Pod Insights The Moth The Moth Radio Hour: Brand New YOU About this episode In this hour, stories of starting fresh. Unexpected opportunities, budding relationships, your next home, and a new take. This episode is hosted by Moth Executive Producer, Sarah Austin Jenness. The Moth Radio is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.
Storytellers:
Student Naushin Khan has never had a "good relationship" with chemistry.
Kristin Lawlor feels like the only single girl in New York.
Mariam Bazeed and their family relocate to Egypt during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Law professor Dave Moran tries his hand at modelling.
Aleyne Larner meets a man 20 years her senior.
Podcast # 712
Transcript 0:13 Speaker 00 This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. In this episode, lifelong learning and the pursuit of the unfamiliar. Everything novel and new. We start in Central Park with an unlikely catalyst for change: pond scum, also known as algal blooms. Notion Khan shared this story with us as part of a moth education showcase when she was a high school student in New York City. Here's Notion, live at the moth.
0:48 Speaker 01 Raise your hand if you ever hated your high school science class. Especially chemistry.
0:59 Speaker 01 When I was in 10th grade, I also hated my chemistry class. Sitting in the classroom, I used to think, "Why do I have to learn all these complex chemistry words like oxidation, reduction, specto-something-something?" We don't see those words in our environment. There is no connection. We don't use them. They're pointless. When I entered into 11th grade, I had to take that subject test for chemistry. I was so frustrated because I never had a good relationship with chemistry. But I still had to take it. Sitting in the testing center for three hours, I was so pissed.
1:46 Speaker 01 I don't even remember what the test was about as it just bubbled random answers.
1:53 Speaker 01 So, my sister came to the testing center to pick me up and when she saw me very gloomy, she decided to take me to the Central Park to give me some therapy to forget the test.
2:09 Speaker 01 When I went to the park, she handed me a camera to take pictures. So, I was running around in the park, holding a camera, and I saw a lake full of green water. I was like, "Wow, green water! I did not know there was green water before."
2:29 Speaker 01 When I saw the water, I want to touch it. Then...
2:37 Speaker 01 Then my sister shouted, "Hey, stupid! Do you not see the sign beside the lake that says 'Dangerous! Algal blooms! Please don't contact with the water'?"
2:50 Speaker 01 I was like, "Wow! This glowing, beautiful water could be that dangerous? It even can give me skin disease? That's unbelievable!"
3:02 Speaker 01 And a few days later, I was accepted to an internship. And the internship was called Sustainable Energy. And I thought I would be learning about planting trees and how to save energy. So I'm excited! And I went to the first day of the internship, and I was shocked. It's all chemistry!
3:24 Speaker 01 I was thinking, "Oh, God! I did not sign up for this!"
3:32 Speaker 01 And my professor gave us an assignment to conduct an experiment and research that would somehow benefit the environment using all chemistry.
3:46 Speaker 01 But because we have to do it, I remembered my day at the Central Park, where the water was all dangerous because of harmful algal blooms. So my team and I decided to conduct some research by collecting those water to see if we can somehow make that water into something that would be beneficial for the environment. After conducting six weeks of research, I realized the words that I used to hate in my chemistry class, like "specto something something", now became my favorite word. Because it is spectrophotonometry that...
4:29 Speaker 01 That helped me to turn that harmful, ugly, bomb-affected water into biofuel, which would benefit the environment. In this way, we were able to take the harmful substance of the water and turning them into something that would produce less carbon dioxide into the environment and use them as a biofuel to run our cars. I was like, wow! It's all chemistry! I never even thought chemistry was all around us like that before. I thought to myself, why did I still think in my chemistry class
5:12 Speaker 01 that science is so boring that there is no connection of chemistry in our environment, when there is? We just don't think about it, but hey, it is those oxidation words that gives us invisible ink, which maybe you know. And it is antioxidants that keeps our fruits fresh. Oxidation that lets us turn these lights. Still, why do you think we hate science? Do we not like the stars? We use science all the time. We do love science, although we tell ourselves we don't. So after that experience,
5:54 Speaker 01 this time I took my sister to the Central Park. And I took her near to that lake, and she shouted again, "Hey, notion, do you not remember? I told you that that lake is dangerous. You're gonna get skin disease." And I looked at her and I told her, "Do you know how much biofuel they can produce from this lake?" She looked at me, I was like, wow, so you like science now? I was like, yeah, you know why? Because every day I drink polar covalent hydrogen bonds, which is simply water. Thank you!
