25 Years of Stories: A Look Back At The Moth Radio Hour
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Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Jay Allison, a host and producer of the Moth Radio Hour. You certainly are. And I'm Vicki Merrick, your co-producer of the Moth Radio Hour. And we're your hosts this week. Hello, Vicki. Hey, Jay. So you may know by now that all through this year, we've been celebrating 25 years of the Moth.

And we're showcasing stuff we think you'll like from every year The Moth's been around. And in this episode, we're looking at 2009. Yeah, in 2009, we continued to share some great stories, expanding story slams to Detroit and Chicago. And then we started a little show you might know called The Moth Radio Hour. Right.

And we're actually recording right now at public radio station WCAI, which we founded right here in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And this was the first radio station in the world to air the Moth Radio Hour. And now we're up to like 575 radio stations around the country. That's not bad. It's not bad, but you know. But we're going for world domination next. That's true.

Anyway, so mark this anniversary, we want to play a couple of stories. And the first is from that inaugural episode of the Moth Radio Hour. And it's a story that's a special favorite of Vicki and me.

Yes, I just actually listened to it, and it still holds up. We've listened to it probably a thousand times. I mean, I was guffawing in my car yesterday. This is from Michaela Murphy, and she told it on a moth main stage in New York City, and it takes place right here on Cape Cod. So, here's Michaela, live at the moth.

I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island and for my entire childhood we were never more than 20 miles away from the core of our universe, the Kennedys. We were Irish, they were Irish. We were Catholic, they were Catholic. They were family. We were like the relatives that they never got to see, but we knew, you know, they're busy and we knew that they loved us.

So anything that was happening to them was also happening to us. So their tragedy, plus our own tragedy, was a lot.

So this one Thanksgiving after dinner and a family fight at Grandma's house, we were in the car and we're driving home and the radio was playing this 10th anniversary of the JFK assassination. And I'm sitting in the back seat and I start to cry. And my sister Erin says, "Hey Dad, Michaela's crying." And my father pulls that car right over to the shoulder of I-95. He stops it, he turns around and he looks at us.

And with tears in his own eyes, he says, "Don't you ever be ashamed to cry for that man."

So my parents grew up near Newport, and they got married in the same exact church as Jack and Jackie, St. Mary's. And my father gave exact replica jewelry to my mother that was replications of the jewelry that Jack gave to Jackie. And every Saturday night after Mass, my family would be in the living room, and we'd be happily ever aftering to the original soundtrack of Camelot.

And every year during the 70s, my four aunts would take me and my two cousins on their dream vacation. A rented beach house in Hyannis on the very cove sharing beachfront with the Kennedy compound. Every day for an entire week, my Aunt Pat would roll up her sister's hair. My aunts would apply sunscreen to the back of their necks, the backs of the hands, and the tops of their feet.

and then they would drag their beach chairs down to the beach, and they would set them up perfectly, not facing the water, not into the sun for tanning, but perfectly for spying on the Kennedys. They would sit there all day in the broiling sun with high-powered binoculars and keep a constant surveillance, and every year they'd have the same exact conversations. Usually around mid-morning, the first sighting would be made, usually by my Aunt Pat. She'd be, up,

They got Rose out, walking. Ethel looks drawn. And then about an hour later, my Aunt Gert would say, "How old is Rose now?" And Aunt Momo would make the calculations. Well, let's see. Jack died in '63 when she was 74. And Rose's birthday was two weeks last Thursday. And Joe died in '69, making her a widower 81, so 85. And then they'd break for lunch.

So after Lobster and Drawn Butter and hosing us down, they'd all hustle back to their posts and they'd watch. And every now and then there'd be something they didn't know. Hey, who's that? Who's that? Who's that? So they'd draw out the family tree in the sand, they'd analyze it, they'd come up with a profile, and they'd crack the code. It's one of Bobby's.

Now any mention of Bobby would always bring up the inevitable, "Oh, I just pray to God they don't tell poor senile Rose about Bobby. It'll break her." So then the long afternoon stretch would end with the inevitable annual observation, "You don't see Jackie much here." And then all of my aunts would drop their binoculars and look at each other meaningfully. Now all of this meant that no one was paying any attention to me and my cousins in the water.

And the summer when we were nine years old, we found something. Now, had an aunt, perhaps in an effort to ease a cramp in her prying neck, just sort of glanced towards the water, she might have seen us climbing into this tiny, plastic, half-inflated boat. She might have cried out in alarm at the lack of oars and life vests.

