The Moth Radio Hour: All In - Live from London

Flu season is here, and we know how overwhelming it can be to figure out what supplements to take. Gruen's is here to help with a convenient, comprehensive formula that ensures you're properly supported without the confusion of multiple products.
Are you taking a handful of pills every day? Gruen's isn't just a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic. It's all of that and more at a fraction of the cost.
Plus, it tastes great. Each daily snack pack contains eight gummies, because you can't fit all the nutrients we offer into just one.
And it's not just vitamins. Gruen's has 20-plus essential vitamins and minerals and over 60 whole food ingredients.
All vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and nut-free. Plus, there's a low sugar option.
Here's where the science gets fun.

Groon's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. You wanted a supplement

you could enjoy. This isn't a chore.
It's something you look forward to. Visit groons.co

and get up to 45% off with the code MOTH. Is there anything more electric than standing in

a packed stadium chanting for an artist to come back out on the stage for one more song?

Well, actually there is, when your cash comes back for an encore.

And with Discover, it can, because they automatically match

all the cash back you've earned at the end of your first year.

So yeah, it pays to stick around until curtain call.

But it pays to discover even more.

See terms at discover.com slash credit card.

This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles.

And today we're taking you to London for a live main stage show.

Now imagine you're sitting in a darkened Gothic revival style church.

The sun is setting through the stained glass windows.

Candles illuminate the eaves.

The wooden pews are packed and the energy is buzzing

as our audience awaits an evening of stories on the theme of taking a leap and going all in. Live from the Union Chapel in London, here's your host for the evening, actor, comedian and writer Tiff Stevenson.
How beautiful! Welcome to The Moth! Hello, I'm your host Tiff Stevenson. I'm local and cheap.
Also, a sexually confident woman in my 40s. Yeah.
The men are like frightening. People are frightened of sexually confident women in their 40s.
It's what I went as for Halloween last year. People are like, hideous,ous, kill it.
Who's been to The Moth before? Let me hear you cheer. A few of you, about half, I would say.
If you've never been to The Moth, let me tell you about The Moth. It's a non-profit, excellent.
It's storytelling. It's first-person storytelling.
And we have storytellers coming up tonight telling true stories stories personal stories from their lives because the moth believes that building community and empathy through storytelling is more important than ever before yeah i think that's a beautiful sentiment the storytellers will use no notes no cheat cheat sheets they do uh we have three stories this is how it's going to run tell you how the night's going to go we have three stories. This is how it's going to run.

Tell you how the night's going to go.

We have three stories and a break

where you can go to the bar.

Yeah, see, that's how you know

you're in the UK and not America.

People will cheer going to the bar

as a part of the evening.

And tonight's theme for the show is all in.

That's the theme for tonight's show.

Stories about going all in. Like the time I went to Paris, I went all in on mezcal.
I drank a lot of it. In fact, I was still throwing up on the way to the Eurostar the next day.
I walked up to the desk, having done a little puke in a bin, I'm very classy, let's get that out of the way. And as I walked up to the desk, the man behind the check-in counter said, is it contagious? I said, sorry, what? He said, what is making you sick? Is it contagious? And I had to say, no, I did this to myself.
It's beautiful, beautiful. So as I introduce our storytellers tonight, I like to introduce them with a little bit of a question to get you into the mood and the vibe of the evening.
And because it's me, I've asked a question about fashion. I like to know when our storytellers have gone all in on fashion.
You know, I've gone all in on fashion plenty of times. There was the time I bought fingerless gloves and thought they were a good idea.
Yes, exactly. Fingerless gloves, not a good idea.
Not combined with a shawl.

In London, when it's foggy. As I said, I asked everyone a question before this, and our first storyteller said, when she went all in on fashion, she said, I have to dress up for work.
I work with families in museums. In the last few weeks, I've been a pirate, a spider, a very sweaty anteater, and a spunky squirrel.

