Moth stories have the power to bring you into a world that is often not your own and leave you wishing that you could live in that world

Just a little bit longer since 1997 the moth has shared more than 50,000 stories with audiences around the world through shows

Workshops and on the moth podcast and the moth radio hour once the curtains have closed the rooms emptied and the voice is quieted

It's the stories still ringing in our ears that whisper over and over we are all of us more alike than we are different

Help us write the next 25 years of the moth story by making your year-end gift today

Text moth22 no spaces to 41444 to make your gift and help provide the space

Tools and resources needed for more people to embrace the art and craft of personal storytelling in their own lives. Thank you

Welcome to the moth podcast. I'm Sarah Austin, Janess. You're host for this week

Many things are happening in the world right now and we're here today to remember joy and to muster up a little hope

In every moth main stage we direct we try our best to include a few local storytellers years ago

I heard this great open-mic slam story from a woman named T. Dixon who was living in Los Angeles

She was an army veteran a trauma surgeon a volunteer a dog lover a writer basically a modern-day

Shira a woman who did it all so I called her and I asked her to be our local storyteller in an LA

Mainstage called state of affairs

She agreed and we called each other a few times a week leading up to the show to develop her story

The night before the moth main stage after the rehearsal we had dinner with the whole cast

T and I sat next to each other and she told me stories the whole night other stories than the one she had been working on

She was like a jukebox of stories. She had lived through it all saved lives in combat saved lives and hospitals all over the world

And she still laughed with every anecdote she told

T didn't drink and the night before that show I heard stories of her nights on the military base with all the male marines

Where she sneakily poured the shots out over her shoulders instead of drinking them stories from her family in the South

Stories of her trusty pickup truck and how she adopted her dog T was basically a dream

...