From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Bob Garfield is away this week.

I'm Brooke Gladstone, and these are Starlings.

The U.S. is infested with starlings because of Shakespeare.

On a snowy March morning in 1890, a bard and bird-loving drug maker named Eugene Shefflin released 60 starlings, because they'd once been mentioned by Shakespeare in Central Park.

There are now some 200 million of them larding our homeland with guano.

As the bard once said, a pestilence hangs in our air.

Then again, you might say the same about him, depending on your first encounter.

A recent unscientific survey taken in Manhattan's Washington Square Park suggests that, for some,

Shakespeare was snuffed by pedigogy's cold dead hand.

Any personal experience?

High school, having to read it all the time

and not really understanding the language.

I appreciate his work.

However, I don't feel as if I connected to it now.

But we met a bunch of, I'm guessing, fourth graders.

He saw it differently.

Praise.

Poetry.

Happiness.

All people.

Happy.

...