Good Life Project - Lea Thau | The Art of Reinvention

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Starting as an unpaid intern at The Moth when it was still a local storytelling group in New York City, Lea Thau rose up to become the Executive & Creative Director, where she remained for a decade. During her time there, she co-created The Moth Podcast and The Moth Radio Hour, helping to launch the "brand" into a global phenomenon. Thau has since become a Peabody Award-winning producer and director, now hosting her own popular podcast Strangers, which won the 2015 Public Radio March Madness Contest. She is also a storytelling teacher and coach who's worked one-on-one with people like Ethan Hawke, Marc Maron, Gabriel Byrne, Darryll “DMC” McDaniels, Margaret Cho, Suzanne Vega, as well as post-graduate fellows at Harvard, inner-city kids in New York and Los Angeles. Thau also teaches storytelling for businesses like Google, Nike, Intel, and many other companies.You can find Lea Thau at:Website : http://www.storycentral.org/Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/strangerspodcast/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So for the better part of a decade, my guest today, Leah Thao, was one of the driving forces behind the ascension of the cultural icon that has become known as the moth and its expansion from a local underground scene to a global media phenomenon with a huge presence, not only on stages of all sizes, but in the world of podcasting and public radio. And the funny thing is that was never Leah's plan until it was. While working with a team that would change the face of media and storytelling, she was also living into her own very hard driving, sometimes destructive and massively overworked story before everything came to a head. And she found herself in a place where all of it,

her work, her relationships, her health, her life, more or less came tumbling down. And she had to make some decisions. How would she rebuild it in a way that would let her live the life she wanted? That exploration eventually led her to really step out of the space for A Window of Time and then back into it to launch what became the popular podcast Strangers, which won the

2015 Public Radio March Madness Contest, beating out some of the most iconic shows in the space. Along the way, she has also worked with everyone from post-grad fellows at Harvard to inner city kids, people in homeless shelters in New York and LA, to celebrities like Ethan Hawke, Marc Maron, Daryl DMC McDaniels, Marga Cho, Susan Vega, and even mega brands like Google, Nike, Intel, Saatchi & Saatchi, Tiffany, through her company Story Central, really helping to understand how to elicit and then become better tellers of their own stories. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Growing up in Denmark, first jumped out to Paris, I guess, for a year or so after getting out of school. What was going on that drew you to Paris? I mean, first and foremost, I think I really wanted to get out of Denmark. I love the country I'm from, but it's a very small, and at the time it was still a fairly homogenous place. And I had been to Paris many times and loved the city the way many, many people

do. And I had very romantic ideas of Paris, but I also really was so drawn to the multiculturalism and the diversity and the big metropolitan life. And I moved to Paris and I was like, you know, this is the big, big world. And I loved that and then moved on from there to New York because then I went to New York for, you know, a few weeks one summer. And then I was like, oh, screw Paris. This is where it's happening. Where has this been all my life? New York is the only place on the planet that I want to live for a lot of those same reasons.

Yeah. And I guess you ended up, when you came to New York, I know you ended up in Columbia. Was that sort of part of the intention? Come here, study, complete, or were you coming to work first? I moved to New York because I really wanted to live in New York City. I had actually come with my French boyfriend. He and I had met in Paris. We then moved to Denmark, and he'd lived in New York before, and we went to visit for a few weeks one summer. And the moment we landed, like that night, I was like, I want to live in this city.

And he had gotten, I brought him back to Denmark to my home country. He'd gotten a job there actually at the faculty, although I was quite young. I was still a student myself, but he was a little bit older. And, you know, so we had this very settled life. I was 23 years old when I moved to New York, right? And for a couple of years, he and I had lived in Denmark and like had a nice apartment and we would have his colleagues over for dinner. And, but that whole time I just was thinking, I want to get back to New York and I want to get back to a different kind of life. And so he and I broke up and I thought, if I don't leave now, I was still in the middle of my studies.

I, you know, I was like, I'm going to get another boyfriend. I'm going to get another apartment. I'm going to get another something. And all I want is to live in New York. So I just moved to New York. And then I was like, I'll figure out the rest. But then, you know, pretty quickly. And, and so I really just moved and my parents and everybody was horrified because I had been accepted to a very good graduate program. And I was like, no, I'd rather go be a waitress in New York City. And nobody thought that was a terribly good idea. But I did it. And but then I realized, you know, if I want to stay here, I'm going to need a visa and some other things. And so, and I probably should finish my studies. And so applying to Columbia was really just a way for me to finish my studies and stay in New York. And I remember I lived in an apartment on the East Village, which, you know, is not close to Columbia, exactly, for those familiar with New York City geography. And I would take the train up there a couple times a week because I was really just a visiting scholar. I was not enrolled. I just sent my papers home to my graduate program in Denmark and ended

up graduating from there while having a visa and a library card and could audit any classes I wanted at Columbia. But it was very funny because I remember one morning I lived with a woman, Kim Pierce. Actually, she's quite a great filmmaker and we were roommates at the time. She made Boys Don't Cry and she was making early versions of that when we were living together. But we'd already lived together for a few months. And we were both on the L train going across town and then to go uptown to Columbia. And I said, where are you going? She said, oh, Columbia. And I said, oh, me too. And we'd lived together for a few months. And she said, you go to Columbia? I was like, you go to Columbia? But she had graduated except she was making the film, which was her thesis.

And I, you know, went there so rarely that we lived together for two months and neither one of us even knew that we went to Columbia. So, no, it was not the university. It was the city that drew me. That's too funny. So you're living on the East Village then. Would that have been like late 90s-ish, something like that? 95 is when I first, yeah, came. Right.

Which is a really interesting place to be. I mean, the East Village in the 90s was not like, you know, I mean, East Village is always cool, but the East Village in the 90s was, it was basically music and drugs. I mean, it was a crazy scene. I loved it. I loved it. You know, the trip to New York that inspired me to eventually move there a couple of years later, we stayed in the West Village with a friend.

