August 12, 2020 • 17 mins
The most uplifting news of the past six months? Two giant pandas in Hong Kong finally mate after ten years, when their zoo is closed to visitors due to Covid. But what if there was another reason it took so long for them to get into the mood? An alternate history of panda passion by Curtis Sittenfeld, the bestselling author of six novels, including most recently, Rodham.
Narrated by Rachel Dratch. Hosted by Ashley C. Ford.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This is Ying Ying and Lee Lee, two pandas
that live in the Ocean Park Zoo in Hong Kong.
The zoo has been trying to get them to make
for ten years with no luck. I'm Ashley Forward and
this is the Chronicles of Now, where we ask writers
(00:37):
to dream up short stories inspired by the news. Okay,
so the news this year has been relentlessly bleak. The pandemic,
a global economic depression, police violence, a dangerously incompetent president,
species extinction, climate change. It just goes on and on
(00:58):
and it's depressing. Right, We felt we needed to change
it up here at the Chronicles of Now. We needed
some good news. So on this episode we're going full panda.
It seems was the Private season when the coronavirus shut
down the zoo, the pandaly. If there's one good thing
to come of this, it's not in our absence. Some
(01:21):
timid pandas finally got it on, and boy did they
get it on. No visitors were there, but the camera
was rolling and the media ate it up. These pandas
are having sex. I'm watching them, and I might be
the happiest I've been since the pandema. Now this is
(01:46):
a family podcast, and we would never shamelessly goat at
panda sex like The New York Times did in this video.
When those pandas did it, I felt this strange surge
of pride. Oh no. We commissioned one of the country's
finest writers of fiction to give the panda take on
the story. Curtis Sittenfeld is the best selling author of
(02:08):
six novels. Her latest is Rotten, a novel that reimagines
Hillary Clinton's life. As she did in that book, she
took some artistic liberties for her pandas story. The zoo
in the story is sort of fictitious, and I changed
the panda's names to respect their privacy. In a world
gone haywire, sometimes pandas are the only way to make
(02:33):
sense of it all. The incident the day that bifurcated
my existence into before and after happened back in twenty sixteen.
(02:54):
By then, I'd been at Breeze Point Zoo for nine years.
Though time is elastic in a life such as mine.
That first time I saw him, I didn't know his
name or even his speeches. I pieced this information together
afterward by eavesdropping on my handlers, who have long assumed
(03:15):
that I don't understand cantonese. All I knew that day
when I awakened from a morning nap atop of a
massive rock, was that perched on a log hardly more
than a meter away, regarding me unabashedly, was a small
creature with reddish fur, pointy ears, inquisitive brown eyes, white whiskers,
(03:36):
and a long striped tail. How enchanting he was, how
life has build, how glossy his coat, and in his gaze,
what depths, what perspicacity. The internal jolt I experienced made
(03:56):
me abruptly understand that I was sleeping my life away,
both literally and figuratively. I'd been napping on my stomach
with my glossy black fore legs flung in front of me,
and I rolled on to my side to display my heft,
all one hundred twenty kilograms of it, to its most
(04:19):
flattering effect. I routinely twenty kilograms of bamboo a day
up until this very moment. That consumption had been my
raison d'etre. He approached tentatively at first, then with greater confidence,
he passed my head and walked regally around me to
(04:41):
sniff my hind quarters. To nudge my back, the contact
with electrifying returning to my head. He made eye contact
with me from close range, then cocked his ears to
the right, indicating I should follow. What ensued was truly magical,
(05:10):
the most intoxicating interlude of my life, and I am
still unable to say whether it lasted minutes or hours.
My enclosure featured an air SAT's bamboo forest and cave,
multiple ponds, and wooden climbing structures, and my new friend
(05:33):
and I frolicked through it. All. I did not know
then that my friend was a red panda, that his
name was Zusian, or that he'd escaped his enclosure from mine.
All I knew was that it was delightful to lumber
and climb with him in the sun. I was impervious
(05:54):
to the humans pointing and hooting from above, their strange
rubbery faces contorting with pleasure, and yet it was the
delight they took in the sight of Zusian and me,
the commotion of their delight that eventually drew the attention
of the zoo handlers, who, when they realized what had happened,
entered my enclosure. There were six of them in blue
(06:17):
medical gowns. And rubber boots and restrained me while removing Zeeshan.
