The Moth - Hellos and Goodbyes: Woniya Thibeault and Mike Birbiglia

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

On this episode of the Moth Podcast, Catherine Burns, our former artistic director, shares the very first story she ever directed, and the last. This episode is hosted by Catherine Burns. Storytellers: Woniya Thibeault survives in the wilderness Mike Birbiglia gets his heart broken

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Katherine Burns, your host for this episode, and for over 20 years, the Moth's artistic director. I stepped down last month, but I can still remember the spring night in 2000 when I attended my first Moth show. I was swept away by the mesmerizing stories and the energy of the warm crowd. I floated home. I became, in turn, a Grand Slam contestant, and a volunteer in what was then called the Moth Community Program. Soon after, in one of the great splesings of my professional life, I got the chance to work at this groundbreaking organization, which at the time had just two full-time employees. Thank goodness for our many volunteers.

The job has taken me to places I never thought possible when I started that first day. Directing a show on the main stage of the Sydney Opera House, rehearsing a story at dawn and a trailer at the Bronx Zoo. Sitting after hours in the Tower of London as the Ravenmaster put his beloved birds to bed, then ran his story for us in the moonlight. This job has been one of the great loves of my life

and I've been blessed to be a part of growing an organization that means so much to so many. I know I'm leaving them off in the hands of many brilliant people as I pursue a number of personal dream projects. So, on this episode, as a way to say goodbye, we'll be hearing the first story I ever directed and also the last. Let's start at the end with a story that was told by Wownia Tibo just a few weeks ago. She shared this at her live show at the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, for the theme of the night was, buried. If you hear some airplane noises or crickets, well, that's because we were outside among the tombs and the stars.

Here's Wownia live at the mouth. By the way, my nostrils freeze together for an instant on every inhale. I'm guessing it's gotten down to about 20 below zero. I'm sitting on a rock looking out over a vast expanse of frozen water. And as I stare at the high cliff wall across the South Bay, the helicopter crests the rise. And I can hear the noise of the rotors reverberating off all of that ice in front of me,

and it strikes terror into my heart. Now, I have been living on this remote peninsula just south of the Arctic Circle for over two months. And I've had very little food. There are all kinds of wild animals all around and bitter cold temperatures. But the reality is that the only thing that really scares me out here is that helicopter and what it might be coming to do. I've devoted my adult life to learning, practicing, and teaching ancestral skills.

The same skills that our ancestors used to live and thrive in the wild, things like gathering and eating wild foods, skinning deer, tanning their hides and making clothing of them, harvesting willow and weaving baskets and the like. And while I've spent a lot of time in the wilderness and sometimes with very limited gear, I've never done anything like this, and I would never have predicted that one day those skills would bring me here, living on my own long term in the Arctic wilderness. I was a wimpy bookworm of a kid. The classic kid always picked last for any team in high school PE, right?

I was anti-hunting and vegan as a teenager, and yet I have been living on my own in one of the most extreme and rugged wildernesses in the world, surviving off of my hunting and trapping and loving every second of it. Now, that said, I would never have chosen to come out here to live long-term if it hadn't been for a television show. The alone show is a self-filmed wilderness survival challenge where they pick 10 people and each of those 10 people are allowed to choose 10 items and they're clothing and

then they are dropped by helicopter or boat into different areas of remote wilderness with a case full of cameras to live for as long as they can and to document the whole journey themselves. So it's designed to be an incredibly rugged challenge. And it's a competition. The last one out wins and gets a lot of money. Now, when the show approached me and invited me to be a part of season six,

at first I wanted nothing to do with it. The idea of the challenge and going to this amazing wilderness was absolutely appealing, but frankly, I hated TV. I felt like TV was everything that I disliked about our culture and then magnified and commercialized. And the idea of it being a competition and about money felt kind of gross to me. At the same time I realized that it was important for someone like me to take on this challenge in a visible way like on this television show because the images that we normally see of wilderness survival are someone built like Rambo, you know, bulging biceps, usually a male, usually with some

