The Moth Radio Hour: Brand New YOU

Transcript

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Speaker 1 This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin-Janess.
In this episode, lifelong learning and the pursuit of the unfamiliar. Everything novel and new.

Speaker 1 We start in Central Park with an unlikely catalyst for change, pond scum, also known as algal blooms.

Speaker 1 Notion Khan shared this story with us as part of a moth education showcase when she was a high school student in New York City. Here's Notion live at the moth.

Speaker 4 Raise your hand if you ever hated your high school science class.

Speaker 4 Especially chemistry.

Speaker 4 When I was in 10th grade, I also hated my chemistry class.

Speaker 4 Sitting in the classroom, I used to think, why do I have to learn all these complex chemistry words like oxidation, reduction, spectro, something, something?

Speaker 4 We don't see those words in our environment. There is no connection.
We don't use them. They're pointless.
When I entered into 11th grade, I had to take that subject test for chemistry.

Speaker 4 I was so frustrated because I never had a good relationship with chemistry.

Speaker 4 But I still had to take it. Sitting in the testing center for three hours, I was so pissed.

Speaker 4 I don't even remember what the test was about as it just bubbled random answers.

Speaker 4 So my sister came to the testing center to pick me up, and when she saw me very gloomy, she decided to take me to the central park to give me some therapy to forget the test.

Speaker 4 When I went to the park, she handed me a camera to take pictures. So I was running around in the park holding a camera and I saw a lake full of green water.
I was like, wow, green water.

Speaker 4 I did not know

Speaker 4 there was green water before.

Speaker 4 When I saw the water, I want to touch it.

Speaker 4 Then my sister shouted, hey, stupid, do you not see the sign beside the lake that says dangerous algal blooms, please don't contact with the water?

Speaker 4 I was like, wow, this glowing, beautiful water could be that dangerous. It even can give me skin disease.
That's unbelievable.

Speaker 4 And a few days later, I was accepted to an internship. And the internship was called Sustainable Energy.
And I thought I would be learning about planting trees and how to save energy. So I'm excited.

Speaker 4 And I went to the first day of the internship. And I was shocked.
It's all chemistry.

Speaker 4 I was thinking,

Speaker 4 oh God, I did not sign up for this.

Speaker 4 And my professor gives an assignment to conduct an experiment and research that would somehow benefit the environment using using all chemistry.

Speaker 4 But because we have to do it, I remembered my day at the Central Park where the water was all dangerous because of harmful algal blooms.

Speaker 4 So my team and I decided to conduct some research by collecting those water to see if we can somehow make that water into something that would be beneficial for the environment.

Speaker 4 After conducting six weeks of research, I realized the words that I used to hate in my chemistry class, like spectro something something,

Speaker 4 now

Speaker 4 became my favorite word because it is spectrophotonometry that

Speaker 4 helped me to turn that harmful algal boom-affected water into biofuel. which would benefit the environment.
And this way, we were able to take the harmful substance of the water and turning them into

Speaker 4 something that would produce less carbon dioxide into the environment and use them as a biofuel to run our cars.

Speaker 4 I was like, wow.

Speaker 4 It's all chemistry.

Speaker 4 I never even thought chemistry was all around us like that before.

Speaker 4 I thought to myself, why did I still think in my chemistry class that science is so boring that there is no connection of chemistry in our environment when there is?

Speaker 4 We just don't think about it, but hey, it is those oxidation words that gives us invisible ink, which maybe you know.

Speaker 4 And it is anti-oxidation that keeps our fruits fresh. Oxidation that lets us turn these lights.
Still, why do you think we hate science? Do we not like these stars?

Speaker 4 We use science all the time. We do love science, although we tell ourselves we don't.

Speaker 4 So after that experience, this time I took my sister to the central park.

Speaker 4 And I took her near to that lake, and she shouted again, hey, Notion, do you not remember? I told you that that lake is dangerous,

Speaker 4 you're going to get skin disease. And I looked at her and I told her, do you know how much biofuel they can produce from this leak?

Speaker 4 She looked at me and I was like, wow, so you like science now? I was like, yeah, you know why? Because every day I drink polar covalent hydrogen bonds,

Speaker 4 which is simply water.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 1 That was Notion Kong.

Speaker 1 These days, Notion is a student at the University of Rochester, and yes, you guessed it, she's studying chemical engineering.

Speaker 1 Her hobbies include making art, reading manga, and capturing nature on her phone. As a chemical engineering student, her focus is on renewable energy, and she works on new experiments every week.

Speaker 1 Right now, she's working on a research project for solar microgrids in Nepal, and she hopes to travel to Kathmandu soon to implement these grids, which will provide provide electricity to 400 villagers.