Okay, so strap yourselves in and get ready. And please welcome to the stage, the moth stage, our very first storyteller, Kate Oliver.
I was frozen with fear. I couldn't move a muscle as he lifted the gun up to point at my face and he said, pow.
Now I'd never been paintballing before. I never wanted to go paintballing.
I'd never expected to go paintballing. The only reason I was there was it was my friend's 30th birthday and he'd got the tickets as a present.
And this in itself was surprising because neither he nor I nor the two people we'd gone with were the type. We are friends from being in the same gay show choir together, so our only previous engagement in sport together was choreography to Tina Turner songs.
And I feel it really summed up our expectations of the event that he ended the invitation with, I hope they have pink paint. When we arrived, it was not as we'd expected.
We got dressed up in these kind of camouflage onesies, like the big jumpsuits, and we walked down into this basement arena for round one. Now, round one is where you're just with your friends, so it's just the four of us, and you're kind of trying to work out how it all works and what to do.
And we're in this huge arena. It's about the size of a football pitch.
It's all underground. It's totally dark in there.
There's these big black and neon shapes, these abstract shapes that you're meant to kind of dive behind to hide and shoot. And it's totally black and there's techno music playing.
So it's silly. It's silly there.
And we treat it like it's silly. We start shooting each other or trying to.
We're rolling around on the floor. We're doing movie scenes with each other.
And all this lasts right up until the point that one of us actually hits someone else. Becauseballs hurt.
Paintballs bruise. Paintballs can break the skin if you're getting too close.
And this is when our silliness started to turn to fear because we knew that after this, we were going into round two. And in round two, you're not with your friends anymore.
You're with groups of strangers. And as we walked up the stairs back to the waiting room, we saw all these groups of strangers, all taking it much more seriously than we were, including this group of eight teenage boys, about 15 or 16 years old, one of whom raised his gun up to point at me.
Now, if you haven't been to Paintball before, there are two groups of people there. One is this group of teenage boys.
They go every weekend. The staff know their names.
They've brought their own guns. You can bring your own guns to paintball.
And they are there to prey on the weak. And the second group of people, the weak, we are a bunch of gays who've just realized we're there for their target practice.
But the reason I froze up so badly when this happened was not because I'm afraid of paint. This came from a far more primal place.
I was flashing back to when I was this teenager's age, about 15 years old. And in school, the most terrifying thing in the world to me was teenage boys.
I was the weird androgynous nerdy kid in the class. You probably remember the weird androgynous nerdy kid in your class.
If you've wondered how they're doing, we're fine. I'm fine, thanks.
I had this big frizzy hair, like swept straight back. I had these thick glasses on.
And I would walk around the edge of the playground on my own, every break time, with my head down, carrying my briefcase. And kids would shout stuff at me, and they'd throw stuff at me.
Once in class, they banged on the window and shouted stuff. A couple of kids came to my house one time.
So it got pretty bad. And so my main memory of being kind of 12 to 15 is just feeling so tense all the time and just feeling like a target and wanting to hide and just wanting to disappear.
And so in that waiting room, in that space, when this teenager raised that gun, I just, I was the exact same person.

I was terrified. I was so frozen.
I was ashamed. I felt so embarrassed.

I knew that in a minute my friends would notice that I was afraid of this child and they'd be ashamed of me too.

But as I panicked,

something shifted. He lowered the gun and he suddenly looked really confused.

He suddenly looked very young and he said to me,

Miss, did you bring a cockroach to my school? And I did, I did. I did.
I used to work in the London Zoo Schools Outreach Program. And it was my job to go around schools and teach kids about endangered species and about habitats.
And we would bring animals from the zoo with us, not the wild animals like the lions and tigers, but like snakes and lizards and ferrets and giant insects like these rainforest cockroaches. The cockroaches, by the way, are particularly cute animals.
His name was Charlie. He was very sweet.

And this job was exactly as awesome as you are imagining right now.

We would drive up to a primary school and the kids would see the van out the window

and they'd all be going, the zoo's here, the zoo's here.

And then we'd walk into the classroom or the assembly and we'd be like, is everybody excited? And they'd be like, yeah! It was like being a celebrity. And the first day, I went to a secondary school where the teenagers are.
I was definitely nervous because teenagers, as you know, are not allowed to like things and are not allowed to show that they're enjoying something. So when we went in, there was stony silence, but then we got out the snake and one of the kids was really scared, but then she touched it and it wasn't slimy like she imagined.
And then she asked a question and then they were all asking questions and they were laughing and having fun and I just got to be that cool popular person that I didn't get to be in school and though this job was so important to me and these experiences were so big for me I don't ever expect one of these kids to remember me after this day.

Like, I'm always just going to be this vague memory of, like, the day the zoo lady came to school, you know?

Like, you probably remember when the animal person came to school, right?

If you've wondered how they're doing, I'm fine. We're fine.
Thanks so much.

