Naomi Fry: Before we start the episode today, we wanna talk a little bit about a project we're working on, and Vinson, I would like to throw this to you because you're the one who came up with the idea. 
Vinson Cunningham: Well, July 4th is on the way, as I'm sure all of our listeners know. 250 years of our country, America, and I've been wanting to develop a playlist made up of songs about America.
Ab- I guess really songs about our feelings about America, whatever that means right now. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, and we want this to be a joint project. We three are each gonna pick some songs to share, and listeners, we really want you to help us. Pick some songs too, and we'll work all of our picks into a whole episode built around this idea of America seen through music.
Naomi Fry: Yeah, and the song that you pick could reflect something you love about America. It could be like, a song about you know, the hopes you have for America or the fears you have for America or the things you hate right now about America. And get specific. Tell us about the lines that speak to you, the lyrics that speak to you. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, give us a range. Contemporary, old, in between, whatever you got, we're here for 
Naomi Fry: it.
This is, this is actually so fun. This is such a fun thing. I'm so excited for this. And so I want you guys to pick up your phones, record a voice memo, and tell us what song reflects your feelings about America today, and send these voicemails that you record to us at themail@newyorker.com.
EPISODE OPEN
Vinson Cunningham: This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Vinson Cunningham. 
Naomi Fry: I'm Alex Schwartz. And I'm Nomie Frye. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. 
Vinson Cunningham: Hey. Hi, guys. What's up? 
Naomi Fry: Hello, everyone. Okay. Dear listeners, you might have heard last week's episode.
It was, once again, an edition of I Need a Critic, um, but there was one voicemail that
we didn't get to because we thought that it deserved its very own episode, and I'm gonna play it for us right now. 
Katarina: Hi, critics. This is Katarina speaking. I do have a question, and that is do you have some cultural recommendations, uh, that touch on the special bond between humans and animals? Eh, I would love to delve deeper into that but don't really know where to start.
All I can think of is Lassie. Eh, thanks very much. Bye. 
Naomi Fry: Okay. When I heard this, I was like, "What? We're not gonna get to this on I Need a Critic?" Because I immediately had so many thoughts. I am a friend of the animal kingdom. I have many thoughts about animals, both kind of in my life with the actual pets I have, which we'll get to, but also culturally.
Uh, s- there's really so much to say, like, way beyond Lassie, and I, I was so excited to help this listener. And so I'm actually s- so psyched that we're gonna be talking about this more broadly, like, over the course of, like, 45 minutes. You guys, what are some of your favorites that come to mind when you hear this, this question from our listener. 
Vinson Cunningham: I don't often... You know, I'm, I'm not the kind of person who sort of, like, cries at stories about animals, but the one time that this ever happened to me w- was, uh, in 10th grade, the first time I read The Odyssey. And, uh, Odysseus has a dog named Argos who after all of his questing to get back home, all of the struggles and vicissitudes, the sirens, et cetera, finally he gets back home and he sees his trusty dog, Argos, who has, you know, has been left behind all these 20 years, and at the sight of his master, w- we get the sense that he's been holding out for this, Argos finally drops dead. And it's the, it's the sweetest and most tender moment in the, in The Odyssey. I remember just like, wow, this is so beautiful. Um, that's, that's where it starts for me, the animal narrative.
Alex Schwartz: That's almost too much for me to bear thinking about. I know. I'm, like, crying right now. I'm crying already. Yeah. I, unlike you, Vinson, I, uh, the animal kingdom, and especially work about the animal kingdom, really moves me to a degree where I often avoid it because- ... I feel too vulnerable. I, I, I... Just to think about the book Stone Fox, the children's novella by John Reynolds Gardiner that I read as a second grader involving a sled race and a dog who also drops dead, here's a theme.
I, I... The heartache I feel just- Thinking about this book that I haven't read since I wanna say 1995- Yeah ... would break me right now. Um, I have so many works that I'm looking forward to discussing in this genre. One of them that I hope we can talk about a little more is a novel for adults. It's called The Mare by Mary Gaitskill, one of my favorite writers, from 2015, about a girl's relationship with a horse.
And also, and I think this is, of course, another theme in these works, the girl's relationship with other people because we often, in art, use animals as a way to explore human bonds, too. 
Mm-hmm. 
Naomi Fry: Let us also remember that animals in culture are a source for great levity. Let us talk Garfield. Oh, yeah. One of my favorites, and, you know, much can be said about animals in comics.
You know, Snoopy, my God, I mean, Peanuts, so much to say, so much to think about. I'm so excited. We’re going to go all the way back to Aesop’s fables, talking about our favorite animal stories, from the past from the present. And we're also gonna be talking about a very recent example that's been getting, I think, a huge response from audiences, and that is the new movie, The Sheep Detectives, about some, some clever, crafty sheeps who help solve a murder.
We're gonna talk sheep. We're gonna talk tears. We're gonna talk laughter. And I think just in general, what we wanna be kind of thinking about is the role animals play in our lives more broadly right now. In a lot of ways, we are more distant from the natural world than we've ever been, but at the same time, we treat our animals more like humans than we ever have, right?
