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Oh, oh dotcom, stop wasting time targeting stuff done with oh do the math is brought you by progress. Have you tried the name your price tool? Yet it works just the way it sounds. You tell progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. It's easy to start a quote and you'll be able to fight the rate that works for you is just one of the many ways you can save with progressive, get your quote today at progressive dot com and see why four out of five new auto customers recommend progressive, progressive casualty, insurance company and affiliates pricing coverage. Man limited by state law. Are you or do you know a high school student with a story to tell do you want to learn to craft your own story join them off for our all country programme, a free virtual out of school programme with high schoolers from all over the country dig in?

to the unique wonder of your life, build your confidence and find your story. All country will run every Saturday or a Sunday for seven weeks, starting April second, to apply visit them dot org slash all country. The deadline to apply is March thirteenth. We hope to see there. computer ex. This is the mouth radio, our I'm Chloe, seven one of the directors of the mind I've always loved mystery stories, the clues, the deductions, the big reveals and I have always secretly dreamed of being a detective when I was seven, my dad came home from work one day with a book called the magic storybook that He had made out of a Manila folder and computer paper. All of the pages inside were blank. My

God said that the book was mad egg and that only he could read the stories which he would do for me and my little brother, when we asked The mystery of the book consumed me couldn't be real magic right interrogated, my dad for weeks before he finally broke and admitted that he was making the stories up ass, he went along detective, Chloe, cracked, the case and the books. Held all the more magical to me because of it Only three years later it still on my bookshelf in this, our stories of mysteries life presents us and the ways we meet them. Our first or a comes to us from Michel cost Olano. She told it for us but a story slam and allay where we partner with public radio Station Casey our W. Our slams musical timekeepers. Let the tellers know when it's time to wrap up

you hear weird sounded ended this story, that's what it is. Here's Michel live at the mouth, so I didn't realize how midwestern I am until I moved to New York City specifically when I tried my first apartment in New York City of Craigslist. I had been there for us six weeks I was sub letting a bedroom in an apartment where I had eight other roommates someone rented the couch someone rented the other Couch and someone rented the broom closet for two hundred dollars a month. I swear to God so after spending six weeks there in real world bushwhack, I decided to get the hell out and went to Craigslist to find my own place, so. You see at the time I was very busy. Super stress had a really high pressure job, fashion weak as working for a big brand where I held the real the important role of unpaid in turn. So,

taking an afternoon off was not allowed, not even an option, photos would have to do. I had to run an apartment base up of photos so this is where it goes from dumb to unbelievable. So please just bear with me if you ve ever an apartment in New York City before it's pretty standard that you need three months rent to get a new place, you need the first ones ran the last months, rent and a third man which is a non refundable brokers fee for all their hard work. That was fined, I had set aside and plan for it. However, you also had to prove it and it is true that you made forty times the rents and if you didn't make forty times the rent, Of course, I know that made eighty times threads so ads. Dollars an hour. I did not make forty times rotten Williamsburg my parents back home, Zuri did not make eighty times around, so I told this summer, Craigslist broker my Saviour and he said no problem Just give me six months right up front

and I said no problem. You have a business card. You have an office here, let me just give you the majority of my savings, no further questions, so he made up we sign the lease I give him six months, rents in Kashmir is checks in exchange for a set of keys, and we go our separate ways. I go to the apartment to check it out immediately and when I go to the end, building. I can't the keys, don't work, they dont fit the lock it's that simple, So another tenant is kind. Let me end, and I realise not only are the keys, not real. The apartment isn't real There are no vacant units in the entire building. Although I have just signed a lease saying. This is my new address and I have movers scheduled to bring my things to this new address. The next day. There is no apartment I call my friend from Craigslist, he doesn't answer and I come about a hundred more times my heart is raised,

thing like never before the room was spinning I saw, mentally retracing what I have from this person. I go back to us office. Where I met him, it turned, I was a shared death that he had rented with cash. I looked at the business card. I have from him. And it was one of those free ones that is basically just now for Vista print, so I too, I too call is number again and it's been disconnected is now the first of the man I have nowhere to live. absolutely no money to get a new apartment and no way to reach the man who has it all. Luckily, between the couch, the broom ass though I had plenty of places to crash. I figured it out so my first thing was I try to take any legal action. I could and I find out that they are part of was a real and this man was it real. He, no one with his name had ever received a brokers licence in the state of New York, not only

