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A narrative podcast from two bird lovers (and friends) exploring all things bird.
She's a panther, she's a lion, you're the fox.
I'm Hannah.
And I'm Cleo.
And you're listening to Birds on Birds.
Hey, everybody, and welcome back to Birds on Birds.
I feel like I just inhabited your body when I did that.
I feel like I was accidentally inhabited your body?
No, you were inhabiting my body.
I feel like...
What I'm trying to say is it felt like I was like doing what you usually do in the same intonation that you usually do.
Okay, okay.
But I didn't do it on purpose.
Anyway.
Welcome back everybody.
I am so excited to talk about today's episode.
And I'm excited to get into everything that Hannah has prepared for us today.
Before we get started, Hannah, what have you been up to?
Anything you've been doing that's fun lately?
Um, you know, I love movies, so I feel like I've been seeing lots of good movies.
We're kicking off the summer season with a lot of stuff already.
I already talked about obsession and I love boosters.
Yeah.
I also saw tuner.
Oh, right.
It was really good.
Actually, it's not only did Hannah tell me about that, she brought me a bobblehead. Bobblehead of what's the guy's name?
Dustin Hoffman.
Dustin Hoffman came into my house and said, do you like Dustin Hoffman?
And I said, I don't know.
And she was like, I brought you this.
And I was like, okay.
And it's like Dustin Hoffman sitting at a piano. And a bobblehead.
Yeah.
And it's great. Love it.
No, it's, um...
I went to an early access screening with friends and by early access.
I mean, like a couple days.
Um, but AMC A couple days before?
It got released.
Oh, like you did the scream unseen?
No?
It was like Sunday night before the Thursday release.
Um, But I literally only went because I get, I mean, we've talked about this before, but we're both A-listers with AMC.
And they randomly will send me ads to like go to Scream Unseen or they also do like random sweepstakes.
They're like, buy tickets during this date to this date, and you could win a chance to be in the red carpet for this.
And I never sign up for those.
But this one I signed up for because it came with a bobblehead.
And I love bubble heads.
Sure.
Um, so it turns out the bobblehead is even featured throughout the movie, because they Dustin Hoffman and Leo Woodall, who is one of the hot men of the moment.
They are piano tuners.
So they go and do piano repair and tuning.
And on their van. That they travel in.
They have a bunch of bobbleheads on the dash and one of them, a special bobblehead that they made for the 40th anniversary of them being in business.
Special 40th anniversary of being in business.
Business.
Anyway, I was super pissed off because I didn't get the bobblehead when we walked in.
They didn't say anything about it.
And I was like, okay, well, sometimes with these special screenings, they'll have like someone posted up outside of the theater.
So I was like, okay, this theater, you look, go up and down an escalator to get in and out of the actual, like, theater area, the lobby is downstairs by itself.
So we go up, there's nobody posted up outside of the theater with a bobblehead.
And then I'm like, whatever.
It's fine.
It was like, maybe they ran out.
Yeah.
Or it's like, they said like, you know, it was like with an asterisk that you would get this.
And I was like, whatever.
I'll just enjoy the movie But then it's like heavily featured throughout the movie.
They constantly are panning over this bobblehead whenever he's driving in the van.
And then at the end, my friend went up to the concessions and was like, hey, I think we were supposed to get this pop ahead.
Do you all not have it?
Like, is it only at certain theaters and you aren't one of them?
And they went in the back and they had like a 100 of these bobbleheads.
Which is crazy because this is what happens when only teenagers work for you.
Like movie theaters are set up to fail because they're just. Just teenagers.
They don't care.
Well, and like a couple managers. Who also don't care.
So anyway, I brought my extra one to Cleo.
Yeah, which was very funny because before she opened it.
She was like, do you like Dustin Hoffman?
I historically don't know what anyone was like, except for like a handful of people.
I know their names, but I don't know what anybody looks like just by their name most of the time.
So I was like, who is, I don't know who that is.
And he's kind of like an old actor.
I wouldn't say he's like, yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Stuart's really good about knowing. Actor names and what they've been in and like discography or filmography type situations.
And yeah, he also is really good about that with bands.
Like, this person's, it's the rice maker.
The rice cooker just went off and we both got scared, but it was...
I almost thought it was the smoke alarm, the smoke alarm.
It was not.
It was just the rice cookie, which means when we're done with this, we'll have food to eat.
Yay.
Plain rice.
Your favorite.
Honestly, I do love.
I do do, actually.
Rice with just like a soft boiled egg mashed in and a little bit of soy sauce or butter.
Just plain is fun with me.
Oh, no salt?
Nothing.
Hmm.
I have strong feelings about that.
I think you should try butter.
Okay.
Yeah, salted butter preferably. Anyway.
But yes, so that's how I end.
I also ended up with a Dustin Hoffman sitting at piano bobblehead, and it's pretty elaborate.
No, and it's like hefty.
Like it's heavy.
Yeah.
Like, it weighs a substantial.
I would say that it weighs more than most of the birds we've talked about.
I was literally gonna say it weighs most than more than most birds we were talking about.
What's wrong with us?
Why are we, I can't we speak?
All those apple chips.
Grace, a little crazy.
Get a little crazy.
Apple chip chips.
Boots with the fur.
Apple bottom chips.
We're gonna get famous by being sued for singing everyone's.
What I want to know is like, is an apple the bottom we want to be talking about?
Like, peaches are known for the good box.
No, I don't think you want to have Apple.
Apple Bottom is it like gets smaller.
Yeah, no, it is giving like grandma butt.
Yeah, I'm thinking maybe they mean the opposite way.
Yeah.
Like, because the top of an apple can be pretty, like, rotund and cute.
So I think it's an apple turned upside down.
Okay.
Yeah.
But I think peaches are better.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
You know Gabby Wendy?
Of course.
She's been posting and Robbie, her wife, has been posting all these pictures of her, like, trying on clothes, but it's really just her being naked.
Yeah, and it's fucking awesome.
But her butt is incredible.
Oh yeah, she has a great body.
It's like...
It's unreal.
It doesn't look real.
Yeah, it might not be.
Yeah.
But she looks great.
I love her.
I love that they are so secure in their relationship that they get to share it with the world and we get to benefit from it.
They are hilarious.
Which Robbie's in hacks.
Oh, yeah, amazing.
She's not in all the seasons.
She's only in the last 2 or three, but yeah, you should.
I just love her so much.
I think Gabby Windy is the one of the funniest people.
Like naturally one of the funniest people on earth.
I know that her wife is the comedian, but I think Abby is like so funny.
She is. Funny.
And I don't think Robbie would be with her if she wasn't fucking funny.
No, yeah.
I imagine they make each other laugh quite a bit.
But I also imagine that sometimes they'll like stop being fucking funny.
I'm being serious for a second.
Probably real.
That's probably what's going on.
But yeah, I love her.
I remember clocking that she was gay because she was too funny to be straight.
Oh that's so good.
No, when she showed up on Clayton season, which shout out to Clayton.
Once again, using our mouths and our, well, nope.
If you listen to the podcast, that someone else.. Mouth. To white.
Yeah, apparently.
But anyway, the point is, I was like, this girl is so fucking funny.
She can't not be queer.
Like she can't.
And then she was like, no, I'm for sure queer.
And then married a dyke.
I love it.
We love it.
Happy Pride month.
Happy Pride month again.
We continue on our pride month. To celebrate pride.
Escapades, and we will continue to do that moving forward.
Yeah, in this episode. Will.
But before we get into that, what have you been up to, Cleo?
Wait, oh, yeah.
Did you say that Turner was a good movie?
Oh, I didn't.
We got destroyed. You like the bobblehead?
I really liked it.
It was one of my favorites this year, actually, which I've seen a lot of good movies.
It's a, again, they're piano tuners, but he has this special highly sensitive hearing.
So he has to wear these like earplugs, essentially, like all the time.
But he, Dustin Hoffman's character is getting very old and he forgets how to open, or he forgets the safe combination for something and he accidentally leaves something in a safe in his house.
So this guy learns to crack a safe because of his highly sensitive hearing.
He can take his earplug out and then he just like, he can hear the clicking much more clearer than like other people.
So he unfortunately ends up in a situation where he's a safe cracker for this like, um, gang. Gang. Essentially, yeah.
Like a criminal group of people. Organization.
Um, and he gets himself in a little mess because of that, but he also has this beautiful girlfriend that he meets because she's a piano player and he tunes her piano and it's very cool.
It's like a little romantic.
The music is very cool.
