Choose Your Own Theme: The Moth Radio Hour

This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Chloe Salmon. I love thinking up the themes for these episodes and finding stories that fit. But stories speak to us all differently.

so why should I get to have all the fun of deciding what unites them? In this episode, you'll hear five wonderful tales. The theme? I'm staying out of it. You get to decide. What common threads do you hear?

Maybe I'll tell you what my vote is at the end of the episode, and you'll have a chance to send yours into the moth. But until then, I'm all ears. Our first story comes to us from Boston,

where we partner with public radio station WBUR. Here's Harold Cox, live at the Moth. It was a brilliant idea. At least I thought so.

I was going to make a time-lapse photography video of me losing weight. I knew this was the right thing to do. So every day after breakfast,

I made four photographs. One facing to the front and then turned to the right and then turned to the right and then turned to the right So I now had four photographs and if you put a lot of them together you would see me turning around kind of like a rotisserie chicken So I was doing this because I had gained a lot of weight and it was necessary for me to lose some

So my plan was that I was going to start drinking those god-awful green smoothies I don't know why people drink that stuff, but I was going to drink them. And then secondly, I was going to ride my exercise bicycle, which rankly I'd been using to collect old clothes and lots of dust.

And then thirdly, I was going to document this by making this photo exhibit, which would show me going around and around and around like this rotisserie chicken. And I would then be able to see myself get thinner. and I would have an Academy Award presentation.

Three weeks into this project, the bicycle was horrible because the problem is you go nowhere fast. And I wanted to get off of that thing. And then the green smoothies were really horrible.

And I thought, well, maybe I could dress it up. So what I did was I need to do something that will make this actually all right. I started making the smoothie and I put some kale and a cucumber. And then I thought, you know, I really like grapefruit.

So let's put some grapefruit in there. And then I put the peel in as well. All right. Here's what I would say about that.

Don't do it. It's really bad. First, it looks like something you shouldn't eat. And then secondly, it was really nasty.

But then I continued to make the photographs because I just wanted to, you know, I could see myself going around and around and around. It was really nice. So let's jump forward to a time when I had to go to Chicago for a presentation. This was a very important work presentation, and I'd made this PowerPoint that would accompany my presentation.

I went to Chicago, and I was in the auditorium, just me and the audiovisual guy. I gave him the PowerPoint flash drive. You know where it's going. He made a mistake.

And instead of putting up my brilliant PowerPoint, I looked up and there was a picture of me. He had found one of those pictures and my arms were stretched out, my legs were stretched out naked.

it. Because how else are you going to see the changes that I wanted to see in my body? So I'm having a panic moment, and I screamed to him, and I said, take that down, take that down. He pressed a button, and I started going around. So I'm going around in the circle, and there was a woman who came into the room. She screamed, and she went back out.

I don't know who she was. I didn't go back and check because I need to make certain that we came, you know, we took this thing down. And he wasn't moving quite fast enough. So I went over and I just yanked all of the plugs out of the thing because I needed to stop this rotisserie of shame.

He and I could not make eye contact the whole time. I went ahead and I had my presentation. I couldn't make eye contact with anybody in the audience. And then I got out of Chicago, and I have actually never been back again.

So what I have learned about freedom is that freedom is really when you let go of blunders. And when you learn about your last blunder. So I'm now at a place in my life where I need to lose some weight again. I am going to drink the smoothies.

I am going to ride the bicycle. I am not going to take pictures. That was Harold Cox. Originally from Texas, he currently lives in Massachusetts and is a university professor. He loves to tell stories about the simple and goofy things that have happened in his life. Luckily, he says, his life is full of simple and goofy things, as we just heard.

I asked Harold if he has attempted a similar kind of fitness chronicle since then. His answer? L-O-L. I will never, ever do this again.

Which, fair. To see a photo of Harold, fully clothed, head over to themoth.org. Our next story was told by Dee Tsai in New York City, where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth.

Here's Dee. I grew up in China, went to college at a coastal city called Tianjin. Never heard of it? It's okay. small town, 14 million population.

I majored in pharmacy, minored in English. And when I was a senior, I was on track to come to the United States for a biochemistry PhD. A few weeks before graduation, I saw posters all over campus about an English talent competition hosted by a local TV station.

Now, Tianjin TV Network is the fourth largest network in China, and being on TV has been my dream since I was a little kid. My first stage was my crib at daycare. Storytelling during nap time, captive audience.

Ever since I was five, every night during National Weather Channel, I would be standing by the TV, and I would do the weather report to my entire family. I could recite all the cities. My grandpa was very proud.

And this was May 2005. I was 21 years old. I knew in about three months I was going to leave my home country, join an intense research program at America's most exciting city, Dallas, Texas.

And I've heard a misery of a PhD scientist's lifestyle. You spend days and nights working the lab, you're lonely, you're dedicated,