She might have had a conniption fit to see us shove off and drift into the violent riptide that would sweep us within five minutes out to the open sea and the Nantucket-bound ferry. But an aunt didn't, and we did. It all happened so fast that we were swept out, and it wasn't until we realized that we could make out the specific features of the ferry passengers that we were really far from shore.

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

So the powerboat sends us back to shore and we're psyched because we're saved until we start to watch the four hopping dots morph back into our four crazed, livid aunts. We are so gonna get it. Now my family under any circumstances has this really weird thing, well they each have like their own weird thing, about like yelling and getting into huge trouble. Like my aunt Gur, like she gets so freaked out that all she can do is yell out our addresses. Like,

Eileen and Kevin, 275 Hooper Street. Michaela, 180 Asylum Road. I swear to God, I grew up on Asylum Road. It's a very telling piece of my childhood. Or my Aunt Pat would do these things where she would say these things that were actually kind of nice things, but she'd say them like they were death threats. She'd be like, yeah, I'll save you from drowning. You get on that beach towel and you lie in that sun. Now! Now!

Or she'd say, "I'm gonna buy you a birthday present. You eat that cake. Now!" So we knew that this is what was coming. The Kennedy boys didn't. So they're vivaciously tanned and they pull up to the shoreline and we brace ourselves. Now, what happens is our aunts are out of their minds. They're ready to flay us. But when they see us in the same boat as the Kennedys, it's like they don't have the emotional capacity to handle it. They kind of snap.

They're kind of like freaking out to yell at us, but they start fake smiling and trying to act all normal. And my Aunt Momo, she takes on this like Kennedy-esque way of speaking, which is sort of halfway between Katharine Hepburn and like the Queen of England.

And we're like looking at them like, "What are you guys doing?" And they're smiling the smile, but when they smile at us, it's like, "You just wait." But they're like, "Oh, David. Oh, Michael. Thank you, thank you, thank you." And they're not mad at us for almost drowning. They're mad at us because the Kennedys had to save us. Like, "Don't those people have enough trouble? Now you?" Like as if our almost drowning was yet another Kennedy tragedy.

So these poor boys finally pull and pry themselves away from my aunts. They get back on the boat and they're leaving and my Aunt Momo's going, "Please give all best to your grandmother." And now it's time for our for real punishment, which was that we, for the rest of vacation, had to stay on the beach because we did not have any respect for the water.

So it's 100 degrees out, and after about a half hour of whining and fighting and emptying out all the Coppertone and kicking sand, we break my Aunt Pat's last nerve, and she says, "All right, you can go in the water, but only up to your knees." So we're happy for a minute until we get in the water and realize how boring up to your knees is. And then we get the great plan of having chicken fights. So we start to have chicken fights, but it's kind of weird because there's only three of us.

But we're doing the best we can to have a chicken fight like that and knock each other off into the water so we get fully immersed. And then my Uncle Al, who never, ever played with us, ever,

comes into the water to play chicken fights with us. And he puts his daughter, my cousin Eileen, up on his shoulders. And then I get up on my cousin Kevin's shoulders and we're having chicken fights. And it's like actual family fun for a moment. And we're like, you know, hitting each other, falling in the water. And then I take my foot and I accidentally kick the side of my Uncle Al's head really, really hard. And his eyeball popped out of his head.

falls into the water and sinks. It pops out of his head and it sinks. Eileen, Kevin and I are in instant complete shock. Right this minute there is still a part of me that is on that beach screaming. Oh my god! We had no idea that he had a fake eye. We didn't know that you could have a fake eye. Why would you have a fake eye? They didn't tell us that Uncle Al had a fake eye because they didn't want us blabbing it to the whole neighborhood.

So we didn't know and like later on, you know, there was Columbo and Sandy Duncan, but this was way before that. We had no idea. So we're all standing there and it's like so horrible. Like I can't even like, I'm like, oh my God. And my cousins, Eileen and Kevin are staring at me with complete hate. Like you broke our dad. Al is standing there and he's got the lid open. So you can like see inside the socket where now it's just like skin and the eyeball gone.

And like you cannot just say I'm sorry to someone that you just... So I don't know what to do. And my Aunt Pat is hysterically screaming because that eyeball cost top dollar. It was a special magnetized eye so it could keep up with the other one. And now I had just better pray that vacation was over and that they got that deposit back because now they were going to have to buy a brand new top dollar eye that was not in the budget.