But we went out the first night. And I remember we went to see a little jazz band at the St. Mark's Bar on the corner of St. Mark's and First Avenue. And, you know, it was like these ancient guys. They were hunched over, you know, and older than 80, I think all three of them. It was a trio, but they were just playing this amazing jazz. And then we walked across the street to Yaffa Cafe, and it was like midnight, you know, and I was still jet lagged. And we had like dinner,

we had pasta at Yaffa Cafe at midnight. And I was like, I need to live in the city. And I actually ended up being a waitress at Yaffa Cafe on St. Mark's Place there for a couple of years, which was a crazy place back in the day. So yeah, it was really fun. I loved it. Yeah. I mean, that's too funny. You were at Waitress at Yaffa, which is kind of a legendary place. Yeah. It's gone now, I hear, but it got torn down a couple of years ago. One of my old waiter colleagues told me that they finally tore it down. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that whole part of the city was really, it was amazing. It was also a center of so much art. I mean, I guess to a certain extent, like Jonathan Larson and Rent was sort of like

right around there, like that area and Lower East Side. A lot of that came out of that time as well. One of my best friends actually lived in an illegal loft on Avenue D. And I know that part of the rent story was based on like, they knew him well. And part of the rent story was, was based on like their building. And yeah, so anyway, those were exactly the days. Yeah, that's amazing. Also an incredible art scene down at the same time. That was sort of like the downtown art scene where it was like the later stages of Keith Haring and Basquiat. Say Adams was down there also.

Yeah. Yeah. That was a moment in New York City and a neighborhood that would leave such a lasting impact in so many different ways culturally throughout the city for decades to come. Yeah. Yeah. So you're hanging out there. You're living down there.

You're effectively commuting up to come. Yeah. Yeah. So you're hanging out there, you're living down there, you're effectively commuting up to Columbia. For those who don't know New York City, there's kind of almost no further place that you could be in the city. Because you have to get across town and uptown. Yeah. Right. And at some point you're pursuing your degree also, you stumble upon this thing called the moth. Tell me how you first stumble into this or discover it. I had a boyfriend who told a story at the moth, and I just fell in love with it. You know, at the time, I was still studying at Columbia, you know, commuting up there, taking classes. When I showed up, the other students would say, oh, the scholar has visited because they thought it was such a joke that I was a visiting scholar. I mean, I was also a little young to be a visiting scholar.

I remember that I knew the head of the Copenhagen Department of Compline and he was at Columbia's visiting scholar. And I ran into him in the hallway and he was like, wait, you're a visiting scholar. I'm a visiting scholar. Like, aren't you just a student? But somehow they granted me that. But and I've been I'm from a rather academic family. And so it almost, for me, it always seemed like you go to university, as we call it in Europe,

you go to university in order to work at university. Like I sort of thought like that was the most natural path, but it really didn't suit me that well. I was fairly good at it, but I did not, I was so sick of academia, honestly, by the time I was at Columbia and really just wanted to get my degree done so that nobody could say, what, you squandered this great opportunity to get a graduate degree. And I started studying literature because I loved

stories. Actually, I first started studying philosophy, history of ideas, because I thought, you know, what is this life all about? What is this existence all about? How do I get the closest to that? Surely by studying philosophy, by studying history of ideas, I will get the closest to that essence. And after a year there, I hated it. I was like, I have no interest in debating whether this chair exists. I'm sitting on it. It does not make me feel like I'm getting closer to the human experience for the particular way that I'm wired, right? I love philosophers, but it just wasn't for me. So then I switched to literature thinking, well, maybe that is the place actually where you can get closer to some essential truth of the human experience, right? And I loved realism at a time when it was really not at all en vogue to, you know, be into realism.

Everybody was, you know, everything was about deconstruction and nothing could be taken literally and you couldn't be earnest about anything. And I was, you know, I love realism and I love stories and wrote my thesis on Henry James, actually. But, you know, still very much in an academic context and just was so hungry for two things. And one was to do storytelling in a different kind of way. You know, comp lit is 50%, if not more, theory. You spend a lot more time reading Derrida than you do, you know, reading actual novels. And it's almost, at least at the time, seen as a little bit banal if you studied literature because you like to read books, you know. So I wanted to work with stories in a different way. And I wanted to be a part of New York City in a different way. And after Columbia, I was lucky to get an internship at the UN in a communication department

there. But, you know, it was a really boring job and I really didn't like it. And I was offered a position there. They said, you know, we can give you a contract for a year, which was what most interns would dream of and what I had thought I dreamed of. But, you know, when they did that, I just went home to my boyfriend at the time. And I was like, I do not want to take this job. I remember it was Thanksgiving. And I was like, I do not want to take this job. It just everybody there seems so miserable. They go home crying every day. The woman who interviewed me for the job and who was going to hire me and she was like, look, you seem

like a great young person. I'd be very glad to have you in this job. And then she closed the door and she said, but I have to tell you that half the people here go home crying every day. It's a very hard place to work. And I think you should maybe get out and not do it. But you know, part of it was that people didn't seem happy there and that it was a boring job. But the other part of it was that, you know, I really, I had moved to New York to be part of New York City. And I'd lived in the East Village and waitress there and loved it, but like commuting up to Columbia, but I was so hungry for, you know, I didn't think I'd live in New York or the US forever. And I wanted to squeeze the most out of New York City and get to know all these different layers of the city and all these

different personalities. And you know, at the UN, I could not be further from that, because it was people from all around the world, it was diplomats.. And so I wanted to be part of New York City. And I was so hungry to work with stories. I love stories. I love realism. I love people. But I didn't want to do it in that academic kind of way, right? So I went to the Moth.

And I was like, wow, this is like all of the things I've been dreaming of, you know, rolled into one. So, I mean, back then, what was the Moth? Because now, in no small part, especially like through your efforts, it's grown into something much more substantial. But way back then, when you first discovered it, what was it actually? Back then, the moth was already fairly successful in terms of being kind of, you know, the best kept secret of the people who loved it, meaning there was a very devoted following, right? And there were a lot of people that didn't know the moth. I mean, I still remember, you know, years later that one

time we were on the subway, me and a couple of other staffers, and we were talking about something. They were like, you're from the moth? And it was like the first time we had that experience that someone on the subway knew what we were talking about. And, you know, that was still many years later. But there was a following in New York that was very dedicated and loved it. I think we had a mailing list of about 5,000 people when I joined. And, you know, the show sold out very quickly. And, you know, so there was an original founder, and it was his idea. And then he'd hired a friend of his to run it. And they had built up something, you know, quite successful in a few years, but still, you know, kind of underground and only in New York and, you know, not known certainly by a ton of people, but that had a very dedicated following.