And so my question for us today is, what does the way we think about animals say about us humans? So that's today on Critics at Large, our favorite animals.
________________


Okay, you guys. We are entering the animal kingdom. We already started touching on some of the texts that have been meaningful to us early on. What do you, what do you recall? Alex, we already heard about the death of the dog in, in your second grade book, which I've actually never heard of, the, the book you- Stone 
Alex Schwartz: Fox.
Stone Fox. Stone Fox. I put it in a locked room in my heart- ... and shut it away, so painful was the scene. Oh, my God. So painful was it for me. So this is, like, 
Naomi Fry: a therapy moment, 
Alex Schwartz: really. It's, it's a lot coming up, but that's okay because there are other happy examples, such as, the E.B. White books. Absolutely. Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and the kind of lesser-known one in this trilogy, but one I also love, The Trumpet of the Swan. Trumpet of the Swan. Yeah. Stuart Little in particular really wrecked me. I mean, I, I know, guys, it's, we're gonna get happier, but- ... 
this tiny 
mouse. Yeah. This little mouse- going off to meet his fate, as- Mm ... as all creatures must do. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. Were those big for you, too? Yeah. Uh, Stuart Little was an odd one because he is an animal, right? He's a mouse, but he's born from a woman.
Nobody really explains how that happens, right? I mean, he has- Oh, we just accept it. We just accept it. He has his older brother, George, who's, like, a boy. They live uptown, and s- and Stuart is born to, to, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Little. But then he has this, you know, it's quite tragic, I think you're right, Alex, because he has that pull between his human family and the animal kingdom.
He falls in love with a bird, with Margalo, and she, she leaves, and he goes searching for her. And then there is that very odd moment when he is traveling, trying to find his bird love with his little car. And, um, he is s- set up on a date with a tiny woman. Do you remember that? 
Vinson Cunningham: I do not remember this. And she, let, let 
Naomi Fry: me be honest, it's vaguely coming back to me. Yeah, she's the daughter of the richest family in a town he, um, he stops by on the way. The name of the heiress, the tiny heiress, was Harriet Ames. My God. And she got set up with her. Have you read this recently? And she... No. 
Vinson Cunningham: It's just in there, man.
This was the, this was the right- Oh, my God ... the right topic for the right people. Oh, 
Naomi Fry: my God. But it's all of which is to say this question of, like, the role animals play d- more generally sometimes in these texts, it's the sort of, like, in between role, right? The kind of, like, anthropomorphic impulse to imbue a, an animal character with human characteristics, uh, feelings, thoughts, you know, ab- abilities. But on the other hand, they're, like, furry all over. You know? They're not people. Right? Vincent, what, what about you? Do you recall, like, a, a, a childhood text or- 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. There are a couple, sort of, there are a couple small ones. Of course, uh, the Disney movies of my childhood are, loom large.
Bambi. Oh. The death of Bambi's mother- Ugh ... is a classic- Oh, God. Yeah ... sort of childhood trauma um, The Lion King. Um, that sort of, uh, interpolation of Hamlet. Uh, and, you know- To be honest, The Lion King meant a lot to me when I was a kid. It was, like, shortly... I don't know. I don't remember what year it came out in.
1994, I'm seeing. Okay. But it became very important to me. In 1995, my father died, so, like, the whole, like, Simba and his father thing- Oh, God, yeah ... and, like, a young man, uh, sort of young man, a young cub coming into his own or whatever, it was a, it, it was an interesting way through this, uh, again, this sort of mediation that a- animals can, uh, animals in narrative, I guess, can effectuate. So they're, they belong to one kingdom, but they can also sort of ferry things over into ours. Um, a big one early in my life and through my life has been the animalia of, um, the, uh, The Chronicles of Narnia- 
Alex Schwartz: Hmm ... where 
Vinson Cunningham: there's this really complex hierarchy of being. Um, the children in that story, spoiler alert, uh, especially in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, are sort of meant to rule the land, Narnia.
Um, but they do so, uh, in this sort of, like, super Edenic way in which there are these talking animals, and the, the, the talking animals, I'm thinking of the, the brave mouse, Reepicheep. A faun named Tumnus looms large. Their ability to relate to human beings is the mark of their sort of, their dignity and their, um, their encounter with the god of this realm, Aslan the Lion.
So, uh, that was, that was a really big one. But all this talk of mice- Yes ... all this talk of Stuart Little reminded me of, like, maybe the biggest- influence o- on me, which I hopefully relayed to, to my older daughter, and I'm gonna try to do it again with my younger one, which is my absolute fanatical love of the cartoon Tom and Jerry.
Naomi Fry: Oh, that's so interesting. It's 
Vinson Cunningham: my f- it- to me, it's the funniest, it's the funniest thing. I, I laugh at To- uh, Tom and Jerry like I laugh at Eddie Murphy. I just, it makes me cry, and the reason is they're just trying to kill each other. 
        CLIP: Tom and Jerry
It's another thing, 'cause when we bring them into narrative, all of a sudden we can deal also with the brutality and violence of life and sort of make it comedic or almost, like, uh, inescapable.
