The Moth Radio Hour: The Call
53:25 Share

Support comes from Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm. Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations, and at trial, when the lawyer you choose matters most. Online at Zuckerman.com.

The Moth is brought to you by Progressive, home of the Name Your Price tool. You say how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. It's easy to start a quote. Visit Progressive.com to get started. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.

This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our mainstages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows from New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more. The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection.

To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginness. This episode is all about calls. Literal telephone calls and one story about a man's true calling. I must say, I don't love talking on the phone. I'm a much stronger in-person kind of friend. But I've been practicing phone conversations more.

So when I do call my best friend, well, after she picks up the phone and says, "Wow," I say, "We're doing our favorite thing. We're talking on the phone." So we're doing this hour because when the phone rings, it's like a great mystery. And remember before caller ID, we didn't even know who was on the other line. Phone calls can change the direction of a story in an instant. They reveal things, like in this first story from Susan Fee.

Susan told it at one of our open mic story slams in Seattle, where we partner with public radio station KUOW. Her little appetizer of a story really sets the tone for this hour. You'll see what I mean. Here's Susan Fee, live at The Moth in Seattle. So I'm a mental health counselor. I work with families and teens. And one of the biggest questions you get is, how do you know what your teenager is really thinking about you? And I'm here to tell you I have the answer.

You don't have to go through their room. It's not about reading texts or going on the computer. I found out the hard way. So I'm out buying a car with my 17-year-old daughter. I'm a counselor, so I had what I called a counselor car for many years. They don't make it anymore, a Honda Insight. It's a pretend Prius. LAUGHTER

So stripped down, there's nothing in this car. And I'm kind of used to that, clunking along, just gas mileage and all. But we're going to bump it up a little bit. And I'm going to buy this new car. And my daughter's with me. We're going to learn how to buy a car. This is going to be cool. And who do I get as the sales guy is Chris, the college kid. Chris, the college kid, showing us around, showing me the new things that you can get in a car.

So I'm learning. I'm liking this car. My daughter's next to me. Chris is in the back. He's showing me how all these things work in the car, and it's got Bluetooth. Well, I've never had Bluetooth. I honestly didn't know how it worked. People can hear things in their car. This is amazing. Chris, show me, Chris College Kid, how do you use Bluetooth? He says, I can do this. So he says to my daughter, you got your phone? Yeah. He says, okay, you got your phone? I say, yeah, I got it. He goes, okay, right now.

Call your daughter on the Bluetooth. Okay. Call my daughter. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, like surround, like I don't even know what's happening. What is happening? Now, if you don't know the song Carmina Burana, you do know it because any movie that involves Satan has this song.

I do not understand what is happening right now. But Chris the college kid in the backseat does understand. He and my daughter understand that this is her ringtone for me. I see him in the back room and he's like, he's trying to tell her, you're not getting this car.

So I catch my breath, I try to understand. He's like, "Yep, yep, you called your daughter. You could have a conversation now, okay?" So I follow up with what really only a counselor would ask. I mean, this takes training. I say, "Gabrielle, what is your father's ringtone?" And she comes back with, "The Imperial March." So, bottom line,

You want to find out what your teenager thinks of you? Ringtones, baby. It's all about the ringtones. Thank you. That was Susan Fee.

Susan and her husband live in Seattle, Washington, where she still works as a counselor. Her daughter Gabrielle was in the audience the night Susan told this story. Gabrielle says she remembers the incident in the same way, but says that she was totally embarrassed and scrambled to turn down the volume when her phone rang. But now she and her mom laugh about it, and they go to moth shows together whenever they can.

Our next story is told by Moran Cerf. Moran is a neuroscientist and probably the fastest talker ever to appear at The Moth. He speaks so fast that the transcript of this story is also at themoth.org if you miss anything and you want to read it later. This story is about a series of crossed wires and missed phone calls. Moran told it in the Adirondacks at a Moth main stage produced with North Country Public Radio. Here's Moran Cerf live at The Moth.

So I'm a neuroscientist and I do research on people. We don't get a lot of fame doing that, but I actually, I'm going to tell you a story about how I did somehow end up being famous for that. So in my research, I'm working with patients undergoing brain surgery.

and we try to do all kinds of things to help them, but we also do research with these patients. And one of the things I did in the last couple of years was a study where we took patients who were undergoing brain surgery and we put electrodes deep inside their brain during surgery to help them with clinical reasons.

