The Moth Radio Hour: The Future Looks Bright

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Speaker 2 The moth is supported by AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca is committed to spreading awareness of a condition called hereditary transthyroidin-mediated amyloidosis, or HATTR.

Speaker 2 This condition can cause polyneuropathy, like nerve pain or numbness, heart failure or irregular rhythm, and gastrointestinal issues.

Speaker 2 HATTR is often underdiagnosed and can be passed down to loved ones. Many of us have stories about family legacies passed down through generations.

Speaker 2 When I was five, my mother sewed me a classic clown costume, red and yellow with a pointy hat. It's since been worn by my sister, three cousins, and four of our children.

Speaker 2 I'm so happy this piece of my childhood lives on with no end in sight. Genetic conditions like HATTR shouldn't dominate our stories.

Speaker 2 Thanks to the efforts of AstraZeneca, there are treatment options so more patients can choose the legacies they share.

Speaker 2 This year, the Moth will partner with AstraZeneca to shine a light on the stories of those living with HATTR. Learn more at www.myattrroadmap.com.

Speaker 3 This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison and in this episode, stories about finding the light at the end of the tunnel, bright futures in dark times, and hope even when things seem hopeless.

Speaker 3 Our first storyteller is Katia Duff. Katya told this story at one of our Open Mic Story Slam competitions in Los Angeles, where we partner with public radio station KCRW.

Speaker 3 Here's Katya live at the moth.

Speaker 4 When I was 14 years old, my parents decided it was a great idea to get me out of school and move a million thousand miles away from the far east of Russia close to Moscow so I could go to a great college several years later.

Speaker 4 I didn't want any of this. I liked my school, I liked my skiing, I liked my rock climbing, my friends.
So when they just moved me to Moscow, I got very depressed.

Speaker 4 In addition to everything, once we moved, we had a little bit of savings, but they suddenly all disappeared because of a financial crisis.

Speaker 4 So when I came to my new school, not only we were poor, but also had no friends. I mean, it's all my fault.
I was very grumpy about moving, and I didn't want any friends.

Speaker 4 But the first year in the new school was extremely miserable. So for my 15th birthday, my dad told me, I know what you'd like as a birthday present.

Speaker 4 Let's go camping with a bunch of other adults and kids. And this way you can climb the tallest mountain in Europe.
You know, most girls for 15 years old,

Speaker 4 at 15, they want probably a dress or a pair of shoes. For me, it was an amazing idea.
Yes, I really want to climb the tallest mountain in Europe.

Speaker 4 So we go on this trip, which was not very well planned, honestly, because it was 10 parents and about 15 kids. And we didn't bring enough food for all of us.
And it was non-stop camping for a month.

Speaker 4 We lived in

Speaker 4 tents, bathing in rivers. And for the last two weeks of our trip, we completely ran out of food and we were in the mountains.

Speaker 4 So we had to stop by different villages, asking Highlanders for cheese and milk. And that was our diet for about 10 days.
We all lost about 10 pounds, I'd say, and we were completely emaciated.

Speaker 4 But for my birthday, I said, I'm still climbing that mountain.

Speaker 4 We spent the night in a wooden house, all of us, and they tell me, Katia, the weather doesn't look very well.

Speaker 4 You know, they promised like a little bit of rain for tomorrow and maybe a little bit of a storm. I say, no, we are going.
It's my birthday. I absolutely have to do it.

Speaker 4 So next morning, when I get out, I realize that there is no electricity because all the electric cables lay on the ground after a storm. My dad tells me, Katya, you...
We are not going.

Speaker 4 No, you're not doing this. I say, no, it's my birthday.
I'm 15. My life has been crap for the last year.
I absolutely have to do it.

Speaker 4 So when my dad turns away, I put all the equipment on, this special metal shoes, and I bring a metal stick, and I start climbing.

Speaker 4 Good thing my dad got out of the house and he saw me on the horizon, and he was like, oh God, she decided to do it. So he starts chasing me with other adults.
They grab me off the mountain.

Speaker 4 They bring me back to the house. They say, Katya, you don't want to die on your 15th birthday.
And that's when I started bawling and saying, oh, my life just sucks. It's been non-stop for years.

Speaker 4 So bad. I'm so depressed.
Why, why, why, why did you take me away from my friends, you started this. And then my dad looks at me and he says, Katia,

Speaker 4 but you know what, this is the worst event of your life, you think? Then after all, it can only get better. So look forward to

Speaker 4 going back to Moscow, going to a new school, and it will all be amazing from now on, I promise you.

Speaker 4 Except when we get on the train and listen to the radio, the first thing we hear, there is a coup d'état in Moscow. It's 1991.
It's the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Speaker 4 The train trip takes 36 hours and every minute of a trip we listen to updates and they say, oh, Gorbachev was arrested and taken away. Oh, now there is a provisionary government.

