![]() Few people were birding during that period, apparently. The park was quiet because it was, like, the COVID era. So let's talk about the Central Park incident that you were involved in. So I'm a mess, and it looks awful, and my shoes are, like - I deliberately wear the worst shoes I can get away with because I'm stomping around the park for hours, and if they get wet or muddy or whatever, I don't want to ruin good shoes. My clothes are from the bottom of the closet, something that I would never otherwise wear except that I haven't done laundry in three weeks. I am almost certainly unshaven for several days. Because honestly, at that point in the migration I am a visual mess.ĬOOPER: My hair is likely uncut. So when you say, I know what this looks like, what did you think it looked like as you were running through Central Park to get a sight of this rare bird?ĬOOPER: A sloppy-looking Black man racing through the park. And you describe how your heart is pounding, and you say, I know what this looks like.Īnd I'm thinking, I don't remember the part about you running in the Central Park incident, but then you explain you're really running because you got an alert on your phone about a rare bird sighting in the park and you don't want to miss it. You said I am a Black man running through New York's Central Park. And you write, I am - you're describing what's happening at the moment. GROSS: The first chapter of your new book is titled "An Incident In Central Park." And I thought, yes, I know about that incident. His new memoir is called "Better Living Through Birding: Notes From A Black Man In The Natural World." As you can guess from the title, the book is also filled with his stories about birdwatching. Now Cooper hosts a new show for the National Geographic Channel called "Extraordinary Birder," and he serves on the board of New York City Audubon. He was one of the first openly gay writers and editors at Marvel and created what he thinks was Marvel's first lesbian character and was in on the creation of Marvel's first openly gay male character. While at Harvard, he came out and then became a gay activist. Growing up in the '70s, he was a young Black birdwatcher in a world of white birdwatchers, a closeted gay boy and a Marvel comic book nerd before that was considered cool. The rest of the book is about growing up as an outsider and how he turned that to his advantage. One chapter is devoted to the Central Park incident. The man, Christian Cooper, has written a new memoir and is my guest. The woman, who was white, called the police falsely claiming that an African American man was threatening her and her dog. He started videotaping the incident on his phone. Remember the news story from 2020 about a birdwatcher in Central Park who told a woman she needed to leash her dog because she was in a part of the park designed to attract wildlife and an unleashed dog was a threat to the wildlife? She refused. ![]()
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