:37:43,956 --> 00:37:47,236
Speaker 1: But of course by then she was dying. The December

554
00:37:47,276 --> 00:37:50,036
Speaker 1: after Silent Spring came out, she fainted from pain in

555
00:37:50,076 --> 00:37:52,956
Speaker 1: a department store while shopping for a Christmas present for Roger.

556
00:37:53,836 --> 00:37:57,436
Speaker 1: She's buying him a record player. Roger would lose her

557
00:37:57,476 --> 00:38:00,516
Speaker 1: not long afterward. But what if she'd finished that book,

558
00:38:00,716 --> 00:38:03,756
Speaker 1: the book she'd wanted to write about climate change decades

559
00:38:03,796 --> 00:38:08,036
Speaker 1: and decades and decades ago. We live in an age

560
00:38:08,076 --> 00:38:13,516
Speaker 1: of risings. In our own lifetime. We are witnessing a

561
00:38:13,636 --> 00:38:19,636
Speaker 1: startling alteration of climate. Carson never wrote that book. I

562
00:38:19,676 --> 00:38:21,436
Speaker 1: still think a lot though, about what it might have

563
00:38:21,476 --> 00:38:25,276
Speaker 1: happened if she had. She'd lived long enough. She wrote

564
00:38:25,316 --> 00:38:27,636
Speaker 1: Sound Spring at a time when books were a big deal.

565
00:38:27,916 --> 00:38:29,836
Speaker 1: She could go on CBS at a time on there

566
00:38:29,956 --> 00:38:33,716
Speaker 1: only three television networks, and she could testify before Congress

567
00:38:33,756 --> 00:38:36,396
Speaker 1: at a time when Congress wasn't polarized, at time when

568
00:38:36,476 --> 00:38:40,356
Speaker 1: laws actually got written and passed. That's why I wish

569
00:38:40,796 --> 00:38:43,956
Speaker 1: so dearly that she'd lived to write the book she

570
00:38:44,036 --> 00:38:47,516
Speaker 1: planned to write about the warming of the seas, before

571
00:38:47,556 --> 00:38:50,836
Speaker 1: the political chaos, before the no holds barred defense of

572
00:38:50,876 --> 00:38:56,356
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry, before internet driven conspiracy theories, before

573
00:38:56,476 --> 00:39:01,436
Speaker 1: social media mob rule, before the virus silent killer of

574
00:39:01,436 --> 00:39:09,756
Speaker 1: our spring. We went back out to sap Sucker Woods

575
00:39:09,796 --> 00:39:12,556
Speaker 1: to listen to the birds, then back to our hotel,

576
00:39:13,316 --> 00:39:15,556
Speaker 1: turned in for the night. It had one more place

577
00:39:15,596 --> 00:39:26,436
Speaker 1: to go in the morning. The last place Ben and

578
00:39:26,436 --> 00:39:29,316
Speaker 1: I went during our visit to Cornell was the archive

579
00:39:29,956 --> 00:39:34,916
Speaker 1: entering the Crotch Library. Crotch Library, Crotch Library. There's another

580
00:39:34,956 --> 00:39:37,516
Speaker 1: story about the Silence of Birds, written by someone who'd

581
00:39:37,556 --> 00:39:40,756
Speaker 1: been an undergraduate at Cornell when it first founded its

582
00:39:40,796 --> 00:39:45,556
Speaker 1: Laboratory of Oneithology, eb White. His papers are at Cornell.

583
00:39:46,196 --> 00:39:49,556
Speaker 1: An archivist Asian Neely had pulled a few folders for

584
00:39:49,636 --> 00:39:58,956
Speaker 1: US Morning Yes in nineteen fifty eight, when Rachel Carson

585
00:39:58,996 --> 00:40:00,796
Speaker 1: had asked eb White to write the book that became

586
00:40:00,876 --> 00:40:03,316
Speaker 1: Silent Spring. She had thought of White because he was

587
00:40:03,356 --> 00:40:05,476
Speaker 1: such a charming writer, and because he wrote a lot

588
00:40:05,516 --> 00:40:09,836
Speaker 1: about nature Stuart Little in nineteen forty five, Charlotte's Web

589
00:40:09,916 --> 00:40:13,316
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two. I don't think Carson really wanted

590
00:40:13,316 --> 00:40:16,396
Speaker 1: White to write about DDT. She was really just slyly

591
00:40:16,396 --> 00:40:19,436
Speaker 1: getting his help and pitching the story to the New Yorker. Anyway,

