About this episode
March is women’s history month, and to honor that, we're sharing two stories of women who faced challenges and … woman-ed up.
This episode was hosted by Kate Tellers.
Storytellers:
Alison Stewart gets through a difficult experience, and meets a hot doctor along the way.
Tess Birch guides a group of girls through a zoo.
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The Moth — Women Up: The Moth Podcast. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Hey Moth listeners, have you always wanted to tell your own story but you don't know where to start? My name is Emily Couch and I'm the producer of special projects and radio at The Moth and one of the authors of The Moth's new guided journal called My Life in Stories. One thing I've learned through listening to thousands of two personal stories over the years is that stories are everywhere. Even seemingly small events in your life can shape you in unexpected ways, but it's not always easy to identify those moments. My life in stories is filled with prompts that will help you mine your memories and find those experiences big or small that have made you who you are. You believe everyone has a story worth telling. You can order My Life in Stories at The Moth.org slash My Life in Stories. That's The Moth.org slash My Life in Stories. Do you remember Blue Apron? The subscription meal service? Well, I have news. The new Blue Apron has just launched and they are totally subscription free. I love that I can order exactly what I want when I want with zero commitment. Blue Apron makes it easier to eat better without the stress of meal planning or defaulting to take out. Every meal is chef designed and informed by nutrition
with options that have up to 40 grams of protein and a strong focus on fiber. Everything comes pre-portion so there's no guess where. On busy nights, their new assembly and bake meals are a life saver, five minutes of prep, one pan. I'm done and when I truly have no time, dish by Blue Apron meals are ready to heat and eat in minutes. That's less time than it takes to listen to one episode of your favorite podcast. Same quality, way more convenient. Order now at Blue Apron.com. Get 50% off your first two orders plus free shipping with Moth 50. Terms and conditions apply, visit Blue Apron.com slash terms for more information. I live a weird little life where I have been gifted a bunch of corporate swag and I tell you what, when it hits, it hits. Now that it's my turn to make it, I'm having a blast on Vista print. There are so many ways to raise awareness for and gift the Moth. Of course, they've got sweatshirts and hats, but they've also got so much more. Who among us does not need another power bank? And how excited am I to get my magnetic car
magnets? Designing and ordering is so easy. If I don't step away, I'm going to have 500 perfect flashlights. Whether you're adjusting a design, starting fresh, or need a little human help to bring an idea together, they make the process simple and approachable. There's a reason over a million people trust Vista print for their small business print needs. It's about showing up confidently and looking polished as you grow. Vista print. Print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code new20 at Vistaprint.com. Welcome to the Moth. I'm Kate Tellers. March is Women's History Month, which in the US honors women's vital contributions to American history, culture, and society. Of course, these contributions are too numerous to be uniquely celebrated in one month, and certainly not on one podcast. So let's take one moment for the US Olympic Women's hockey team, shall we? Phenomenal women. And now for two stories of women who face challenges and
womaned up. First, Alison Stewart told this story when she hosted a New York City main stage, where the theme was only in New York. Here's Alison, live at the Moth. I had a very fancy day planned in New York in February of 2024. I was scheduled to have breakfast with the head of the Brooklyn Museum to discuss their 20th 200th celebration. It was a great celebration they had planned. I wanted to support it. It was a beautiful buffet, pretty room. There were about six of us seated around the table. The music director, she talked a bunch, and I nodded a lot, and I just really didn't feel like saying that much. And I actually, you know, I wanted to talk, but I tried, but I didn't really feel like it. Nothing really came out. It was Thursday, and I had planned a trip to Miami on the weekend, and I still had a show to do a WNYC, so I thought just saved my voice. I left the museum,
and I realized something was wrong when I texted my friend on February 22nd, 2024, and the text said, I am having the trouble speaking. I'm trying to text. I having a hard timing. I've had had speaking. I speak, but there's no there there. I went to the office. I tried to write a paragraph, and it took me an hour. Didn't make a lot of sense, either. I figured I'm just fritzing out. I just seemed to somebody to unplug me and plug me back in. It works with my computer. My co-workers told me, you should call your doctor. So after a brief conversation with my doctor, which ended with a, go to the emergency room, I did what New Yorkers do. I took the subway. I took the subway to the ER. At 2 p.m. I was in the ER, and after a few quick scans, my doctor said, I wish I had better news for you, but you have a mass on your brain. We're going to send you to
Lennox Hill, and you'll meet a really great surgeon. Mass, my brain surgeon, as the person who is going to cut into my brain to look for the mass. They put me in an ambulance, and I'd like to say I was whisked away to Lennox Hill, but I didn't really go anywhere. I noticed we hadn't moved, and I thought, oh my god, I'm dying. I'm dying in an ambulance. But I realized I was in traffic. Here was a protest. My hospital, I was stuck in the middle of a protest. My hospital stay was eventful, all the usual reasons, MRIs, cognitive tests, IV drips, and my surgeon of all things, he was really, really hot. My friends called him Doc Hollywood, McDreamy. I really didn't notice until much, much later. I had a few things on my mind. But he was kind and smart. I found out later he was from Brooklyn, the son of a single mom, an immigrant mom played in a punk band
before he took a turn into neuroscience, as one does. And you know what? You can see him on your ads, on these ads, on the subway, for this sort of sleek, fitting, flattering kind of scrubs. They're called hypothesis. You can see him on the four to six train. It says father, bass player, neurosurgeon. My speech was very limited, and it didn't matter. By Saturday, my voice, and my mind were going. By sunny things got really bad. My test, I couldn't tell the difference between a clock and a ruler on a cognitive test. They asked me, Allison, do you know where you are? And I said, I'm on the hill. Doc Hollywood needed to do surgery soon. And it was quite Shakespearean, right? The mass was right on my speech center. And what do I do for a living? I talk on the radio. And he said, oh yeah, I want you to be awake during your surgery, by the way. Awake during my brain surgery. I have two words for you about awake during your brain surgery.