There's an in- inevitability to the violence that's happening. Not only are there, like, mallets and all these Rube Goldberg devices that Tom tries to get to kill Jerry, and Jerry always ending up, like, you know, burning off Tom's tail. It's, like, horrific violence, but done in this totally comic way that I don't- there's some sort of cathartic relief, um, that we can sort of encounter the chaos and enmity and competition that exists in the world, but by putting it on animals, uh, we can see it in a different way.
Naomi Fry: Right. But yeah, 
Vinson Cunningham: Tom and Jerry, man, that is my favorite. 
Naomi Fry: That's so, that's so funny thinking about it, and I, I, I think that really clarifies a conundrum for me, which is violence. We, we kind of enjoy this violence, or we kind of, yeah, as you said, it's, it's cathartic perhaps to see it- Yeah ... played out in a kind of cartoonish way between animals.
But then, of course, as you both noted early on, the kind of, like, the death of the dog, right? Or the death of animals- At least helps us work out maybe some traumatic feelings or some, like, you know, uh, fears and worries that we have about death, either as, as children or even as adults. You know, why, why, why does the dog always have to die, you guys?
Alex Schwartz: Well- And these- I don't know. Yeah. We just don't know. I mean, yeah, I think it, it does help us work, work out these feelings. It also, I don't know, does it help us work them out? It ... I just wanna say I will not engage with Old Yeller. Ugh. I will not engage with- ... Where the Red Fern Grows. I know, it's like- Because I can't stand- Take me behind the barn and shoot me.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, no, me, that's, that's how I feel, too. And, and, well, I think there's this idea that, that these animals of course stand in for people, and so they help us work through more complicated and more significant losses maybe. But I actually think they stand for their own thing, too. Like, animals and pets and farm animals, whatever, are creatures who are supposed to be cared for by human beings.
Um, I mean, perhaps I'm expressing a kind of theology in saying that. But, you know, goes, goes back to Genesis where Adam is given the care of all creatures and given the task of naming them and caring for them, a job that I don't think human beings are doing that well- Not 
great ... 
in 2026. Um, but there's something about the vulnerability of animals themselves that reflects our vulnerability as people, but also very much as its own thing.
Yeah. And, um, and I think reckoning with that, with their similarity to us, but also their total strangeness from us, their inability to share the human experience, and our inability to share animals' experience, that's where works about animals really get me and touch me, not just as a direct transfer onto the human experience, but as this other thing. That really does enrich our lives to be in contact with species that are not our own. 
Vinson Cunningham: I, you mentioned at the, in the intro, Aesop's Fables. I used to read religiously, this was my, our, my sort of like version of bedtime stories for my older daughter, was we read Aesop's Fables together.
Naomi Fry: Oh, really? 
Vinson Cunningham: And yeah, well because- Mm-hmm ... they have so many, uh, they teach all of these very folksy lessons. Yes. And it helps you talk about other things, here's one. Could I give you one? 
Naomi Fry: Yes, of course. 
Vinson Cunningham: The Ants and the Grasshopper. 
Naomi Fry: Oh my God. I, that is the one that I wanna talk about because I have some, some- Is it really?
Yes, yes. I mean, there are- That's amazing ... several, but, but- Can... 
Vinson Cunningham: I'll read it and you talk about it. You want me to just, I'll just read it and I'll throw the ball straight to you. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah, yeah. Okay. 
Vinson Cunningham: The Ants and the Grasshopper.
The ants were spending a fine winter's day drying grain collected in the summertime. A grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The ants inquired of him, "Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?" He replied, "I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing."
They then said in derision, "If you were foolish enough to sing all summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter." 
Naomi Fry: Jesus Christ. Damn. First of 
Vinson Cunningham: all, cold-blooded. Again, the, the starkness and unforgivingness of animal life somehow has its lessons to, to, to transport themselves into the human world.
Yeah. And so I'd be like, "So this is what this is about," you know? Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: No, of course. I think I was really haunted by this, I have to say. Like, it- Really? Yes. I was haunted by this. And it, it's so stark. You know, obviously it's a fable, so it's, it's very black and white. But I was like, but what about, is it bad to have fun?
You know? Like, it's, it's- ... there is something punishable, right, about that these animals are teaching us about enjoying yourself. Like, he sang. He was singing. He wanted to, like, you know, like, uh, you know, party. And the ants were saying, "Oh, okay, you partied, now y- you deserve to starve." Can I 
Alex Schwartz: offer you some repair? Yes, please. Can I offer you a little bit of repair- Yeah
that could be helpful? Tikkun. Tikkun. Uh- Yeah ... a tikkun? Yeah. Um- So here's, here's the repair that I wanna offer. Okay, yes. There's a children's book called Frederick by the great children's book writer Leo Lionni, and I've been reading Frederick to my son. And Leo Lionni- Wait, is it the mouse? Yes. Is 
Naomi Fry: Frederick 
Alex Schwartz: the mouse?
He's a gray mouse- Yes ... right? Yes, he's a mouse. I remember him. No, yes. He's a mouse. And the thing about Frederick is he's a poet mouse. Hmm. And so while all the other mice are preparing for the winter, busily gathering grain, Frederick just sits on his butt and gazes at the sunset. Like, he does stuff like that.
