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- [Marc] Hi everyone. Producer Marc, here.
Just wanted to let you know that in the opening,
our host mentions the existence of suicide and self harm.
If that makes you uncomfortable, maybe skip the opening.
We hope you enjoy the show.
- [Sara] Welcome to 'The Moth Podcast', I'm Sara Barron,
your host for this week.
For 2022, we've been celebrating our 25th anniversary
by going back through each year of the Moth's existence.
This episode we're at 2014,
which just so happens to be the year
that we launched our story slams in the British Isles.
To mark the occasion, we're going to play two stories
for you.
One from Dublin and one from London.
Now, hosting the Moth in London
is a really special experience.
I've lived in the UK for almost a decade
and in that time I've learned this phrase
that British people often use to describe Americans.
And it's not an insult,
but it's not quite a compliment either.
The phrase is "a bit much."
So, when I first started hosting over here,
I felt this real pressure to dial down a certain amount
of stereotypical American enthusiasm and positivity.
The British audience, if we're just going to dip our toe
in the water of a cultural stereotype for just a second,
very generally, they're less openly emotional.
So a swell of emotion from a British crowd,
be it uproarious applause
or all those tears starting to flow,
it's just way less of a thing here in the UK.
But then there was this night when I was
hosting a GrandSLAM at this venue called Union Chapel.
It's this beautiful old church in north London
that's been converted into a performance venue.
And midway through the show, this guy gets up,
named Michael Such, he's lovely, unassuming.
He's, like, a little bit nervous
when he first gets up there.
But then almost instantly he settles into himself
and goes on to tell the story that was,
at different turns, frightening, impossibly funny,
and in the end, unbelievably moving,
about being in his early twenties,
unable to manage the pressures he was under
and deciding to end his own life.
The attempt was unsuccessful, obviously,
and I won't go into all the details now.
You can find the story in the show notes for this episode
and on themoth.org/extras and we'll link to it there.
For now, I just want to say I heard this story
and was in floods of tears, laughing through the tears.
And I remember thinking, "Come on, British people,
like, surely this one is going to get you guys too.
If one is going to do it, this is the one."
And sure enough, I look expectantly, but subtly, around
at the rest of the audience, and of course they are all also
in tears, finally, not just keeping calm and carrying
on or whatever stereotype we want to defer to here.
They've rather been carried away by this story
that from every possible angle was too moving
and funny to let them do otherwise.
It was, in my humble opinion, very classic Moth.
The Moth, as they'd say over here, at its bloody best.
First up, we have Catherine Brophy.
She told this at a Moth open mic storySLAM in Dublin
where the theme of the night was Home.
Here's Catherine live at the Moth.
(audience cheering)
- [Catherine] This happened the very first time
I ever traveled, that was in my extreme youth.
And for some reasons, I don't quite know what,
I wanted to see the Acropolis in Athens.
That was my whole aim and object in life.
So we decided to go to Greece.
And we went to Greece, we stayed in Athens,
we saw the Acropolis, we were suitably impressed.
But what blew me away was that it never rained.
(crowd laughs) Any day.
Didn't rain any day at all.
Didn't rain at night. (crowd laughs)
So for an Irish person, that is a miracle.
(crowd laughs)
So of course, when you go to Greece,
you have to go to an island.
And off we went and we decided to go to Poros.
And the reason we chose Poros was because
it was the cheapest fare. (crowd laughs)
Now we weren't being cheap, we were just very poor.
(crowd laughs)
So, off we went to Poros.
And we landed into the, into the little village.
And we were going to staying in the village
'cause we were going to camp, because we were very poor.
And we walked outside the village
and found a road that went round the edge of the island,
and we found the perfect place to camp.
The land was sort of tiered,
and there was this bit which is completely flat.
It had a pine tree on it for shelter.
There was a wall.
And then on the next level,
there was some sort of a orchard or something.
And it was looking overlooking the sea.
And we thought, this is it.
So we set up our tent,
but it was so hot, we didn't even need to sleep in the tent.
That was grand.
That night, we lay there with the smell of the pine tree,
and there was the Milky Way glittering in the sky,
and the sound of the waves.
And we fell asleep watching falling stars.
And it was completely magical.
And the next morning we woke up.
And you know when you wake up,
and you know there's somebody there,
you haven't seen them yet, but you know?
(crowd laughs)
And we looked around, and standing on the wall
behind us was this old man and about five women,
and they were all staring down at us, and
(crowd laughs) we were staring up at them.
And the old man started speaking to us in Greek,
but it was all Greek to us, of course.
(crowd laughs)
And then he offered us fresh figs.
Now, I had never eaten, I'd never seen a fig in my life,
never mind eaten them.
So that was terrific and fabulous,
and we thanked him very much.
And we used the one word of Greek that we had
which was kalimera, and they all smiled,
and I think they thought we had more Greek than that.
But anyway, then the man did something.
He was signing and talking away to us,
and the implication was that he was going to go away
and he was going to come back.
And we weren't sure,
was he going to come back with the police,
were we trespassing on somebody's land,
what exactly was going on?
So we decided we'd tidy up our things
and have them ready to move just in case.
And about half an hour later he returned
with one of those, you know, those Greek bags,
those kind of woven bags, a huge big, one of those.
And out of the bag, he took one
of those little blue gas stoves,
and a bottle of water, and a little pot, and coffee.
And he made us coffee.
And it turned out that he spoke a little bit of German.
And I speak no German, but my two friends did.
And he had worked in Germany for a bit, for a while.
And he told us that this tree, this pine tree,
was his tree and therefore we were his guests,
and that's why he was bringing us coffee.
So that was absolutely fabulous.
(crowd laughs)
But he came every single morning. Every single morning.
We had to be sure to be dressed before he arrived
because you really don't want to be putting
on your knickers and your bra in front of
an elderly Greek man making you coffee.
(crowd laughs)
And as the time went on, he asked us where we were from,
and we told him we were from Ireland.
And he looked totally blank.
And we explained that, you know where Germany is,
and then beside Germany, there's Holland?
Yes, he knew that.
And then there's the sea.
Yes, he knew that.
And then there's England.
Oh, you're English?
No, no, no, no, we're not.
So there's England.
And then after England, there's more sea,
and there's another island.
Oh, the Isle of Man? (crowd laughs)
No, no, no, no.
I said, America?
No, no.
So it was like we'd said we'd come from Tír na nÓg.
But in any event, the day before we were to leave,
he told us that we were to be there at lunchtime
because he brought his wife,
and his wife brought another big bag
with another little cooker
and she cooked stuffed tomatoes for us on this.
And he gave us retsina wine, which had been made
with the resin from the tree that we were sleeping under.
And the tomatoes were delicious.
The wine was, well,
there's a reason they call it the divine paraffin.
It's an acquired taste. (crowd laughs)
And we left the island the next day.
And of course I've never seen them again, but in my head.
So Thelios, which is the old man's name,
and his wife are my Greek family,
and that pine tree is my home from home.
(crowd cheers)
- [Sara] That was Catherine Brophy.
Catherine lives in Ireland and travels the world.
She's been rescued by a circus troupe in Serbia,
had breakfast with a Zambian chief,
been kicked by a horse on the Mexican plain,
and yes, she has a couple of tales to tell.
Our next storyteller is Charlotte Mooney.
She told this story at a Moth story slam in London
where the theme of the night was tests.
Here's Charlotte, live at the Moth.
(crowd cheers)
- [Charlotte] Hello.
Four years ago, I was sitting on the edge of my bath,
in my bathroom, holding a plastic pregnancy test for babies,
and waiting to see what was going to turn up in the window,
if I was going to get a line or a cross.
And the strange thing about pregnancy tests is
sometimes you get a line and you are not pregnant,
and it is the cause for the most joyous relief.
And sometimes you get a line and it's crushing.
And crosses can pretty much go either way as well.
And in that moment, I actually didn't
know how I was going to feel.
And a cross appeared, and it was with huge relief
that I realized I was happy.
Fucking scared shitless, but underlying that, happy.
At the time my partner was away, it was his baby.
That's not the way this story's going.
(crowd laughs) He's a circus performer,
and he was performing a piece of abstract dance
in a tree in Wales. (crowd laughs)
And I thought, rather than tell him on the phone,
I was going up to see his show at the weekend.
So I thought, I'll wait till the weekend,
and I will tell him then.
And so for the next four days,
I found myself going back to this pregnancy test
to just check like I thought the result might have changed.
And I would be wandering aimlessly around the house,
clutching it.
So that when Saturday came, it made sense to me
to wrap it up in a little bit of tissue paper,
and put a bow around it and write, "Dear Alex."
And then I put it on the passenger seat next to me,
and I drove up the M4 to see him.
And for the first part of the journey,
I was full of these fantasies and daydreams
about how he would open it,
and sweep me up in his arms,
and cry tears into his manly beard.
But the moment I crossed the seven bridge,
and got closer and closer,
I started to feel unease.
Partly because I realized my fantasies
were quite disgustingly sentimental.
Partly I was starting to question the wisdom
of doing a big, grand, romantic gesture
with an object that I had essentially urinated on.
(crowd laughs)
And partly because, deep down,
I didn't know how he was going to react.
I arrived late.
He and the rest of the cast were already in the tree.
(crowd laughs)
So I put the pregnancy test in my pocket,
and sat at the bottom, and started to watch the show.
I was a little bit relieved to have a stay
before I had to tell him.
And the show was, it was a piece of
abstract contemporary circus with birds mimicry.
It was batshit crazy, but I actually really loved it,
and I was really proud of him.
It was very long. (Charlotte and crowd laughs)
The first hour was great, but, like, after hour two,
hour three, hour four went on,
I just started to get increasingly nervous,
so that by the time he came down from the tree,
I felt like a 13 year old girl
about to ask someone to get off with them.
He ran towards me and he did scoop me up in his arms,
and he said, "I've really missed you.
I've planned a whole afternoon for us."
And I was like, "Okay."
And the first thing, he and the other performers took me,
at the bottom of the oak tree there was a spring.
And if you followed the spring out of the town,
it led to a wood and then it turned into a stream.
And then after about half an hour that became waterfalls.
And after about an hour,
it was a deep pool of clear water,
reflecting black in the way only Welsh water can,
but beautiful.
And all the rest of them stripped their clothes off
and started jumping in.
And Alex said, "You're going to love it, but I've got to
warn you, it's shockingly cold."
And I started to think, "Fuck, is it all right to
jump in shockingly cold water when you're pregnant?"
Like, I know you're not supposed to have really hot baths.
Is it like this?
Is it an extremity of temperature thing?
But I couldn't tell him that I didn't want to jump
in the shockingly cold water
because I didn't want to tell him I was pregnant,
there in front of loads of other the people.
So I ended up taking off my clothes
and jumping in for, like, the most short, polite
amount of time possible for a great,
life changing experience, and then jumping out
and putting my clothes on again.
And then after that, we had a six hour hike in the mountains
and then we had a communal meal,
and then there was a fire pit,
and then singing, and then a presentation.
(crowd laughs)
So that by the time we were actually alone together,
it was two o'clock in the morning.
And I think what I actually did was something like this.
"I got you a present." (crowd laughs)
And he opened it.
And his face was completely blank.
(Charlotte and crowd laughs)
And I felt, like, a physical stab of fear there.
He said, "I'm really sorry, but I dunno what it is."
(crowd laughs)
I said, "It's a pregnancy test."
And he said, "What does the cross mean again?"
And I said, "The cross means you're pregnant."
And he let out a sort of strangled bird-like whoop.
(crowd laughs)
And it did an asymmetrical dance leap off the bed.
None of which had been in my fantasies.
But, at that moment, were the absolutely perfect reaction.
Thank you. (crowd cheers)
- [Sara] That was Charlotte Mooney.
Charlotte is a storyteller
and circus artist based in London.
She has told all sorts of stories in clubs,
theaters, festivals, and around campfires across the UK,
including folklore, myth, science, and history.
She is also artistic director
of circus company, Occam's Razor.
That's all for this week.
We hope you enjoyed our look back at Moth stories
from the British Isles,
and we hope you'll come with us
as we continue to dive into some of our favorite stories
from the Moth's 25 year history.
From all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week.
- [Mark] Sara Barron is one of
the fastest rising comedians of her generation.
A powerhouse live act, Sara's two standup hours,
"For Worse" and "Enemies Closer" have sold out
at both the Edinburgh Festival and at multiple runs
in London's Soho theater.
She was nominated for best newcomer
at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards,
as well as receiving rave reviews from publications
including the Times, The Guardian, the Independent,
the Evening Standard, and the Scotsman.
As a writer, Sara has published two essay collections.
"People are Unappealing" and "The Harm in Asking."
Her writing has also featured in Vanity Fair
and on This American Life.
This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced
by Sarah Austin Jenes, Sarah Jane Johnson,
and me, Mark Solinger.
The rest of the Moth leadership team includes
Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hixson,
Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham,
Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant,
Inga Glodowski, and Aldi Kaza.
All Moth stories are true
as remembered by their 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.