But we also did something where we told them, "We're going to show you pictures and see how your brain looks when you see those pictures." And we kind of have a map of your brain when you see those pictures. And then we can basically know how your brain looks when you think of those things. So the patient could sit in bed and think about the Eiffel Tower. We would see a pattern that we organized from before, and we would project a picture of the Eiffel Tower in front of their eyes.

So patients would basically sit in bed, think about things, and we would project their thoughts on a screen in front of their eyes. And this was a remarkable project that took us five years to accomplish. And when we finished, we were very excited and wanted to tell the world about it. And the way scientists tell the world about things is by publishing it in a paper. So we write a paper describing everything you did, and we said we could have people sit in bed, think about things, and project their thoughts on a screen. And then you send this paper to a bunch of journals.

journals with all kinds of ranking and the journals basically take your work and try to find flaws in it and if they can't find any flaws they publish it and that's basically what you do as a scientist this is your career now journals get all kinds of rankings and the highest ranking journal in science the one that is the hardest to get in is called Nature

Nature is where you put your work if you really are going to change the world. To give you an example, this is where the discovery of DNA was published in the 1950s. When they cloned the ship Dolly, it was published there. When they discovered a new galaxy, they published it there. It's really the place where you put your work if you're going to change the world. So we submitted our work there, and it took six months where people tried to find flaws in our work. And eventually, on October 1st, I got the email saying, "Congratulations, your work is going to be published in Nature in three weeks."

And I was excited. This is something that doesn't happen regularly to scientists. It happens usually 0 to 1 times in a scientist's career. So I was really happy that my work is going to be there. I was still a graduate student at the time. I was ecstatic.

And then they tell you that they're going to come up with your work within three weeks. So you have three weeks to kind of prepare things. And then they have a press release where they announce to the world your work. And usually those press releases don't go well, people don't get it right. So I had this idea. I contacted Nature and I said, "Why don't we create a YouTube video explaining the work? We're going to make a nice video where I can interview myself, my colleagues. We're going to show videos of the patients thinking about things and projecting their thoughts."

and this video is going to explain to people how it's done. And they were very happy with it, and I said, "I'm going to make it. I'm going to edit and make this movie." So I spent the next three weeks working on making this movie, and I actually worked day and night, and I learned stuff, and I did a lot of cool things in the movie, and I ended up working until the very last day, until the day the first release was about to happen. And I worked all night, and at 8 a.m. that morning, I actually put this video out there on Nature's website, and I just waited.

Now, the press release was scheduled for 1:00 p.m., so I had five hours to sleep. And I said, "I'm going to go to sleep now, rest before my glorious day comes out." And I put my phone on vibrate, and I went to sleep to relax a little bit. And I was planning to wake up at 1:00 p.m. to see how things kind of come out, but I actually ended up waking up an hour before.

because my phone kept vibrating the entire time. It woke me up and I picked up my phone and looked at it and I had 50 missed calls and my answering machine was full of messages and I didn't know what's going on and then my phone was ringing right away so I picked up the phone and on the phone was the senior producer from BBC Nightly News and he says, "I saw your work, I saw your video and I'm gonna wanna open our Nightly News with this video." Now here's the thing about the video.

In the video, I asked one of my colleagues, a neurosurgeon in our team, to explain what this work can be in the future, what could happen in the future with this work. And he says, "Well, in the future, you can use this thing to have machines work by using just thoughts, using memories, using dreams, and then the movie kind of ends gloriously with the future and fades out." And the guy on BBC calls me and says, "I saw your video, and I want to know about this dream recording thing that you're doing. Just to be clear,

Dream recording is not what we did. We'd never recorded a dream. We never did anything with dreams. We only had patients think about things and project their thoughts. And just the movie ends with the final two words, recording dreams. So he asked me about it, and I say, I don't know what you're talking about. What is this dream recording? And he says, well, one of your colleagues in the team said something about dream recording. And I say, well, I don't think it's true. Maybe it was a mistake. He says, I don't understand. Is it possible or impossible? And I say, well, in theory, it's possible. He says, thank you, too.

And so the last thing that I said to the BBC senior producer was that dream recording is possible. And I said, "Well, that's not a big deal. Maybe it's one little mistake, it's not going to be a big deal, probably one little fluke, but it doesn't matter." And now it's 1:00 p.m., and I refresh my browser to see what comes out, and the first thing is nature having this personal list describing the ability to have people think about things and see their thoughts. And the second thing is the BBC with a headline, "Scientists say that dream recording is possible."