So I just didn't know what to do. I was like, my life is over. I am no longer Michaela. I am now Murph's girl who kicked Al's eye out in the Cape. And it's awful, and everybody's just crying and pointing at me, and now my other aunts are getting in on it, like, and who's the blame part of the conversation's happening? So I just kind of back off into the water. I'm kind of, like, going back and, like, regressing back to, like, where life as I once knew it had ended. And I just stand there, and, like, I kind of wish I had drowned.

And I kind of wish the Kennedys hadn't saved me. And I bent off into the waves and I just started like sifting through sand and shells and pebbles and it's totally ridiculous. But like I will never stop looking for this eye. I'm going to look forever. And I keep looking and looking and I'm sifting through and then all of a sudden there is an eyeball in my palm staring right at me. And so I scream and I drop it back and it sinks back into the water.

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

And then he kind of like tests it, you know, and it's like keeping up with the other one. So it's working still. And now it's the weirdest thing because now we know it's a fake eye. And now that you know it's a fake eye, it totally looks like a fake eye. And I can't believe that I never noticed it wasn't a fake eye before. So now vacation's back on.

And so everybody gets back into their beach chairs and they start to settle down to begin telling the story over and over like a million times about what I just did. And I have not really fully reintegrated back into the family yet. I'm kind of standing apart. And I notice that there actually has been like kind of a group of people who've been watching this whole thing. And then I see something that I didn't notice, that no one noticed. And that's that two of the Kennedy kids, David and Michael, had taken a walk on the beach.

And I can tell just by the look on their faces that they had stood there and seen the entire episode. That they had been there watching us. Thank you.

That was Michaela Murphy. It was. And Michaela's work has been featured in The New Yorker and been produced off-Broadway and at the Clinton White House. She's a co-founder of LIFE, which is Leadership Fueled by Entrepreneurism, an education platform for high school students in Detroit and New York City. And she's currently director of education at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania.

I love that story. Vic, can you guess what my favorite line is? You know, I can't because there's so many. I mean, was it about when the aunt gets, whenever she gets mad, she says every kid's name and their address? That's good. No, for me, the one that sticks to me, with me, just like it did for Michaela, was...

Don't ever be ashamed to cry for that man. Oh, my gosh. I mean, just the feeling in that from him to her and then carried through generations. And it just makes you...

you know, feel the past and being carried, that kind of tragedy being carried into the future. And at the same time, it's light and it's life is going on. Yeah. And she's hilarious, but also, you know, the beauty of her saying that they felt like family because of all the things in common. Right, right. But when she says, anytime there was tragedy in our family or their family, it was a lot, you know, because they were both tragedies in their family, you know, which was a gorgeous moment of like,

Big humanity. You know, it's like we're all kind of in the same family, which I love that part. And there's an eye that pops out. So, you know, it's a good story. All right. Well, that happened on Cape Cod over in Hyannisport, not too far from here in Woods Hole. And we can visualize it perfectly. And our next story...

Oh, right. Our next story, oh, God, is one of our favorites also. And it takes place right here. Well, right across the Vineyard Sound. And it was told by Buddy Vanderhoop from Martha's Vineyard. But really, you should be the one introducing this, don't you think? Well, I don't know. I don't know.

You're both fishermen. Yeah. Well, we fish the same waters, but he does it with a lot more success than I do. This is a great tale of adventure. And he has success a lot, but maybe not every trip, as you'll hear. So here's Buddy Vanderhoop. He's live at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs. Good evening. My name is Captain Buddy Vanderhoop.

I'm a Wampanoag Indian from Gay Head, from the Wampanoag tribe of Aquinnah. And I had the occasion growing up talking to my elders who were seafaring men and women. My great uncle Amos Smalley harpooned and killed Moby Dick, the only white sperm whale that was ever harpooned.

I listened to stories for years. As a matter of fact, for my 10th birthday, my Uncle Amos gave me one of Moby Dick's teeth, which he scrimshawed on that trip, which is still my favorite treasure today. And some of the advice that they gave me, they told me that the ocean is a playground, but you should always respect water.

the ocean because it can turn on you and harm you and even kill you so just respect the ocean which i have always done and always kept this in the back of my mind and one day i had a tuna fish charter my boat was broken down and was being repaired so a friend of mine lent me his boat which was a 32-foot wooden boat the escort

Charles Ogletree, professor at Harvard and head of the law department, was one of my clients. Dennis Sweet, another highfalutin lawyer from Mississippi, one of his colleagues and friends was there. Charles's father-in-law was there, who was 78 years old, and Jen Clark decided to jump on the boat as my first mate that day. So we put all of our lunches and stuff in the cooler, got all the fishing gear on the boat, headed out of Minipsha Harbor.

