The Moth - 25 Years of Stories: Truth

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

This week, we hear a discussion about truth in storytelling. This episode is hosted by Kate Tellers. Host: Kate Tellers Storyteller: Dorothy Storck Discussion: Kate Tellers, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson

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 slashon to experience a live show near you. That's theMoth.org-FordslashHuston. Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Tellers. For 2022, the 25th anniversary of the Moth, we've been counting down and celebrating every year the Moths been around. This episode we're at 2012, which is the year we formalized our education program. Through workshops and story slams, the education program provides students and teachers with a forum to share personal stories with one another, then on a stage, and often on this

very podcast. EDU reaches hundreds of middle and high school students and teachers every year all across the country. And at the Moth we know that every level of education can be story worthy, which is why since 2006 we've been developing stories from Barnard College alums for a special event at their annual reunion. We'll be playing one of those stories, and then I'll be chatting a bit with my co-authors about how it relates to a conversation we've been having when we talk about our new, now-New York Times best-selling book, How to Tell a Story, the essential guide to memorable storytelling from the Moth. Before we listen, I should note,

this was before we had a podcast or radio program, so the audio here is not perfect. We think it's worth it. Here's Dorothy Stork. APPLAUSE Hi, I transferred up because I was working part-time and went to get a job at the McClain trucking company because the campus library was only paying 50 cents. They were paying a buck. The dean of Whitman sent a committee down to see if the McLean trucking company was appropriate

for Duke Cohen. It wasn't. So I transferred to Barnard for my senior year. I was the January 1951 graduate. Around that time, the Korean War was ratcheted, there was a marine recruiting sergeant on campus and he offered me this kind of deal. I could go to the platoon leaders course in Plotico, Virginia for the summer. And then when I graduated, I would be a lieutenant of the United States Marines, and I thought,

okay, it looked great in green. The guys would have to salute me. And as a English-lit major, with a specialty in Chaucer, it was iffy whether I could get a job to support me in New York City. So when I was down at Quantico that summer, I met a Marine pilot, a captain, and he asked me back for the New Year's ball at Quantico. I should have been studying for my final but I at Montclapton the morning instead was sitting in my Apple Green evening dress with issues tied to match it and the Quantico officers clogged with my

marine captain who was in full dress and gorgeous. And the band had gone home and he said, let's fly to the Jacksonville Naval Air Station for breakfast and I said, shoot. So we did, we went out to the, to the run and got on a C-45 beach craft. It was security was what can I say, someone more lax than those did.

And we took off and we flew and we flew. And it was like most January mornings, it was dark. And we kept on flying. And after a while I heard him yelling into what I thought was the radio, made it, made it. And I said, what's up? He said, I don't have to tell you this,

but we're running out of gas. He said, have you ever jumped before? And I said, I said, what? He said, take an parachute, jump. And I said, no, he said, well, this is how you do it. He said, he said, you go on and you count to 10,000 by 1,000, 1,000 and 2,000. And then he put a marine green parachute on me Which was a slightly darker green than my old greenie evening dress And and I looked out and it was still dark

And I kept thinking church And I kept thinking church tables. He said, you go first. So I did. And what had happened is that it was just packing, put it on upside down. So when I pulled the rip cord, I came over with my taffy to go. I'm going over my head from the ground. Had anybody been looking. It also looked like Mary Poppins.

Well, he landed in a tree and I landed in the swamps on the edge of the... it was the Okapanoki swamp, they were way cross Georgia and even over. And for a while I couldn't see what was grunting around me. It turned out to be those those hairy pigs with tussles. There were about ten of them. He was in the tree and he kept yelling to me to go get help. So I did. So I went out. Finally, it was coming up, I think it was about six o'clock just dawn, and I finally found this dirt road with this firework coming along and one of those rusty implements, you know, tractor. And I said, excuse me, I'm a tenant store

in the United States Marines, and I just failed out of an airplane. And you help me. And he took off down the road and got the sheriff who got the posse. We got Ralph out of the tree. And then we went over to see where the aircraft might have landed after it finally ran out of gas. And that was in Mr. Thigpen's backyard.

