The New Yorker Radio Hour - Goodbye to “Elephant and Piggie,” and Getting to Know Gorsuch

Episode Date: March 24, 2017

 Jill Lepore takes a look at history and the Supreme Court. Plus, we hear stories about life in prison and learn why Mo Willems retired his enormously popular children’s-book series “Elephant and Piggie.”     New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

They didn't break that, but they have pretty good access to those people. Her image subconsciously mocks that lineage. So that's happening? Okay. It seems like an incredible story here on many fronts. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick. The most beloved and acclaimed author in American fiction, due respect to Tony Morrison or Philip Roth and many other masters, is Mo Willems. He's the author of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. Hooray for Amanda and her alligator, and pigs make me sneeze. He'll join us in the studio later this hour.

Now last week, Neil Gorsuch took questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee in his bid to fill the seat that Justice Scalia had held for so long on the Supreme Court. One question that conservatives and liberals alike have been asking is how does Gorsuch's legal philosophy compare to Scalia's? And to understand that, you have to look not just at the record of his decisions as a judge, which is important enough, but at its view of history.

That's what Jill Lippoor tells us. Jill is both a staff writer at the magazine and a historian. She wrote a fantastic essay recently about the Supreme Court, history, and the law. Now, Jill, before we get to Neil Gorsuch, I think you should start by describing what you call the history test. not the kind of test that you give to undergraduates, I take it, but explain what this history test is. Sure. Well, unlike the kind of test you give to undergraduates, this one is very difficult to pass because it's quite vague and uncertain. But the court, in trying to make judicial decisions, has several different ways it might use history. One is to look to precedent, that is, the body of earlier legal decisions. Everyone's going to do that to one degree or another.

But then there's a broader deference to political, cultural, and social history. And justices sometimes talk about this as a history test. That is to say, does the way we decide this ruling, would it be consistent with the larger historical trends in American culture and life? So that's particularly used in constitutional cases, not criminal or civil cases. It's all at the top. Right. So if you think about it, the Constitution doesn't have originally a Bill of Rights. Since the Bill of Rights, which is ratified in 1791, people have made other rights claims.

And then the problem is, where do you find those rights? So for example, what's a good case to sketch that out? So the classic instance is the right to privacy on which so much of our contemporary political debate hinges. The right to privacy is not written in the Constitution, certainly not in so many words. It is discovered in the Constitution in a case from 1965 called Griswold v. Connecticut. Estelle Griswold was the head of the Planned Parenthood Clinic in New Haven, Connecticut, and she challenged the constitutionality of bans on contraceptive services. And her lawyers argued that these bans were unconstitutional because they violated a right to privacy.

which the Supreme Court agreed was to be found in the Bill of Rights in between the words as they are written, in the kind of shadowy, in the sort of spaces, in the curning spaces between the letters themselves was to be found the idea of privacy and that it was therefore a fundamental right. But in Roe v. Wade in 1973, the justices did something a little different. they offered a historical rationale for the right to privacy. That is, Justice Blackman looked at the history of abortion law in the United States to point out that only fairly recently had abortion become a crime. And therefore, that a right to privacy did pass in a way this de facto history test. So there's a general sense that conservative justices look to history,

and liberal justices look to contemporary norms, but what you're talking about seems a heck of a lot more complicated. Yeah, it's gotten a lot more complicated. It's gotten, I mean, the reason I got so fascinated by this was I just have for months and months been still puzzling over Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in the same-sex marriage case from 2015. Why so? Because he goes on and on. He quotes Cicero.

He talks about ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and it's just, it's full of, a fairly extraordinary historical rumination. And when you see that much history in a Supreme Court opinion, just as your question suggests, it tends to be from conservatives. That is to say, the emphasis on history and tradition tends to come from conservatives. Because if you think about it, many of the rights that people have been fighting for, certainly since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, are rights that earlier generations of Americans did not have.

If you're trying to call for ending segregation, desegregating the schools, history's not the place to go for your argument since segregation had been an American tradition. So most rights cases that came from the laughter from liberals in the second half of the 20th century threw away history and tradition and argued using other forms of judicial reasoning mostly, but also using other kinds of evidence like social science. Jill, a word that we hear, a concept that we hear all the time is originalism, and it's associated with the conservative side of things of the justices. But can we define what originalism means exactly? Originalism was coined in 1980 and became the hallmark of the Reagan era Justice Department. It means that the best way to interpret the law and all constitutional questions is to look for the original meaning and the original, intention of the framers of the Constitution. So originalism has many adherents, but on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia was by far the most powerful of them and the most eloquent, a really terrific spokesperson for this set of ideas.