but the LLC that I made out all my cashiers checks to was never registered, so there was nothing I could do legally. So I left the courthouse early hopeless, that day and in a last ditch just decided to get on the internet and see what Nancy do shit. I could do what I could find on this guy. You know by don't have anything to do. His name was Nathan Psmith. Also, so like a really doesn't get more generic or like fake than that. So I really had a hard time, I'm on the internet. This takes me the website called the ripoff report and the ripoff report is exactly what it sounds like. I highly recommend it. It is like Yelp gone, It is really a great song, so honourable report this. Guy's name is everywhere at least a dozen times he's been running this scam in Brooklyn for about two or three months and he's still at it. So I go to the comments,

unable to find his new phone number I take it down, but instead of calling him, I call the Brooklyn police. I tell them exactly what happened to me, how much money was taken, which was a lot, and I tell them what's happening to other people, you know so I thought I couldn't believe it, but they tell me come in the next day and they can open a case so oh I work with my friends, the ripoff report and MIKE colleague eyes. We finally have a case against the sky if you want to do anything, come onto the ninetieth precinct, so in the car of two weeks. Two dozen people came from that had removed off by this one craigslist scammer. He saw an over. Forty thousand dollars from all of us total, the reason no one had ever been able to bring a case against him is because he had taken amounts each individual, just small enough to not be like grandma sunny in hell. He met Miss midway.

Sir. Oh, my gosh, please take my money. No questions asked here. You go so he has, to this day that it was me the sucker of all suckers there was responsible, for assisting operation that lead to in being arrested inside of a Starbucks. I like to think that they didn't like right after they call his name. He picked up his drink. I have no idea. I don't I went down. I know is that one year later after this all happened. I got a call from an unknown number telling me to get my checks. So I went in and I got my money back

and I like to think that I'm still just as trusting people for better or for worse- and I still find all my apartments on Craigslist, but now when I meet a new landlord or broker. I like too casually mentioned the one I had a rested. What was Michel testimony Michel is issue designer who now lives, in LOS Angeles, with her dog Wily Michelle does that she did and finding another apartment at the last minute, but then she was looking in a panic on the second day of the month, with a move and date of immediately the Options were limited she spent, facts dear sharing, a space with a roommate and some mice.

About to never again rent an apartment without seeing it in person. First, if any of Michel's ripoff report compatriots are listening, we want to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook at them on and at my stories on Instagram, who knows. Maybe we can get our union on the books Our next story of lives, mysteries, is from Alexandra gross us. She told this for at a grand slam in Madison Wisconsin, where we partner with public radio station W p I theirs Alexandra live at the moment, it really was no big deal. My husband was pictures of our morning I had taken mother to sit along the Lake Bluff of Lake Michigan and had taken place, then, with mean we picked her up and there was a beautiful day and the sun, was hitting us and I can

the wind blowing my mother's hair and not even a cheap phone camera could ruin the moment so look into These pictures my mother is in hospice, which means she has a wheelchair, which means she has to be lifted in and out of places, and he to know. Who got her there so he says: how did your mother get there? my son says: mom. Did it My husband says you're kidding says: no, did you forget she's Colombia That's the answer. My kids give to everything that I do. Colombian now growing up Colombian. I got to see with that My mother was an immigrant. She had six children, she was a single mother. She work three jobs to give us everything, but because of that she was hardly home, and I Mr

I wanted her and I wished for her, but she was working. my mother is in hospice, because our kidneys are feeling the actors says that maybe because of her age should have will have for three more months, maybe six, but he forgets she's colombian too, so Eighteen months later, we are, we here, Lake Michigan sitting on the bluff? I take my mother to these places were enjoying our days together. And on this last day I take her over to the walk wishing following from a hospice there's a fountain in and when you are Immigrant, you don't know. What's colombian and you don't know what's american and you think everybody does things the way you do, but we can pass a fountain without throwing in coins in seeing our wishes out loud so

parking friend Lafountain before I take her back up to her room and I hand her some coins and she throws her coins in the fountain and she doubts, Hawaii and she does it with such force that I dont know that she, if she's, really pissed off, because she never To go to Hawaii and I don't want to get her more pissed off because she's dying, so I my coin and I say Hawaii just in case. so we make our wishes and we're throwing inner coins. More tossing, and we were like maniacs and were laughing, and I look at her and I found In love with my mom I You have not had a chance to be with her. My entire life- and I have heard I don't even Know- To make any more wishes, I have my wish. I've got her, so I take

back up to her room, and she is doing so good that I decide tomorrow we can have another big day. I kissed her on the forehead. I take back and I tell her I'll be back in the morning: nine o clock and be ready at eight twenty. My phone brings the next morning at my house and it the hospice center. I pick up the phone I don't start breathing until I hear her in the back he's she's alive. But she's screaming no no than theirs. as your mother sick. You have to come. Hospice centres, only eight minutes away, so I rushed over and as soon as the elevator doors open, I can hear her. I go in her room. The nurses, your mother, there's kidneys are done. We need to start the comfort procedure, now months ago, months ago, my mother has signed these forms asking for comfort procedure, meaning and things and there is to be no hospital and we

just let things go back. She sign those papers when she used to be sick and she's, not sick anymore. We were just hit the lake and we're going to go shopping today. So when I see the nurse leaving to my mother and say soon Lenore, you will have your relief soon. Do something that I still can't believe I step in between in the nurse and my mother, and in or secret language? Spanish, so that the nurse can't understand, I say tell her. No, tell her you're going shopping and tell her now tell her you the hospital tell her. You changed your mind, my mother grunts hospital. Seated nurse you heard that you must go to the hospital, then their says you can this is her wish and, I think,

I have my wish for the past eighteen months, and I know I was only supposed to have my mother for six months, but I have for eighteen, and it has made me greedy and I am ready to beg, borrow and still for one more minute with her, but I turn English. This time I say it's, ok, you can go. I asked the nurse hello my mother will have after the morphine starts. She said two days. Six days later My mother There is still with us because Why does everyone keep forgetting we're colombian. When she passes away on there- and I want to say something, but I become a little four year old, calling her back Mamma Mamma this puts her hand on my arm and she says just think of them- if you gave her that she found it so hard to leave

that was Alexander reasons. Alexandra lives in Wisconsin and is currently working on a collection of short stories about life with her mother. When they were new to America. She says that toward the And she felt like she got to meet a different side of her mother. A loving beautiful woman with a sunrise for a heart, although they never did make it to her. Why she says she still cherishes the memories of the day she had some one to carry to the bluff of Lake Michigan to see a photo of Alexander with her mother had on over to the moth dot org coming up. Next, a magical tree leads to a sibling rivalry and a mistake.

is calling presents an opportunity to a father and son when Author radio, our continues Moth radio hours produced by atlantic public Media Woods whole Massachusetts and presented by p r ex them others brought to you by Car MAX Carbine can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be that way because car

max gives you the time you need to make the right choice with their new love your car guarantee you can take up to twenty four hours for your test drive and once you buy enjoy a thirty day. Money back guarantee up to fifteen hundred miles, learn more and start shopping today at car, max dot com, car max car buying re imagined. You are listening to the moth radio, our from pr acts, I'm Chloe Salmon and this episode, where exploring stories of mysteries, great and small. Our next story comes to us from Annie share. She told us at a slam in Chicago where we partner with public radio station W C after. you other storytellers, Annie took this stage. So, as seems to be true for many of us here night. My first enemy and friend was blood related.

my brother and I would fight constantly growing up we'd fight about everything from which blockbuster movie to rent to who was better at danced chance. Revolution was me who had the worst of all cut, which was also me. The only The thing that we didn't really fight about was who was really to blame for our tumultuous relationship, which we could agree. and was our parents but can back now? I think that, more specifically, the real root of our sibling had rivalry was the gum drop tree so to backtrack a little bit when my brother and I were born. Our parents planted a tree for each of us in the backyard. My tree was a beautiful tree that blossomed, big white flowers. I really had no complaints about my tree it except compared to my brother's tree.

And his tree was also this beautiful tree. That blossomed white flowers, but the difference was that his tree. Also blossomed gum drops now. This was really the biggest Mystery to my brother and me growing up always Who was that one? random morning each spring. We would wake up and look outside our bedroom windows and their they'd, be these hundreds of different gum drops of Rainbow Colors strown about my brother's tree and covered in sugar and ready to be harvested before breakfast. Now, of course, I was more than welcome to engage in the harvest and I did every year, but when I really started to think about this discrepancy, I couldn't help it become a little bit on the hinge. Why was my tree a normal tree and is tree was the super special gum drop tree. Was I been on great?

or were things in my life. Really this vastly unequal was I adopted so this one night in early spring, pre huh her my brother and I were playing a game of hide and seek, and I headed to the best hiding spot in the house, which was underneath my parents bed and I'm not kidding when I tell you that this is the best hiding spot in the entire house, because it was taking him. quite some time to find me and I start to poke around see. If there's anything interesting, I can find help pass the time when out of the corner of my eye. I see this big white storage been with the lid kind of popping off, and I take this box out from underneath the bed and I take the lid off and what did I see but dozens and dozens of bags of rainbow colored gum drops and huge spools of green flaws.

I had single handedly uncovered the greatest mystery of my generation. So here I wasn't this crossroads. I could either put the lid back on the box and put the box back under the bed, not say anything and let the mystery of the gum drop, free, live on for my brother forever. or I could be a big asshole about it, so I run out to the hallway, and I yell my brothers and aim, and he comes running back into my parents bedroom where he is swiftly. Confronted with this big box that single handedly destroy he's all of our childhood hopes and dreams, and he takes one look at the box and he starts to cry, and I take one look at him and say whose special now- and he takes one-

look at me still with tears in his eyes and says: Annie. I've known that mom and dad do the gum drop tree for a really long time. But I am sad because I wanted the magic too, live on for you, so I dont quite remember what happened for the rest of that but what I do remember is that for several years after my family- and I would spend one night together- relate spray, sitting around the kitchen table stringing rainbow. Colored gum drops onto spools of green flaws in preparation for tomorrow's harvest. So what I learned is that, regardless of whatever grow on your trees or in your gardens. Sometimes there's nothing sweeter than your roots.

thank you that was any share. Any is a writer and the based in Chicago she's, an ensemble member at the NEO futurists theater, and she says in addition to storytelling, she loves biking, Karaoke Oki and playing cribbage, while young Annie smoothed her way into the truth of the gum drop tree. There was one mystery left for me. Why do her parents only ever put gum drops on her brothers tree. She grace they put my queried the family group taxed and her mom confess that simply put the hanging process was much more difficult than they anticipated and decorating. One tree was easier than to. They ruled that the annual harvest had to be equally shared between the siblings that any would understand when she grew up and called it. A day case closed while

her family has stopped hanging. The gum drops now that she and her brother are adults. Any says that she can't wait to revive the tradition if she has her own family someday and if she has more than one kid she'll be sure to put gum drops on everyone's trees neck stop another Islam story from Chicago, where we partner, with W B easy this one from Adam partner. So when my son SAM was about eleven years old, he got very into coins. More specifically, at the metallurgy store the chemistry around coins. He was fascinated with the metal. They would do all these things. With these coins change around the house, he would sign them up using chemicals. He would bake them in the oven to make them look older. He would she don't clean them.

chemicals to make them look brighter and shiny, or he would electoral play one coins chemical up metal onto the other point, and it was just like this little mad scientist and was very fun to watch. This kitty was very into everything he did was a bright look it so that led to his desire to be a coin collect because he was so into the coins themselves, and he knew that I had a coin collection. When I was a kid, so he asked me to get started. It sure I'll do what my dad did for me I'll give you some of my points to get you started, but You gotta promise me you dont clean any of the coins, because that devalues the coins, no matter what you do, if you want to make them, look better it just it makes them less valuable or value less. So is a cool, so we start collecting coins. I gave some a mine. He starts going to coin talk that com at night and these sixty year old coin collectors and its sterical to watch this little kitty too so into it we'll go to. coin shows every month down. Le Illinois, and I would just

If we follow me around- and he would take, as you know, is allowance or his birthday money, any would buy a couple. Pointy talk to the other exhibitors neighbours really knowledgeable cause. He was always reading about it, so I just want to watch him at work. So one time down there any says to one of that coin: exhibitors. He says if I had a nineteen forty three s double die. Would that be valuable and the coin exhibitors? Does he like kind of looks up? You know like a very traumatic Claus and it takes up his last two goes. If that's true You may have just put yourself through college, and so so I'm I'm standing behind them. At that time. The government lawyer and I had no money in the bank. I was putting away twin five dollars with each paycheck for a government for a bond savings bought and on that savings plan, what it came up bore hundred years to put him through college. So I was just like your eyes like, but then I was a cartoon character like that that the dollar signs of my eyes, bugged, in Annapolis, waiting going right in our society, is that they like this. Whatever happened to somebody deal in my family and also very exciting, we so what's next

the guy goes take a picture of a time when you get home and send it. It may not tell you what I think so we go home Sam was also it's like: the photography of coins is really accurate. Pictures of coins and those sent it to this guy and a guy immediately emails back. He says I think you got something here so so I'm thinking like in sets up a hundred thousand hours. That's what you know you never civil annoyed that I really hundred twenty thousand dollars. So that's what I'm thinking you know and so so excited where we were like cool crazy. The half were running around like and what do we do with the pennies? We hid it in between, like his lease box ring in the mattress your government, the House gets rod, they will be able to find the penny in the bed and then we have a guy. What's what the next step like this guy, like the Amis like he knows everything you know he's like Moses, are something we just Madame at this thing, and so so so we so he says you gotta, take you have to get a greater look officially assessed by these national grading companies, and one of them was coming to the Roadmap convention centre from big Convention and, like the next month,

waited on guard at the house, we're on constant vigil you now, and so we go to this quite show. A month later, I walking and unlike make sure, nobody's following Mainly because I got the coin of the century and I walk in and we go up to them to the both and an eye, other gag? What we want to do because we see it, so I give it to him and in two seconds he says, as this been cleaned, and I and I idle I looked at SAM and simply low manatee. He bowed his head and the energy just goes out of his body and I realized he had cleaned it and it's now work. Nothing you know so we went from this to this, and so so I e that time. I had its that being his financial plan his father in our so I said, I said, come on, let's take a walk So we go. We wanted the stairwell. Remember we sat down again, did did you really clean that coin and he said

And maybe enforcement for sure did, and so so now Again, I can't be as financial plan or have to be his said. Listen, you know what we never had this money. It was an h. You know that things like that. You know that's just crazy. Four hundred and ten, that's don't worry about it. We're going to be and you're the best things in life and ones yet the workforce and, as I'm saying some kind of making myself actually believe it too, and so so so he started feel better. I said: don't go back and assure you want to go home and he said at let's go back in the shy love coins. Mike ok go he got over it. I was all right we're walking around. I come up with a brilliant idea. If you want to find out what it would have been worth, We didn't clean. It really really stupid idea right. So so we go back to the grating. and walk up. Those at the bottom of this kind have been worth if we didn't clean and he goes at twenty. Twenty five bucks and I dont know if we, if we didn't clean it any gods. Yet twenty point by bicycle: it's a nineteen!

forty three s double die. Re was stamp twice by the San Francisco meant the native ordinary by mistake. Only a few guided the circulation right, because no it's it's like it's something, because it's not what you're talking about a goes, its worth: twenty or twenty five bucks, the wedding We need that are not so. We realize you know what we re going. I was that you like, we have won the golden, take it that this is like the Willy Wonka episode. You know where we want to go and you never had it. In the birthplace officer, we're jumping up and down like we had just found a nineteen. Forty three asked double die and I realize you know coins when their flawed, sometimes a very valuable. When we're flautist people, we really we learn some valuable less. thank you, Adam partner lives and Buffalo Grove, Illinois and as a director of legal solutions or a technology companies, while his