Well, Mr. Thigpen had a farm just outside of Wakecross, Georgia, and I said, oh, Mr. Thigpan, we're looking at the tale of the plane rising out of his cabbages. And I said, Mr. Thigpan, I am so sorry. And he said there, there, my dear, as long as you're all right, and the Marines paid him in. But now they sent down a plane for me to fly us back for us to fly us back to Congo from the Jacksonville, Florida, New Layer Station. But they wouldn't let me on the plane because the official version was that I was out of uniform. So Ralph flew back and I took the silver chief train back to Barter just in time to

take my finals in Mr. Fogel's classroom and my friend from Bronx, Phil Betsy, went Wait, that means you said, how are the holidays? That's... To catch me later. At Ralph's court, Marshall, later that month. I said he had been very brave putting the parachute on me and everything. I never saw him again because it got so much publicity. He married his old girlfriend from Detroit. But I thought what might be a good idea. Before I got my garnered degrees signed by Ike Ismanard, before I became commissioned and then raised to transfer the Air Force, which I did, for they could get me. And so I served it not until 1965 when the Air Force

and I had a disagree with it or some bombing that we're doing in Southeast Asia. And I took a job for 95, though, as a week at an newspaper, but that's another story. Thank you. That was Dorothy Stork. Dorothy Stork was an Air Force major reporter and newspaper columnist. She passed away in 2015 at the age of 88. Now I'm going to take you behind the scenes

of how we helped Dorothy develop her story and talk a bit about truth and storytelling with two of my fellow how to tell a story co-authors, Sarah Austin, Janess, and Jennifer Hickson. First, Jennifer, way back in 2006, you worked with our storyteller Dorothy Stork. What was that like? Well, Dorothy is one of the most incredible storytellers.

Okay, Dorothy lived a very storied life, let's say she... This was not the only story of her life that seemed incredible. And she went on to, you know, Winna Pulitzer Prize. So she was a esteemed journalist. But the first time I spoke to Dorothy, it was over a crackly telephone line. And she told me this story. And there was a little resistance to even my, wow, what?

You know, wow. And she was just sort of like, no nonsense. Yep, then we got in the plane and we took off and When we hung up I wondered Could could could what I have just heard be true? Is it possible that someone you just walked out on the tarmac and took a plane and then and then Jumped out of a plane and the plane crashed and and her flowing down with the taffeta gown upside down over her head Landing in a pig pen. Wow, and so

It wasn't that I didn't exactly believe her, but I wanted back up, you know, so I thought surely This would have been an extraordinary event even even then and so This would have been an extraordinary event, even then. And so she had mentioned Waycross, Georgia. And so I wrote to the library there. And I said, hey, and I also had, because it was New Year's Eve, I knew it was New Year's Eve, 1951. So I had a date, and I wrote to, and it's a small town there, I wrote to the librarian. And about two weeks later, I got a big manila envelope that had the

clipping. It told the story in an abused way as someone who's like someone fell from the sky in our town. And yeah, that verified the story. Was it just the series of events that you found amazing? Was there anything outside of that series of events that felt untrue to Was there anything outside of that series of events that felt untrue to you that made you slu-th? Well, I just, I was not aware that somebody, you would go on a date and they'd be like, what do you say we fly down to Florida for breakfast?

That already seemed like really? Did people do that? And that somebody who I presume had been drinking, and then I guess him not being able to operate the plane showed that. That seemed, yeah, she said, as she says in the story, security was somewhat lax. That seemed crazy, and I don't know,

I've had some crazy dates, but dang, you know. I never did anything like that. And yeah, falling out of a plane, you know, just suddenly with no training in a ball gown, parachuting out of the sky, it's, yeah, it's one of the most extraordinary stories I've ever heard, ever, in all of math history. Later on I spoke to some people who were, and they said, yeah, they used to do that a lot.

You'd fly down, you know, it was kind of like borrowing dad's car, taking some of these airplanes. I don't know, some military guy I spoke to once told me that was, yeah, security did used to be pretty lax. So, yeah, it seems like there are so many holes in the story, but it's just a window into a different era where those aren't the holes that they are today. Yes, and also, I mean, it's also Dorothy's style.

That's just like, here's the facts. Here they are. I know. Aren't they extraordinary boom? You know, just lays them out there. She wasn't someone to milk it for the drama necessarily. She's like, here's the crazy thing that happened. And then moving on, you know, yes, very Dorothy Parker. Did you address this with her? Like, this is so extraordinary. I don't know if the audience is going to believe you or try to get something out of her that might be more truthful. Did you worry about that in the delivery, even of the story?

Yes, I definitely worried about that, but Dorothy was sort of like, well, too bad if they don't believe it, it's the truth. Nothing but the truth here. I'm a journalist. I don't make things up. But of course, I very tenderly brought that up. I never want to say to someone like, I think you're, you know, full of it What how could this be? Yes, I expressed wonder

I Expressed wow can you lean into that a little bit more because how exactly? Yeah, but Dorothy knew she was a storyteller on paper and Actually, if you look up some of her articles, too, she's kind of, they're very tight, they're tussed, there's not a lot of flower detail. That was her style, totally. That's how she, right, here's all the things that happen. Boom, boom, boom, wow. Sarah, when we were writing, we talked so much about truth. And of course, there's a difference between truth like an extraordinary situation or series of events that may or may not be made up. And then the emotional truth of the story, which is what we really spent so much time talking about. But in our discussion of how we sensed truth in a story, you had an interesting situation with a teller who

did ring really true. What was that that you shared with us? In 2011, I was working with a gentleman, we'll call him Al, and Al lived in the Bronx, and we were working together on a story for a night that was all about the Vietnam War. And I went up to the Bronx every day to work with him. He was in kind of an assisted living home for people who were trying to get back on their feet. And yeah, I must have been up there every day or every other day for like three weeks and we sat and we workshopped his story that he had started in a Moth community workshop.