6:38 Speaker 00 That was Notion Khan. These days, Notion is a student at the University of Rochester. And yes, you guessed it, she's studying chemical engineering. Her hobbies include making art, reading manga, and capturing nature on her phone. As a chemical engineering student, her focus is on renewable energy, and she works on new experiments every week. Right now, she's working on a research project for solar microgrids in Nepal, and she hopes to travel to Kathmandu soon to implement these grids, which will provide electricity to 400 villagers. Notion sent us a few articles linked on our website, themoth.org, about the algae in Central Park.
7:21 Speaker 00 So you too can fall in love with science if you haven't already.
7:38 Speaker 00 Life can change for the good when you least expect it, if you're open to it. We met our next storyteller, Chrissy Lawler, at the Moth Teacher Institute, where educators from around the country share best practices for using personal stories in the classroom. At the end of the workshop, we record the stories from these educators. So, live from the Moth Teacher Institute, here's Chrissy Lawler.
8:04 Speaker 02 So when I was 28, all of my friends were in relationships. Everything else was great. I had finished grad school. I had my first teaching job. I was exhausted at the end of every day. But then on the weekends, I'm like, all right, I gotta blow off some steam. I'm single. I'm ready to mingle. I was the only single girl in New York. So I'd call up my friends and say, who's coming out tonight? Oh, we're gonna go to dinner. Okay. Sunday nights were the worst. Sunday night is boo night. Oh, we're just gonna, you know, catch a movie on the couch? Okay, so then I was left seeing a movie on my couch alone. So when one of my colleagues organized a Friday happy hour that fall,
8:47 Speaker 02 I was like, let's do this. I'm in. So I'm there, four, five drinks in, and I turned to the young man next to me, who's a colleague, and I proclaimed, quite emphatically, that I'm either going to have to learn to knit or read Proust. And he turned to me and said, "Come over to my place Monday night. My wife will teach you how to knit and make you dinner." And my feminist sensibilities are shook because it's like, is this the future? Your wife is going to make me dinner and we're going to knit? In my head, I'm like, "Eh."
9:29 Speaker 02 And what I say is, "What can I bring?" So on Monday, I'm at their door with a bottle of wine and just from inside the apartment, the smells are delicious. And it's warm and it's cozy and lovely and we sit down together and the three of us share an amazing meal. And after dinner, she sits down with me and starts me off with a scarf. That's the most basic beginning. And she's a very patient teacher. Knit, pearl, knit, pearl. The needles are clunky, my hands aren't getting it, but she's, she's good with me. She's taking it slow. And she asks me why I chose the yarn colors I did.
10:12 Speaker 02 And I said, "Well, this is a Harry Potter scarf." So then for the next hour, there was some knitting, but a lot of Harry Potter fan love. And so at the end of the evening, she said, "Come back next Monday. We'll do a little more work on your scarf." And in my mind, I'm like, "Okay." And what I said was, "Okay." So the next Monday, I was back, another delicious meal. This time I brought a dessert. And I had forgotten everything. She had taught me the first time. So she's very patiently again, showing me how to knit. And I had a couple more inches, knit, pearl, knit, pearl. She's like, "Your stitches are kind of loose." "The yarn's kind of itchy."
10:54 Speaker 02 And then we start talking about our various experiences teaching English abroad. She had taught in China, I had taught in Chile. We talked about the places we want to travel, the places we have traveled. And kind of knitting, but mostly talking. So at the end of that night, we didn't have to check in. We just knew we'd be back again for another week. And you know, this time, my stitches were too tight, but you know.
11:20 Speaker 02 She starts to tell me about how she grew up on the West Coast. She lived with her grandmother, who was a talent booking agent for Elvis impersonators. So she grew up surrounded by all these Elvases, and it was quirky and just weird, and I was loving every minute of it.
11:36 Speaker 02 And so we proceeded like this. Every Monday, I'd add a couple of inches, and we would talk. And much later, that fall, maybe beginning of winter, she tells me that, in fact, the whole thing had been a setup, that she had tasked her husband with bringing home a friend. She had moved across the country for him to take a new job. She didn't have a job. She was looking, and in the meantime, she didn't know where to begin meeting people, and she was kind of lonely. So he was a matchmaker, and he did a really good job.
12:11 Speaker 02 I'm like, wait, but you're in a relationship. How can you be lonely?