And I say, "Well, one mistake, not a big deal. No one's going to notice that." And I refresh the browser again. Ten minutes later, MSNBC. Scientists have been recording dreams.

Refresh the browser, Fox News, scientists have been recording dreams and keeping them in storage. Refresh the browser, Wall Street Journal, scientists are recording dreams and keeping them in a database, they have hundreds of years of... and the story gets bigger and bigger. Everyone talks about the dream recording. No one even mentions the ability to think of things and show them on the screen. No one even mentions that. And as I refresh the browser again and again, more and more news outlets are talking about the scientists at Caltech who can record your dreams.

And I'm really frustrated, I don't know what to do. And people call me and I answer and I try to explain to one by one each reporter who calls me that it's not the case, but no one really cares. They keep talking about Recording Dream, they have a name for it now, the DRM, the Dream Recording Machine, and it has a price, and people buy it, and it's like you can buy 10 for $8, and people talk about this thing, and the much I comment about it, no one really cares. And I'm really frustrated because this is my career, it hinges on this project, and no one cares. So I call my dad, who's a journalist.

And I said, "Dad, here's what's happening. How can I kill this story because it won't die by itself?" And my dad said, "Look, son, no one cares about science. Just turn off your phone for two days, don't answer anything, and the story's going to die by itself because no one cares about it." And so I do just that.

Two days later, the story is number one. They have like this ranking. It's number one on BBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Reuters. Everyone keeps talking about this dream recording machine. And because I didn't pick up my phone for two days now, people email me. So I get emails from people sending me their dreams, people asking me to go to hearings with the CIA, explaining how they can be...

The dreams have been coded for years now. And I get more and more of those emails. All of that, of course, now too. And I get this chef, a famous British chef sends me, he says his dreams have been about this particular recipe and he can't get the ingredients and he wants me to put electrodes in his brain and give him the ingredients. And Apple calls me and they say they want to have this dream recording machine in their next operating system. And I say, it doesn't exist, sir. I don't know. And they say, fine, you want to play it far? Okay, we're going to option this thing. So when you actually release this thing, then we're going to buy it. I say, it doesn't exist. They say, oh, you're really playing it tough.

Okay, good enough. And so people call me and ask about it, and the story won't die. There's like something that the queen said, and still my story trumps this thing. And I don't know what to do. I feel frustrated. And my friends, who've seen me upset for two days now, they contact me and say, you know, it's Halloween now, October 30th. It's like a fun night. Why don't you go out with us? Have a night out. Forget about this thing and just go out. And I say, fine, it's a good idea. I'm going to go out with you guys. And I do that. We go out, and I dress up.

and as a kind of a self-deprecating sense of humor, I dress up like Freud. I put a little beard and a pipe and I comb my hair to the side, and I have these little glasses and I go out, and now we all have a great night out in New York, and they take pictures of me,

And the night after, they're putting it on Facebook and on places, and now if you look for my name, not only do they see my work, but they also see a picture of me looking like Freud with the title "Moran Cerf can record dreams". So the story gets even bigger because everyone now knows about this thing who is actually the new Freud. That's me. And I say, "Oh my God, this story is never gonna die. I don't know what to do." And I try to find all kinds of tricks to kill the story by going on live shows and explaining it doesn't... it's not the case.

But now nothing happens. And now people say, you know what? It's now October 30th, but in four days they're going to have the midterm election in the US, November 4th. Surely this story is going to trump your story. Four days later, the house changes hands, but still, story number two now is about the scientists who can record the dreams. Nothing will kill the story. And I'm waiting, it's been a week now, and nothing ends.

And I think that, "Wow, this is never going to happen. My scientific career is over." And at the same time, there are other scientists who have been trying to recall dreams, who have been commenting my work, saying that it's impossible that I've been doing that because they've been trying for years now, and other scientists have been competing with them, saying that of course they can do it because I'm better than them, and there's like a battle between scientists all about my work, where I'm not involved in. And I think to myself, "Wow, this is not going to end, and I just have to wait and give up my scientific career." When suddenly, I get the phone call. I was sitting in my office,

And the phone rang, it was 6pm, and I answered the phone, and on the line was this woman, and she says, "I'm going to put Chris up with you in a second." And I wait for him a second, and on the line is a person who addresses himself as Christopher Nolan.

famous filmmaker who just released a movie called Inception about the same time, about people who can do stuff with dreams. And he calls me and says, "Look, I've been looking at your work now for a few days. It's great. We're gonna have a DVD release of Inception in a few days, and I want you to be the face of this thing. I want you to go on a world tour with me and explain how you've been doing it for a while, so my work is gonna be getting the scientific authority, the scientific stamp." And I say, "Well, sir,

I don't know what to say, it's a really great movie, but we never did it. We never record dreams, and I don't think it's possible in the sense that you think it is. And he says, "Well, send me the paper. I want to read it." In fact, he was the first and only guy out of all the reporters all over the world who actually asked me to give him the paper. So I sent him the paper, and he reads it, and he calls me back and he says, "Look, I look at your work. Yes, there's nothing about dreams there.

