Popping Up: Tonja Murphy

The Moth

Arts, Performing Arts

4.6 • 25.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode, we take a look at one of the coolest projects the Moth has done - the traveling Pop Up Porch. And we hear a story that came out the Pop Up Porch.

We also interview Rita Brent - who hosted one of our events and shares her experiences.

If you’d like to experience some of the magic of the Pop Up Porch you should come visit us at the Pop Up Porch when it comes to your city. We’ll be in Ann Arbor from September 27th to October 1st, Detroit from October 4th to October 8th, and in Dallas from October 11th to October 15th.

For more information, visit to themoth.org

Also, The Moth's spinoff podcast Grown is up for a Signal award. If you haven't listened to Grown before, check it out, it's filled with stories all about growing up, and if you have listened, we'd love for you to vote for it for the Signal Awards. Just go to vote.signalaward.com and vote for Grown in the categories of Best Co-Host Team and Best Emerging Podcast.

Hosted by:

Aldi Kaza

Storyteller: Tonja Murphy’s students always tell her the truth, so she has to be careful about what outfits she wears.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Aldi Kaza, director of production at the Moth and your
0:07.3	host for this episode. About a year ago, the Moth launched something pretty special. It
0:12.7	was a project that was inspired by our beginnings, stories shared late into the night on a front
0:17.2	porch among friends. We custom built a tiny home with a small porch of its own and took it
0:22.5	on the road through six different cities. Tulsa, Dallas, Jackson, New Orleans, Birmingham,
0:28.1	and Atlanta. Over those many miles on the road, more than 5,000 people joined us to listen to
0:33.0	stories from our archive and work with our team on their own story ideas. From city to city,
0:38.0	the entire tour was a beautiful way to learn about each of these communities. We met school teachers
0:42.9	and students, civil servants and clergy, musicians and poets, even a guy with a pet rooster.
0:48.6	The pop-up porch is a testament to the power of storytelling as a way to bring people from
0:53.1	different walks of life together. It was a privilege to create a space where members of the
0:57.3	community felt comfortable and eager to share their stories with us, particularly for folks who
1:02.1	thought they didn't have a story we're sharing, but left with something to tell friends, neighbors
1:06.4	and family. I'm happy to share that we'll be back on the road this year as we travel to Ann Arbor,
1:11.2	Detroit and Dallas. I'll tell you more about that in a bit and I'll talk to someone who we met
1:15.7	along the way last year. But first, let's play a story that came out of our inaugural pop-up
1:20.2	porch journey. We met this storyteller in Jackson, Mississippi, where Tanya Murphy went on stage
1:25.2	at the Jackson Story Slam, which was held in partnership with Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
1:30.4	Here's Tanya Murphy. Live at the Moth.
1:37.6	So I work with kids, mostly middle school, mostly high school, and the one thing about them is they
1:47.9	will always tell you the truth. I always tell you the truth. So because I know they're going to
1:53.9	always tell me the truth, I make sure that I pick the right outfit that I'm going to wear around
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Moth, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Moth and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.