And she hired me actually initially to start the community outreach program. program, they had gotten a grant to go and do storytelling for at-risk youth and in homeless shelters and other marginalized populations who could really benefit maybe from the opportunity to tell their story, to be given a voice, to be heard, and so on. And also, by the way, they'll learn some phenomenal communication skills in the process that they could use as they were trying to get their lives back on track or whatever it may be. And so they were looking for someone to help with that. And I saw that and I was like, this is the only thing I want to do. And so, oh, so with the Thanksgiving, when I was like, I don't want to take this job at the UN, you know, I went home to my boyfriend and I said, what am I going to do? I don't think I can turn this job down because I don't have a green card and there are not going to be so many jobs

that I can take. And he said, why don't we get married? And then that'll settle that more or less. So we decided to get married. We went to City Hall in jeans and got married a couple months later, and I didn't take the job. I turned it down. I had the Thanksgiving holiday to think about it, you know, and we decided to get married and I turned it down. And then, you know, it takes a couple of months, a few months for your work papers and stuff to go through. And in the meantime, I saw that ad from the Moth that they were looking for someone to coordinate the community outreach program. And I thought, this is everything I want to do. And so I applied. And I think the only reason I probably got it because I didn't have a ton of relevant experience at the time, probably being a waitress was more relevant

experience than being a visiting scholar at Columbia. But, you know, I said, you know, you can't pay me for the first couple of months because I'm not allowed to work and my work papers haven't gone through. So I'm going to have to work for free for two months. And they were like, done, you're hired. And so sold. So I think I beat out the other candidates by being, you know, very affordable. And it was definitely an experience. I mean, I remember the first place I went into was a homeless shelter on the Bowery called Project Renewal. Well, on Third Street, but off the Bowery. And it was a substance abuse treatment center for homeless men. And, you know, I had talked to them and they said, well, the guy who

coordinated it said, why don't you come in and, you know, tell us a little bit. We have a group meeting every Friday in the afternoon. You can come in and talk about what it is that you do. And then, you know, we can, you can see if any of the guys want to sign up for your workshop. So I had also, it was a part-time job. So I was still doing the hustle of having to get other gigs too. And I came from just having interviewed with a documentary filmmaker who was looking for someone part-time to help him with some language things. And I thought, okay, I could do that. So I was dressed for that interview, you know, in like a kind of like a short skirt and, you know, a tight skirt and like a, you know, blouse and, you know, makeup and little heels and all that. And I walked into this shelter and there were 200 men in there who had lived there for eight months and hadn't seen a woman in that time.

Basically, it was all male. And, you know, I remember the guy introduced me and I walked up the middle aisle. I'd kind of been standing in the back and, you know, they were cheering and I turned And I ran, you know, over to my little sign up table that they had set up for me and just ran off stage and ran over there. And the first guy who came up and, you know, a little line formed of people who are interested in learning more about my workshop. And the first guy who came up had the words pussy eater tattooed on his face. And I, you know, it took me a moment to register that. And I didn't know if he had written it, like, to make me more embarrassed because I was already so flustered and, you know, beet red in the face. And I was like, did he write that for my benefit?

But he actually ended up taking the workshop and I learned that it was a permanent tattoo. So, yeah, I had some great times there. I mean, that's amazing, especially as your first experience. So were you actually, was this where you were going out and you were, you would then sort of like teach them storytelling and then have an event in that location or invite them into one of the local moth events? What was the goal there? The program itself would always culminate with a show. So we'd go into most of these places for about eight weeks at the time and work with people on their stories and then put on a show for the school or for the shelter or, you know, the local community. But fairly quickly, we also started

taking the best of the people from the outreach program and putting them in the big shows, you know. It was a great way to find storytellers for that. But that was not the primary purpose. The primary purpose was definitely to, for the people to learn how to tell stories and to be given that voice in their own community. Yeah. I mean, I'm so curious because you're pretty young then, and you're going into these places where people have, regardless of their age, they're places where almost by definition, they would imagine a large part of that is not just here's how to tell your story, but here's how to uncover your story, which especially when you're working in those populations, it's got to be such an incredible experience to be a part of from your

side also. Absolutely amazing. I mean, you know, I used to write in grant applications that shaping the narratives of their stories also helped them shape the narrative of their lives. And I thought it sounded really clever and perhaps it helped us get a grant or two. But I also came to find it to be true that there is an enormous sense of empowerment that comes from telling your own story and from learning how to shape that story. And you begin to see patterns of cause and effect, and you begin to view your own life as a narrative, and as a narrative that you are in control of, as opposed to a narrative that's just sort of a runaway train and you're hanging on for dear life.

And a lot of the people we worked with were in that situation, right, because their lives had been derailed in some way or another, and they were trying to find their way back. And so this whole idea of, oh, it's a narrative, and I have some power over that narrative to shape it, both when I'm telling my story, but also when I'm living my life, I think was really empowering for people. And it was incredibly moving and wonderful. And yeah, maybe my favorite thing that I've ever done professionally. Yeah. I mean, when you drop into that scenario also, how do you actually, because you're the person who comes in and says, okay, so I'm going to help you understand how to do this whole thing,

but you're pretty new to it yourself. Oh my God. So what were you drawing on that basically said, well, you know, walk in the room and have some sense of, I can tell you how to do this. No, it was crazy. I mean, I really couldn't, you know, and that characterized a lot of my early years at the Moth, you know. The people who hired me were amazing in empowering me in that way. Probably by the time I went to work at the Moth, I was maybe 28, I think, when I first went to work there. And we just learned by doing. But I was terrified, to be honest. I had, you know, volunteers that I would train to go in with me and help get people, draw people's stories out of them and help work with them to shape the stories.

And, you know, the first times that I was trying to teach these volunteers how to do this thing that I barely knew what to do. Yeah, I mean, because it's sort of like there's the added pressure of, well, I'm not just helping some random person, you know, learn how to tell a story about their lives. But it's almost like I'm helping these people who've been through so much make sense to a certain extent of what they've been through and if i get that wrong and it's not just about you know like well okay so they won't be able to tell a good story like maybe they're not

going to be able to create that sense of meaning or understanding about their own their own personal life and and what they've been through and the suffering and the struggle. I mean, it's a whole different level of pressure. It's true, but at the same time, you know, I think that very often, you know, just sitting down next to someone and saying, I'm interested, I want to hear your story, is important and empowering for them.