Speaker 4 All the power is taken away. And the minute the train gets into Moscow, we see tanks on the streets, people with guns, explosions, black smoke everywhere.

Speaker 4 I look at my dad and I say, dad, you promised that

Speaker 4 you promised my birthday was the worst thing ever. What is going on?

Speaker 4 So when we come home and turn the TV on, they say, okay, coup d'etat was a failure, but Soviet Union has collapsed anyways, but it's not going to be that bad.

Speaker 4 But for me, it was more than bad, and I actually

Speaker 4 got so sick with flu, my temperature was like 103 or something. And for two weeks, I don't remember anything.
When I got out of this condition, I felt different.

Speaker 4 I felt like I was suddenly stronger or something. Because to be honest, it's been what now 28 years since that happened.

Speaker 4 And no matter what happened in my life after that 1991 summer, nothing shocked me anymore. And

Speaker 4 I think that really made me a strong person as I am now. Thank you.

Speaker 3 That was Katya Duft.

Speaker 3 She is the author of the public transit blog, Tales from the Bus. She's a linguist fluent in English, Russian, and French and works in subtitling and translating.

Speaker 3 She's a frequent participant in storytelling shows and contests in Los Angeles and is a Moth Story Slam winner.

Speaker 3 Katya says, to this day, this remains the most challenging camping trip she's ever been on. To see a photo of Katya and her father shortly after their trip, visit them.org.

Speaker 3 Up next, we have another moth slammer, Aditya Dakshinamoti. Aditya told his story at the Bell House in New York City, where we're presented by public radio station WNYC.

Speaker 3 Live from Brooklyn, here's Aditya.

Speaker 8 All right, have fun.

Speaker 8 Well, I'm not really proud of admitting this, but one of the biggest breakthroughs I've ever had in my life is to get an interview from the greyhound of the skies, Spirit Airlines.

Speaker 8 I'm not sure if any of you know, but getting a job as an international student here in the U.S. is very hard.
In fact, most companies have it in their policy not to hire internationals.

Speaker 8 And I was painfully made aware of that in my first year here in the U.S. as a student.
Probably applied for over 100 jobs, zero callbacks.

Speaker 8 Every recruit I spoke to would say, good resume, but we don't hire internationals.

Speaker 8 But in hindsight, it's not really a surprise that Spirit Airlines is the first company to give me an interview, is it?

Speaker 8 They probably tried hiring regular Americans here and they didn't want to work for them. So they're coming after desperate folk like me.
But that didn't matter to me.

Speaker 8 You know, I came here not just to get a master's, but also to get a job and live and work here. So I was ready for this.
This is what I've been waiting for.

Speaker 8 And they came through my university, which meant I had a head start over the others,

Speaker 8 by default because I was living up to my Asian student stereotype. I had a 4.0 GPA, and I was the darling of my professors.
So they put in a very good word for me.

Speaker 8 The first round of interviews was on campus. I feel like I did that pretty well.
Second round, they invited me down to their headquarters. Went there, again, feel like I did pretty well there.

Speaker 8 Two nervous weeks go by, and then I get a call from the recruiter. And she says, hey, you know, thank you for coming down.
We feel like you'd be a great addition to the team.

Speaker 8 We'd like to offer you the job. And as she's saying that, I'm on this side going,

Speaker 8 and then I calm myself down and I say, oh, I'm so glad to hear that.

Speaker 8 You know, I'm very excited. And then she tells me what the salary is going to be.
And that was less than what they had advertised when they were coming to my university. And I took issue with that.

Speaker 8 You know, why is it less? She said, okay, give me a couple of days. Let me talk to the management.
She calls me back and she says, hey, I spoke to the VP. Turns out,

Speaker 8 I don't think he's going to move. And I was like, I said the same thing, but you said you were gonna give more

Speaker 8 and it was a couple minutes a couple seconds of silence and she goes okay but are you still interested in the job I was like are you kidding me you're the only one to interview me let alone give me a job of course I'm interested and then she says okay can I send you the offer letter now I wasn't really sure why she asked that but in my mind because I grew up in India nothing is official till it's on paper so I thought this is her wanting to get everything that we spoke on paper so she sent me the email with the offer letter I respond back with my counter offer stating the exact same things.

Speaker 8 And a few days go by, I think it was the long weekend or something. And the next Monday, I get again a call from them.
This time

Speaker 8 it was the recruiting, the hiring manager. And he says, hey, is this audio? I was like, yeah.
And he says, I just want to let you know that we're rescinding the job offer. And I'm like, wait, what?

Speaker 8 What happened? I mean, he said, well, we're taking back the job offer. We're going in a different direction.
I was like, well, is it because I asked for more money? It's okay.