I still remember the sight of him as one of
the handlers carried him away, the yearning in his mournful
expression and proud tale. I have not seen him since,
and it has been agony. I soon learned that he'd
(06:45):
been living, and as far as I know, still does
in an enclosure adjacent to mine. Also that his species
in general and he in particular, are known for being
escape artists. It is this fact that has kept me
these last four years in a constant state of alertness
and hope that he's plotting another escape, that one day,
(07:07):
if even for just another moment of bliss, we'll be
together again. It's not that I dislike Da Pung, my
enclosure mate. Indeed, I feel a sincere, if moderate affection
(07:28):
for him. But really, who could be attracted to someone
when you see them defecating up to fifty times a day.
I've heard our handlers attribute our aversion to mating to
the low libido endemic among giant pandas, But this explanation
underestimates our individual idiosyncrasies. All of which is to say
that the handlers are erroneous in their assumptions about why
(07:51):
once the zoo was closed to visitors earlier this spring,
Da Pung and I engage in our first ever how
might I say this voluntary coupling, Jiang Jian and Dapong
have made a breakthrough, the handlers told one another and
journalists worldwide. All they needed was a little privacy. They
(08:11):
rewarded us with apples and carrots. But it wasn't privacy
that motivated me. It was boredom. I mean, seriously, COVID
just didn't shut down your world. For the last four years,
I've spent my waking hours being mildly amused by the
human visitors to our zoo, and my sleeping hours dreaming
(08:34):
of a reunion with Zushan. Then the human visitors vanished,
and many weeks into the new quiet, in a moment
of profound enui, and I decided I might as well
give a union with Da Hung a whirl. But even
in the act itself, with dab Hung fumbling behind me,
(08:58):
pressing his body against mine, the small bump of his
panda hood trying to find the appropriate cavity, it was
Zeeshan I thought of. As for dab Hung, I'm not
convinced he felt any more enthusiasm than I did. I
know that over the years, our handlers have tried to
encourage him with legs strengthening exercises, with exposure to the
(09:22):
excretions from my scent glands, and even with spicy videos
of others of our kind. But I suspect in the
end it was less that such incentives proved effective than
that he was trying to please our handlers. Passion alas
cannot simply be summoned. Meanwhile, the fact that so much
(09:45):
about Zeshen was and is forbidden and impossible our respective sizes,
our enclosures, our differing species, has never decreased my longing
to know what it's like to yearn for four years
for a red panda who is mere meters from you,
beneath the same sky, breathing the same air from the
(10:08):
South China Sea. Did you know? Are you tiny, wiley heartbreaker?
I think as I chew bamboo, are you coming back
to me? And if so, when hurry? Please Zeshian, because
I miss you terribly. That was breeze point by Curtis
(10:33):
Sitt and felt the narrator was the one and only
Rachel dratch Hi. Curtis Hi Ashley. So I get the
feeling that you didn't stop with the news reports of
panda's having pandemic sex. I'm feeling like you went a
little bit deeper. You did some serious research into panda sex.
Am I correct? Well, I assume you mean that as
(10:57):
a great compliment. I do, and I do well, Okay,
so this is what I did. I mean, of course,
of course I didn't research into panda sex as any
self respecting fiction writer would. I started by buying a
National Geographic book for kids about pandas, which I often
(11:23):
find books meant for kids to be a useful starting
place for research in fiction because it sort of tells
you the general information you need but doesn't overwhelm you,
and it's not like you lose like five years of
your life doing research. And then, of course I also
went into all the nooks and crannies of the Internet,
(11:43):
and I've learned quite a bit. So is it true
that giant pandas have low libido? It's true the giant
pandas have low libidas. And actually, and I'm saying this
like factually, not disrespectfully, Supposedly, the male panda does have
an unusually small penis and weak hind legs, which make
(12:08):
the physical act of sex challenging. Wow, that that part
I did not find in a children's book, but I
did find it online. I mean, useful information in case,
in case you ever have like a panda libido emergency,
you know, in your future, I think you'll you'll be
(12:31):
well equipped a hand. You never know. The world is
a big and surprising place, speaking of with everything going
on in the world, why this story, Why panda sex?
