Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. You all know The Moth, the long-running storytelling organization, based right here in New York. Of course, The Moth Radio Hour, which airs on WNYC Wednesday and Sunday nights. Well, next month, on March 14th at NYU Skirball Center, WNYC and The Moth are cooking up a special collaborative event titled Only in New York in honor of WNYC Centennial. The Moth will present a special main stage featuring five storytellers, one from each of the five boroughs.

Yours truly will be hosting and there'll be some music involved, too. In a moment, we'll hear more from my next guest, Moth executive producer, Sarah Austin Jenness. Hi, Sarah, by the way.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Hi.

Alison Stewart: But first, listener, today, we are coming to you with a very special opportunity and to ask for your help. We couldn't do an event like this without help from our WNYC listeners. The Moth is still selected stories for this event, so call in for a chance to tell your story on The Moth. Pitch us a one-minute version of an Only in New York story, whatever that means to you. We especially would like to hear from the people who help keep the city running. That's bus drivers, ferry operators, people who run the electric grids, plane crews at the airport, subway mechanics, conductors, sanitation workers.

If you're one of those people or someone else who makes up a piece of this engine that keeps this city going, and if you have a story, call in, make sure you keep it concise. Give us an elevator pitch. No promises here, but give it a shot. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Now, maybe your job doesn't quite fit into one of those categories, but you still got a great Only in New York story. A story that takes place in Carnegie Hall or on the Staten Island Ferry or the Brooklyn Bridge. Call in and tell us.

It might be a love story, a story of kindness you witnessed, or something weird. You can give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Make sure that it is the short version. Sarah, did I miss anything in that.

Sarah Austin Jenness: No, you got it.

Alison Stewart: All right. While they get the people lined up and for us to listen to their stories, we'll talk about this event we're going to do on March, what's going to happen.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Yes. Well, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. We're just going to present some incredible true stories from New Yorkers from New York, one from each of the five boroughs, as you said. Thank you for hosting this very special event. We're so happy to-

Alison Stewart: Oh, thanks.

Sarah Austin Jenness: -celebrate WNYC Centennial.

Alison Stewart: What's the difference between The Moth main stage?

Sarah Austin Jenness: The main stage, the stories are about 10 minutes long. It just gives you a chance to get into something a little deeper. We want to know you. We want to get to know you through your story. It gives us a chance to hear not just the plot, but a little bit more of the emotional journey.

Alison Stewart: Where do stories usually come from? Not the ones that you hear on the air. We're going to hear on the air, but where they usually come from.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Stories happen when there's a pattern that is broken. You could think of your Only in New York stories of what do you do in New York all the time? Then what was one day when something was different, was surprising, really, really shocked you in a good way, perhaps?

Alison Stewart: Let's take a step back and talk about The Moth's history. It's been around since 1997, correct?

Sarah Austin Jenness: Correct, yes.

Alison Stewart: How did it start?

Sarah Austin Jenness: Well, a gentleman named George Green grew up on St. Simons Island, and he would gather with his friends on Wanda's porch, and they would tell true personal stories into the night. The porch was screened, but it had holes in it, and so there are moths that would come through and circle around the light, and they started to call themselves The Moths because they would circle with each other and tell these true stories and get closer because they were sharing not necessarily what they did well, but the tough decisions they had to make, the time when maybe they weren't proud of their decisions, but they got close.

Then he came up to New York and missed those nights on the porch and invited two people to his apartment to share true personal stories, and that was that.

Alison Stewart: A lot of people experience them all through the radio. They obviously can't go to the events. Tell us how the radio captures the vibe of the live event.

Sarah Austin Jenness: We have 600 live events a year all over the world, and we record everything.

Alison Stewart: Oh, okay. Got you.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Every single show. Then the creative team at The Moth listens to everything. We choose the stories that are fresh, that are surprising, that after almost 28 years, we're looking for stories that are speaking to our time now, and in a lot of ways, to current events. We want stories that challenge dominant narratives and that keep people challenging their own beliefs. We pick the very best stories that we hear all around the world and put them in The Moth Radio Hour and The Moth Podcast.

Alison Stewart: I'm curious, do you believe that stories have a beginning, middle, and end?

Sarah Austin Jenness: I do, but I don't think they have to be in that order. Yes, you could start with the middle, go to the beginning, end up at the end, or a different combination of such. Also, some of the stories that have resonated with me the most, I've been with The Moth for almost 20 years now, and they're the stories that don't quite have an ending that's wrapped up in a bow. Those don't feel so real to me. Sometimes if you start in black or white and you end in gray, it's even more captivating and real.

Alison Stewart: You want to hear some stories?

Sarah Austin Jenness: Yes.