Hmm. And all the other mice think that Frederick is a really big nuisance, that they're all working and getting ready for the winter, and he's doing absolutely nothing. And then winter comes, and they all go inside, and they eat through all their food. And then they're just kind of hungry and- Despairing, frankly.
And then Frederick, boom, spotlight on Frederick. Frederick at that point says, "Well, here's what I have for you." And he starts reciting poems for them about the other seasons, and their lives are enriched. That's what the grasshopper is doing. That's what Frederick the mouse is doing. That's what the artist is doing.
this, this totally Puritan finger-shaking- Yes ... only the ant is doing the right thing. Excuse me. Y- the ant was probably hopping along to the grasshopper's music this whole time. Mm-hmm. And now is hypocritically saying, "You've contributed nothing." Yeah. And that's just not true, as Frederick shows us.
Vinson: And that’s why fables are good for children because in the best ones, you do this with a child, well, what do you think the grasshopper was thinking, what’s his defense against this indictment about suppeless to bed, don’t you sometimes like to not? It gives you all these points of view into a situation you might not otherwise encounter. 
Naomi Fry: In a minute, we talk about one recent text featuring beloved animal characters: The Sheep Detectives. That’s in a minute, on Critics at Large from The New Yorker. 
:: MIDROLL 1:: 
Naomi Fry: Well, we've been talking about animals. We've been talking about favorite texts. We've been talking a- about what we can learn from the depiction of animals, you know, over the course of our lives. But now I want us to turn to a much more recent example, The Sheep Detectives. What have you guys been seeing or hearing about this movie, like, before you actually went to the theater and, and, and saw it?
The people were saying, "See the sheep. 
Alex Schwartz: Go see the sheep." And I was hearing this, I really was. And I was hearing it from people with grown children, without children, whatever, and was aware that people were enjoying filming themselves weeping after having seen the sheep. Um, so yeah, I knew, I knew people 
Naomi Fry: were loving the sheep.
You... Okay. So yeah, just to recap, this movie came out last month. It was directed by Kyle Balda, who's known for the Minions movies, which are, you know, surprisingly delightful, I have to say. It was written by Craig Mazin, one of the creators of The Last of Us and Chernobyl.
Okay? But this time he's going full sheep. What did you guys, what did you guys- What did you guys think of The Sheep Detectives? Uh, was it a satisfying animal text 
Alex Schwartz: for you? I very much enjoyed The Sheep Detectives. Mm-hmm. I had a great time sitting alone at an 11:00 AM viewing of The Sheep Detectives as people watch with their kids, and in some cases their spouses or their parents, their older parents.
Mm-hmm. And it was just me, the sheep, and them. Very much enjoyed The Sheep Detectives. 
Naomi Fry: Alex, do you wanna synopsize The Sheep Detectives for us just briefly so we all, we're all on the same sheep page? 
Alex Schwartz: So we're in a beautiful, bucolic English countryside- Mm-hmm ... where Hugh Jackman, George, lives in a very cute little trailer and tends to his sheep.
He is a shepherd, of course. 
        CLIP: The Sheep Detectives
But the sheep love George. George loves the sheep. One day, sadly, George is murdered. And fortunately, the sheep know just what to do because George has enjoyed reading murder mysteries in the Agatha Christie vein to them every night. And the sheep, who by the way can speak amongst themselves- Think that they're up to the task of solving this problem, and indeed they are.
        CLIP: The Sheep Detectives
So the sheep go off to help the hapless policeman in town, who's played by- Cousin Greg ... Cousin Greg from- Nicholas- Nicholas Braun. Nicholas Braun. Nicholas Braun. There you go. Um, with a great kind of wavering, definitely not English, but, like, trying to be English accent, which kind of just really works for the movie, the whole theatricality of it.
Vinson Cunningham: It's a very sweet movie. Mm-hmm. It's very well ... The voice acting is great. Mm-hmm. The sort of the- the- the chief sheep, Lilly, who's- who's known to be the smartest of the sheep- Uh, is that her real name? Smartest sheep 
Naomi Fry: in the world Yes.
Vinson Cunningham: The smartest sheep in the world- I believe, yeah ... played by, uh, at least voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Uh, she was great. Lot of... It, it's sweet and, but it's also a kind of funny twist on the, um, and we've talked a lot on this show about the sort of, uh, re-achieved hegemony of the whodunit. This is another twist- Mm-hmm
on that. Yeah. So I thought that was kind of funny, the genre aspects I was into. Yeah. It, it's, it's cute. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: 
Alex Schwartz: It, it does make sense to me that people are so into this movie.
I think, uh, first of all, talking animals never has and never will go out of style. Mm-hmm. But a lot of the talking animals we've seen recently are slick, animated, very contemporary. I'm thinking of the Zootopia franchise- Mm-hmm ... for instance. Um, kinda like s- there's like a sarcasm and, um, I don't mean edginess.