Speaker 1 Notion sent us a few articles linked on our website, themoth.org, about the algae in Central Park, so you too can fall in love with science if you haven't already.

Speaker 1 Life can change for the good when you least expect it, if you're open to it.

Speaker 1 We met our next storyteller, Chrissy Lawler, at the Moth Teacher Institute, where educators from around the country share best practices for using personal stories in the classroom.

Speaker 1 At the end of the workshop, we record the stories from these educators. So, live from the Moth Teacher Institute, here's Chrissy Lawler.

Speaker 8 So, when I was 28, all of my friends were in relationships. Everything else was great.
I had finished grad school. I had my first teaching job.
I was exhausted at the end of every day.

Speaker 8 But then on the weekends, I'm like, all right, I got to blow off some steam. I'm single.
I'm ready to mingle.

Speaker 8 I was the only single girl in New York. I call up my friends and say, who's coming out tonight? Oh, we're going to go to dinner.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 8 Sunday nights were the worst. Sunday night is Boo Night.
Oh, we're just going to, you know, catch a movie on the couch. Okay, so then I was left seeing a movie on my couch alone.

Speaker 8 So when one of my colleagues organized a Friday happy hour that fall, I was like, let's do this. I'm in.

Speaker 8 So I'm there,

Speaker 6 four,

Speaker 8 five drinks in. And I turned to the young man next to me, who's a colleague, and I proclaimed, quite emphatically, that I'm either going to have to learn to knit or read Proust.

Speaker 8 And he turned to me and said, come over to my place Monday night. My wife will teach you how to knit and make you dinner.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 my feminist sensibilities are shook because it's like, is this the future?

Speaker 8 Your wife is going to make me dinner and we're going to knit?

Speaker 8 In my head, I'm like, eh.

Speaker 8 And what I say is, what can I bring?

Speaker 8 So on Monday, I'm at their door with a bottle of wine, and just from inside the apartment, the smells are delicious and it's warm and it's cozy and lovely and we sit down together and the three of us share an amazing meal and after dinner she sits down with me and starts me off with a scarf that's the most basic beginning and she's a very patient teacher knit pearl knit pearl the needles are clunky my hands aren't getting it but she's she's good with me she's taking it slow and she asks me why i chose the yarn colors I did.

Speaker 8 And I said, well, this is a Harry Potter scarf.

Speaker 8 So then for the next hour, there was some knitting, but a lot of Harry Potter fan love.

Speaker 8 And so at the end of the evening, she said, come back next Monday. We'll do a little more work on your scarf.
And in my mind, I'm like, okay.

Speaker 8 And what I said was, okay.

Speaker 8 So the next Monday I was back, another delicious meal. This time I brought a dessert.

Speaker 8 And I had forgotten everything she had taught me the first time.

Speaker 8 So she's very patiently again showing me how to knit and I add a couple more inches knit pearl knit pearl she's like your stitches are kind of loose

Speaker 6 okay

Speaker 8 the yarn's kind of itchy

Speaker 8 and then

Speaker 8 we start talking about our various experiences teaching English abroad she had taught in China I had taught in Chile we talked about the places we want to travel the places we have traveled and kind of knitting but mostly talking so at the end of that night we didn't have to check in we just knew we'd be back again for another week.

Speaker 8 And, you know, this time my stitches were too tight, but, you know.

Speaker 8 She starts to tell me about how she grew up on the West Coast. She lived with her grandmother, who was a talent booking agent for Elvis impersonators.

Speaker 8 So she grew up surrounded by all these Elvises, and it was quirky and just weird. And I was loving every minute of it.

Speaker 8 And so we proceeded like this. Every Monday, I'd add a couple of inches and we would talk.

Speaker 8 And much later that fall, maybe beginning of winter, she tells me that in fact the whole thing had been a setup, that she had tasked her husband with bringing home a friend.

Speaker 8 She had moved across the country for him to take a new job. She didn't have a job.
She was looking and in the meantime she didn't know where to begin meeting people and she was kind of lonely.

Speaker 8 So he was a matchmaker and he did a really good job.

Speaker 8 I'm like, wait, but you're in a relationship. How can you be lonely?

Speaker 8 And it had never occurred to me before that I was not the only lonely girl in New York. So eight years later, I have about three feet of a very amateurly knitted scarf.

Speaker 8 And I'm never going to finish it.

Speaker 6 I don't like knitting.

Speaker 8 But I'm hanging on to it. And I've hung on to these friends.
And with very, very few exceptions, we've had dinner together every Monday night for eight years.