Cold breeze. That's all I'm going to say. I was in the hospital about five weeks. I had to learn to walk again, but mostly to talk again. I had to do so much speech therapy. I made up words. I told people I had as bismia. There's nothing as bismia. I meant as phasia. A phasia is what it is. But, um, and one of my final trips I had to take before I could go home with more therapy was I had to go to a Starbucks and place an order. I looked like I had been in a car accident, but I'm supposed to order a latte to get out of the hospital. So I said my order over and over in my head, which didn't help because I have no memory. But I did it. My physical therapist took me to Starbucks. He's like, you can do it. You can do it. I approached the counter. I was like, I'm glad you're ready to order. I'm not sure what I ordered, but I got an oat milk blonde to express it with caramel drizzle.
I didn't know if you had caramel drizzles, but apparently I ordered it. I had to learn to be in New York again by myself. I had to learn to walk around the corner by myself. I had to learn to avoid protests. This one was a labor one by myself. I had to deal with rudeness to have problems with people. It takes them a long time to talk. I'm talking to you, the guard at the Met. I remember you. And I still get a cold sweat before ordering at Starbucks. And somebody asked me, well, why do you do this? And I said, well, I'm a New Yorker. That was Alison Stewart. Alison is the host of WNYC Show, all of it, and host their book club Get Lit with the New York Public Library. She's also a contributor to the Atlantic Life. As they say about New York, if you can make it here, you'll make it anywhere. This is a place where rats steal your pizza.
It torrentially reigns inside the subway, and the rent, as one poet said, is too damn high. Alison is just one of the city's many inhabitants who shine with the spirit of our beloved Lady Liberty. Arm raised triumphantly above all the chaos that swirls around it. And if you happen to be in New York City on March 20, we've got a very special main stage at NYU's Skurball Center, where Alison told her story, and where some incredible people will get up on stage and tell stories that dig deep into the idea of the American dream. For tickets, go to the moth.org slash events. After the break, a story about a woman who struggles with some girls. Back in a moment. Today's episode is brought to you by Alma. At different periods of my life, therapy has been really helpful, but the process of finding a therapist can be overwhelming. Between finding out the right fit, figuring out insurance, and cost, it's tricky to know where to begin. That's what makes Alma so helpful. Alma's on a mission to make high quality, affordable
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drive keeps you in command when conditions are unpredictable. The new RAV4 is designed around the way people actually use their SUV. From daily errands to weekend adventures, while the GR Sport model, coming soon, boasts a net combined 320 horsepower in a plug-in hybrid drivetrain with a GR-tuned suspension for an even more responsive, exciting drive. No matter which RAV4 you choose, you'll enjoy the reliability Toyota is known for, coupled with the inspiring performance that's unique to Toyota. Shop more and find details at toyota.com. The all-new RAV4 from Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome back. Our next story is from Tess Birch, who told this at a Melbourne story slam where the theme was control. Here's Tess, live at the mosque. So when I turned 18, I decided I was going to become a brownie leader. And before we go through the next five minutes with you thinking, I'm obsessed with baked goods or something. I'm just
going to make it perfectly clear that when I say brownies, I mean girl guides. And when I say girl guides, I mean the girl version of Boy Scouts. Except we're trying to move away from that because when you define yourself in relation to something else, you're just marketing yourself into an anti-space and no one wants to be in the anti-space. So for the purpose of this story, I run a youth group for children. But I didn't want to be just any old brownie leader. You know, I had grown up with these amazing women as my brownie leaders and I wanted to be the best brownie leader ever. But there was only one problem with that, which is that I am a good cop. Now really, there's nothing that bad about being a good cop. I mean the kids like you more. And they were generally really well-behaved kids. You know, you'd have the odd occasion where it would be three a.m. and you're on camp and they decide to practice for a fire alarm and you haven't asked them to. And in those situations, it's kind of good to have someone just to crack the sheets and send everybody back to sleep. But luckily I did brownies with my sister Emma and she's taller than me and she's really scary. Anyway, together we made a great team and we decided we were going to take
the brownies to the zoo. And there was a baby hippo at the zoo. And we kind of have this philosophy and girl guides of letting the kids lead the activities and we don't tell them what to do. But we were tactical about this and we made a scavenger hunt and all the best animals were at the most points. So this way we're like we're guaranteed to see the good animals. So there was too many kids for us to all go away, go around in a group. So we split up into smaller groups and I have my kids and I'm ready to see the baby hippo and I'm like, right, where are we going? And they say Australian animals. And I was like, you have got to be kidding me. I was like, if you want to see kangaroo just go drive on a country highway, look out the window. Like anyway, we go to the Australian animals. It's dead boring and I'm thinking like, okay, like baby hippo, like baby hippo is coming. Next thing they want to go to is the bird aviary. And I am shit scared of birds but you cannot tell that to children. Pro tip, don't talk your dear terrified of something if they have control over you because they will just drag you to that thing. So we're going through the bird avories for what felt like my whole life. And then finally we stopped because they found a playground that was themed like a storage system and they spent the next hour playing on this giant toilet paper
