The Moth - 25 Years of Stories: A Look Back At The Moth Radio Hour

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

This week, we take a look at the origins of The Moth Radio Hour. This episode is hosted by Jay Allison and Viki Merrick. Host: Jay Allison and Viki Merrick Storytellers: Michaela Murphy and Buddy Vanderhoop

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's the moth.org forward slash Houston. Welcome to the moth podcast. I'm Jay Allison, a host and producer of the moth radio hour. You certainly are, and I'm Vicki Merrick, your co-producer of the Moth Radio Hour and

We're your hosts this week. Hello Vicki. Hey Jay So you may know by now that all through this year we've been celebrating 25 years of the Moth And we're showcasing stuff we think you'll like from every year the Moth's been around and in this episode We're looking at 2009. Yeah. In 2009, we continued to share some great stories, expanding story slams to Detroit and Chicago. And then we started a little show you might know called the Mothradio Hour. Root. And we're actually recording right now at Public Radio Station WCAI, which we founded right here in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

And this was the first radio station in the world to air the Moth Radio Hour. And now we're up to like 575 radio stations around the country. That's not bad. It's not bad, but you know. But we're going for world domination next. So anyway, to mark this anniversary, we want to play a couple of stories. And the first is from that inaugural episode

of the Moth Radio Hour. And it's a story that's a special favorite of Vicki and me. Yes, I just actually listened to it. And it still holds up. We've listened to it probably a thousand times. I mean, I was defying in my car yesterday. This is from Michaela Murphy, and she told it on a math main stage in New York City,

and it takes place right here on Cape Cod. So here's Michaela, live at the mall. Applause. I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, So here's Michaela, live at the Mawth. Applause I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and for my entire childhood, we were never more than 20 miles away from the core of our universe, the Kennedys. We were Irish, they were Irish, we were Catholic, they were Catholic, they were family.

We were like the relatives that they never got to see, but we knew, you know, they're busy and we knew that they loved us. So anything that was happening to them was also happening to us. So their tragedy, plus our own tragedy, was a lot. So this one Thanksgiving after dinner and a family fight at Grandma's house. We were in the car and we're driving home and the radio was playing this 10th anniversary of the JFK assassination. And I'm sitting in the back seat and I start to cry.

And my sister Aaron says, Dad, Michaela's crying. And my father pulls that car right over to the shoulder of I-95. He stops it. He turns around and he looks at us. And with tears in his own eyes, he says, don't you ever be ashamed to cry for that man. So my parents grew up near Newport and they got married in the same exact church as church's Jack and Jacky, St. Mary's. And my father gave exact replica jewelry to my mother. That was replications of the jewelry that Jack gave to Jacky. And every Saturday night

after mass, my family would be in the living room and we'd be happily ever aftering to the original soundtrack of Camelot. And every year, during the 70s, my four aunts would take me and my two cousins on their dream vacation, a rented beach house in Hyannis, on the very cove sharing beachfront with the Kennedy compound. Every day for an entire week, my aunt Pat would roll a persistors hair, my aun aunt would apply sunscreen to the back of

their necks, the backs of the hands, and the tops of their feet, and then they would drag their beach chairs down to the beach, and they would set them up perfectly, not facing the water, not into the sun for tanning, but perfectly for spying on the Kennedys. They would sit there all day in the broiling sun with high powered binoculars and keep it constant surveillance. And every year they'd have the same exact conversations. Usually around mid-morning the first sighting would be made usually by my aunt Pat, she'd be. Up, they got Rose out.

Woken. Ethel looks drawn. And then about an hour later, my aunt Gert would say, how old is Rose now? And Aunt Momo would make the calculations. Well, let's see. Jack died in 63 when she was 74. And Rose's birthday was two weeks

last Thursday, and Joe died in 69, making her a widow at 81, so 85. And then they'd break for lunch. So after lobster and drawn butter and hosing us down, they'd all hustle back to their posts, and they'd watch. And every now and then there'd be something they didn't know. Hey, who's that? Who's that? Who's that? So they'd draw out the family tree in the sand. They'd analyze it. They'd come up with a profile and they'd crack the code. It's one of Bobby's. Now any mention of Bobby would always bring up the inevitable. Oh, I just prayed a God they don't tell poor senile rose about Bobby, it'll break her. So then the long afternoon stretch would end with the inevitable annual observation.