These animals are... They're not Lenny Bruce. Let's, let's be real. But, but there's- There's a kind of cynicism. They're, like, shooting up in the- ... in the bathroom. There's just a kind of, uh- Mm. Yeah ... th- there's a kind of fast-paced slickness- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... about a lot of the contemporary animal fare- Mm-hmm ... that gets fed to us, and that's been the joke.
The joke has been, "Animals, they're just like us, and we move faster than ever, and we talk faster than ever, and, like, this one's a little annoying, and that one's a little bit serious, and this one's grumpy, and blah, blah, blah." Yeah. Mm. You know, and, and it's- 
Vinson Cunningham: The movie Madagascar is just like this. 
Alex Schwartz: The movie Madagascar is just like this.
It's crack for your children- Mm-hmm ... and do not engage with it. This is my strong recommendation. I think that the slowness of it, and to get to something that we talked about a few weeks ago in our episode on earnestness, the earnestness of it- Yeah ... I think has really appealed to people. It's an invi- it's an invitation to be moved, and to be moved in an intergenerational kind of way.
It also really reminded me of the movie Babe. Yes. Just a huge smash hit from my own childhood- Yeah ... and was everywhere, and I went and re-watched parts of Babe. It is so weird. You were just talking about Craig Mazin writing Chernobyl. You know who co-wrote Babe? George Miller of the Mad Max series, Wait, really? Like, the apocalypse, yes. The apocalypse and talking animals, guys. Wow. These are, these are part and parcel. 
Naomi Fry: Yes. The, the comparison to Babe is apt, though I have to say I think Babe is an infinitely better movie. I don't know if infinitely, but it's certainly a better movie. Interesting. I liked Sheep Detectives. I, I thought it was a cute movie. I think for me the thing that was less satisfying, and I don't know if, if you might agree or not, is I wasn't really interested in the humans, and there was a lot of humans in this movie, I just wasn't that- Yeah ... interested or convinced by the human part of it, but I did really like the sheep, and I liked the relationships- ... between the sheep, which I think sh- you know, which is why I did ultimately enjoy it. But I, I don't know. I think Babe was just ... Babe is, like, one of my favorite movies.
There is just something so pure about it. 
        CLIP: Babe
Like Babe is mostly about the animals, you know? And it is mostly about the relationship between the animals, which are o- of course symbolic of relationships between humans. But I don't know. There was just too, too, too much of the people plot in, in this movie for me to completely love it as an animal text. 
Naomi Fry:  are there texts that, that are specifically adult, um, directed about animals- Mm-hmm
that you guys can recall being affected by? 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Um, I think Mary Gaitskill, who's a novelist, a short story writer, and an essayist, has a very profound insight into the beautiful and painful parts of being human.
Like, I, I truly cannot say enough about how, um, important her, her works are to me. And in 2015, she wrote a book called The Mare. There are many different stories that are interwoven through the book, but the main one is that a woman named Ginger, who's a white woman in her late 40s, who is very fragile, has had experience with addiction, now lives in Upstate New York with her husband, has no children, welcomes into her home this, uh, girl from Brooklyn, from kind of the inner city in New York, um, a Dominican girl named Velvet, as part of a Fresh Air Fund experience one summer when Velvet is, like, a tween.
And Velvet starts volunteering at this local stables where she meets a horse whose name is Fugly Girl because- Mm-hmm ... this horse is brutal and no one can really get, get her to be ridden and all of the rest of it. And Velvet and this horse form, uh, an amazing bond that enriches and complicates Velvet's life and Ginger's life. The way that the animal-human bond is portrayed and the kind of completion of Velvet when she's riding, um, the horse she renames Fiery Girl, and her attempt to understand or intuit what someone who, what someone, something that can't speak but can communicate needs. and their struggles and breakthroughs in communication and mutual understanding is really one of the most beautiful things I've read, and it moves me even to think about it right now. 
Naomi Fry: In a minute, we’re leaving the culture behind to talk about our real life relationship to the animal world. Critica at Large from TNY will be right back. 
:: MIDROLL 2:: 
Guys, um, what animal do you see me as? And then I'll tell you what animal I see you as. I th- I mean, it's 
Alex Schwartz: basic, but you're a cat. I'm a cat? It's very basic. Yeah, of course. 
Yeah. 
Really? Of course, yeah. I think you can be extremely cuddly. You can also, you can also get your claws out, for sure. I'm a bit of a hater, as we know.
Yeah. Mm, mm, mm. You're a bit of a hater, but d... when, when treated with love and care, you, you melt and you purr. Aw. That's you. And Vinson's an owl. 
Vinson Cunningham: I'm an owl. Yeah. Oh my 
Naomi Fry: God, Vinson, yes, you are an 
Alex Schwartz: owl. You're wise. Vinson's a wise owl. You're a wise owl. Mm-hmm. Wise owl. Alex- And, and Vinson, Vinson also enjoys staying up late.
Vinson Cunningham: I do. That's very true. He's- Night owl ... he's a night owl. It's true. Bad habit. 
Naomi Fry: Alex, I see you as a kind of like wise, I mean, you're also wise, like a, like, um, I... You know what? I see you as a bit of like a sheep wearing glasses. Okay. 