12:17 Speaker 02 And it had never occurred to me before that I was not the only lonely girl in New York. So eight years later, I have about three feet of a very amateurly knitted scarf, and I'm never going to finish it. I don't like knitting.
12:37 Speaker 02 But I'm hanging on to it, and I've hung on to these friends. And with very, very few exceptions, we've had dinner together every Monday night for eight years.
12:49 Speaker 02 Thank you.
12:55 Speaker 00 Chrissy Lawler still teaches language arts, English as a new language, and journalism at the Young Women's Leadership School in the Bronx. Chrissy never went back to knitting, but she and Nicole are still very close. It's now over 10 years since this story took place, and those Monday night dinners were still happening until the pandemic hit. Chrissy says they can't wait to see each other again. And some good news. Nicole and her husband Andrew have two daughters now, who were the flower girls at Chrissy's wedding. To see photos of that happy celebration and the unfinished scarf that started it all, go to themoth.org.
13:42 Speaker 00 After our break, a woman remembers her childhood in Kuwait during the Gulf War, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
14:11 Speaker 03 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
14:21 Speaker 00 This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. The stories in this hour are about all things new. But what happens when you're a six-year-old in a time of turbulence and everything is new and different? Maryam Bizid told our next story at a Moth showcase at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Here's Maryam, live at The Moth.
14:45 Speaker 04 The year is 1990, and my twin brother and I are six years old. We've repurposed our dining room table into a bomb shelter. Now, the reason for this was real. Iraq had actually just invaded Kuwait, and so we were living there. And my parents told us that if ever we heard rockets sort of come too close to our house, that we should run to the living, to the dining room table and get under the wood so that we'd be protected from falling rubble. So we did this a couple of times, like drills, my twin brother and I, for fun. But we weren't really taking this too seriously because literally, nothing had ever happened in Kuwait.
15:30 Speaker 04 Like, except for the discovery of oil.
15:34 Speaker 04 My life proceeded like clockwork there. You know, pick up from school at 3 o'clock. Then we go home and have lunch, which always started with clear vegetable soup. And then dishes, and then communal family nap time. And it was like, my life was so regular that we didn't need an alarm clock to know when it was time to wake up. So the idea that there would suddenly be like rockets falling on our dining room table, I was like, alright.
16:06 Speaker 04 There's a lot of foreign labor in Kuwait because of the oil money. My family is Egyptian. I'd been born in Kuwait, but that didn't give us citizenship rights there. So our stay there was contingent on someone in my family having a work visa, right? So my parents were discussing this, what do we do? What do we do? And they decided that my mother would take my twin brother and I back to Egypt, where we were from, and where we spent every summer. And my father would stay in Kuwait during the war to anchor us there.
16:45 Speaker 04 Now, my parents were really strong believers in the resilience of children, which made them really bad communicators. So like, they didn't really discuss what the plan was with us. But we like packed our stuff up, and with the cooler of food in the backseat of the car,
17:09 Speaker 04 we drove to the border. In 1990, there's 500,000 Kuwaiti nationals living in Kuwait. There's 1.5 million foreign nationals living there. We outnumber them 3 to 1. So if you can imagine, at the border between Kuwait and Iraq, there's this enormous line of cars of families going back either temporarily or permanently to where they were actually from.
17:34 Speaker 04 And so we drive up, you know, there's a border agent, and you have to take everything out of your car. And they inspect everything, and they have like a little mirror at the end of a stick, and they look at the underneath of the car. And so we do all of this, they look at our documents, and we load the car back up.
17:54 Speaker 04 And then, my dad just like doesn't get into the driver's seat. And he says, you know, be good, take care of your mother. Like, I'll see you, see you.
18:08 Speaker 04 And, and like, he hugs us. And then my mother gets behind the steering wheel and we're supposed to drive this way. And my father is literally the only person going back into Kuwait. Because to review, there's a war on.
18:24 Speaker 04 And there's no public transport going down that way. Like, I'm just looking behind at the rearview mirror and watching him get shorter in the desert and being like, how is he gonna get home?
18:37 Speaker 04 And I, like, I know how distressing this sounds, but actually, I was young. And, and also, like, the idea of saying goodbye to people abruptly was just an everyday part of my life as, as a daughter of people who had migrated for labor. And there was someone who was always like in between school years just leaving, right? Because their family had repatriated. Or, you know, the first goodbye that I said to a close family member. I was two years old when my sister, who had been my primary caregiver up until that point, had to go back to Egypt to start college.