Alison Stewart: All right, we're going to start with Joanna. All right, Joanna, I'm going to set the clock. Go for it. You're on the air.

Joanna: Okay. Well, I don't know if this story fits into all of the setup that you've just given, but this happened one night. I was walking near Astor Place with my boyfriend at the time, it's about 20 years ago, and I slipped and fell on a banana peel. It was very crowded. It was a Friday night. As I'm trying to get up this out of the crowd, this woman appears, hands me a Winnie the Pooh band aid, and then before I could thank her, just disappears in the crowd. To me, it feels like something that's always been my Only in New York story that could only happen here.

Alison Stewart: Joanna, thanks for the call. Let's talk to Olivia. Hi, Olivia. Your clock's going to start when you start talking. Go for it.

Olivia: My Only in New York story, I was 15 years old in Manhattan with family on our way to the Met. We had just left the luncheonette, leaving lunch out on the sidewalk, cloudy day. Thought I felt a raindrop land on my eyelid. Very squishy raindrop. I reach my finger up and look with my other eye to realize that it was not rain. It was pigeon poop dripping down my eyelid into my eye, so only in New York will a pigeon poop in your eye.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling. Let's talk to Katherine. Hi, Katherine, you're on the air.

Katherine: Hi, Alison. My story is it was my birthday and I went to a Broadway show with my husband and my 13-year-old son. I always wanted to ride in a pedicab. I had never done that. We got a price quote from one guy and he said about $50 to ride from 42nd Street to Penn Station. When we came out, we ended up in a different cab, and we didn't know that they're not regulated in pricing. We went from 42nd Street to 34th Street, Penn Station. It was a fun ride. We get out, and the guy wanted to charge $150. We didn't have that much cash on us.

He started yelling at us, all muscle, no motor, and we panicked and he said, go to the ATM. We went to the ATM and it wasn't working, and then we didn't know what to do, so we ran down onto our train. He followed us onto the train heading to Long Island, and he went to push my husband. I'm an introvert, but I turned around and I screamed at him and scared him away. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: She made it in just a minute, by the way.

Sarah Austin Jenness: That was good.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Gwen. Hey, Gwen.

Gwen: Hey. How are you doing?

Alison Stewart: Doing okay. What's your story?

Gwen: My story is that the early '90s on the L Train, which Alison, you remember was a crappy, crappy subway. We didn't have any smartphones, so it was just us and our fellow New Yorkers. We were on a packed L train, pulled into First Avenue, heading towards Brooklyn. No Williamsburg histories at that time. It was just a bunch of Polish immigrants, Latinos, Blacks, a lot of Hasidim, and these kids get on the train, a group of kids with a boombox. Literally, everybody on the train, you tell them to go, "Oh, man," because we're about to get into the tunnel that goes to Brooklyn. It's a long tunnel.

The doors close, turn the boombox on, and what comes out, but bom, bom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All of a sudden, everyone starts smiling and looking at each other. By the time we got to Brooklyn, almost everyone on that train was singing the chorus.

Alison Stewart: Love it. Thank you so much for calling. I'm speaking with Sarah Austin Jenness, executive producer of The Moth. We are previewing The Moth and WNYC present Only in New York. It's going to be on March 14th at the Skirball Center. You can audition to be a storyteller by calling in right now. Tell us your best Only in New York story, something that could only happen in this city. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. I want to hear your story. Before you came to The Moth, where were you?

Sarah Austin Jenness: Where was I? Well, I've been with The Moth for half my life. I was freelancing in film and TV. One night, I had to fill a theater on the Upper West Side. I just invited everyone that I had met in film and TV so far, freelancing. One guy afterwards said, "What are you doing after this?" I said, "Well, I'm looking for a home." I feel like it was the first time I was just very vulnerable and honest. I said, "I'm looking for a home. I want to work somewhere that I really care about and plant seeds and see them grow."

He said, "Well, have you ever heard of The Moth?" I said, "A couple months ago, I handed out programs at The Players Club." Then I felt like it was this weird kismet moment, swim downstream. He said, "Well, I know the people there and they're hiring, actually." Then I thought, "My God, this is--" Yes, the stars aligned, but it was a long time ago.

Alison Stewart: What have you learned in your nearly 20 years at The Moth?

Sarah Austin Jenness: That people are more alike than different. That we have so many stories. We're not just a single story. There are just so many that live inside of us. I feel so proud of the whole team at The Moth, and all the listeners, the volunteers, and the storytellers over the years. There have been more than 60,000 stories told on stage, and it's growing. I feel like we're doing our part to help people love their fellow person and be really open to their neighbors. Maybe they're sharing stories on buses and waiting online.

You don't have to necessarily share it at The Moth in order for The Moth to fulfill its mission of bringing people together through their stories.