592
00:40:19,676 --> 00:40:23,196
Speaker 1: Carson and White had stayed close, and after Carson died,

593
00:40:23,956 --> 00:40:27,076
Speaker 1: White wrote one last children's book, The Trumpet of the Swan,

594
00:40:27,716 --> 00:40:31,796
Speaker 1: Analogy for the Earth. On a lonely pond on a

595
00:40:31,876 --> 00:40:36,156
Speaker 1: day in spring, some baby swans were hatched. One of

596
00:40:36,196 --> 00:40:39,196
Speaker 1: the young swans had a problem. He had come into

597
00:40:39,236 --> 00:40:42,716
Speaker 1: the world without a voice. He couldn't utter a sound.

598
00:40:43,636 --> 00:40:46,036
Speaker 1: I have written the story of this little swan, and

599
00:40:46,116 --> 00:40:48,236
Speaker 1: I will read it to you. During the whole of

600
00:40:48,236 --> 00:40:51,596
Speaker 1: our visit to Ithaca, I'd been overwhelmed by this scale,

601
00:40:52,116 --> 00:40:56,036
Speaker 1: the enormity of evidence for species extinction and for climate change.

602
00:40:56,636 --> 00:41:00,476
Speaker 1: All that bird data, billions and billions of observations, people

603
00:41:00,556 --> 00:41:04,076
Speaker 1: wandering in the woods and fields and long beaches counting birds.

604
00:41:04,956 --> 00:41:08,516
Speaker 1: Then there's the study of billions of tweets. But sitting

605
00:41:08,556 --> 00:41:12,036
Speaker 1: in that arc five with Ebe White's papers, I remembered

606
00:41:12,356 --> 00:41:18,636
Speaker 1: how badly people also need stories fables. The fifth signet

607
00:41:18,876 --> 00:41:22,356
Speaker 1: was different. He opened his mouth but didn't say a thing.

608
00:41:23,196 --> 00:41:26,316
Speaker 1: He made an effort to say beep, but no sound came.

609
00:41:26,956 --> 00:41:30,036
Speaker 1: I think he came into the world lacking a voice.

610
00:41:31,116 --> 00:41:35,436
Speaker 1: A young male Swan will be greatly handicapped in finding

611
00:41:35,436 --> 00:41:38,276
Speaker 1: a mate if he is unable to say co ho

612
00:41:38,916 --> 00:41:42,316
Speaker 1: co ho. Nearly everyone we talked to you for this

613
00:41:42,356 --> 00:41:45,516
Speaker 1: episode they'd first gotten fascinated with birds in the natural

614
00:41:45,516 --> 00:41:48,876
Speaker 1: world has little kids. That's one reason Ben and I

615
00:41:48,916 --> 00:41:51,756
Speaker 1: were in the eb White archive to read letters to

616
00:41:51,836 --> 00:41:56,636
Speaker 1: him that had been written by little kids. This is

617
00:41:56,676 --> 00:41:59,276
Speaker 1: a pack of letters from the combinations in the third

618
00:41:59,356 --> 00:42:03,356
Speaker 1: grade classroom. Dear mister White, I am a pupil from

619
00:42:03,396 --> 00:42:07,116
Speaker 1: Saint Leo's Primary School in Altona, North My name is

620
00:42:07,196 --> 00:42:09,756
Speaker 1: Diana and I'm eleven years of eight. I have read

621
00:42:09,796 --> 00:42:11,716
Speaker 1: both of your books, Trumpet of the one at Charles

622
00:42:11,716 --> 00:42:13,796
Speaker 1: Webb and I was reading the books. They really got

623
00:42:13,796 --> 00:42:16,396
Speaker 1: to me because they are so interesting. Lots of other

624
00:42:16,396 --> 00:42:18,316
Speaker 1: people have read your books and they feel the same

625
00:42:18,316 --> 00:42:21,276
Speaker 1: way about them. The books really makes sense not like

626
00:42:21,356 --> 00:42:28,636
Speaker 1: other books you're expect. Dear Diane, I'm glad you think

627
00:42:28,636 --> 00:42:35,036
Speaker 1: the books makes sense. The books make sense, stories makes sense.

628
00:42:35,476 --> 00:42:38,436
Speaker 1: If Carson were writing today, she'd get death threats on Twitter.