Speaker 1 Chrissy Lawler still teaches language arts, English as a new language, and journalism at the Young Women's Leadership School in the Bronx.

Speaker 1 Chrissy never went back to knitting, but she and Nicole are still very close.

Speaker 1 It's now over 10 years since this story took place, and those Monday night dinners were still happening until the pandemic hit. Chrissy says they can't wait to see each other again.

Speaker 1 And some good news: Nicole and her husband Andrew have two daughters now, who were the flower girls at Chrissy's wedding.

Speaker 1 To see photos of that happy celebration and the unfinished scarf that started it all, go to themoth.org.

Speaker 1 After our break, a woman remembers her childhood in Kuwait during the Gulf War when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

Speaker 12 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 1 This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin-Janes.

Speaker 1 The stories in this hour are about all things new. But what happens when you're a six-year-old in a time of turbulence and everything is new and different?

Speaker 1 Miriam Bazeed told our next story at a moth showcase at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Here's Miriam live at the moth.

Speaker 11 The year is 1990 and my twin brother and I are six years old. We've repurposed our dining room table into a bomb shelter.

Speaker 11 Now the reason for this was real. Iraq had actually just invaded Kuwait and so we were living there

Speaker 11 and my parents told us that if ever we heard rockets sort of come too close to our house that we should run to the living, to the dining room table and get under the wood so that we'd be protected from falling rubble.

Speaker 11 So we did this a couple of times like drills, my twin brother and I for fun.

Speaker 11 But we weren't really taking this too seriously because literally nothing had ever happened in Kuwait, like except for the discovery of oil.

Speaker 11 My life proceeded like clockwork there.

Speaker 11 You know, pick up from school at three o'clock, then we go home and have lunch, which always started with clear vegetable soup, and then dishes, and then communal family nap time.

Speaker 11 And it was like my life was so regular that we didn't need an alarm clock to know when it was time to wake up.

Speaker 11 So the idea that there would suddenly be like rockets falling on our dining room table, I was like, all right.

Speaker 11 There's a lot of foreign labor in Kuwait because of the oil money.

Speaker 11 My family is Egyptian. I'd been born in Kuwait, but that didn't give us citizenship rights there.

Speaker 11 So our stay there was contingent on someone in my family having a work visa, right? So my parents were discussing this. What do we do? What do we do?

Speaker 11 And they decided that my mother would take my twin brother and I back to Egypt, where we were from, and where we spent every summer.

Speaker 11 And my father would stay in Kuwait during the war to anchor us there.

Speaker 11 Now, my parents were really strong believers in the resilience of children, which made them really bad communicators.

Speaker 11 So, like, they didn't really discuss what the plan was with us,

Speaker 11 but we like packed our stuff up and with a cooler of food in the back seat of the car

Speaker 11 we drove to the border. In 1990, there's 500,000 Kuwaiti nationals living in Kuwait.
There's 1.5 million foreign nationals living there. We outnumber them three to one.

Speaker 11 So if you can imagine at the border between Kuwait and Iraq, there's this enormous line of cars of families going back either temporarily temporarily or permanently to where they were actually from.

Speaker 11 And so we drive up, you know, there's a border agent, and you have to take everything out of your car, and they inspect everything, and they have like a little mirror at the end of a stick, and they look at the underneath of the car.

Speaker 11 And so we do all of this, they look at our documents, and we load the car back up.

Speaker 11 And then my dad just like doesn't get into the driver's seat. And he says, you know, be good.

Speaker 11 Take care of your mother. Like, I'll

Speaker 11 see you.

Speaker 11 And like, he hugs us. And then my mother gets behind the steering wheel and we're supposed to drive this way.
And my father is literally the only person going back into Kuwait.

Speaker 11 Because to review, there's a war on.

Speaker 11 And there's no public transport going down that way. Like, I'm just looking behind at the rear view mirror and watching him get shorter in the desert and being like, how is he going to get home?

Speaker 11 And I know how distressing this sounds, but actually, I was young.

Speaker 11 And also, like, the idea of saying goodbye to people abruptly was just an everyday part of my life as a daughter of

Speaker 11 people who had migrated for labor. And

Speaker 11 there was someone who was always like in between school years just leaving right because their family had repatriated

Speaker 11 or the you know the first goodbye that I said to a close family member I was two years old when my sister who had been my primary caregiver up until that point

Speaker 11 had to go back to Egypt to start college So this idea that I would just suddenly have to say goodbye to my dad and then like see you when I see you

Speaker 11 was just a part of my life. It was every day.