Alison Stewart: We'll hear more stories after the break. This is All Of It. You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Sarah Austin Jenness, executive producer of The Moth. We are presenting The Moth and WNYC present Only in New York on March 14th, 7:30 PM at NYU Skirball Center. You could be a part of it. Before we get to our next series of storytellers, what are you looking for in a good Moth story?

Sarah Austin Jenness: We want not just the plot, but we want to know how you were feeling throughout. We want to know what you were thinking. What's your inner dialogue? How are you a little different at the end than you were in the beginning? We all experience the world in myriad ways, and so we want to be a little bird on your shoulder and go on the journey with you.

Alison Stewart: Let's take some more calls. Let's talk to Bill in Greenwich Village. Hi, Bill. You've got about a minute. Go for it.

Bill: Okay. Hi, Alison. My father came to New York from a very small town on the Russia-Poland border many years ago. He lived in The Bronx and worked in Manhattan and would take the bus to work. From the accent of the bus driver, my father recognized that he was a landsman, a fellow countryman. It turned out this was the driver's first day on the job, and he was very nervous. My father offered to drive, and they switched places and he drove to Manhattan, teaching his new friend the route. When they got to Manhattan, they switched places again. This was my father's first time ever driving a bus.

Alison Stewart: That's a great story, Bill.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Wow.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for sharing that. Let's talk to Jill from Westport, Connecticut. Hi, Jill. Thanks so much for calling.

Jill: Hi. My story took place in the summer of 1997. I was 27 years old, and I was hanging out at the Orchard bar, down on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. It was not a trendy area at the time. It was about midnight. This strapping guy comes walking through the door, and I think, "Oh my gosh." He sits down with a group of friends across from me. He's kind of looking at me, I think. I'm looking at him. Then he gets up and he starts walking in the direction of the exit.

I had this panic moment thinking, this is New York City. He's going to walk out that door. I'll never see him again, and I just had this compulsion to meet him. I walked up and introduced myself, something I've never done before. He was actually heading to the bar to get a drink, to get up the guts to talk to me. We ended up talking till 4:00 AM closing down the bar, and then we went and got a cab and asked him to take us to Save the Robots, a club neither of us had been to, but we didn't want the night to end.

Turned out to be closed, and the taxi driver turned off his meter, and drove us around the city trying to find us a club that was open because he thought we were so cute. His name was Mahfouz, and we have his phone number, and we still regret that we didn't invite him to the wedding.

Alison Stewart: Ah, just made it. Finally, let's hear from Bob. Hi, Bob.

Bob: Hi. Must be about 25 years ago, I was catching the number one train at the intersection of Broadway and 79th Street. I got down on the platform. For some reason, there was about a dozen bagels scattered down on the tracks. No apparent reason. As I moved along the platform, I realized there was a little cluster of people. As I passed, they were having a very polite argument over whether they were Zabar's bagels or H&H bagels.

Alison Stewart and Sarah Austin Jenness: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: That's a good one. That's really funny. We have good storytellers. Once you choose your five storytellers for this event, do you work with them? Do you help them develop their stories?

Sarah Austin Jenness: Yes, The Moth directors will help you tell your story. We work quite extensively with people for the main stage, and we help to pull out all the ingredients and put them back together and really find the one arc for the 10-minute story. Some of these stories are hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny. Some of them are really somber. Some of them just make you think. What I love about these shows is that everyone comes away with their own favorite. The first one will be someone's favorite. "Oh, the third one, that's my favorite." It's nice. They all will resonate with everybody.

Alison Stewart: People remember that you released a book called How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth. You and your colleague Catherine Burns came on the show. I asked Catherine about a piece of advice in the book, which was uncomplicate the truth. This is what she said.

Catherine Burns: Endings are where truth comes in, right? Because it's like, where are you going to end your story? Most, life is messy. Turning people's lives into art is we do every day. It's very, very complicated, messy work. The best stories actually are not wrapped up in a bow. If you could just find some place that you landed, some little piece of resolution within the story you're trying to tell, that will be very satisfying for an audience, but it doesn't mean you have to have everything in your life worked out around the ending of the story.

Some people think that they do, and then they get overwhelmed. Really, it could just be a small moment against it.

Alison Stewart: I saw you nodding your head, yes?

Sarah Austin Jenness: Yes, that's great. I mean, there's one thread in the story. Even though there can be many pieces, there's one central thread in the story. The job is to resolve that one question that you've posed in the beginning.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Sarah Austin Jenness: And then find an answer to it at the end. As Catherine was saying, it doesn't have to be a yes or no answer. It could be, and I realized there was a longer journey than I had anticipated.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear some more stories. Let's talk to Nina from Brooklyn. Hi, Nina. Thanks for calling, All Of It.