Why now? I always longed for an interviewer to say
to me, why panda sex? Why now? No? Well, so, okay,
(12:53):
So I'm not sure how great a level of detail
I should get into. But I actually originally thought that
I wanted to write a story based on a different headline,
based on a headline about sort of the chat challenges
of dating during a pandemic, and especially like what if
(13:15):
you had just started seeing someone and then then maybe
gone on like one or two dates and then everything
shuts down. And so I actually started working and worked
for a few days on that story, and I just
felt like, you know, it was kind of tonally off,
or I don't maybe it's because I'm about to turn
forty five, and it was from the perspective of like
(13:36):
a millennial, and I really really felt my age, like
I kind of like almost like like it was like
trying to be a cool mom and like use the
current lingo. And so then I just kind of thought, like,
you know, maybe I'm just not going to do this project, Like,
of course I love the Chronicles of Now and like,
I think it's such a sort of interesting premise and
(13:58):
have enjoyed the other stories. But I was like, you know,
maybe I'll just wait six months or something. And then
Tyler Cabot, the founder, showed me his list of headlines
he had gathered. And of course, because headlines from the
recent past are all so overwhelmingly sad and heartbreaking and
(14:19):
frustrating in so many different ways, I mean, across lots
of topics, and so this headline about you know, these
two pandas have made it for the first time voluntarily
after all these years together. It was the one headline
that made me literally laugh out loud, and I thought like, oh,
(14:40):
there's no question, like that's that's definitely the one I
want to write about it, like ding ding ding, yes,
And I mean I also I do have a soft
spot for just like writing about like crushes and romance
and yes, sex, I mean, I try to write about
sex in like a intentional way where it serves the plot.
(15:00):
But so in some ways I also saw this as
a really festive opportunity to make fun of myself and
and to make fun of myself and the people who
make fun of me for writing sex scenes in fiction.
Your latest novel is Rodham, a novel about Hillary Clinton,
and there are sex scenes in that book with Bill,
and I'm wondering which was more interesting and challenging to
(15:23):
imagine Hillary is having sex with Bill or panda sex.
They were each challenging yet rewarding in their own way.
It's the best possible answer for that question. You end
with a note about forbidden love across species, sizes, enclosures.
(15:48):
What can we humans learn from the female panda's love affair. Well,
I think I think that one thing that maybe I
don't know if this is like unsettling or reason for hope,
is that you know, she she sort of lives her
life in her enclosure. And my research did reveal to
(16:09):
me that giant panda spent the majority of their time
eating bamboo and napping and kind of pooping. I think
to a lesser but still significant degree of pooping and
knit like. But actually that I think the appearance of
the red Panda is maybe like a lesson that all
(16:29):
of our lives can take surprising twists when we don't
expect it. M M, come on, Curtis, yes, bring that
back around. You can read my full uncensored interview with
Curtis Settenfeld on our website Chronicles dot fm, where you
(16:50):
can also read her story and other short fiction torn
from today's headlines. Our sound designer and composer is Bart Warshaw,
our producer is Curtis Fox, and our associate producer is
Emily Roston. Tyler Cabott is the executive producer and founder
of Chronicles of Now for Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer
(17:11):
is Ali Tom Mullock. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliore,
Heather Fame, and Eric Sandler for the Chronicles of Now podcast.
I'm Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening.
Pushkin. This is Ying Ying and Lee Lee, two pandas
that live in the Ocean Park Zoo in Hong Kong.
The zoo has been trying to get them to make
for ten years with no luck. I'm Ashley Forward and
this is the Chronicles of Now, where we ask writers
(00:37):
to dream up short stories inspired by the news. Okay,
so the news this year has been relentlessly bleak. The pandemic,
a global economic depression, police violence, a dangerously incompetent president,
species extinction, climate change. It just goes on and on
(00:58):
and it's depressing. Right, We felt we needed to change
it up here at the Chronicles of Now. We needed
some good news. So on this episode we're going full panda.
It seems was the Private season when the coronavirus shut
down the zoo, the pandaly. If there's one good thing
to come of this, it's not in our absence. Some
(01:21):
timid pandas finally got it on, and boy did they
get it on. No visitors were there, but the camera
was rolling and the media ate it up. These pandas
are having sex. I'm watching them, and I might be
the happiest I've been since the pandema. Now this is
(01:46):
a family podcast, and we would never shamelessly goat at
panda sex like The New York Times did in this video.
When those pandas did it, I felt this strange surge
of pride. Oh no. We commissioned one of the country's
finest writers of fiction to give the panda take on
the story. Curtis Sittenfeld is the best selling author of
(02:08):
six novels. Her latest is Rotten, a novel that reimagines
Hillary Clinton's life. As she did in that book, she
took some artistic liberties for her pandas story. The zoo
in the story is sort of fictitious, and I changed
the panda's names to respect their privacy. In a world
gone haywire, sometimes pandas are the only way to make
(02:33):
sense of it all. The incident the day that bifurcated
my existence into before and after happened back in twenty sixteen.
(02:54):
By then, I'd been at Breeze Point Zoo for nine years.
Though time is elastic in a life such as mine.
