The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Finding Your Calling

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

A speech writer has a defining moment at the White House; a young Carl Bernstein gets his first job as a copy boy in a news room; a firefighter charges into his first big blaze; and a doctor struggles with duty and identity while serving in a medical camp in Syria. Hosted by The Moth’s Artistic Director, Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: David Litt, Carl Bernstein, Nick Baskerville, and Vivian Huang.

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 theMoth.org forward slash Houston. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns and today we're going to hear stories about finding your Colleen in medicine, firefighting, journalism, and politics.

Like our first storyteller, David Lit, who fell in love with a presidential candidate's message and moved to Washington in the hopes of being called to serve. I first met David when he called me up a few years ago. He said, Hi, I'm a speechwriter for Obama. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? And I was like, yes, you can. Here's David lit live at Royce Hall in Los Angeles. In 2008, I was one of those young people who became obsessed with Barack Obama.

I was a senior in college at the time, and after I graduated, I drove out to Ohio, and I worked on his campaign, and after the campaign, I drove to Washington because hope and change. And two years later the White House actually hired me. They hired me to write speeches. And people would hear about my new job and they would say, wow, you must be really good. And I'd say, I don't know, I hope so. And they thought I was pretending to be humble, but I was entirely sincere. It's not that I didn't think I had any talent whatsoever. It's just that I knew there are 300 million people in America

and some of them are babies. But a lot of them are adults. And it just seemed unlikely that I was the best we the people could do. So every day I walked through the gates of the White House absolutely sure somebody had made a mistake. And while this was going on my friends and family were equally sure they now had direct access to the president of the United States. friends and family were equally sure they now had direct access to the president of the United States. Like I'm sitting in my White House office and I get a text from my sister Rebecca and it says, how come the Department of Homeland Security doesn't have a mailing address?

Now even in the best of circumstances, this is a disturbing question to get from a family member. But if you work in the White House, you want to know the answer to this kind of stuff, and I have no idea. And it's like this with everything. I mean, suddenly, everyone has a law that only I can get through Congress. Everybody has something wrong with Obamacare that I need to know about. Mostly everybody has the same question. They all want to know, have you met him yet? Have you met Obama yet? And I say no, I haven't met him yet, and I get this look.

And it's a look I soon learn means you may be 24 years old and working at the White House, but you're still a disappointment to your family and friends. And I have to say I totally get it. I mean everybody thinks that the White House is either like the TV show, The West Wing, wherever it's hanging out with the president, or it's like the TV show Scandal, wherever it's having sex with the president. But if you're looking for Hollywood analogy, the White House is like the Death Star. What I mean by that is just that there's thousands of people, they run around the hallways,

they're all just trying to make sure their little bit of their job works well. And just because Darth Vader is the public face of the organization, it doesn't mean that every stormtrooper gets personal one on one time. So I try to explain this whole death star thing, and it doesn't work. I still get that disappointed look. And frankly, nobody's more disappointed than I am. I mean, nobody wants me to meet the president more than me. And there's two reasons for this.

The first is kind of corny, but it's true. I moved to Washington because I thought, I don't know what it is, but there must be something I can do for my country. I want to be the kind of person where the president of the United States is just a little bit better at his job because I'm in the room. And the second reason is I would really like Barack Obama and I to become best friends. Now I'm not saying that every White House staffer imagined that they would become buddies

with the president, I'm just saying that none of us ruled it out. Like you would hear these stories. You know, somebody got a fist bump in the hallway or someone else got invited up to play cards on Air Force One, and the moral was always the same. Any moment could be the moment that changes your life forever. Now, my first chance at a life changing moment came in November 2011 when I was asked to write

the Thanksgiving video address. I will say up front if state of the union is all the way on one end of the presidential speech writing spectrum. Happy Thanksgiving America is kind on the other side. But as far as I was concerned, this was the most important set of words Barack Obama would ever say. And so I threw myself into this. I mean, I wrote and I rewrote and I made edits

and then I made edits to the edits. And finally, the day of the taping came and I went to the diplomatic room, which is one of the most beautiful rooms in the White House. It has this wrap around mural of 19th century American life. And the advice I always got was, you have to act like you've been there before. So I'm standing there, trying to act like I've been there before. So I'm standing there trying to act like I've been there before.