Speaker 11 And there was something exciting about going home to Egypt. Like it was the place we spent every summer.
It was really exciting. There's great beaches there.
Our cousins were there.

Speaker 11 Horseback riding lessons were there. So I was excited a bit to be going back home.

Speaker 11 But then Being somewhere for like a summer and then having to like resume your life some somewhere are two different things.

Speaker 11 And I found that I didn't like Egypt when I had to just be living there.

Speaker 11 Like I didn't have any of my stuff

Speaker 11 and I really hated the school that I went to. Everything was just unfamiliar.
I didn't like my teachers

Speaker 11 and I began every single morning just wailing.

Speaker 11 And when I mean every, when I say every single morning, I mean that literally. Like every day for the time that I was at that school, every single day, I cried.

Speaker 11 I'd have to get like peeled away from my mother. So

Speaker 11 I was famous for it at the school that I went to. Because at six years old, it actually takes a lot of stamina to make a huge scene every morning.

Speaker 11 So like.

Speaker 11 I was that kid.

Speaker 11 And then

Speaker 11 it actually got to the point where this woman who like ran the canteen thing that you could buy snacks in the playground and stuff, she would take pity on me and every morning would sort of like wait until I'd been peeled away from my mother and was like still weeping in the corner.

Speaker 11 And she would come to me and bring me to sit next to her at the canteen and give me an enormous

Speaker 11 bag of salted popcorn and

Speaker 11 a huge like glass bottle of Coca-Cola, second breakfast.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 11 I would sit there and just like eat the whole thing and drink the whole thing and then start to feel like a little bit alright.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 one day she actually met my mom.

Speaker 11 She came

Speaker 11 and met her and said,

Speaker 11 Hi, your daughter has been eating my food all term and hasn't paid me for it.

Speaker 11 And she just told her an arbitrary number of what my mother owed her, and I was in a lot of trouble. And

Speaker 11 I know she was a poor person in a poor country, but I was still hurt.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 it wasn't just me who was having a hard time, right? Like, so I was crying in the morning and my mother was crying at night. The Bazeed family.

Speaker 11 And I didn't understand that. Like, I was like, what's wrong with you? You're from here.

Speaker 11 Right? Like, you were born here. This is where you're from.
This is what's familiar to you. This is where you've been telling me we're going to come back to eventually.
Why are you so upset?

Speaker 11 Like, you're home, supposedly.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 11 yeah, the adults in my life didn't seem any less dislocated than I was.

Speaker 11 But while I could generate all the energy I needed just internally, my mother needed a visual aid. Her visual aid was this concert that

Speaker 11 had been composed about the war very hastily

Speaker 11 and that aired on the local channel every single night.

Speaker 11 And so she would listen to this and just like be sobbing. And I would be watching her listening to this and be sobbing.

Speaker 11 and the lyrics went something like this

Speaker 11 which

Speaker 11 translates into

Speaker 11 our hearts quake

Speaker 11 it's it's directed at the prophet our hearts quake because in in this war, both the victim and the aggressor are Muslim, right? So we're fighting our own people.

Speaker 11 And so my mother would listen to this and cry, and listen to this and cry.

Speaker 11 Thankfully, you know, the occupation didn't actually last very long, so our time in Egypt finally came to an end.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 11 the Americans had come in, and the war ended very quickly after that.

Speaker 11 And in exchange, of course, America got to protect its oil interests in the Middle East and also negotiate permanent military and Air Force bases in the Middle East in addition to all the other permanent military bases that the United States has in the Middle East.

Speaker 11 Because nothing is free, not war, not popcorn.

Speaker 11 So the war was over and I was coming home, like we were gonna go to like home, Kuwait home, and I was so excited to be seeing my dad.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 we flew back, and

Speaker 11 I remember he met us in the arrivals hall. We were so, all of us were so excited to see him.
And my twin brother and I ran towards him, and my mother still got there first.

Speaker 11 And she kissed him on the cheek. It's the only time I've ever seen them do that in public in my whole life.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 so we like, you know, we grab our luggage and then we go outside to the car.

Speaker 11 And I notice as my dad's loading the car up that there's actually a bullet hole in the trunk of our red Chevrolet Impala

Speaker 11 in the trunk. And if the war

Speaker 11 by

Speaker 11 if the war had been in black black and white for me up until that point, seeing that bullet hole was like suddenly everything was just technicolor.

Speaker 11 And I just kept looking at the trunk of our car and looking at where the steering wheel was and then the trunk and the steering wheel and being like, actually, that's not a very big distance.