You don't see Jackie much here. And then all of my aunts would drop their binoculars and look at each other meaningfully. Now all of us meant that no one was paying any attention to me and my cousins in the water. And the summer when we were nine years old, we found something. Now, had an aunt, perhaps, in an effort to ease a cramp in her prying neck, just sort of glance towards the water,

she might have seen us climbing into this tiny plastic, half inflated boat. She might have cried out in the alarm at the lack of ores and life-ests. She might have had a conibction fit to see a shove-off and drift into the violent riptide that would sweep us within five minutes out to the open sea and the nan-tucket-bound ferry. But, and not d't, and we did. It all happened so fast that we were swept out, and it wasn't until we realized that we could make out the specific features of the ferry

passengers that we were really far from shore. We were so far from shore that my aunts were now reduced to four hopping dots. Uh-oh, it was like Gilligan's Island for real. So an Atlantic swell crashes over our heads. And as soon as the water clears out of our eyes, a powerboat pulls up out of nowhere. And in this powerboat are David and Michael Kennedy. So David and Michael pull us up into the boat, and we are like, oh my God, we are saved by a powerboat.

So the powerboat sends us back to shore and we're psyched because we're saved until we start to watch the four hopping dots morph back into our four crazed, livid, aunts. We are so going to get it. Now, my family, under any circumstances, has this really weird thing, with each other, like their own weird thing, about yelling and getting into huge trouble. Like, my aunt Gerr, like, she gets so freaked out

that all she can do is yell out our addresses. Like, I lean in Kevin, 275 Hooper Street. Mikaela, 180 asylum road. I swear to God, I grew up on asylum road. That's very telling piece of my childhood. Or in the way, Aunt Pat would do these things where she would say these things that were like actually kind of nice things, but she'd say them like they were death threats. She'd be like, yeah, I'll save you from drowning. You get on that beach towel and you lie in that sun. Now, or she'd say, I'm gonna buy you a birthday present.

You eat that cake, now. So we knew that this is what was coming. The Kennedy boys didn't. So they were vivaciously tanned and they pull up to the shoreline and we brace ourselves. Now, what happens is our aunts are out of their minds. They're ready to flay us. But when they see us in the same boat as the Kennedys, it's like they don't have the emotional capacity to handle it. They kind of snap. They're

kind of like freaking out to yell at us, but they start fake smiling and trying to act all normal. And my aunt Momo, she's like, just takes on this Kennedy-esque way of speaking, which is sort of halfway between Katherine Hepburn and the Queen of England. And we're like, looking at them, like, what are you guys doing? And they're smiling the smile,

but when they smile at us, it's like, you just wait. But they're like, oh, David, oh, Michael, thank you, thank you, thank you. And they're not mad at us for almost drowning. They're mad at us because the Kennedys had to save us. Like, don't those people have enough trouble? Now you? Like, as if our almost drowning was yet another Kennedy tragedy.

So these poor boys finally pull and pry themselves away from my aunts. They get back on the boat, and they they're leaving and my aunt Momo's going, please give all best to your grandmother. And now it's time for our for real punishment, which was that we for the rest of vacation had to stay on the beach because we did not have any respect for the water. So it's a hundred degrees out and after about a half hour of whining and fighting and like I'm emptying out all the copper tone and kicking sand, we break my aunt Pat's last nerve and she says, all right, you can go in the water but only up to your knees. So we're

happy for a minute until we get in the water and realize how boring up to your niezes. And then we get the great plan of having chicken fights. So we start to have chicken fights, but it's kind of weird because there's only three of us. So, but we're doing the best we can to have a chicken fight like that, and knock each other off into the water so we get fully immersed.

