This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Chloe Salmon.

My very first job at The Moth was as an assistant producer on the StorySlam team.

Slams are our open mic storytelling competitions.

They happen monthly in 28 cities in the U.S. and beyond.

At each event, 10 storytellers are randomly selected to take the stage and tell a five-minute story on the night's theme.

For a few years, I was in charge of choosing the slam themes for each season, along with my colleague Jody Powell.

Twice a year, we'd hole up in a meeting room and come up with ideas for the next six months' worth of events.

Slam themes are a delicate balance. You want them to be general enough to spark a wide worth of events. Slam themes are a delicate balance.

You want them to be general enough to spark a wide range of stories, but specific enough

to encourage a point of view.

Fun enough to inspire creativity, but rooted enough to offer depth.

There were other considerations as well.

For example, a question we found ourselves asking every time,

how likely is it that people are going to interpret this solely as a sex thing?

Sigh, bye-bye, ecstasy.

Each time, we'd come up with themes that felt fruitful.

Scandal.

Aftermath. Dinner. But we'd also try to throw in a curfews that felt fruitful, scandal, aftermath, dinner.

But we'd also try to throw in a curveball or two,

ones that we were excited to see how the storytellers would interpret.

Uniforms. Dirt. Doors.

Those were my favorites, the ones that we flung out into the Moth universe and sat waiting,

...