Calling In: The Moth Podcast

On this episode, we explore The Moth Pitchline, the place where anyone, anywhere, can pitch us their story. We'll feature a story that came from a pitch, as well as a couple of pitches that caught our ears. If you'd like to pitch us, just go to themoth.org/pitchline and follow the instructions there. This episode was hosted by Chloe Salmon. Storytellers: Sophia Romero decides what to do with the placenta in the back of her fridge. In addition, we featured story pitches from Michael Ivory, Kathy Etheridge, Carla Brizuela-Perez, and Martha Ruiz-Perilla. Podcast # 990

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Moth. I'm Chloe Salmon. At The Moth, we find stories in lots of places. There are our open mic story slams that happen regularly in 29 cities, our workshop programs that give participants the tools to develop and shape their own narratives, and of course, good old fashioned research. You haven't quite lived until you've cold called a stranger to see if they'd be interested in letting you ask them 1 million very personal questions in service of building a story together. But one of my favorite ways is via The Moth Pitch Line, where people can go to our website and leave a two-minute recording summarizing a story they'd like to tell. I'm part of the team that manages The Pitch Line, and I absolutely love it.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  One, I'm very nosey, so thousands of people opting in to tell me their business is my personal heaven. But even more than that, I like what it represents, that even without a live audience, even without quite knowing who will be listening, the impulse to share, to connect, to tell a story is still there. So in honor of the tens of thousands of folks who have called in over the years, this episode is dedicated to The Pitch Line. We'll hear a story that was developed from a pitch, as well as a few wonderful pitches that have been submitted recently, and the reasons why they caught our ears, as well as a few pointers to take away for your own pitch. First up is Sophia Romero, who told this story at a main stage in Troy, New York.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Here she is, live at The Moth.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  In 1995, I was pregnant with my second child, when a visiting relative told me that in the northern region of the Philippines, where my father's side of the family is from, there is a tradition of burying the placenta or the afterbirth with tokens of good wishes for the child. I was hearing this for the first time. Now, my mother, who comes from a different part of the country, did not bury hers, because if she had, I never would have heard the end of it. You see that hibiscus bush over there? That's where I buried my placenta.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  I have to admit, the idea was both intriguing and fascinating to me, because you know, when you're in your third trimester of pregnancy, you just want it to be over. And yet here, I was being asked to think about tokens, predetermining the life of this child before it could even live outside of me and on its own. Why not? I loved it. And my husband, who is a nice Jewish boy from Queens, and whose mother I know did not bury her placenta, agreed. He said, "Let's do it." And our midwife was equally excited, but she said,

• 3:06Speaker 01

  "You have to take it home right away, because the hospital doesn't hold on to them." So on the day of our birth, she was prepared. As soon as the afterbirth was delivered, she carefully transferred it into a plastic takeout container that can hold a double order of hot and sour soup. She gave it to Dan and told him, "Go home now and stick it in the freezer," which he did. He took the F train from the West Village to Brooklyn, because it was faster than taking the cab.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  He stuck it all the way to the back with the words "Do Not Eat" written on masking tape. And there it stayed for the next three years. We fully intended to bury it, once we got enough sleep. But, you know, days turned into weeks, turned into months. We didn't. I couldn't, because it turned out that it was not as simple or as easy a decision to make.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  How do you bury a placenta? Do you stick it in a shoebox with ribbon, and then bury it and commemorate it with a headstone or a flag, so that you always know it is there? I happen to live next to Prospect Park, and those city squirrels are vicious, and they like to poke around anything and everything. And I was afraid that I would walk into my backyard and find a family of squirrels enjoying a picnic over something that used to be mine. Or worse, chasing that rogue squirrel with leftovers between its jaws,