You know, so many people in these situations don't really have a voice, aren't really heard, right? There are just statistics. Nobody really wants to hear the story behind it. And, you know, when I say we would pick stories for the big shows, occasionally that was part of that was like, oh, we're doing a big fancy show at the Museum of Natural History in the Whale Room. Well, let's bring up one of the guys from the shelters and have his story there because, you know, that way, that whole community is also going to get exposed to these other existences in New York City, right, in that multi-layered city. So that was part of it. But I think the point of it was not to recruit storytellers for our main stage shows. The point of it really was to empower these populations and to say, we are interested and we want to hear you. And I always said to the volunteers that I trained, you know,

challenge them to really tell their stories well. Like, yes, it's a first important step to just sit down and say, I'm interested in your story. I'm interested in who you are. I'm interested in what happened to you. But, you know, that said, I would also say to the volunteers, really challenge them because we're not here out of pity. Like if we're here out of pity, it creates a bad dynamic. And there are so many other services that are like, oh, let me go do that. Let me hold your hand or be a friend to you or be a big brother or be other things. There are other organizations that service that. We are a storytelling organization. We're here because we want to teach them something. We want to expect something of them. We want something from them. And there's that exchange. And that I think very quickly got us between this sort of us and them, you know,

because it was like, we're not here out of pity. We're here because we're genuinely interested in your story. So we would challenge them to really tell the stories as well as they could. But you know, when you say, well, the stakes were high. Yeah, but at the same time, you know, so what if somebody bombed, right? Maybe it was more important that he got a chance to do it and that everybody cheered. Because, you know, I mean, I remember in the very first workshop, we had a guy who on day one sat and just looked at his feet. And the whole time, you know, and there were only 10 people maybe who had signed up. I think I limited it to 10 then. And we could barely hear what he said when he said his name.

You know, we went around and all introduced ourselves. And he just said his first name. we could barely hear what he said when he said his name. You know, we went around and all introduced ourselves. And he just said his first name. We could barely hear what he said. He didn't say a word for the entire class. And he ended up at the final show telling a great story, right? And for someone so shy to overcome that and stand in a room of 200 people and tell his story, the empowerment of that in itself, even if it didn't have the perfect arc or the perfect shape or wasn't the perfect story, you know, was incredible. And the guy with who had

pussy eater tattooed on his face ended up telling a story about how, you know, his lifelong dream of owning a flower shop. And so, you know, there were a lot of really surprising things. But the other thing I remember I often said was don't, you know, necessarily make a story about what they've been through or why they're homeless or why they're in prison or what has happened to get to this point. We're just interested in having them tell the best story that they can tell and whatever they want to talk about, because I don't want it to be this kind of thing where it's like, let's go talk to the homeless guys and hear homeless stories, right? So they would also tell stories about all kinds of things. One of them was a great natural storyteller. And I remember he told a story about, you know, you always remember these

early workshops, right? Every story is imprinted in your brain because it was like the first one and your stakes were felt so high. But I remember one of them told a story about stealing his grandfather's dentures when he was a kid because he had lost a tooth. He'd gotten a quarter from the tooth fairy. And he was like, wait, this is a great racket. Like if I can get my hands on some more teeth, I could make a killing. So he stole his grandfather's dentures, put them under his pillow, and, you know, was greatly disappointed the next morning when there were no dollars under his pillow. So, you know, people told all kinds of stories. And that was also very important for me because I didn't want them to be pigeonholed as like the poor homeless people, you know? Yeah. I think that's such a great lesson.

Also, I think just to learn for all of us is because I have the sense that we're all looking, you know, to live and then be able to tell the great story of our lives rather than like, what if we actually just really became present and aware of all the little tiny moments that pass and how magical even the slightest little thing really is. And that any one of those, you know, can become the stories that woven together, you know, make this beautiful tapestry and like a deeply storied and fulfilling life. Totally. Yeah. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So you start out there in the community outreach side, but pretty quickly you rise up and you end up, I guess, the creative and financial director. So essentially you're running the whole thing. I mean, you know, along with a couple of other people, but you go from being the outreach person to the person who's largely in charge of the main stage shows and sort of like running a large part of the organization, right? Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. I became the producer with the woman who was the director at the time. So I went from having a part-time job with the outreach to kind of having that plus being the main stage producer. And then when I'd been there for about a year and a half, she left. And so I found myself

with the moth in like a lot of boxes. We'd been working out of her apartment in Brooklyn, which was one of those New York City one-bedrooms that's really a studio. There was no door between the two rooms, and that was our office and her home. And so she left, and so suddenly we had no office. I mean, we meaning I, and just was standing three days before Christmas with the moth and boxes on the on the street. So, yeah, I was I had just turned 30 and I ended up running the whole thing, but luckily was able to hire someone else right right away. So it was me and one other person. And we that we had a board member who had an apartment he was selling.

But he said, oh, you know, and he'd already moved into the new apartment, but he was like, you guys can put the stuff here and sit here and work while I'm selling this place. Just don't make it look too messy, you know, because realtors will be walking through. So while we were sitting there working in one corner of this giant loft, you know, with our little mess, little pile of boxes, you know, little skyline of boxes,

and two little desks, you know, the realtor would walk through and show the apartment to prospective buyers. And of course, it sold in a few months. And anyway, so it was those types of days. Yeah. Yeah. And at that time, also, so this is still, I mean, it's growing, the reputation is growing, a lot of people are coming and becoming aware of it. But it's still bound by essentially local events. And it's also, you know, this is a nonprofit. So, you know, it's scrappy. It's, in keeping any nonprofit, you know, like you said, you're writing grants. You're constantly looking for funding.

This was not yet the way that most people got to know the moths so you know like at some point then it goes from this local thing which is kind of legendary locally to a national and then international phenomenon and that it seemed like the real catalyst for that was i guess first the radio show and then um shortly after that the podcast which is i'm curious how those came to Actually, that was the other way around. We really wanted to have a radio show. And the Moth is very much a community organization and built up by a ton of amazing people. And I just want to acknowledge that. And the staff grew and we hired more and more incredible people to work with us, many of whom are still there today. And, you know, we had a very active board and different things. So it certainly wasn't my effort. But I do remember

when I first took over as executive, I think executive and artistic director was my title at first. And, you know, the board said, oh, we need you to write, you know, like your vision plan for the Moth. And, you know, I was, had just turned 30 and had no leadership experience. And I was like, my vision plan. But I remember I found it many years later. And I, and I was like, wow, all of those things actually did come true, more or less in that order. But this was back when the woman left, who was there before, and I ended up taking over. that was in late 2001, right? So it was actually much later in 2008 that we started the podcast.