But it doesn't matter. I still want you to go on a tour with me because you're now the face of the recording. Everyone thinks you are. Just go on a tour with me and explain how it can be done. No one really cares about the details. Just go on a tour with me and explain how it's done. And I say, well, let me think about it. Because on the one hand lies fame and fortune. And on the other hand, my integrity and science. And I need 24 hours to think about which of the two I'm going to choose. So I spend 24 hours thinking about it. And after 24 hours, the phone rings again. And I pick up. And I say...

As much as I would have loved to help you in this, I don't think I can go on this world tour with you and explain how dream recording is possible, given that it's not. And he says, well, I understand. If you ever change your mind, we're working on Inception 2. And I say, I'll remember, and I'll call you back. And so all I was left with was a scientific project that gradually went the right way, and people actually now know the truth about it, and a story. Thank you.

That was Moran Cerf. Moran is a professor of neuroscience at the Kellogg Business School and a professor at the American Film Institute. Prior to his career in opening and studying brains, he worked as a hacker, a radio host, and a furniture designer.

Moran told the story a while back, and I asked him if people can record dreams now. And he said numerous labs are pursuing it, his lab is exploring it daily, and they're getting closer and closer. He says the only difference between science fiction and science is timing. And by the way, Moran said about his story, "I don't worry about time limits. If it's running too long, I'll just talk faster."

After our break, an elevator mechanic gets an unexpected call from her mother, and then another, and then another, 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 Sarah Austin-Ginness. We're exploring calls in this hour.

Our next story is about a good kind of phone call. It's the kind that changes your life in a positive way. Nancy Maul was originally part of a moth community workshop we taught with Congregation Beth Haktiva, a Reconstructionist synagogue, and Fountain Baptist Church in New Jersey. It was a moth workshop that brought together two different faiths to connect across traditions. Nancy then told her story at a community showcase in Brooklyn, New York. Here's Nancy Maul live at the moth.

Thank you. It was a regular Tuesday at work. It was a beautiful day. And I was standing on the roof of the New York Times building in Times Square. I was on the roof because I'm an elevator mechanic, and that's where the elevator machine rooms are. I was drinking a cup of coffee and watching the traffic below, and I heard the phone ring in the motor room. That usually is a bad thing. It means somebody's stuck in an elevator or somebody's complaining about something.

So I went in to answer the phone, and it was my mother. Now, I hadn't spoken to my mother in maybe two years, so it was strange on so many levels. It was strange that she would call me, that she would call me on the roof of the New York Times, that she would know that I was on the roof of the New York Times.

And she said, "Are you okay?" I said, "I'm fine. Sorry, I haven't called." And she's like, "No, really, are you okay?" And I said, "I'm okay. Are you okay?" She said, "I'm okay." I said, "Okay, that's great." She said, "A plane hit the World Trade Center and I was worried about you." I said, "Well, that's sad."

And she said, "No, really, it's serious, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay." And I said, "Okay, I'm okay." And we hung up, and I, you know how the rest of the day went. The next day I was back at work, and the phone rang in the motor room, and it was my mother. And she said, "How are you doing? Are your friends okay? Where do you live? Is your house okay?"

And I said, "Most of my friends are accounted for and the house is okay and I'm back in Times Square. I'm safe." And she said, "Well, how's my city?" And let me preface this by saying my mother was a New Yorker. She lived in Jackson Heights, Queens and then in Murray Hill. And in 1937, she was Miss Larchmont. She'd have you know.

And we don't... Well, we didn't get along. We didn't agree on really much of anything. She was a Republican and I was a Democrat sliding toward communist. And she's a devoutly Catholic person and I'm very much not. And...