19:21 Speaker 04 So this idea that I would just suddenly say, have to say goodbye to my dad and then like, see you when I see you, was just a part of my life. It was every day.
19:33 Speaker 04 And there was something exciting about going home to Egypt. Like, it was the place we spent every summer. It was really exciting. There's great beaches there. Our cousins were there. Horseback riding lessons were there. So I was excited a bit to be going back home.
19:52 Speaker 04 But then, being somewhere for like a summer and then having to like resume your life some- somewhere are two different things. Um, and I found that I didn't like Egypt when I had to just be living there. Um, like I didn't have any of my stuff. And I really hated the school that I went to. Um, everything was unfamiliar, um, I didn't like my teachers. And, um, I began every single morning just wailing. And, um, when I mean every, when I say every single morning, I mean that literally. Like, every day for the time that I was at that school, every single day, I cried, I'd
20:36 Speaker 04 have to get like peeled away from my mother, so I'd be, like, I was famous for it at the school that I went to. Because at six years old, it actually takes a lot of stamina to make a huge scene every morning. Um, so, like, I was that kid. Um, and then, it actually got to the point where this woman who, like, ran the canteen thing that, you know, you could like buy snacks in the playground and stuff, um, she would take pity on me. And every morning would sort of like wait until I'd been peeled away from my mother and was like still weeping in the corner. And she would come to me and bring me to sit next to her at the canteen and give me
21:18 Speaker 04 an enormous, um, bag of salted popcorn and a, a, a huge like glass bottle of Coca-Cola second breakfast. And I, she, I would sit there and just like eat the whole thing and drink the whole thing and then like start to feel like a little bit alright. Um, and, one day she actually met my mom, you know, like she came and sa- and, and, and met her and said, um, "Hi, your daughter has been eating my food all term and hasn't paid me for it."
22:02 Speaker 04 And she just told her an arbitrary number of what my mother owed her, and I was in a lot of trouble. And I know, like, I know she was a poor person in a poor country, but I was still hurt.
22:17 Speaker 04 And it wasn't just me who was having a hard time, right? Like, so I was crying in the morning and my mother was crying at night. The Bizid family.
22:31 Speaker 04 And I didn't understand that. Like, I was like, what's wrong with you? You're from here.
22:38 Speaker 04 Right? Like, you were born here. This is where you're from. This is what's familiar to you. This is where you've been telling me we're gonna come back to eventually. Why are you so upset? Like, you're home, supposedly. But, yeah, the adults in my life didn't seem any less dislocated than I was. But while I could generate all the energy I needed just internally, my mother needed a visual aid. Her visual aid was this concert that, like, had been composed about the war very hastily and that aired on the local channel every single night.
23:23 Speaker 04 And so she would listen to this and just, like, be sobbing. And I would be watching her listening to this and be sobbing. And the lyrics went something like this.
23:49 Speaker 04 Which translates into, "Our hearts quake." It's directed at the Prophet. "Our hearts quake because in this war, both the victim and the aggressor are Muslim." Right? So we're fighting our own people.
24:07 Speaker 04 And so my mother would listen to this and cry and listen to this and cry.
24:13 Speaker 04 Thankfully, you know, the occupation didn't actually last very long, so our time in Egypt finally came to an end.
24:24 Speaker 04 And, um, the Americans had come in and the war ended very quickly after that.
24:33 Speaker 04 And in exchange, of course, America got to protect its oil interests in the Middle East and also negotiate permanent military and air force bases in the Middle East in addition to all the other permanent military bases that the United States has in the Middle East. Because nothing is free, not war, not popcorn.
25:01 Speaker 04 So the war was over and I was coming home, like, we were gonna go to, like, home Kuwait home, and I was so excited to be seeing my dad. And, um, we flew back and, uh, I remember he met us in the arrivals hall, we were so, all of us were so excited to see him. And my twin brother and I ran towards him and my mother still got there first.
25:26 Speaker 04 And she kissed him on the cheek, it's the only time I've ever seen them do that in public in my whole life. And, so we like, you know, we grab our luggage and then we go outside to the car.
25:41 Speaker 04 And I notice as my dad's loading the car up that there's actually a bullet hole in the trunk of our red Chevrolet Impala, in the trunk. And if the war, by, if the war had been in black and white for me up until that point, seeing that bullet hole was like, suddenly everything was just technicolor. And I just kept looking at the trunk of our car and looking at where the steering wheel was and then the trunk and the steering wheel and being like, actually, that's not a very big distance.