Through that time, we had been growing steadily in various ways. But yeah, the big national breakthrough kind of came from that. And so I thought that The Moth should be a radio show, and so did many other people. And there was interest in making it a TV show. There probably still is, but it's really hard to make something like The Moth work for TV, we found. But The Moth was bound by an interesting situation where it was, at the time, we felt like a lot of the intimacy really depended on the storytellers, you know, speaking to a fairly intimate audience. We thought if we blow it up to 3,000 people, you know, we're going to lose some of that connection between the storyteller and the audience and a lot of what makes the moth feel

special. You know, we wanted to preserve the intimacy, but it took, it was extraordinarily time consuming to produce these shows because we've worked one-on-one with each storyteller for the main stage shows, right? And they still do. And so it takes an enormous effort to make these shows that seem like no effort has gone in at all. And it's very off the cuff. And so to do all that and then sell maybe 300 tickets, and even if it sold out overnight, it just wasn't financially a very good model. But we thought, well, instead of making it, you know, where we sell 3,000 tickets, if we could bottle that intimacy and then share it with a much larger audience through something like radio, you know, that would really be a better way to scale the moth than to just make the shows bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And I think that was a really key insight we had at the time. And the other was that radio would be the optimal

medium for something like the moth. We also videotaped all the stories. But if you sat and watched a 12 or 14 minute video of a person telling a story, you know, if it compared to the pace we're used to in TV, it just was like, who is this comedian who's bombing, you know, because it just, we're not used to that on television. And there's also, you know, you would think that in a way that television is more intimate than radio, because there's a lot that you can't get in radio, right? If somebody's holding up and here, you know, is the T-shirt that I wore that day or here's the trophy that I won that day or whatever it is. You can't see that. You can't see the expressions on their faces, the whites in their eyes, the quiver of their lips or whatever it may be.

Right. So you'd think that so much is lost. But actually, it's kind of the other way around. I think audio is such an incredibly intimate medium. And just like when you're reading books, you sort of are able to fill out the visuals for yourself. And it's almost distracting to have that camera. I found at least at the time that on video, you know, and probably some brilliant person will make them off into a TV show one day if the people who are still there want it to be one. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it wasn't an obvious thing because actually there was

something distancing about the camera where you felt like when you watched a video, you were reminded that you weren't there in a room where something incredibly special and very connecting and very communal had gone on and where you could hear a pin drop in the room, you know, it feels like everyone is holding hands under the table. And that feeling at the Moth was part of what made it special. And whereas audio, you know, took something away, but also gave you that feeling that you were intimately connected with the storyteller. And so we had this vision that the way to really scale the Moth would be radio. We had a problem, which was that there was nobody who really wanted our radio show. I mean, back then there was no podcasting, right? And the only way to get a radio show was to have some major gatekeeper at a major station. Usually you would get on your local station. It was very rare that you would go straight to national, but we knocked on every door. We knocked on every local door, every national door, and nobody at the time thought that there should be a moth radio show

where we're willing to gamble on it at the time. But we were quite clever in that we recorded the stories really well for all those years. And so I remember in 2008, or I don't know when podcasting first came out, maybe in 2006, five or six. And I remember Dan Kennedy, who still hosts The Moth frequently and did then, he emailed me the press release when Apple said, you know, we're starting something called podcasting. And he was like, I think this would be brilliant for The Moth. And my first reaction was, well, that's crazy. What would we give away the content for free? I mean, here we've been working like beasts till 11 o'clock every night, sitting on the floor, eating, you know, cold canned ravioli because we're so poor and so stressed.

And like the only thing we have of any value is this archive of incredible stories that we have built up over the years through all that hard work. And so give that away for free seemed insane, you know, sort of like the same reaction that the music business and everybody had at first to this new technology, I'll confess. So it took a couple of years. But then, you know, when the final door that I could find to knock on or we could find to knock on for the radio show had been sort of closed in our face, then, you know, it's like, well, what do we have to lose? Why not just, you know, do a podcast? And so we started putting out the stories, just individual stories, one by one. We did not know a lot about podcasting at all,

but it just very quickly took off. And then suddenly everybody was like, oh, wait, don't you want to do a radio show? And we were like, yeah, actually, that would be a really good idea. That's so funny. So podcasting, even though it was so early in the game, was really the proof that public radio needed to be able to sort of understand that this is something that's viable. So that's so fascinating that you sort of reverse engineered it that way. I didn't realize that. Well, there were lots of people who thought it should be a radio show, right? There were lots of people that I knew who were radio producers or worked at radio stations who were like, why is this not a radio show? You know, we tried every avenue, right?

So one producer at the Moth who's still there, she, I can't remember, she knew a woman who moved to be a writer for Garrison Keillor. And she was like, put these CDs in his car, will you please? And my boyfriend at the time was doing an interview with Garrison Keeler for a book. And I gave him the CDs and said, you know, give him these CDs. And we got to meet him very briefly backstage at a show. And I was like, we're from the, you know, and we invited him to come host our benefit. And he saw that and he was like, why is this not a radio show? And he flew me and another person to Minneapolis to try to set that up. But that was right when the wheels were starting to roll and we ended up having a lot of offers.

But there were people out there who thought it should be a radio show. But back then it was like there was only 24 hours in the day. And every radio station already had, of course, a full broadcast slate. They didn't have an hour of dead air, right? So in order to slot you in, they would have to knock somebody else out. And that was just such a brutal system. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. So those two things happen. And then along with the local shows, over the next handful of years, this thing starts to just explode in scale. Like you said, you know, you could leverage the stories that were being told locally to grow a national and eventually global audience around all these things as this is all growing

though. And you're sort of, you know, one of the people who's steering the ship, you know, along with a team of people and it's getting bigger and bigger. There's other things. I mean, on a personal level, it sounds like it's also, it's taking up, it's essentially devouring every waking hour of your life and taking a toll. Yeah. I mean, the first year I ran The Moth, you know, you asked, how did you know how to do this? I really didn't, right? I was directing all the shows that first year and I had never directed before. And I had never even sat in on a rehearsal because, you know, we had a very antiquated system before that when we were

just so scrappy and we'd worked out of the former director's studio apartment, as I mentioned. And, you know, and so I would be in the office till 11 p.m. taking RSVPs for the shows. We didn't even have a ticket system right when they were doing rehearsal. So I'd never sat in on a rehearsal. I was like and we actually had a TV contract then for with a small little TV network called Trio at the time. So I had to produce like two shows in one night, you know, because they wanted to maximize, you know, what they got for the expense of bringing out all these cameras and whatnot. So I had to do produce two shows in one night. I'd never done it before. You know, I, it was terrifying and we had quite a bit of debt and I had never done any fundraising and we had to figure out how to get that paid off. And I mean,