She was straight and I'm gay. And she had a really hard time with that. And so anytime we tried to talk about anything, food, movies, politics, religion,

We'd end up in opposite corners of the room, hissing at each other. And we just sort of gave up, because there wasn't much in the relationship that fed either of us. And every time we got together, it ended in a terrible fight. And we just sort of let it go. So here she was calling me a second time. And I was really touched. It seemed like she actually cared, which I did not think she did. And she said, you know, during the war, when your father was overseas...

All us ladies had to go out and keep everything open. We had to go to concerts and sports events and museums, and you're going to have to do that. You're going to have to keep my city alive for me. My mother had left New York and gone out to take care of a sick relative in South Dakota and was foolish enough to marry a cowboy. So she was calling me from the West, and she hadn't been back to New York in decades. Um...

But she still thought New York was her city. And she wanted to know how it was. So we...

we developed a kind of a rhythm. Every morning I'd get a little five-minute phone call from my mother to see how her city was. And she'd asked me what I was doing. And so I said, well, I got tickets to Joe's Pub and I saw Justin Vivian Bond and they sang Benny Goodman songs to kind of keep everyone's spirits up. And she told me about going to the Waldorf Astoria and dancing to Benny Goodman. And she said, you know, what are you going to do tomorrow? So I

Every day I had to come up with like a little what did I do and and how was I keeping her city alive? And I was going to theater and I was going to sports events, which I hate and and I was One night I was on emergency call back walking through Times Square going up 6th Avenue and and my little flip phone rang and it was my mother because at this point she'd gotten my phone number so she could call me whenever she wanted to and

And she said, how's my city doing? Tell me about it. Hold up your phone and let me hear. So I walked along 6th Avenue, and she could hear the horses clopping around Central Park, and she could hear the taxis honking. And she said, what's it look like? And I said, well, every taxi's got this little plastic flag hanging out of the window. Every business has a flag on it. Even the gay bars have flags on them. I said, it looks like Kansas. And...

And my mother found that touching, and she's like, "Well, I'm glad you finally got some patriotism." And she said, "I'm thinking about visiting you, so just put that in your mind." And this was a scary thought, so I thought, "I'll just keep her at bay with a few more stories." And then I got tickets to the opera. So the opera was something I never wanted to go to, and I

spent four hours listening to this Mozart thing that went on and on and on and everybody was dressed like my mother and it was very stuffy and it was very boring and then at the end this red-haired lady came out and she sang this aria and it was gorgeous and I knew nothing about opera but I discovered that night that they sing without microphones. They're just freaks of nature and they can fill this huge auditorium with just what God gave them and

And at the end of this aria, all these stiff-looking people stood up and they started pounding on the boxes and screaming and throwing flowers and shrieking and stomping. And it was like Yankee Stadium in the cheap seats. And I was like, this is really raw. This is really visceral. I get opera. Yeah.

So when I told my mother about that, she said, we're going together. I'm coming. I'm coming to JFK. Come and pick me up. So I drive out to the airport, and I'm terrified because we've been having this beautiful little relationship where I make the city come alive for her, and she makes the city come alive for me, and everything's great in five-minute increments, but now we're going to be stuck together for a week. And I don't know how smart this is because it's a beautiful thing, and I think it's all going to go...

So I pick her up, I get her gigantic suitcases, I put her in the car, and we're driving in semi-silence because I think she's also scared. And she says, so have you been going to Mass? And I just let that sit there for a minute. And I was like, no. And then there was silence.

And then she said, "Well, I have some things in the suitcase for you." And I'm hoping, "Chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip cookies." It turns out the Legion of Mary went all over Sun City and bought every dust mask they could find, which was really sweet 'cause we had none. All of the people who were working downtown were out, and we appreciated that.

And she said, "And I've got something else for you." So we got back to Jersey City to my little skinny 12-foot wide house. And we went upstairs to the guest room and she unzipped this bag and inside it was the flag from my father's coffin. I think I mentioned he was a B-17 pilot in World War II. And those coffin flags are big and my house is small. And she said, "Do you mind if we hang it on the house? I know you're not patriotic, but..."

I said, yeah, I would love it. So we opened the two windows and we dropped it down the front of the house and it basically covered the whole house. And so if anybody doubted my patriotism, they doubted it no longer. And the rest of the week went really well. We had like one little fight and we worked it out. And we stayed away from religion and we stayed away from politics and we stayed on

We went to things together, and we loved each other, and we enjoyed each other, and we had those five-minute phone calls for the next nine years of her life, and I miss every one of them. And I have tickets to the opera for next Saturday. That was Nancy Maul. Nancy still loves opera. In fact, she just saw Bluebeard's Castle at the Met, which coincidentally featured an elevator shaft as a principal visual element.

