Welcome to the Moth Podcast, I'm Leon Gully, your host for this episode and director

of development at the Moth.

As a fundraiser, I think a lot about the concept of giving back, above what we can and should

do as members of a community, how we can make sure that the things we value continue to

have a place in the world, whether that's through volunteering, showing kindness to the

people around us, or supporting the organizations we care about.

Today, we're going to share two stories that examine this idea and look at what we get

when we give back.

And we'll tell you a little bit about how you can help support them off in its mission

to create community and build empathy around the world.

First up, we have Jim Beebe Woodard.

He told the story at a Burlington Vermont story slam, where the theme of the night was

love hurts.

Here's Jim, live at the Moth.

So as an adult here, I would characterize myself as a devout atheist.

But as a kid, I did grow up going to church.

And we went to a really nice church, actually, it wasn't super dogmatic and it was really

invested in families and doing good in the community and kind of all the things church

should do.

And one of the ways that our church did that was there was always some sort of food drive

going on, canned food drive kind of thing.

And very often we would have a Sunday where all the kids in the congregation would have

...