And the woman behind the camera takes one look at me and goes, this is your first time here, isn't it? And I crack immediately. I'm just like, yes, I have never been here before. Please help me. And she says, don't worry. She explains her name as Hope Hall. She films the president all the time.

She's going to take care of everything. All I have to do is wait. So I wait. And I wait, and I wait, and I wait. And just when I'm wondering, is this whole thing a nightmare? Is it a practical joke? Somebody gets an email on their blackberry, and they say, okay, he's moving. And then there's kind of a crackling in the air.

And a minute later, President Obama enters the room. And he's standing up, so we all stand up, and he sits down, so we all sit down. And he looks at the camera to start taping when Hope stops him, and she says, actually, Mr. President, this is David. This is the first video he's ever written for you. And President Obama looks at me, and he says,

oh, how's it going, David? I had exactly one thought in that moment. I did not realize we were going to have to answer questions. And I have literally no idea what I said after that. I mean, I actually blacked out. Like, I went home for Thanksgiving and my family was like, so have you met him yet? And I was like, yeah, and they were like, what did he say?

And I was like, how's it going? And they were like, what did you say? And I was like, I don't know, I blacked out. And I get that disappointed look. And I can't blame anybody because if I'm going to be the kind of person who makes the president a little bit better at his job when I'm in the room, I am going to have to deal with questions more complicated than how's it going. And at the moment there's no indication that I can do it.

But I make a promise to myself. I say if I ever get another shot at a life-changing moment, I am not going to let myself down. And I didn't know if it would ever happen for me, but in fact, it happened just a couple weeks later. I was sitting in my office, I got a phone call from the chief speech writer at the time, a guy named John Favreau, and he called me up and he said, Betty White is turning 90 years old. An NBC is doing this special where different famous people wish her a happy birthday in these 30-second skits.

And you're pretty funny and no one else wants to do it. I want to give it a shot. And I said, absolutely. And again, I understand state of the union is over here. And happy birthday, Betty White is over there. But this was Mike Gettysburg address. And so we had one week to make it perfect. We started off, John and I came up with a joke for the president.

We were going to have him fill out a birthday card, and then while he was filling it out, he would hear his voice on a voiceover say, dear Betty, you're so young and full of life, I can't believe you're turning 90. In fact, I don't believe it. Please send a copy of your long form birth certificate to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. So we feel good about the joke, but we still need a birthday card. So one day that week, I go to CVS near the White House, it's a half block away. I grab a birthday card that I think is going to be pretty good. Then right when I'm about to leave, I realize we aren't actually one birthday card, we need two identical birthday cards.

Because we have two different camera angles, we don't want anyone to know that the president has already written his birthday greeting. I think yes, this is how White House staffers are supposed to feel. I've saved the day. And so I walk back to that hallmark rack, and I get an identical card, and I ring it up, and I go back to my office, and I'm feeling really good. And then the last thing we need,

we need some way to end the video. And so what I come up with is, we're gonna have the president put in headphones, and then he'll listen to the theme song from the Golden Girls, which is Betty White's most popular show. So I find the perfect pair of headphones that go over the ear, they'll look great on camera, and I listen to the Golden Girls theme song on repeat just to get in the mood. And then finally on Friday, I get the call.

Come on over. Now, here's what they don't tell you about having a meeting in the Oval Office. When you have a meeting in the Oval Office, you do not just walk into the Oval Office. The first thing you do, you wait in this kind of windowless chamber. It's a little like a doctor's office, except instead of last year's Marie Claire magazine, they have priceless pieces of American art. And instead of receptionists, they have a man with a gun who, in a worst-case scenario, is legally obligated to kill you.