The way they use sound throughout the movie is really cool.
Um, And I love a heist.
Oh, I love a heist. Yeah.
It was really fun because it was like a...
It was a heist in a way that most, it was different.
It was a different setup than the typical heist movie, I would say.
Cool.
Okay.
It was a lot of fun.
Yeah, like we said recently, there's so many good movies out right now that it's hard because you feel like you're missing out no matter what. Just keep coming out.
Yeah.
Well, and some of them just get the most limited releases.
Like Project Hail Mary might even still be playing in some theaters across the country and that's great.
I think it's a fantastic movie.
However, there are some movies that are only playing for like 2 weeks.
I know is God is, I think I might miss it.
I'm sad about it because I really wanted to see that in theaters.
Yeah.
It looks amazing.
So maybe I'll get time.
Maybe I'll have time to do both.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
So I saw Tuner and it was great.
Um, but yeah.
And then we saw Devil Wears Prada together.
Yes, we did, which was...
Devil Wears Prada 2.
I should say.
Yeah. Was really fun.
I liked it.
I thought as far as sequels go, it was really good.
They surprised me with a couple twists that they grew in, for sure.
It definitely got a little cutesy at times where I was like, we don't need to do that.
You know, like the, yeah, like callbacks to the first.
Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's too much.
And I think they rode the line in the beginning, but then it got much better.
And it did comment on, you know, the difference between 2006.
Yeah, I was going to say 2026, but that is now.
So 20 years.
And I thought the spin of like how journalism in magazines is dying was really interesting.
It was really cool.
Because I never even considered that.
It was kind of a main plot point from the very beginning of like the status of journalism because Andy is like a journalist who's been working in the industry for 20 years at this point.
So it was really cool because I think it's an important conversation right now.
Totally.
Also, everyone looked hot.
On a much less serious note and...
But truly, like, it's crazy after 20 years, the 4 core stars look just as good, if not better.
And they did in the 1st one.
Shout out Lucy Lou.
Oh my god. Is quite possibly in my top 5 hottest of all time celebrities.
Since Charlie's Angels, I have had such a crush on her.
I remember being young watching Charlie's Angels the 1st time and seeing her take off her motorcycle helmet and going, oh no.
Like, I, the freckles.
She's just hot.
Yeah, and cool.
She seems so fucking cool.
She does.
She picks really cool roles.
Yeah, she like gets older and probably needs less work.
She feels like the last movies I've seen her in, she's been in a really cool role.
Yeah, I just think she seems like such a badass.
I would love to have her at like a dinner table, dream dinner table conversation.
Oh yeah.
She'd be one of my like random picks just because I don't know anything about her, but she seems like she'd be interesting.
I'd be very interested to shock to her.
Yeah.
So it was a lot of fun to see her in that as well because I just hadn't seen her in anything in a while.
No, it was, yeah, there were several surprise appearances by people.
That was fun.
Caleb Heron, who I love.
So true podcast, comedian.
He had a bigger role than I expected.
And the girl from Bridgerton, who, fuck, I cannot remember her name.
I'm gonna Google her right now because I think she is awesome and I try really hard to remember.
I know I just said I can't remember people's names ever, but I try really hard to remember female actresses' names because I think it's important.
Simone Ashley.
I fucking love her.
What a queen.
She's so cool.
She's also so hot.
Everyone's so hot in this movie.
It was just, Chef's Kiss.
Donatello looked hot.
Just kidding.
No offense.
No offense, Donatella.
She doesn't Donatello.
I think I did I think you did, which I think...
I was thinking Michelangelo, which is also a Ninja Turtle, but I believe a painter.
Yeah, they are both actually painters.
Okay, I think all the ninja turtles are named...
I thought I could do something and I thought that Donatello was only...
I was about to sound really stupid.
No.
Incredible.
Yeah, no, I had a lot of fun.
I thought it was worth seeing.
I don't know that it's still in theaters.
I don't think so Yeah, we just saw it and it might have been one of the last weekends, but it also has been getting a lot of, like, I was having trouble finding times where the theater wasn't like just the 1st 3 rows available.
So I think it's been having a pretty long life as far as the box office hit.
So that's cool.
Good for them.
But yeah, Stanley Tucci could do anything to me.
And I would say thank you.
So that's how I...
That's good to know.
I didn't know that about you.
Now I do.
Well, okay.
But then remember when we were leaving and I was like, are you sure he's not gay?
Oh yeah, because he's married to Emily Blunt's sister.
Yes.
Yeah.
And there are videos of them talking, which is quite funny now because he, they're interviewing each other and she's like, how would you describe your wife?
And she's like bossy?
And then he like starts laughing.
And without the context of knowing that her sister is married to him, is like very funny because you're like, Emily Blunt.
Why are you being weird?
And then you realize it's her sister and you're like, oh, that's just like being a sister.
Yep, which is quite funny.
And also quite sweet.
He also invited, after that whole fiasco happened with the women's hockey team and the men's hockey team and Trump calling them and like making fun of the women's hockey team.
Stanley Tucci invited the women's hockey team of America, Olympics.
That's not what they're called, but not that, but it's the right vibe.
He invited them to his house for like a private dinner.
So I guess it's his house and I can't remember her name, something blunt.
Yeah.
Trisha Blunt.
It's not her name.
But Emily Blood's sister.
Yep.
Patrice famously.
Carmen Blunt.
Tell me, please.
I feel like it's a, it's, it's like similar to Emily, but for some reason, my brain is going into a category of like Trisha.
Yeah, my brain is going like weird older British name.
It's Felicity.
Oh, it's not.
It's okay, I was kind of on the right path.
I wouldn't have made it there, but I was on the right path.
Felicity.
Felicity.
That's lovely name.
Felicity.
It's actually, I'll be referencing it with this episode.
So that's fun.
Felicity?
Yeah.
Oh, you'll be referencing her?
Nope.
Oh, just the word.
There's a poem collection by Mary Oliver that is called Pelicity.
What does it mean?
It means...
Joy, but it also means it's also commonly a woman's name, for example, Felicity Blunt.
The quality or state of being happy, especially great happiness.
Cool.
Do you want to tell me anything else is going on with you?
That sounded weird.
Is that a threat?
It's like when your mom knows you're lying about something. And she's trying to be cool about it.
And she's like, so was there anything else you wanted to tell me?
That your boyfriend has all D's?
Yeah?
Did you want to tell me that?
My mom worked at a school so she could see our headline.
So anytime I was dating someone, she would look up their edline, which was it was like your online grade system so your parents could check your grades.
And because she worked in the school system.
She could lurk my boyfriend's headlines and she would go on and if I had a crush on someone, she would check their headline to see if they made good grades. Then she would harshly judge them based on that.
Yikes.
Yeah.
She cared a lot about good grades.
I mean, it still does, probably.
It is a weird thing that we do, I would say.
But outside of that, what have I been up to?
Going in the show category, I've been watching 2 things on Apple TV, which I think Apple TV, they have like some pretty elite shows.
They do.
And I think they're making a lot of cool, unique shows that I really enjoy.
But recently I've been watching the 2 shows.
One is Widow's Bay, which is super fun.
It's like horror and comedy and a little bit of mystery.
And I do think it balances the 2 pretty well, which I think is a lot of fun.
It's been interesting.
Like, Stuart and I kind of watch it while we do our like crafts and we hang out and then we watch an episode, but it's like one episode a week.
So right now it's, I think there's like 7 episodes out.
Actually, by the time this comes out, maybe all of them will be out.
But it's pretty fun.
I'm having a good time.
It's like, scarier than you expect for how, like, kind of offbeat humory it is, but it's a good time.
And then what I really love that I've been like obsessed with is Margo's got money troubles.
I just started it kind of on a whim.
I think it might be based on a book.
I feel like I've seen, okay.
It is based on a book.
I thought I had seen this book going around for a while.
I didn't read it.
Well, the same thing happened to me with lessons in chemistry and nobody told me that that I thought that was going to be a rom-com.
Let me tell you right now.
It's not.
It is not.
Did you watch it?
I didn't watch it but I read it.
Not a rom-com.
No.
Decidedly not a rom-com.
Incredible show.
So good.
I really enjoyed it, but I was like, whoa, I did not expect this to be heavy.
It's very good.
You should watch it.
The book is even sadder because there's chapters in the perspective of the dog.
Oh, the show has a chapter in this an episode in the perspective of a dog.
Oh shit.
Yeah.
And it tore my shit up.