But this time, this one time I got recognized outside of work, this would change everything. Because this teenager, he leaned over to his friends and he told them who I was, and they all started going, oh, my God, it's zoo lady.
Zoo lady. Zoo lady's here.
Zoo lady's here. And they were talking about the ferret, and they thought it was going to bite them, but then it didn't, and it was so soft and they were so excited and they had such a good day.
And we were all suddenly laughing. And when we walked down into that arena for round two, it was like we had eight personal bodyguard snipers next to us.
We walked into that arena. we were haphazardly diving behind the cardboard boxes they took up strategic positions and they were picking off people i couldn't even see at the other end of the room nobody got near us that day we walked out of there completelyfree, apart from the accidental shots we'd hit each other and ourselves.
And it was amazing. It was amazing.
It was so amazing to feel like I was that terrified kid inside. I was still there.
But the people around me, they just saw me now,

and they just accepted that. And now, today, I still work with young people, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't still sometimes get that jolt of terror when a young person says or does something that sparks a memory for me.

But now I know that I can breathe.

And I... when a young person says or does something that sparks a memory for me.

But now I know that I can breathe,

and I can accept it, and I can move on.

Because I know now I am still that scared kid.

I'm still that same person.

But I'm not just that kid anymore.

I'm zoo lady.

Thank you. Ah, yes.

What an opener.

How fantastic.

Give it up once more for Kate Oliver.

Well done.

Kate Oliver has all the coolest jobs.

She's an educator in environmental charities,

museums and zoos,

and a psychotherapy student.

She spends her free time running the Radical Rest Project,

encouraging people to have more rest. And she says she absolutely sees the irony in this.
She's only been paintballing one other time since her first adventure. And she said once again, she encountered a gaggle of teenage boys, but this time she and her friends got their butts kicked.
we'll bring you more of this special live hour from London when the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers.
It's a bull market. It's a bear market.
Rates will rise or fall. Inflation's up or down.
Over 41,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle,

the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform.

With one unified business management suite, there's one source of truth,

giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions.

With real-time insights and

forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next.
Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.

Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash moth. That's netsuite.com slash moth.
netsuite.com slash moth. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed.
When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Forget struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites.
Indeed Sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. Sponsored Jobs push your post to the top of the page for your ideal candidates, getting you results quicker.
And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs receive 45% more applicants than non-sponsored ones.
Plus, with Indeed sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results, which means you're getting exactly what you need when you need it.
There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.
And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash moth. Just go to Indeed.com slash moth right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.
Indeed.com slash moth. Terms and conditions apply.
Hiring Indeed is all you need. Fans of The Hunger Games, get ready, because the story you've been waiting for is finally here.
Sunrise on the Reaping, the highly anticipated new audiobook from Suzanne Collins, is now on Audible. Narrated by Jefferson White, this gripping new chapter follows a young Hamish Abernathy, long before he became a mentor, facing the brutal reality of the 50th Hunger Games.
24 years before Katniss volunteered as tribute, the quarter quell changed everything. With twice as many tributes taken from their homes, fear grips the districts of Panem, and in District 12, one name is about to become legend.
Whether you've been a fan from the beginning or you're just starting your journey, Sunrise on the Reaping brings the world of Panem to life like never before. Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.
Experience the worldwide best-selling series in a whole new way. Go to audible.com slash sunrise and listen with the world.
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles, and today we're bringing you a live show from Union Chapel in London.
The theme of the night was All In, and your host is Tiff Stevenson. So moving on to our next storyteller.
When I asked him about the time he went all in on fashion, he said, two words, Jinko jeans. I said, I didn't know what they were.

And he said, they were balloon jeans,

the hugest, overly large jeans you could wear.

I said, enough said.

I get it.

I get the visual.

Please welcome to the moth stage,

Navid Madavian.

Thank you. My wife, Emily, and I, we were on our land for the first time, and we were trying to figure out

where our tiny house would soon go, which was more difficult than we had anticipated because

looking around, there weren't any reference points.'s just land for miles sagebrush and dust for as far as we could see it was the first time I'd ever been able to say my land and I remember that day saying it over and over and over and over again and as I'd say it I focused on the way it sounded, I exaggerated the motion of my lips and my mouth, my land. Emily said, stop doing that.
It's 2016 and Trump has just been elected. And so I did what any reasonable Middle Eastern American could do at the time.
I moved to the middle of nowhere America. And not just anywhere, cowboy country.
We had visited the state of Idaho the summer before on a whim. And immediately we had fallen in love with its mountains, its landscape, its real estate prices.
And so we bought six acres in one of its most remote areas, sight unseen. And we made the decision to move from San Francisco, epicenter of American liberalism, to Mackie, Idaho, population 500 cowboys.
But we could own a tiny house, we could maybe start a family, and most importantly, we could both pursue our dreams of becoming artists. Before moving, I had been a fifth grade teacher, but what I really wanted to do was to be a New Yorker cartoonist, and I know what you're thinking, if you want to become a New Yorker cartoonist, move as far away from New York as possible, make sense.
But what I've learned about being a cartoonist is you have to see the world kind of askew.

