Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Ying Ying and Lee Lee, two pandas
Speaker 1: that live in the Ocean Park Zoo in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: The zoo has been trying to get them to make
Speaker 1: for ten years with no luck. I'm Ashley Forward and
Speaker 1: this is the Chronicles of Now, where we ask writers
Speaker 1: to dream up short stories inspired by the news. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the news this year has been relentlessly bleak. The pandemic,
Speaker 1: a global economic depression, police violence, a dangerously incompetent president,
Speaker 1: species extinction, climate change. It just goes on and on
Speaker 1: and it's depressing. Right, We felt we needed to change
Speaker 1: it up here at the Chronicles of Now. We needed
Speaker 1: some good news. So on this episode we're going full panda.
Speaker 1: It seems was the Private season when the coronavirus shut
Speaker 1: down the zoo, the pandaly. If there's one good thing
Speaker 1: to come of this, it's not in our absence. Some
Speaker 1: timid pandas finally got it on, and boy did they
Speaker 1: get it on. No visitors were there, but the camera
Speaker 1: was rolling and the media ate it up. These pandas
Speaker 1: are having sex. I'm watching them, and I might be
Speaker 1: the happiest I've been since the pandema. Now this is
Speaker 1: a family podcast, and we would never shamelessly goat at
Speaker 1: panda sex like The New York Times did in this video.
Speaker 1: When those pandas did it, I felt this strange surge
Speaker 1: of pride. Oh no. We commissioned one of the country's
Speaker 1: finest writers of fiction to give the panda take on
Speaker 1: the story. Curtis Sittenfeld is the best selling author of
Speaker 1: six novels. Her latest is Rotten, a novel that reimagines
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's life. As she did in that book, she
Speaker 1: took some artistic liberties for her pandas story. The zoo
Speaker 1: in the story is sort of fictitious, and I changed
Speaker 1: the panda's names to respect their privacy. In a world
Speaker 1: gone haywire, sometimes pandas are the only way to make
Speaker 1: sense of it all. The incident the day that bifurcated
Speaker 1: my existence into before and after happened back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: By then, I'd been at Breeze Point Zoo for nine years.
Speaker 1: Though time is elastic in a life such as mine.
Speaker 1: That first time I saw him, I didn't know his
Speaker 1: name or even his speeches. I pieced this information together
Speaker 1: afterward by eavesdropping on my handlers, who have long assumed
Speaker 1: that I don't understand cantonese. All I knew that day
Speaker 1: when I awakened from a morning nap atop of a
Speaker 1: massive rock, was that perched on a log hardly more
Speaker 1: than a meter away, regarding me unabashedly, was a small
Speaker 1: creature with reddish fur, pointy ears, inquisitive brown eyes, white whiskers,
Speaker 1: and a long striped tail. How enchanting he was, how
Speaker 1: life has build, how glossy his coat, and in his gaze,
Speaker 1: what depths, what perspicacity. The internal jolt I experienced made
Speaker 1: me abruptly understand that I was sleeping my life away,
Speaker 1: both literally and figuratively. I'd been napping on my stomach
Speaker 1: with my glossy black fore legs flung in front of me,
Speaker 1: and I rolled on to my side to display my heft,
Speaker 1: all one hundred twenty kilograms of it, to its most
Speaker 1: flattering effect. I routinely twenty kilograms of bamboo a day
Speaker 1: up until this very moment. That consumption had been my
Speaker 1: raison d'etre. He approached tentatively at first, then with greater confidence,
Speaker 1: he passed my head and walked regally around me to
Speaker 1: sniff my hind quarters. To nudge my back, the contact
Speaker 1: with electrifying returning to my head. He made eye contact
Speaker 1: with me from close range, then cocked his ears to
Speaker 1: the right, indicating I should follow. What ensued was truly magical,
Speaker 1: the most intoxicating interlude of my life, and I am
Speaker 1: still unable to say whether it lasted minutes or hours.
Speaker 1: My enclosure featured an air SAT's bamboo forest and cave,
Speaker 1: multiple ponds, and wooden climbing structures, and my new friend
Speaker 1: and I frolicked through it. All. I did not know
Speaker 1: then that my friend was a red panda, that his
Speaker 1: name was Zusian, or that he'd escaped his enclosure from mine.
Speaker 1: All I knew was that it was delightful to lumber
Speaker 1: and climb with him in the sun. I was impervious
Speaker 1: to the humans pointing and hooting from above, their strange
Speaker 1: rubbery faces contorting with pleasure, and yet it was the
Speaker 1: delight they took in the sight of Zusian and me,
Speaker 1: the commotion of their delight that eventually drew the attention
Speaker 1: of the zoo handlers, who, when they realized what had happened,
Speaker 1: entered my enclosure. There were six of them in blue
Speaker 1: medical gowns. And rubber boots and restrained me while removing Zeeshan.