It turns out this little room is the perfect place to second-guess every life choice you have ever made. And so I'm sitting there with Hope Hall, the videographer, and I'm just thinking, do I remember how to explain the joke, or both of the birthday cards in there? I check my pants pocket, or the headphones still there. Or the headphones still there.

Or the headphones still there. I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown when finally one of the president's aides pokes her head out and says, okay, he's ready for you. Go on in. To my credit. The first time I entered the Oval Office, I do not black out. I can remember this very clearly. Right in front of me, I can see a painting of the Statue of Liberty

that was done by Norman Rockwell that someone has told me is valued at $12 million. And behind me, out of the corner of my eye, I can see the emancipation proclamation. Not a photocopy of the emancipation proclamation, the emancipation proclamation. And I can feel the message that this document is sending through the room, and that message is, I'm here because I freed the slaves, what are you doing here? here. And I look across the desk at the president, and I realize he may also be wondering what I'm doing here. But I feel great.

I mean, I've spent an entire week just practicing how to explain this one joke to the president. So I step up, I look at him, and I open my mouth, and what comes out is like I'm trying to ask for directions, but in Spanish. Like the nouns and the verbs are there, but there's nothing in between them. I just say, Betty White, video, NBC, very funny, everybody laughs, Estabian? And the president gives me kind of a confused look. And I hope the videographer jumps in and explains everything and rescues me. But I'm a little concerned because I am here

to show the president how professional I am. And in my professional opinion, we are not off to a great start. Still, I'm not that worried because I have that second birthday card in my pocket. And so I'm going to get a chance to show President Obama how I save the day. And as soon as hope is finished filming, even I am surprised by how confident I sound when I walk up to the desk and I put my hand down and I say, Mr. President, I'm going to need to take that birthday card and replace it with this identical birthday card

because we don't want anyone to know you've already written your birthday greeting. And President Obama looks up at me and he says, we're filming this from all the way across the room. And I say, yes, that's right. And he says, so no one's going to see the inside of the card. And I say yes, that's right. And he says, so I can just pretend to write in the card, we don't actually need another

one. And I say yes, that's right. And I put the card back in my pocket, and it's strike two. But I'm not giving up yet, because I made that promise to myself. And besides, I really do feel good about the ending with the headphones. And so the moment hope is done filming her second camera angle. I walk back up to the president and I reach into my pocket and I pull out what looks like a hairball made out of wires. I don't really know what happened.

I guess somewhere in that waiting room, I have just worried this thing into a hopeless tangle. And now I don't know what to do, so I just hand the entire thing to the president in the United States. Now, if you work in the White House, you will hear the phrase, there is no commodity on Earth more valuable than a President's time, which I always thought was a cliche until I watched Barack Obama untangle headphones for 30 seconds while looking directly at me.

And he untangles and untangles and when he finishes, he looks at hope and just goes, pfft. Shotty advance work. And he does it in this way that lets you know that he's only joking and B, he is not even a tiny bit joking. And I'll tell you, my heart just sinks. I mean, this was my third chance to make a second first impression on the President. And I let myself down.

And all I want to do is get out of there. And President Obama says something like, well, would it be funnier if I bob my head in time to the music? And I say, yeah, that would be funnier. But my heart isn't in it. I mean, I know I don't belong there. And the president looks into the camera to tape this final scene. And then suddenly he stops.

And he says, well, wait a second. If I'm going to bob my head in time to the music, I need to know how the music goes. Does anyone here know the Golden Girls theme song? And President Obama looks at Hope, and Hope doesn't say anything. So I look at Hope, and Hope doesn't say anything. So President Obama looks at me. And suddenly, I know exactly what I can do for my country.