• 5:13Speaker 01

  and me screaming, "Give it back! Drop it!" As an immigrant, my relationship to the land of my birth is very different from the land I have acquired by choice and now live in. I knew that once that placenta went into the ground, I would be staking a claim to a land that I was just getting to know and understand. Was this home? Or was this where I received my mail? I left the Philippines in 1986, leaving everything behind to start over. I came to New York, started a new career. I met and married my husband. We started a family.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  And I became an American citizen. Overnight, I was turned into a hyphenated individual, a Filipino-American, a demographic that looked good on paper, but didn't exactly describe who I used to be and who I was becoming. My mind was filled with my native language, Filipino, but the words and ideas that tumbled out of me were oddly unfamiliar. In trying hard to blend in and to assimilate, I turned against myself, fighting an enemy from within.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  How does one live in two worlds, yet belong to neither? And there, in the back of my freezer, was this silent witness to my internal struggle. I was afraid each time my mother came over to babysit or make dinner, because she might cook it by mistake, or worse, throw it out by accident. My children, Eli and Amalia, were now seven and three years old. But the longer this placenta remained unburied,

• 7:20Speaker 01

  the farther apart my two narratives remained. But here's what happens when you procrastinate. The universe steps up and makes that decision for you. So one Saturday morning, I woke up, went down to my kitchen, and found a puddle of water by the foot of my refrigerator. I opened the freezer door. The bulb was also out, confirming what I was afraid of. My refrigerator had died. The ice cream looked like yogurt. The frozen meat was no longer frozen.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  And there, in the back, I could see the takeout container, the black ink running down the sides. And I thought, "What the whatever?" I didn't wait three years just to throw this thing out. I had to save it at all costs. But I was also curious, because I had never seen it before. I mean, there were so many things going on. So I took it out and decided to take a look, not knowing what I would find. I opened it, and to my surprise,

• 8:48Speaker 01

  there was this beautiful round dome floating in melted ice. It was this bright red. It sparkled like a ruby. I smelled it. I jiggled it, and it jiggled back. I immediately covered it and ran to my next-door neighbor and asked her to please hold on to this plastic container until Dan and I could figure out a plan. She's an immigrant too, so she didn't ask any questions.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  In the meantime, it just so happened that we were actually had plans to go away to the North Fork in eastern Long Island, where Dan's family has a summer home. And then it occurred to me, well, I could bury it there. We packed up the kids, we packed up the refrigerator with everything we could save. I got the plastic container for my neighbor and packed it in its own cooler with whatever ice I could save. We drove up, the cooler was in the back, the kids fell asleep immediately, and Dan was focused on not getting a speeding ticket.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  And all I could think of was this passenger sitting by itself, all the way in the back. Would it make the two and a half hour trip? Did I put enough ice? And then I started to think of tokens, because nobody ever told me what those tokens were. And then it occurred to me, in the Philippines, when someone moves into their first home, their first dwelling, before the furniture comes in, before the curtains are hung, they bring in rice, sugar, and salt. So we get to the house, Dan takes care of unpacking the car, I take care of bringing

• 10:52Speaker 01

  the kids in, settling them inside. And the next time I look up, there is Dan in the front yard, walking with a shovel over his shoulders. And then, I thought, okay, I grabbed the kids, put my three-year-old over my shoulder, because she was still asleep, and grabbed a few things from the pantry. When we got to Dan, he had already started digging a hole. And he stopped what he was doing, with a big smile on his face, and said, "This is a good spot."

• 11:33Speaker 01

  And my seven-year-old, Eli, said, "A good spot for what?" And I said, "A good spot for burying mommy's placenta." And my seven-year-old said, "What's that?" And I said, "Baby food." By the time Dan was done, he had dug a hole so deep, nothing would ever get in. Very carefully, he opened the cooler and took out the container and solemnly poured

• 12:15Speaker 01

  out its contents: blood, matter, and water, spilling into the soil and turning it into a brown mush. And then, from his pocket, he took out tokens that I didn't even know he had. He threw in a sheet of music for a musical life, a compass for mathematical acuity, a copy of Wired magazine, because this was the 90s, and a pair of dice, so that the children would always be lucky.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  I threw in a cup of sugar for a sweet life, rice, so the children would never go hungry, and salt, so they would be forever rooted to the land. And then we planted a butterfly bush, in honor of the land where I was born, and in honor of the land where I now live. And so that I could also truthfully say, "You see that butterfly bush over there? This is where I belong. Thank you."