That first time I saw him, I didn't know his
name or even his speeches. I pieced this information together
afterward by eavesdropping on my handlers, who have long assumed
(03:15):
that I don't understand cantonese. All I knew that day
when I awakened from a morning nap atop of a
massive rock, was that perched on a log hardly more
than a meter away, regarding me unabashedly, was a small
creature with reddish fur, pointy ears, inquisitive brown eyes, white whiskers,
(03:36):
and a long striped tail. How enchanting he was, how
life has build, how glossy his coat, and in his gaze,
what depths, what perspicacity. The internal jolt I experienced made
(03:56):
me abruptly understand that I was sleeping my life away,
both literally and figuratively. I'd been napping on my stomach
with my glossy black fore legs flung in front of me,
and I rolled on to my side to display my heft,
all one hundred twenty kilograms of it, to its most
(04:19):
flattering effect. I routinely twenty kilograms of bamboo a day
up until this very moment. That consumption had been my
raison d'etre. He approached tentatively at first, then with greater confidence,
he passed my head and walked regally around me to
(04:41):
sniff my hind quarters. To nudge my back, the contact
with electrifying returning to my head. He made eye contact
with me from close range, then cocked his ears to
the right, indicating I should follow. What ensued was truly magical,
(05:10):
the most intoxicating interlude of my life, and I am
still unable to say whether it lasted minutes or hours.
My enclosure featured an air SAT's bamboo forest and cave,
multiple ponds, and wooden climbing structures, and my new friend
(05:33):
and I frolicked through it. All. I did not know
then that my friend was a red panda, that his
name was Zusian, or that he'd escaped his enclosure from mine.
All I knew was that it was delightful to lumber
and climb with him in the sun. I was impervious
(05:54):
to the humans pointing and hooting from above, their strange
rubbery faces contorting with pleasure, and yet it was the
delight they took in the sight of Zusian and me,
the commotion of their delight that eventually drew the attention
of the zoo handlers, who, when they realized what had happened,
entered my enclosure. There were six of them in blue
(06:17):
medical gowns. And rubber boots and restrained me while removing Zeeshan.
I still remember the sight of him as one of
the handlers carried him away, the yearning in his mournful
expression and proud tale. I have not seen him since,
and it has been agony. I soon learned that he'd
(06:45):
been living, and as far as I know, still does
in an enclosure adjacent to mine. Also that his species
in general and he in particular, are known for being
escape artists. It is this fact that has kept me
these last four years in a constant state of alertness
and hope that he's plotting another escape, that one day,
(07:07):
if even for just another moment of bliss, we'll be
together again. It's not that I dislike Da Pung, my
enclosure mate. Indeed, I feel a sincere, if moderate affection
(07:28):
for him. But really, who could be attracted to someone
when you see them defecating up to fifty times a day.
I've heard our handlers attribute our aversion to mating to
the low libido endemic among giant pandas, But this explanation
underestimates our individual idiosyncrasies. All of which is to say
that the handlers are erroneous in their assumptions about why
(07:51):
once the zoo was closed to visitors earlier this spring,
Da Pung and I engage in our first ever how
might I say this voluntary coupling, Jiang Jian and Dapong
have made a breakthrough, the handlers told one another and
journalists worldwide. All they needed was a little privacy. They
(08:11):
rewarded us with apples and carrots. But it wasn't privacy
that motivated me. It was boredom. I mean, seriously, COVID
just didn't shut down your world. For the last four years,
I've spent my waking hours being mildly amused by the
human visitors to our zoo, and my sleeping hours dreaming
(08:34):
of a reunion with Zushan. Then the human visitors vanished,
and many weeks into the new quiet, in a moment
of profound enui, and I decided I might as well
give a union with Da Hung a whirl. But even
in the act itself, with dab Hung fumbling behind me,
(08:58):
pressing his body against mine, the small bump of his
panda hood trying to find the appropriate cavity, it was
Zeeshan I thought of. As for dab Hung, I'm not
convinced he felt any more enthusiasm than I did. I
know that over the years, our handlers have tried to
encourage him with legs strengthening exercises, with exposure to the
(09:22):
excretions from my scent glands, and even with spicy videos
of others of our kind. But I suspect in the
end it was less that such incentives proved effective than
that he was trying to please our handlers. Passion alas
cannot simply be summoned. Meanwhile, the fact that so much
(09:45):
about Zeshen was and is forbidden and impossible our respective sizes,
our enclosures, our differing species, has never decreased my longing
to know what it's like to yearn for four years
for a red panda who is mere meters from you,
beneath the same sky, breathing the same air from the
(10:08):
South China Sea. Did you know? Are you tiny, wiley heartbreaker?
I think as I chew bamboo, are you coming back
to me? And if so, when hurry? Please Zeshian, because
I miss you terribly. That was breeze point by Curtis
(10:33):
Sitt and felt the narrator was the one and only
Rachel dratch Hi. Curtis Hi Ashley. So I get the
feeling that you didn't stop with the news reports of
panda's having pandemic sex. I'm feeling like you went a
little bit deeper. You did some serious research into panda sex.