And after Scalia died, Neil Gorsuch gave a tribute address at Case Western Law School in which he talked about what it was that Scalia had contributed to American jurisprudence. Perhaps the great project of the Justice's career was to run. remind us of the differences between judges and legislators. To remind us that legislators may appeal to their own moral convictions into claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future. But the judges should do none of those things in a democratic society. The judges should instead strive, if humanly and so imperfectly, to apply the law as they find it, focusing backwards, not forwards, and looking to text, structure, and history, not their moral conviction.

or policy consequences they think best for society. As Justice Scalia put it, and it rings true to me, if you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong. But Jill, it sometimes seems like where the justices start is where they want the decision to land, and then they work backwards to find the history to justify that decision.

Is that fair? that it's more politics than they'd like to admit? I completely share your tendency to see it that way, but I don't think that's entirely fair. I do think that justices believe that they are examining the case on the merits and that their understanding of history is so structured as to result in the outcome that they favor, but that they might see that it's history.

that's dictating that ruling rather than their politics. So I think what happens when liberals argue from empirical research social science data to argue against desegregation and to argue for women's rights and gay rights and same-sex marriage rights, what happens in the 1970s is that conservatives come up with their own judicial philosophy that is essentially a very narrow use of history, which is originalism. And that's where you get liberals using history differently and casting back, kind of out-originalizing originalists, casting back. No, we'll give you ancient history. Let me go to Cicero.

And that's where that move comes in, right? It's the left saying, okay, okay, who's going to bring the best history to this game? I have better history than you. My history is more interesting. My history is more thorough. My history has a longer timeline, especially in the same-sex marriage debates, right? It's the historical research of a generation of scholars that really makes a difference. So for Gorsuch, he's tackling this problem at a really interesting moment when originalism is in a certain kind of crisis, having risen to prominence not only on the court but in an American public opinion, but these larger historical arguments that liberals have been making have been very successful, both in the public's mind and also on the court.

So Gorsuch has written very specifically about the question of the history test, and I think fairly candidly, states, Depends what history you're looking at. Who's history? How far back are you going to go? If you want to find justification for a decision you're going to make, you can cater your historical research to find that answer and to justify that position. Gorsuch has been very frank about that in his own writing.

Is that similar to the style of thinking of Anton and Scalia? Not at all. It doesn't sound like that at all. Have you read one of those Scalia opinions? No. Scalia would throw a book across the room. Exactly. And hit you in the head with a sense of certainty, no?

I think a lot of people are still puzzling over what Gorsuch's jurisprudence will really look like. He is absolutely a textualist. He's very interested in the text, the original wording of the Constitution and its amendments and also of previous rulings of the court. He is an originalist in the sense that Scalia was an originalist and that he believes that the best historical record and the first historical record to consult on any constitutional matter is the Constitution itself and the surrounding documents. And the Federalist papers. The Federalist papers, right, the things that people wrote at the time who were involved in framing the government. How is that justified, though? In other words, why would you stop at the Federalist Papers? The justification for originalism is Scalia said it's the lesser of two evils.

That's the way to prevent the judiciary from becoming legislative. One of the things that caught my eye in your essay is that you said that the framers themselves were not originalists. What did you mean by that? So think about the revolution in the first place, the War for American Independence. Its whole use of history is to say, let's just set history aside. History is a set of injuries committed against us by the King of England. What history tells us is that people have a right to revolt. But we don't mean to make ourselves blindly venerate tradition.

People in power often found their tyranny in an argument about the past. So we must always be able to criticize the past. It almost seems like a kind of fundamentalist view of a religious text. Right. And legal scholars who have done careful work trying to understand why originalism exists in this country, there's a guy Columbia law school named Jamal Green, who's done a really interesting comparative study. Let's look at a few other former English colonies that have written constitutions

and see, do they have originalism? And if they don't, why don't they? So he looks at Australia and Canada in particular. Former English colonies, they have written constitutions. They have nothing like originalism in their political culture. Why? He looks at a number of possible factors, and he decides it's because they don't have fundamentalist Protestantism in the country. And he argues that originalism, it's appeal to the public, not necessarily to justices, but its appeal to the public lies in how closely it aligns with fundamentalism, that what you read in the gospel is the literal truth of God and that it is a revealed text.

in the same way that many originalists believe the Constitution to be divinely inspired. Who's waiving the Constitution now is the political question, I think, worth asking. Jill, thank you so much. Hey, thanks so much for having me, David. Jill Lepore is a professor of history at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. In a minute, we're going to get an intimate look at life inside prison from people who are living it. This is the New Yorker Radio. I'm David Remnick. You're listening to The New Yorker,