Speaker 11 But we got in the car and in the weeks after the end of the Iraqi occupation,

Speaker 11 everything on the radio was just like celebratory music composed for the end of this occupation. And on the radio, there were all these Kuwaiti children singing, welcome, welcome, Bush.

Speaker 11 Thank you, thank you, Bush.

Speaker 11 And we drove home.

Speaker 11 And like, I could see there was a clear effort that had been made

Speaker 11 in the apartment to welcome us home. Like,

Speaker 11 you know, my dad had like dusted,

Speaker 11 you know, he'd made us, like, he'd made us our favorite meal

Speaker 11 that he makes. But there was something that still just felt so still

Speaker 11 about the inside of our home and something that was just so different about it and unfamiliar.

Speaker 11 But it was still, you know, it was good to be back together as a family.

Speaker 11 And we were sitting down at the dining room table. And this was finally a chance for my dad dad to actually tell us what

Speaker 11 the war had been like for him that we'd left him in the middle of.

Speaker 11 Because while the whole time we'd been in Egypt, we'd only been able to speak to him once a week for three minutes, which is not a lot of time.

Speaker 11 You don't get to tell any stories really in three minutes. And so he's telling us

Speaker 11 about one day when the rockets had actually gotten too close to our house.

Speaker 11 And he had been in the shower, he panicked, and with soap suds covering his body, he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist and then ran into the desert barefoot

Speaker 11 to get away from the lights.

Speaker 11 And I just remember feeling so ashamed at that moment that these were the stories that my dad had from the war, right? This bullet hole that he never talked to us about.

Speaker 11 And then this image of my father running naked in the darkness, scared for his life.

Speaker 11 He had to leave

Speaker 11 because dining room tables don't protect you from rockets, actually.

Speaker 11 It was

Speaker 11 for me a moment of realizing that I'd been lied to about a lot of things in my life.

Speaker 11 It was a lie that American imperialism has ever or will ever save anyone.

Speaker 11 It was a lie that Egypt or Kuwait could be home for me when I needed a visa to stay in one place and when I'd never actually lived in the other.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 the wood of that dining room table wouldn't have protected me.

Speaker 1 That was Miriam Bazeed. We met when Miriam crafted a story in a moth community workshop in collaboration with the Muslim Writers Collective.

Speaker 1 Miriam is a non-binary Egyptian immigrant, writer, stage actor, and cook living in Brooklyn. And right now they're in collaboration on a new play about the life and times of Cleopatra.

Speaker 1 The act of crafting your own story takes openness indeed, especially if you're telling it for the first time.

Speaker 1 The Moth produces hundreds of events every year and the stories are all told by people like you. Yes, you.

Speaker 1 Do you have any stories of embarking on a new journey, of jumping in and saying yes before you have all the pieces worked out? Or really any personal story that matters to you? We'd love to hear it.

Speaker 1 You can record your pitch right on our site or call 877-799Moth. That's 877-799-6684.
The best pitches are developed for moth shows all around the world.

Speaker 1 Here's a pitch that came in from Zach Lipton.

Speaker 13 I didn't tell anyone, especially not in my family, about my purchase because I'm from a traditional Jewish family and it would have killed my mother to know I was out there on the open road.

Speaker 13 My father's prolonged battle with cancer would come to a head in May 2017 when he was taken to the emergency room because he had trouble breathing.

Speaker 13 While he was in the ER, his oncologist came down and gave us all the bad news that the experimental treatment that was supposed to save his life hadn't been working, and this was the end of the road.

Speaker 13 My sister and I rushed to be by his side, and the three of us cried and cried.

Speaker 13 But for just a moment, we came up for air, and I turned to them and I said, Well, now that you've got your bad news, I may as well tell you I bought a motorcycle.

Speaker 13 The tears of sadness started to mix with laughter and love, and we started to plan our road trips together because that's what you do with dying people. You plan for your future.

Speaker 13 And he made me promise right then and there to always wear boots when I ride, and I still do every time.

Speaker 1 Remember, you can pitch us your story. Give us a short version of the plot and what you stood to lose or gain.

Speaker 1 We listen to every pitch that's sent in. Call us at 877-799-Moth or pitch us online at themoth.org.
You could even inspire someone you know to pitch. Spread the word.

Speaker 1 After our break, a law professor willingly gets naked, and a 53-year-old woman enters the wild world of online dating when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

Speaker 12 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 14 What's up, world? It's Von Miller, Super Bowl MVP, chicken farmer, and now host of Free Range. This is a show where I go off the field and off the script.

Speaker 14 We're talking what's hot in music, film, trending news, and everything blowing up your feet.

Speaker 15 If you love football, you'll feel at home.