I came home crying every night for the first year. I worked so late and I would just come home to my then husband and weep from just fear and exhaustion. And it was really hard. And then, you know, we continued to work really hard. And I think a lot of that in hindsight was also of my own doing. You know, just like when you leave a partner, a husband, a wife, or whatever it may be, and you know, and then you enter a new relationship and you're like, oh, all these things that I thought was this annoying person's fault, and surely only them, because I'm perfect and I don't make any mistakes. You know, then you get a new boyfriend and you're like, oh, wait, he's complaining about the same things. And I'm irritated about the same things with him or some other things with him. And similarly, once I

started Strangers and, you know, which is my now show and was just as exhausted and was just as worn out and it was all me and I was making all the decisions and, you know, there was nobody else swinging the whip. And, you know, I realized that a lot of the tendency towards putting too many logs on the fire and just letting my ambition kind of run away from me and being willing to sacrifice almost everything on that altar, like the only thing that mattered was success. I realized in hindsight that I created an atmosphere like that at the Moth, not just for me, but also for everyone else who worked there. And that it was pretty toxic. And, you know, so I don't want to put it all on like, yeah, it's really hard to build an organization. It is. And to some degree, your willingness to work incredibly hard is also part of what creates the success.

Right. And that's part of why that wheel is hard to step out of is because to some degree it does pay off, right? But, you know, you have to learn to let go. You have to learn to delegate and, you know, not think that you personally are holding together the entire universe at all times of the day. And if you let go for five seconds, it's going to fall apart. And I think I was very much in that mentality. So some aspects of what was hard about it were definitely of my own doing. And I feel sorry also for the other people who had to endure, you know, that pace and that atmosphere. But, you know, there's also just a reality that it's incredibly hard to build up an organization and the infrastructure of that and the finances. And after 9-11 in New York and all nonprofit

funding was down and, you know, you have to be willing to work hard, for sure. I don't think you can do it without working hard. But there's like a sort of a punishing level, you know, that, that I think I added to it. I, one of my favorite yoga teachers always says there are no extra points for suffering, right? And I had not learned that yet. I thought there were extra points for suffering, right? And I had not learned that yet. I thought there were extra points for suffering. Yeah. So what happens, because you're sort of in there hard driving, helping to grow the organization. It's getting really big. Things aren't getting easier though. You mentioned Strangers, which is the project that you split off to launch 2013 first started, is that right? 2012. 2012. Okay. Tell me how that transition

unfolds. So like what happens when you finally exit the moth? Was that the type of thing where it was sort of like gradual leading up to that and then it just made sense? Or did something happen where you're sort of traumatically out and then it's time for you to embrace something that you owned? Yeah, the board fired me. So that's what happened. And I remember they said, it's not performance, it's communication. I had done very well at raising the money and building up the organization with their help also, obviously, and the help of others. But I was not an easy person to deal with then, I don't think. That's not to, you know, place all the blame on myself. Things are complicated. They're a dynamic. But, you know, and there's often a tension, I think, in nonprofit organizations, which between

the board and the people who work day to day, because the board doesn't work there, right? So they come in. And I think I never fundamentally accepted that premise that like, here are people that only I only see every eight weeks. And they're like, oh, no, don't do it like this. Do it like that. And I'd be like, what? Like, who are you? Like, no. You know, and so I was very I think I might have fired me, too. I think nobody would dispute what I I did for the moth. And I'm grateful for that. And I learned a lot and I'm proud of it. And it gave me a great platform to jump off and do something else. And so I don't have very many

regrets now, but at the time it was horrible because I was engaged to be married and I, and I actually tell this story, you know, on my show, but I was engaged to be married and I was pregnant. And when this all started to unfold, right. And, and by the time it was over, I had been fired and my fiance had left me and I found myself with a tiny infant and out of a job and single and, you know, pushing 40 and I'd given 10 years of my life to the moth. And it was my entire community, you know, in New York. I mean, every friend I had, every acquaintance was someone who came to the main stage or came to the slams or volunteered or was involved in some way, hosted or whatever it might've been, right? So it was like my whole world collapsed. And my response to that at the time was not to go, oh, let me pause and figure

out, you know, why that happened. And just as I thought, oh, the moth is a huge hit. I'm engaged to be married. I'm pregnant. You know, I remember I told my therapist, like, I have everything I've ever wanted, right? And I just, I cried my way through five years of therapy, right? But that one week, it just looked like everything was perfect. And that was like the week, you know, later I would learn that that same week, different things happened that would ultimately lead over the course of the next year to my ouster from both my relationship and my job. And so I was very much living a story of what my life was then. And it didn't fit with the storyline. So I didn't pause to kind of figure out, wait, why is this so radically different from the story I

have in my head about where everything is at? I just, you know, decided, let me just go show them all. I'm going to move to another coast and I'm going to start another show and I'm going to get another man and I'm going to... And so then I just started it over. I was like, okay, Boulderville, you know, down to the bottom of the mountain, I'm a little tired. I'm a little worse for the wear, but I also have some experience. So let me just, you know, put on some gloves and start, you know, pushing it back up the hill. And that was incredibly, incredibly hard to do. And it was from such a place of, you know, let me show them and ego and defeat and a lot of hard things. So that caused me to have to put my now show on hiatus a couple of years ago because I finally hit the wall. Yeah. I mean, you end up starting your own show, Strangers. You move to LA

and now you have a lot of chops. So the show actually gets a lot of early traction. You end up getting aligned with sort of like a hot podcast network fairly soon after that. And it seems from the outside looking in that, okay, so this was a hard stop, but there's a whole new thing. You have ownership, you have total control, you're in a new place, people are talking. There's a lot of buzz around this new thing that you're creating. And from the outside looking in, it's like, well, this is pretty amazing. And then, like you said, you get to, I guess, 2017-ish, I guess, towards the latter part of 2017.

All of a sudden, this show just kind of stops. And it wasn't just that the show stopped. It was that everything kind of came to a head with you. Yeah, totally. Just everything that I had been running away from my whole life. I mean, yeah, I just kind of fell apart. I tell this story just now as I'm coming back. I just released an episode recently that kind of tells the story and goes back 10 years and kind of shows this mentality and this mindset. And I think the wall I really hit was that I was not, it had been a long time since I did it for fun or for enjoyment, you know, and there were a lot of factors. I mean, some of them were deadlines, you know, that are imposed by the outside world. Right. But really, I knew that the problem was me. Right. Because I you know, you look back, you get to 40 or 48 as I am now. And, you know, you look back on 10 or 20 years and you're like, wait, who's the constant? Right. And and me. But the way I told the story on the show is I actually happened to go to this house with the same group of people for 10 years.