You have to, in order to poke fun at things, to make connections other people can't see.

And Mackie, Idaho was perfect for this because everything felt slightly askew, particularly

for a city boy like me who knew nothing about farming or ranching. For example, it took me two years to realize that all chaps are in fact assless.
So for the first year, we mostly kept to ourselves, which was easy to do, because technically we were like 20 minutes outside of town, past the farmers for Trump flags and the Make America Great Again welcome sign. And of course there was the occasional stare that went on too long, which may or may not have been because of the complexion of my skin, and the occasional pointed question like, you're not a Muslim, are you? Which was definitely because of the complexion of my skin.
But when we actually made it into town, people were usually really welcoming and they were kind and we got some of that small town charm that we had moved there for in the first place. On one of these trips into town, we were buying groceries stocking up for a couple of weeks.
Emily stopped outside of the movie theater in town, and she lingered a little longer than usual. The theater had been closed on and off for like 10 years, and it has this beautiful Art Deco marquee that's like a homing device, particularly for somebody like Emily, who is a filmmaker.
So on this particular day, she drops her groceries, and she has her hands and her face plastered against the glass. And I could almost hear the gears whirring.
And as my arms are getting increasingly tired, I'm getting increasingly nervous, because if you could imagine a graph where the x-axis is the length of time that Emily spends quietly thinking, and the y-axis is how much trouble we're going to be in. This would have been off the charts.
And so as soon as I saw her smile in the reflection, I knew that was that. We were going to reopen the movie theater.
On the drive home, she explained that this is what we can do for the town. We don't know anything about farming or ranching, but what we do know is movies and art.
And now I'm excited at the thought because if this was going to be our home, we needed some way to give back to the community, you know, to become known entities, real members. Instead of being that terrorist, which is something somebody had called me, I could instead be that movie theater terrorist.
And so we started up an arts council, which allowed us to rent the theater for cheap. We found and refurbished the original 1940s popcorn machine, and I rallied the community to help us clean up the movie theater, our community, which is something I hadn't been able to say before.

And I remember saying it over and over and over again. And as I'd say it, I'd focus on the way it sounds, our community.
Emily said, stop doing that. And so we reopened the theater.
The morning of opening night, I was sitting in, I was having a cup of coffee in the local coffee slash bait slash tackle slash beer shop.

And as I'm sipping my coffee, I'm imagining the thunderous applause that we're obviously going to receive after the movie that night. You know, standing ovation, cowboy hats being thrown high into the air.
When my neighbor at the counter, he asks me a question. He's an older cowboy, and his breath was hot with coffee, and his handlebar mustache was glistening with sticky bun.
And he leans in, and he asks, you're not trying to bring that Boise, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, artsy, fartsy, social justice warrior crap here, are you? And I'm actually ready for this question because Emily and I, we know our audience, and I respond confidently, no, we're actually showing an indie Western. And he asks, John Wayne? And I said, no, Robert Pattinson, the Twilight guy.
and so blank stare he He says, you should show John Wayne. That night, it's opening night.
I'm too nervous to sit in the theater with everyone. And so I stood outside of the auditorium and the theater was packed that night.
Some people came on dates. Some people came alone.
Everybody had popcorn. And as I stood, I thought about how some people even took selfies of themselves with the tickets underneath the glow of the marquee, which was now on illuminating Main Street.
And so the movie's starting, and I lean into the curtains, because even if I can't watch it, I at least want to listen to it and enjoy it. And I hear the words from the movie, there's a gang bang social tonight.
And so I'm grasping the curtains, and I should say at this point, it's an important part of the story, that I actually didn't have a chance to watch the movie before showing it. So by the time Robert Pattinson was masturbating a quarter of the way through the film, I was laying horizontally on the ground, the carpeting pressed against my cheek, and I could actually hear audible groans coming from the theater at this point, but that just may have been the sound of Robert Pattinson achieving completion.
So after the movie, needless to say, I raced into the lobby and I tried as much as I could not to make eye contact with anyone as they shuffled out of the theater, their eyes wide, their cowboy hats pressed tightly against their chest. And I really believed if I just don't move, if I stand perfectly still, maybe nobody will be able to see me.
Kind of like that scene with the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Not a super auspicious start.
A question we got a lot after that was, are you going to show new movies? These were new movies, just indie movies that nobody had heard of. We couldn't show big budget films because we couldn't afford to, but that's not why we had opened the theater in the first place.
That's not what we wanted to do. We really believed if we show good movies, we can earn the community's trust, our community's trust, even if we were showing subtitled documentaries about whale hunting in the Faroe Islands.
If you build it, they will come, became our mantra. But no one came.
Night after night, I'd flip the switch on in the theater and it would reveal maybe one, maybe two people in the auditorium. And so we relented.
We showed John Wayne. And everybody came.
They really loved John Wayne. And I remember getting swept up in the excitement and I decided that this time I'll sit in the theater with everyone.
We showed the movie The Quiet Man, which if you haven't seen, it's a classic story. Boy moves back to Ireland.
Boy meets girl. Boy meets girl's brother.
Boy fights girl's brother. And in the end, everyone is happy and friends for life.
It's a movie I've seen many times, and I've enjoyed it every time I've seen it. But watching it that night in that town, in that theater, the screen framed by the silhouettes of cowboy hats, watching John Wayne physically drag and shove Maureen O'Hara the five miles back from the train station, it felt different.
And I'm a fan of John Ford, and I actually love John Wayne, and it is just a movie,

but it has this idealized past that masks misogyny, deeply conservative values, and it felt just like the town itself, and they came, and they laughed, and they saw themselves

reflected back, but I didn't. Even after showing John Wayne and Star Wars and other fan favorites, things didn't really improve for the theater.
And a lot of my conversations with Emily at the time turned to the question of, should we even be doing something that nobody wants? And it didn't help that the theater was impossible in the winter to keep warm. And I joke that we can maybe buy our one customer one big coat.
And so most nights I spent by myself in the theater, drawing cartoons bundled up in my big coat, the sound from the movie playing to an empty auditorium. And on one of these lonely nights, this older cowboy walks in, someone we had affectionately nicknamed Racist Dave.
Racist Dave walks in and he asks for his nightly popcorn, and as I'm buttering his popcorn, he sits down and he told me a little bit about the history of the place that I didn't know. For example, underneath the movie theater had once been a gambling hall, and across the street above the bar had been a brothel into like the 1960s.
Again, cowboy country. And as I hand racist Dave back his popcorn, he says almost to himself, lots of history in this place.
And that word stayed with me, history. It was easy to feel nostalgic in the theater, right? The Art Deco marquee outside evoked simpler times.

And I wondered, maybe that's what brought Emily and me there in the first place,

this sense of nostalgia, this desire for something simpler.

And it also occurred to me that maybe racist Dave and I had more in common

than I had previously thought, apart from the casual racism. But I now know that nothing is ever that simple.
In 2019, our daughter Elika was born, and Emily and I made the tough decision to leave our small town and move back to the big city. As much as we had tried to become members of the community,

sometimes something just isn't a fit,

like a vegetarian joining a local hunting club,

which I also have a funny story about.

On our last trips into town,

Emily continued to linger outside of the theater,

but the theater felt different.

It felt smaller now.

And for a while, the community actually,

they kept the marquee on,

but the smell of popcorn was gone.

Thank you. theater felt different.
It felt smaller now. And for a while, the community actually, they kept the marquee on, but the smell of popcorn was gone.
After we closed the theater for good, we learned that back in the old days when film was still shown on print, reels were smuggled in from this wealthy town over the mountain, and that allowed our town to watch movies without licensing them, so for free. In its entire history, the theater had never been viable,

which was fitting and also kind of romantic. And looking back, I think that maybe that's what it takes to be an artist, to be a dreamer and a risk taker and a little naive.
But you have to try

something to see if it works. And if it doesn't, well, you get out of dodge and you try again.
Thank you. Thank you.
Navid Madavian. Fantastic.
if you don't know the moth is an independent arts organization supported by members and generous donations and if you want to find out more about workshops in schools other events and workspaces please visit themoth.org let's have one more round of applause for our storytellers. Navid Madavian is a cartoonist and writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker since 2018.
He's the author and illustrator of the graphic memoir, This Country, Searching for Home in Very Rural America. Since leaving his tiny house in Idaho behind, Navid and his family have now settled

outside of London, and he continues to poke fun at the things he sees slightly askew.