And then my uncle Al, who never, ever played with us, ever, comes into the water to play chicken fights with us. And he puts his daughter, my cousin Eileen, up on his shoulders. And then I get up on my cousin, Kevin's shoulders. And we're having chicken fights. And it's like actual family fun for a moment. And we're like, hitting each other, falling in the water.

And then I take my foot, and I accidentally kick the side of my uncle's ass head really, really hard, and his eyeball pops out of his head, falls into the water and sinks. It pops out of his head and it sinks. Eileen, Kevin and I are in instant complete shock. Right this minute, there is still a part of me that is on that beach screaming. It's like, oh my God, we had no idea that he had a fake eye.

We didn't know that you could have a fake eye. Why would you have a fake eye? They didn't tell us that Uncle Al had a fake eye because they didn't want his blab in it to the whole neighborhood. So they didn't tell us that Uncle Al had a fake eye because they didn't want his blabbing it to the whole neighborhood. So they didn't tell us. So we didn't know. And like later on, you know, there was Colombo and Sandy Duncan, but this was way before that. We had no idea. So we're all standing there and it's like so horrible. Like I can't even like, I'm like, oh my God. And my cousins, I lean in Kevin are staring at me with complete hate. Like you broke our dad. And my cousin's Eileen and Kevin are staring at me with complete hate like you broke our dad

And my uncle Al is standing there and he's got the lid open So you can like see inside the socket where it now. It's just like skin and the eyeball gone and Like you cannot just say I'm sorry to someone that you just So I don't know what to do. And my aunt Pat is hysterically screaming because that eyeball cost top dollar. It was a special magnetized eye, so it could keep up with the other one.

And now I had just better pray that vacation was over and that they got that deposit back because now they're gonna have to buy a brand new top dollar eye and that was not in the budget. So I just didn't know what to do. I was like, my life is over. I am no longer Michaela. I am now Murf's girl who kicked Al's eye out in the cape.

And it's awful. And everybody's just crying and pointing at me. And now my other aunts are getting in on it, like, and who's the blame part of the conversation's happening. So I just kind of back off into the water. I'm kind of like going back and like regressing back to like where life as I once knew it had ended. And I just stand there and like I kind of wish I had drowned. And I kind of wish the Kennedys hadn't saved me.

And I bent off into the waves and I just start like sifting through sand and shells and pebbles. And it's totally ridiculous. But like I will never stop looking for this eye. I'm going to look forever. And I keep for this eye. I'm gonna look forever. And I keep looking and looking, and I'm sifting through, and then all of a sudden, there is an eyeball in my palm, baked, staring right at me, and so I scream, and I drop it back,

and it sinks back into the water. But now, we know it's possible. So everybody gets back into the water, and now we're all sifting through, and sifting through, and I pray to God for no more future happiness until we find this eye. And I also kind of pray that it not be me, that finds it this time. So after like an hour, my cousin Kevin finds the eye, and he holds it up in triumph, and he does not let go.

And my uncle, Al, takes the eye. He like washes it off, and just pups it back in. And then he kind of like tests it, you know, and it's like keeping up with the other one, so it's working still. And now it's the weirdest thing because now we know it's a fake eye. And now that you know it's a fake eye, it's totally looks like a fake eye. And I can't believe that I never noticed it wasn't a fake eye before. So now vacations back on. And so everybody gets back into their beach chairs and they start to settle down to begin telling the story over and over like a million times about what I just did.

And I have not really fully reintegrated back into the family yet. I'm kind of standing apart. And I notice that there actually has been like kind of a group of people who have been watching this whole thing. And then I see something that I didn't notice, that no one noticed. And that's that two of the Kennedy kids, David and Michael, had taken a walk on the beach. And I can tell just by the look on their faces

that they had stood there and seen the entire episode, that they had been there watching us. Thank you. That was Michaela Murphy. It was. And Michaela's work has been featured in the New Yorker and been produced off Broadway and at the Clinton White House. She's a co-founder of Life, which is leadership fueled by entrepreneurism, an education platform for high school students in Detroit and New York City, She's a co-founder of Life, which is leadership fueled by entrepreneurism and