roll and getting wet. Until finally I did what anyone else would have done in my situation and I said girls, if you don't get off that giant roll of toilet paper, I'm calling MR my sister and they all just got off straight away. And so I'm like, right, bad cop time. We're going to see the hippo and they were like walking behind me so slow and they were so tired and they were complaining and I'm like, girls, I'm doing this for you. How many baby hippos do you think you're going to see in your life? Like keep walking and they hated me and to get to the baby hippo we had to go through the lemur enclosure and I don't know if you've been to the zoo recently but it's like the freaking butterfly house. Like you have to all be in the one room with the door closed before you can open the other door and it was so busy and the lemurs are like free roaming so just lemurs everywhere and I'm like dragging these kids through. I'm like, come on, come on. Okay, so we got through the lemur enclosure. Rush past the gorillas. I was like, not today boys and then we get to we get to the baby hippo and it is glorious and I am just loving it like highlight of the day, highlight of my brownie leader career and I decide, okay, I've seen the hippo, probably need to
number off and number one is missing. Jamie, the littlest brownie is gone and I'm like, okay, it's fine. And the girls are like, oh, I think she's just gone ahead to the spider monkey so well, it's like, you know, kind of briskly walking to the spider monkeys. She's not there. So now I'm kind of flipping out a bit and I think the girls are sensing my panic and they're finally behaving. They're not saying anything that is quietly like coming behind me and I run up to the zookeeper and I was like, I've lost a little girl. She's sick. She's really small and it's Jamie. She's got a yellow backpack on and check the security cameras and the lady is like, oh, don't worry about it. It happens all the time and she is totally chill but anyway, she kind of shoves us into a little waiting room so that we're not just flipping out in public and running people's time at the zoo. And meanwhile, I have to bite the bullet. I have to call my sister and I call a quick dialed phone and I'm like, hey, um, like, don't win a panic. It's all fine but just so you know, I've lost Jamie, okay, bye, hang up before she can get angry. Anyway, we're waiting in this waiting room. The zookeeper said that they've got everybody looking and then I get a call from another brownie
leader and this is basically confirming the worst news ever, which is that I am the worst brownie leader ever because I left a child in the lemur enclosure. Basically, her sister opened the door and she was there and she was just like, hey, and her sister's like, what are you doing here? And she goes, lost. She was totally fine. She just stayed there with the lemurs. Anyway, we got everyone home. It was all good. Good day at the zoo in the end. I saw the baby hippo. We returned with the same number of children that we left with and the next year we decided to go to the zoo again. This time we were smarter. We went to where I'd be open-range zoo because I learned that you can, doesn't matter if you're a good cop or a bad cop, when all the kids are locked in a bus, you have total control of them. Thank you. That was Tess Birch. Tess is a corporate lawyer and stand-up comedian, sometimes simultaneously. Her work takes her around Australia from outback communities
to capital cities, mining towns to music festivals. On these adventures, she loves to soak up the scenery and the stories. Tess is actually still working with the girl guides. And since the story took place 10 years ago, some of these girls are now volunteers with her. She said, quote, it's a huge privilege to be a part of a movement for women and girls that fosters collaboration, confidence and community. My role now is focused on supporting the adult volunteers, who I tell not to put too much pressure on themselves. I find the adults slightly easier to keep track of, and so far I haven't left anyone else in the lemur enclosure. If you'd like to see a photo of Tess and her troop before anyone was lost, we'll have that on our website at the moth.org-extras. I have never been a Girl Scout or lost a Girl Scout, but every year I do my civic duty and relieve the Girl Scouts of so many of their cookies. I support women and emerging women. I hope you do too. That brings us to the end of our episode. Thanks so much for joining us. From all of us
here at the moth, we hope that you remember to listen to women's stories, no matter what month it is. Kate Tellers is a storyteller, host, senior director at the moth, and co-author of their fourth book, How to Tell a Story. Her writing has been featured in Mixweenies and The New Yorker. This episode of the moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Geness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of the moth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Klutsche, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinale, Caledonia Cairns, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Urna. The moth podcast is presented by Odyssey, Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Restennis. 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. 30 years ago, blinds.com broke the mold and made custom window treatments easy for everyone.
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