I watched it all in like 2 days and I remember just like crying for 2 days straight.
But it's, that makes it sound like you shouldn't watch it, but you should.
It's really good.
It's a lot of.. Not a rom-com.
Period.
But it's very good and it is about love, sorta.
It's also about women.
Everything.
It's about women it's about work for. Racism.
It's about so many things.
There's more packed into it than you could ever possibly imagine by the silly little trailer that they showed.
I'll tell you that.
But I was a big fan and I loved it.
But Margot's got money troubles is incredible.
I've been recently obsessed with El Fanning.
I think she is maybe one of the best, like actresses.
I feel like I haven't seen her in a ton of stuff.
But in this show, she is like phenomenal.
Phenomenal.
I am like shocked by how well acted it is. And also like body tea, just, it's so good.
Like, she's so hot, but she's so she's such an interesting character.
It's also Michelle Pfeiffer, who looks so good.
And also, oh gosh, what's his name?
He was from Parks and Rec.
He's like Amy Poehler's other half.
They're in everything together.
Um, wait.
Hang on.
Adam?
No, no, no, no.
Not the guy from Severance.
No.
Okay.
Nick Offerman.
Oh.
He's in it?
Yep.
He plays her dad who is an ex-pro wrestler who's now like an addict who's like trying to be better and it's so good.
And honestly, I'm not usually into this kind of man, but in this show, I'm like, he's hot.
He looks hot.
I got from and has a personality that makes you...
That could be what it is.
Yeah.
It's it's really good.
And then there's a girl who I've definitely seen in other things, but I just like, I feel like in this show, she has such a good role.
Her name is Thadia Graham.
She plays Susie.
I'm not totally certain what else. Quite the name.
Yeah, cool name.
I think it's a really cool name.
And she is also incredible.
I really just think it is a incredibly well-acted, well-done show.
It has a plot line that makes you laugh, but also makes you really upset and like cry.
It's like a drama.
It's a comedy and there's like this whole side plot of her being like whether or not she's a good mom because she's doing only fans and like her only fans is like this really artsy, like she's an alien who's come from space and she doesn't understand what's going on.
So her like friends teach her about things, but she's wearing like a pink wig and she's painted green.
And when she acts like this alien, I don't know, I just feel like you can really see her like breadth of ability.
I just think you should watch it.
It's truly so good.
Fascinating.
I don't know, any of that.
Yeah, I'm obsessed. Told me that I should watch it.
I need to.
Yeah.
And I just found out that Thadia, she is Northern Irish and she does not.
She does an American accent and I had no fucking idea.
She was Irish.
No clue.
Just watch it. Really, really think it's worth your time.
Like I said, Michelle Far...
Oh, Michelle.
I'm Michelle.
Michelle, I'm sorry.
I love you.
Oh, and Nicole Kidman's in it.
And she also plays an XWWE star who is now a lawyer and she's just such a fun character in it.
She was also doing Scarpetta, which is based on a like long-standing series of a mortician and a mystery.
That show is also really good.
And she does incredible.
I mean, Nicole Kidman.
I literally, she could do anything.
Yeah, we come to the movies.
What does she say?
We come to this place for magic.
But also, oh, I thought you were going to stay.
I'm triggered by that now because they've cut it to shit.
Oh, they've cut it like crazy, but she still has heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
She does.
They just like, I need them to bring the whole thing back.
She won a Pulitzer for that.
Yeah.
Oh, she did?
To be clear, I don't know that that should have happened.
Who cares?
Did she write it?
I don't think so.
I think just for I don't I don't understand how Pulitzer's work.
What I do know is that I love Nicole Kidman more than most things in life.
She's amazing.
She really has his baby girl.
I didn't like Baby Girl, but...
A lot of people did.
I was not a fan.
Rico Nasty is also in it. Acting?
Yeah.
I think she's always a good actor.
I just like, you know, I just didn't love the movie.
I didn't think it was nearly as sexy as like, oh, I didn't think it was sexy.
A lot of people were like, I was bricked up and I was like, oh, I did not feel that way.
No.
But I thought it was like a good movie.
It just was like hard to watch. Because you're the whole time you're just like, I was in your seat.
Oh yeah, fully.
The whole time.
But she really, I mean, she's just everybody knows that she can act.
Bitch can act.
Like, she can, she can do anything.
She could.
She's been in so many types of roles.
And even all at the same time.
I'm like, she has Scarpetta coming out.
She was in this show.
She's recently been in another movie.
I'm like, how do you have time?
No, I don't Divorce?
I think, yeah.
I mean, but also, she's always been always doing stuff.
That's true.
She did that movie or that show at the same time that she was filming Baby Girl and like another movie.
It was that show where it's like, it's this family.
Well, while you're doing that, I'm meant to tell you that Rico Nasty is also in Margot's got many troubles.
And so is Lindsay Normington, who I also saw in Anora, which I really loved.
She's kind of a side role in Anora, but I think she's really cool.
And I like her a lot.
So I just think it's like a star studded cast.
I think it's well done.
I think it's really just a good commentary on a lot of things that are happening around us, but not the political things per se.
Like, I feel like there's a lot of shows right now that are talking about inherently political commentary and I mean that by, like, governmental.
This is more about like single moms and how they make money and whether or not they're allowed to do or have certain things and also just like blurred lines between relationships and yeah, it's it's really good.
Go watch it.
That's how I feel.
Yeah.
Um, the show was like a limited series, basically.
So like an extended movie, basically.
I loved my favorite.
It's called the perfect couple.
Oh, yes.
And it was on Netflix.
But she did that?
She's been in so many things recently.
I can't remember, actually, if I watched the perfect couple, but I read the book, I believe.
Nine Perfect Strangers, shoes and both...
Nine Perfect Strangers, I saw.
Yeah, she, I mean, she does everything.
She literally does everything.
Maybe I should watch the perfect couple.
I don't know that I did I think you like it.
It's kind of, I'm fairly certain I read the book.
Okay.
So I think that's why I'm getting it confused.
And I've also never seen practical magic.
Oh my god.
I'm a fool, but I want to watch it because the 2nd one is coming out soon.
Yes, that's another one that will be incredible.
Sandra Bullock has a scene in that movie.
They both look incredible.
But there is specifically a scene in that movie where Sandra Bullock is running in like the sunset or something and she's just in like jean shorts and a tank top and she looks magical.
I've never seen anyone look hotter.
No, she's definitely there's lessons to run. Hot, but I can tell you right now someone took a video of me running.
People would laugh.
I, it's not hot for me.
No.
I'm not speaking on how you run because I don't know that I've ever seen you run.
You don't want to.
It's bad.
I have a turnout.
Like a duck.
Oh?
Or maybe you would like that because I love dust.
I love duck.
I run stupid.
Even my mom says that.
Mom.
She said, you run flatfooted like a duck.
I think about it all the time.
Yeah.
Not all the time.
It's not that serious, but when I was going to hit classes for a while, they used to run, make you run a little bit, and there's this one girl that came to class one day and she was like, do you want to race?
And the instructor was outside and I was like, not really.
And then he was like, oh, you guys doing a foot race?
She beat me by so much.
And I was like, I knew that was going to happen and that wasn't fun for me.
I said, I didn't really want to do that.
I didn't want anyone to see me run.
Then we did that.
I hate running.
Makes my ankles hurt.
It's not good for me It's not.
Anyway, good for me.
Okay.
That's it?
Yeah, let's go ahead and get into the episode, which today, I believe, is conservationist, not a bird highlight.
Mary Oliver.
A gay highlights still.
We're still in the LGBTQIA ++plus.
Correct.
Realm.
But we're going more conservation mode.
Yeah.
This week.
And non-traditional conservationist. Since she is famously a poet, but yeah, but I think that's there's a lot of ways you can be part of conservation.
Well, and even with Bill.
He was an artist who ended up...
Yeah, no, he wasn't.. Thing.
He was not an ornithologist.
Classically trained.
Can you be classically trained?
I don't know if you can be in like crane imitation.
But I would love to.
Wow.
Sign it up.
Yeah.
Like, classically trained, I've truly only ever heard of in reference to like instruments or like ballet.
Yeah.
I'm a classically trained ornithologist.
Yeah.
Shakespearean acting, I think too.
Exactly.
It's an art.
Yeah.
No.
He did sculpting.
Um, and Mary did words.
Mary Oliver.
If you haven't heard of her.
That, wild, but I would say she's probably one of the most famous North American poets.
I would also say you probably know her, even if you don't think you do.
Yep, that's true.
So kind of like the one of the cruxes of this is that she does all of her poetry is about nature in the natural world and the wonder that it provides and that's how she is a conservationist without being someone who's like doing citizen science necessarily.
Not that she didn't, I would say she kind of did citizen science by the way that she lived her life, but it wasn't like through projects or something.
But she does have a lot of references to birds.
It's her most frequently referenced, consistent theme or symbol.
Imagery, yeah.
And again, all of it is about nature, but specifically birds, she references a lot.
And she even has a quote where she says a poem should always have a bird in it.
So that's like the crux of this whole episode.
But, um, as far as how she feels about the natural world, she has a quote from her essay collection called upstream, and it's, I could not be a poet without the natural world, someone else could, but not me.
For me, the door to the woods is the door to the temple.
So, I love it.
But let's get into who she even was.
Yeah, who was Mary Oliver?
Also, just, I just Googled this for fun, but...
You said every poem should have a bird.
She said that.
And I was Googling just to see how many bird species there actually are. You want to take a guess?
I mean, honestly, I feel like maybe even a 100?
Bird species.
Oh, sorry.
In the world, like total.
Okay, not that she references.
Got it, got it, got it.
I was like, I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Hold on.
We need to, we may need to pause.
I like pull my headphones off.
I'm like what did you just say?
You think we're only going to have 100 episodes of content?
We're making our way through.
We're about 10% then?
Oh, my God.
No, um 5000?
10 to 11,000.
Okay.
Possibly more.
Yeah, probably more.
There is the Birdlife International recognizes around 11,500 species, but they're more aggressive into splitting populations.
Yeah. Species.
So 11,000 is about the number.
Damn.
Yeah.
So we could do this for a long time.
Perfect.
100.
100.
How many years is 11,000 weeks?
I'm looking it up.
You think I'm joking?
We're living forever.
We're going to do this for 210 years we'll cover every bird you've ever thought of.
What's funny is that we haven't even had every episode about a bird.
Oh my god. At least 300 years of content.
Yeah, I think so.
We'll have to pass on this podcast like a tortoise.
Oh my god.
To like our next predecessor, no, post-decessors.
Ancestor.
No, we'd be their ancestors.
Yeah, what is?
Inheritors are...
Proteges.
Mm-hmm. Protégés. 210 years, almost 211 years.
Perfect.
Good.
Something to look forward to.
So yeah, anyway, tell me more about Barry Oliver.
I just needed to Google that because I like splitting things.
For me, that makes it fun.
Yeah, I love that you did that.
And then I was like, 100?
Which, I mean, I do think maybe that's right. 100 weeks is accurate.
Oh, I meant, I think it's probably around 100 for Mary Oliver references.
Yeah. Total, but maybe less.
Okay.
So, Mary Oliver, she was born September 10th, 1935.
Yeah.
We've got another Virgo.
Not surprising.
Yeah.
So says someone who doesn't really believe in astronomy.
That's so true.
For reference, if you didn't, Hannah and I are both Virgos.
So, yeah.
And we're both queer.
And so is Mary Oliver.
Yeah.
So basically we're all 3 of the same person.
No worries.
I was being a goose.
Goose, you were silly.
Silly goose.
Um, but she did pass away January 17th, 2019.
So she was 84 years old.
I thought she had passed. Earlier.
No, no, no.
Earlier than that.
I thought she was like long gone.
No.
I mean, not to say that 2017 is, but I was thinking like longer than that.
Yeah.
Like maybe early 2000s.
Yeah, it's only been 7 years.
That's awesome.
Well, that's not awesome that she died, but she lived longer than I thought.
It's cool.
She lived 84 years.
A nice, long life.
She is widely considered America's most beloved and best-selling poet.
She was born in Maple Heights, Ohio, which is just a small town in Ohio.
Maple Heights sounds cute as fuck.
It does.
I don't like Ohio, but...
Sorry.
I almost made another, we'll talk about it later.
Okay.
Okay.
I've just been getting really into random YouTube crafting girls and they're always from Ohio.
That's hilarious Yeah. Interesting.
So I'm like, I wonder what's that about?
There are parts of Ohio.
I think it's probably because there's not as much to do, but there's a lot of nature.
Yeah, there is.
Well, and that was kind of her life was that she didn't have a great childhood.
She was had some abuse and neglect that happened with her parents, but she would often escape into the natural world starting at a very young age.
But wandering in the woods near her home and writing and Walt Whitman is probably her most frequently referenced writer.
Wow.
Who is also pretty naturey, no?
Yeah, and queer.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, cool.
Amen.
Yeah.
So nature wasn't just an inspiration for Oliver.
It was actually a refuge and like where she found a true home because her actual home was filled with a lot of things that she wanted to avoid.
So in upstream, she opens with the line, and this is again, this was actually, I think, her last published work before she passed away.
Upstream the book.
Yeah, it's a it's a bunch of essays.
Um, but she starts with in the beginning, I was so young, and I was a stranger to myself.
I hardly existed.
I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it before I knew at all who I was, what I was, and what I wanted to be.
Oh, which was great.
So we love her.
I know.
She left Ohio the day after her high school graduation in 1953.
She was like, I'm out of here and she went to the estate of the poet Edna St.
Vincent Malay, which is a mouthful of a name.
Oliver went there the day after her high school graduation because she'd already started a correspondence with Edna's sister, Norma.
Great name.
Norma.
Hot damn.
I want a bonded pair of dogs. Named Edna Norma.
Yeah.
Oh my god.
That's cute. Necessary.
Um, but it was there at this estate, um, that she met the love of her life.
So I'll get her in a minute.
But over a 50 year career of publishing, she had more than 30 collections of poetry and prose, mostly poetry.
She won the Pulitzer.
The Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1984.
And then the National Book Award in 1992 and a Lannin Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Wow.
She also had a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Cool.
Which feels significant.
Yeah.
The New York Times has stated that she's far and away, this country's best-selling poet.
So who knows what that's based on, but seems real.
Yeah. Say it New York.
I think I was just thinking, sometimes there feels like there's an aspect to poetry, and this is as someone who, like you're, you were an English master of English.
And Stuart is very good at and enjoys dissecting when he reads.
And I think poetry is a lot of dissecting.
And sometimes it can feel very gate kept. And a little too out there for me to really connect.
Too much energy.
Or just try to dissect.
Um, too much that feels unclear, so it doesn't feel like much.
It's hard for me to connect with it.
But I think what Mary Oliver did that made her work so popular is she made it accessible by using language that felt familiar.
Yeah. And made it beautiful.
Like without it being, it's like simple without being boring.
Yeah.
And I think that that is something that if you can do it, you are like the master of your craft, you know, if you don't need to use the fancy words.
That's actually something we learn a lot in my communication class, which I realize is not the same as poetry.
Like the point is not to communicate clearly in poetry necessarily, but something we talk about a lot is like if you can use a word that's more simple, you should.
And that's not because vocabulary shouldn't be expanded.
It's just to try to prove the point that like, if you're trying to get something across to a large audience, you want it to feel like a large audience can interact with it.
And I think a lot of her work gives that to people, that connection to poetry, that maybe they don't feel inherently to poetry.
Like, I don't always have a connection to poetry.
I have very specific poets that I like.
And it's because I feel like I can connect to what they're saying because I don't feel like I have to spend hours dissecting what they're trying to tell me.
It's so much more accessible.
So I think for her, I mean, the New York Times makes shit up all the time, probably.
I think that it makes sense to me that she's as popular as she is.
And I don't think it's cliche.
I think it's accessible.
I agree.
No, I think that's a really...
She wasn't trying to cage her ideas.
She was trying to share how she felt, but in a beautiful way, like song lyrics.
Yeah, yeah.
Like it's not, it doesn't need to be complicated.
It doesn't.
To be well written and to be connected with.
Yeah.
I agree.
Um, so a poem that kind of sums up her.. Style.
Okay, the poem is titled why I wake early.
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning, and spread it over the fields, and into the faces of the tulips, and into the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of even the miserable and the crotchety. Best preacher that ever was, Death Star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from our ever darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light.
Good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch now how I start the day in happiness and kindness.
Yes, I love it.
I loved reading out loud in class.
Yeah, I used to read a headache. Read it early so I could practice.
Practice That's so cute No, it just like, it's just, she just wants to be with the sun.
She just wants to be outside.
I love it.
But she is also a queer icon.
GTQ.
She I. Not just outlet.
Oh yeah, you're right.
Not just Ally.