Education platform for high school students in Detroit and New York City and she's currently director of education at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania. I love that story. Can you guess what my favorite line is? You know, I can't because there's so many. I mean, was it about when the aunt gets whenever she gets mad? She says every kid's name and their address? That's, that's good. No. For me, it was the one that sticks to me with me. Just like it did for Michaela, was don't ever be ashamed to cry for that man. Oh my gosh. I mean, just the feeling in that from him to her and then carried through generations and it just makes you, you know, feel the past and being carried that kind of tragedy, being carried into the future. And at the same time, it's light and its life is going on. Yeah, and she's hilarious, but also, you know, the beauty of her saying that they felt like family

because of all the things in front. Right, right. But when she says, in any time there was tragedy and I have family or their family, it was a lot, you know, because there were both tragedies in their family. Yes. Which was a gorgeous moment of like big humanity.

You know, it's like we're all kind of in the same family, which I love that part. And there's an eye that pops out. So, you know, it's like we're all kind of in the same family, which I love that part. And there's an eye that pops out. So, you know, it's a good story. All right. Well, that happened on Cape Cod over in high-annisport, not too far from here in Woods Hold, and we can visualize it perfectly. And our next story. Oh, right. Our next story, oh god it's one of our favorites also and it takes place right here well right across the vineyard sound and it was told by buddy Vanderhoop from Martha's vineyard but really you should be the one introducing this don't you think. Well not I don't know. You're both fishermen. Yeah he well we fish the waters, but he does it with a lot more success than I do.

This is a great tale of adventure. And he has success a lot, but maybe not every trip. As you'll hear. So here's Buddy Vanderhoop. He's live at the Tabernacle in Oak Dwarfs. I'm a Wampano Agindian from Gahad, from the Wampano Ag tribe of Aquina. And I had the occasion growing up talking to my elders who were seafaring men and women. My great uncle Amos Smalley, Harpoon, and killed Moby Dick, the only white sperm whale that was ever harpooned.

And I listened to stories for years, as a matter of fact, from my 10th birthday, my uncle Amos gave me one of Moby Dick's teeth, which he's scrimshod, on that trip, which is still my favorite treasure today. And some of the advice that they gave me, they told me that the ocean is a playground, but you should always respect the ocean because it can turn on you and harm you and even kill you, so just respect the ocean, which I have always done and always kept this in the back of my mind. And one day I had a tuna fish charter.

My boat was broken down and was being repaired. So a friend of mine lent me his boat, which was a 32-foot wooden boat, the escort. Charles Earl of the Tree Professor at Harvard and head of the Law Department was one of my clients in a suite. Another high-falutin lawyer from Mississippi was one of his colleagues in France was there. Charles's father-in-law was there who was 78 years old and Jen Clark decided to jump on the boat as my first mate that day. So we put all our lunches and stuff in the cooler, got all the fishing gear on the boat, headed out of Manabasha Harbor. As we rounded Gayehead, the wind was about 10 to 20 miles an hour that day. And Charles's father-in-law started getting seasick. But if you've ever been on the boat with Charles Ogletree,

it doesn't matter once you leave the dock. If you're seasick or not, you're going for the day. So we rounded Gayehead, headed down for the dumping grounds, which is 40 miles south of Gayhead, a place that was made famous by Frank Mundes in his search and quest for great white sharks, which was done in the 1950s. He caught an enormous amount of great white sharks

just south of Martha's Vineyard in those days. And we were in search of yellow fin tuna. So we get down there, it was a little bumpy going down, but it actually turned out to be quite a nice day. We set the gear out as soon as we got all eight rods in the water, three of them went off. We landed the three tuna fish, put them out again, and we were having a great day of fishing. It was beautiful, flat, calm day. And we were... This was late afternoon. We had 13 fish on the boat.

It was 3, 30 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon. We saw all the other boats heading north going home, but we decided we'd be a little greedy because we were catching so many fish. We stuck around for another round of fish. And Charles hooked into the biggest fish of the day, about 4.30, quarter five. It was about 120 pound yellow fin. And he was in the chair, reeling him in.