Nina: Hi. Thank you so much. For me, as the hopeless romantic that I am, I recently met this guy on a dating app, and I was texting with him on my way to work, and then just happened that we were on the same L Train at the same time, but in different cars. We realized. He told me, "Get off on your stop at Union Square, and I'll get back on my stop on the train to go to my stop, but I just want to give you a hug and a kiss."

We'd never even met yet, and we were just trying to organize when to meet, and that ended up being our first meeting. I don't know. I grew up in New York City, and it just kind of makes me feel a little give-me-faith, I guess. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Nina, thanks for the call. You know what's so interesting? You would not hear that story because it has the term dating app 20 years ago.

Sarah Austin Jenness: That's right.

Alison Stewart: It really is a time. It's a bit of a time capsule.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Yes, a timestamp. Yes, that's magical.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Patty from Long Island. Hi, Patty.

Patty: Hi. I was walking to work through the park at the lower tip of Manhattan, and I was stuck behind a group of teens who were clearly on a school trip. Ahead of them was one of the Bowling Green subway entrances. This particular entrance, there's a few entrances at this stop, but this entrance has this little glass enclosure at the top, so it looks like a small glass shed. A train must have just pulled in. People started pouring out of the exit. One of the teens exclaimed, "How do all those people fit in that little house?"

Alison Stewart and Sarah Austin Jenness: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Oh, thank you for that story. That made me laugh. Let's talk to Alba in Brooklyn. Hi, Alba.

Alba: Hi. Nice to be speaking with you. My story is very much a New York story. I was a little kid whose neighbor had gifted me, my family, some dance lessons, ballet lessons. We spoke Spanish at home, not English. Didn't know much about what was going on culturally, but this kind lady gave us dance lessons. Great. The dance lessons, I remember having to go to enter the building on a side entrance, and I was a little displayed in the dance class. There was an older girl in the class, and she's standing by the window, and she's looking down over Broadway because we were on the side.

We come in through the side entrance, but the front was a theater entrance. She starts screaming, The Beatles. It's Beatles. I ran to the window. I had no idea what she was talking about. We were above the Ed Sullivan Studio.

Alison Stewart: 10 seconds.

Alba: And I looked up because I didn't know where the Beatles were.

Alison Stewart: That's a good story.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Wow.

Alison Stewart: She came in there at the end. So glad you could make the call. This is an impossible question. Do you have a favorite Moth story?

Sarah Austin Jenness: It is a tough question. I've loved them all. There's one that I've loved for years. Cynthia Riggs. She called into the Pitchline, and I did want to mention the Pitchline, because if people can't call in, you could go to themoth.org and pitch your story. Cynthia Riggs called into the Pitchline, and she said in her pitch that she received a box in the mail, and it had a latitude and a longitude on it instead of a return address.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Sarah Austin Jenness: When she opened the box, there were cryptograms inside that were wrapped in archival plastic. There was one little cryptogram on a note on the top. When she decoded it, it said, "Dear Cynthia, I've never stopped loving you, Howie." It turns out Howie was a man that she was in a marine biology lab with when she was 18, and he was, I think, 26. Now, she was in her early 80s. You'll have to go to The Moth to hear the story. Of course, we called her right back. We expanded the story. She ended up telling that story twice with us.

Not to give it away, but there's a very happy ending. It's not one that is one of those black-and-white endings in the beginning there, but it's very beautiful.

Alison Stewart: Let's try to get Erica in here quickly. Okay? Erica, you got a minute. Go.

Erica: Hi. In 2003, the 75th Annual Academy Awards, that's the year that that was happening. A bunch of friends and myself, we rented a suite at the Oscar Hotel. We just thought we'd have a comfortable evening. A friend of ours had invited his friend from Columbia. She had been a co-student with him. We opened the door, she brought her boyfriend, and there was Tony Bennett standing right next to her. He came in and we were all in shock, but we ended up watching the Academy Awards with him.

He was sitting at the end of this bed with his hands on his knees. He had this beautiful suit and these gorgeous rings. I remember thinking how shiny he was. I had this whole new appreciation for self-care and respect. That was the year Bob Mitchum died. He told stories about Robert Mitchum, and a friend of mine had her birthday that night, so we kind of all sang to her.

Alison Stewart: We appreciate it. We got there.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Wow.

Alison Stewart: That's a good line. We are very much looking forward to The Moth and WNYC present Only in New York, March 14th at 7:30 PM at NYU Skirball Center. Sarah Austin Jenness, executive producer of The Moth. Thank you for being with us.

Sarah Austin Jenness: Thank you so much. That was so fun. I could listen to these for ages.

Alison Stewart: Come on back.

Sarah Austin Jenness: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.