• 13:40Speaker 00

  That was Sophia Romero. She's the author of the novel Always Hiding. Her essay, Sun Over the Yardarm, appears in the Make Mine a Double anthology, and she wrote a blog called The Shiksa from Manila on being in an interfaith and interracial marriage. After the break, I'll talk about how Sofia developed her story from her original pitch and play a few other pitches for you. Back in a moment. Welcome back. The story you just heard from Sofia came from a pitchline submission she sent to us in 2025. Here's the initial pitch.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Just before the birth of my second child, my husband and I made a decision to bring home the placenta and bury it with tokens of good wishes for the child. We stuck it in the freezer with a tape that said, "Do not eat," and there it stayed for the next three years. It turns out that burying the placenta was not a simple endeavor. As a Filipino immigrant, someone who is not native to this country, my relationship to the land of my birth is very different to the land I have acquired by choice. I also have an immigration past, and somehow the placenta, like me, was caught between those three narratives. But then our refrigerator died, and we had to save the placenta.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  My quick-thinking husband brought the placenta and our family to the place where we got married. There, we buried the placenta with the tokens of music for a musical life, sugar for a sweet life, and Wired magazine. We buried the butterfly bush on top of it for new beginnings, and because now I have a home.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  When I heard Sofia's pitch, it felt like a perfect fit for a main stage event I was casting at the time. I reached out, and we got to work, digging into the story and seeing what else we could unearth. There were more details that came to light with the additional time, like the extra tokens they buried with the placenta, and more depth to be found in her struggle with her idea of home as an immigrant to this country. When given the space to deepen and grow, it flowered into the wonderful story you just heard. And like I said earlier, hers is just one of the tens of thousands of pitches we've received over the years. I thought it might be fun to share a few that caught my ear recently with you. First up is Michael Ivory, who pitched this from Philadelphia.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  My grandmother had two prayers for my life. The first was to see me graduate from college, and the second to see me preach my first sermon, if I was to become a preacher. I never did end up preaching that sermon, but I did graduate from college. But by that point, my grandmother had taken sick and was unable to make the trip from Miami, Florida, to Durham, North Carolina, where the graduation took place. So when I came back to Florida, I made sure to put on that same suit, cap, gown, and stole that I wore the day of my graduation, and processed through the nursing home to her room, so that she would have a front row seat to her prayer being answered. Just in time, too, because she ended up passing away seven months later.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  My grandmother had a small life insurance policy, and the day after her funeral, my mom called me into her bedroom and handed me a single $100 bill, told me that this was my grandmother's inheritance to me. I then left Miami and went to North Carolina to start the first day of a new job, only to find out that in the time I had been spending grieving, I had lost that job. Soon, all my savings ran out. I picked up my wallet and went to the grocery store, prepared to do the very thing I didn't want to do: bought the ingredients to make some spaghetti, because I could eat it for a while, and went to the cashier and handed her that $100 bill, begging her not to take

• 17:33Speaker 02

  it, because she wasn't just taking money, she was taking the last thing my grandmother could touch me with. But as I left that grocery store, and I ate off of that spaghetti for just enough days to find a new safe harbor, I could hear my grandmother saying, "You didn't lose any part of me. I managed to feed you across the span of life and death."

• 17:58Speaker 00

  What I love about Michael's pitch is that he takes something that many people have experience with, the preciousness of a relationship with a grandparent, and makes it his own. The story comes alive in the specificity. He doesn't just give us an overview of their relationship. He brings us into moments, going to see her in his cap and gown, receiving the $100 bill as his inheritance after she passes, and eventually having to spend it. Those moments make the story something special, and Michael is clearly a gifted storyteller. Pitches can be serious, like Michael's, but they don't have to be. Kathy Etheridge dialed in from Aurora, Colorado with a story about an unfortunate party planning choice.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  The Denver Bomb Squad evacuated an entire cul-de-sac in my neighborhood because of something I put in their mailboxes. It was my Halloween invitation. Okay, perhaps I have concerning levels of Halloween enthusiasm, but really, the best Halloween parties start with a great invitation. One year, I made plaster casts of my teenager's fingers and tied strings around them, put them into jewelry boxes with the words, "Don't Forget Your Costume." People loved it, but I thought, I can do better. I wanted to keep on the same theme, you know, body parts, so I decided to create an eyeball floating in a specimen jar with the line, "We'll keep an eye out for you." I packaged them in a cardboard box