Nancy's mom came to New York one more time after this story took place. She went to the New York Times to see her daughter and meet editors and reporters and the president of the Times. Nancy said her mom wasn't willing to ride on the top of an elevator, but she did peek down the shaft and squeal. To see a photo of Nancy and her mom, plus the newspaper clipping of Miss Larchmont at the World's Fair in Flushing in 1939, go to themoth.org.

So here at The Moth, we talk a lot about how to find a story of yours. And the start of the story, or the hook if you will, is always something that breaks a pattern. So unexpected phone calls are a great way to look for stories. Did you get a surprising phone call or an email or a knock at the door?

If there's a story about that, you can pitch us by recording a one-minute version of your story right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. We listen to all the pitches we get and the best are developed for moth shows all around the world. When we come back, a story from comedian and actor Cheech Marine of the comedy duo Cheech and Chong. When the Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.

You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin-Ginesse. In this hour all about calls, our last story is about a calling. It's from Cheech Marin. Some of you may know Cheech as an actor. He's one half of the hilarious duo Cheech and Chong, and they've made eight films together. This is basically Cheech's origin story. It's how Cheech became Cheech, and it takes place at the time of the Vietnam War.

He told this at a Moth Night in Los Angeles that was produced in partnership with public radio station KCRW. Here's Cheech Modine live at the mall. I used to be a Cub Scout. I was a Boy Scout. I was an altar boy. I sang in the church choir. I was a straight-A student all through school. When I graduated from high school, I won the religion award.

I was the product of a Catholic education and I was prepared for anything that happened here in the 12th century. My father, Oscar, was a cop. 30 years, LAPD. He was a World War II vet, was in the Navy, saw combat in the Philippines, and he never talked about it, except once he talked about it. And I understood why he never talked about it. It was horrific. And he only had one rule, Oscar.

And that rule was, my way or the highway. We didn't get along really great. But it wasn't just because of that, it's because it worked me to death. I'd wake up in the morning, all right, make your bed. All right, make your bed again, those corners aren't right. Go out there and cut the lawn. Now edge the lawn. Now come in and vacuum. Now wash the car. Dad, come on, man. Hey, listen, you're a Chicano, and you're always going to have to have three jobs. So get used to it. Oh, man.

So when I went off to college, man, I was ready for anything. Get me out of here. So I worked. One night I came home from work and my roommates had a little party going on. And there was music and there was laughter and the lights were low. And it was really smoky in there for some reason. And out of the blue, somebody handed me this little hand-rolled cigarette. Well, I'm here to try anything. So I took a hit. And I heard my dad's voice.

If you ever smoke marijuana, you're going to turn into a heroin addict and you're going to steal out of your mother's purse. So I took another hit, looked around, and what else have they been lying about? For those of you who didn't go to college in the mid-60s, boy, you missed it. Because it was happening. There was a revolution going on. There was a very unpopular, unjust, immoral war going on. And they were sending thousands of young men over there to die in the jungles of Vietnam. And they lied to us every step of the way.

And my college was a hotbed of radical activities, a string of speakers that came in and riled us up. There was Floyd McKissick from SNCC, there was Reyes T. Arena from the Chicano Land Movement, there was Timothy Leary in his LSD, he became a good friend of mine. "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Two weeks before he was assassinated, Robert Kennedy spoke at our university.

Martin Luther had been killed just before that, now Robert Kennedy, and they were murdering our leaders. But there was one person that came to school and he made the most impact on me. He wasn't the most fiery, he wasn't the most bombastic, he was actually the quietest. His name was David Harris, and he was the leader of the draft resistance movement. And he had a very simple message: if you're not registered for the draft, don't register.

If it registered and they call you up for a physical, don't go to the physical. If you've gone to the physical and they ask you to step forward to be inducted in the Army, don't step forward. Refuse to be a part of this machine. And it's the only thing that made sense to me during this whole period. So that's what I'm going to do. So I handed in my draft card. I gave it to David Harris himself. And then he put it on a collage that accompanied him and his new wife Joan Baez on a speaking tour throughout the United States.

and it was on the cover of Time magazine. And if you looked real closely in the corner, you could see my name. I was a revolutionary now. I was going to make a change. I was fearless until about two weeks later, General Hershey, who was the director of the draft at the time, issued this proclamation that anybody who burnt their draft card or turned it in or demonstrated in front of the draft board would be immediately reclassified, drafted, and sent to the front lines of Vietnam.