Speaker 1: I still remember the sight of him as one of
Speaker 1: the handlers carried him away, the yearning in his mournful
Speaker 1: expression and proud tale. I have not seen him since,
Speaker 1: and it has been agony. I soon learned that he'd
Speaker 1: been living, and as far as I know, still does
Speaker 1: in an enclosure adjacent to mine. Also that his species
Speaker 1: in general and he in particular, are known for being
Speaker 1: escape artists. It is this fact that has kept me
Speaker 1: these last four years in a constant state of alertness
Speaker 1: and hope that he's plotting another escape, that one day,
Speaker 1: if even for just another moment of bliss, we'll be
Speaker 1: together again. It's not that I dislike Da Pung, my
Speaker 1: enclosure mate. Indeed, I feel a sincere, if moderate affection
Speaker 1: for him. But really, who could be attracted to someone
Speaker 1: when you see them defecating up to fifty times a day.
Speaker 1: I've heard our handlers attribute our aversion to mating to
Speaker 1: the low libido endemic among giant pandas, But this explanation
Speaker 1: underestimates our individual idiosyncrasies. All of which is to say
Speaker 1: that the handlers are erroneous in their assumptions about why
Speaker 1: once the zoo was closed to visitors earlier this spring,
Speaker 1: Da Pung and I engage in our first ever how
Speaker 1: might I say this voluntary coupling, Jiang Jian and Dapong
Speaker 1: have made a breakthrough, the handlers told one another and
Speaker 1: journalists worldwide. All they needed was a little privacy. They
Speaker 1: rewarded us with apples and carrots. But it wasn't privacy
Speaker 1: that motivated me. It was boredom. I mean, seriously, COVID
Speaker 1: just didn't shut down your world. For the last four years,
Speaker 1: I've spent my waking hours being mildly amused by the
Speaker 1: human visitors to our zoo, and my sleeping hours dreaming
Speaker 1: of a reunion with Zushan. Then the human visitors vanished,
Speaker 1: and many weeks into the new quiet, in a moment
Speaker 1: of profound enui, and I decided I might as well
Speaker 1: give a union with Da Hung a whirl. But even
Speaker 1: in the act itself, with dab Hung fumbling behind me,
Speaker 1: pressing his body against mine, the small bump of his
Speaker 1: panda hood trying to find the appropriate cavity, it was
Speaker 1: Zeeshan I thought of. As for dab Hung, I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced he felt any more enthusiasm than I did. I
Speaker 1: know that over the years, our handlers have tried to
Speaker 1: encourage him with legs strengthening exercises, with exposure to the
Speaker 1: excretions from my scent glands, and even with spicy videos
Speaker 1: of others of our kind. But I suspect in the
Speaker 1: end it was less that such incentives proved effective than
Speaker 1: that he was trying to please our handlers. Passion alas
Speaker 1: cannot simply be summoned. Meanwhile, the fact that so much
Speaker 1: about Zeshen was and is forbidden and impossible our respective sizes,
Speaker 1: our enclosures, our differing species, has never decreased my longing
Speaker 1: to know what it's like to yearn for four years
Speaker 1: for a red panda who is mere meters from you,
Speaker 1: beneath the same sky, breathing the same air from the
Speaker 1: South China Sea. Did you know? Are you tiny, wiley heartbreaker?
Speaker 1: I think as I chew bamboo, are you coming back
Speaker 1: to me? And if so, when hurry? Please Zeshian, because
Speaker 1: I miss you terribly. That was breeze point by Curtis
Speaker 1: Sitt and felt the narrator was the one and only
Speaker 1: Rachel dratch Hi. Curtis Hi Ashley. So I get the
Speaker 1: feeling that you didn't stop with the news reports of
Speaker 1: panda's having pandemic sex. I'm feeling like you went a
Speaker 1: little bit deeper. You did some serious research into panda sex.