Coming up, more from our live mainstage show at the Union Chapel in London,

when the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. When spring has sprung and IKEA is at your fingertips, reclaim your space fast and find out how convenient shopping IKEA can be.
When ordering IKEA, they have the best option for you. Want to turn your patio space into an outdoor oasis? They're on it.
Choose from thousands of pickup locations and find a pickup point that's closest to you.

No time to pick up before that family barbecue?

No problem.

Their affordable delivery options are so convenient. When you check out online, you'll actually enjoy the party prep.
Shop now and enjoy convenience with a click. Order IKEA online and choose from thousands of pickup locations or affordable delivery with free shipping

on small orders over 50 for ikea family members whenever wherever however you shop ikea they're

here to help the last thing you want to hear when you need your auto insurance most is a robot with

countless irrelevant menu options which is why with usaa auto insurance you'll get great service that is easy and reliable all at the touch of a button. Get a quote today.
Restrictions apply. USAA.
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles.
You're listening to a main stage event we produced in London at the Historic Union Chapel. And here's your host, Tiff Stevenson.
I said I'm in my 40s. I'm a very sexy age now.
I'm the kind of age where if I turn down an alcoholic drink at the bar, people are like, oh, is she on antibiotics? Because they want to know. Sometimes I order a cranberry juice just for an air of sexual mystery.
To keep it fresh and exciting. I'll tell you how you can tell that you're middle-aged when you

start buying your clothes in places that also sell food. Yeah, that would be my fashion all in, you know.
I like it, because if I can double down on a pair of shorts and some chicken wings, I'm barbecue ready.

That's me.

I'm good to go.

Just those little signs.

So, I went to Jamaica for the first time to discover my roots and heritage. We were going to a party on the beach, and I decided that my outfit should be maybe the shortest booty shorts with the word Jamaica emblazoned across them and a top with Jamaica emblazoned across it in case anyone had forgotten whereabouts in the world we were.
I hopped into the taxi to head to the party and when we got five minutes away I made him turn back and take me home because I lost all confidence in it. So please welcome our final storyteller for this evening to the moth stage.
are you ready Catherine I've just realized

that I've not written your surname, but I know what it is. I was bouncing in my car seat with this untamable excitement, and it felt like freedom.
so we pulled up in the car in the car park and I made my way to this leisure

center taking in its bright lights and these loud voices and this sharp tang of chlorine

and it's a leisure center right in rural east midlands but to me it felt like Disneyland

and I kind of got in there and I got changed in the cubicle and I made my way to the edge of the

pool taking extra care to walk not run even though every single part of me I didn't want to run I wanted to fly and when I got in that water for the first time that's exactly what it felt like and I swam whenever and wherever I could lakes the swimming lessons I learned to snorkel and then later to scuba dive because that wasn't enough. I just loved it.
But then fast forward 10 years and that childhood jubilation has become locked in a prison of my teenage body. So puberty is happening and the thought of stripping down, much like the Jamaican booty shorts in a swimsuit every week was a form of fresh hell and it wasn't just these changes to my body but I also relaxed my hair at that time to make it really straight because that was the cool thing to do and of course relaxer is destroyed the moment water goes anywhere near it but if I didn't relax hair, then not only would I be ridiculed at school,

but my swimming cap wouldn't fit over my afro. So I was sort of in a lose-lose situation, and I became really disillusioned and miserable with it all.
I looked around and I thought, there's no one here who looks like me. I don't fit here.
So I stopped. Swimming's not for me.
in January 2020, just as the earliest strains of coronavirus were being reported at the bottom of our weekly news cycle, I unexpectedly lost my uncle, Delroy, and it was so unexpected that when I got that news, all I could say was, what? Because we'd just been together at Christmas

which was 10 days earlier, and we'd had the annual Christmas quiz, and he'd been quiz master, and we'd had this big argument about Stormzy, of all things. And he kind of helmed our family since we'd lost our grandfather.
So it just made no sense to me that he was no longer there.

And I fell apart.

I think my family fell apart.

And then weeks later, we're in a global pandemic,

the world fell apart.

And I developed this sort of thing

that was just pushing down on my chest.

