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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 old's. 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. Spanish, French, Ital, 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.
- [01:02]
Kate Tellers
The rest of your Life.
- [01:03]
Dan Kennedy
Redeem your 50% off@Rosetta Stone.com moth today.
- [01:08]
Unknown
The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist whether you're running, swimming or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generations. IPhone Xs are later required charge time and actual results will vary.
- [01:40]
Dan Kennedy
This is the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This is also the December holidays. People have all different opinions of those holidays. Some love the season and they go all out. Some want the holidays to be over as fast as possible and there are a million variations in between. Personally, I tend to veer wildly between the extremes. Some years it's all about getting to an airport, flying to the people we love, and letting them give us stuff that we will never use. And we give them stuff that they will never use. And it's joyous and tense and strange. Other years it's just a quiet day of gratitude at home, just enjoying the season and taking a moment to reflect. Love both of those in their own strange way. On today's episode, two stories of different strategies to navigate the holiday season. First up is Renata Sanken. She told us live at a Moth Story slam that we did in Louisville, Kentucky. Here's Renata live at the Moth.
- [02:47]
Renata Sanken
I'm going to start my story with A phrase that probably everyone here has said, I would think, which is, I love my family, but. Because if you could say it without a but, you wouldn't be here. You would be with your family because you love them. So I love my family, but we get along better if we have a little bit of space between us, especially, like, me and my mom. Like, I'm kind of an introvert. I need a lot of alone time to sort of process my life and stay sort of sane. And my mom is an extrovert, and she needs to tell all of her thoughts to everyone as they happen. And she won't use Twitter, which I feel like. I feel like that would be good for her. She won't. And also, she quit smoking in the 80s, but then she started up again sort of recently. But she still follows, like,'70s rules for smoking. So she'll talk to you and she'll smoke. Even if you're a baby, she'll just smoke at you. So it's hard to spend a lot of time with her for those reasons. So last year, I was a little bit nervous about going to see them for Christmas because my parents had both retired and bought an rv and they decided they were going to spend the winter in Texas, which seems sort of fine. That's warm, it's nice. But where they are staying, it's called Terlingua. You might have heard about it because there is a National Geographic documentary about it called the Badlands of Texas. It's a ghost town with a population of 58, 60 when my parents are there. And also, my brother had announced he was not going to be able to make it to Texas for Christmas because he had to work retail. And that's my only sibling. So it was like just me and my parents in an RV with 58 other people in Terlingua. But I do love my parents. So I went to Louisville airport on Christmas Eve, and I was gonna fly to El Paso, which is the nearest airport to Terlingua, even though it is five hours away. That is where it's just like, nowhere, this town. So I made. My first flight was fine. I went Louisville to Atlanta and then Atlanta. My next flight, Atlanta to El Paso, was overbooked. So they were looking for volunteers to take the next flight and get. They were offering a $500 flight voucher. And that's the sort of thing I normally am all over because I love to travel, but I also love not being broke. And I'm also always behind on podcasts. So for me, it's just like a Dream, like, just hang out at the airport, just listen to my podcast, get paid for it. I'll get there eventually. It's fine. But the catch in this case was that the next flight wasn't until the next day. So it wasn't. You'd have to stay the night in Atlanta and then fly out on Christmas morning, which was, to me, another perk. It was like one less day. It would be one less day in the rv. And that sounded good, but I knew, like, I knew that my parents would be really disappointed. And I knew they were. You know, I was looking forward to seeing them. But I knew more. They were very excited to see me. And so I did not volunteer. And no one volunteered. So they kept raising the price of the flight voucher to $600, $700. $1,000 of flight vouchers. And I realized, like, that was it. That was the price. That was the price I would put on my parents. Happiness was $1,000. But I pulled out my phone because I wanted to call them before I volunteered, just to make sure they would still be able to come pick me up at the airport the next day. I knew they would be sad, but I wanted to make sure it was possible. But as I pulled out my phone, before I could call them, I was paged and they called me to the count. And because no one had still volunteered, they had chosen. They had chosen me to be bumped. So I was like, oh, I still get the flight voucher, right? And they were like, yes. And hotel and meal vouchers for lunch and dinner and breakfast. And they're like, we're so sorry about the inconvenience. And I was like, this is amazing because. Cause I got all of that stuff. And I could in good conscience tell my parents, like, well, I didn't. It just. They bumped me, which is true. I mean, they're not here, but it's true. Don't tell them otherwise. So that night, I was in my hotel room in Atlanta by myself, eating pizza that the airline had paid for, watching a too cute marathon on Animal Planet. And I loved it. But it was still really nice to see my parents at the airport in El Paso the next day. Thank you.
- [08:24]
Dan Kennedy
That was Renata Sanken. Renata is a librarian who lives outside of Boston, and she's also the co host of a podcast called the Worst Bestsellers, which is all about books, as you may have guessed. This year, Renata is taking a direct flight to spend the holidays with her family. And she'll pretty much be hoping the whole time that her parents don't listen to this episode of the Moth podcast. She also wanted us to tell you that she really does love her family very much. Our next story was just told a few nights ago at a Moth main stage here in New York City. Kate Tellers hosted the show at Cooper Union, and she opened the second half with this little gem. Here's Kate Teller's live at the Moth.