Speaker 8 I'll take whatever I gave earlier.

Speaker 8 I'm sorry, don't do this. And he's like no I'm it's too late we're we're going in a different direction and and I was actually sleeping when that call came

Speaker 8 not really a good way to be woken up and then I was like walking around my room yelling what the fuck happened how did I screw this up I just couldn't understand and then I texted my professors immediately and said okay don't panic we'll try to find out what happened The next day,

Speaker 8 went to one of their offices and he said, well, turns out you went back on your word. I was like, what do you mean?

Speaker 8 Well, it turns out you accepted the offer on the phone and then you renegotiated once you got the offer.

Speaker 8 And I tried to explain to him, well, well, that's because I'm in the culture and the country that I grew up in, nothing spoken is official. Official things start only when things are on paper.

Speaker 8 And he kind of had this like, you know, sad look on his face, but he said, you know, I'm sorry, I think this is it. Can't help you here.

Speaker 8 And I walked back slowly to my car. I remember I sat in that parking lot for about 45 minutes.
My eyes were welling up and I felt like I have screwed up my best chance to get a job here.

Speaker 8 I don't know if I'll ever get that chance. And I was terrified.
And I just didn't know what to do. But that was only like half of the problems or things in my mind at that time.

Speaker 8 You see, in just that long weekend, I threw a party for all my friends because I had just gotten a job at Spirit Airlines.

Speaker 8 I put it on social media, on on Facebook, that, hey, everyone, all thousand of my friends all over the world, I'm going to be working for Spirit Airlines in Miami.

Speaker 8 I didn't have Twitter at the time, otherwise, I would have tweeted at Spirit Airlines as well.

Speaker 8 I told my mom, I told my girlfriend, I told my dad, like everybody knew. And I was thinking, man, this is messed up now.
Now I got to walk all of it back and also try to find another job.

Speaker 8 This is going to be fun.

Speaker 8 Things eventually worked out well for me. I went on to work for Southwest Airlines, which is a much better company.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 this time I did not negotiate past the phone. For those of you who thought I would have never negotiated, if you fuck up something the first time, next time you do it right, you do not do it.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 I waited one whole month till after I got the job to tell anyone that I now got a job. Thank you.

Speaker 3 That was Aditya Dakshinamoti.

Speaker 3 Aditya is an airline professional, storyteller, and DJ. He grew up in South India before moving to the U.S.
for his master's and currently calls New York City home.

Speaker 3 He has appeared in Moth Story Slams, as well as many other storytelling shows throughout the U.S.

Speaker 3 We followed up with Aditya to find out more about his experience job hunting as as an international student without a work visa.

Speaker 10 There's always this can they hire me question that goes into your head before, you know, am I a good fit for this role?

Speaker 10 So there's a lot of shot in the darks and the first thing you tend to ask anyone is, do you sponsor for a visa?

Speaker 10 And most of the time the answer is no and the conversation ends then and there. You have to probably try

Speaker 10 way more than you normally would you cannot be picky at all

Speaker 10 because you don't know who will sponsor

Speaker 10 and who won't so you might have to take a job that's not necessarily what you really want so are you still working with southwest no so i actually had to leave southwest and the us

Speaker 10 because I couldn't get a visa.

Speaker 10 Then I left Southwest thinking I will never come back to the US and it's all over and I took a job in a Middle Eastern country called Qatar working for an airline there and six months into my job there they asked me to move back to the US completely out of coincidence so I ended up back in New York like within the next year that's what happened after so where did this dream of like wanting to work for an airline come from when did you start um when did you start knowing that that was what you wanted to do so I'm an only child and I was,

Speaker 10 I mean, you could call me a spoiled child when I was growing up and that's not a bad characterization at all.

Speaker 10 So for me to get a sense of the real world, my parents sent me one summer to live with

Speaker 10 my cousin. He was living in Bangalore at that time.
It was close to

Speaker 10 an aviation manufacturing company in India.

Speaker 10 And while I was was there I would see fighter jets taking off and landing and commercial aircrafts taking off and landing and I grew up in like a very small city in South India where you don't see airplanes often like they are like mythical creatures

Speaker 10 you you see one and you just stop dead in your tracks at least I did every single time I loved everything about them they fly they make a loud noise

Speaker 10 and they seemed not accessible, which is why I really wanted them. So at that point I decided I wanted a career that had to do something with airplanes and that's what I did.

Speaker 3 That was Adicha Dakshina Morte speaking with moth producer Emily Couch.

Speaker 3 When we return, two more stories from our SLAM series about the things that inspire us to move forward.

Speaker 3 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

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Speaker 3 This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, and this episode is all about looking ahead to what promises to be a brighter future.

Speaker 3 Next up is Brenda Williams, who told this story at a New York Slam, presented by WNYC. Here's Brenda.

Speaker 13 Thank you. You're welcome.
Hello, I'm Brenda and I'd like to share with you how worth came to be defined in my family by a set of pots and pans.

Speaker 13 And we have to go back to when I was about three years old, growing up in London. My parents emigrated from Jamaica to England before I was born, and there was never enough money.

Speaker 13 So my mom would go to Freddie the Butcher, and she would get these scraps and turn them into these really delicious, savory stews and soups.

Speaker 13 And at that age, I thought it was some kind of sorcery, some kind of kitchen magic, total mystery.

Speaker 13 And it was around that time that the door-to-door salesman came calling, and he came with these stainless steel pots, lots of them with every imaginable insert, broiling, steaming, you know, everything,

Speaker 5 whatever.

Speaker 13 Anyway,

Speaker 13 I don't know what it was about these pots, but they ignited in my mum some kind of fierce longing.

Speaker 13 Enough that she entered an installment arrangement with this man that she could in no way afford.

Speaker 13 So she struggled through it and I was about six years old when the box arrived and I had elder siblings who were not interested in a box, but I was. And I remember my mom made me wash my hands.

Speaker 13 So I washed my hands and we opened the box and we took out the pots one by one and we oohed and awed over their magnificence.

Speaker 13 And I figured that the kitchen magic at this point would take on some kind of upgrade. but my mum had a different idea.

Speaker 13 She took the pots, put them back in the box, and put them on top of the fridge, and that's where they stayed.

Speaker 13 And I remember just every year, once or twice a year, I would beg, Oh, mummy, mummy, can we look at the pots?

Speaker 13 And she would take them down

Speaker 5 from the box,

Speaker 13 back in the box,

Speaker 4 up on the fridge.

Speaker 13 And I realized now that she felt the pots were too good to be used, or more specifically, too good for her to use.

Speaker 13 But I was little and I fretted. I thought the pots were lonely up there.
I was really afraid that they would be sad that they weren't being used for their proper purpose.

Speaker 13 Then I became a tween and a teenager and I stopped thinking about them altogether until when I was 14 my family emigrated to America, New Jersey, land of all good things.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 5 yeah,

Speaker 4 New Jersey.

Speaker 13 And so

Speaker 13 My mum packed up all her precious things, including the pots, and the box was dilapidated by then, so she got a new box.

Speaker 13 And they went on top of the the fridge in our New Jersey apartment.

Speaker 13 And at that point I asked her, Mom, you know, why don't you just use them, just use them? And she gave me this little smug smile and she said,

Speaker 13 not just yet.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 13 in the meantime, she trained to be a nurse in England, but could only get night work.

Speaker 13 And so I took over making the family dinner, which was truly awful. You know, we're talking tuna casserole, hamburger helper,

Speaker 13 until eventually I learned some of her skills.

Speaker 13 I also learned that the key to kitchen magic is in the hands that do the work, it's in the love that goes into the process, and it's also in the imagination in terms of how you work the ingredients.

Speaker 9 So,

Speaker 13 remember, not just yet. That became a reality when at 31,

Speaker 13 I married a highly educated man.

Speaker 13 And my mom gifted us the box of pots

Speaker 13 on my wedding day.

Speaker 13 And my highly educated groom, he looked askance at this box. There were much more,

Speaker 13 you know, sophisticated brands, all-clad, Le Cruze, whatever. Anyway, I felt that my pots would not feel welcome in my fancy new home.

Speaker 13 And so we didn't use them. And eventually, I did not feel welcome in that home.

Speaker 13 And it took 14 years of marriage before I got my divorce. And I packed up my precious things,

Speaker 13 including my box of pots, which had been unused for 40 years

Speaker 13 and

Speaker 13 I now use them every day.

Speaker 13 Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 13 I experiment with them, I bang about, I singe their bottoms

Speaker 3 all the time.

Speaker 13 And my friends and family, they sigh around my dining room table they breathe in those savory scents and they often eat much more than they plan to which thrills me

Speaker 13 you know I've I've adjusted my thinking it's still the hands and it's still the love and it's still the imagination but for me the kitchen magic is also those pots

Speaker 13 and I am finally worthy as my mother always was, even if she didn't know it. Thank you.

Speaker 3 Brenda Williams is a writer and human resources executive who lives in Brooklyn. Many of her stories focus on Caribbean immigrants in New York and London.

Speaker 3 Brenda says that when her mother gave her the pot, she was thrilled to have that piece of her family history and thrilled that they would finally be put to use.

Speaker 3 Her mother has passed away, but not before knowing that Brenda was using the pots regularly. She's still using them and she says her cooking continues to evolve.

Speaker 3 Next up with a tale of finding hope is Alistair Bain.

Speaker 3 Alistair has told many stories of the moth from slams to the main stage and here's one from an open mic story slam we produced in Denver where we partner with public radio station KUNC.

Speaker 3 A note that the story contains the use of a homosexual slur. Here's Alistair Bain live at the mall.

Speaker 7 When I was 13 I got my first horse. His name was Bo.
He was a half an inch over pony class, a chestnut with sort of anonymous breeding history, not very well trained, a little bit mean and shaggy

Speaker 7 but I didn't mind because he was mine and I was willing to put the hours I knew it would take to train him in because he was the one part of my life that didn't feel dark and dangerous.

Speaker 7 At that point, my dad had dropped me off with my mom in a small town in central Illinois. She had enrolled me in a Catholic school where I was the only native person in an otherwise white school.

Speaker 7 I felt different, but that wasn't the only reason.

Speaker 7 The kids had another name for

Speaker 7 the reason I was different. Words like fag, queer, it, and freak.
I heard that all day. The teachers told me if I didn't act so weird, maybe I wouldn't get in trouble being bullied.

Speaker 7 And when I went home, although my mom's words weren't quite that crude, her sentiment was the same. Everything I did, how I walked, how I talked, seemed disappointing.

Speaker 7 But every afternoon, I would get to go to the stable and saddle up Beau and go for a ride.

Speaker 7 I spent so much time grooming him and training him that within a few months, the first time we went into the dressage ring, he was flawless.

Speaker 7 And we walked out with a long, shiny satin blue ribbon in front of everyone who had thought that we were misfits.

Speaker 7 And for just that moment, everything felt good, like a story of redemption.

Speaker 7 But over the course of the next few months, as I entered eighth grade, it seemed like the bullying got worse. And at home, I had decided that it was time that I finally said it out loud to my mother.

Speaker 7 I came out,

Speaker 7 and her reaction was everything I feared it would be, and more, worse.

Speaker 7 I could almost feel her disapproval through the walls in the house.

Speaker 7 And at that point, it seemed like even when I was at the stable with Beau, those rides, that time I had with him, weren't enough. And there was this darkness that was encroaching on my very spirit.

Speaker 7 A voice inside me that said, maybe there was no place I would ever belong and no use going on.

Speaker 7 One Saturday morning, I found myself in the bathroom looking in the medicine cabinet and my mother's newly refilled prescription of tranquilizers, thinking that it would be so easy that night before bed to take them all.

Speaker 7 The kids would have no one to bully on Monday. My weather would have no one to say was embarrassing the family.

Speaker 7 I left them there, knewing they'd be there, and went out to the stable.

Speaker 7 And I saddled up Bo.

Speaker 7 I decided that day I was going to do something good for him, something to make him happy, because even if I felt like I couldn't feel happiness anymore, he could.

Speaker 7 So I rode him down by the airport where there was a long dirt road.

Speaker 7 I take him down there and let him just run to his heart's content.

Speaker 7 As we got near, I could feel him getting excited. He knew what was coming next.
As we turned the corner onto that road, I stepped in my stirrups like I was a jockey in the Kentucky Derby.

Speaker 7 I let him have his reins, and he took off.

Speaker 7 I had heard someone say once that if you're a true horseman, there comes a day when the communication between you and your horse ceases to be the tug of a rein or the nudge of a knee, and you simply become one with that animal.

Speaker 7 And as he ran flat out down that road, I began to feel that happen.

Speaker 7 It was as if he and I could speak without any cues from myself.

Speaker 7 He ran faster and faster, and as we approached the end of the road, there's a dead end sign. I didn't have to rein him in.
He knew what to do.

Speaker 7 He slid to a stop, pivoted on his back legs, and ran back the other direction.

Speaker 7 And as he did, it felt almost like that little horse's joy of being alive on a fall day, running full out under a crisp blue sky with the smell of the dried corn in the field next to us, came up through those reins and ran through my body like electricity.

Speaker 7 And so that everything was suddenly quiet.

Speaker 5 and clear and beautiful.

Speaker 7 We reached the end of the road and standing there was a woman outside our car. She'd stopped and was watching us.

Speaker 7 She smiled, waved at me, and said, You and that horse, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Thank you, I said.

Speaker 7 And that was enough.

Speaker 7 In my culture, we say horses have the ability to heal, and I know that that's true.

Speaker 3 Alistair Andrew Bain is an Eastern Shawnee writer, storyteller, and artist. His short stories have appeared in Alone Together, Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19.

Speaker 3 Alistair's love of animals hasn't waned. These days, he fosters dogs who are feral or who have experienced trauma.

Speaker 3 Alistair says his dogs have taught him about resilience and healing, that they seem to be able to let go of the past and live in the present.