I mean, I'm sure she was an ally to certain identities, but she was not loud about her identity.
She was a very private person.
She does dedicate every poem collection to who she's been with.
So there's several women that she's dedicated to, but mostly Molly Malone cook, who will get into it in a sense.
Related to Post Malone.
No, actually.
Funnily enough.
That would be so funny.
Sorry, it's not.
I'm making it unserious and I don't need to be doing that.
No, no, no, no.
It's funny.
Um, so she was not loud about her identity, but she was always fully herself.
So it wasn't that she was like closeted or ashamed.
She just wanted to live the life she wanted to live.
Um, She also didn't really make a lot of political statements.
It wasn't like she was like a protest poet, but she was kind of radical in the way that she lived and the way that she talked about wanting others to live.
She never gave an interview about being a lesbian.
But she did write about the queer experience in the universal sense.
So her most famous poem is wild geese.
And the famous line, you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Yeah.
And it has kind of become a queer anthem that never announced itself as a queer anthem, but it has been used at countless queer gatherings, weddings, memorial services.
Like it really kind of emphasizes that you just need to be who you are and love what you love.
Yeah, I have it pulled up, actually, and I think that it's like making me feel like I'm going to cry just reading it.
No, it really hits and I think the very last stanza is that what poems are in?
Says whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over, announcing your place in the family of things, which just feels very like, it's totally making me tear up right now.
Like, I feel like I might cry because it is just like a poem about belonging.
And I also love the imagery of the goose, like harsh and exciting, like, because that is what life feels like.
It is like ferocious and crazy and beautiful and, you know, islands are made of fucking volcanoes erupting and then the fucking albatrosses. Lay eggs on it.
Anyway.
No, it's beautiful. Incredible.
It also starts with the banger of a line, you do not have to be good. Which is just, I think that especially queer people and some people really connect to this idea of like being raised to be good and quiet and what you're supposed to be.
And so this idea of like, you just have to let like give into your instincts and let yourself be, you know, the animal in one with nature because at the end of the day, we are mammals.
No, 100%.
We're in the same, you know, kingdom class.
No.
I don't know.
It's just, it's it's very well done.
And again, simple.
You could read it.
There are no big words.
There's no metaphors that are so outside of the realm of understanding, but it's so impactful.
And I've known about this poem since, I don't know, probably since I was on Tumblr when I was 10 and it came up.
And it still makes me feel like I'm gonna cry when I read it now.
I know.
It's crazy No, and I found like a podcast that she, I don't know if she went on a podcast or what, but there's this one podcast where they do authors reading the poem and she reads it.
But I also found a recording of Florence from Florence and the Machine, or yeah, Florence and the Machine.
Reading the poem as well.
And that was beautiful.
So it's, it resonates with so many people and, yeah, it's it's, it's lovely.
But as I mentioned before, she also very much revered, well, Whitman, he was someone that she turned to a lot throughout her young life, and then she writes about him frequently later as well.
She has a whole, um, essay in upstream called my friend, Walt Whitman, and they were not friends.
He was dead before she knew him, but, um, he was her friend in the sense that we're friends with like someone we admire.
But yeah, he was a queer poet himself and she would call him the brother that she never had.
But she just really emphasizes that you can find your family in all kinds of places.
And I think that's, and it's even referenced in wild geese, like the family of things.
Like, I think there's this idea of chosen family that she echoes throughout her work and it's in a way that feels very different than kind of how we talk about it now because it's a little more mainstream to have a chosen family.
But yeah, it was very much a part of queerness, especially back then.
Oh, totally.
And the way that you kept each other's secrets and spaces was so much.
I don't want to say more sacred because I do think queer spaces are still very sacred, but they were more protected because they had to be.
And there are places in the world where that still exists.
And places in America where that still exists.
But it is interesting to live in a space where it is and isn't like that, you know, and in some ways feels like it's reverting to that, especially for trans people.
We've made a lot of progress, but we're, we're also going back. Dangerous space.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We have the possibility of going very far backwards is on a brink that is uncomfortable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there are places where it's already like past the brink, like in Kansas.
You can't even drive without, like, if you were to get pulled over, you could be arrested just for being a trans person with an ID.
So it's A violent time.
Disgusting.
And I think Walt Whitman experienced a very violent, scary private time, and then Mary had that throughout her life.
And so it's just like important to value the things that are around you and try and fight for them and whatever makes sense for you at the time.
Yeah.
Don't put yourself in more danger, just continue to prioritize your own health and well-being.
Yeah, absolutely.
And pay attention to what's going on in the news, even when it feels big and you need to take a break.
You have to just know so that you can make sure that you are protecting yourself and protecting your friends.
Exactly.
That's what's important.
Agreed.
Yeah.
But the 1st and longest love of her life was Molly Malone Cook.
So as I mentioned, she dedicates most of her poetry collections to her.
Sometimes she doesn't reference her full name.
She just calls her M. Um, but Molly was her own queer icon in her in her own life.
So she wasn't just like a sidekick or someone with Mary.
She, um, was born in January 5, 1925.
So yeah, wild.
Um, and she passed away August 25th, 2005.
So she lived for over 80 years, um, which is, again, a pretty long life, especially considering like, yeah, some of the stuff that you go through and she like was a smoker and all that.
So you just never know.
It seems like some of those smokers, they really outlived like a crazy amount of time for those things.
Yeah.
But she was a formidable artist and cultural figure.
So one of the 1st staff photographers at the Village Voice, which is a famous New York magazine situation.
But she photographed many people, including, she had a pretty close friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt.
So that's cool.
Interesting.
Wasn't she also predicted to be or supposed to be queer?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Well, she's they they were together.
Eleanor Roosevelt?
Oh, sorry.
I'm so sorry.
I was like, I was like, he was gay.
Pretty sure she was married to the President Roosevelt, whose name I can't remember right now.
No, Eleanor has been predicted to be queer.
And not only did she have a close relationship with Molly and several other famously queer, like out queer people in a time when there weren't a lot of out queer people, but also she had a weird, not a weird, but a famously close friendship with Amelia Earhart.
What?
We referenced with the Albatross, but they kind of were speculated as potentially having a romantic relationship, not to friendship.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So, fun fact.
Connection.
But she did find, nope, she founded the 1st finale.
She fans.
She find the 1st photography gallery on the east coast.
Wow.
It was called the 7 Photographer Studio in Provincetown, P Town.
But she would champion very, at the time, obscure photographers, but one of them was Ansel Adams, which you may have heard of.
No.
He's, you would have seen his work.
He photographed a lot of, oh, national parks.
Yes.
Okay.
Sorry.
I thought you meant a poet and I was like, for sure not.
No, no, no.
No, I studied photography for a little bit.
Ansel Adams.
So I may.
I do actually know who this is.
Sorry.
Yeah.
No, he's very famous for his nature photography and doing like, I would say that some of the most iconic shots of like Yosemite and Yellowstone that you've come to know as synonymous with the place were done by Ansel Adams.
And I'm fairly certain he used pinhole photography.
Okay, which I think is when I learned about him, but I'll, that's cool. Doesn't totally matter.
But it's interesting because it was like basically a tiny hole and a piece of photo light sensitive paper that you would put at the back of a device and then you just open the hole and expose it to what's out there and it will project the image onto the photo sensitive paper, but you had to be like a master of light.
I mean, photography anyway, no matter what is a mastery of light, but using the natural world to do that is even crazier because you have to be like aware of how bright it is and how long you should let it expose.
And then you use chemicals to basically process that.
And I'm fairly certain that that's correct, but I'll Google that while you talk about it.
No, that makes sense.
But he was pretty obscure when he started at her photography studio and was there's even there's a photography collection that Mary created of her work and it's called our world, but one of the images is a receipt of Ansel's different photos that he was selling and they were $35 each.
Oh my god.
Which is wild.
So, um, they she did become Oliver's literary agent after she stopped doing photography and she closed down her studio.
She was famously known for when people would call Mary.
Molly would be the one that was talking to them on the phone and they she would be the one handling the call entirely.
So in P-Town, Provincetown.
It was understood that reaching Molly was the same as reaching Mary.
PTown is Rhode Island, right?
I think it's Massachusetts.
Oh, you're right.
But very close to Rhode Island.
Yeah.
Um, they ended up, her photography studio eventually became also a bookshop called the East End bookshop and then they closed down the photography studio and it just was the East End bookshop and they ran that together for a majority of the time that they lived in Provincetown.
But they did meet at Steepletop, which is Edna St.