And at every moment, I felt like I was looking behind,

looking over my shoulder, just waiting for this next bad thing to happen because something bad was happening I was sure of it but then I would try and reassure myself I'm a positive person no no you're fine you're absolutely fine because the worst possible thing has already happened so okay deep breaths and then in January 2021 one year later I got a message in a group chat with my friends and I still remember this really surreal detail of an apology for the way the message was being conveyed not for the actual message itself and the message said that my friend Simon had ended his life by suicide and well I couldn't utter the word what this time because it was beyond all comprehension so I just paused I wanted to scream but I couldn't because this thing was weighing deeper and deeper on my chest. And in lockdown, there was no other option available to me.
So I walked and I walked every day and I passed this lake and it became quite intriguing to me. It was kind of vast and mysterious and imposing.
And I went back to it again and again and again. And one day I stopped at this lake.
I looked at it and I just thought, I've got to get in. And it was an icy English January.
So there wasn't really anyone else around, but I still have my teenage fears in the back of my head. So I sort of glanced in the bushes, made sure there was no creepy stalker lurking and stripped off my clothes bra and pants and I got in oh my god it was freezing like a thousand needles stabbing every single inch of my body freezing but as I sort of gasped

for breath and tried to remember those motions I'd been taught all those years earlier

I felt something so I went back the next morning, in proper swimsuit this time, and I felt it again. And I went back again the next day and the next, and days turned into weeks.
And one day I'm in this routine and I'm swimming and something happens with that same thing and it came up and up and up and I just started to sob

and I don't know if anyone's actually experienced the feeling of crying in a body of water before

but it's actually quite hard to stay afloat so I was sort of panicking and swam to the shore

because I didn't want to drown and I got to the shore and I sat with my arms around my knees and

I cried like a baby but I knew in that moment I found something with this swimming

And I can't wait to see you. I sat with my arms around my knees and I cried like a baby but I knew in that moment I found something with this swimming and I carried on and I carried on and the weather was getting a bit warmer and one day I'm there I am headphones in walking to the lake and there's this woman in my spot and I'm looking at her thinking this is my place this is my space I spend my life making polite chit chat conversations with older people I just want to swim so I got in the water and swam as quickly as possible and got out so I wouldn't have to speak to her whilst we got dressed and she's there sort of smiling at me all kind and nice and I just thought leave me leave me alone.
Came back the next morning. There she is again, smiling.
And instead of kind of feeling this childhood jubilation of the five-year-old, I just felt like a five-year-old. This is my space.
Why are you invading it? And every morning that week, same time, same place, there she is. And I started to just feel trapped.
Anyway, one morning we swim, we're out, same time, getting dressed as usual, and she offers me a slice of lemon cake, homemade. So obviously I thought to myself, I'm gonna have to eat this, aren't I? And I sort of gritted my teeth preparing for this polite conversation about the weather or something that I really didn't want to have but weirdly she didn't seem to want to talk to me she didn't seem to want to disturb me and we just sat and ate the cake in peace and went home and I kind of began to grow quite accustomed to her presence it felt really nice we didn't bother each other we were both just there doing our thing separately but together and then one morning I came up to the lake and she wasn't there and the next morning she wasn't there again and I looked for her and I looked for her every morning that week but she didn't come back and I felt that thing in my chest again coming up as I wondered what was happening to her I didn't even know her name and she didn't come back so I did the only thing I knew how to do I kept swimming one day I walk up to the lake and she's back so I'm smiling at her first list I'm probably like a weirdo because I was so happy to see her and the next morning probably like everyone here I'd got into baking during lockdown and I brought her a slice of banana bread and we shared that by the edge of the lake together and she told me that she had buried her husband and described the socially distanced funeral broadcast over zoom and the goodbye that she hadn't said and it was the strangest feeling because I was listening to her and she's 40 years older than me and she's German and I've tried with all my might not to like her, but we so intrinsically understood each other.
And I spoke to her about my uncle and about Simon and she didn't ask how he did it or was he depressed or any of those questions that I'd become really resistant to hearing she just listened without need for any explanation and I realized we've both come filled with sadness to this lake and spring turns into summer and we keep swimming and now we're not just in the fair weather sort of territory we've got other swimmers coming in so we we welcome them into our weird gang of misfits and we slowly all swim together we have a whatsapp group and you message in it and see when you want to go for a swim and there's always someone to swim with and I began to realize actually we're all in this sort of strange place of coming to the water because we're looking for some form of connection now I left that house which was in Oxford and that lake I moved to London last summer and I don't swim every day anymore I think I don't need it in that same visceral way, but every time I'm back in the water, I still feel that childhood excitement, and I feel that first icy dip, and I feel that sacred ritual of the time when I swam every morning because it kept me here and I

especially feel the healing that I found in the kindness of a stranger. Catherine Joy White, everyone.
It's so funny.