And that was his fix. And I thought, it doesn't seem like it's quite so legal, but anyways, that's what he did. So I went from revolutionary to a little scared revolutionary. But another miracle happened at that time. I discovered that I was an artist. I couldn't draw and I couldn't paint, I couldn't sculpt, but I took a pottery class my last semester in school. And my Mexican genes came trotting out.

They said, "Hey, Holmes, where you been? Come on, man. Let's get on the wheel. We're back ordered. Let's go." And I made pottery from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. I was a pottery-making fool. And that became my life, and I found my calling. I was going to be a potter. I was going to go out, and I was going to dig in the ground and make clay and make pots for the rest of my life. And then I got another notice that I had been reclassified, 1A.

Ready to go. I was in school. I had a 2S deferment, but they reclassified me because of my political activities. I'm like, oh, jeez, what am I going to do now? So my pottery teacher, who was kind of hip to what I was going through, said, you know what? I have this ex-student of mine who's a Canadian, and he's very successful. Maybe you could be his assistant. Well, that's all it took, man. I gathered all the money I could, which was 80 bucks, bought a bus ticket.

Got ready to leave and before I left I wanted to say goodbye to my mother. My father happened to be there at the house. They were getting divorced at the time. He learned about my plans and he said, "You know what? I don't believe in what they're doing over there, but if they call me I would go." Well, that's the difference between us, isn't it? I have the strength of my convictions. Didn't sit well with him. So we didn't part on really good terms. But I was on the dog north.

The last stop we had before we crossed over the border into Canada was Great Falls, Montana. We pulled into Great Falls late at night. I got off the bus bone-weary, went to check into this hotel, and in the corner there was a bar with a bunch of cowboys having a good time getting drunk, and one of the cowboys looked up, "Hey, that looks like a draft dodger. You a draft dodger? You gonna go to Canada? Well, you better not because we're gonna be here in the morning. We'll take care of your ass."

So I didn't spend quite so restful a night, and I came downstairs quietly early in the morning, looked around the corner, and there was no cowboys there. I guess hangover trumped patriotism. So I got back on the dog and entered Canada. I had a picture of what I thought Canada was going to be like. It was going to be Sergeant Preston of the Yukon with a team of dogs and igloos and Nanook of the North, man.

went into Alberta looked like Bakersfield, except really cold. I met the guy, Edra Hanchuk. He had won the Bicentennial Exhibition Award the year I got there. He was a famous potter, and I became his assistant, and I went to work right the day I met him. He said, okay, go start cleaning those bricks. And so I worked my ass off cleaning those bricks, and I worked my ass off every day, and I did everything necessary

a potter should do. I dug clay, I wedged clay, I pug clay, I wrapped clay. I just never threw clay because that was his job and I had to work my way up to it. And eventually I found a little cabin to live in by the river and it had electricity

I had a pot-bellied stove. It didn't have any gas. It didn't have any running water. So every day I had to go down to the river for my water. And I had to chop wood every single day. Chop wood, chop wood, chop wood. One night after work, I was out there chopping wood. It was already dark. And I was like, oh man, this is bone-weary. And out of nowhere, the northern lights appeared.

and the Aurora Borealis and they surrounded me and I was standing in the middle of a cathedral of light with red, blue, yellow, green, orange, violet and I thought, "God, my God!" I thought, "My God, I'll never be closer to nature than at this moment." And I went back to chopping wood because that's what I did every day. It was the coldest winter in Alberta in 80 years.

And there I was, 20 below, chopping wood. And I realized at that point that I can survive anything. I can always support myself because I know how to work. I know how to work because I was taught how to work by... So I went back to chopping wood. So I met a couple guys in town and they said, hey, you ever been skiing? Oh yeah, we used to ski all the time in South Central. They had...

Some of the best hills around. Okay, well we're going to take you to Banff. I'm going to teach you how to ski. So we rented some skis. We went up on the hill. Pointed me in a snow plow. I says, okay, this is how you turn. This way for left. This way for right. And push me. Right. And I'm picking up speed. Hey, this is cool, man. I look like the brown blur. And the only thing they didn't teach me how to do was stop. And I'm going and I hit a bank. Came down and broke my leg in half.