kind of military training and more often than not with a knife the size of their forearms, strap to their thigh. You do not see young and petite women, I am five foot four, I am small framed, going out into the wilderness with the idea of going to somewhere that they knew they belonged and coming from a place of connection and respect and reciprocity rather than going out to wrestle the wilderness into submission. So while parts of me were a little reluctant, there were parts of me that knew it was right. And so here I am, on this baron, rocky peninsula watching the helicopter settle onto the rocks. So I do what I do during these medical checks,

and I'm pretty nervous about it, because the last couple medical checks I just barely squeaked by. I strip down to my long underwear in the bitter cold and I step onto the scale and I'm poked and prodded and my vitals are checked. And I'm sitting nervously watching the camera crew and the producers and the medical team confer. And the cameraman who accompanies these medical journeys, the only time where we are not self-filling everything is during these medical checks.

He points the camera at me and he says, well, Nia, what are you talk to the camera about how hard this is, about how it's the hardest thing you've ever done? And I look at him and I think the hardest thing you've ever done. And I look at him and I think the hardest thing I've ever done, now it's incredibly challenging. It is physically grueling. There's so much deprivation, near starvation, bitter cold temperatures, everything I've got

just to live here every day. And yet it's also so magical and beautiful. Now, I've been through some hard times in my life, emotionally devastating times. My parents splitting when I was a young girl, my mom getting cancer not long after, two very painful divorces and countless other griefs. And when I was experiencing those,

I didn't have northern lights dancing overhead just for me or the ice sparkling in the water just before the lake freezes over. A million beautiful things that I would never have seen in any other circumstances. So while this is hard, there is no way that is the hardest thing I've ever done. I look at him and I say, no, no, it isn't.

And in fact, those hard things I've been through are part of what makes me strong out here. And amazingly, I make it past the medical check, but the producer looks at me and tells me in his sternest voice that it was by a very narrow margin. And I absolutely have got to start bringing in more food, which I already know. And so I am relieved.

And yet, that question leaves me unsettled. And all of those griefs are stirred. And yet there's one grief that hasn't healed, that isn't something that I've just moved past. And that is the knowledge that I've never had the opportunity to become a mother. I was never one of those people that questioned whether or not I wanted children. I always knew I did. It was always one of my most important life's goals. And yet, when I got pregnant at 22 in an unstable phase of the relationship with the man, I would later marry.

We both knew that it really wasn't a good time for us. And we decided not to keep the baby. And I figured, I am young, I've got so much time, I've got the rest of my life, it's not an issue. And yet, the years dwindled quickly. And by my mid-30s, I found myself increasingly desperate to have a child, that tick, ticking of that proverbial clock so strong in my ears, that it drove my decision-making. And I made some really poor choices. Anything I would say yes to if it meant there was potential for a child in there.

And those poor choices just pushed motherhood further away. Until at age 39, I was living in a broken-down school bus on a steep slope, on a mountainside, with a partner with whom my relationship was becoming increasingly volatile. And I was just preparing to tell him that I was pretty sure I was pregnant as he was preparing to tell me that he had changed his mind about wanting children. And as you can imagine, it didn't go well. And just a few months before my 40th birthday, I miscarried.

Now, I understood that it wasn't a good situation to be in, so there was a sense of rightness in the miscarriage, and yet the knowledge that it may very well have been my last chance was so debilitating. And the next couple of years had me absolutely crippled with grief and angst and longing and mourning. The fact that while I am someone who has devoted my life to ancestral skills, I will never be anyone's ancestor. And yet, when I think about that and my beautiful Arctic home right now, I find that I can think about it without that stabbing

pain that's always been present with those thoughts before. And I ask myself, what's going on? When did that shift? And that's when I remember the dough. The alone team had reached out to me late in their casting process. And while they were inviting me to participate potentially, I still needed to go through all of the normal hoops in order to be selected. And that meant submitting footage of myself doing a variety of survival-related tasks. And because it was so late in their timeline,

they needed that footage within a week. Now, I had a busy life, I had a bunch of things going on. I was about to tell them no way, call me another time. And then not long after a friend of mine called me and said, well, Neha, you've got to help me. A deer was hit crossing the road in front of my house and she wandered into my yard to die.