And so I'm standing there in the Oval Office with the emancipation proclamation right behind me. And I look our commander in chief in the eye, and I say, Bum bum bum bum, thank you for being a friend. Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum, travel down the road and back again. Something, something, you're a pal and a confidant. But he looks kind of amused, so I keep going. I'm like, and if you threw a party, invited everyone,

you knew. And that's when he gives me a look that's like, OK, president's time. But it works. President Obama bobs his head in time to the music, and Betty White gets her card, and NBC gets her special. And I leave the Oval Office that day with my head held high knowing that the president

of the United States was just a tiny bit better at his job because I was in the room. And people still ask me after that. They still say, have you met him yet? Have you met Obama yet? And I can finally say, yeah, actually I have. And then just to myself I think Not to brag or anything

but technically I'm thankful he's a friend Thank you very much David lit root speeches for President Obama from 2011 to 2016. For four years, David was also the lead writer for the President's comedy monologue at the White House Correspondence Dinner. His memoir about his time at the White House, thanks Obama, was published in 2017. His most recent book, Democracy in One Book or Less, How It Works, Why It Doesn't, and Why Fixing It Is Easier Than You Think, was published in June of this year.

You don't have to be a presidential speechwriter to pitch us a story. You can just call our pitchline, which will let you leave a two minute version of a story you'd like to tell. The number to call is 877-799-Moth, or you can picture the story right on our website, theMoth.org. Again, you can picture your own story by calling 877-799-Moth, or by going to theMoth.org. Coming up, long before Watergate, a young Carl Bernstein gets his first job at a newspaper. And an inexperienced firefighter must confront a deadly basement fire, when the Moth Radio

Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Our next storyteller is Carl Bernstein. He's a world-renowned journalist, but his story is about how we got into the newspaper business in the first place. He told it back in 2006 at the New York Public Library. Here's Carl Bernstein.

So it's very good that we get to tell these stories and puncture ourselves, and it's same as true of my muse. But my muse, a woman, women, and how I got to be a writer or a journalist is, I took typing with the girls. And this was in the 11th grade. And until then, my muse had been a cue ball at the Silver Spring Recreation Center in Maryland because I shot a lot of pool during school hours.

And it was kind of represented the kind of student that I was, which is to say most of the day I was at the pool hall. But I was really tired of taking a shop, which I had taken since the seventh grade and every year you make another one and it was trays for your mother that had little things for toothpicks in them in the shape of a fish. I said, screw this, I'm not making another game tray with a fish. I'm going to take typing with the girls.

So I took typing, and I was the only guy in the class. And it was one of the few classes that I went to. And I quickly got up to 85, 90 words a minute. And it has served me very well in life. Because my father, recognizing that I was not likely to graduate from high school, had a good sense to say, how would you like to go to work for a newspaper?

Maybe I could get you a job as a copyboy there, because he had a friend at the evening star, the Washington evening star newspaper, who owed him a favor, because my father in the McCarthy era had been a source for this guy's reporting on some of the excesses of the McCarthy era. And he said, I think I can get you an interview for a job as a copyboy. I don't know what a copyboy did, but my father correctly perceived that I had some ability

to pass a few tests because they were written exams, and I could kind of bullshit my way through to written exams. And those were the only courses that I could really pass. So, I was just turned 16, and I was about five foot two, and I said, I went to the Washington Star by the freeway in Southeast Washington, and I was escorted up to the office of a man named Rudolph Kaufman III who was in charge of the copyboys.

And he was the son of the owner, old Washington family, and he had wanted to be a geologist and had gone to Princeton to be a geologist, but the family wanted him to be in a newspaper business. And so he was in charge of the copyboys. So he said, why do you want to be a copyboy son? And I said, well, I'd like to get a job. And I think, you know, maybe sometime I'd like to write. And I once was a newspaper boy, in fact for his very newspaper. And he says, well, let me show you the newsroom. So he opens up the door and it takes me into this cavernous hall about bigger than this place.