Vinson Cunningham: I- A little Lilly vibe? 
Naomi Fry: A little vibe? A little Lilly vibe. All right. You're like the smartest, uh, you're the smartest sheep in the world.
Thank you. I kind of see that. That's touching. That's touching.
You guys, let's move on and talk, start talking a little bit about, uh, what our relationships looks like with animals in the real world.
I mean- Whether online is real world or not, I, I guess, I guess we mean kind of like not in, you know, fictional texts, right? Um, obviously our feeds are full to the brim of animals that we love to love. Do you have some favorite animal celebrity friends that you, that you like to cozy up to on your phones?
Vinson Cunningham: I, I am not much of a- 
Naomi Fry: Oh my God, Vincent ... animal 
Vinson Cunningham: follower on Instagram. Oh, God The animals that I see the most of and that I care the most for are, especially this time of year, the, the whales that get sort of end up beached. Oh. Uh, and, and the, and the attempts of various human communities to get them back into the sea.
Recently- Are we talking about Timmy? Recently, I think- Oh, no. Is Timmy the most recent one- Oh, no ... who, like multiple times came back- Oh, Timmy ... and they kept trying to push him back. I, Timmy survived, though. Timmy went back, right? Uh, uh, 
Alex Schwartz: uh. 
Vinson Cunningham: Or am I- Who wants to tell him? I might have the wrong Tim- I might have the wrong a- 
Alex Schwartz: Who, who's gonna tell him?
Oh, 
Vinson Cunningham: no. Oh. Not Timmy. 
Alex Schwartz: Timmy, just to fill people in, was a, was a 40-foot humpback whale. He got stranded off of Germany's Baltic Coast. A couple of German millionaires privately funded an operation to get Timmy back. It seemed like things were going well. He got into this water-filled barge. He was towed out of the Baltic Sea, released into the North Sea, and then about a month ago, his tracking device went silent, and his carcass was discovered.
Naomi Fry: Yeah, I'm sorry, Vincent. But it, it's just 
Alex Schwartz: the 
Vinson Cunningham: fact- I might have been thinking about a different... In, in any case- I don't know. I don't know. Vincent's 
Alex Schwartz: whale is a living whale. 
Vinson Cunningham: Anyway, yeah. So the- these are my encounters with animals. Usually it's that. I like whales. 
Alex Schwartz: Just the fact that Timmy the whale becomes this huge media sensation says, I think it says a lot about how animals fit into our lives now as this kind of spectacle.
It's almost like we s- through social media and through, and through, frankly, just the regular news media, we're kind of eternally at the zoo l- looking in the pen. You know, I find it a bit troubling, and Nomi, of course, I know you're gonna come to us with a ton of recommendations- ... for animals to follow, and I want them all.
But I will just say, you know, our relationship with the natural world and with animals is already so denuded. We don't have experience, most of us, dealing with animals outside of the pet world. So this kind of like hubbub and furor over animals online, I can't totally tell if I find it heartening, sickening, somewhere in between.
Yeah. I, I think we're just, we've lost our compass in a way- Mm ... about how to interact with animal life. Okay. Nomi? Yes. So- Take us back. Tell us about the cute animals you follow. Well, okay, 
Naomi Fry: let me tell you a story about losing one's compass because of- Mm ... online and its depiction of, of, uh, of, you know, cute animals.
There was a squirrel I followed on Instagram Eve the June Bug Squirrel. And I believe, I'm not sure what the origin story was. I think she might have fallen out of a tree or something, maybe got hurt as a, as a baby squirrel, and was rescued, and is- lives with humans now. You know, she's being, like, uh, brushed with, like, a, an old toothbrush, and she's being, you know, she's eating, like, the, the soft petals of a flower, and she's snuggling and, you know, being, like, petted and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
It's very, very cute. I'm not saying anything bad about Eve the June Bug Squirrel, okay? But I was following, and I received a certain impression of this squirrel, and one morning I came downstairs in our house, and we have, uh, a cat door. I was washing dishes when I heard kind of like a, a scrabbling, scratching sound.
I see that there's a terrified squirrel And so I, because I was following Eve the June bug squirrel, I- Uh-oh. Yes. I, and I am a friend to all animals.
Uh-oh. I begin to pet the squirrel. Oh, no. Because I'm a- Oh, no ... fucking idiot, and the squirrel lets me, and I am, am encouraged. Mm-hmm. 
Alex Schwartz: And 
Naomi Fry: so I say to myself, "It's just, like, really one step away from the door. What if I pick up the squirrel and I just kinda toss him outside," right? Like, I, I didn't mean to, like, cuddle him, right?
I'm not, like, a, a complete idiot, but I am an idiot because I was like, "I'm gonna pick him up," okay? And so I attempt to pick him up. It lashes out. And it bites me, right? Oh, no, Nomi. Had to go to the ER. Every, like, doctor or nurse I told why I'm there started to chuckle. I was, like, the comic relief on ER or something, you know?
I was like- But all of which is to say, all I want is to cuddle a sweet, soft animal. I need this comfort, and yet that animal did not wanna be cuddled by me. 