Malay's estate in New York.
Um, and She, Mary was there for years, helping to organize Malay's papers after her death.
She, that was like kind of one of her 1st jobs outside of graduating.
And in the late 1950s, Molly Malone Cook visited because she'd done that several times in her life already and she was friends with Norma, whatever the situation was.
And Oliver saw her and she later wrote in our world, which I referenced just a 2nd ago, is I took one look and fell hook and tumble.
And then they were together from that moment until Molly's death.
Wow.
Yeah.
Also, Ansel, he did not.
He used all different types of cameras, basically, but he did develop a technique that mastered light and natural settings and how to know exactly how long exposure was for.
So I was half right.
Okay.
But it's hard, really hard.
Anybody who's in photography will tell you that mastering light, that is part of the art, especially outside.
I can't imagine.
It's insane.
And the outside, yeah, and the amount of time, like it's just very different photography back in the 1920s and 30s.
The sharpness that he was able to develop.
And I mean, she was a photographer too, and I was looking through some of her photos.
Molly Malone, and she, it's gorgeous.
It's very like life, lifestyle, not lifestyle. Like kind of like street photography, sort of.
Yeah.
No, she really liked photographing people.
She had a quote in this book that she referenced in her like journals and she said that she wanted when she 1st started doing photography.
She wanted to capture the face of every person in North America.
Um, and she ended up even joining like World War II and as a, sorry, what?
Joining in what way?
I think she was in the military.
Oh, shit.
Okay.
Yeah.
And you said joining, sorry.
World War II.
And I was like, that was a weird way to put it.
On what side?
How?
She was a community?
In what capacity?
No, she could be a work photographer.
She applied for a job at a personnel office of the U.S. Army in Germany. And was hired to be a personnel officer.
Oh, okay.
What's a personnel officer?
Have no idea.
Okay.
I'm guessing kind of like a secretary situation.
Like, I don't I don't quite know.
But it was...
A personnel officer is like HR.
And it was actually around the time that the war had recently ended.
And so, I think there were people still around making sure everything settled.
Um, but she would travel every chance she got and like go take photos of people across Europe.
Um, but, They did move to Provincetown in the early 1960s together, um, and they made a life that they really loved.
And it is actually Provincetown, or, as a lot of people call it, P Town.
It's famously a very, very queer town.
I was going to say very.
I have heard of it because of that.
Yeah.
Still, to this day.
Yes.
In the movie that was like the largest budget, romantic comedy based on a gay man, the one, I don't know.
It was called Bros.
Oh, I saw bros.
Did I see bros?
They go to PTown one weekend for Pride.
I did see bros.
Yeah.
It's that guy.
He goes around and interviews people by yelling at them on the street.
Yep, yip, yip, Billy Eichner.
Billy on the street.
That's his name No, he was gay.
Yep.
Super gay.
And gay in that movie.
But, um, they were pretty poor when they 1st moved to Pete Town because she's a, Molly was a photographer.
Mary was a poet.
They did not, like, really get a lot of money from their bookshop and things like that.
So they would gather a lot of food from the woods. And the ocean.
Literally foraging.
Yeah.
And they built a very bohemian, creative life centered on the art and writing and nature and each other.
Money was never important to them, but they weren't always necessarily suffering for food, but they did have several years where they were like pretty poor.
Oliver often actually cites Molly as the person who taught her what attention really meant, which is significant because Oliver is very much known in her writing is like, pay attention.
Like that's one of her big themes is paying attention to the world.
And she wrote in our world, attention without feeling.
I began to learn is only a report, an openness and empathy was necessary if the attention was to matter.
And she saw that with Molly.
She credited mostly watching Molly work in her dark room. And the intensity with which she engaged both strangers and friends as the thing that deepened her own practice of observation beyond just mere description of what she was seeing.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
I really love that.
I love the idea of observing and feeling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it, because otherwise, yeah, it is just a report.
You're just saying, like, this is what happened.
And, well, and I think it's the, you know, one thing that I think about a lot, which I've been thinking a lot about a lot of things lately, as I've told Hannah offline. Off pod.
But one thing I think about a lot is the economy of attention.
And somebody said, can't remember who, but somebody said, if something is free, like a product is free, then the currency is your attention.
Yep.
So thinking about social media and certain things, right?
I think about back when Instagram was 1st introduced for anyone who's potentially Gen Z listening.
When Instagram was 1st introduced, you could only see what your friends posted.
And you would hit the bottom.
When you were scrolling Instagram, you would hit the amount of updates that you had that you hadn't seen.
You'd hit the bottom and then you'd go continue on with your day.
And you'd like check to see if people did maybe later on, but like you'd maybe have 2 or 3 posts that you saw.
You know, it was, it wasn't endless scroll.
You didn't get a bunch of suggestions of things that you didn't see or didn't put from people you didn't follow.
Ads were maybe a thing, but not much. If at all.
And so I think a lot about the economy of attention.
And I think that's why sometimes I have such a hard time with like sitting down and watching super long shows or things like that because I'm like, I have other things that I can give my attention to. And that I want to give my attention to.
And in the grand scheme of things, our life is long and very short at the same time.
And like, I, if there's a moment where we get to flash back and look back at everything, I want to feel like I gave my life the attention it deserved.
Yeah.
You know, and even just like, when you wake up in the morning and you immediately reach for your phone or try to listen to a podcast while you brush your teeth, which I'm adding myself right now, like, there are moments where I'm like, you should just be like, in the moment.
It's barely 3 minutes since you've been awake and you've already like started playing a little game on your phone and looked through Facebook marketplace.
Like, it is it's just very interesting.
No, honestly, that's a really good call because I think that's one of the things I love about birding is that it gets me outside and I don't it forces your attention.
Yeah, because I'm now listening for the birds and not just watching for them.
I'm not consuming all this media at all times, like listening to a podcast, listening to an audiobook, listening to music.
I'm listening to the actual world around me, and I'm looking at it.
And sometimes I'll use my phone, but just to like identify the birds.
Sure.
Um, and that feels so different.
I think there are actual studies that have been coming out lately about how birding helps people's brains like relax and also helps them get back to focus.
I've been on a social media hiatus for about 6 months and I will say every now and then I'm on Facebook, but I don't count Facebook because it's mostly just ads for dogs for adoption and Facebook marketplace and I have a timer on it.
I can't use it for more than an hour a day.
But the fact that I use Facebook for an hour is kind of crazy, but it's like where I'm at right now.
That's my, like, one thing I'm allowed to have and it's because I buy things on Facebook marketplace that I sometimes need and sometimes I don't.
But I will say that like my attention feels better. A lot of the time.
Not all the time because I think technology is still distracting and it's around us in different ways to be whatever it might be.
But like, I do think I feel more engaged with the world since stopping that's also partially due to being in school, which forces me to be engaged with the world, sort of, the world of education.
But anyway, all that is to say, I'm not like taking a break forever, nor am I like proselytizing about everyone quitting social media because I do miss out on like fun updates from my friends who maybe just aren't as good as texting as my other friends, but I do think overall taking a hiatus is good and you should do it.
Yeah.
Or set a timer or get a brick or whatever it is that people use to stop themselves from scrolling constantly.
Yeah.
Because it's the economy of your attention.
And it's something time is the thing that we will never get back.
It won't.
We won't.
It and we.
It and we, period.
But moving on.
To end the section on Molly.
She has a poem at the very end of the our world collection, which again, our world is a whole collection of poems and writings about Molly specifically that Oliver created after she passed.
And I think is an attempt to kind of process her grief.
And so she went through all of her photos and all of her journals and all this stuff and she wrote her own pieces about their life together.
And it's still very private.
There's still plenty of things she doesn't share, but it is beautiful.
And I, I highly recommend looking at it because also it shares a bunch of really beautiful photos and stuff with that Molly took over the years, including several portraits of Mary.
But there's the last, the very last writing is the poem called The Whistler, and it's kind of about like time and attention, but she says, all of a sudden, she began to whistle.
By all of a sudden, I mean that for more than 30 years, she had not whistled.
It was thrilling.
At 1st I wondered, who was in the house?
What stranger?
I was upstairs reading and she was downstairs.
As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught, but visiting, the sounds warbled and slid, and doubled back, and larked, and soared.
Finally, I said, is that you?
Is that you whistling?
Yes, she said.
I used to whistle, a long time ago.
Now I see I can still whistle, and cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.
I know her so well.