And it's the most exciting thing I ever saw in my life. There must have been about 300 people among them names well-known later, Mary McGurray, David Broder, Haynes Johnson, a lot of great, great reporters. But there was an excitement to this place that was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. And people were yelling, copy, and these kids would come running out of nowhere, like little squirrels. And they would grab the copy, and they would squirrel up to the desk and give it to the editor up there, and a guy with an eye shade.

And he would start looking at it. And this was an afternoon paper with five editions in a six-hour period. And this place operated like this all day. And the sports department was in the rear, out that way. And so you had ball games going on and people yelling, copying, and it would ball scores would come in and there would be a shooting downtown and people would run outside and I'd never seen anything quite like it in my life and I really want to go to work there. But I didn't get hired and I couldn't quite figure out why but I thought maybe because I was too short because I was only five foot two at the time and I was

still growing and I just turned 16. And most of the copyboys were, you know, they'd come out in a Marine Corps or out of Yale and they were 22 and 23 and 24. But I kept coming back and knocking on the door and saying, you know, I really like to go to work here and finally they gave me a typing test. Piece of cake. Right? So I got hired as a copyboy. Well, the copyboy doesn't exist anymore,

but a copyboy really was an office boy who did every manner of thing from running copy, a reporter, would be on deadline, and he would finish one page of a story and he would yell copy and you'd run up and grab it from him, take it to the desk and then he'd go back typing and you would, he had a room off to the side called a wireless room which is where all the teletype stuff came in from all over the world. There were about 15 of these machines and go, clack clack clack clack clack clack.

The whole time now, of course, you go into a newspaper office and it sounds like you're an insurance company. It's got carpet, and there are no type riders anymore. But this place was just constant noise and motion. And then the copy boys would run, and they would go up to the mail room and get the papers as they came down off the press and put them on a cart and bring them in into the newsroom.

And this was my first day at work and it was so exciting and they were telling me to my senior copy boys, the names of all the editors around the desk, the national editor, the telegraph editor, the foreign editor. And the foreign editor also had a little eye shade, which a lot of desk people wore in those days. And then it got to be two o'clock, and a head copy boy who was actually about 30 years old, came up to me and said, Bernstein, I said, yeah, he says, two o'clock. So I had these big repeater clocks going from here all the way to the back of the room.

So it was pretty easy to tell it was two o'clock. I said, yeah, it's two o'clock. He says, well, you work an eight to four shift. Do you ever work an eight to four shift has to watch the carbon paper? I said, what? He says, yeah, you know, the eight to four shift, you watch the carbon paper two o'clock every afternoon. Well, the reporters would type their stories on six-ply paper.

There would be, we call them books. And in between each of the sheets would be this hideous purple double-sided carbon paper that just to type on it would send a cloud of purple dust up in the air. And what you did when you got a story from a reporter, you ran it up to the desk, you pulled a carbon paper, I threw it in a basket, and this basket would start to build up like that. And by two in the afternoon, there would be baskets that's kind of all over the place like that. And I had copy boys in Bernstein, it's 205.

You better go watch that carbon paper. You know, be in deep trouble here. You get your shift, you got to do that. I say, well, where do you watch the carbon paper? I said, well, where do you think you watch the carbon paper? You go in a men's room and you watch the carbon paper. So, you know, it's my first day at work. By now, I'm five foot four

and I've been to no label Louise on G Street and I bought myself this cream colored suit and it's the summer, you know, and I'm looking like a million dollars at my $44.25 a week job and I'm 25 cent a week job and I go start collecting carbon paper. Well, I take one of these baskets and I try to hold it out like this because I don't want to get on my suit from no label Lewis. And my grandfather, who was a tailor, he'd very carefully cuffed it and everything and really made it look nice. He held this damn thing out and I went around and I got a few more pieces of carbon paper and I put it in the top and somebody said, what are you doing? I said, oh, I'm going to go wash the carbon paper and it's okay. So I'm thinking, Jesus, wash the carbon paper.