Speaker 1: Am I correct? Well, I assume you mean that as
Speaker 1: a great compliment. I do, and I do well, Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is what I did. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: of course I didn't research into panda sex as any
Speaker 1: self respecting fiction writer would. I started by buying a
Speaker 1: National Geographic book for kids about pandas, which I often
Speaker 1: find books meant for kids to be a useful starting
Speaker 1: place for research in fiction because it sort of tells
Speaker 1: you the general information you need but doesn't overwhelm you,
Speaker 1: and it's not like you lose like five years of
Speaker 1: your life doing research. And then, of course I also
Speaker 1: went into all the nooks and crannies of the Internet,
Speaker 1: and I've learned quite a bit. So is it true
Speaker 1: that giant pandas have low libido? It's true the giant
Speaker 1: pandas have low libidas. And actually, and I'm saying this
Speaker 1: like factually, not disrespectfully, Supposedly, the male panda does have
Speaker 1: an unusually small penis and weak hind legs, which make
Speaker 1: the physical act of sex challenging. Wow, that that part
Speaker 1: I did not find in a children's book, but I
Speaker 1: did find it online. I mean, useful information in case,
Speaker 1: in case you ever have like a panda libido emergency,
Speaker 1: you know, in your future, I think you'll you'll be
Speaker 1: well equipped a hand. You never know. The world is
Speaker 1: a big and surprising place, speaking of with everything going
Speaker 1: on in the world, why this story, Why panda sex?
Speaker 1: Why now? I always longed for an interviewer to say
Speaker 1: to me, why panda sex? Why now? No? Well, so, okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how great a level of detail
Speaker 1: I should get into. But I actually originally thought that
Speaker 1: I wanted to write a story based on a different headline,
Speaker 1: based on a headline about sort of the chat challenges
Speaker 1: of dating during a pandemic, and especially like what if
Speaker 1: you had just started seeing someone and then then maybe
Speaker 1: gone on like one or two dates and then everything
Speaker 1: shuts down. And so I actually started working and worked
Speaker 1: for a few days on that story, and I just
Speaker 1: felt like, you know, it was kind of tonally off,
Speaker 1: or I don't maybe it's because I'm about to turn
Speaker 1: forty five, and it was from the perspective of like
Speaker 1: a millennial, and I really really felt my age, like
Speaker 1: I kind of like almost like like it was like
Speaker 1: trying to be a cool mom and like use the
Speaker 1: current lingo. And so then I just kind of thought, like,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'm just not going to do this project, Like,
Speaker 1: of course I love the Chronicles of Now and like,
Speaker 1: I think it's such a sort of interesting premise and
Speaker 1: have enjoyed the other stories. But I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll just wait six months or something. And then
Speaker 1: Tyler Cabot, the founder, showed me his list of headlines
Speaker 1: he had gathered. And of course, because headlines from the
Speaker 1: recent past are all so overwhelmingly sad and heartbreaking and
Speaker 1: frustrating in so many different ways, I mean, across lots
Speaker 1: of topics, and so this headline about you know, these
Speaker 1: two pandas have made it for the first time voluntarily
Speaker 1: after all these years together. It was the one headline
Speaker 1: that made me literally laugh out loud, and I thought like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's no question, like that's that's definitely the one I
Speaker 1: want to write about it, like ding ding ding, yes,
Speaker 1: And I mean I also I do have a soft
Speaker 1: spot for just like writing about like crushes and romance
Speaker 1: and yes, sex, I mean, I try to write about
Speaker 1: sex in like a intentional way where it serves the plot.
Speaker 1: But so in some ways I also saw this as
Speaker 1: a really festive opportunity to make fun of myself and
Speaker 1: and to make fun of myself and the people who
Speaker 1: make fun of me for writing sex scenes in fiction.
Speaker 1: Your latest novel is Rodham, a novel about Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: and there are sex scenes in that book with Bill,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering which was more interesting and challenging to
Speaker 1: imagine Hillary is having sex with Bill or panda sex.
Speaker 1: They were each challenging yet rewarding in their own way.
Speaker 1: It's the best possible answer for that question. You end
Speaker 1: with a note about forbidden love across species, sizes, enclosures.
Speaker 1: What can we humans learn from the female panda's love affair. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I think that one thing that maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is like unsettling or reason for hope,
Speaker 1: is that you know, she she sort of lives her
Speaker 1: life in her enclosure. And my research did reveal to
Speaker 1: me that giant panda spent the majority of their time
Speaker 1: eating bamboo and napping and kind of pooping. I think
Speaker 1: to a lesser but still significant degree of pooping and
Speaker 1: knit like. But actually that I think the appearance of
Speaker 1: the red Panda is maybe like a lesson that all
Speaker 1: of our lives can take surprising twists when we don't
Speaker 1: expect it. M M, come on, Curtis, yes, bring that
Speaker 1: back around. You can read my full uncensored interview with
Speaker 1: Curtis Settenfeld on our website Chronicles dot fm, where you
Speaker 1: can also read her story and other short fiction torn
Speaker 1: from today's headlines. Our sound designer and composer is Bart Warshaw,
Speaker 1: our producer is Curtis Fox, and our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Emily Roston. Tyler Cabott is the executive producer and founder
Speaker 1: of Chronicles of Now for Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Ali Tom Mullock. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliore,
Speaker 1: Heather Fame, and Eric Sandler for the Chronicles of Now podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening.