Calling In: The Moth Podcast

The Moth - The Moth

This episode of The Moth Podcast celebrates the Moth Pitch Line, a platform where people submit two-minute recordings of stories they'd like to tell. It features Sofia Romero's powerful true story about

Key takeaways

• Personal stories often emerge from deeply cultural or intimate experiences, revealing universal themes of identity and belonging.
• The act of delaying a decision—like burying a placenta—can become a metaphor for unresolved internal conflicts.

Main topics

• Immigrant identity
• Cultural traditions in parenting

Notable quotes

"You see that hibiscus bush over there? That's where I buried my placenta."

"I was afraid each time my mother came over to babysit or make dinner because she might cook it by mistake or worse, throw it out by accident."

Conclusion

The Moth Pitch Line continues to be a vital space for authentic storytelling, transforming personal moments into powerful narratives.

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:01) Welcome to The Moth. Speaker 7 (0:02) I'm Chloe Salmon. Speaker 8 (0:04) At The Moth, we find stories in lots of places. There are our open mic story slams that happen regularly in 29 cities. Our workshop programs that give participants the tools to develop and shape their own narratives. And of course, good old-fashioned research. You haven't quite lived until you've cold-called a stranger to see if they'd be interested in letting you ask them one million, Very personal questions in service of building a story together. But one of my favorite ways is via the Moth Pitch Line, where people can go to our website and leave a two-minute recording summarizing a story they'd like to tell. I'm part of the team that manages the Pitch Line, and I absolutely love it. One, I'm very nosy, so thousands of people opting in to tell me their business is my personal heaven. But even more than that, I like what it represents. that even without a live audience, even without quite knowing who will be listening, the impulse to share, to connect, to tell a story is still there. So in honor of the tens of thousands of folks who have called in over the years, this episode is dedicated to the pitch line. We'll hear a story that was developed from a pitch, as well as a few wonderful pitches that have been submitted recently and the reasons why they caught our ears, as well as a few pointers to take away for your own pitch. First up is Sofia Romero, who told this story at a main stage in Troy, New York. Here she is, live at the Moth. Speaker 6 (1:36) In 1995, I was pregnant with my second child when a visiting relative told me that in the northern region of the Philippines, where my father's side of the family is from, there is a tradition of bearing the placenta or the afterbirth with tokens of good wishes for the child. I was hearing this for the first time. Now, my mother, who comes from a different part of the country, did not bury hers, because if she had, I never would have heard the end of it. You see that hibiscus bush over there? That's where I buried my placenta. I have to admit the idea was both intriguing and fascinating to me because you know when you're in your third trimester of pregnancy, you just want it to be over. And yet here, I was being asked to think about tokens, predetermining the life of this child before it could even live outside of me and on its own. Why not? I loved it. And my husband, who is a nice Jewish boy from Queens, and whose mother I know did not bury her placenta, agreed. He said, let's do it. And our midwife was equally excited, but she said, you have to take it home right away because the hospital doesn't hold on to them. Speaker 6 (3:14) So on the day of our birth, she was prepared. As soon as the afterbirth was delivered, she carefully transferred it into a plastic takeout container that can hold a double order of hot and sour soup. Speaker 6 (3:34) She gave it to Dan and told him, go home now and stick it in the freezer, which he did. He took the F train from the West Village to Brooklyn because it was faster than taking the cab. He stuck it all the way to the back with the words, do not eat, written on masking tape. And there it stayed for the next three years. Speaker 6 (4:10) We fully intended to bury it once we got enough sleep. Speaker 6 (4:16) You know, days turned into weeks, turned into months. We didn't. I couldn't because it turned out that it was not as simple or as easy a decision to make. How do you bury a placenta? Do you stick it in a shoebox with ribbon and then bury it and commemorate it with a headstone or a flag so that you always know it is there? I happen to live next to Prospect Park and those city squirrels are vicious and they like to poke around anything and everything and I was afraid that I would walk into my backyard and find a family of squirrels enjoying a picnic over something that used to be mine. Or worse, chasing that rogue squirrel. with leftovers between its jaws and me screaming, give it back, drop it. As an immigrant, my relationship to the land of my birth is very different from the land I have acquired by choice and now live in. I knew that once that placenta went into the ground, I would be staking a claim to a land that I was just getting to know and understand. Was this home? Or was this where I received my mail? I left the Philippines in 1986, leaving everything behind to start over. I came to New York, started a new career. I met and married my husband. We started a family. And I became an American citizen. Speaker 6 (6:02) Overnight, I was turned into a hyphenated individual, a Filipino-American, a demographic that looked good on paper, but didn't exactly describe who I used to be and who I was becoming. My mind was filled with my native language, Filipino, but the words and ideas that tumbled out of me were oddly unfamiliar. Speaker 6 (6:30) In trying hard to blend in and to assimilate, I turned against myself, fighting an enemy from within. How does one live in two worlds yet belong to neither? And there, in the back of my freezer, was this silent witness to my