And then I had copy-boy cars and better hurry up, Bernstein, better get in there, wash the carbon paper. And then I had copy-boy comes, you better hurry up, burn steam, you better get in there and wash that carbon paper. So I kind of back out in a newsroom like this, into the name of the hallway, and then men's room back here. And there's a row of sinks. I look at the sinks, and I look all of a sudden,

I take one sink, and I take this much carbon paper and I put it under there. I put a little carbon paper under there. Third sink, carbon paper under it, and it was just this was 1960, which was an era when plumbing was changing because they had invented the aerated faucet. So it meant that instead of the faucet like you had in your kitchen, which just water came out, this stream like from a fire hose would come out. So I kind of went back like this and I went,

pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, like that. And all of a sudden, there was like this, old faithful. Well my cream colored suit from no label always looked like I'd been on a safari. I looked like a leopard. And at that moment, I noticed that behind me, while I was kind of trying to dry off the carbon paper, there was a gentleman who was pulling his fly out, and he turned around to me and said, son, what are you doing? And I immediately recognized him because he'd been pointed out to me.

It was Newbold noise junior, the editor of the paper. I was very happy to see Mr. Noise. And I said, oh, Mr. Noise is 2 o'clock. I'm just washing the carbon paper. And he said, what's your name? Bernstein. Mr. Bernstein, I want you to go in that newsroom and you go back there and you tell whoever told you to do this. That if I ever find out who is responsible for this or if this is ever done again in this newspaper that we are going to clean house

in the Copy Boy Department. I mean, you know, I had inkling. So I went back to the Copy Boy who had told me to do this. And I said, you know, I could leave this business, but I think I'm going to stay. But I don't want to do this again. And that was my first day at work. Thank you. That was Carl Bernstein.

Carl shared a Pulitzer Prize with Bob Woodward for his coverage of the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post. With Woodward, he's the author of the book, All the President's Men. And he also wrote a woman in charge, the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton and is currently writing a memoir about his apprentice years at the Washington Star. Our next story was told that one of our story slam competitions in Washington DC where we partnered with the Public Radio Station, WAMU. The storytellers job, putting out fires, nearly got them killed when a basement fire broke out the first night he was on the job. Here's Nick Baskerville, live at the mall. This is a basement he shouts.

That's when I knew it just got real. That's when I knew I was finally going to get to do what I've been wanting to do for a long time. This is my big opportunity. We pull up to this house. It's a two-story single-family home. It's got a attached garage to it. That guy was yelling. That's my very first fire officer. He's probably forgotten more than I'll ever learn.

He's a few rooms ahead of me and will me? But at that point, I was three months out of recruit school. This is my very first fire as a full-time firefighter. Now, it's not my first fire. I've been volunteering for like three years, so I understand it, I get it. And so I've learned that not every time you get put on a house fire is it's really a house fire. Sometimes the reported house fire is really burnt food on the stove because people put toaster cakes on the stove.

But not this time. This time I'm at the fire and then I'm holding this hose and I'm slinging around. I get around to the garage. I start flaking it out. Around then two more people show up. They're from the other crew. We all get adjusted and the decision is made. We need to go through the front door. So we pick up a charge hose line now. We go around. We go through the front door, all the way to the back, down into the basement, and it's like, this time I realize

I might need a pep talk for myself. I say, self, I say, huh? I said, look at here, look at here, look at here. Basement fires are among the most dangerous fires that you're going to deal with. There's only one way in and one way out normally. Get down to the basement, put this thing out. Don't mess around.

So that's what we tried to do. We get down to the bottom, and we found all the heat. You know that kind of heat that you feel when you open up, you're oven and it's been preheated to 500, check. We found all the darkness in that dark thick black smoke. It's the only way I can describe it is like this. If you take a minute right now and close your eyes and that level of darkness you see, that's what I saw. The difference is right now you can open your eyes. Found heat, found darkness, can't find the fire.