Radio Hour. One of the country's leading journalists on the effects of poverty and crime is Alex Kotlowitz. You may have heard his stories on This American Life and his best-selling book, There Are No Children Here Staves With Me to this day, although I think I read it first some 20 years ago. It's the story of two boys in a Chicago housing project, and it was even adapted into a television movie with Oprah Winfrey. Recently, Kotlowitz has been working with inmates at Statefield Correctional Center, a maximum security prison outside Chicago. The men at Stateville are generally serving long sentences for violent crimes. Alex asked them to write not about their crimes or how they got to jail, and not on questions

of guilt or innocence, but rather to focus in on describing the cells where they spend their days. Here's one of those essays read for us by an actor. It's called A Visit from an outsider. After a long day of landscaping work, I walked into the cell house and stood outside my cell waiting for the gallery officer to let me in. Leaning against the bars, I noticed something moving in the back of the cell. I couldn't tell what it was because it was hiding behind the steel bunk bed. When the officer opened the door, I walked straight to the back and moved the laundry bag from the wall.

To my surprise, it was a bird, a robin or a wren. I'm not sure. I'm six foot seven and 300 pounds, and when the bird caught sight of me it undoubtedly feared for its life. It scurried away, taking cover under the bunk bed. Its little legs moved so fast that it looked like the roadrunner character. It found safety between two gray property boxes. I couldn't help but to laugh at its cartoonish ways. I lay down on the cold concrete floor and reached under the bed to grab it, but it ran and hopped out of my reach. As I lay on the floor, it made its way to the front of the cell and jumped on a slot between the bars.

It perched for a moment there. I sat up and admired its beauty. Its beak was bright yellow. Even its brown plumage amidst all the prison gray seemed colorful. Sitting on the bars, it no longer seemed afraid. It barely moved, just its head which swiveled from left to right and back again. It seemed so delicate. Its little black eyes were no longer looking at me.

Instead, it appeared it was trying to figure out which direction to fly. I hoped it would find its way out of the building, so I waved my hands showing it toward the door, but it flew further into the cellhouse. For a few minutes, I felt like I was somewhere else. It was a small crack in a routine which sets my life every day. My encounter with the bird brought a rare moment of pure joy, and so I've held on to this small memory.

Ten years later, it still makes me smile. A visit from an outsider read for us by the actor Rick Walker. Journalist Alex Kotlowitz sent us the piece after he taught a writing workshop for inmates, and we published it on New Yorker.com. Now, Alex, that's a remarkable piece of writing, And I wish you could tell us a little bit about its author, James Trent, who he is and how you came to get this piece of writing from him. Sure. So James is, he's in Stateville prison, a maximum security prison about an hour south of Chicago.

And he's, I think, served a little over 20 years already. And this piece was, in some ways, kind of an accident in some ways. I had been asked to visit a class at Stateville run by a philosophy professor at Northwestern. Jennifer Lackie. And I came in there actually, my intent was to talk about my first book, There Are No Children Here. They had all been given copies of it, and I went in there to talk to them about it, and also to talk to them about the craft of storytelling. And in that three-hour class we had together, I asked them to do this short exercise where I asked them to write about their prison cells. And I was so taken with what some of the guys wrote that I offered, for those who would take me up on it,

to work with them on trying to work on these pieces that were just really about sort of the everyday life of being in prison and how one gets by. And James wrote this piece, and he struggled with it. It's a small piece. It's a beautiful piece, I think. And one of the things he struggled with, he talked about this bird, and I kept on pushing him this moment, why he was telling this story. And I remember getting back one of the drafts that he gave to me.

And he talked about how the bird was, you know, symbolized freedom and with, you know, and that he saw it fly away from the cell. And it didn't feel like him. It felt like this kind of trope that he was using. And then he hands me a draft and mentions in passing that this incident happened 10 years earlier. And I realize that that's it, that he's held onto this moment for 10 years. Alex, the men you were working with were convicted of some really violent crimes, and James Trent is no exception. He and his former girlfriend were convicted of killing her daughter, who was four years old.

When you were working with him, did this come up? Right, with the guys I worked with, I didn't talk to any of them about their crimes, in part because I know enough that, you know, so much of their life has spent trying not to let that moment define who they are. and I haven't spoken to him about it. But I did, he happened to, I happened to talk to him the other day. He calls occasionally, and I mentioned to him that I might mention his crime. And he said to me, he said that was, you know, I understand. And he said, you know, I was more than that before I went in, and I'll be more than that before I leave. I guess someone hearing this would say, with every good intention, here's a guy who killed a child.

And I just wonder why? Why teach him? Why work with him on storytelling rather than with someone else who might profit just as well from your attentions? Yeah. You know, David, to be honest with you, I kind of stumbled into this. It wasn't something that was premeditated, so to speak. I just happened, I mean, I agreed to come visit these guys in prison. I do this. And I was just so taken with what they had written that I thought, you know, I partly, you. you know, I sort of thought it as a kind of personal challenge. Could I get something out of these guys that resonated, that felt real and personal and felt in some level literary? I will tell you that this experience has made me want to go back in, not necessarily to state-filled, but to another prison to work with inmates on this.