As we rounded Gay Head, the wind was about 10 to 20 miles an hour that day, and Charles' father-in-law started getting seasick. But if you've ever been on the boat with Charles Ogletree, it doesn't matter once you leave the dock. If you're seasick or not, you're going for the day. So we rounded Gay Head, headed down for the dumping grounds, which is 40 miles south of Gay Head.

a place that was made famous by Frank Mundus in his search and quest for great white sharks, which was done in the 1950s. He caught an enormous amount of great white sharks just south of Martha's Vineyard in those days. And we were in search of yellowfin tuna. So we get down there. It was a little bumpy going down, but it actually turned out to be quite a nice day.

We set the gear out. As soon as we got all eight rods in the water, three of them went off. We landed the three tuna fish, put them out again, and we were having a great day of fishing. It was a beautiful, flat, calm day. And we were... This was late afternoon. We had 13 fish on the boat. It was 3.30 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon. We saw all the other boats heading north, going home. But we decided we'd be a little greedy because we were catching so many fish. We stuck around for another...

another round of fish and Charles hooked into the biggest fish of the day about 430 quarter five it was about 120 pound yellowfin and he was in the chair reeling him in all of a sudden I looked back

and the fish is 100 feet behind the boat and he's got a 350 pound Mako charging in on the tuna fish. I said, "Charles reel, reel, reel, get that fish in." The Mako hit the fish, took his whole belly out. I said, "Get him in, get him in." So he finally reeled him in, got him to the boat. I gaffed him, pulled him over the rail, got him on the boat. He only had damage to the underside of him, so most of the fish was still good. And

Just about the time that that fish hit the deck, the motor died. I said, "Oh no, here we are 45 or 50 miles south of the vineyard and the batteries are dead." And I went over, I looked at Jen Clark and said, "What happened?" She said, "The motor stalled." So I went up, turned the key, no clicks, nothing. The ammeter gauge was over below 9 volts. So I said, "Well, maybe if I give it a half an hour, 45 minutes,

the battery will recharge itself or come up a little bit enough to start the diesel motor. And so I cleaned the fish, cut the head of the fish off. There were no guts left because the mako enjoyed those. And I decided I'd put the fish head, the tuna fish head, on a hook to see if we could catch the mako that had the rest of my fish. So, well, 15 minutes later, Charles hooks up to

a pretty nice shark, about a 400 pound shark. I got him in and it was just a blue shark. So we pulled him in next to the boat. I cut the leader off and then I said, well, it's been about a half, 45 minutes. I'm going to try the motor again. Hit the key, nothing. So the sun's going down. It's really, we're in a bleak situation right now. We're drifting south. We're already 45 or 50 miles south of the vineyard. I look over to the northwest and the sky's totally black. It was just

nightmare and ten minutes later we had a major thunderstorm over us lightning all around the boat the winds picked up to 25 30 miles an hour it's getting dark and then the thunderstorms over it's a little bit calm the seas are built up to 48 feet we're dead in the water in the slosh sideways and it's just about

dusk. You can just barely see the little piece of light where the horizon was and I saw a boat on the horizon. Well I had brought two 2,500 foot parachute flares with me on this trip. It's part of my emergency kit anyway. So I shot one up and it lit up the whole ocean for a mile around us it seemed. The boat started turning. I saw the boat turn toward us and 20 minutes later the boat

pretty close to us. The two members of the boat, the lobster boat, came out on deck and they said, what's the problem? I said, well, we're broken down, the batteries are dead, we have no way to get back to Manapsha. Could you please tow us back to Manapsha? And the captain says, do you have any beer? Charles Ogletree said, yes, we have a six-pack of red-striped beer. And as the mate said, yeah, man. And

So they throw a line over, we put the beer in a plastic bag, they pull the beer over, throw a line, we hook it up to the bow cleat, and it's a 48 foot seas, it's blowing 25 or 30 miles an hour. They start hauling us up north toward Martha's Vineyard. Well, the wind is increasing all the time, it's blowing 35 now, seas are almost 10 feet tall, waves are crashing over the front of the boat, and all of a sudden the line parts.