I have no idea what to do with her. This is your thing. Will you please come and get her? And I was already in my housemates truck on the way to pick her up when I realized, oh my God. This is the footage that I need for my casting footage. So I filmed myself cutting her up and packing her meat into the freezer, skinning her and tanning her hide and making tools out of the bones and the

sinew in her forelegs. That doe had allowed me to apply to a loan. She's the reason why I'm here. But that wasn't the most magical gift that she brought me. I was elbow's deep inside her body cavity, gutting her, when I felt something hard in there. What in the world could it dear have been eating that would be hard, I asked? And then it hit me just as her uterus slid out into my arms. She had been pregnant when she was hit on the road that day with two beautiful fangs that looked so close to birth that it was as if I could feel them breathing. My housemate was also an ancestral skills practitioner and he looked

over my shoulder and he said, oh my god, those are going to make amazing peltz. I almost elbowed him in the ribs. No way, these were so sacred and beautiful. They needed ceremony, not skinning. So I laid them into a salad bowl and I finished cutting up the meat and packing it all away and hours later when my housemates were long since asleep, I went back to that salad bowl and I carried into the kitchen and I washed each of them and the sink got all of the amniotic fluid off until their little white spots just shown bright. And then I carried them into the living room and pulled a rocking chair up to the woodstove

and just sat with them in my arms and I pet their beautiful soft fur and looked at how they had exquisitely formed little eyelashes. Every part of them was perfect and ready for the world except for their hooves which were still soft in my fingers and translucent. So I rocked them and I sang to them and I kissed their wee little black noses and I cried over them and then I laid them in a basket and covered them in wildflowers and as the sun rose I buried them under a wild rose bush in my yard. And thinking about it now, I realized that that was the moment that my grief shifted, something about holding those two babies in my arms,

feeling their weight, and getting to give that ceremony and shower with love, these two babies that had never had the opportunity to take their first breath. Just like the two babies that I had carried in my body had never had the opportunity to be born. And that in giving them the proper send-off and really mourning them properly, the weight of that terrible grief had been lifted from me. And now that I think of it, had I had that family that I had always dreamed of, I wouldn't be here now, living the life

of my dreams, going off into the wilderness to live off of it, using only meager resources and the skill of my own two hands, that was the fulfillment of all of my life's purpose. And it has been incredible to learn how to trap animals taught by those animals themselves and to turn their beautiful pelt into clothing, to keep me warm in the Arctic cold, to build the muscles and bones of my body from the plants and animals of this place. It was a dream come true. And if I had been given the opportunity to trade this experience for the family I had always wanted, I honestly don't know that I would make that trade. And that's amazing to think about.

But I was getting skinnier and skinnier. I was clearly digesting my muscles and my organs were likely to be next. Just let me stay a little bit longer, I would pray, and then all of a sudden it hit me like a lightning bolt in my head and dropped me to my knees because I realized I can't do that. One day they're going to be people all around the world watching it and I would be demonstrating to them that it's okay to sacrifice your long-term health for the idea of winning and money and competition and that is exactly counter to everything that I believe in and stand for. A lot of those young people

watching would be children the one moment that more eyes were on me than any other time in my life was I going to be an example of everything that's the antithesis of what I feel to be right. No way. There was no way I could do that. And maybe I wouldn't ever have the opportunity to mother children of my own, but I could mother those young people right now by setting a good example for them. And so, before the next medical check, I used my GPS device and I dialed up the production team for the alone show. And I said, don't bother packing up the scale and bringing the doctors. You're not doing a medical check for me today. You're picking me up and you're taking me home.