26:21 Speaker 04 But we got in the car. And in the weeks after the end of the Iraqi occupation, everything on the radio was just like celebratory music composed for the end of this occupation. And on the radio, there were all these Kuwaiti children singing, "Welcome, welcome, Bush. Thank you. Thank you, Bush."
26:48 Speaker 04 And we drove home. And like, I could see there was a clear effort that had been made to, in the apartment, to welcome us home. Like, you know, my dad had like dusted. You know, he'd made us, like, he'd made us our favorite meal that he makes. But there was something that still just felt so still about the inside of our home and something that was just so different about it and unfamiliar.
27:19 Speaker 04 But it was still, you know, it was good to be back together as a family. And we were sitting down at the dining room table. And this was finally a chance for my dad to actually tell us what the war had been like for him that we'd left him in the middle of. Because while the whole time we'd been in Egypt, we'd only been able to speak to him once a week for three minutes, which is not a lot of time. You don't get to tell any stories, really, in three minutes. And so, he's telling us
27:53 Speaker 04 about one day when the rockets had actually gotten too close to our house. And he had been in the shower. He panicked. And with soapsuds covering his body, he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist and then ran into the desert barefoot
28:13 Speaker 04 to get away from the lights. And I just remember feeling so ashamed at that moment that these were the stories that my dad had from the war, right? This bullet hole that he never talked to us about. And then, this image of my father running naked in the darkness, scared for his life.
28:37 Speaker 04 He had to leave because dining room tables, like, don't protect you from rockets, actually.
28:46 Speaker 04 It was, for me, a moment of realizing that I'd been lied to about a lot of things in my life. It was a lie that American imperialism has ever or will ever save anyone. It was a lie that Egypt or Kuwait could be home for me when I needed a visa to stay in one place and when I'd never actually lived in the other. And the wood of that dining room table wouldn't have protected me. Thank you.
29:19 Speaker 00 That was Miriam Bazid. We met when Miriam crafted a story in a Moth community workshop in collaboration with the Muslim Writers Collective. Miriam is a non-binary Egyptian immigrant, writer, stage actor, and cook, living in Brooklyn. And right now, they're in collaboration on a new play about the life and times of Cleopatra. The act of crafting your own story takes openness, indeed, especially if you're telling it for the first time. The Moth produces hundreds of events every year, and the stories are all told by people
30:04 Speaker 00 like you. Yes, you. Do you have any stories of embarking on a new journey, of jumping in and saying yes before you have all the pieces worked out? Or really, any personal story that matters to you? We'd love to hear it. You can record your pitch right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed for Moth shows all around the world. Here's a pitch that came in from Zach Lipton.
30:34 Speaker 05 Luke told me that a man goes through his midlife crisis when he experiences the mortality of his father. That rang true to me, and it also helped me explain why, in a sudden burst of inspiration, I bought a 20-year-old motorcycle while my father was dying of cancer. I bought this beautiful machine without even knowing how to ride a motorcycle, not even having my license. I didn't tell anyone, especially not in my family, about my purchase, because I'm from a traditional Jewish family, and it would have killed my mother to know I was out there on the open road. My father's prolonged battle with cancer would come to a head in May 2017 when he was taken to the emergency room because he had trouble breathing. While he was in the ER, his oncologist came down and gave us all the bad news that the
31:16 Speaker 05 experimental treatment that was supposed to save his life hadn't been working and this was the end of the road. My sister and I rushed to be by his side and the three of us cried and cried, but for just a moment, we came up for air and I turned to them and I said, "Well, now that you've got your bad news, I may as well tell you I bought a motorcycle." The tears of sadness started to mix with laughter and love and we started to plan our road trips together because that's what you do with dying people, you plan for your future. And he made me promise right then and there to always wear boots when I ride and I still do every time.
31:50 Speaker 00 Remember, you can pitch us your story. Give us a short version of the plot and what you stood to lose or gain. We listen to every pitch that's sent in. Call us at 877-799-MOTH or pitch us online at themoth.org. You could even inspire someone you know to pitch. Spread the word.
32:18 Speaker 00 After our break, a law professor willingly gets naked and a 53-year-old woman enters the wild world of online dating when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
32:56 Speaker 03 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Growing up, whenever I...
