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- [00:00]
Dan Kennedy
As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year olds. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years with millions of users and 25 languages offered. Spok, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean. I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off, visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@RosettaStone.com moth today. Are you feeling overwhelmed with all the supplements out there? We get it. There is a lot of misinformation and fake claims. That's why Groons took the time to understand proper dosing to ensure nutrition is optimized and safe. Convenient, comprehensive formula. Are you currently taking multiple vitamin supplements a day? This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy or a prebiotic. It's all of those things and then some at a fraction of the price. And bonus, it tastes great. The holiday season into the new year can be overwhelming. It can feel impossible to stick to a routine. But Groons can help you by meeting your nutritional needs. And vitamins are portable eight gummies in each daily snack pack. Because you can't fit the amount of nutrients we do into just one Gummy plus it makes a fun treat. Grunz is more comprehensive and accurately dosed than your current nutrition solution. Check the label. Vitamins are 100% and minerals at about 25%. The safe and effective amount grooms ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. You wanted a supplement you could enjoy. This isn't a chore, it's something you look forward to. Get up to 45% off.
- [02:17]
Christopher Hitchens
Use the code Moth welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This podcast is supported by makers46 handcrafted bourbon. Big, complex and enjoyable. More online@makers46.com makers46 bourbon whiskey 47% alcohol by volume distilled in Loretto, Kentucky, reminds listeners to drink responsibly. This podcast is brought to you by shutterstock.com a global image marketplace on the web. With over 20 million professionally curated stock photos, illustrations, vectors and video clips, Shutterstock makes it easy to find the right image or video clip for your creative projects. In fact, Shutterstock adds 10,000 images and clips every day. So every time you visit, you can find something new. And Shutterstock enables you to download any image in any size and pay only one price for 30% off your new account. Go to shutterstock.com and use the offer code the MOTH2 the story you're about to hear by Christopher Hitchens was told live in New York way back in 1999. This recording, however, sounds like we recorded it in 1899 because we at that time hadn't purchased the recording equipment that we have today. So the quality not great, but we think the story is. The theme of the night was mentor to tormentor, progenitor. Here's Christopher.
- [03:50]
Believe me, I hope you've all got drinks and cigarettes and lots of food because it takes a lot more than a fucking saxophone to stop me when I've got drinks. Now, various people mentioned, well, it should be an actual story, something that really happened to you. I say, okay, I'll tell you quickly. No, I won't at that. I'll tell you elaborately how it once happened to me that I was both, because this is my quarrel with Brodsky, among others, about religion, how it once came to me that I was deified and how it once happened to me that I killed somebody. And I'd ask you to settle down and take that look off your face and stop smirking. Why I do so because this is all true. You may, if you've ever looked at the map, have noticed there's an almost beautifully perfect teardrop shaped island off the south coast of India. It used to be called Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka. It has the shape beautifully of a tier. Most countries don't look good in profile, as you know. The United States looks like a buffalo hide with which somebody has wiped their ass. The United Kingdom looks like a penis that's had suffered the most appalling diseases and depredations. France looks like I don't know what the hell it looks like. Actually, Ceylon is a beautiful teardrop shaped island and on this island there's been a terrible civil strife for several years and I went with a group of Tamil people all the way across the island on a famine relief mission where I noticed that before we even set out, they. They stopped at a temple and smashed some coconuts and made various propitiations and offerings at a temple, an elephant temple, a Ganesh temple, just to bless our journey, short one. But the fear was that there wouldn't be a safe one and we were crossing. I now realize they were perhaps too kind to tell me or too prudent or too cynical. I never know now which was territory that was very hostile to them. Anyway, that may be why they drove the car at great speed. I sat in the front. The Tamil driver sat behind the wheel. I'll never forget, as long as I live, the moment when, barreling through a village in the middle of Sri Lanka, very near the great Buddha temple at Polonarua, where the most titanic and beautiful ruins still are. In the dark dawn, barreling through this village, an old fool ran out right in front of us, in front of the road, and the car began to screech. But I already knew far too late, the bonnet, the hood hit him. Up into the air he went, fell with a terrible thud right on the hood, right up on the windscreen. I could see his face looking at mine through the glass as if what, watching someone drowning in an aquarium up onto the roof with another terrible thud. And then as the car stopped, skidding down onto the tarmac and dust in front of us and then the wheels went over him again and I thought, I think we've killed him. And everybody stopped dead, if you'll pardon, you should pardon the expression. We had no choice. And. And from everywhere came villagers who I instantly realized did not welcome the presence of the Tamil minority in their village under any circumstances, let alone this one. Also there came