Am I correct? Well, I assume you mean that as
(10:57):
a great compliment. I do, and I do well, Okay,
so this is what I did. I mean, of course,
of course I didn't research into panda sex as any
self respecting fiction writer would. I started by buying a
National Geographic book for kids about pandas, which I often
(11:23):
find books meant for kids to be a useful starting
place for research in fiction because it sort of tells
you the general information you need but doesn't overwhelm you,
and it's not like you lose like five years of
your life doing research. And then, of course I also
went into all the nooks and crannies of the Internet,
(11:43):
and I've learned quite a bit. So is it true
that giant pandas have low libido? It's true the giant
pandas have low libidas. And actually, and I'm saying this
like factually, not disrespectfully, Supposedly, the male panda does have
an unusually small penis and weak hind legs, which make
(12:08):
the physical act of sex challenging. Wow, that that part
I did not find in a children's book, but I
did find it online. I mean, useful information in case,
in case you ever have like a panda libido emergency,
you know, in your future, I think you'll you'll be
(12:31):
well equipped a hand. You never know. The world is
a big and surprising place, speaking of with everything going
on in the world, why this story, Why panda sex?
Why now? I always longed for an interviewer to say
to me, why panda sex? Why now? No? Well, so, okay,
(12:53):
So I'm not sure how great a level of detail
I should get into. But I actually originally thought that
I wanted to write a story based on a different headline,
based on a headline about sort of the chat challenges
of dating during a pandemic, and especially like what if
(13:15):
you had just started seeing someone and then then maybe
gone on like one or two dates and then everything
shuts down. And so I actually started working and worked
for a few days on that story, and I just
felt like, you know, it was kind of tonally off,
or I don't maybe it's because I'm about to turn
forty five, and it was from the perspective of like
(13:36):
a millennial, and I really really felt my age, like
I kind of like almost like like it was like
trying to be a cool mom and like use the
current lingo. And so then I just kind of thought, like,
you know, maybe I'm just not going to do this project, Like,
of course I love the Chronicles of Now and like,
I think it's such a sort of interesting premise and
(13:58):
have enjoyed the other stories. But I was like, you know,
maybe I'll just wait six months or something. And then
Tyler Cabot, the founder, showed me his list of headlines
he had gathered. And of course, because headlines from the
recent past are all so overwhelmingly sad and heartbreaking and
(14:19):
frustrating in so many different ways, I mean, across lots
of topics, and so this headline about you know, these
two pandas have made it for the first time voluntarily
after all these years together. It was the one headline
that made me literally laugh out loud, and I thought like, oh,
(14:40):
there's no question, like that's that's definitely the one I
want to write about it, like ding ding ding, yes,
And I mean I also I do have a soft
spot for just like writing about like crushes and romance
and yes, sex, I mean, I try to write about
sex in like a intentional way where it serves the plot.
(15:00):
But so in some ways I also saw this as
a really festive opportunity to make fun of myself and
and to make fun of myself and the people who
make fun of me for writing sex scenes in fiction.
Your latest novel is Rodham, a novel about Hillary Clinton,
and there are sex scenes in that book with Bill,
and I'm wondering which was more interesting and challenging to
(15:23):
imagine Hillary is having sex with Bill or panda sex.
They were each challenging yet rewarding in their own way.
It's the best possible answer for that question. You end
with a note about forbidden love across species, sizes, enclosures.
(15:48):
What can we humans learn from the female panda's love affair. Well,
I think I think that one thing that maybe I
don't know if this is like unsettling or reason for hope,
is that you know, she she sort of lives her
life in her enclosure. And my research did reveal to
(16:09):
me that giant panda spent the majority of their time
eating bamboo and napping and kind of pooping. I think
to a lesser but still significant degree of pooping and
knit like. But actually that I think the appearance of
the red Panda is maybe like a lesson that all
(16:29):
of our lives can take surprising twists when we don't
expect it. M M, come on, Curtis, yes, bring that
back around. You can read my full uncensored interview with
Curtis Settenfeld on our website Chronicles dot fm, where you
(16:50):
can also read her story and other short fiction torn
from today's headlines. Our sound designer and composer is Bart Warshaw,
our producer is Curtis Fox, and our associate producer is
Emily Roston. Tyler Cabott is the executive producer and founder
of Chronicles of Now for Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer
(17:11):
is Ali Tom Mullock. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliore,
Heather Fame, and Eric Sandler for the Chronicles of Now podcast.
I'm Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening.
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