33:03 Speaker 00 Asked for anything that could be a gift. It was common to hear, wait until the holidays. Well, Mint Mobile is skipping the wait completely this season. Right now, every single one of their plans is just $15 a month. I love their honest pricing and great service. All plans come loaded with high-speed data plus unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. You get to keep your current phone, hang on to your number, and pick a three, six, or 12-month plan so you never have to deal with a monthly bill again. So what are you waiting for? To get your new wireless plan for 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com/moth. That's mintmobile.com/moth. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/moth. Limited time offer.
33:47 Speaker 00 Upfront payment of $45 for three-month, $90 for six-month, or $180 for 12-month. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.
34:05 Speaker 06 Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan, packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland, and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with legendary resale value, built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more.
34:49 Speaker 06 From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places. Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, board-certified OB-GYN and menopause specialist. My podcast, UnPaused, is the place for bold, unfiltered conversations about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life. Every week, I sit down with medical experts and leading voices to talk about the health issues that matter most. Because UnPaused isn't just about the years you live, but how well you live them. Listen and follow UnPaused with me, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, wherever you get your podcasts.
35:32 Speaker 00 You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. This is an hour all about broad-mindedness and stepping into the unfamiliar. Many years ago, I was telling a friend about a crush I had on a man who I thought had a crush on me, too. My friend said, "Have you kissed him yet?" And I said, "No, I haven't thought it through fully." I remember she was sitting on a bar stool because she laughed so hard at this clear evidence of my non-spontaneous self that she slipped off. So this theme of openness and newness and diving into the strange and unusual is also a good reminder for me to lean in.
36:14 Speaker 00 Dave Moran told this next story about leaning in at an open-mic Moth Slam in Ann Arbor, where we partner with Michigan Public Radio. Here's Dave, live at the Moth.
36:29 Speaker 06 As the students filed into the classroom, I tried but failed to stop my hands from shaking. Now, I'm a law professor, so I'm used to seeing students in a classroom. I've given hundreds of lectures to thousands of students. But this wasn't a law class. This was an art class at a community college. And I was seated on a stool in the center of the classroom, wearing only a white robe. And in five minutes, I was scheduled to take it off. How did I get there? Well, as you might guess, it was a midlife crisis I had about a year earlier, when I suddenly decided to-- I needed to find out if I could learn to do something creative.
37:12 Speaker 06 And I ended up taking a drawing class at a community art center. And I hadn't drawn anything since junior high, and my drawings were terrible. But I gradually got better and better as the class went on. And we ended with drawing a model, a live nude model. And drawing a person, as I learned, is very difficult. And so as the class went on, the instructor Heather at one point said, "I'm gonna give Helen the model a break. Anybody wanna stand up there? Keep your clothes on. Anybody wanna stand up there and take a turn posing?" And I raised my hand, and I did. And for 15 minutes, I stood up there with my hands on my hips, twisting my torso, and my mind went blank for maybe the first time in my life.
37:56 Speaker 06 I now know that I discovered a form of meditation, but it felt great. And then afterwards, I looked at the drawings that my fellow classmates had made of me, and I liked them. And I thought, "This was wonderful." And so after the class was over, I emailed Heather, the instructor, and said, "That was wonderful. Are there more opportunities to do that?" And she came straight to the point in her email back, "Are you willing to pose nude?" This led to an interesting conversation with my extremely indulgent wife. And ultimately, the answer was, "Yes, I'd like to see if I have the guts to do that, and I'd like to have that feeling again." And so, fast forward a few months, I made contact with a community college professor,
38:38 Speaker 06 and I had a date, September 14th, 2010, a Wednesday evening. And so I started preparing for it. So I did poses in front of the mirror. I did poses in front of my extremely indulgent wife. I went online, hoping to find reassurance, because I was getting more and more frightened as the date approached. And I did not find reassurance online. Instead, I found advice such as, "If you're a male model, whatever you do, for God's sakes, don't think of any sexual thoughts. And if you do think of any sexual thoughts, immediately start counting backwards from 100 while thinking about penguins." And so that didn't help me. And so, we showed up. I showed up on the day, at the appointed time, with my bag, with my robe and my slippers,
39:23 Speaker 06 and Kathy, the instructor, showed me to a room where I changed. And I came back out, and the students filed in, and I looked at them. And they were a varied lot, all ages, from 18 or 19 to people older than me. And Kathy gave some instruction. She said, "Tonight, we're gonna start with some gesture poses, some two-minute action-type poses." And then she looked straight at me and says, "Dave, whenever you're ready." "That's my cue." And so I stood up, shaking, my hands shaking violently. Took the robe off, kicked the slippers off, and assumed a pose reminiscent, I hope, of Discobulus, the discus thrower from ancient Greece.