• 19:25Speaker 03

  labeled "Laboratory Sample: Homo Sapient Material Seeking Host," but no return address because I didn't want to give anything away. Delivered 75 of these boxes and spent the afternoon imagining everyone opening them. Meanwhile, one of my neighbors, a kindergarten teacher, saw this box and called her mother, who told her to call the police. The police called the Bomb Squad. The Bomb Squad evacuated the entire street and had the HOA send an email telling all the residents, if they received one of these packages, they should bring it to them or put it in the freezer. Eventually, the Bomb Squad saw an open one and told the kindergarten teacher very calmly, "Apparently, you've been invited to a Halloween

• 20:09Speaker 03

  party." And that's how the police ended up in my kitchen on October 1st, explaining that next time, I should probably put a return address on my invitations.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  This one is just a hoot. I might venture to say a hoot and a half. I listened, and I found myself physically cringing in my seat, but also laughing at the absurdity of the Bomb Squad getting called in because of a creative Halloween invite. Kathy does something great here, which is elevating the experience from an anecdote into a story by giving more context to the event. She tells us how hard she goes for these parties and the pride she takes in them. That extra layer punches her up into story territory. And remember, we want to hear your whole story in the pitch. Don't leave us hanging. This next one is from Walnut, California, just outside of LA. Here's Carla Brizuela Perez.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  I grew up as an only child with a single mother and immigrated to the United States and the Philippines when I was six. I never met my dad, nor did I want to know. My mother kept saying he was royalty, and I kept thinking it was her own delusional thinking. Fast forward to almost 10 years later, I answered a call in the evening from an attorney from Malaysia, saying that he represented my dad and wanted to speak to me and my mom. We ended up traveling to London, where I first met my dad, the former king of Malaysia. At the time we met, he was the Sultan of Pahang, but at the time of my conception, he was

• 21:47Speaker 04

  the king. Lo and behold, my mother's story was true. We remained estranged from him, but was fortunate enough to receive some financial support when possible. He died in May 2019. I never got to say goodbye, and I only heard about it through news articles. My father's side, including my half-siblings, are still in power in Malaysia, although I have no relationship with any of them. Currently, I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and I've been able to turn my emptiness into empathy in the work that I do. I've been fortunate enough to have friends and family to fill the void that was lacking in my paternal side, and I use this experience to help guide my work and my life.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Carla could have ended that with, "You'll never guess who my bio dad turned out to be. Call me back." People think a cliffhanger will entice us, but usually it does the opposite. We kind of need to hear the whole story and can't always follow up to get it. The way she unfolded the surprise makes the pitch even stronger. When I heard this one, I said, "Wait, what?" The "wait what?" is a pitchline classic. That's also how we felt after hearing this pitch from Martha Ruiz-Pria.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  I was completing the last year of my dental studies in Colombia, and I was sent to a rural area to complete my residence practice at a hospital that was located in a red zone, what was called a red zone at the time, which is a very violent area. At some point, the hospital was taken hostage by the guerrillas, and I was taken from my room, where I used to sleep at the hospital, to my dental office and forced under gun point to take care of a 15-year-old child they had brought with an oral abscess. His father was holding a gun at the nape of my head, and I was forced to complete the procedure this way. It was one of the scariest, most courageous, and incredible experiences I ever

• 23:48Speaker 03

  had.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Like Sofia's, Martha's pitch was actually developed into a full mainstage story. You can listen to it at themoth.org. I highly recommend. It's a wild ride. These pitches are just a few examples of some really wonderful, bite-sized stories we've been fortunate enough to hear over the years. Do you have a story you've been itching to tell? Our fall mainstage season will be starting up in September, and we're always looking for new voices in the cities we visit. Take this as your sign from the universe. You can go to themoth.org to see upcoming mainstage events near you, and you can pitch your story while you're

• 24:27Speaker 00

  there at themoth.org/pitchline. That brings us to the end of our episode. Thank you to our storyteller and pitchers for sharing with us, and to you for listening. Remember, wherever you are, whoever you are, we want to hear your story, and I, for one, can't wait to listen.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Chloe Salmon is a director at The Moth. Her favorite Moth moments come on show days when the cardio is done, the house lights go down, and the magic settles in. Sofia Romero's story was directed by Chloe Salmon. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Genes, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Kluchay, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardenale, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Uranya. The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers. For

• 25:32Speaker 05

  more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.