This autumn, fall for moth stories as we travel across the globe for our main stages.

We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows from New York City to Iowa City,

London, Nairobi, and so many more. The moth will be performing in a city near you,

featuring a curation of true stories. The moth mainstaged shows feature five tellers,

who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories. The Moth Mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful,

unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told

reveals something new about our shared connection. To buy your tickets or find out more about

our calendar, visit the moth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon.

Welcome to the Moth podcast. I'm Suzanne Rust, your host for this episode. They say to never

meet your idols, but I'm not so sure. I mean, if you don't meet your idols, you might miss out

on learning from the people you admire most. While working at the Moth, I've had the opportunity to meet

some really cool people, humanitarian, astronauts, actors, authors, and have all been gracious and kind,

exactly the type of people I was hoping they'd be. Folks like Elizabeth Gilbert, Mike Berbiglia,

Andre DeShilles, were all warm and friendly and met my expectations.

On this episode of The Moth, we've got two stories about what happens when you actually meet your idol

and all the messy emotions it brings up.

The first up is Harriet Jernigan, who told this at one of our open mic story slams in San Francisco.

Here's Harriet live live at the mall.

It was 1994, and I was in charge of the poetry section at the Midnight Special,

this bookstore in Santa Monica that was known not only for its left as politics, but also

for its celebrity clientele, everything

from Chevy Chase to Octavia Butler, to Frank Zappa. And I got to meet a lot of celebrities,

...