All of a sudden sudden I looked back and The fish is a hundred feet behind the boat and he's got a 350 pound Mako charging in on the tuna fish I said Charles real real real get that fish in the Mako hit the fish took his whole belly out I said get him in get him in so he finally Reeled him in got him to the boat. I said, get him in, get him in. So he finally reeled him in, got him to the boat. I gaffed him, pulled him over the rail, got him on the boat. He only had damage to the underside of him, so most of the fish was still good. And just about the

time that that fish hit the deck, the motor died. I said, oh no, here we are, 45 or 50 miles south of the vineyard, and the batteries are dead. I went over, I looked at Jen Clark and said, what happened? She said, the motor's solved. So I went up, turned the key, no clicks, nothing. The amateur gauge was over below nine volts. So I said, well, maybe if I give it a half an hour, 45 minutes, the battery will recharge itself. It'll come up a little bit enough to start the diesel motor. And so I cleaned the fish, cut the head of the fish off.

There were no guts left because the Mako enjoyed those. And I decided I'd put the fish head, the tuna fish head on a hook, to see if we could catch the meco that had the rest of my fish. Well, 15 minutes later, Charles hooks up to a pretty nice shark, about a 400 pound shark, got him in and it was just a blue shark. So, we pulled him in next to the boat, I cut the leader off and then I said, well, it's been about a half, 45 minutes. I'm going to try the motor again. Hit the key, nothing. So the sun's going down. It's really, we're

in a bleak situation right now. We're drifting south. We're already 45 or 50 miles south of the vineyard. I look over to the northwestern and the sky's totally black. It was just a nightmare and 10 minutes later we had a major thunderstorm over us. Lightening all around the boat, the wind picked up to 25 or 30 miles an hour. It's getting dark. And then the thunderstorms over. It's a little bit calm. The seas have built up to 48 feet. We're dead in the water in the slosh sideways. And it's just about dusk. You can just barely see the little piece of light where the horizon was. And I saw a boat on the horizon.

Well, I had brought 2,500 foot parachute flares with me on this trip. This part of my emergency kit anyway. So I shot one up and it lit up the whole ocean for a mile around us, it seemed. The boat side, it turned, saw the boat turn toward us and 20 minutes later, the boat is pretty close to us. I think the two members of the boat, the lobster boat came out on deck and they said, what's the problem? I said, well, we're broken down, the batteries are dead,

we have no way to get back to Manabshia. Could you please tell us to back to Manabshia? And the captain says, do you have any beer? Charles Ogletree said, yes, we have a six pack of red stripe beer and as the mate said, Yamann. So they throw a line over, we put the beer in a plastic bag, they pull the beer over, throw a line, we hook it up to the bow cleat, and it's 48 with seas. It's blowing 25 or 30 miles an hour. They start hauling us up north toward Martha's Vineyard.

Well, the wind is increasing all the time. It's blowing 35 now. Seas are almost 10 feet tall. Waves are crashing over the front of the boat and all of a sudden the line parts. Well, these guys are up in the pilot house and they're lobster boat, Drinking Red Stripe. They kept on going. They're, they're, they're, they're sterling, it's getting smaller and smaller, it's going down in the way and finally it's totally out of sight. I said, oh my God, these guys don't even know that they dropped us. They're drinking beer and having a blast in the wheelhouse.

Here we are back in the slosh and these 10-foot waves now, and it's just, I mean, it's critical. So finally, I see the Portland-A-Stiber light coming back to us. Half an hour later, they're beside us again. It's blowing 40 to 45 miles an hour now. And it's really, really getting nasty. So I mean, scary nasty. They threw us in line again. They told us for maybe a mile and the rope parts again.

They this time knew that they dropped us. Turned around and said, well, we can't help you anymore because the rope's too short. We don't have anything any thicker. So we're going to call the Coast Guard right now and we'll stand by you until they get here. So they call the Coast Guard. Here we are.