Well, these guys are up in the pilot house of their lobster boat drinking Red Stripe. They kept on going. Their stern light's getting smaller and smaller. It's going down in the waves. And finally, it's totally out of sight. I said, oh my God, these guys don't even know that they dropped us. They're drinking beer and having a blast in the wheelhouse. And here we are back in the slosh in these 10-foot waves now. And it's just, I mean, it's critical. So they...

Finally, I see the port and the starboard light coming back to us. Half an hour later, they're beside us again. It's blowing 40 to 45 miles an hour now, and it's really, really getting nasty. I mean, scary nasty. They threw us a line again. They towed us for maybe a mile, and the rope parts again. They, this time, knew that they dropped us, turned around, said, well, we can't help you anymore because the rope's too short. We don't have anything any thicker.

So we're going to call the Coast Guard right now and we'll stand by you until they get here." So they call the Coast Guard. Here we are, it's blowing 50 miles an hour now. The seas are building 15 to 18 feet. We're sideways in this stuff and it's just the outriggers are slamming into the mast. It's just a horrible scene. And Dennis Sweet looks over at the other boat. They have deck lights on. They have lights on in the wheelhouse. He said,

I gotta get out of here. I'm gonna go over to that boat. I'm swimming and I said Dennis, how are you gonna get on the boat when you get over there? And did you forget about the sharks we just caught about an hour and a half ago? And all the blood that's been pouring out of the scuppers of this boat since we've been rolling here in the slop? So he aborted that idea pretty quickly. So uh

All of a sudden, Charles, his father, has been seasick all day long. He's huddled in the back of the boat. He's got blankets over him. He hasn't moved one inch in five hours. Charles says, buddy, could you go over and nudge my father-in-law and see if he's still alive? So I went over, gave him a little nudge. He grunted, and he was in bad shape because he'd been dehydrated for now going on 12 hours or 13 hours, and...

He was alive. So the boat's outside of us. The Coast Guard's on their way. All of a sudden, it's blowing 60 to 70 miles an hour. It's unbelievable. This is an unforecasted storm. The weathermen are always right, you know. But this was totally unforecasted, and we're dead, and we're in 20-foot seas right now. All of a sudden, these two gigantic rogue waves, I'm talking...

waves three and a half stories big, 230, 35 foot waves. We go up this wave, come back down. The second one hits us so hard, it tips the boat up 90 degrees. The rail goes under the water and it seemed like the whole ocean came into the on deck at one time. We took on five to 8,000 gallons of water on that one wave. And I'm getting really nervous now.

Everybody else, I said, okay, don't lose your calm. That was really, really bad. I know how bad it was. Everybody put your life jackets on. Here's a flashlight for everybody. I said, if we get hit by another set of these waves, we're going to roll the boat over. And don't try to go over the sides. Keep your wits about you. Go over the stern. Stay together. Put your flashlights on. Hang on to the boat. And

We didn't get hit with another set like that, thank God. But just to keep people's minds occupied, I had them do a bucket brigade. Charles was in the bilge. Jennifer was holding the flashlight. He passed it to Dennis, and I throw it overboard. And it took us about an hour and a half to get all that water out of the bilge, which helped keep everybody's mind off of what was really happening because it was so unbelievably miserable.

that it was mind-blowing how bad the seas were that night. The Coast Guard, I saw a boat on the horizon finally. The Coast Guard, I had one more of those 2,500-foot parachute flares left. I shot it off, went up, lit the whole ocean up around us. Half an hour later, the Coast Guards outside of us saying with their little bullhorn, we're going to pull up alongside of you. I said...

don't pull up alongside us. We have a wooden boat. We're either going to smash into you and sink, or you're going to smash into us and we're going to sink. I think these guys are all from Ohio or Indiana or somewhere. They'd been to the Coast Guard Academy and they're now doing real-time stuff. They had forgotten their booklets, I think, that day. They were so seasick. They had all their deck lights on. You could see them barfing over both sides of the boat.

And they were all so weak. I was out on the front of this 28-foot boat in 25-foot seas holding on for dear life. I mean, I'm going... I'm like a windshield wiper on the front deck, going back and forth, waiting for them to get a rope over me so I could hook it up so they could get us under tow, which took over an hour. I was so pissed off. And I couldn't even...

I couldn't even start screaming at them because they just wouldn't have done any good anyway. But they finally got a rope to us and we're under tow. We're in 20-foot seas. I mean, the waves are just coming totally over our boat, which was pretty scary in itself. We had no bilge pump. We had no electricity whatsoever. We couldn't even communicate with the boat that was towing us. So

It took 23 hours for them to tow us back to Menemsha. So all in all, it was a 34-hour tuna fishing trip. Finally, we got back. Nobody gave a shit about all the tuna fish we had. Their loved ones were on the dock. Everybody's getting hugs and tears, and everything is hunky-dory because we're alive. And I attribute this to my elders that gave me the advice that...