Well, crap. How do you misplace fire? And so we're looking, I'm looking through doors, I'm looking for anything, it's nothing. And by now, this point, the heat is gong at my ears, it's gong at everything that I'm wearing. I open up the fire hose and I whip it around to try to get it cooled off, and it's not doing anything. Finally, I feel the tap, I'm going to show it from the other guy, I says, we're going to take it out and try something different.

So out we go, out the front door, now we're around to decide and we found another entrance. In this time, all we can see is fire. And now I'm doing it. I've opened it up and I am getting it. I am doing my job. Why y'all laughing at me? And in the process, I hear this sound. Is that sound of air horns? Oh man, that's the signal that the fire chief gives you, then he wants you to evacuate

out of the building because there's a problem. And I walk out with this attitude like stupid fire chief 30 years experience. We were doing it. You don't even know. You weren't there. You weren't oh. Because then I realized that the entire second floor and the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. And the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. But that wasn't the scary part. As time goes on, and my understanding of fire behavior increases, I tend to class called the order of reading smoke. And it has all kinds of new science and understanding. And one of the things they say in there is that smoke is fuel.

Like the fuel, the smoke that me and my crew were covered in, as we said at the bottom, and I realized the only reason why we weren't heard is because I never found that spark in looking for that fire. And it's at that moment I've come to appreciate not getting what I want exactly when I want it. Thank you. Nick Faskerville is an Air Force vet with 14 years of service. Nick tells us, I'm now an officer at the Fire Service. The person expected to do what my officer did for me.

Every day, it's my hope to help protect the people I work with for the dangers they don't know exist. If I can take care of them, they can take care of the public. Coming up, a young physician working out of a makeshift medical tent in Syria must make a difficult choice. That's next on the Moth Radio Hour. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange,

PRX.org. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns, and our final story is from Dr. Vivian Hoang. Vivian is a physician who has done work for doctors without borders. She contacted us to suggest a number of her colleagues' storytellers, but after hearing one of her stories, I knew we had to get her up on

the stage. Here's Dr. Vivian Wang live at the moth. It is the dead of summer. Temperatures are swelling above 100 degrees. The hot desert sun is unrelenting. It is the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid. Eid is usually a time of celebration, but intense fighting has broken out. I am a medical doctor with doctors without border in northern Syria.

The war has been raging for over three years now. People aren't going to work, children aren't going to school. There is no safe place. There is no clean running water. There is no electricity. And the healthcare system has collapsed. Just a couple months ago,

my surgical colleagues were operating a small operation inside a secret cave. They had to crawl into a small entrance to get inside. Inside there was an inflatable operation tent. Some emergency beds, and chalky dust everywhere, but they managed to take care of patients. Since the war has begun, the Syrian government has been attacking health care facilities, and health care personnel. The patients that are looking for care are in danger and the people that take care of the patients are

also in danger. We have now upgraded to a building that was once a chicken farm. There are no more chickens there, but this isn't like a scene out of the episode of Grey's Anatomy. That afternoon, I was assigned to look over people that were sick but stable. It is one room divided into many areas. There's a triage area, there's an inflatable operating tent, there's a maternity ward, and also in the front we ask that the patients leave their weapons there. Earlier in the day, there was intense heavy bombing. The government liked to bomb when people got out of mosque because they could get more bang for their buck.

There was chaos in the hospital. People were lying everywhere. And there, I saw this man. He was laying in the middle of it. He had been wounded by shrapnel. Earlier we had stopped his bleeding and bandaged him up. But he looked uncomfortable to me. So I tried to ask him, in Arabic, are you in pain? And he wouldn't look at me. And so I thought, maybe he didn't hear me. So I tried to walk closer to him.

And I felt a little scared because he was a big guy twice my size. But I mustered up a little bit more courage. And in Arabic I asked him, are you in pain? And to my surprise, he didn't look at me, but in English he said, cover your hair, cover your hair. And I was a bit surprised when he said that, because I had already been covered from neck down as was customary for foreign women working in Syria.