It's blowing 50 miles an hour now. The seas are building a 15 to 18 feet. We're sideways in this stuff and it's just the outriggers are slamming into the mass. It's just horrible scene and Dennis Sweep looks over at the other boat. They have deck lights on. They have lights on in the wheelhouse. He said, I got to get out of here. I'm going to go over to that boat. I'm swimming and I said, Dennis, how are you going to get on the boat when you get over there and did you forget about the sharks we just caught about an hour and half ago and all the blood that's been pouring out of the scuppers of this

boat since we've been rolling here in the slop so he aborted that idea pretty quickly so all of a sudden Charles his father has been seasick all day long. He's huddled in the back of the boat, he's got blankets over him, he hasn't moved one inch in five hours. Charles says, buddy, could you go over and nudge my father-in-law and see if he's still alive? So I went over, gave him a little nudge, he grunted, and he was in bad shape because he'd been dehydrated for now going on 12 hours or 13 hours and he was alive. So the boats outside of us, the coastguards on their way, all of a sudden it's blowing 60 to 70 miles an hour It's unbelievable. This is an unforecasted storm the weathermen are always right, you know

but This was totally unforecasted and we're dead and we're in 20 foot seas right now all of a sudden these two gigantic rogue waves I'm talking waves, three and a half stories big, 230, 35 foot waves. We go up this wave, come back down. The second one hits us so hard, it tips the boat up 90 degrees, the rail goes under the water,

and it seemed like the whole ocean came into the on deck at one time. We took on five to eight thousand gallons of water in that one wave and I'm getting really nervous now. Everybody else, I said, okay, don't lose your calm. That was really, really bad. I know how bad it was. Everybody put your life jackets on. Everybody get, here's a flashlight for everybody. I said, if we get a hit by another set of these ways, we're going to roll the boat over.

And don't try to go over the sides. Keep your wits about you. Go over the stern. Stay together. Put your flashlights on. Hang on to the boat. And we didn't get hit with another set like that, thank God. But just to keep people's minds occupied, I had them do a bucket brigade. Charles was in

the village. Jennifer was holding the flashlight. He passed at the dentist and I throw it overboard. We took us about an hour and a half to get all that water out of the bilge, which helped keep everybody's mind off of what was really happening because it was so unbelievable, it was mind blowing how bad the seas were that night. The Coast Guard, I saw a boat on the horizon finally. The Coast Guard, I had one more of those 200, 500 foot parachute flares. Left, I shot it off, went up, lit the whole ocean up around us. Half an hour later, the coast guy's outside of us saying, with their little bullhorn, we're going to pull up alongside you. I said, don't pull up alongside us, we have a wooden boat, where are you going to smash into you and sink?

Or are you going to smash into us and we're going to sink? I think these guys are all from Ohio or Indiana or somewhere. They've been to the Coast Guard Academy and they're now doing real-time stuff. And they had forgotten their booklets, I think, that day. So, they were so seasick, they had all their deck lights on. You could see them barfing over both sides of the boat. And they were all so weak. I was out on the front of this 28-foot boat in 25-foot seas,

holding on for dear life. I mean, I'm going, I'm like a windshield wiper the front deck going back and forth waiting for them to get a rope over me so I could hook it up so they could get us under tow, which took over an hour. I was so pissed off. I couldn't even, I couldn't even start screaming, I don't because they wouldn't do any good anyway. But they finally got a rope to us and we're under tow. We're in 20 foot seas. I mean, the waves are just coming totally over our boat, which was pretty scary in itself.

We had no build pump. We had no electricity whatsoever. We couldn't even communicate with the boat that was towing us. So it took 23 hours for them to tell us back to Manemsa. So all in all, it was a 34-hour tuna fishing trip. Finally, we got back. Nobody gave a shit about all the tuna fish we had. They loved ones around the dock. Everybody's getting hugs tears, and everything is hunky-dory, because we're alive. And I attribute this to my elders that gave me the advice that, and I'd like to pass this on to everyone in the audience,

that you have to respect the ocean. The ocean's a great playground, but you have to respect it, because it will kill you. And Charles Ogletree still goes fishing with me. He's my best client. Dennis Sweet, he will fish with me if I have two keys, which means you have two engines, so you can get back on one.