I think, I thought, elbow, and ankle, mood, and desire, anguish, and frolic, anger too, and the devotions, and for all that, do we even begin to know each other, who is this I've been living with for 30 years, the clear, dark, lovely whistler.
Hmm.
And it's so beautiful.
It is.
Yeah, but they were together for 40 years, which is amazing.
Incredible.
Yeah.
But after Molly, um, she actually did have another late love in her life named Anne Taylor.
And not Anne Taylor, the clothing breaker.
I was going to say mom to wear.
Did she happen to make clothes by chance?
There's actually not a lot known about her.
She's even more private than Mary Oliver.
So there's really not a lot of references, but her last 2 works, which were Felicity and upstream.
Actually, it might be more than just two, but the 2 that I know of, um, that she dedicates are to Anne Taylor, but that's really the only reference.
But after Molly's death, Oliver made a choice.
She left Provincetown, where she had built the life with Molly and wanted to move to another place.
So she moved to Hope Sound, Florida.
Have you heard of it?
Familiar.
Okay.
It's kind of in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Perfect.
Well, that sounds like something Mary Oliver would like.
Yeah.
And she had a thing that she's told a friend after Molly passed and said, I want to, I could either buy a small cabin in the woods and shut the door forever, or I could unlock all the doors and see who I could be in the world.
So she unlocked the doors and somewhere in her 70s, she fell in love again.
The woman's name was Anne Taylor.
Oliver kept her much more private than she even kept Molly for the whole life that they spent together.
But she did write about her in the sense that she said once, if I have any secret stash of poems anywhere, It might be about love, not anger.
And that was in 2015 at nearly 80 years old.
She finally published that collection and it was called Felicity, which we referenced.
Felicity Blunt.
Felicity by Mary Oliver Felicity by Joy.
Yeah.
There you go.
Period.
Period.
Also, just so you know, actually, Hope Sound, when I lived in Florida. Was like nobody really lived there, but it's about 20 minutes north of Jupiter, which we were just talking about.
Hannah's husband was born in Jupiter.
Um, and I'm from that part of Florida as well. Sort of.
I'm from a little bit more south than that, but yeah, it's not far from that.
And my memory of Hope Sound is that nobody fucking lives there because everybody lives in Jupiter, but nowadays, because Florida's gotten so populated, I may have an outdated idea of Hope Sound.
I haven't lived there in 10 years, so, and I certainly am not driving through Hope Sound when I'm visiting.
So, but it is quite near the ocean.
So it's probably awesome. In that regard.
Yeah, I'm sure.
But in Felicity, it's kind of this new love braided together with like processing her grief of losing the love of her life.
I can't imagine.
And she still references a lot of birds, but, um, she says there are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like telling someone you love them, your heart is beating, isn't it?
You're not in chains, are you?
So that was where she passed away. In Hope Sound.
Let's get into how she did conservation through poetry.
So, again, as I mentioned before, she was not a protest poet, but she rooted her conservation in wonder.
And really, she wanted people to fall deeply in love with the natural world, so that they would feel a part of it themselves and that they would protect it because they were protecting themselves.
Yeah.
Her essay collection, again, upstream, I've referenced it a lot is particularly rich with her work of like, and some of it's stuff that she'd previously published, but it meditates on the creative and spiritual life of an artist formed entirely by the natural world.
And it includes a whole essay called Bird, and it's all about nursing an injured seagull back to health.
And it really kind of has this concrete example of her conservation ethics in action of like being gentle with the world and trying to leave it the way you found it, but sometimes better.
She also has an essay called Provincetown.
And it's her mourning, the slow transformation of the place she loved from an intimate bohemian coastal, natural town to this like tourist destination that it now is, and a grief that is like also ecological.
She also has a poem called The Meadowlark sings, and I greet him in return.
We have lots of Western metal larks out here.
Um, but devotions are, there's a reference.
She kind of unites herself with the metalark against the terrible debris of progress, is her quote.
So this idea that humanity has sometimes forgotten its role as a listener to the natural world.
And we try to like take up too much space.
And it's, it reminds me of what we've talked about like with like the grasslands and the impacts we're having without like necessarily understanding it.
But her most quoted conservationist line is from the poem, The Summer Day.
And this is also probably something that you've heard of, I would say it's probably her most famous line that people reference, but she says, tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.
Yeah.
And it's really been adopted as kind of an environmental activist anthem in the same way that the wild geese line has been adopted by the queer community.
But there's actually a whole nature trail of 50 plus Oliver poems that exists at Greenway Meadows Park in Princeton, New Jersey.
So that was developed after her death.
Wow.
Also, PBS, we love PBS because they're public broadcasting.
Um, they are releasing a documentary on her called Saved by the Beauty of the World.
It's premiering this August, end of, I think it's like August 25th, 2026.
But it features several famous people reading her poetry, different archived video footage, and then just all sorts of lovely stuff related to her life.
But Helena Bonham Carter reads in it, Stephen Colbert, Oprah, Steve Bushemi, and Lucy Dacus, which we love.
But yeah, it's a, she's doing it all.
She's doing it all.
Lucy or Mary?
Yes.
The answer is yes.
Lucy does so much.
I love her.
I do too.
If you don't listen to Lucy.
If you're listening, I love you. Love you.
You're my favorite.
We love you so much.
And you know who I'm talking about.
Oh, I do, I do think she's my favorite.
I love the other two, though, to be clear.
And if they were here, I'd be excited about that too, but she's my favorite.
Julian Baker is my favorite, but that checks.
Lucy Dacus is a very close second.
And no offense to Phoebe.
No, no, there's nothing, they're all incredible.
There's a reason that they're boy geniuses.
They're genius.
Yep.
So let's get to the bird of it all.
Birds on birds part.
Let's get to that.
The butt of it all.
They are the single most recurring image across her entire body of work.
She dedicated a whole collection to them called Owls and other fantasies that she published in 2003.
And it's all bird poems.
There's also the bird essay I just referenced.
There was a lovely person named Elijah Cardenas, who published in 2022 in a journal, like a dissertation paper, but I was able to download it.
I want to read it.
I love.
And he specifically talks about like the impact of birds on her work.
Yeah.
So I think it's a very cool analysis of things, but there are 42 distinct bird species that are referenced across 76 poems.
He mostly is referencing devotions, which is a collection where she actually has a bird photo as the cover.
Wow.
Oh, amazing. A little bit. Bird chick.
Oh, cute.
Yeah.
And so 188 individually named bird references total, 42% of the named references are simply just bird, which we've even heard in some of the other poems that we reference today.
Um, but it's kind of just uses like a texture to define the nature of the place.
But the top 5 named species are owl, which were about 6%.
Heron, about 5%, thrush, about 4%, and then Mockingbird and Swan were about 3% each.
But kingfishers, meadow larks, loon, geese, catbirds, blue Jays, all referenced as well.
But Cardinas's core finding was that Oliver uses birds as vehicles.
Each one carries a specific theme toward her larger argument that humanity belongs to the natural world and must reconnect with it.
Her consistent pattern is amazement first, then meaning comes from that.
Yeah.
So she begins with awe at the bird and what it's doing and then draws the breeder toward that deeper theme that she might be going for.
Her body of work is at its root, a response to postmodern cynicism, the cynicism we have that, this is hopeless.
Like the world is ending and an argument that wonder, not critique is the more radical act, which I think is tough sometimes.
Honestly, that right there.
That's the line. Is say it one more time.
An argument that wonder, not critique is the more radical act.
No, I think that's fully true.
I think that, yeah, this is again, my noodle.
I be noodling, and I, this is something I think about a lot, especially raised as like an angsty teenager, who was like kind of rebelling against everything.
I think there is something rebellious and beautiful about just seeing the world for the magic it is.
And I also feel like nature is what allowed me to kind of like break whatever hard shell exterior that I wanted to create around myself.
And yeah, I think that and I would say like hope, wonder and hope kind of go hand in hand as well.
And I think that's why this is a weird thing I'm about to say, but I think that's why partially zoos are so important is because they allow you to see these things up close, to experience that wonder because sometimes we're so disconnected from a cheetah.
Yeah, you're not going to see a cheetah in America unless you see one in the zoo, but like some little kid is going to walk by and see that and become obsessed with it for the rest of their life and like maybe we'll turn into the science. You know what I mean?
Like, there's just something about being exposed to the natural world that I think is more powerful than quite possibly anything else I've come across.
And I think that embodiment, this idea that like allowing wonder and joy for the things around you to replace that like critique and the feeling like you need to be searching for the thing that's wrong all the time is how we heal.
I agree.