40:08 Speaker 06 And as I stood there with my imaginary discus,
40:13 Speaker 06 every neuron in my brain screamed, "Grab the robe and run."
40:21 Speaker 06 But I managed to fight it off, and after about 30 seconds, the heart rate came down, and I started to feel great. And then I did another pose where I was throwing a ball, and I did another pose where I was catching something. I did another pose where I'm reaching for the ceiling, and then I had a break. And then I had a long pose, and then a pose where I get to lay down for a while. And at the end, Kathy said, "You were wonderful. Can you come back again?"
40:47 Speaker 06 And I did. And eight and a half years later, I'm still doing it. I still model once or twice a month at community colleges and local art centers. And so, I'm so glad that I overcame the fear because I love the feeling of meditation, of losing myself while staring at a wall while people are drawing me. And I love the fact that this face, this body, can produce beautiful art. Thank you.
41:26 Speaker 00 That was Dave Moran. Dave lives in Ann Arbor, where he's a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He co-directs the Michigan Innocence Clinic, which exonerates people who've been wrongfully convicted of crimes. He loves running, cross-country skiing, and yes, figure drawing on both sides of the easel. He always considered himself to be funny-looking. He says he has lots of freckles, and a large nose, and a gangly body. And he adds, "Modeling has been the most body-positive experience of his life. He feels much more comfortable in his own skin now." To see photos, PG photos, of some pencil sketches and art that Dave has inspired, go to themoth.org.
42:20 Speaker 00 Our last story in this hour is all about the quest for romantic love at any age. Elena Lerner told this at an open mic story slam in Phoenix, Arizona, where we partner with public radio station KJZZ. And a note to listeners, this story does have a mention of sex. Here's Elena, live at The Moth.
42:41 Speaker 04 Not long after my 53rd birthday, I decided that it was time to be in love again, and that the way to go about doing it was to internet date. Why not? I had been married, divorced a long time, I'd been in a couple of relationships that had fallen apart, and at the end of all of those things, all I felt was hurt, betrayed, disappointed. But still, I'm a pathological optimist. So I went on Match.com and eHarmony, and because I was 53, Silver Singles.
43:22 Speaker 04 None of those things were very successful for a while. I had a number of dates, I made lots of connections, but for the most part, none of them were thrilling at all. I had repeat dates, but nobody I wanted to spend more than 24 hours with. And then, I got this one connection. It didn't seem like it was going to work in the beginning, because he was in his mid-70s, and I was in my 50s.
44:03 Speaker 04 But, his profile, his profile was interesting to me, and when he wrote to me, he used a word I'd never heard before, and I had to look it up. And that doesn't happen with me often. So that was intriguing, and it made me laugh, and so I reached out to him.
44:26 Speaker 02 We connected a couple of times online, and then we decided it was time to meet, and so we did. We had already discovered with our chats online that we had a number of things in common. We were both Midwesterners. He had grown up in St. Louis. I'm originally from Chicago. We had both come to LA for jobs. He was an advertising creative director, and he had just retired after 40 years. For over 20 years, I'd been in TV sales, and so we had that in common. But when I saw him, all I could think was, "Fragile. He looks fragile."
45:08 Speaker 02 Now, what did I think a 70-year-old white guy was gonna look like? He was tall, much taller than I expected. He was thin. He was well-dressed, casually well-dressed. He wore aviator glasses. He had nice blue eyes. He smiled really nicely. He had a soft voice. But I kept thinking, "Fragile." We went on a couple of dates, and what we discovered when we began dating was that
45:53 Speaker 02 what we really had in common, besides coming from the same general geographic area, was that we were jazz lovers. And I mean, real jazz. Straight-ahead, serious jazz. And that bound us together. We would see each other two or three times a week. We'd meet for dinner. We would go to jazz events. And that went on for a few months. The holidays started to come, and I thought, "Oh, maybe I should go home to Chicago." My daughter was still living there. I would see my daughter. I would see family and friends. But I hate cold weather, and I hate snow. And 20 years in Southern California had not changed my mind about it.
