Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm your host this week, Michelle Jalasky. It's hard to remember a time before Netflix and Hulu and on-demand TV.

Even though I grew up without all those things, I'm one of those millennials on the cusp who had a pretty analog childhood.

It's been a long time since I watched TV on an actual TV.

In this episode we have two stories about old-fashioned television magic.

Our first story is a blast from the past and put me right back to childhood, on the couch in front of the TV.

Jessica Lee Williams and told this story at an LA Storieslam where the theme of the night was respect.

Here's Jessica, live at the Moth.

I think that's good.

When I was 18, my little sister for my birthday, she gave me this journal that she had written in the front cover.

It said, to Jessica, if you don't make it as a talk show host, maybe you'll make it as a writer instead.

Happy birthday.

When I was 18, the only thing I wanted to do with my life, I was obsessed with the idea of being a talk show host.

I would just come home from school and just sit on the sofa and go through Rosie O'Donnell,

called Morning Povitch, Heraldo, just down the line. It wasn't my personality that squashed those dreams.

It was Heraldo Rivera and his live studio audience.

I lived in Maryland, which was three hours away from New York City, and they would always show on the talk show they'd say,

if you want free tickets to send away, so I had to send away to all of them, including Heraldo,

and I got four tickets, and I invited the people who I thought were the coolest people I knew,

and we had this plan to go up to New York City and go see the show live, and then everyone bailed on me.

I was devastated, and so my mom was like, I'll drive you up there and go see Heraldo with you,

which was horrifying.

Then when we got there, this producer came out and said, who wants to take part in today's show?

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