His comments sent me into a time where I endured sexism and gender inequality. When I was little, my grandmother would always tell me, stop growing taller, we can't marry you off. And when I was 10 years old, my father wouldn't let me get glasses. I couldn't see the chalkboard. And he said, if you had glasses, you wouldn't be pretty and we couldn't marry you off. He said, if you had glasses, you wouldn't be pretty and we couldn't marry you off. He said, you have it a lot better.

Your great-grandmother, in China, she had her feet bound. And my aunties, I would hear often the times, they would say, boys are easier to take care of than girls. Boys are just better than girls. But through all of that sexism and through all of the favoring of boys over girls, my family did value education. And so as a little kid, my father would go around telling people I was going to be a doctor. And lucky for him, I also did feel the same way.

Medicine fascinated me. I absolutely love the bugs that invaded the bodies. And when I was in college, there was an Ebola outbreak in Congo. And I was just fascinated how this bug could wreak such havoc on the body. And so I read everything I could about this outbreak. And that's when I discovered doctors without borders. Doctors without borders is an international humanitarian organization that was started in 1971. And their basic principles are impartiality, neutrality, independence. And it is because of these tenants, they are able to go to places and do the work that they do.

And when I was in college, I said to myself, one day I'm going to be a doctor with that organization, and I'm going to try to help and alleviate the suffering in the world. And years went by, and I went to medical school, and I thought that being a doctor, I could level the playing field a bit. That being a doctor, I wouldn't have to face sexism. But I think that was a bit naive.

Because when I was in training, nurses would rather take orders from a male doctor. Patients would always say, what a nice nurse you are. And female doctors still get paid less than male doctors, and many of my female colleagues feel the same way. But despite that, I finished my training, and I was accepted into doctors without borders. And there I was in Syria. I thought I had made all my dreams come true. That had become a doctor, and I have fought all the sexism and the gender inequality.

But here I was with this man. He was wounded, and he needed help. But in that second, he took everything away from me that I had worked so hard to fight against. And I was just so angry at him. And I just wanted to walk away. I thought, you must be not that sick. I'll just let you be there and you can just suffer.

But my conscience wouldn't let me do that. I couldn't watch him suffer. And I thought about how we were meeting at that particular moment. And that he believed in something so strong that his religion brought him there with his suffering. And then I thought about why I was there, is because I believe so strongly in medicine. And that came before being a woman.

And so for him, religion was like medicine for me. Religion trumped everything, even his suffering, even equality for women. And so I met him where he was. And I forgave him at that moment. And I let go of that anger in that moment. And I was a doctor first and a woman second. So I did what he asked me to do.

I went into another room. I took the purple scarf that was around my neck. I wrapped it around my hair. I went back out. I gave him some pain medicine. And then I put him in an ambulance for him to go to Turkey in hopes that he would get better care.

Inshallah. Thank you. That was Dr. Vivian Hoang. Vivian is with the physician and epidemiologist who previously worked with the organization Partners in Health. I asked Vivian if there's a follow-up to the story. She wrote, I feel like now is such a crucial time in our history to tell stories of what it's really like in places where violence is the norm, especially when the world

is becoming so much more xenophobic. I'm in New York seeing patients at a tuberculosis clinic these days and last month I saw a Syrian refugee family and immediately I felt a closeness to all of them. In some ways, I breathed a sigh of relief, and seeing this family from Syria, now in New York City, restored my faith a little in this current political climate. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour. Your host this hour was the Moths artistic director Catherine Burns. Catherine also directed

the stories in the show. The rest of the most directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess, Jennifer Hickson, and make bowls production support from Timothy Lewley. Special thanks to Paul Holden-Grabber and everyone at Live at the New York Public Library. Most stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. other music in this hour from the TV theme players, Max Rebunak, Stelwag and Symphonet and Jamie Seiber. The Malthus produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Malthus radio hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, thumb-off.org.