And the first year I got engaged at the tip of the point on Cape Cod at this gorgeous house. Right. To the man who I ended up breaking up with, my son's father. And we're very good friends today. And we've actually been working on trying to do a story together. But that that has not always been the case. But, you know, I got engaged there. And then things started, you know, the next year I came there pregnant and alone and freshly heartbroken. And the year after that, you know, I'd just been fired. And so it was just like starting at this house was like when I was at the pinnacle.

And then it was just one long kind of sliding down from there. That's how it felt. And like you said, I don't think it looked that way to anybody else at that house or in the world. But internally to me, I had not satisfied my own success criteria. I, you know, I had not processed this trauma it was of losing my whole life, but I'd also not processed, you know, the things that had made me as an intern, you know, at 19 or 23, you know, be the last person in the office, right? I was closing the office when I was an unpaid intern and putting out the newsletter by myself. So you start to look at those things and you go, wait, maybe this pattern is also really, I could keep blaming

everybody else and I could stay miserable or I could start figuring out how it is that I'm creating this situation where I'm so stressed out and not enjoying it. So yeah, I thought I would be gone for a couple of months and I ended up being gone for over two years. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results

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Flight risk. Yeah, I'm curious about that window because you hit a point where you make a decision that I need to just kind of put this on hiatus to process some stuff. And as it extends past this short window of time, because to a certain extent also that had become your identity, it also become a source of money for you. Once you start to realize, okay, for me to go all in, to really get through what I need to get through on a personal and emotional and psychological level, this may take a long time. And clearly you made that decision. And then just a couple of months ago, all of a sudden the feed on Stranger, your show, goes live again. What happens to make you say, it's time, I'm ready. And how do I step back into this? Well, you know, I'd, I'd spend a year trying to figure that out, right. And being like, okay, so I should do all the things that you do. You know, I should, you know, write to

Apple podcasts and say, will you feature the show? I'm coming back after a good long hiatus, and they've been kind to me in the past, and I should line up press, and I should da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then I was like, no, I don't think I want to start it that way. My plan was to really just put the show on Patreon and be like, I don't care if, you know, if I could get to 5,000 listeners on Patreon and that could sustain me, why do I need 500,000? Really, like, all I want is to do my work and be able to make a living that's decent, you know, where my expenses are covered and I can live and, you know, we can live. My partner does the music and mixes the show, right? So, you know, there could be a little bit of money for him and enough for me for that to be our livelihood. And so I thought, I really don't want to deal with the commercial podcast market because I've been so burned out, by the way.

I felt like there was always this, you know, regularity and frequency are God. You know what I mean? You must put out as many shows as you possibly can at all times and with unwavering regularity. So you can never take like a month off because you need a vacation, right? You have to put out episodes every two weeks. And I hated that part of it. But, and I don't know that that's the only way to do it. If some sponsor came along now and said, we'd like to work with you and be a seasoned sponsor, and I'm open to sponsorship, right?

But I thought they need episodes six months in advance. I mean, I really had a kind of breakdown, right? If we take a step back two and a half years ago, I used that word. And then I think, well, maybe it sounds too dramatic because I didn't end up on medication or in the hospital or, you know, but I could not keep going. And I cried a lot. And I started going to yoga every day. And I wasn't able to do very much work. And I was not able to do anything public. So the choice in some ways was made for me. I mean, I think when you hit that wall in your life, which most people are gonna in some form or another,

if they're not workaholics, like I was, maybe they're not going to hit it with workaholism. Maybe they're going to hit it with isolation because they're so shy that they never leave the house. I mean, there are many forms that this can take. But whatever our tendency is, right, there's going to come a moment in our lives in middle age where we first of all have that like, wait, I look back on 20 years of working and who's the constant, right? But also where we find that the cost of continuing the way we have been is getting to be greater than the benefit of whatever that was designed to protect us from. And so when we hit those walls are like, no, I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to pause. I'm not going to listen. I'm not going to learn. I'm not going to bend into my tight hamstrings and lean into my painful past and figure out what went wrong here.

I'm just going to insist on keeping it up the way I always did. You know, you, I think, end up having to twist yourself into a pretty ugly and miserable pretzel, right? And so, yeah, I hit a wall and maybe I could have kept going if I had decided to double down on the strategy. But I had already for a while been doing some self-exploration work and really feeling like I would like to find a way to be happier in this life because a lot of what I had set out to do after the moth had succeeded. I had a new man. We had bought a

beautiful house with a pool and palm trees. And we had three kids between us and we had, you know, successful careers. And so from the outside, it sort of looked like I had succeeded or I had won. And I was like, wait, this is the second time that I'm in a position where a lot of people would look at my life with envy and feel miserable. Right. And so I had already been working on that for a while. And then, you know, some things happened that just made me realize that sort of brought to highlight it, how much I was living in a, in denial and, and how little I was able to be authentic in my relationship and my work and my relationship to myself and to everybody around me. And I just felt like that was more important than anything else. And so I didn't even properly, you know, say, hey, I'm going on hiatus. It's going to be

a while. I'm taking a creative break. I hope you understand. I said, I'll be back in two months. And then I just never came back. And I didn't even want to go to the listeners and say, here's the plan, because I didn't have one. I didn't want to cry to them again, because I already had. I didn't want to, you know, so I thought I don't want to speak to them until I have something to say. And I didn't care. I think I also needed to get to that place. I saw my Apple podcast, like ratings, you know, I had very few one star ratings. And when I just disappeared, you know, I just saw them grow and grow and grow. And I was like, when I'm at the point where I don't even care, or it's been a year since the last time I even checked my stats or who

was rated or reviewed the show, maybe then I'll be ready to come back. And I totally got to that place. I needed to be totally separate from what anyone thought of me in order to focus on my own healing. And that's pretty much all I've done. I mean, aside from doing some money work, you know, I teach corporations how to be better storytellers, for instance, sometimes and other things for money. But coming back, I thought if I could just have 5,000 listeners and live that way, then that's all I need. And I wasn't going to release it publicly, maybe an episode here or there as kind of teasers. But then the whole pandemic happened. And I thought people really need something. And right now, you know, when it was first happening and everybody was freaking out and everybody was, some people were going crazy. And I now, you know, when it was first happening and everybody was freaking out and everybody was, some people were going crazy.