Alex Schwartz: I know.
Well, Nomi, here's the truth about, about us, about us three. We're all very domesticated humans. Mm-hmm. We're, we have pets, but we're not used to living a rugged life out in the wilderness. And increasingly, few humans are. Yeah. So in a way, our species has, I really think our species has become unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with many animal species, and there is a risk, as you say, of, uh, of over-cuteifying- Yes
wild creatures- Yes ... definitely, I'm thinking of Punch. Okay, let's talk Punch. Let's talk about Punch for one second. Punch is a macaque. He is a, I think he's a 10, 10 months at this point.
Mm-hmm. He's a 10-month-old macaque. He's in a small Japanese zoo, And Punch's mom abandoned Punch, which is very sad. It's very sad. Punch's mom abandoned Punch I'm led to understand because she had a difficult labor during a heatwave.
Sometimes 
Vinson Cunningham: the baby has bad vibes. Yes. Mm-hmm. She got, 
Alex Schwartz: she, she is not- She got the ick. She got the ick from her baby Punch- ... and moved, and moved from, and moved on. Mm-hmm. Um, she moved on, but Punch has become a kind of global hero, and so many people are showing up at the zoo and just loving on Punch. And Punch has this Ikea stuffed monkey that he loves.
He has two. The zoo washes one every day. Those Ikea stuffed monkeys are sold out. The, the... Y- you just get the feeling that tiny Punch is carrying the bedraggled human spirit on his small- ... little monkey shoulders.  we're just at this interesting stage where what is wild, what is not. All I mean is there's a lot at stake for us humans in our treatment of these animals, and I just think it's very unequally distributed. Am I a bit of a, an animal Marxist?
I might be. It's, some animals, like Punch, are getting all our love. 
Mm-hmm. 
Most animals are being totally abandoned by us, and we're eating up their habitats and destroying their environments and, and on we go. So we, like, need our totems, like Punch, to keep our relationship to the animal world. This is not good.
This is not healthy. Yes. Am I the only person to think this? 
Vinson Cunningham: No. Yeah, I was just gonna say that, like, you know, there are often a love of animals and, to your point, like, a hoarding of animal attention can mask lots of forms of abuse. I'm thinking of two documentaries, both by the same director, I believe, Tiger King and, um, Chimp Crazy, which I wrote about, I guess, two years ago now.
Um, people keeping exotic animals, usually for, uh- Eventually for profit for, you know, making these small time zoos, uh, usually illegally. And then, you know, you got the, the documentaries that take you behind the scenes of those things, and there are event- there are inevitably, um, all kinds of abuses of the animals.
Um, sometimes our interest in animals can have this sort of prurient and abusive, uh, ambit. Uh, famously there was a, a tiger named Ming, uh, that was found living in an apartment in Harlem and grew to 425 pounds and ate, like, chick- 20 chicken thighs a day. And I think the tiger piss finally made its way downstairs and the, and there was a report made.
And, uh, so I mean, uh, there is a kind of mania that can, uh, accompany our, our more inia- innocent interests. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I just think w- it's, animals are such, and our relationship to animals is such an interesting bellwether for the health or, um, the lack of health in our relationship to other people and to the world at large.
And it can really cut both ways. It's, it's, it's so good to give love to something. It's so good to give love to other humans, and it's so good to give love to non-humans. It's so good for us. It's good for them, it's good for us. And then we all know examples when things just get totally out of whack. Mm-hmm. when I think about the kind of, uh, the, an extreme on the spectrum of where we are with our relationship to animals,, I'm just gonna call her out, Marie Antoinette, you know? I must think of Marie Antoinette and her lap dogs.
I m- I must think of Mops, the pug. Oh, Mops. M- Marie Antoinette's pug And if any of our listeners wanna go to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can see an absolutely exquisite kind of Tiffany blue velvet gilded doghouse that was made for Marie Antoinette.
Mm-hmm. Mops might have peed in this thing, guys. Like, this is a beautiful little house while people were hungry on the streets. Wow. So- Yeah ... in our, in our own world, we have, we have a similar kind of out of whack thing. Mm-hmm. Um, dog strollers. Became aware of them in Green Point- Mm ... 10 years ago. Now they're everywhere.
Couldn't believe what I was seeing. Yeah. Couldn't believe that I was, what, the little faces I was looking at when I expected to see a human child in there. Just, just a great shock. So it's- So fuzzy ... I, I don't want to accuse anyone of going too far with their love of an animal, but I think these needs- Hmm
to, um- project onto animals the kind of care that we should be giving to other people but aren't is, it's just fascinating and telling. 
Naomi Fry: Please. Yeah. No, it's true. You know what I think about it? Like, sometimes I think, "Oh, if only they could talk." You know what I mean? Like, if only, you know, I, I look into my cat's eyes and I say, "I love you.
Like, I love you so much." 
Vinson Cunningham: So beautiful. 
Naomi Fry: And, you know, I imagine one of them answering and saying, "I love you too, Mother," or something, right? It, like, I'm, and, and I kind of, like, fantasize, like, how amazing would it be if we could a- if we could fully relate, right? Like, you know, if language was theirs and we could have these moments where reciprocity could be articulated fully, right?