And it was an extraordinary story of losing all feeling after being drafted into the Vietnam War as a very young boy when he was living in the Bronx. And he did three tours in Vietnam and he saw so much death and atrocity and just had no feeling left. And he was working on a story. It was a harrowing story.

He could barely speak. He had a very raspy voice. He was always very excited to see me and worked really hard on his story, but the story was all about how he finally got feeling back when he killed another in combat. And it was a terrible and beautiful story, and one that felt very representative of how complicated the Vietnam War was.

And I remember when he told the story that night at the players club, again, it was the summer of 2011. And we set him up with a special microphone because of the way he spoke, and he didn't have much breath, and, you know, it was one of those nights. It was like, we were breathing collectively, Kate, like you say, we were breathing one breath. And it was really beautiful, and I was so proud of him and so proud of the story, and I felt like it was a real triumph for him. And again, it was one of those extremely complicated stories about a very complicated war.

And I was so proud that we found him. And I remember just how hard it was to get the story to the place where it was, because again, Ma's stories are 10 to 12 minutes. And this was a very long story for him took up many years of his life, and we made some cuts, but I felt like the heart was really there,

and everyone seemed to move by it. So, many months later, after the creative review, we decided the story was good enough to move on to the radio, everyone really liked it. In audio, and we moved it on to a very special radio episode, and then we got complaints. Tons and tons of complaints, and rightfully so, from other veterans of the war, and they said this guy is not in any of the veterans' logs, and certain

details of his story don't pass muster, and it is just basically a fraud. And so I, at this point, was no longer in touch with him. He had left this medical facility and I couldn't contact him and I looked him up and I just basically couldn't, couldn't verify that he was who he said he was. And you know, it's so funny, I just relist into the story. It's in our archive now and it's marked, do not air. And we pulled it from the air right away. And we sent apologies to the veterans who had written in.

And, you know, it aired for a very short time before we pulled it. And, you know, it was my fault for not looking it up. There was no way that I thought the story was false. There was no way. I mean I sat with him and I talked with him for weeks and weeks and weeks and we cried and he said I'm not sure how to phrase this and what to put in the story and there are too many details and I saw so much death and you And he goes into excruciating detail about just very vivid brutal scenes. That's all I can really say of the war.

And I'm still shocked. And I'm still wondering what parts of it were not true, was all of it not true. Did he serve under a different name? Did he, you know, and then what comes out are this idea of false memory. Some people, especially with the Vietnam War, didn't get drafted or dodged the draft and had terrible guilt for it and so read so many books and were so knowledgeable about it that they almost have invented a past

where they did serve. And I don't know, maybe he maybe that's what he was doing. It just strikes me as so it's so sad and so odd and it's just an unsolved mystery. So yeah, we pulled the story. It exists deep in our archives with a big sign that says, do not air. And it remains one of the biggest mysteries of my career at the Moth. It's really unsettling because again, I've been directing stories for over 15 years now. And I mean, there is an emotional quality and a backbone. And when you're looking someone dead in the eye and they are crying and lost in the memory and come back to reality and are trying to piece it together, you're

like, this is, you know, beyond an Academy Award performance, beyond that. Like, it has to be true, but somehow it wasn't. I think it's such an interesting thing that you bring up this idea of false memory. Maybe he read so many accounts that he almost made himself believe that what he was saying was true. I always laugh about how intensely we debated some of the lines in this book, but we did have that whole back and forth

about should a story be honest or feel honest. And this sort of answers that it should be honest, he probably believed that he was telling you his story even though maybe it was a compilation or a memory of a memory of a memory of something he'd read, not a memory of a memory of a memory of his own experience, which is what true stories are. As someone who was in that rehearsal, I just have to second Sarah that it was completely convincing. I wept everybody in the room in the rehearsal wept. It was so real and he was feeling it.