And I thought, wow, I have these stories that I've slowly been releasing over on Patreon for a very small group. I have not announced it publicly yet, just once, like on Facebook and a little group had come in, but I'd not started promoting it. And I thought, well, I could just start dropping them in the feed with no ads, no plan, no press, no nothing. Like I haven't even, I put up one called the Cape chapter one, and I originally had a chapter two and chapter three, but for complicated reasons involving other people, I had to take them down. And I I'm working on another story now. I don't even have a chapter two. And like, that would be so against the rules of podcasting. Like, you know, if you're coming back, you've got to drop like one every three days to really get the algorithms going. And I was like, I don't mind sharing things with people publicly. And if enough people are willing to support me on Patreon and I can live that way, if people enjoy my stories and people are sad, if they can't afford to get them on Patreon, even though it's only a buck a month, you know, then I don't mind putting them out publicly. All I don't want is that thing where I'm like constantly looking at my ratings,

constantly looking at my reviews, constantly having to answer to agents and sponsors who want five interruptions of some heartfelt story. You know, they want me to break in with five mid-rolls. And I just was so sick of negotiating that whole thing. That was just so counter to the way I was trying to live my life and come back in a healing way that I wasn't going to release them publicly at all.

But then when the pandemic hit and I thought, oh, people could use some stories. I have some stories lying around. Let me just put them out there. And then it's actually been quite rewarding because it's helped build the Patreon in a nice way. And I've not pulled many of the levers still that I could if I really want to blow the doors open. But I don't think I'm quite ready for that. I really want it to be a slow build so that I don't get my own ego or ambition don't run away with me. Right.

And it's that whole thing. You know, it's the repeated pattern. And you did the thing where you said it's time to shut this down and step away and take a couple of years and really understand who I am and what I want from whatever it is that I call work and make my contribution and my art. And now as you step back into it, it's really interesting to see how you're thinking through, okay, so how do I do the thing that I love to do? How do I put it out into the world? But how do I offer it in a way that is in alignment, not with what my old

self would do and not even in alignment with what I know I could do if I really wanted to. You have the resources, you have the relationships, you have the skill and the craft to go back in and do this thing that would make you pop and get really big and be the super commercial and regimented. But it's interesting to see you making decisions that say okay um my primary drive here is to step back into this world from a place that is so much better aligned with who i am and what i want from my life at this moment in time and it's almost like the work for you is to resist pushing too hard, is to resist, it's almost like you're saying no to the things you know you could do and very likely succeed at because you know where that leads you.

Yeah, well, you know, I think the big shift for me is that I feel like before the stories I did were always a means to an end. They were never the end in and of themselves. And the end that they were a means to an end. They were never the end in and of themselves. And the end that they were a means to was very much about what can it bring me in terms of downloads, accolades, clicks, money, not so much money, more the other stuff. But, you know, and that's a fundamentally unsatisfying place to come from, especially if you want to be an artist. And I've never called myself an artist before. Like I would almost choke on the word because it sounded so, I don't know, conceited, I guess.

And I was like, no, I'm just, I help, you know, I tell people's stories. But I actually, I'm practicing now calling myself an artist. You can tell that I still have to offer a few caveats because I still worry that I sound a little conceited. But I want to come at it from a place of being an artist or thinking like an artist and doing the stories for that sake and not for what they can bring me for a lot of reasons. But starting with the fact that I think it's really toxic and ultimately unfulfilling for me when I do it in the other way. I mean, the lesson I could have learned from the moth was that all that success didn't bring me a whole lot of joy. When you're living in that very ego way, and I'm sorry, it's such an overused and cliche word, but it is also

the easiest shorthand for a particular kind of way to live that's not being very present or centered in yourself or very in touch with what's real or what actually works for you, right? But you're driven by these ideas of what you ought to be. And I guess that's what I mean when I use that word, or that's part of what I mean. And what you don't realize is that you can never satisfy that it's a black hole, right? There are more and more and more success, but like 10 years of the moth, we grew and grew and grew and grew and had more and more success and did better and better. And I just kept putting more logs on the fire and it never fulfilled me. And yeah, I would have moments of, you know, you get a little fix, like a sugar high

of like, wow, that was a great thing that just happened, or this week we're a hit, or, you know, but it didn't fundamentally fulfill me in any kind of way. And so then I got fired, and then I started seeking that again, and built that up to a level where there had been enough triumphs and moments, you know, for me to know that if that was going to do it for me, it would have. The only option was to find another way. Yeah. No, I love it. It's so interesting to see how, number one, I'm happy you're back because you are a stunning storyteller and curator of stories. And it's nice to see you really doing it, choosing the stories you want, doing it the way you want, and also bringing so much of yourself to the center of what

you're doing now. And I love how you're just sort of like making choices from a different place right now and how that shows up. It's sort of like you're putting the same level of intention and craft into the life you want to live as you are to the work that you want to put out into the world. I think it's a really hard place for so many of us to land. I think that's so much of the work for so many of us. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So sitting here in the container of the Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I'm trying to think, how do you answer that without stepping into a cliche.

For me, it's really about being in my life at all. I feel like I've lived much of my life like it was a story that I was shaping, sort of looking at it from the outside. And if it looked really good on paper, then that must mean that things were great. And a good life is one where you are actually in touch with what's real enough to be able to enjoy anything at all or really even live at all, right? And so I practice that every day. Now, I do yoga and meditation every day, which are, for me, essential because the pull is very strong for me. I am a storyteller, right?

So the pull to kind of narrate my life. And I am a recovering workaholic, right? And it's hard now that I'm back because there's a lot to do. I used to have a staff, but now I'm back because there's a lot to do. I used to have a staff, but now I'm the one who's contacting Spotify to find out why the new episodes are not showing up there and why, you know, there's a duplicate account and how do I not lose all my followers and why are there things going to the wrong? And oh my God, I'm doing all the technical, all the admin, all the creative, and it's a ton of work. And I, you know, every day need to do something to not

get sucked into that mentality of, oh, my, you know, if I didn't get this out today, like I said, I would, then all my patrons are going to leave me and everything is going to end up badly. And, you know, I will have failed. And, you know, fighting against that inner voice for me is, well, not so much a fight as maybe a surrender to, you know, letting go of that idea that I, first of all, control it all in such a direct way, but also that everything is going to fall apart if I don't hold on so tight all the time. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening.

And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation.

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