I mean, I realize one of the things is that given the high incarceration rate in this country, in some ways, we really don't fully understand what it means to be incarcerated. what it means to be in prison for 10, 20, 30 years. After this essay was published, you heard from his mother, from James Trent's mother. What did she tell you? Yeah, she called. I don't know how she got my phone number, but she called me. And she was so grateful. I think, you know, she, you know, which she saw on this essay, I think is what she sees in her son,

which is this sense of humanity, you know, this richful, complicated individual. She told me that, I guess, apparently at her church, one of her friends had read the piece because it ran on the New Yorker's website and had brought a copy in to distribute to all the people in the church. It just, I mean, I could just, I could feel and hear the sense of pride she had in her son. There was another man you work with whose mother was also particularly proud of her son's essay, and his name is Demetrius Cunningham. Let's listen to his story. Learning to Hear on a Cardboard Piano by Demetrius Cunningham. On my bottom bunk bed, I sat in deep thought. I had an unusual problem.

The prison choir that I sang and needed a piano player, and they needed one quickly. I thought to myself, how could I teach myself to play? I had no prior experience with the piano, but as a boy, I was infatuated with the instrument. I can still remember running down the hallways of my grandmother's house. Every time I ran past her old upright piano, I would slam all the keys down at the same time. Music has been my constant companion. It's like my DNA has tiny quarter notes infused into it. One day while I was watching TV in my cell, I flipped past the show on BET with the gospel singer Andre Crouch, who described his first piano.

He said it was made out of cardboard. I had an idea that was literally out of the box. I soon realized that it was Tissue Day. Every Tuesday, the institution hands out hundreds of rolls of tissues, one roll per inmate. I knew that there would be plenty of cardboard boxes around. I found a large, empty one abandoned at the end of the gallery of cells. I tore off the top flaps and quickly went back to myself. In church, I had taken measurements of the keyboard, so I cut a piece from the cardboard box,

but it wasn't long enough. I needed 76 keys to mimic the prison's piano. so I staple two sections of cardboard together. I then took 10 sheets of white typing paper and wrapped it around the cardboard. For the white keys, I used a black pen to outline them. For the black keys, I cut small rectangles out of black construction paper. I attached the keys with clear packing tape. By now, my cardboard piano looked so realistic that an officer walking past doing count did a double take.

He was so taken aback by my piano that he walked straight into a wall. wall. Now came the hard part. I had to somehow take the music in my head and make it real. I asked my mother to send me some beginner's piano books. The first few weeks I mainly focused on scales, but I got really frustrated. The books that I had were too basic and I only had access to the real piano for one hour on Sundays. So I called home again and asked my mother to send some professional books on chords, on harmony, and on music theory. She also threw in a piano for dummies book just for fun. I studied these books day and night, carrying them everywhere I went, to the yard, to the chow hall, and to choir practice. I positioned my practice space at the end of my bunk bed.

I was fortunate to have the bottom bunk because I could sit on my small property box like a piano bench. I folded my mattress on itself and then placed the piano on the steel bed frame. For hours at a time, I would practice finger positions and cords. Sometimes I would hum the sound of the keys as I tapped on the cardboard. I had one silly ask, only partly joking, do you need me to call a psych doctor for you? I was making progress. Every Sunday I got to try what I learned on a real piano, but I'd be so nervous that my hands would shake so much that I'd hit the wrong keys. To hide my mistakes, I'd play softly and let the voices of the choir cover it up. I preferred playing the cardboard piano in the privacy of myself.

I discovered the formulas and equations to many of my favorite songs. Take, for instance, the song, Ribbon in the Sky by Stevie Wonder. This song starts with the one, two, three chord progression. Once I figured this out, I could use it in other keys. I felt like a musical chemist, experimenting with all types of chord progressions. I was recently transferred to Pinkneyville Correctional Center. The move was unexpected. As soon as I arrived there, I saw many.

familiar faces from my old prison. They told me that the church choir needed a director and a piano player. I took both jobs. After I played the first church service, I told them about how I learned music. They got excited. Now I sit in my cell, on a box, next to my bunk bed composing music, and building cardboard pianos for three other inmates who have accepted the pedagogy of the cardboard piano. Alex, that's an amazing piece of writing. I wonder if it's your experience that in the best of circumstance, a prisoner finds something to take up his hours or her interests or whatever it might be, because otherwise it's a horrendous existence. What's your experience of that? Right. I think that, you know, I think partly, and you hear this in Demetrius' piece, is that part of

the experience of living in prison is you live so much in your head. You know, it's, you try to find ways as you suggest to get by. I have one gentleman I know who spent 14 years in prison who told me that he would spend his days counting the bricks in his cell. It was sort of how he managed to get by. But this piece always makes me smile. I mean, here's this guy who was able to figure out a way to make music in his cell. I know you're not a polemicist by nature, but I just wonder after all these years and visits and contact with prisons and prisoners, what you think has to be done? What radical changes are necessary to our prison system, in your view?