And it felt beautiful to witness him giving birth to this story that obviously cracked open his heart and meant so much to him. It was absolutely shocking that he wasn't true. You know, or maybe parts of it were true, but there was PTSD involved. And again, maybe he served under a different name. Or maybe he, this is my heart and my soul

still thinks that part of it was true. You can tell by the way I'm saying this. And there has to be some kernel in there because it's just, it's like, it defies all laws of sensibility for it to be totally untrue. But the name that he gave us did not match any of the veteran's names

from the Vietnam War. And so many veterans said that these specificities of his story led them to believe that this was untrue. Maybe it was, maybe he conflated three different jobs into one. Sometimes storytellers do that. Maybe he got the name of the place wrong. Maybe he, I don't know, I don't know which parts were true and which parts weren't true. And right before this, I found an email for him and I tried again to, you know, but the email bounced

back. I mean, you know, I don't know where this guy is. He called me right after the show, and he left a message on the moth voicemail, and he said, I just want to thank you for helping me tell my story. It just remains one of those unsolved mysteries, very frustrating experience, and one that I still have a hard time believing is true. I can't believe the untruth is true.

And now, you know, we do say in the book, stories are true as remembered by the storyteller, but we do say, if you say you're a veteran, we're gonna check that. And that's because of this guy named Al, you know? I mean, because otherwise, I would never check if you were a veteran. I mean, my God, thank you to all the veterans.

But I would never say, are you really a veteran? I would never have ever done that. Now I'm going to say, how do you spell your name? Which exactly were you in? When were your tours? What exactly did you do? Do you have any witnesses to verify that you were there? You know, but it's because of this gentleman,

and that's just sad, but it's just the way that it is. So if you give us some things that we can fact check, we're gonna fact check those because I was just so trusting. I mean, this was more than 10 years ago. So I mean, I was pretty early on in my directing time here. And I just didn't even think to check. But now we do. I'm just thinking, sometimes the moments that are the most emotionally charged become so charged with the motion that the way you process it by

reliving it can change the facts of it. You know, because you're processing it over and over and over again. And I'm remembering when I worked with Catherine on my story, there's a moment where I go to see my mom in her room on the night that she's dying and she's pulling out her suitcase and I say, what are you doing? And she says, I have to pack and I have to explain that she doesn't need a suitcase. And to this day, my sister and I don't know who that happened to, like don't know who was in the room to have that conversation

because both of us remember it so vividly. And probably because on the night that my mom was dying, we were just both going in and out, coming in and out and reporting to each other. This is what mommy's doing now. This is what she looks like now, just back and forth and back and forth. We just share the memory and the only other eyewitness has gone from this planet. So we don't actually know who had that conversation. There was a time when we would both swear that we were in that room because we just told that scene to each other so many times.

And it's a true exchange. And if we could roll back tape, it could be that it was my sister. But my sister and I have decided that it was probably with me, even though she remembered it at one point as her own too. And we just had to decide that for our own closure. Well, it is art after the, you know, at the end of the day, it is art and I think the collective we, but how it shows up in each person's story is the way the art shows up. I think it's just like, now Kate, if you said, as I was a veteran and going through this, that would be a different story.

If you were like, when I came back from my tour and I was with my mother, I'd say Kate, I need to fact check that. Yes, my mother was packing up my purple heart. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I had to take a break. I think that what this also speaks to and this thing that people are so curious about, I mean, I think all of us, and all of the interviews we've had recently, people are constantly asking about this idea of truth. And everyone's asking about what, you know, the actual factual, salacious details,

do they have to be true? And the hard truth is, yes, you have to tell the facts. You can't fake a purple heart in your math story. But the meat of our jobs, so often is that process of helping people discover what's essentially true. I mean, that's to me the most intimate part of this work, because when you start asking people these deeper questions about how they felt, what truly was that experience to you,

and why is it in your memory and something that you're compelled to tell days and weeks and months or maybe even gears later. You know, I think in the end, the truth always wins. The truth is always more interesting than than what is made up. That's all for this week. We hope you enjoyed our look at truth and storytelling. If you want to dive even deeper, you can pick up how to tell a story, the essential guide to memorable storytelling from the moth wherever you get your books. From all of us here at the moth have a story worthy week. Kate Tellers is a storyteller host, senior director at the moth, and co-author of their fourth book How to Tell a Story, which is available for

pre-order now. Her story, but also bring cheese, is featured in the moths all these wonders, true stories about facing the unknown, and her writing has appeared on McSweeney's and in the New Yorker. This episode of the Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Geness, Sarah Jane Johnson, Mark Solinger, and me, Davie Sumner. The rest of the Moss leadership team includes Katherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluche, Suzanne Rust, Inga Gladowski, and Aldi Kaza.

All Moth stories are true as remembered by Storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else visit our website, themoth.org. The Moth podcast is presented by PRX, the public radio exchange, helping make public radio more public at PRX.org. Thank you.