Speaker 14 But if you're here for the vibes, the internet deep dives, the conversation, this is your podcast. Join me every Wednesday.

Speaker 14 Follow and listen to Free Range with me, Von Miller, everywhere you get your podcast.

Speaker 1 You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Janess.
This is an hour all about broad-mindedness and stepping into the unfamiliar.

Speaker 1 Many years ago, I was telling a friend about a crush I had on a man who I thought had a crush on me too. My friend said, have you kissed him yet? And I said, no, I haven't thought it through fully.

Speaker 1 I remember she was sitting on a bar stool because she laughed so hard at this clear evidence of my non-spontaneous self that she slipped off.

Speaker 1 So, this theme of openness and newness and diving into the strange and unusual is also a good reminder for me to lean in.

Speaker 1 Dave Moran told this next story about leaning in at an open mic moth slam in Ann Arbor, where we partner with Michigan Public Radio. Here's Dave, live with them.

Speaker 7 As the students filed into the classroom, I tried but failed to stop my hands from shaking. Now, I'm a law professor, so I'm used to seeing students in a classroom.

Speaker 7 I've given hundreds of lectures to thousands of students. But this wasn't a law class.
This was an art class at a community college.

Speaker 7 And I was seated on a stool in the center of the classroom, wearing only a white robe.

Speaker 7 And in five minutes, I was scheduled to take it off.

Speaker 7 How did I get there?

Speaker 7 Well as you might guess it was a midlife crisis I had about a year earlier

Speaker 7 when I suddenly decided I needed to find out if I could learn to do something creative and I ended up taking a drawing class at a community arts center and I hadn't drawn anything since junior high and my drawings were terrible but I gradually got better and better as the class went on and we ended with drawing a model, a live nude model.

Speaker 7 And drawing a person, as I learned, is very difficult. And so as the class went on, the instructor Heather at one point said, I'm going to give Helen the model a break.
Anybody want to stand up there?

Speaker 7 Keep your clothes on, but anybody want to stand up there and take a turn posing? And I raised my hand, and I did. And for 15 minutes, I stood up there with my hands on my hips, twisting my torso.

Speaker 7 And my mind went blank for maybe the first time in my life. I now know that I discovered a form of meditation, but it felt great.

Speaker 7 And then afterwards, I looked at the drawings that my fellow classmates had made of me, and I liked them. And I thought, this was wonderful.

Speaker 7 And so, after the class was over, I emailed Heather, the instructor, and said, that was wonderful. Are there more opportunities to do that?

Speaker 7 And she came straight to the point in her email back: Are you willing to pose nude?

Speaker 7 This led to an interesting conversation with my extremely indulgent wife.

Speaker 7 And ultimately, the answer was, Yes, I'd like to see if I have the guts to do that, and I'd like to have that feeling again.

Speaker 7 And so fast forward a few months, I made contact with a community college professor,

Speaker 7 and I had a date, September 14th, 2010, a Wednesday evening. And so I started preparing for it.
So I did poses in front of the mirror.

Speaker 7 I did poses in front of my extremely indulgent wife. I went online hoping to find reassurance because I was getting more and more frightened as the date approached.

Speaker 7 And I did not find reassurance online.

Speaker 7 Instead, I found advice such as if you're a male model whatever you do for God's sakes don't think of any sexual thoughts

Speaker 7 and if you do think of any sexual thoughts immediately start counting backwards from 100 while thinking about penguins.

Speaker 7 And so that didn't help me.

Speaker 7 And so we showed up.

Speaker 7 I showed up on the day at the appointed time with my bag, with my robe and my slippers and Kathy, the instructor, showed me to a room where I changed and I came back out and the students filed in and I looked at them and they were a varied lot, all ages from the 18 or 19 to people older than me.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 Kathy gave some instruction. She said, tonight we're going to start with some gesture poses, some two-minute action type poses.

Speaker 7 And then she looks straight at me and says, Dave, whenever you're ready, that's my cue.

Speaker 7 And so I stood up, shaking, my hands shaking violently, took the robe off, kicked the slippers off, and assumed a pose reminiscent, I hope, of Discobulus, the discus thrower from ancient Greece.

Speaker 7 And as I stood there with my imaginary discus,

Speaker 7 every neuron in my brain screamed, grab the robe and run.

Speaker 7 But I managed to fight it off, and after about 30 seconds, the heart rate came down and I started to feel great.

Speaker 7 And then I did another pose where I was throwing a ball, and I did another pose where I was catching something.

Speaker 7 I did another pose where I'm reaching for the ceiling, and then I had a break, and then I had a long pose, and then a pose where I get to lay down for a while.