In half, just like that. A compound fracture and I was in the hospital for a month. I was in a full length cast with crutches for six months. So when I got out of the hospital, my same friends said, "Hey, why don't you come to Vancouver with us? It's really cool there. That's where we're from." So what the fuck? They had such good advice in the first place. So I went to Vancouver

And it was like San Francisco of the time, except without the drumbeats of war and the protests. It was just peace and love and sex and girls and flowers and butterflies and Stanley Park, and I had a ball. And sooner or later, I met this other guy that I had gone to school with, and he was in Vancouver for the same reason. And he says, "You know, there's this guy in Vancouver, and he's running this weird thing. It's an improv company in a topless bar."

In Chinatown. Skid Row. You guys would have a lot in common. So that's how I met Tommy Chong. He had come off the road with his band and he had seen improv theater and that's what he wanted to do. But he wanted to keep the Topless Girls at the same time. You know, because we needed customers. And so we started doing topless improv.

And what it was was hippie burlesque. That's what we were doing. And we owned the club so we could do anything. And we did four hours of naked improv every single night. And so at the end of nine months, the troupe dissolved because all the members wanted to go to the hills to get their head together. My head was together. My pocketbook wasn't together.

So I said, "Well, we gotta make a living doing this, and so why don't we just compact what we're doing with this troupe into two guys, and we'll go be a comedy team, and we'll go conquer the world." Yeah, sounds good. We could go to LA, where it was warm, I knew everybody, and it would be fun. Only one problem: I was wanted by the FBI at the time.

And they were always coming around my mother's house, according to her, seeing if I was there. So, oh, God, how are we going to get back into the country? Hey, I got a brilliant idea. I'll just borrow a phony ID. Can you imagine doing that today? So I did. I borrowed my friend Bill Noor's driver's license with a picture of Bill Noor on it. So I went up to the immigration guy at the airport. Hi, and I held it up like this. Hi, I'm Bill Noor. I'm going down to L.A. to do some interviews.

He looked at the picture and looked at me. We were both kind of dark. He says, well, welcome to the U.S. And I was in. Wow. But still, I was still wanted and they were still coming around. So I said, what am I going to do? And every time we go on stage, Tommy would say, hey, you know, he's wanted by the FBI. Shit. He's just kidding. That's not funny. And then another miracle happened. There was an announcement in the paper that my case, along with 600 others,

Went to the Supreme Court. It was a class action about that illegal drafting. And the case got thrown out. And so now we were not felons. So the government tried to redraft me the next day. Three years later. And they sent me a notice for physical.

So I sent a BAMF for my x-rays and went down to the induction center to stand in my underwear with my x-rays along with a bunch of other guys. Doctor comes out smoking a cigarette, looks at me, "Hey you with the leg, come over here." Takes me into his office, "These are your x-rays?" "Oh, yeah." "Well, you have about a 13 degree distortion in your leg. That's not going to come as bad news, but you're not fit to be in the army."

I know it probably breaks your heart, but you're 4F'd. Lucky break. That's what the doctor said. Lucky break. And yes, sir, it was a lucky break. So now I was free. I could do anything I wanted to do. I went and saw my mom, how you doing, everything. But I had one last chore. I had to go see my dad. So I took my buddy along with me for moral support, and we drove over to his house where he was living with his new wife.

And I walked up on the porch, and before I knocked on the door, I could see him in the kitchen. He was in there, and he was cooking, towel over his shoulder. And I stood there for as long as I could until he saw me outside. Come in. He hadn't seen me for three years, or we talked. Not one word, not a letter, nothing. So I walked in there, and he looked me up and down for a long time. So, you hungry? Sit down. So he sat down, and then he didn't say another word for a long time.

He looked at me and said, so what have you been up to? Oh, you know, just working. Well, you know how to do that. I said, yeah, I do. Thanks. That was Cheech Marine in Los Angeles.

Cheech is a third-generation Mexican-American, and in addition to his notoriety for Cheech and Chong, he's directed Broadway shows, been honored by the Smithsonian, and he writes children's books. His memoir, Cheech is Not My Real Name, But Don't Call Me Chong, is out now. Cheech also holds one of the largest private collections of Chicano art in the world. ♪

So that's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour, all about calls and callings. And if you want to contact us, all of our information is at themoth.org. We hope you'll join us next time. Your host this hour was Sarah Austin-Ginesse. Sarah also directed the stories in the show, along with Katherine Burns and Michelle Jalowski. The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles' production support from Emily Couch.

Mall stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Todd Sikafoos, Carl Orff, Lou Dodd-Sessions, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Carlos Santana.

You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced 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. Special thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Charitable Trust for supporting our Los Angeles main stage.

The Moth 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, themoth.org.