I think we sort of have to revisit why ultimately we are putting people away. You know, we very quickly are sentencing people to 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and are we sentencing them because of punishment? Are we sentencing them because of hope that somehow they'll be rehabilitated? and find redemption, or are we sentencing them to keep everybody else safe? And I don't think we've asked those fundamental questions. I don't know these men well. I've gotten to know them through the course of these writings,

but I will say I have a hard time reconciling the individuals I met with the crimes that they committed that got them there. People change. People find, or in some cases, they find out who they really are. And I think we have to acknowledge that. Alex, I want to thank you for this. I want to thank you for your work, which is extraordinary. And let's close with one more story called What Isn't Here by William Jones.

My cell is notable for what is not there rather than what is. I don't have a glass mirror. I have not seen a true reflection of myself in five years. The plastic mirrors sold in prison are small. five by four inches and distort and cloud one's appearance. I normally cut my own hair, but every few years I go to the prison's barbershop. On this last occasion in the shop's glass mirror, I noticed for the first time some gray hair and a few deep wrinkles around my eyes. My cell is without privacy. My cell happens to be located by the door that leads into the cell

house and so at a wood desk just outside a guard there can see everything i do so when i use the toilet or wash up i take a sheet from my bed and use it as a curtain i tuck one end under my mattress on the top bunk and tie the other end to a hook i've pasted to the wall even though this curtain is technically against prison rules and could land me in solitary confinement for months i take the chance most guards who sit outside my cell are women, and I'm sure they don't care to see me naked, so they allow the makeshift curtain. I don't have a stove or a hot plate or a microwave, yet much of the food sold in the commissary, refried beans, rice, instant oatmeal, and ramen noodles requires hot water. I also don't have a refrigerator. To keep things cold like pop or a carton of milk,

I placed the items in the cool water of the toilet bowl. Needless to say, you need to wash the can or carton really good before drinking. It took me 15 years to finally succumb and begin using this refrigeration method. My cell is without space. I constantly bump into my cellmate. I've gotten into a few fights because of it. Once I accidentally kicked my cellmate in his head while getting off the top. He became enraged and pulled me off my bed. We fought like dogs. My cell is without quiet.

All day inmates yell, guard shout orders, guard radios blast. Inmates play music on small stereos or their televisions to full volume. This goes on all night as well. On occasion, I plug my ears with toilet paper so I can sleep. My cell is without a wind. window. I can't see a sunrise or a sunset or a star or the moon. My cell is without a criminal. I'm now 61. The young ruffian who came into this cell ready to take on the world died a long time ago. You can find William Jones's story and all the essays we published about life at Stateville Prison at New YorkerRadio.org. They were performed by Rick Walker, Sean. Paris and Cedric Young.

WBEZ, the public radio station in Chicago, has a podcast called Written Inside, featuring these stories and many more. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. We've got so much more to come this hour. Please stick around. I'm David Remnick. If you have children born in the 21st century, there's a very good chance. You know Mo Willems.

Willems is prolific. He's acclaimed. Critics love him. Kids adore him. And parents do too. He's fast on his way to becoming what Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendeck were for previous generations. And among those many fans is the New Yorker's Rivka Gulchin.

The first book of Moes I came across was a gift. It was, we are in a book, exclamation point. And my daughter was only four months old at the time. And there's something about when you're with a very young child, you're reading the same books over and over and over. And you start to understand it in a deeper way, which is not just a fantasy with Moes' books. There's just so much going on,

even though the word count was probably, you know, 71 words. Willems has a background in TV, and his career as an author began with a book called Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. That became a successful series, and so did the next series, Canuffle Bunny. But he really blew up with a book about an elephant named Gerald and a pig named Piggy. One book called Today I Will Fly, and then another and another, up to 25 books,

when Willems finally retired the series last year. My daughter always is like trying to hurry over to what she calls the silly part or the silliest page. Often there's several pages which are the silliest part or the silly page. And it's usually when one of the characters is in a sort of a state of agitation or out of control or says a word that's a very silly word or a silly phrase. So that's what she's always rushing to. one of the books that I've read the largest number of times due to audience demand is should I share my ice cream. Oh, look.

I know. This is actually awesome. To me, seeing really abused books. Like, I mean, this has got, I don't even know what kind of stains on it. And it's beat in the corner or whatnot. But this book has been loved and probably eaten off of at some point. All right. It's one of the great Greek questions.

Epicurus asked it best. Should I share my ice cream? By me, Mo Willems. Ice cream penguin says, Ice cream! Get you cold ice cream for a hot day. Oh boy! Oh boy! Ice cream! One ice cream, please!

He's wagging his tail, as elephants do. Here you go! Oh boy, oh boy! I love ice cream! Wait! Piggy loves ice cream too. Piggy is my best friend. Should I share my ice cream with her?

Should I share my awesome, yummy, sweet, super great, tasty, nice, cool ice cream? I was so amazing. There's some great stains in this book. You should never ever let an actor read your books. Look at these stains. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the Elephant and Piki series. And if you could tell us a little bit about how you decided to end it. It was sort of like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar saying, all right, I'm stepping off the court.

It's a difficult decision. it's a freeing decision. For me, it was very freeing. Coming to that decision allowed every remaining book to be precious. I think that what I realized was that every time I was making an elephant and piggy book, I was not making something else. Well, I wanted to ask you a little bit along those lines. Every year of your life for many years now, you've done a sketchbook,

not to sell, not to make money from, but to send to friends in a new year. to lose money for. And these sketchbooks are collections of cartoons, drawings, anecdotes that you put together almost like a Christmas card. Right, exactly. And this year is, I think, the 23rd or the 24th year that I've done it. In the beginning, I did it to get work. And they were very sort of, you know, rejected New Yorker cartoons.

And then they became narratives like, don't let the pigeon drive the boss. And sometimes they became wordless and a little bit more. serious. What I started to realize is that every year they are something that I am not allowed to do for work. I have to think outside of how I usually think, but it's only going to friends. So I don't... It's a safe space. Yeah, maybe it's a same. There's something of like, here I am throwing some spaghetti on the wall. Anybody want spaghetti. And you did do a sketchbook from your year in Paris. Can you tell us what I was?

Yes, so I did this sketchbook about signage, re-translating signage, because it's like going to kindergarten. This is the thing. If you go to France for a year, even if you speak a little French, it's exactly like being a kindergartner. Every day you learn a whole bunch of new stuff. Every day there's basic signage that doesn't make sense. You have to decode. And every day you need a really long nap. Because it's exhausting.

And so I started taking pictures of funny signage. and retranslating what it meant into larger jokes. And that sort of evolved. That was part of what became the welcome book was the idea of trying to communicate the simplest ideas possible. How did that connect to the book that is now the welcome book? I think everything comes from a confluence.

When people have children, and I'm really just on a business level encourage fertility and others. Whenever a friend has a child, I will make a drawing, and usually it is an animal holding a sign saying, please enjoy your stay. And I started to realize, you know, there are just things you should say to a young child. And if the young child doesn't understand you yet, it doesn't matter. So you can be saying anything. So why not say the things you should say? And if you should say them, and you say them often enough, you might even begin to believe And tell us about some of the things you say in the Welcome Book.

Well, which I, you know, I was speaking with a number of friends about which of your books make us cry and we have to sort of cover up our snuffles when we read them to our children. And the Welcome Book is one of these two. It just makes me cry. It says that you have a heart. You should cry. But I try and protect the little people. They cry too. So it starts off with an image of a.

again a signage, basic signage, and says, thank you for joining us. Your arrival has been anxiously awaited. There were moments of fretting. There were moments of nervous anticipation. There were moments of dread. But now you have arrived. I am filled with joy that you are here with me

while we read this book together. I'll skip ahead to, we regret to inform you. Not everything is as it should be. be. There is unkindness and fighting and wastefulness and soggy toast. You will not be exempt from any of these things. There will be tears of sadness. There will be hurt. There will be spilled ice cream. Sorry. You know, there's so much in there. And one thing that I admire in this book and in all your books is that it's not as if the world doesn't have disappointments, darkness, fear. And in a sense,

I feel that children are always alert to that. They're very alert to those things. And you incorporate that. I mean, you want to have a balance. If you're going to write the most core sort of fundamental things, you have to say there's great joy. There are people who are doing their best and there are horrible things. It would be unfair not to say that because then what happens is some kid one day suddenly wakes up and like realizes the world is terrible. That's even worse, you know. There's a rule in comedy that you never write on the nose, which is you never say exactly what you mean. And that's, I've discovered over years that that's only partially true. You never write on the nose until it matters. You have to be face to face with I love you.