Ceylonese, Sri Lankan police and militiamen fingering their weapons. I had to think quite quickly as I looked at my because if you go to Northern Ireland, if you live there long enough, you can tell who's Catholic, who's Protestant. You can just tell. The Catholics are a bit shorter, a little swarthier, call me old fashioned, if you will, the same. Roughly. Roughly. You don't have to stay in Sri Lanka very long to realize that they don't just not look the same to outsiders, they don't look the same to each other. The faces were suffused with the most terrified panic if I was not there, the fat Englishman with his stupid. I was wearing a white suit of kind of ridiculous Graham Green ice cream concession cut. They were going to be lynched. So I put on my crammed on my straw hat and stood up, towering over the locals and said, well, can I help you, officer? And they backed off a little bit and by showing a press card that said Scotland Yard on it. I worked in London in, in those days, I persuaded them I was a policeman and that they couldn't lynch these people right then and right there. So when we got through the moment which was, I still think the nearest I've got to being humiliatingly killed myself to seeing others humiliatingly killed and to. And certainly is the nearest I've got to having someone killed by a car that I was in. We drove on slowly and carefully and they made camp towards the evening and lit a fire. We were nearly at the other side of the island where they were again in Tamil territory. And they said, do you know what we were doing when we broke those coconuts at the beginning of the journey and we offered their sacrifices? And I said, no, it didn't occur to me to ask. They said, well, we all believe in Sai Baba. Anyone here ever been a Sai Baba fan? Remember Sai Baba? He was the man who could produce magic ash on video and who claimed to raise people from the dead in South India. He was a big deal in the cult world. In the cult religious world, in the inane Western imitation of pseudo eastern religion that still goes on was a big thing. Then said, but we, we now realize that you are Sai Baba. This was a bit of a face up. I mean, they hadn't even cooked my dinner yet or brought me my things. But they said, no, from now on we're going to carry you everywhere and we're going to bring you your things. Did you. Was it Johnnie Walker Black? Yes, I said. I mean, so that I said, okay, all right. Was it Rothman's Blue? Certainly it was Rothman's Blue. But you don't have to carry me everywhere. I mean, you know, we chaps feel we've got over all that. No, no, we insist. You are divine. It was only your. It was. Well, I've been told that before, though you might not think it'd look at me. It was only your intercession, your personal intercession that saved us from being lynched. You are to us the God and you have saved our lives. Now, I'm not one to repudiate a compliment, and certainly not when rammed home, if you'll pardon the expression, with a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and a sleeve of Rothman's Blue. But what I said was, what about, shouldn't we check on the road back when we get back to that village? Because the last we saw that guy was being dragged out of the road and put on a stretcher by the police. And one reason we were let go was he wasn't dead yet. Shouldn't we check to see if God saved his life? I wonder what happened. In the words of the old Noel card song, I wonder what happened to him. And there isn't another road. So we had to take the other road back. And we did go back through that stricken village where we were probably the only excitement that had been in that part of mid Sri Lanka for some time. And we did make a courtesy stop. And since they were under my protection and since I was divine, it was okay to call at the police station and at the hospital. And we found that the man that we'd run over and hit and who I'd seen, I'll never forget his face even now, writhing, squirming, panicked through the windscreen of that car, then down under the wheels, having bonked on the roof of the car, who did turn out to have been the town drunk for which I even now were willing to raise a glass that he was as dead as. As Dickens says about Mali, dead as nail indoor. And I thought, well, why doesn't a man who can produce magic ash from his palm and proclaim that he can raise people from the dead and intercede in human affairs as a divine one? Why didn't Mr. Sai Baba save him and not us? So these were both my mentors and protectors and my tormentors. In very good company, I must say. They all were. But they taught me what I already knew, which is that all stories about eternal life, all stories about divinity, all stories about divine intervention are entirely false. And that was a lesson absolutely worth learning. And with or without the Johnny Walker or the Rothman Blues, I feel I can still drive it home. Thank you.
- [12:58]
Christopher Hitchens was an author and journalist. He was a columnist and literary critic at Vanity Fair, Slate, the Atlantic, the Nation, Free Inquiry, and many other media outlets. He was named one of the world's top 100 public intellectuals by foreign policy and Britain's prospect. In 2011, he lost his battle with cancer. This episode is brought to you by shutterstock.com with over 20 million high quality stock photos, illustrations, vectors and video clips, Shutterstock helps you take your creative projects to the next level. For 30% off your new account, go to shutterstock.com and use the offer code themoth2 and some tour. The Moth main Stage is returning to the Boston area with a show at the Somerville theater on Thursday, April 11 and that is presented by WBUR. Tickets go on sale to WBUR members on February 26 and the general public on February 27. For ticketing information, visit WBUR.org Dan Kennedy.
- [14:08]
Dan Kennedy
Is a writer and performer living in New York. Follow him on Twitter at Dan Kennedy.
- [14:15]
Christopher Hitchens
Thanks to all of you for listening and we hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org.