46:34 Speaker 06 Got that at all. And in the end, I decided, okay, I'm just gonna stay in L.A. And when I told him that, he was really pleased. And we made plans about how to spend our holidays, our vacation together. But what that made me think about was, oh, if we're gonna spend all this time together, we better talk about sex. And I couldn't quite figure out how I was gonna handle that. Because I realized I liked him. I really liked being with him. And if he wanted something I didn't want, or I wanted something he didn't want, it could come to an end. And that would really be sad.
47:17 Speaker 06 So I went about this, the same way I go about most things, I just jumped in. We were sitting in my apartment, a few days before Thanksgiving, sitting on the sofa, playing Scrabble. And I sort of sidled up to the question. I said, so, as this relationship continues, have you thought about intimacy, and does that mean a sexual component? He had a glass in his hand, and he almost lost it, and he started to choke.
47:59 Speaker 06 And he coughed, and he said, uh, yeah. Are you okay with that? And his voice was like, a little boy's kind of voice. And I said, yeah, but I wanna make sure that oral sex is part of this, cuz if it's not, we got nothing to talk about. And he started to choke, and cough, and sputter, and I thought, oh my God, he's gonna die. We aren't even gonna get to sex. And he said, you are really something.
48:43 Speaker 06 That's all I can tell you.
48:46 Speaker 02 And he said, "Yeah, that's really okay." And he leaned over to me, he put his arm around me, and he kissed me with a slow, warm, soft kiss.
49:05 Speaker 02 And he wasn't fragile at all.
49:14 Speaker 00 That was Elena Larno. And that word that Don used that Elena had to look up, it was "calipigian," which means "having shapely buttocks." Elena and Don dated for a year and then got married. She said they traveled constantly to places neither of them had ever been so they could have the new adventure together. Sadly, Don passed away after seven years of their marriage. She said, "We were two adults who wanted to love each other, and we did." Elena recently moved to Phoenix to be near her daughter and create another new life for herself. She's now a docent with the Museum of Contemporary Art, and she loves to read to elementary students in after-school programs.
50:01 Speaker 00 And for any of you online dating and looking for new love, like I am, Elena says, "Come up with who you are and what you want so the right new person is attracted to you. Don't try to twist and turn and make yourself attractive to somebody else." You can share the stories from this hour or others from The Moth archive through our website, themoth.org. We hope these stories expand your understanding of others and even yourself, and that this year, you're open to the possibilities of what life will bring. And maybe you'll tell a story about the journey.
50:39 Speaker 00 Check out The Moth's schedule on our website and find out about our online slams and throw your name in the virtual hat. We want to hear your stories. For inspiration, we included some first lines from our open-mic story slams in our credits. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
51:09 Speaker 03 Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Jenness, who also directed the stories in the show, with additional coaching in the Moth education program by Julie and Goldhagen, Tim Lopez, and Deavion Walters. All right, guys, this is the way it'll work. You'll come up to the microphone, you'll say your name, and just the first line of your story. The rest of the Moth directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch. I'm Nicole, and a huge cardboard box that we dragged out of the corner of my mother's attic brought me here tonight. The Moth would like to thank the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art for their
51:52 Speaker 03 support of the Moth Community Program. Hi, I'm Stacy. So, I met this guy on the internet, and we were dating for like three weeks when he invited himself on my vacation. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Cronos Quartet with Fode Muzo Sussu, Swing Growers, Omid Shabani, Jerry Mulligan with Chet Baker, and Oscar Schuster. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
52:27 Speaker 02 Hi, I'm Oscar. I woke up in the middle of the night, 2:00 in the morning, when I thought I was having gas pains, and it turns out I was having a baby in the middle of the hurricane.
52:37 Speaker 03 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicky Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. I'm Paul. Marcy went out with me again and again, even though she was beautiful. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.
53:16 Speaker 02 Breeze Airways, your hometown carrier for non-stop flights from Richmond to Sarasota, Bradenton and more. Your getaway to Florida's west coast is closer than you think. Breeze makes it easy to snag a getaway with non-stop flights, flexible change policies, and a seriously nice onboard experience. Enjoy premium seating with Breeze Ascent, plus high-speed Wi-Fi and tasty snacks. Book today at flybreeze.com. Breeze Airways, seriously nice. In partnership with Visit Sarasota.
Previous The Moth Podcast: A Blue Bonus Next The Moth Podcast: Family Matters Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated