Fresh Starts: The Moth Radio Hour

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1:02U.S. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. Listeners of this podcast can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXLLearning.com slash audio. Visit IXLLearning.com slash audio to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. I've always dreamed of being able to order my coffee in Italian like a local, instead of just pointing at the menu and hoping for the best. There's something about speaking another language with real confidence that opens up a whole new world of experiences. That's why I'm so excited about Rosetta Stone's Sapphire. It's their biggest launch in over a decade. It takes that research-backed method we all know in trust, and adds fresh, cutting-edge features that make it easier than ever to go from knowing a few phrases to speaking naturally about the topics you actually care about. What I love is that you aren't just memorizing vocabulary lists. You learn entirely in your new language through visuals and audio, just like you did as a kid.

2:06One of my favorite new features is chat missions. It turns conversation practice into a game, putting you in real-world scenarios, like ordering at a restaurant or asking for directions, and giving you missions to complete. You get real-time feedback along the way, so you build that confidence before you ever have to use your skills in the real world. If you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone's Sapphire. Listeners of this podcast can get 20% off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. This gets you access to Rosetta Stone's Sapphire in 25 languages. Visit RosettaStone.com-rs10 to redeem your 20% off. That's Rosetta Stone.com-rs10. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Peter Aguero. In this show, we are

3:10turning the spotlight to a department at the Moth that has been meaningfully changing lives for over a decade, the Moth's education program. Since we first walked into a school in 2012, we've worked with more than 2300 high school and college students from New York City, from around the country, and around the world. Today, we're listening to some of our more recent stories. Some were told on stage for the first time right after the students had taken an eight-week workshop, and others got a few tries to tell him before we got to hear them again. Just in time for back to school, we theme this hour fresh starts. These workshops usually start with folks sitting in a circle, introductions, a little-known fact about yourself, and then the ice starts to break before it all tumbles down and we're ready to be vulnerable together. I used to be a classroom teacher about three lifetimes ago, and teachings always give me this tremendous satisfaction. I really missed it and I started going to the Moth Slams in 2007, and one day, the producer Jen Hickson asked for

4:12volunteers to teach storytelling for the Moth. I jumped on it and I bugged Jen about it for weeks until I got on the roster. I've been teaching with the Moth now for 18 years. It's a tremendous honor, and there's a joy that comes from teaching folks how to be honest with themselves and how to talk about it in a crystal clear way. You go into these classrooms and you talk to these kids and no ones ever listen to them like this before. They have never had the opportunity to get in front of people and say something from their mind, but that's not having to convince anybody of the value of what it is they're saying. Most of these kids you get in there and they're like, I don't have any stories. There's nothing I have to say. No one's going to care. By the end of that six or eight weeks or however long you get to spend time together, they figured it out. They realize that their stories have value. Their experiences are real, they're theirs, and they can help themselves, and they can help others. All you got to do is start at the beginning until the truth. So this hour is focused on the Moth Education program, Moth EDU for short. So sit back and listen,

5:14no pressure, you won't be graded on your participation. Our first story comes from Arva Chacon. Arva participated in the Moth Story Lab, which is an eight week storytelling workshop in person or virtual for high school students in New York City and around the country. She went on to tell her story of the education grand slam. Here's Arva. I was entering high school at a progressive religious school and when I and it was considered progressive because they were mixed gender classes. I walked in on my first day with a brand new dress that went below my knees and a boat load of optimism. I was really excited for this school because this was the only Jewish school in the Tri-State area that offered BC calculus. And I decided because I knew someone who did it that I was going to take BC calculus my sophomore year. And in preparation, I took Algebra 2 the summer

6:15before high school. I looked at my schedule that first day and I saw that third period on Monday was Algebra 2. The school didn't know me. I didn't know them. I'm sure it would all be okay and by Tuesday morning I'd be in a precalculus class. You know that really annoying kid in math class who sits in the front row has their hands super glued in the air and doesn't let the teacher finish asking the questions before answering. I was determined to be that kid. After class I went up to my teacher and showed him my transcript. He looked at me and he said it's my first day too. I don't know what I'm doing. They're going to have to go talk to the head of the math department. In order to find the head of the math department I had to find the math department. Which was also known as the bunker. Located in the basement of my school it had no windows,

7:21no natural light. Just flickering halogen lights that cast everyone in a sickly pallor. The head of the math department looked at my grade in Algebra 2 and then he looked at me and he told me we'll see after your first test. That's a little unreasonable but not totally unreasonable. I got in 102 on my first test. Wonderful. He looked at my 102 and then he looked at me and he said we'll see after your second test. That's not 102 not enough. I didn't do as well on my second test. I got a 98. He looked at my 98 and then he looked at me and he said it's too late in the school year. You can't take pre-calculus this year. I'm sorry. I thought this was ridiculous and my mother thought this was ridiculous so by the end of that day I was signed up for an online pre-calculus class

8:25outside of school. I should mention at this point that when someone else asked the head of the math department why I couldn't take BC calculus, my sophomore year and pre-calculus my freshman year he explained that they didn't have enough resources for me. They did have four boys though taking advanced math at the time so I guess four is just the maximum. At the end of my freshman year of high school I returned to the bunker with my pre-calculus grade. He looked at my pre-calculus grade and then he looked at me and then he looked at the A plus again and he looked at me and he said you know we have this program where you can take pre-calculus over the summer. I pointed to my grade and I told him I've already taken this class and he said no our pre-calculus is different. After spending that summer taking pre-calculus I can testify that the unit circle is still the unit circle no matter where you're learning. I was allowed to take BC calculus my sophomore year

9:29and for the first time in my high school math career I really felt like I was flying. I was learning integrals. I was learning derivatives. I learned something called the Taylor series which is really cool. It's when you have a function and then you use derivatives to approximate that function in a series and as you add them up and you add more terms to the series the closer and closer to approximate the function and it's just beautiful to watch. It's also how calculators do math. And so it really broke my heart a little when an older boy who had taken BC calculus to sophomore year came up to me and told me that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to take your sophomore year because he got a four and I'd have to work really really really hard to get a five. I was not interested in taking pre-calculus the third time so I continued on and later on that year a freshman boy asked me whether there was a good idea to take BC calculus my sophomore year and after further questioning it came out that he had actually been offered the spot and wasn't even sure

10:32whether he wanted it. Another freshman girl came up to me with the same question and I told her it was a fantastic idea and if she really was interested she shared email the head of the math department. Before we both went our separate ways meet to history and heard a Hebrew she told me teasingly you better get a five which is the highest score you can get on an AP so I can take this class too. She was only joking. Later on I went to math class and I was learning integration by parts and while my math teacher was in the middle of writing out a U he all of a sudden capped his marker placed it carefully in the tray and turned around to face me. He clasped his hands together and told me if you don't get a five on this exam it'll reflect badly on me and it'll reflect badly on you so you have to get a five no pressure but you have to get a five. I did in fact get a five on the BC calculus exam.

11:38Maybe because I took algebra two twice in pre-calculus twice and I no longer attend that school but more importantly that freshman girl she's taking BC calculus there as a sophomore. Thank you. That was Arva Chica. She is now at university and would you believe she majors in computer science and math. Arva still loves Pascal's triangle and a Taylor series and is a member of the university's debate team. Our next story was told by Edie Wattene. We met Edie at the Moth Story Lab here in New York. Here's Edie at the Moths Education Grand Slam in the spring of 2025. I grew up in the weird suburban neighborhood of Brooklyn perfect for Verizon commercials because

12:43the houses look like they could be anywhere and the streets look like they were made for playing kick the can. I had four friends growing up who lived on kick the can street aka the coldest sack around the corner from my house and so all throughout elementary school I would go over there and we and we would make up games most of which involving eating dirt and as we got older and we reached middle school I would go over there and we would sit on the coldest sack and plan our future. Specifically a backpacking trip around Europe that we would take the second that we graduated from high school. In order to fund said trip we needed funds so we came up with business ideas. Starting a famous clothing line starting a famous rock band anything that can make us lots and lots of money. We're growing up I was always more of a realist and when we were kids I was the first one to suggest that maybe we bring the dirt eating to a gentle clothes and as we got older I was the first one to point out that none of us could really so never mind play a musical instrument

13:49but at 12 years old there was one business idea that I thought could take us to Europe and that was babysitting. So one day we walked around the neighborhood and we plastered flyers on every single lamp post with our 12 year old phone numbers written in block print what could go wrong and we waited and we waited and when we waited some more and when weeks passed and we hadn't received a single call I was crushed four years later I tried again it took until about a month before my 16th birthday for me to finally book my first gig the big grow-way not through flyers on lampostes but through Facebook. My first gig was around the corner from kick the can street so I knew the route well I walked over confidently went up the elevator confidently walked down the hallway confidently shook their hand confidently I had felt ready to take care of kids since I was a kid

14:51so I was feeling pretty confident I waved goodbye I turned to the baby and then it began the ear splitting scream and the blubbering tears her mom was probably still in the elevator it had been 15 seconds there was no way I could ask for help now that would ruin my Facebook reputation and so I waited 10 minutes 20 minutes I bounced her on my hip I cradled her in my arms the way one does to a baby so I have heard but nothing helped at this point she was foaming at the mouth like a James Bond villain clearly I was killing her and so I gave in I called her mom I was like hey any chance you're still in the neighborhood I don't really know what to do right now and she was so nice she was like don't worry girl I'm right up the block come on over and so we went on over I took the baby downstairs I asked the UPS man for help with the buttons and the straps and the mechanics of the stroller because it is not self explanatory and we went down the block and there her mom was and

15:53she was like hey girl and I was like hey girl and she was so nice we spent the rest of the hour talking about Brooklyn punk bands and what the kids are up to these days but I felt like screaming how should I know how should I know what the kids are up to these days I am not a kid I am a babysitter I thought that when I walked into that apartment I would be treated like an equal I thought that after I put the baby to sleep and her mom came home we could sip sangria and talk about tariffs but no as soon as those two hours were up she waived a very sweet goodbye and paid me in full all $30 but it was humiliating I didn't want that money it was clear she didn't take me seriously no one was ever going to take me seriously the way that I had wanted to be taken seriously so I was just gonna give up that was it right then right there no more of this

16:56but I didn't give up because the Facebook post was still up and not only was I still booking gigs but I was raking them in and they didn't immediately start to get easier no one tells you what to do when a three year old puts pesto on his penis at the dinner table but then they did start to get easier I started to babysit for some older kids and they taught me their own games robot card games and door bowling and I made up some new games of my own mainly tricks to help get them to brush their teeth on time and by the time their parents came home they were always fast asleep somehow along the way I had become a pretty good babysitter I eventually made enough money to pay for my portion of the European backpacking trip we leave in a week the day after I graduate from high school just as we planned four weeks after that we arrive

18:01home two weeks after that I go to college in California away from my parents and those kids and their parents in the street where I first attempted to play the mythological game of kick the can it is a weirder feeling than I would have thought knowing that I'm about to go through this major transition from childhood into adulthood officially but it's also kind of nice being in such a liminal space I don't want to be treated younger than I am I never have but I also kind of don't want to be treated older than I am when I'm babysitting and I'm reading to a kid and they're laughing and they're having a good time and they slip up and they call me mom it's super cute and it feels great because I know that I am doing an excellent job but I realized that I like to go home after that until my own mom that that had just happened thank you

19:02that was Edie Wadman Edie loves walking in Prospect Park and scanning the sky for pigeons flying in formation she says she no longer eats dirt and has met more fellow herbivores than ever in her first year Pomona College she offered a bit of advice for her fellow babysitters never lie about knowing how to change a diaper you will not get hired back to see photos from Edie's trip to Vienna and the early days of her babysitting venture please visit themoth.org in a moment a journey in the woods and a game of manhunt that's when the moth radio hour continues the moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic public media and woods whole Massachusetts while September no longer means back to school for me there's something about the change of

20:03season that makes me want to get organized my New York City kitchen never has enough storage space so I bought Wayfair's small kitchen isling with storage and all my bowls finally have a proper home Wayfair made the whole process painless Wayfair focuses on delivering quality and value and confidence so your home can handle real life their Wayfair verified lineup gives you extra confidence thanks to a strict 10 point quality check performed by product experts whether you're organizing after back to school refreshing a room for autumn or getting ready for Halloween decorating you can shop thousands of products across any budget using filters and real customer photos with over 20 million verified five star views you always know you're making the right transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life join Wayfair rewards today and get 5% back on every purchase head to Wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home that's w-a-y-f-a-r.com Wayfair every style every home I was grabbing a drink at a coffee shop in my

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22:06they work with luxurious materials like washable silk organic cotton and premium mongolian cashmere was sweater starting at just fifty dollars not to mention their accessories i got the asmaisway shoulder bag and chocolate brown and i've been wearing it constantly it's well structured enough to keep it shape even when it's full but slouchy enough to feel effortlessly chic everything in their line costs fifty to eighty percent less than comparable boutique labels because they partnered directly with ethical factories and skip high retail markups you can even upgrade your living space with their direct to consumer home collection featuring premium sheets bath towels and furniture find the fall pieces you'll reach for a most at quince download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince dot com slash moth get free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns now available in Canada in the UK too that's qiuinc.com slash moth this is the moth radio hour i'm peter aguero we've been listening to stories of turning over new leaf and hitting the reset button this next story reminds us that sometimes starting over

23:11means bringing a piece of the past with you that comes from max traco max told us at a grand slam at bk one in brooklyn new i live in the woods not in a fun tree house way or off the grid way but i live in the woods in a way that my house is right here and the woods are right here actually more like this um but i really never gave a lot of thought to them or cared much for them well besides when i cursed them for making my wife i lag while playing for night um but that's up until i found myself playing manhunt with my friends in march of twenty nineteen and this game i don't know if you guys know what manhunt is but it's like tag on steroids and this was a particularly kind of a theory all game of manhunt surreal game of manhunt because it was a monkey's wedding which for those of you

24:12who aren't as well versed as myself in south african slang is when the sun and the rain are happening simultaneously so i don't know if you've experienced a monkey's wedding personally let alone one in the woods but it's kind of it's beautiful it's surreal you can kind of see the rain and the sun plugging the gaps of the trees um up above and i was really just i could feel myself in the moment it felt like one of those moments where you're just present and you're having fun smiling laughing and eventually we were tired uh sweaty probably pretty pretty sorry probably pretty smelly as teenage boys tend to be after they run around um so we started to head back towards my house and when i crossed the threshold that kind of marks where the woods end and my backyard begins everything rushed back to me i felt the sense of guilt and that's when i remembered the reason that we were here today

25:16and it was for my sister scarlet shiva who had passed 24 hours earlier and basically a shiva is when in the Jewish religion you have friends and family come and celebrate somebody's life that passed and i felt guilty because my sister was gone but i was here happy and i had really only seen grief portrayed in movies or books and i'd never seen it portrayed as a 10-year-old running around with his friends in the rain playing manhunt um so i was kind of out of loss i the shiva was ending and my friends were leaving and i it started to really hit me that all of these emotions so i went in to the house where my mom was she was my confidant and my biggest supporter she always gives me the proper advice that's uh um and i went to her and i told her

26:16you know is there something wrong with me i mean i my sister died 24 hours ago and i'm here playing manhunt with my friends smiling having a great time as if nothing happened and she said to me that if you let everything the world throws at you bigger small get you down then you're never going to be truly happy and that my sister scarlet would have wanted me to be free and live for the both of us so at the time i would i probably said something like that stupid or just dismissed it because i wasn't really in the mood to take advice and i thought she was just uh kind of uh helping me mask my weird coping mechanism but um i was tired so i started to walk to my room but my feet took a hold of me and they took me to my sister's room so i entered her room and now this is going to sound really weird but each person has a distinct

27:17smell and when they're gone from the earth their smell can still remain and i and i smelled my sister as though she was there and i sat down on her bed and i could feel her sitting next to me i could almost uh feel it and then i laid down on the pillow and i let my thoughts wander i found myself my thoughts swirling and kind of a montage like a movie montage of my memories that i made with her playing i could remember us uh throwing water balloons at each other in our house in Pennsylvania and i could even remember the car ride there where we thought the whole time and she made my dad kick me out of the car um but then that's when i noticed that without all of those memories her death wouldn't have had such a profound impact on me and that

28:18their joy and pain can coexist kind of like that monkey's wedding even if it's raining the sun can still shine i let my eyes close i want to sleep and i have the best sleep of my life thank you oh that was max tracco max is a high school senior from west jester new york and as soon to be texas longhorn he's the founder of voyaged a nonprofit expanding access to student travel he loves telling and collecting stories and he lives with his mom and a menagerie of rescue animals i had the honor of hosting the show when max told this story it was a beautiful and cold night in brookland and i was stunned by max sophisticated and measured contemplation on grief it stayed with me for a while i got to have a conversation with max recently and it felt like a gift to get to sit with him just a little longer and we wanted to share it with you one i have i'm just at a curiosity but you know when you're young you don't really have a sense of

29:20even what grief is and as you get older you're forced to deal with it because it's part of life because i feel like you carry that with you for a long time you know yeah i mean i definitely agree with that i mean i'd say that like it's kind of it's sad thing to say but like i feel like a lot of the time you know grief it can be like almost dormant and i mean it's not like i don't think of my sister for months but you know it's not like at this point you know it's been seven eight years and i you know it's sad to say but i don't always think of her every day i mean obviously it's always gonna gonna stick with you you know it can you know rear it's had at different times but and it's always with you that's for certain so even though you know my life had kind of completely changed you know been turned upside down within a day i was still kind of the same person and in a lot of

30:23ways my life was still the same so yeah i think it's really kind of interesting how two things can really be true at once and you can even feel multiple ways at once even if they're contradicting emotions so yeah i definitely think that that was kind of a big i guess if i could impart a piece of information that that would probably be uh you know what my story was trying to impart did you find it helpful to be able to give voice to it like because it was very specific about the story that it was about the grief and you very much standard right in the face so i guess the real question is like did you find that to be a benefit for you yeah i think it really was a benefit because i mean obviously the people were one thing like now telling you in front of people but i'd say like the most uncomfortable part to me was probably saying all

31:23that out loud because you know i mean i'd say that i've always been like good about expressing my emotions but at the same time it's you know difficult to even want to think about that in my own head and it was really nice to i mean i didn't go into the moth program thinking that that was my story i mean i don't even fully remember how i how it came to be my story but i you know it felt very cathartic to say out loud and express myself and it was nice because it felt like more formatted than it kind of uh it gave a structure yeah yeah it gave a structure to this a more fit sponsor feeling do you remember a moment you know anything from the workshop because it's it's fascinating like how did i even get here and it's from a series of questions that you don't even realize so like was there any moments or questions or where activities or insights did you remember that we're really helpful in the in the workshop honestly i think there might have been

32:25one from you that kind of stuck with me what like when i was telling it the it was maybe the dress rehearsal when we'd first night you okay but i remember like the story was pretty final but i for some reason wasn't saying like my sister scarlet's name and i mean i didn't even realize that i wasn't saying her name but i feel like when i put it in for me it felt kind of honestly really good to say her name because when you kind of say someone's name it feels more like you know they're kind of living or even if they're not living they're still their memory is still living if there was something in your story there's something that didn't fit and you'd love people to know something about scarlet or you and scarlet i mean there's a ton of things that come to mind but the first thing that kind of comes to mind which is kind of silly but all of the bickering we did you like you and as young kids you would literally bicker so much that on one of our family trips my dad jokingly obviously uh told me to go out of the car and then he said that

33:29he was gonna leave me at the gas station like all they were all like that was how much we were fighting but i always remember then right after you would make up we were like really best friends and even though we were young i always like could tell her anything and i just felt myself around her that's beautiful man thank you so much for sharing max traco everyone in a moment we head into a bumpy senior year and then to the start of law school when the moth radio hour continues the moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic public media in woods hole massachusetts today's episode is brought to you by alma therapy has been valuable for me but getting started isn't exactly easy the hardest part wasn't deciding to go it was figuring out where to even begin

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36:41five brand new true stories discovered by moth directors about balancing without a net trusting your gut and walking the tightrope visit the moth dot org slash tightrope to find the moth main stage tour in a sitting near you that's the moth dot org slash tightrope this is the moth radio hour on peter aguero there's an embroidered sampler at my desk at home with a sort of mantra on it i came to with my therapist nadeen it says i resent that i have to accept this this pretty much sums up the way i believe we can make it through this maddening and beautiful world with that in mind here's hope guzzle hope told her story at a final share after a three day moth workshop with four to moth students learning to tell their own stories so they can better tell the stories of us here's hope in june of 2024 i was diagnosed with stage four killing cancer which was really in

37:45convenient because i was supposed to be starting law school in august it had been my lifelong dream to go to law school and i'd already did it once my junior year of college i was diagnosed with stage three calling cancer and i had to push my LSAT setting back and i just could not go through that again so i said okay i will fly home to beautiful sunny tampa florida get my colon removed and then we will figure out what kind of treatment i could get the doctor presented me with two potential paths either i could get chemo chemotherapy and radiation which would be incredibly invasive and was a more traditional approach but some people in my situation could be eligible for a pretty revolutionary form of immunotherapy offered up in new york city conveniently where i was planning to go to law school so after i recovered kind of from surgery my mother my grandfather and i flew up to new york met with my genius amazing doctor doctor sersak over msk and was cleared to go

38:46to law school i was not only cleared for the treatment but was cleared to completely live my life normally she just suggested that maybe i lay back a little relax and maybe take law school a little bit easier than most people so long as i did that when i met back with her in january to ensure the treatment was working all should be fine i took her words of advice paid my obscene amount of money to fordum and decided to ignore everything she told me i decided i was going to be a killer i wasn't going to talk to anyone i was going to work 80 hours a week i was going to live and breathe the law and when i wasn't doing that i was in a listen to legal podcast so suffice to say i was really fun to hang out around i in doing so i made myself incredibly sick i would be studying non-stop so that i wouldn't sleep and i really needed the sleep of the treatment and then i'd get really bad brain fog and then i would get back to studying or i would

39:49be throwing up and then i would be in the bathroom for hours and i would think oh my god i missed that time i could have been studying that was all i could think so i would say up later and then the brain fog would get work you get the idea it really wasn't great but i continued on like that until finals i put my everything into it i cared so much about these grades uh for those of you who are in law school first your grades are really shown to be the end all be all they're so important to people so i was putting that pressure on myself you don't get your grades back until December so i got to relax when i came home my mom said i'm so happy to see you let's get that cancer appointment set up with your doctor and i was like oh yeah that that's not that's not great but we'll go do that so i get to relax we fly up in January i quickly learned that the day that i am used my doctor is the same day that i get my one-el grades back this was devastating i went from being kind of anxious at the appointment to super anxious about the grades like that was all i

40:51focus on it was pretty ridiculous my mom says with me we take the cab over from my apartment the west side over to the upper east to go meet with my doctor she walks in huge mile on her face she says the treatment is working so well it's amazing my mom's crying i'm crying she's crying it was wonderful my mom and i decided to go celebrate with some overpriced light Italian fare over at Santa Bros and yeah we walk in we have the warm wood paneling we go sit down i sit on this like weird kind of velvet booth where i'm just picking at my fifty dollar really mediocre pasta surrounded by the weirdest people ever when i get when my group chat starts blowing up saying oh my god one-el grades completely dropped so i go to the bathroom it was cold and that should have been a sign i checked my phone and guys the grades were really bad they were really bad i don't mean like oh my god i always had a 4.0 and i have a 3.7 and how am i gonna no that's not what i'm talking about they were a seriously bad and i just break down i almost start off i'm so upset but i you

41:59know splash some water on my face and go out back to my mom she can tell i'm a little upset she knows me pretty well and i'm also horrible hiding my emotions um and then she asked me what's wrong and i say well mom to be honest like the treatment stuff that's the grade but my grades were like pretty bad and i tell her this and she looks at me and she goes are you fucking kidding me you just found out that you aren't going to die and this is what you're worried about some like slightly below average grades give me a break and i knew she was right i felt like i was dying which is crazy because i literally just found out that i wasn't um but yeah i just realized i couldn't control any of my emotions so i say wow i'm being a psychopath right now i really should not be acting like this so i decide maybe i can't control how i feel in this moment but maybe i should try to act like a normal person moving forward so i do some crazy stuff i start talking to people and i

43:03meet like the read that i actually like which is really exciting in law school um i start going on walks occasionally i call my family members even the really annoying ones and i start to actually feel a little better and this recovery of sorts of sorts wasn't perfectly linear um i definitely had moments where i kind of went back to the behavior that i was mirroring before but i was better and i was getting better and the grades actually got better which was really exciting and the more i've leaned into work-life balance throughout the duration of my treatment the better my outcomes have been so while i would never say i would exact i was grateful for having had cancer because that would be a big fat lie i am grateful for what it taught me about balancing success and life i can still go after these big lofty goals while making sure and prioritizing having a bigger and more beautiful life thank you that was hope guzzle hope is originally from pamphlada and is in her

44:12third year of four-time law she's excited to share that her treatment is wrapping up very soon to celebrate and thank her amazing medical team she'll be running the new york city marathon in november to raise money for fred's team the official running team at memorial sloan cattering to support cancer research she's never run before but this feels like a fantastic way to start woo our final story is told by andrew magil andrew told this at the education mainstage matinee where once a year we invite schools to join us for two class periods in the morning to enjoy a live storytelling show there's a dj plan when they walk in the lights are low there's free merch andrew who is about to share his story was the host of the event here's andrew live at the moss education mainstage matinee

45:17i realized in high school my report card never really matched who i was like the comments on my report card never matched who i was it was like talks too much in class i was like yeah i was just telling my boy i why naruto is the best ninja has the ability to do better i'm like yeah but you call me on a bad day truly needs to improve their work ethic to reach their full potential okay maybe okay maybe the comments was a little was right and when i was planning my senior year schedule in the eleventh grade i told my guidance counselor hey i'll do whatever i'm over school and she's like you need to take a six forty five class a sociology class can you do it i was like of course i can do it she said uh are you sure i say yeah who's the teacher and she said it's mr bonavita i said the dean she's a yeah i said the guy who takes people's hats off their head because it's against school policy she's a yeah that's the one i was like the guy who wears uh sandals and jeans all throughout the year that's my teacher i was like this is going to be a breeze so i

46:23remember starting senior year six forty five i walk into class and yes it was early so i get into the building i'm i'm sitting down in class and mr bonavita is like this class is going to be fun but it is going to be a hard class you need to show up to class the past i was like oh cool whatever and he said look around everybody look around and we looked around and he was like you're not everyone here is going to make it to the end of this semester and i was like hard to we go and die what was happening here he's like no this class starts at six forty five and not a lot of people are going to make it you need the commitment the effort the time i was like yeah whatever man i got you and for the next two weeks i did not make it to that six forty five class folks i was late every day and like i said he was a dean so i would like be hiding in the lunchroom when i'd see him walk by and he'd be like yo and you're six four you're black you can't hide you why are you trying to hide and he called me over and he said hey you're going to fail this class if you don't show up to class

47:24you need to show up to this class and i was like oh whatever so the next day i was like fifteen minutes late but i showed up to class i got into class and he had these turntables set up and i was like oh what's going on here i thought it was a sociology class and i go sit down and i asked one of my friends i was like oh what's he doing he's like oh he's a DJ i was like and he's a teacher and a DJ i was like and the DOE is not paying anybody money and he proceeded to tell us that history doesn't always repeat itself but it does often rhyme and then he mixed single ladies into jackson five i want you back and it blew my mind for a bit i was like what and he explained to us like yo this is this is what history it rhymes and it does these beats and i'm going to explain it with my my job i'm a DJ when i don't teach and it literally blew my mind i was like yo this is actually insane and from that i was hooked on class and i never missed

48:28a day i mean some days i'd be a little late but um you know he taught us uh you know we use Dave Chappelle's Clayton Bigsby to talk about racism uh we did the widest kids you know to talk about Abraham Lincoln and all all his history and all his his life um at the end of the year um i actually got into his historiography class and we got to go to DC um and we got to talk to uh one of the senators a civil rights activist John Lewis and he told us um you got to get into the right trouble and i was like yo this is amazing and at the end of the year uh i said hey mr bonavid i would love to be a DJ like would you hire me and he said no yeah you lazy you don't really come to class and lie i'm not going to trust you with that like i'm if i did i'm i'm it's a DJing is a gift what i'm going to give you is a gift and i i don't want you to uh take it for granted uh because this gift can take you anywhere and i was like all right man so i went home and i thought about all the stuff

49:29we learned in class i thought about i was like you know what let me just write a letter i was like that's what they do in government right when something's bad you just write a letter to congress do something so i wrote them a letter put it in his mailbox and he didn't say anything to me and like a couple days before you know we've got to graduate and he says hey i'm going to take you on um and you're going to you know i'm going to give you a little internship and figure it out and it's been 15 years and i'm i'm a DJ now i'm a dean and i'm really thankful for the gift that mr bono be the gave me Andrew McGill is a high school English teacher stand up comic and storyteller born and raised in Brooklyn New York Andrew's been DJing for over 15 years and still works with mr b every week he still enjoys and plays that mix he's taught a bunch of kids that mix but it is never as good as it was with mr b to see photos of Andrew and mr b DJing go to the moth.org

50:43do you have a story of your own fresh start you can pitch us your story by recording it right on our site the best pitches are developed for moth shows all around the world it was stuck in california in the 1970s a conservative suburban town that used to be an agricultural mecca linen runny was a kid you wore paint button up oxards to class and third grade and he was teased relentlessly it really didn't help but he was gentle and kind after class one day my third grade teacher misses bumpers handed out blue flyers announcing little league trouts to all the boys though i went up to her desk after class and i asked if i could have a flyer and she very firmly said no it would just for boys when i pressed her she told me she didn't have new more flyers and i should go home the extra blue flyers i started to put back in her desk anyways i immediately tried to think of a boy who might not want his flyer and i remembered blender grogney i ran to catch up to him and i asked her to flyer and he gave it to me even though i didn't know how to play i went to

51:43the trouts one cool Saturday morning and stood in de grass dozens and dozens of eight nine year old boys waiting to try out the male coaches stood watching us with their clip boards and we lined up to run drill after drill even though i fumbled along i didn't know how to play it was the best day of my life a week later i got a call from my new coach very sprunget and i got instructions for our first practice it turns out how was good at baseball and i became one of the best players in our league i hit the first ball over the fence and i was nominated by the entire league to our all-start team in my last year those years were full of teasing harassment and dignities around being own girl who ever played in our league that i just didn't care every bit of practice drilling hours in the hot central valley sun i just couldn't get enough but none of it would have been possible without minoroni i hope you hear this story one day and you reach us out so i can think to myself that crunched up blue flyers stuffed at the bottom of this book bag with like

52:44little wonk as golden ticket to me it was a lifeline and without minoroni i would have missed the first shoe love of my life baseball here comes another pitch when i graduated from college in 2004 my dad's graduation gift was a dad daughter trip of my choice anywhere in the world i chose Athens but as usual he did what he wanted to book us a 10-day fishing trip in argentina instead my dad is an outdoor zero-publican card carrying member of the nra whereas i'm an indoor z-queer card carrying member of the ACLU my stomach sank as i remembered other dad daughter trips hauling antlers up mountains and silence silently suffering through his heavy-handed lessons about hunting and fishing techniques a month later we're in a

53:45creek in argentina and i'm crying behind my sunglasses as my dad yells at me critiquing my pathetic cast and then out of nowhere he says you know who was really good at that your grandpa i flashed to my only memory of my dad crying when i was 10 years old my grandpa had died and the pastor asked for memories for the ulyge and my dad said my dad taught me to fly fish and he broke down and sobbed and these two images of my dad crying in this memory of now in the creek fused together and i realized my dad doesn't just want to give me a trip to Athens he wants to give me his family legacy and i don't fall in love with fly fishing that day and my dad still doesn't understand me but i understand him

54:55remember you can pitch us online at the moth.org where you can also share these stories or others from the moth archive and by tickets to moth storytelling events in your area through our website the moth.org there are moth events year round and you can find a show near you and come out and tell a story the moth can be found on all major social media platforms i just want to say at moth edu we've got an unmatched group of instructors with passion and care for their students for their stories and somehow for creating detailed lesson plans if you're listening to this and you're an edu instructor past or present thank you for all your work it wouldn't be possible without you that's it for this episode of the moth radio hour we hope you'll join us next time and that's the story from the moth

56:05this episode of the moth radio hour was hosted by peter aguero and produced by me jay allyson and jody powell who also directed the stories in the show co-producer is vicki maric associate producer emily couch the stories were coached by melissa brown jana thing cabral melody conze and julienne goldhaegan education program instruction by hanna alan emie blumberg zoe laiz ingrid romero deli licelle d'areus sharp and meo tuberty the moth's leadership team includes jena duncan marina cluche sarah austin junez jennifer hixin jordan cardinale caledonia carence cate teller suzan rust serrige and johnson and patrice aurenia special thanks to unlikely collaborators for their support of the moth education program and to honest stern for her help on this episode our pitches are from brandy burnizani and san francisco

57:05and francisco southwick davis in brookland new york moth stories are true is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers our theme music is by the drift other music in this hour is from epidemic sound stelwagan symphonet and blue dot sessions podcast music production support from davi sumner the moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic public media in woods whole message special thanks to our friends at audacity including executive producer lea reest denis for more about our podcast for information on pitching us your own story and to learn all about the moth go to our website the moth dot org