It's a hard thing to be face to face with. So this book, while it has little jokes and whatnot, it really is on the nose. Often also, with Elephant and Piggy, you were often, often it was conflict. Like just this morning I was reading to my daughter, look at my new toy. And she knows that they're wrong and that the toy that Elephant thinks he broke that was Piggy's is meant to break and then snap back together. but she's just like overwhelmed with pleasure until later when she opens it because she knows that they're going to have a fight about this. And do you feel like you see an evolution along your books or even within Elephant and Piggy

what kind of conflicts you're drawn to? Because for example, I felt that Elephant and Piggy early on there was a lot of kind of their intense need for each other and how vulnerable that makes you, especially how that's difficult for Gerald. and that as the books evolved, different kind of conflicts were able to move in because certain other conflicts had shifted away. I guess that's unconscious.

They were taken. There was a point at which I really realized that these books were philosophical questions. And so I started reading more philosophy and becoming more interior about what are the questions I have that I don't know the answers to. Well, in fact, almost all of them I felt like could kind of be sort of.

sort of tied to a text that is sort of a grown-up text. Like, should I share my ice cream as an ethical test? Yes, absolutely. And it's sort of like Groundhog Day that's sort of engaged in philosophically with every answer to the question of how can I be good. Not only how can I be good, and I think the twist is for me in that was, how can I be good is only one aspect of the question. The question is, when should I be good? And that's a much harder question to answer. We're doing this play.

The play is touring of Elephant and Piggy. We are in a play. And one of the sections is, should I share my ice cream? And he sings this song about being an ice cream hero. He has this great fantasy that just by deciding to share something, he will become such a hero. And he gets so self-involved that the ice cream melts. And Piggy will be amazed to see.

Super-duper power generosity. He's so nice! I can see it clear as day. I'll turn to Piggy, and I'll say, This is for you, here you go. Hope you like chocolate and chipastasio. Then, because I'll have made her day, she'll turn to me and say,

You're my hero. But early on when he says, Should I share my ice cream? The actors have told me that when there are school groups visiting, the kids go, no. They've answered. But when the grandparents are there at the public shows, like, oh, yes, yes. Because they know.

That's so amazing. They know the context. They know who's listening. They know if they're going to get ice cream afterwards or not by having, by seeming to be generous. And I do remember one show where Gerald suddenly the character, the actor says, that's it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to share my ice cream. And a kid way in the back just yelled out, you fool!

It's amazing. The idea of it being a vaudevillian piece with lots of little sketches that add into something larger, the idea is that there's an emotional amplitude. So in the beginning, the crisis is, I can't find my friend. Oh, there my friend is. It's not so big. And it works its way up to sharing your ice cream or breaking your toy. And then when they realize that they are in a play and the play will end.

And the script, they literally have nothing left to say when the script is done. It's like the end of Beckett. I've often thought we are in a book is basically waiting for Godot in a way that's accessible for children. You know, the great thing about children's theater is that, like, I love Berendello. I love Yonnesco. Of course, that's what I'm going to be writing for. My audience is too young to know that that's snobby in some way. What surprises, I guess it doesn't work that way, what surprises can you see as you look forward?

Are you asking me what am I doing next? I want to ask you the worst question possible. Are you actually asking me what I want to do next? It's like the we are in a book thing. I wanted to bring it to the top of the top. I mean, I feel like I'm going back and forth to discover where I am more comfortable, the types of stories that I want to tell. I feel very free. And that is part of the ending of the Elephant and Piggy series that I can experiment.

What are you working on next? That's a terrible question. I know. I don't know. I'm not really one of those people who's very good at cracking open my ribs and showing my heart. But, you know, I have found that reading children's books has been, I haven't been as excited about literature since I was maybe 18 years old. And that reading and rereading, because I think that's what's so powerful about children's books, I don't read these books to my daughter. I read them a thousand times, and it makes me have more respect for the kind of deep,

structural beauty that a lot of these books have. And so I don't know exactly what I'm working on, or maybe I do, but that's what is moving me. That's my intellectual food. Well, you know, a great book you don't read, you live. Mo Willems, Talking with the New Yorkers, Rivka Galchin. Her profile of Willems and the New Yorker is called Mo Willems's Funny Failures. You can find it at New Yorker Radio.org. We're going to end up with a trip to the airport, but a quick one.

Don't worry, we're not going to be stuck there for hours. This winter, a new terminal opened at New York's JFK Airport. It's modern, it's luxurious, and you're not going there. The New Yorker's Lizzie Whitticom went to check it out, along with Stephen Valentino from the radio hour. We are going to the Ark at JFK, which is the, world's first 24-hour pet and livestock airport terminal quarantine facility. According to the fact sheet, it's a 178,000 square foot space with an animal handling center divided into three sections.