- [09:13]
Kate Tellers
A few years ago, I met this kind of quiet dude with curly hair in the bar in the basement of the building that I lived in in the West Village. And he was very sweet. He offered to cook me carbonara. But I had recently, the year before, broken up with a guy who everyone thought I was going to marry. He and I shared an apartment, we bought furniture together. And when he and I broke up, it's like the earth fell out from underneath me. And I didn't know who I was or where I was. I was a mess. I would sit on my roof in that apartment building in the West Village and drink wine and talk to my Chihuahua. It was a very, very dark time. But I really liked this curly haired dude. So I thought, you know, I'm going to do it, I'm going to hang out with him, but I'm just going to, like, go full throttle and let him know what he's up against. There's going to be no, like, sort of medium period here. So on our second date, I took him to a show. I surprised him at the show with my dear uncle, and I was like, okay, so here's my family. And then I took the two of them to a dance party in the basement of the Chelsea Hotel, where 15 of my friends were there very drunk and just sort of gyrating against him. And then we went to the half king on 10th, and he and my uncle and I ate a pounded wine and ate like mozzarella sticks and calamari, like so much fried food, until we fell into a cab and I fell asleep on him. That was date two. It was super fun. And he thought it was apparently fun because we kept hanging out and we had fun. We had fun and it was great and it was all going really well. And then Christmas came. And Christmas is my holiday. I am very passionate about Christmas. So I knew that if this guy and I were gonna work out, he was gonna have to get on board with Christmas. But he was raised Jewish, and he's not Jewish. He's not even Jewish. But he has no. He has no Christmas tradition. So I had to start him from the ground up. And I come about my Christmas obsession honestly. I come from a massive Catholic exuberant family. My mother's one of six, my father's one of seven. They were high school sweethearts that grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania. To this day, if you go to a Catholic church in Erie, Pennsylvania and open the door, the faces that will turn and look at you will be all of my cousins. It's that kind of thing. Okay? We're very, very serious about Catholicism. They're serious about Catholicism. I just took the Christmas part of it. So as we're driving from New York City to Erie, I'm briefing him on this and I'm like, okay, listen. So all of my brothers are named after apostles. You should google them, just so you know the names you're gonna be throwing out. But we also have some repeat names. There's Big Mike and there's Little Mike, there's Aunt Mary, there's other Aunt Mary and there's baby Mary, she's 25. Also, everyone married a woman named Pat. So we just number them one, two and so on. It's hard to keep track. You gotta keep up. There's a lot of caroling that happens. All caroling happens while screaming at the piano that has a banner over it that says sing we joyous altogether except for one song. Silent Night is sung to a creepily accurate, about quarter life size manger scene where someone in the room will put Jesus in the manger in the third verse. Sing quietly but with heart. We carol on Christmas Eve. We carol on Christmas day. In between Christmas morning, we wake up at 0800 hours, we exchange gifts and then we get to Aunt Barb's early because she makes a Velveeta Strata that is the food of the St. The saddest day of the year is December 26th because we're 364 days away from the Strata. So I need you to stay on track. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Anyway, Christmas Eve, we show up to my aunt area's Mary's one of my Aunt Mary's rec areas and everybody starts to hand out these carol books. These carol books were made by my cousin Carolyn when she was 12 years old. They have Snoopy stickers all over them and we hold them like they are hallowed text, like they've been coming out for decades now. And we each have like Snoopy and Woodstock and we turn them and they're all of these, you know, the lyrics to all of the holiday songs that we're gonna scream at the piano together. And he turns to me, he's never caroled before. And he was like, kate, these lyrics are really dark. And I was like, what? And he's like, to save us all from Satan's power. Like Herod the king in his raging, all children to slay. And I was like, well, it was nice knowing you. So we start singing and we're singing carols and he's like trying to follow along and of course no one can hear him because we're all just screaming the lyrics at this, at this, at this banner. And we get to, we get to we three kings. And I'm like singing like belting out, like sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in a stone cold too. I was like, he is not wrong. He's definitely not wrong. Those songs are dark. But counterpoint, they are also awesome. So he makes it through, he sings, he chugs along. Not a singer, not a Christian, not any of these things. Except for the person calling himself my boyfriend at the time. And we leave and he said, kate, as we're coming home from Christmas, he says, do you realize in the course of 48 hours I met as many new people? And I was like, oh yeah, that's because other cousin Chris couldn't come. Anyway, he comes back the next Christmas and the next Christmas and the next Christmas. And last week we're in our dining room with our two little kids and it's quiet. We're about to sit down for dinner and he says, oh wait, hold on. And he goes over to our stereo, which because we live in Brooklyn, is an iPad attached to the WNYC's app, attached to a Bluetooth speaker. And he turns on my current obsession, which is WNYC's 24 hour holiday station. I don't know if you guys are listening, but it is amazing. And he comes and he sits back at dinner and we have planted our two, four, and now eight feet together. And he accepts me. Christmas and all.
- [15:30]
Dan Kennedy
That was Kate Tellers. Kate is a storyteller, writer and a host on staff at the Moth. She's also the co host of a podcast called I'm Still Here, which is all about making art after having kids that premieres in January. So this year, Kate is the one hosting the holiday celebration here in NYC for her whole family. Her husband Jason just carried a giant tree home in the pouring rain. They're attempting to be exactly the same. They want to recreate the iconic ornaments, the decorations, Aunt Barb's strata, all the caroling, the whole nine yards. Kate's father is now singing with Pittsburgh's Bach Choir, and he's already sent a list of the carols that they'll be singing, and he has assigned soprano, alto, and tenor and bass assignments to all of them. There's sheet music. He has already cast the quartet who will be singing. Kate says that she's thankful as his firstborn, she made the cut to sing. That's it for this week on the Moth Podcast. We hope you've had a story worthy week and from all of us here at the Moth, Happy New Year.
- [16:39]
Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock on and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller.
- [16:46]
With the Moth Podcast production by Emily Couch, Ivan Kureyev, Vicki Merrick, and Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.
- [17:00]
Renata Sanken
Org.