Speaker 3 After the break, two more stories of optimism against the odds.

Speaker 3 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 feed. 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 podcasts.

Speaker 3 You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour. In this hour, we're hearing stories from people who have faith in the future, even when the present isn't always so promising.

Speaker 3 No stranger to working against the odds is Kathy Kinnear Hill, who took a difficult campaigning job in a place she felt unwelcome and unsafe.

Speaker 3 Kathy told this story at a Moth Main Stage in Jackson Hole, where we were presented by the Center for the Arts. A quick caution that this story includes the use of a toxic racial slur.

Speaker 3 Here's Kathy Kinnear Hill.

Speaker 11 It was Kansas City, Kansas,

Speaker 11 the year 2012,

Speaker 11 and it was the reelection campaign for President Barack Obama.

Speaker 11 I was working it

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 one wonderful day I walked into the office and I'm not gonna lie, I was thrilled to find out that we were gonna Skype with the president.

Speaker 11 He popped up on that screen

Speaker 11 and he gave us a pep talk. You know that Obama kind of pep talk?

Speaker 11 And he thanked us for all of our hard work.

Speaker 11 And then he said,

Speaker 11 get out of Kansas.

Speaker 11 We're wasting our time.

Speaker 11 For those of you who could do this,

Speaker 11 take this campaign to Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Speaker 11 Take this campaign to Iowa. And I'm asking you to please deliver Iowa to me, to us.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 11 yeah, I'll do that.

Speaker 11 I'd already worked his election campaign a few years before.

Speaker 11 And when you're campaigning and volunteering, you have duties like putting signs, you know, yard signs up and pamphlets here and there.

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 having conversations because the president always would say just have conversations.

Speaker 11 Conversations after conversations don't stop.

Speaker 11 And also,

Speaker 11 we are registering the people to vote. And I will never forget

Speaker 11 looking into the faces of my African-American elders.

Speaker 11 And they say to me,

Speaker 11 I've never voted.

Speaker 11 I've never registered.

Speaker 11 But I'm registering now

Speaker 11 because I have a reason.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 11 not only do I have a personal reason to be working these

Speaker 11 campaigns,

Speaker 11 after reading a little bit about Senator Obama back in the day, I realized that he and I had a couple of things in common.

Speaker 11 One,

Speaker 11 we were biracial in America and identified as black.

Speaker 11 And we grew up in an era of turmoil where

Speaker 11 we both had to

Speaker 11 decide and determine who we were,

Speaker 11 where we were going.

Speaker 11 No one could help us and tell us that. We had to go on that journey.

Speaker 11 Another thing we had in common and do have in common is that we were raised by loving white families.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 11 I'm heading from

Speaker 11 the suburbs and cities of the Kansas City area to campaign in the cities and suburbs of Iowa.

Speaker 11 And I got in my little Honda every weekend for about a year and drove four hours there and four hours back. and did the same types of things, lots, hundreds and hundreds of phone calls,

Speaker 11 knocking on doors and

Speaker 11 registering people to vote.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 towards the end of that campaign in 2012, I got a phone call and I was asked to be a canvas captain,

Speaker 11 which is

Speaker 11 basically just taking a leadership role and doing the same duties that I'd already been doing. But they asked me to do this in rural Iowa.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 11 being that committed person that I am,

Speaker 11 I said yes. And I dropped off me, a middle-aged African-American woman, and another campaign worker, a little bit older African-American woman, in rural farmland, Iowa.

Speaker 11 So we walked into this this little teeny campaign office and we got our little clipboards and our pens and all of our papers and put our little buttons on, our little Obama hat, and we're going to go register people to vote.

Speaker 11 So we did and we walked out of that door and

Speaker 11 Rita,

Speaker 11 my partner in campaigning, was

Speaker 11 is one of the strongest and most amazing women I've ever met, a retired school teacher. So I looked up to her and I looked over at her and I said,

Speaker 11 Yeah, we don't, do we? Are we gonna, we're gonna do this, right?

Speaker 11 And she said, I am fired up and ready to go. Aren't you? I'm fired up and ready to go.
Let's go.

Speaker 11 And I said, Well, then, yeah, I'm fired up and ready to go too.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 we're walking down a farm road, and our first stop was a trailer park.

Speaker 11 And as we're approaching the gate to open it,

Speaker 11 we looked looked up and there was

Speaker 11 a man, a big old man with a big old rifle.

Speaker 11 And before we could open that gate,

Speaker 11 he looked at us and he said, I didn't vote for your nigger last time, and I ain't voting for your nigger this time.

Speaker 11 Now you girls better turn around and get.

Speaker 11 And we did.

Speaker 11 and again I looked at Rita and said

Speaker 11 you know we don't

Speaker 11 we don't have to do we don't have to do this and she said oh I'm more fired up and ready to go let's go

Speaker 11 so we did and we knocked on doors and we knocked on doors and we rang doorbells nobody on that day was ever that horrible to us. We had people, of course, you know, closing the door in our faces,

Speaker 11 just saying, no, thank you.

Speaker 11 And then, of course, you've got the ones that you knock on their door and you can see the curtain open and then close.

Speaker 11 And we're like,

Speaker 11 yeah, we know you're there.

Speaker 11 But we didn't stop us. We kept walking and we kept having conversations.

Speaker 11 And then we get to a farm and we're walking down this long gravel driveway.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 approaching us is a is the farmer who owns that that land

Speaker 11 and he looks at us

Speaker 11 and he says

Speaker 11 no

Speaker 11 I see what you're selling and and I'm not buying

Speaker 11 and I remembered our president asking us to have conversations and I said could we just have a minute

Speaker 11 and before he could answer His wife opened the front door

Speaker 11 and she said

Speaker 11 Ladies, if you're going to be at my house, you better come in here. Supper's on the table.

Speaker 11 And we were scared and hungry.

Speaker 11 But I'm thinking,

Speaker 11 in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, but do I really want, it was a get-out moment.

Speaker 11 Do I really want

Speaker 11 to go into this

Speaker 11 home, farmhouse, in the middle of nowhere? I don't know these people.

Speaker 11 And then the door closes, right?

Speaker 11 But before my thought was finished, Rita says, yes, ma'am, we are hungry.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 we went in and we sat down.

Speaker 11 Oh, that food.

Speaker 11 I could make you drool if I went into detail about it.

Speaker 11 It was meatloaf that was melting in our mouths, mashed potatoes and gravy, greens,

Speaker 5 cornbread,

Speaker 11 and sweet tea.

Speaker 11 It was soul food.

Speaker 11 And our conversations with Cecil and Wilma,

Speaker 11 it was a beautiful time.

Speaker 11 We talked about a lot of things. They asked us a few questions about the campaign, and we talked a little bit about that.

Speaker 11 But mostly we asked them questions

Speaker 11 about their lives.

Speaker 11 And they told us about their kids and their grandchildren.

Speaker 11 They literally breathed for those grandbabies. They lived for those grandbabies.

Speaker 11 And then they told us about the church down the way where they got married.

Speaker 11 And before we knew it,

Speaker 11 it was time to go. So we head to the front door.
We thank them for this lovely meal.

Speaker 11 And Wilma gives us a hug and hands us some food to go.

Speaker 11 And as we're walking back down that gravel drive, Cecil is walking with us to get us to the road.

Speaker 11 And when we get to the road, he takes both of our hands, Rita and Kathy.

Speaker 11 Thank you.

Speaker 11 Thank you for coming in and sharing this time with us. And thank you for talking to us.

Speaker 11 But most of all,

Speaker 11 thank you for listening to us.

Speaker 11 Now I probably won't vote for your guy.

Speaker 11 And we waved and turned around and walked away. And a few steps up, we hear this.
But hey, Kathy,

Speaker 11 I just might.

Speaker 11 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Kathy Kinnear-Hill grew up in Portland, having been adopted as a baby into a white family in the early 60s.

Speaker 3 Her dad was a professor at Lewis and Clark College, and her mom taught at Martin Luther King Jr. School, where Kathy is an instructional assistant to a class of kindergartners.

Speaker 3 Kathy and her husband, Dennis, have two children and recently became grandparents. To see photos of Kathy working for the Obama campaign, visit them.org.

Speaker 3 Our final story this hour is from Jason Schelmer. Jason told this story at a slam in St.
Paul, Minnesota.

Speaker 9 Standing in a sea of organic produce consisting of pineapples, cucumbers, and strawberries, I saw her standing there in a wide-brimmed hat, a cardigan that was tan and white over a summery outfit and flat shoes.

Speaker 9 Our eyes met. We smiled.

Speaker 9 I knew,

Speaker 9 and she knew that I knew.

Speaker 9 Now the fact that I'm at Ralph's grocery in North Hollywood is surreal at best.

Speaker 9 A week earlier, I had been offered a job to work behind the scenes on a TV show. So I quit my job, threw everything I owned into a storage unit, and drove cross-country.

Speaker 9 Once there, after working a few days, I was notified that there was going to be some production changes, and it wasn't going to work out. Scheduling issues.

Speaker 9 Yeah, no grand, you're fired, no scandalous story, nothing, just scheduling issues. So I had come to Ralph's grocery to emotionally eat.

Speaker 9 And the moment I saw her, I was immediately whisked away to a snowy mountaintop.

Speaker 9 It was Carney Wilson from Wilson Phillips.

Speaker 5 Oh my God.

Speaker 5 Are you kidding me?

Speaker 5 Carney freaking Wilson?

Speaker 9 Now, if you don't know who Carney Wilson is, Let me tell you, she is one-third of the power trio Wilson Phillips,

Speaker 9 who in 1990 gave the world the number one anthem for anyone, for anyone who was teetering and on the brink of giving up to just hold on.

Speaker 9 Now, I love pop culture. I'm a pop culture fanatic.
So I, immediately, recognizing the magnitude of this, knew I needed to follow Carney Wilson.

Speaker 9 So I did.

Speaker 9 And it was awkward. She got pork chops.
I bought pork chops. I'm a vegetarian.

Speaker 9 She bought flowers. I bought flowers.
I'm allergic.

Speaker 9 She was in feminine hygiene products.

Speaker 5 I'm a boy.

Speaker 9 So I ducked around the aisle to text my friend, Jen, to let her know of this moment. Now, Jen is a massive Wilson Phillips fan.

Speaker 9 She actually was in negotiations with their management to have them perform at her graduation. I sent her her a text, oh my god, I'm at Ralph's grocery in North Hollywood and I just saw Carney Wilson.

Speaker 9 And that's when Carney Wilson walked right past me and mouthed hello.

Speaker 9 She didn't say it, she just mouthed.

Speaker 9 Now, if you are a famous singer or an actor and you talk in public, people recognize your voice. She couldn't say hello.
She just had to mouth it.

Speaker 9 Because then five people aisles over would have come running over, screaming, sing, sing, sing. And she would have been like, no, I'm just here to buy yogurt.

Speaker 9 Sing, and she would have felt pressured and she just would want to go home. She's not even wearing makeup.
And they would have been demanding it.

Speaker 9 And so then she would have started singing an a cappella version of her number one hit, Hold On.

Speaker 9 And then people would have cracked out their phones to record it and put it on YouTube in hopes of it going viral. And then people would have started screaming and losing their minds.

Speaker 9 And then TMZ would have shown up and it would have been a debacle. Don't ask me how I know these things.
I just do.

Speaker 9 So she mouthed.

Speaker 9 After following her around the store and acquiring a cart of stuff I don't want or need, they came to check out. She was two aisles over, and I watched them scan every item out of her cart.

Speaker 9 And I was trying to time it perfectly so we could have a moment, her and I, as we left the store. But I had the slowest cashier in the world.
She had the fastest.

Speaker 9 She walked past the end of my aisle. She turned around, looked at me, and said goodbye.

Speaker 9 I died.

Speaker 9 It was just like their song, Hold On, Someday Somebody's going to make you turn around and say goodbye.

Speaker 5 I, Jason Schover from Little Falls, Minnesota, made Cardi Wilson turn around and say goodbye.

Speaker 9 She got into the elevator to go down to the parking garage and as the doors started to close, I thought, do it.

Speaker 5 Just reach out and yell, hold on.

Speaker 8 But I didn't.

Speaker 9 I'm respectful.

Speaker 9 So here we are chasing our dreams, doing what we want to do. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.
We'll go through horrible things in life. We'll fall in love.

Speaker 5 We'll get divorced.

Speaker 9 We'll

Speaker 9 have successes and failures. We'll fall flat on our face and sometimes we'll pick ourselves up.
Sometimes we won't.

Speaker 9 Sometimes what unites us all is the fact that we just find that little kernel of hope.

Speaker 9 Sometimes we find it in a prayer or a mantra or a text from a loved one, just that one little thing that we cling on to.

Speaker 9 And sometimes it's seeing a celebrity in a grocery store that sang one of your favorite songs in three-part harmony

Speaker 9 that gives you the hope to hold on for one more day

Speaker 9 because things will go your way.

Speaker 10 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Jason Schomer is a stand-up comedian and storyteller who spent two years as the opening act for comedian Louis Anderson in Las Vegas and continues to tour with Louis regularly.

Speaker 3 Jason has worked in New York City for the Rosie O'Donnell Show and behind the scenes in Hollywood on the television series Baskets.

Speaker 3 So that's it for this episode. We hope these stories offer you some comfort and hope.
Hope that things can get better even when it feels like they won't.

Speaker 3 Please join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour.

Speaker 3 Larry Rosen directed the stories in this show with additional coaching from Jennifer Hickson.

Speaker 3 The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janess, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.

Speaker 3 Moth's stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift.
Other music in this hour from Nigel Kennedy and the Croca Band.

Speaker 3 Soul Live, Michael Hedges, Blue Dot Sessions, and Wilson Phillips. You can find links to to all the music we use at our website.

Speaker 3 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Speaker 3 This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Rhys-Dennis.

Speaker 3 For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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