Mm-hmm. As it is with a human. However- However ... one of the things that makes it so special and so relieving in some ways is that it can talk back. I have a chi- I have a human child who talks back, and this is, like, often, you know, almost always a most wonderful thing. But sometimes it's It's a difficult thing. Because it's difficult to deal with another person. And the relief of an animal is that, you know, their fuzzy- ... Chunky body that you hold in your arms is is mute. You know?
Except for the meows or the barks as the case may be. 
Alex Schwartz: know, I don't know, Nomi, um, if you're aware of what I consider to be a supremely troubling TikTok account called I Am Bunny. I find this unholy. What's going on? Okay, so what's going on with Bunny? I'm pretty freaked out by I Am Bunny.
I Am Bunny is a dog who, um, whose owner has given... It's, she's a, she's a sheep-a-doodle, and her owner has given her a set of buttons that can say words in automated voices, and it is by pressing these buttons that Bunny is purported to speak. Okay. Oh, God. So here's an example. There's a, there's a Bunny video in which Bunny, this black and white dog, it has a longstanding feud with Tenrec, another dog in her household, and Bunny is standing on, um, 
standing on buttons to say big ugh
        CLIP: Bunny account
And what I find so disturbing about 
Bunny is of course her owner, who kind of uses the techniques of modern gentle parenting to explore Bunny's feelings with her, like affirming her feelings in this sort of sing-songy verbal way. What's happening here? And there's something like, like, um, Nomi, you say, and I totally get this, like you wish that sometimes that the cats could talk.
Don't you think that would be the most delicious- And say, "I love you, Mother." Right, exactly. Or is they're probably just gonna say 
Naomi Fry: Like me 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Me. Yeah, it's 
Naomi Fry: me. I want to 
Alex Schwartz: kill you. And they, and they make their wills so known through all these... I, I just think, like, again, on the plus side and the beautiful side of this human-animal relationship is being taught by animals, and being taught to learn a kind of communication that isn't verbal, and learning how, how, and, and having to, to change your own way of speaking and communicating.
Mm-hmm. 'Cause these 
Naomi Fry: relationships are mutual. They really are. Okay, you guys. We're reaching the end of our time together. What would you want to give us as a kind of, like, parting idea about, like, our relationship to animals in the world? Words of wisdom? Parting thoughts? 
Vinson Cunningham: It's funny. As a new-ish pet custodian, I, I've noticed, I mean, there's a big narrative, especially, um, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where I live in Brooklyn, about sort of animals become these really interesting symbols of space and how people inhabit them, and it's sort of adjunct to the ongoing conversation about gentrification.
How, how do pet owners and their sort of, how they interpret their own prerogatives in terms of taking up space on the sidewalk- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... or in public parks, et cetera. And so I, I just wanna say to the pet owners of the world that your animal, while beautiful, is not an excuse to treat people poorly, you know, other people have a part to play, too. So, uh, while you develop your sense for your animal, also k- keep, keep working on that other people thing. I think it'll do you well.
Naomi Fry: Yeah. That is very wise. I would just say, like, if you can afford to, I think it's really great to adopt a, a rescue animal. It takes a certain amount of, like, work and, and, and funds and so on, but if you can and you're on the fence, I would really recommend it. It helps the animals, and I think it really gives way more than it takes. And I often say that, like, adopting a cat Uh, like, I don't know, whatever, when I had my first cat, like 18 years ago, I guess it really, um, prepared me to, uh, become a, a mother of a human person.
Like, that was kind of like my first inkling that I would maybe be able to care, uh, for someone that was, uh, helpless. 
Alex Schwartz: That's beautiful. 
Naomi Fry: So yeah, no, for real. Like, I feel like she taught me how to love, Trixie, RIP. Um, a, a small senior black and white cat. Um, so yeah. Okay. Alex? 
Alex Schwartz: I guess I would say that the two important qualities of relationship to animals that just keep coming up for me are love and respect. Love to experience a kind of caring for a creature, because that's really what it is. You, you take on a creature to care for, knowing that i- essentially, if things go well, it will die on your care.
And you get a very pure experience of caring. Mm-hmm. And then what I mean about respect is just a much bigger, and frankly more basic, idea about a shared planet, which increasingly feels less and less shared, and more gobbled up by us. But we are a shared planet. I, I went on a nature walk in Prospect Park with my son a couple of weekends ago- It was just a delight to observe, to try to stop and observe and understand little things, like why turtles sit in the sunlight, through the eyes of a kid and also through my own eyes.
Um, there were swans there who had, had an experience where, um, one of them had to be taken away to be cared for. I think she'd eaten something that was bad, and she wasn't able to sit on her eggs as long as she should have, and the male swan tried to step up, and long story short is that the eggs were lost, and apparently the swan mourned.
Yeah. 
You know, you don't have to anthropomorphize an animal to understand that there is a shared experience of being on planet Earth, which I do believe is the best planet to be on. 
This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barasch is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman, and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy, with music by Alexis Cuadrado. You can listen to all of our episodes anytime at newyorker.com/critics​