As the species.
I agree.
A human.
And Oliver certainly felt that way.
And I think she lived a very full life in living that way.
I think it's why the guy who invented acid wanted everyone to take acid initially because it's like kind of how it makes you feel when you take psychedelics is like, you get really connected.
And I think some people didn't feel that before they take them and then they experience the world in a completely different way.
Obviously don't, this is, not a doctor, not a doctor, whatever, tell you to take psychedelics.
That's not what I'm trying to say, but I do think there is like a shift.
And for most people that take them, if you can do it safely and you don't have histories that are concerning, and it's your life.
I'm not telling you to do shit.
You have an experience typically with nature that is indescribable.
And that you never really lose.
No. Once you have it.
And so, yeah, if you listen to the guy who like made acid or the guys who got really into, um, I can't remember what the documentary is called, but the people who were like, getting it through in America making it like a big thing.
It was like a group of people.
I feel like it was on Netflix or something.
It was.
Yeah.
They wanted people to take it for that exact reason.
They were like, this can heal everybody because you can connect.
Turns out human brains more complicated than that.
Some people have very adverse reactions.
And so that's, you know, there is no such thing as a cure all.
But for those of us who have experienced the good side, it is something that you can't ever really like let go of.
It can change you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And with Oliver, it's more so just getting out there. Telling people to experience the connection with the natural world.
The point I'm trying to make with that too, is that people don't always inherently think to do that.
They don't until they're in a somewhat altered state.
Sometimes smoking weed sometimes can cause people to want to like go outside or take a walk or whatever it might be.
And let go of those, like, preconceptions that might be.
Yeah, or the inhibitions of like.
Exactly.
And so I think the point I was kind of getting at was not that like you need to take acid to appreciate the world.
More so just that like, it is not, and I think is becoming less so, like inherent to just kind of go out and see and explore.
And I think the more we connect to our devices, once again, the more we kind of disconnect with that external world.
And we can get a lot more cynical, I think.
Yes.
More on our devices.
And we get so wrapped up in everybody's bullshit.
And like the nuances of what someone said that like was not even explicitly said, but was implied.
And it just, it's a lot.
It's a lot.
Yeah.
Get off your fucking phone.
She just really wants everyone to regain their connection to the natural world.
However, that comes to you.
Yeah.
Naturally, or through some sort of substance.
Mushrooms grow on the ground.
Yeah.
Don't, so does weed.
Just take any, though.
Because you can die from taking the wrong mushroom.
Just because something grows doesn't mean you should eat it.
No.
I just want to make sure in case anyone's listening and they're suddenly.
Please don't ever do anything because you think we told you to. Period.
Except for getting off your phone.
Yeah.
And loving yourself.
But don't come to the natural world through guilt or fear, and I think that's what Cleo's getting at as well with like some of these different ways to approach connecting with the world.
There's times where we need something to help us let go of these other things that we're carrying.
Like an albatross around our neck.
But instead, come to the place with wonder.
And she is aware that there are problems in the world, but rather than centering her work on the critique of those things and the negativity, she makes the conscious choice to observe and marvel at the beauty that exists.
And in her poem When Death Comes, she writes a direct statement of this philosophy.
She says, when it's over, I want to say, all my life, I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.
And, I think that's a beautiful sentiment.
Yeah.
And it's just important to remember that her birds are never just birds.
They are doorways into the questions that she spent her whole life wondering about how should we live?
How should we encounter or deal with death and grief and what does it mean to belong?
And she really asks all the time.
What she wanted to do with her wild and precious life?
And she wants everyone to ask that the time as well.
And as someone who's recently exited their 20s, I just want to speak to anybody who's in their 20s by chance if you're out there.
Um, you're not late to anything.
You're not.
You're not late to life.
You're not moving too slow.
You didn't miss out.
No.
You're good.
You are so good.
You just go outside.
Take a deep breath will really help.
And go look at a bird.
Please do it.
And think of Mary.
Yeah.
Maybe Reed to Mary because like Cleo said, you don't have to be a fan of poetry.
You don't have to be good.
No, you don't have to be good.
You don't have to be good.
You just have to let the soft animal body love what it loves.
Yeah.
So that's Mary Oliver.
Oh, I loved that. Know.
Incredible.
I know.
I'm just like, I was over on the side going through her.
I'm just kidding.
And so what kind of celebrity is she?
No, I was like reading through and it was just making me like tear up so many times while I was going through.
And I was also reminded of another poet, um, that we're not probably going to do an episode about because he's not a specific bird guy, but he was a naturist.
And his name was Wendell Berry and I learned about him through my class.
And he was a big god guy.
But the way he talks about God in the natural world is so outside of modern Christianity that it is truly breathtaking to, and honestly, even if you don't like poetry, you should go find a video of him speaking about it.
Because the way he talks about finding religion and proof of God in the universe and just watching the world around him and how we are like the keepers of God's world is so utterly precious and again, so utterly opposite of the world that modern Christianity, the positions that modern Christianity has taken, which have been so rooted in hate and other horrible things.
And I watched a couple things about with him and about him and he really made me cry.
And, um, you know, he's just, he's listed alongside Mary Oliver as someone who really focused on nature as a theme.
And he also has very approachable poetry.
So, yeah. Novels, I believe.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like I have felt the poetry of being alive in nature.
I mean, we were just talking about, I can't remember if it was last episode or the episode before, but I was just talking about seeing the butterflies in the migration.
And I remember I'd moved away from home, didn't have a job, didn't know what I was going to do.
And within 6 months of living in Colorado, I'd made friends I had a job.
I was like enjoying my life so much and the butterflies felt like a sign.
They felt like something that was happening for me, but like that I got to witness and that I was a part of and it felt like a, I don't know.
It felt like I was doing something right, you know, and I have, I just, I hope that everybody feels the wonder of seeing the world.
I don't know.
Like, and even just going, you know, I, again, was so lucky to go grow up in Florida and like talking about my cousin's house and being able to like, we used to canoe to go get fish bait when we would fish off the docks.
And when you would canoe, you would pass manatees and you'd pass dolphins and you'd pass animals while you were going on your way to go get the shrimp and I just was so surrounded.
I remember being a child and I lived.
Sorry, I'm getting like way off topic, but it's making me think of my childhood.
We lived in this like neighborhood that everybody had huge properties.
So I grew up on a 5 acre property, and it was also in a neighborhood with a lot of very large properties, and there was not many houses, and my family used to just let me take walks.
And so I would take walks through the neighborhood and we had like goats that lived across the street and so I used to like feed them sticks.
I don't even know if they ate sticks, but they ate what I gave them.
Those goats say eat everything.
I was like 10 and I would just walk around in this neighborhood, but nobody lived back there.
It was gated.
It felt very safe.
And there was a little patch of woods that was undeveloped and I used to just walk into it.
And I would just kind of explore this little weird patch that I would constantly kind of go to and go back to and it really, I lived there for 15 years.
So a good chunk of my life.
I'm only 32.
I'm almost 32.
So I lived there for almost half my life and I spent so much time going back and back and back to that little chunk of forest and like these little areas around my house.
And I just remember that being like a solace, you know, like, and yeah, I don't know.
I hope that people, I hope everybody feels that for people who don't feel connected to nature, I don't know what to tell you.
I don't know how to connect with you.
I hope that you figure that out.
But like if you genuinely have tried and you don't know and I don't know how you ended up here if that's how you feel, but I just can't imagine seeing those things and not feeling immense wonder and appreciation and joy and like confusion sometimes.
Like how is it possible, you know?
So that's my soapbox.
Is it a soap box?
Maybe I'm just proselytizing now.
No.
Growing up in Colorado, we had different nature.
We didn't have alligators, but we had...
Birds and I grew up in an area that also had large properties and...
I don't know.
It's just foxes and yeah.
We had foxes too.
Yeah.
Connected by foxes.
We were both sitting down, staring at the moon, little Cleo, little Hannah, just 1000s of miles away, a fox in the woods, sitting outside at night.
The birds in the trees.
Yeah.
It's just, it doesn't matter what the nature around you looks like.
It's just important to try and go connect and feel things and think about the world and yep, be a part of it.
Yeah.
So stop doom scrolling and just fucking go outside.
I know, they, they say Gen Z says, like, go touch grass, but, like, beyond touch grass, like, just, just whatever's available to you.
Just go to it.
Just step outside.
Even if you live in a city, there are places that are green spaces, take a walk to it, make the time.
You will not regret it.
And with that, stay cool, bird boy.