I met everyone yesterday for the first time. Joy White, everyone.

It's so funny.

I met everyone yesterday for the first time,

and I think I didn't write Catherine's full name down on my card because I was like, oh, I just know her.

So Catherine also has a film out based around this story,

and it's in festivals, and it's storming and winning awards,

so you should definitely check that out. Just smashing it.
Catherine Joy White is an award-winning actor, filmmaker, author, activist, gender equality expert, and CEO of Cusini Productions. She's the author of This Thread of Gold, Celebration of Black Womanhood, and the book Rebel Takes on the Future of Food.
You can find out more about Catherine and her film that Tiff mentioned, as well as info about all the storytellers you've heard in this hour on our website, themoth.org. All that's left for me to say, really, now we've heard all our stories, is thank you to you, the audience, because the storytelling literally can't happen without an audience.
So thank you to you guys. Otherwise, we're just one person in a room telling a sad, lonely tale to ourselves.
So give yourselves a round of applause. Sharing stories has to involve an audience.
And I think it's how we connect. It's how we find and i think it's how we connect it's how we find our humanity it's how we reach out to each other find understanding empathy learn get new ideas and so this is the first ever moth i've hosted and i hope it's not the last but i've absolutely loved this evening so thank you i've been tiff stevenson i hope you've me as well.
And we're going to give it up. I want to give it up for storytelling in all its forms.
It's fantastic. As Tiff mentioned, this was her first time hosting The Moth,

but what she didn't say is that she's an internationally acclaimed actor, comedian, and writer.

Her credits are far too many to mention,

but you can find out more about her on Instagram at tiffstevensoncomic

and on our website, themoth.org.

And if you happen to have a story you're itching to tell, why not pitch us?

On our website, look for Tell a Story, and you'll find all the information you need to leave us a two-minute pitch. My name is Thomas Kramer.
I want to tell you all a story called Celebrity for the Day. Back in April, my buddies and I conducted a real telling social experiment.
We convinced an entire mall that I was a famous celebrity. a celebrity impersonator but but that my real self thomas elliot which is my first immittal name was there i kind of surrounded myself with a real attention drawing entourage but but kind of nonchalant and much like a real entourage would be and then we had staged some ordinary mall goers who recognized me as fans throughout the mall.
We picked kind of this focal meeting point, a busy part of the mall, where everyone would kind of collapse on me to create a bit of a frenzy, and a frenzy is what was created. That day I literally signed hundreds of autographs, took almost as many pictures.
Grown women were handing me their children. People were telling me that I was their favorite actor of all time.
Well, security called on about 10 minutes later, and we thought we were going to get kicked out of the mall when security and local police showed up. They said to us, for your own protection, we need to provide you all with a private security escort.
So we proceeded to shut down the Apple Store and Victoria's Secret, some of the most popular stores in the mall. And this aesthetic that the security was creating just really made it go overboard.
We ended up shooting a video. We took some video from iPhone.
We put it on the Internet. And four days later, the video had a million views, and there's something

like 10,000 tweets about Thomas Elliott. The social experiment really spoke to so many social

themes. It was a remarkable day.
I'll never forget. And I would love to tell you all more about it.
Thanks so much. remember you can pitch us at 877-799-MOTH.

That's 877-799-MOTH.

Or online at themoth.org.

Or you can also share the stories you heard in this hour or others from the Moth Archive. That's it for this episode.
We hope you'll join us again next time. Thank you.
This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Meg Bowles, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch.
The rest of the Moth's leadership team include Sarah

Haberman, Christina Norman, Sarah Austin Janess, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Marina Cluche, Leanne Gully, Suzanne Rust, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Casa. Special thanks, by the way, to the taxi driver who found our host Tiff Stevenson's phone in the back of his cab and, like a hero, returned to tour just before showtime.

Moth stories are true

as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift.
Other music in this hour from Rhiannon Giddens, Charles Bertu, and Melina Paxinos. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media

in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey,

including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis.

For more about our podcast,

for information on pitching us your own story,