Speaker 7 And at the end, Kathy said, You were wonderful. Can you come back again?

Speaker 7 And I did.

Speaker 7 And eight and a half years later, I'm still doing it.

Speaker 7 I still model once or twice a month at community colleges and local art centers.

Speaker 7 And so I'm so glad that I overcame the fear because I love the feeling of meditation, of losing myself while staring at a wall while people are drawing me.

Speaker 7 And I love the fact that this face, this body, can produce beautiful art. Thank you.

Speaker 1 That was Dave Moran. Dave lives in Ann Arbor, where he's a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

Speaker 1 He co-directs the Michigan Innocence Clinic, which exonerates people who've been wrongfully convicted of crimes.

Speaker 1 He loves running, cross-country skiing, and yes, figure drawing on both sides of the easel. He always considered himself to be funny-looking.

Speaker 1 He says he has lots of freckles and a large nose and a gangly body. And he adds, modeling has been the most body-positive experience of his life.
He feels much more comfortable in his own skin now.

Speaker 1 To see photos, PG photos of some pencil sketches and art that Dave has inspired, go to themoth.org.

Speaker 1 Our last story in this hour is all about the quest for romantic love at any age. Elena Larner told this at an open mic story slam in Phoenix, Arizona, where we partner with public radio station KJZZ.

Speaker 1 And a note to listeners, this story does have a mention of sex. Here's Elena live at the moth.

Speaker 5 Not long after my 53rd birthday, I decided that it was time to be in love again and that the way to go about doing it was to internet date. Why not?

Speaker 5 I had been married. divorced a long time.
I'd been in a couple of relationships that had fallen apart.

Speaker 5 And at the end of all of those things, all I felt was hurt, betrayed,

Speaker 5 disappointed.

Speaker 5 But still,

Speaker 5 I'm a pathological optimist.

Speaker 5 So I went on match.com and eHarmony. And because I was 53, silver singles.

Speaker 5 None of those things were very successful for a while. I had a number of dates.
I made lots of connections, but for the most part, none of them were thrilling at all.

Speaker 5 I had repeat dates, but nobody I wanted to spend more than 24 hours with.

Speaker 5 And then I got this one connection.

Speaker 5 It didn't seem like it was going to work in the beginning because he was in his mid-70s.

Speaker 5 And and I was in my 50s.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 5 his profile,

Speaker 5 his profile was interesting to me. And when he wrote to me, he used a word I'd never heard before, and I had to look it up.
And that doesn't happen with me often.

Speaker 5 So that was intriguing, and it made me laugh. And so I reached out to him.

Speaker 5 We connected a couple of times online, and then we decided it was time to meet, and so we did.

Speaker 5 We had already discovered with our chats online that we had a number of things in common. We were both Midwesterners.
He had grown up in St. Louis.
I'm originally from Chicago.

Speaker 5 We had both come to LA for jobs. He was an advertising creative director, and he had just retired after 40 years.
For over 20 years, I'd been in TV sales, and so we had that in common.

Speaker 5 But when I saw him, all I could think was,

Speaker 6 fragile.

Speaker 6 He looks fragile.

Speaker 5 Now, what did I think a 70-year-old white guy was going to look like?

Speaker 5 He was tall, much taller than I expected. He was thin.

Speaker 5 He was well-dressed, casually dressed.

Speaker 5 He wore aviator glasses. He had nice blue eyes.

Speaker 5 He smiled really nicely. He had a soft voice, but I kept thinking, fragile.

Speaker 5 We went on a couple of dates.

Speaker 5 And what we discovered when we began dating was that what we really had in common, besides coming from the same general geographic area, was that we were jazz lovers.

Speaker 5 And I mean real jazz, straight-ahead, serious jazz.

Speaker 5 And that bound us together. We would see each other two or three times a week.
We'd meet for dinner. We would go to jazz events.
And that went on for a few months.

Speaker 5 The holidays started to come.

Speaker 5 And I thought, oh, maybe I should go home to Chicago. My daughter was still living there.
I would see my daughter. I would see family and friends.
But I hate cold weather, and I hate snow.

Speaker 5 And 20 years in Southern California had not changed my mind about that at all.

Speaker 5 And in the end, I decided, okay, I'm just going to stay in LA. And when I told him that, he was really pleased.
And we made plans about how to spend our holidays, our vacation together.

Speaker 5 But what that made me think about was, oh, if we're going to spend all this time together, we better talk about sex.

Speaker 5 And I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to handle that because I realized I liked him. I really liked being with him.
And

Speaker 5 if he wanted something I didn't want or I wanted something he didn't want, it could come to an end.