I knew that making the right choice and leaving with my sovereignty intact and instead of being dragged out of there by a team of doctors or being carried out in a stretcher. Being that example in that moment, choosing myself, that was the real victory. Thank you. Thank you. Applause. That was Wonya Tibo. Wonya is a naturalist, craft's person,

an ancestral skills instructor whose passion is inspiring and empowering people to live their wildest, freest, most abundant lives. Through her writing, teaching, speaking, and videos, she offers skills and practices which help people feel connected to and part of the natural world. Her debut memoir, called Never Alone,

was released in June, and I highly recommend it, I couldn't put it down. In the book she writes, it's time to let go of the story of needing children to feel complete and whole. Maybe the key to future happiness isn't using reproductive science to give me a baby. Maybe it's birthing myself and the life I was meant to live. After Onya left her Arctic camp, she learned that she was the runner-up on season 6 of

a loan. The guy who won had managed to shoot a moose. And then, in 2021, she was invited back for an all-star season. I don't want to give a spoiler, so you'll have to watch it to find out what happened. If you'd like to see photos of Onya and the Wild, check out our website, themough.org-extras. Up next is the very first story I ever directed. Back in 2003, we were producing two storytelling shows at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado.

Directing 10 stories over a few days is a lot of work, so our then artistic and executive director asked me if I might take on one of the storytellers. He was a 24-year-old comedian who was just starting out, and his name was Mike Barbiglia. It turns out he never told a standalone story on stage before, and I certainly wasn't going to worry him by telling him this was also my first story. Years later, this story blossomed into his one-man show, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, which you can watch on Netflix. But this is where it all began.

Here's Mike for Ghibel and Lauren for the moment. When I was a senior in high school, I had my first girlfriend, and I went to boarding school. This is the girl that I fell in love with for the first time. And it was really like, you know, that first time where you were like, there's some, it's it, you know, this is the person I found her, you know. And she was great, you know, she was just like, you know, so beautiful. And she played tennis.

She wrote for the newspaper. And she was kind of a bad girl. And I was kind of like a dorky, nerdy kid. And so I was like, yeah, this is my bad girl face. So I was really excited. And she had just transferred into the school. And I find that when you fall in love, you overlook certain red flags about people.

One of them was that she was a liar. And I don't mean that like in an offensive way. In boarding school, lying is kind of a way of life. And there was this one guy in my class who, he was like legendary liar. His name was Jeff Ziggler. And he would lie about things that weren't important at all. There was no, you know, so what were you going to say?

He said, one time, he said, my uncle zig-ziggler, the motivational speaker. I don't know who that is. You know, but he lied about everything. But the other thing is she used to say really mean stuff to me and then she'd say, only kiddin' as though that was okay. She'd be like, you're not good at anything.

Holy, kiddin'. The other thing was that, she would go home on the weekends and we'd talk on the phone and she'd ask me to call her right back every time. Or she'd say, she'd call me right back every time. One time I asked why and she said that her father worked at AT&T and one time she was at his office and stole a list of people's phone cards. And that she would use each one until like they would be suspicious and then she throw it away. So

well, what are you going to do? She doesn't like paying for phone calls The final oh and the other thing is she had kind of a Questionable pass she was expelled from her previous school for a feeling acid and The one final red flag was that she told me not to tell anyone that she was my girlfriend. Because she had a boyfriend that at home that she was breaking up with. And it was over, but if it got back to him, it would be bad. She would go home every weekend and would visit him and would say, said that at one point that his parents were sick, so she had to console him in that.

I thought, well, the guy's parents are dying, so it's all right. So I saw her during the week and that was great. So it didn't matter, I was like, all right. We'd been going out of about two months and we went to Christmas break and she invited me over Christmas break to visit her house in Rhode Island. And I thought that this was my great moment.

You know, it was gonna vindicate moment. It was going to vindicate me. It was going to be my moment where I was like, you know, it's legit. So I go. I drive my mom's Volvo station wagon from Cape Cod to Rhode Island, and I'm thrilled. I remember the song, Glissorene, by Bush, was on the radio.

It was very popular at the time. It was like my love anthem. I was like, this is my song. They know. And I got there and there she was and her parents were there too. And this other guy was there. And his name was Paul. and we were all hanging out and slowly it dawns on me that I'm hanging out with my girlfriend's boyfriend.

And there was some consolation because every time he would go to the bathroom and go in the other room, she would be very affectionate to me. And every time that, but then there was a moment where I was in the bathroom and I thought, what's happening in the other room, you know? So this story took a strange turn when they suggested that we go hang out at his house. So we go and I met his parents and it's a very nerve-wracking thing meeting your girlfriend's boyfriend's parents for the first time.

You don't want to make a bad impression. So we all hung out and as a side note, they seemed in perfect health. And so the weekend ended and I drove home defeated, you know, sort of knew that, you know, this was her life. And I was like her secret life, like on Oprah, when they have a secret family, you know. And it was tough, and you know, I had to listen to that glycerine song with new connotations on the way home. And so anyway, I was like, you know, this is it.

I got to stick up for myself. It's either him or me. I really, I realize that. And so when we got back to school, I called her and I said, you know, we need to talk. So let's meet at the hockey game. My school had a hockey rink as a side note. So I go, she says, OK, I go to the hockey game.

hockey games going on, she's not there yet. hockey game ends. Still no sign. And I have that pit in my stomach, you know, like what? This is going to be my moment. You know, I was going to tell her that she had to pick me or that's it. I started walking around the school to the library to the places she might be and I asked people

where she is and someone says, I saw her with Jeff Ziegler. I remembered that earlier that day, Jeff had said to me, I'm sleeping with your girlfriend. You know that, right? And I thought since he's a liar, I go, yeah, I know. And it dawned on me that the Jeff was her new second boyfriend. And then I was out of the picture. And it was that horrible, lonely feeling where you're walking around some places, people all around, and there's only one person

that you want to be with. At that moment, no matter how mean of things that you would say, I wanted to hear that only kid. And in the aftermath of the, you know, so I was brokenhearted and I sort of mended it as the year went on, I graduated. In the aftermath of the, you know, so I was broken hearted and I sort of mended as the year went on and graduated. In the aftermath, Jeff was expelled for making fake IDs in his room. He had a life-size license from Arkansas that people put their face in. And Megan was expelled the next year for dealing riddle in. And at boarding school you have to, you can't go to the graduation if you're expelled. It's very important that you don't go. It's real strict.

And really, and Megan showed up, I found out, in the disguise, in a wig and sunglasses. I just thought that was so interesting, the idea that you could wanna be in a place so bad, that you have to be in disguise. And then I thought, for the three months that we were together, I was in the wig and sunglasses. Thank you. Woo!

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! That was Mike Rubiglia. Mike is a comedian, storyteller, director, and actor who has performed in front of audiences worldwide, from the Sydney Opera House to Broadway. His shows, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, and Thank God jokes, we're both filmed for Netflix.

His most recent shows, The New One, and The Old Man of the Pool, Spit Muntz on Broadway, and The Old Man of the Pool will be playing at the Edinburgh Festival in August, and The West End of London, starting in September. That's it for this episode. I think back with love and gratitude for the over 500 storytellers who have trusted me to midwife their stories over the years. I'm also thankful for the hundreds of staff, volunteers and board members who've shared their talent with us. And of

course you are cherish listeners who tune in every week to your stories told live and over the air. I started out as a moth fan and I go out as one too. So if you need me, no I'll be out there once again with you, our beloved audience listening. Katherine Burns is a Peabody award-winning director, storytelling dula, consulted and public speaker. She was the artistic director of the Moth from 2003 to 2023, where she was a host and producer of the Moth radio hour. She is the co-author of the New York Times Best Seller, How to Tell a Story,

and the editor of the Moth's best-selling and critically-acclaimed books, The Moth 50 Drew Stories, All These Wonders, and Occasional Magic. All the stories in this episode were directed by Catherine Burns. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Geness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Marina Kluccheye, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Leanne Gully, and Aldi Kaza. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by the storytellers.

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, TheMouth.org. The Mouth Podcast is presented by PierX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at PierX.org.