But it's pretty fancy, isn't it? Well, yeah, from what we've heard and what it's advertised, it sounds like it might be better than what some of the economy class human passengers are treated to. There's a dog and cat spa with a bone-shaped swimming pool. So we're going to do a really serious investigative piece today, and we're going to crack this wide open, aren't we? Yeah, hopefully we'll get some of the animals to talk. Maybe there'll be a whistleblower.

It has that fresh new pet terminal smell to it. So I'm Elizabeth Shudy. I'm managing director of the Ark at JFK, and I am managing this overall pet oasis facility. So this is like, you know, the Delta VIP lounge or whatever? Exactly. Yeah. Sky Miles Plus.

The Sky Miles Lounge. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So just like us, animals have to be cleared through customs. And that can take a while. So what we're trying to do is enable the pet to have a safe, warm, comfortable environment to lay over and get relieved, get fed. We can clean out its crate.

So I guess are we going to speak to the dog later? That is a beautiful dog. It's a beautiful collie. It looks like lassie. Yeah, Aidan is his name. Aidan is a little more heavy set than Lassie, but nevertheless, very fluffy and beautiful. Hi, baby. All right.

Hello. All right. Good morning. Okay, before we're entering the, what is this? This is the bonded warehouse and the in-transit canal area. Yeah, so the waiting area, there's a sign that says U.S. Customs and Border Protection Security Area. I don't, I wouldn't take a picture of that, please. Oh, okay.

It's not for publication. I know, but. So we'll go back here. Okay. So we're crossing the yellow line. And now we are in international waters. Yes. Or international dog crate areas. So, I mean, literally you guys are very fortunate because in a week from now, we won't be able to do this.

Wow. Really? Why is that? Because we really have to be completely compliant with not allowing anybody back into this area without prior authorization of customs and border protection. So where can the dog go to the bathroom when it... Oh, there's an outdoor area. Can we see it or? Yes.

So at what point... You can't take a picture that way. At what point do they... That's the airside, so it's kind of. Oh, I can't take a picture. Why can't you take a picture? Because for homeland security things like terrorism. Oh, like I could be casing it for...

Yeah. Yeah. So these are isolation kennels. If an animal was deterrent. determined to have some sort of illness that required quarantining, we can put them in these. So it looks like a kennel with a glass door and a, it's like a sort of like a refrigerator. It kind of looks like a microwave oven. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

It looks like a microwave oven with two kind of light switches out front. Yeah, you're right, but you won't be microwaving the cats and dogs. It's temperature controlled. It is temperature controlled. My name is John Cudacelli, and I'm the CEO. of Racebrook Capital, which is the private equity firm or family office that my wife and I own, that is the seed funder of this endeavor. And notice the signs, equine departures, equine arrivals, the same as when you're driving up to American or any other airline.

Equine departure, equine arrival. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So it's just like going to a Ritz Carlton. Here it is. The bed's made. Oh, wow. And the horse enters, you know, remember, when you go to the Ritzkarlton, there's the pillows, and here's the little thing at the foot of the bed, and here it is. And what is that on the floor? These are shavings. And the shavings are what gives the horse the confidence to lay down.

So why is this like a Ritz Carlton for a horse? Most horse stalls don't look like this. Really? Why? Because they're not maintained to this level of biosecurity. Fine racehorses, fine barns look like this. If you've been to Lexington, Kentucky, or Great Plains. Maine's Virginia, the finer barns.

What kind of stuff, how do you get a horse ready to fly? They go through all the same process. Do they go through an x-ray? They do not go. The horse itself does not go through an x-ray. All of its equipment. Because they have metal shoes. All of its equipment goes through an x-ray.

Do you have a question? Yeah, so the concern is more like, it's more about biosecurity than, say, like, an actual drug mule being used to ship drugs or something. Drug mule is not a major concern. Okay. So this is Messina. She's our training horse. This is Dr. Linda Middle. As you've heard, the theme is to make comfortable, relaxed, ready to go. And have you ever been to an Italian home that you're not relaxed in?

No. Never, right? You're right. So what we do to make the horses really calm. Oh, amazing. about this sometimes because some of them are Italian. They may not appreciate an opera.

They're from Kentucky, so we have put on the bluegrass. I've never met a Kentucky woman that doesn't like opera. I'm Kentucky. Oh, really? What opera is this? That's Pavarotti. Poverati. And is that what's going to be playing in here?

Absolutely. Okay, between you and the wall, I'm not so sure that's Pavarotti, but whatever. Just saying it. We heard John Cudicelli and Elizabeth Chudy of the Ark at JFK Airport with the New Yorker's Lizzie Whitticom. And after that, what more is there to say? We're done. Thanks for joining us. Next week, Hilton Alls talks with the great actress Jessica Lang.

And I'll talk with Lynn Notage, whose new play is about a Rust Belt town where jobs are declining and racial tensions are on the rise. See you then. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios. New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.