Speaker 5 And that would really be sad.

Speaker 5 So I went about this the same way I go about most things. I just jumped in.

Speaker 5 We were sitting in my apartment a few days before Thanksgiving, sitting on the sofa playing Scrabble.

Speaker 5 And I sort of sidled up to the question. I said, so

Speaker 5 as this relationship continues, have you thought about

Speaker 5 intimacy?

Speaker 5 And does that mean a sexual component?

Speaker 5 He had a glass in his hand and he almost lost it and he started to choke.

Speaker 5 And he coughed and he said,

Speaker 6 yeah.

Speaker 5 Are you okay with that?

Speaker 5 And his voice was like a little boy's kind of voice.

Speaker 5 And I said, yeah, but I want to make sure that oral sex is part of this because if it's not, we got nothing to talk about.

Speaker 5 And he

Speaker 4 started to choke and cough and sputter.

Speaker 5 And I thought, oh my God, he's going to die.

Speaker 5 We aren't even going to get to sex.

Speaker 5 And he said, you are really something. That's all I can tell you.

Speaker 5 And he said,

Speaker 12 yeah,

Speaker 5 that's really okay.

Speaker 5 And he leaned over to me. He put his arm around me.

Speaker 5 And he kissed me with a slow,

Speaker 5 warm soft kiss

Speaker 5 and he wasn't fragile at all

Speaker 1 that was Elena Larnin and that word that Don used that Elena had to look up it was calopygian which means having shapely buttocks

Speaker 1 Elena and Don dated for a year and then got married. She said they traveled constantly to places neither of them had ever been so they could have the new adventure together.

Speaker 1 Sadly, Don passed away after seven years of their marriage. She said, we were two adults who wanted to love each other, and we did.

Speaker 1 Elena recently moved to Phoenix to be near her daughter and create another new life for herself.

Speaker 1 She's now a docent with the Museum of Contemporary Art, and she loves to read to elementary students in after-school programs.

Speaker 1 And for any of you online dating and looking for new love like I am, Elena says, come up with who you are and what you want so the right new person is attracted to you.

Speaker 1 Don't try to twist and turn and make yourself attractive to somebody else. You can share the stories from this hour or others from the Moth Archive through our website, themoth.org.

Speaker 1 We hope these stories expand your understanding of others and even yourself, and that this year you're open to the possibilities of what life will bring.

Speaker 1 And maybe you'll tell a story about the journey.

Speaker 1 Check out the Moth schedule on our website and find out about our online slams and throw your name in the virtual hat. We want to hear your stories.

Speaker 1 For inspiration, we included some first lines from our Open Mic Story Slams in our credits. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour.
We hope you'll join us next time.

Speaker 12 Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Janes, who also directed the stories in the show with additional coaching in the Moth Education Program by Julian Goldhagen, Tim Lopez, and DiAvian Walters.

Speaker 15 All right, guys, this is the way it'll work. You'll come out to the microphone, you'll say your name, and just the first line of your story.

Speaker 12 The rest of the Moths directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.

Speaker 10 I'm Nicole, and a huge cardboard box that we dragged out of the corner of my mother's attic brought me here tonight.

Speaker 12 The Moth would like to thank the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art for their support of the Moth Community Program.

Speaker 16 Hi, I'm Stacey. So I met this guy on the internet, and we were dating for like three weeks when he invited himself on my vacation.

Speaker 12 Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the drift.

Speaker 12 Other music in this hour from Kronos Quartet with Fode Muzo Suso, Swing Growers, Omid Shabani, Jerry Mulligan with Chet Baker, and Oscar Schuster.

Speaker 12 You can find links to all the music we use at our website.

Speaker 3 Hi, I'm Oscar.

Speaker 16 I woke up in the middle of the night, two in the morning, when I thought I was having gas pains and it turns out I was having a baby in the middle of the hurricane.

Speaker 12 The Malt Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Ellison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Speaker 12 This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. I'm Paul.
Marcy went out with me again and again, even though she was beautiful.

Speaker 12 Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis.

Speaker 12 For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

Speaker 6 Deborah had to have surgery.

Speaker 17 I had hip surgery in November of 2024.

Speaker 6 Her United Healthcare nurse, Crystal, checked on her.

Speaker 9 We do a routine call after surgery, and I could tell that she was struggling.

Speaker 6 Deborah needed help.

Speaker 17 My infection markers were through the roof.

Speaker 6 And Crystal knew what to do.

Speaker 9 I called the hospital and said she's coming in.

Speaker 6 And got Deborah the help she needed.

Speaker 17 Crystal and United Healthcare saved my life.