And I'd like to pass this on to everyone in the audience that you have to respect the ocean. The ocean's a great playground, but you have to respect it because it will kill you. And Charles Ogletree still goes fishing with me. He's my best client. Dennis Sweet, he will fish with me if I have two keys, which means you have two engines so you can get back on one. Charles Ogletree's stepdad will never step foot on another fishing boat as long as it lives.

And that's my story. Thank you very much. That was fisherman Buddy Vanderhoop. Captain Buddy Vanderhoop is a member of the Wampanoag tribe of Aquinnah in Massachusetts. He owns and operates tomahawk fishing charters on Martha's Vineyard and is widely known for his ability to catch big fish. Since the story originally aired, he now has a new boat. Hopefully the battery's working. A 35-foot Viking.

Do you remember watching him tell that story over in the Tabernacle? Oh, my God. My hands were sweating. Do you remember how he held his hands and he kept looking at Meg, his director, like, am I doing all right? He held his hands at his sides and they were shaking the whole time. And he's a big man. He's like 6'8 or something. And he's big, you know, like strong man. Big, strong guy. Yeah. Yeah. And he told, he said to me afterwards, he said, yeah, that was a scary night, but not as scary as standing up there and telling that story. Yeah.

I mean, the building, I always equate that experience of listening to that story. It was like being in a storm because the waves of like, what? Another bad thing? Another bad thing? You know, it was like one after another. It was so powerful. I literally jumped out of my seat at one point, I think, towards the end and just, you know, jumped up in the air. I was, yeah, totally swept away. It was exciting.

So many great stories at the Moth over the 25 years. Thousands of them. I don't know, how many episodes of the Moth Radio Hour have we produced? I shudder to think. I tried to figure it out yesterday with Emily Couch, and I think it's like...

285 radio hours. That's a lot. That's a lot. Average four to five stories per hour. So we're in the thousands, and that is the tip of the iceberg. And I don't know, do you ever get bored of it? Because I have to say, I do not really. Once in a while, maybe I'll hear a story I'm not crazy about, but I feel like if you're bored with the moth, you're bored with life. Yes, it's true. Or you hate people or something, because, man...

All the experiences out there, how can you not want to know about more of them? Well, yeah. And also, you have always said something interesting to me. When I would ask you once in a while, do you think that there are a finite number of good stories in the world? And you always say, no. You don't even hesitate. But

The thing that I love, especially about the moth stories that you always point out to me, is like you kind of absorb them and then you tell them to somebody else, almost as if they're your own. And again, it's that beautiful sort of like encircling of humanity moment.

And you step outside of the box, you know? It's somebody else's life and experience, and you can relate suddenly. Yeah. I tell my kids most stories at the dinner table all the time that aren't mine, but they're getting carried on anyway, which is sort of a...

lovely human thing. Oh my God, that's a great thing to say. That makes me, my life feels so much more meaningful for having you say that. That's great. Well, look, it's a great pleasure to produce a show with you, Vic. And then with the team at The Moth who are wonderful, the directors, I mean, they're, they're kind of behind the curtain, but man, oh man. Always inspiring. They, they do, they, they make it really work and make it special.

So that's it for this week. We hope you enjoy to look back at The Moth and The Moth Radio Hour. Yeah. And from all of us, all of us here at The Moth, as they say, have a story-worthy week. But tell us a story. Amen. Next time.

Jay Allison is an independent journalist and one of Public Radio's most honored producers. The recipient of six Peabody Awards, Jay was the host and curator of This I Believe on NPR and co-created the acclaimed websites Transom.org and the Public Radio Exchange. He is currently a host and producer of the Moth Radio Hour and executive director of Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Vicki Merrick is an independent radio producer, voice coach, and editor. She's been a collaborator with Jay for many years, including on four Peabody Award-winning projects, Lost and Found Sound, The Sonic Memorial Project, Transom.org, and The Moth Radio Hour. A special thanks to WCAI in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, for the use of their recording studio.

This episode of the Moth Podcast was produced by Catherine Burns, Sarah Austin-Ginesse, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cloutier, Suzanne Rust, Inka Glodowski, Aldi Kaza, and Brandon Grant.

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