629
00:42:38,876 --> 00:42:42,916
Speaker 1: He be White, he got love letters from children. Dear

630
00:42:42,956 --> 00:42:47,276
Speaker 1: mister E. B. White. Our teacher, Missus mcelnahey, read Charles

631
00:42:47,356 --> 00:42:49,196
Speaker 1: Webb to our third grade class earlier this year. We

632
00:42:49,276 --> 00:42:50,996
Speaker 1: enjoyed it very much. This past months, she read The

633
00:42:50,996 --> 00:42:54,196
Speaker 1: Trumpet the Swan. So many interesting things resulted from your

634
00:42:54,236 --> 00:42:56,796
Speaker 1: book that we thought you might like to hear about them.

635
00:42:56,916 --> 00:42:58,756
Speaker 1: We decided to write a class poem about the Trumpet

636
00:42:58,756 --> 00:43:00,796
Speaker 1: of the Swan. We discussed the order of events in

637
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Speaker 1: the story and put down our ideas on two lines

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Speaker 1: at a time. The poem we wrote is enclosed with

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Speaker 1: this letter, and here's the phone. Louie a Downey Signet

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00:43:11,676 --> 00:43:22,036
Speaker 1: was born a trumpeter swan without a horn. I'm sorry

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00:43:22,356 --> 00:43:24,716
Speaker 1: I didn't want to laugh at their boom. Louis a

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Speaker 1: Downey Signet was born a trumpeter swan without a horn. Sam,

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Speaker 1: a boy who liked the young Swan, would often sit

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Speaker 1: by the clear, quiet pond. Louie could not even say cohoe.

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Speaker 1: So the Cobs stole a trumpet for Louis to blow.

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00:43:40,356 --> 00:43:43,156
Speaker 1: Louis played taps, had a camp for boys to earn

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Speaker 1: the money to pay for the noise. Louie married Serena,

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Speaker 1: and new signets were born, and Louis played on with

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Speaker 1: his shiny horn. By the third grade class, Hilliard Elementary School,

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Speaker 1: Room twenty Dear mister, why blah blah blahlave your books?

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Speaker 1: Do you like swans? I do. My grandparents live on

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Speaker 1: a saltwater pond, and sometimes when we're visiting, swan swam

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Speaker 1: up to the shore looking for food. A fine feathered friend, Steven.

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Speaker 1: Dear Stephen, I liked your letter, Thanks for writing. I

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Speaker 1: never see swans here at home, only geese, but I

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00:44:16,436 --> 00:44:21,236
Speaker 1: think I would like swans. They are admirable birds. Reading

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00:44:21,236 --> 00:44:24,276
Speaker 1: those letters it was like listening to the best bird song.

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00:44:25,076 --> 00:44:31,756
Speaker 1: Lyrical and clear, noble and proud call and response. They

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Speaker 1: gave us faith, and they gave us hope. Maybe people

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Speaker 1: can be admirable birds too. From the Last Archive Coho.

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Speaker 1: The Last Archive is produced by Sophie Crane, mccabbin and

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Speaker 1: Ben Natt of Faffrey. Our editor is Julia Barton and

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00:45:49,316 --> 00:45:53,076
Speaker 1: our executive producer is Mio Lobell, Jason Gambrell and Martine

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Speaker 1: Gonzalez are our engineers. Fact checking by Amy Gaines. Original

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00:45:57,476 --> 00:46:00,836
Speaker 1: music by Matthis Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphinette.

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Speaker 1: Many of our sound effects are from Harry Jeanette Junior

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Speaker 1: and the Star Janette Foundation. Our full proof players are

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Speaker 1: Barlow Adams and Daniel Berger Jones, Jesse Henson, John Kuntz,

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Speaker 1: Becca A. Lewis and Maurice Emmanuel Parent. The Last Argive

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00:46:14,716 --> 00:46:18,076
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Special thanks to

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Speaker 1: Simon Leek, to Ryan McKittrick in the American Repertory Theater,

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Speaker 1: to Scott Edwards, to Aisha Neely at Cornell, the McCaulay

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Speaker 1: Library at the Cornell Lab of Worn Athology, and everyone

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Speaker 1: at the Cornell Lab of Worn Athology. At Pushkin. Thanks

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00:46:32,036 --> 00:46:35,876
Speaker 1: to Heather Fane, Maya Caney, Carly mcgliory, Emily Rustick, Eric Sandler,

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Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, and Jacob Weisberg. Our research assistants are Michelle Gau,

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Speaker 1: Olivia Oldham, Oliver Ruskin Kutz, Emily Spector, and Henrietta Riley,

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Speaker 1: who he'd like to specially thank for all of her

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Speaker 1: help with Bird's song. I'm Jollipoor,