Charles Ogletree's stepdad will never step foot on another fishing boat as long as it live and that's my story. Thank you very much. That is fishermen buddy Vanderhoop. Captain Buddy Vanderhoop is a member of the Wampanoag tribe of Aquina in Massachusetts. He owns and operates Tomahawk fishing charters on Martha's Vineyard and is widely known for his ability to catch big fish. Since the story originally aired, he now has a new boat. Hopefully the battery is working.

A 35-foot Viking. Do you remember watching him tell that story over in the tower, Nekkel? Oh my god, my hands were sweating. Do you remember how he held his hands and he kept looking at Meg, his director? Like, am I doing alright? He held his hands at his side and they were shaking the whole time. And he's a big man. He's like six, eight or something and he's big, you know, like strong man. He's a strong guy. Yeah. Yeah, and he told, he said to me afterwards, he said,

yeah, that was a scary night, but not as scary as standing up there and telling that story. Oh, I mean, the building, I always equate that experience of listening to that story. It was like being in a storm because the waves of like, what, another bad thing, another bad thing, just it was like one after another. It was so powerful. I literally jumped out of my seat at one point. I think towards the end and just jumped up in the air. I was, yeah, totally excited.

I was excited. So many great stories at the moth over the, over the 25 years, thousands of them. And I don't know how many episodes of the moth over the over the 25 years, thousands of them. And I don't know how many episodes of the moth radio hour have we produced. I should have to think. I tried to figure it out yesterday with Emily Kouch and I think it's like 285 radio hours. That's a lot. That's a average four to five stories per hour. So we're in the thousands and that is the tip of the iceberg. And I don't know, do you ever get bored of it because I have to say I do not really.

Once in a while maybe I'll hear a story I'm not crazy about, but I feel like if you're bored with the moth, you're bored with life. It's true. Or you hate people or something because man, all the experiences out there, how can you not want to know about more of them? Well yeah, and also you have always said something

interest me like when I would ask you once and I'll do you think that there are a finite number of good stories in the world and you always say no like you don't even hesitate. But the thing that I love especially about the math stories that you always point out to me is like, you kind of absorb them and then you tell them to somebody else, almost as if they're your own. And again, it's that beautiful sort of like encircling of humanity. And you step outside of the box, you know?

You know, somebody else's life and experience, and you can relate, suddenly. Yeah, I tell my kids most stories at the dinner table all the time that aren't mine, but they're getting carried on anyway, which is sort of a lovely human thing. Oh my God, that's a great thing to say. That makes me my life feel so much more meaningful for having you say that. That's great. Well, look, it's a great pleasure to produce a show with you, Vic. Oh my God, yeah. And then with the team at the Moth who are wonderful the directors I mean they're they're kind of behind the curtain but man oh man

always inspiring. They do they they make it really work and make it special. So that's it for this week. We hope you enjoyed a look back at the Moth in the Moth radio hour. Yeah, and from all of us, all of us here at the moth, as they say, have a story worthy week, but tell us a story. Hey, man. Next time. Jay Allison is an independent journalist and would have public radio's most honored producers. The recipient of 6P Body Awards, Jay was the host and curator of this, I believe, on NPR and co-graded the acclaimed websites, Transom.org and the public radio exchange.

He is currently a host and producer of the Moth Radio Hour and Executive Director of Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Vicki Merrick is an independent radio producer, voice coach, and editor. She's been a collaborator with Jay for many years, including on four Peabody award-winning projects, Lost and Found Sound, The Sonic Memorial Project, Transom.org, and The Mouth Radio Hour. A special thanks to WCAI in Woodssoh, Massachusetts for the use of their recording studio. This episode of the Moth Podcast was produced by Katherine Burns, Sarah Austin-Junez, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of

the Moths leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Kluccheye, Suzanne Rust, Inka Gladowski, Aldi Kaza, and Brandon Grant. All Moss stories are true, as remembered by Storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth podcast is presented by PIRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at pirex.org.