If a pastime these days is telling stories he's also written several screenplays the most reach. and being searching for French Fuca at says that he and SAM continued to look for valuable coins to add two SAM's collection they'd make weekly. so the bank by ten or twenty dollars worth of pennies or dimes and return home to come through them. Looking for another potential winner, they never did find one. But the time spent together brought them closer and Adam says that was reward enough after the break, a journalist puts herself on the line to go under cover in North Korea. That's when the author, radio, our continues

the demands radio hours produced by atlantic public media in Woods Whole Massachusetts and presented by the public radio Exchange, Pierre Ex DOT, Org. this is the moth radio, our from PR axe, I'm Chloe salmon in this or were listening to stories. That will add a little mystery to your day. Our final story comes from Suki. Can she told this for us and Australia, and our show, where report and with the Sydney opera House at the festival of dangerous ideas here stupid. So I was packing my suitcase when there was a knock at the door, I knew was there, so I nor did and I kept packing and she kept knocking So finally, I gave up and open the door

there she was twenty four british Have the evangelical questions that I have been working with for the past six months. She said: he's dead, for a moment. I was confused. I thought she meant God, It was a Christmas time and There had been a lot of these Bible study meetings lately, which is why didn't want to open the door. it was exhausting pretending to be one of them for months. This was my last day teaching I just wanted to get out of there. Then she said pointing at the ceiling and now whispering she said he died

then I knew she meant the other got in that World Kim Jong IL then great leader of North Korea, so the place was pang at the time wise December two thousand and eleven I had been teaching at an all male University in Congo, I was University of Science and technology that was funded, founded and operated by a group of evangelical Christians from around the world.

Now religion is not allowed in North Korea and proselytizing is a Kapital crime. This group of Angela Merkel, Christians, however, had struck a deal with the north korean regime, an unofficial one, to fund the education of the sons of elite in exchange for access. They promised to not pressed for time. but they were getting a footing in a country of twenty five million devout followers of the great leader, and if you were to fall, then they would need another got to replace him. So I pretended to be one of them.

To be there, but I wouldn't you got away with it, because the real missionaries were pretending to not be missionaries. So why did I go through such extreme to be writing about North Korea with any that we're meaning is impossible unless you are embedded their full immersion was the only way I had been to North Korea since two thousand and two and return to repeated and if I were to just right whatever they showed me, then I would be the regimes publicists not a writer, and I didn't want to wait for North Korea's permission to tell North Korea's truth. According to North Korean, which agenda

But this was also personal. I was born and raised in South Korea into a family that was torn apart by the korean WAR in nineteen fifty when North Korea bombed South Korea, my grandmother was living in Seoul pact. Higher five children, including my mother, was then four years old to flee an old southbound trains where jam pack, so the family secure seats in the back of a truck and its when the truck was about to pull off somebody shouted young men should give up seats for women. children, so my grandmother's first child. My uncle was then seventeen got up and said. I get a ride and I'll join you in the next town. Here

arrived and later, the neighbors reporting, seeing him with his hands tied being dragged away by North Korea, soldiers in nineteen Fifty three after millions of Koreans died and families got separated, and I missed this was so and and the Korean WAR paused and along the thirty eight parallel, which is an artificial division originally drawn by the United States, with the help of the allies that five thousand Euro kingdom of Korea was split in half from that point, my grandmother waited for her son to come home like millions of korean mothers on both sides. Korea. Over seventy years have passed and that border which Koreans thought was temporary, is still there

Even though I moved to America, when I was thirteen years old, this fact Molly history haunted me later as a right I became obsessed with North Korea and to find out what is really going on there. so I went under cover as a right as a teacher and a missionary when I got there in two thousand and eleven they were preparing for a year One hundred the north korean calendar system begins at the birth of the original. the great leader to celebrate. The occasion the regime had shut. down all universities and put all university students into construction yield to build quit. Neither manual in actuality. However, the then quickly

I was dying and each young son was about to take over. They put all the youth scatter them to prevent any post the boy revolt outside this was the time of north korean Spring and the arab spring, and they didn't want a north korean spring And the only ones who did not guess end to construction feels where my students, the campus, was a five star praise and none of us were allowed out students enjoy never allowed out the teachers

Allowed out in group outings with reminders to visit greatly on monuments, every class was reported on and recorded. Every conversation was overheard, every room was banned. Every lesson plans had to be pre approved and I ate muse with three students every meal and they never veered from the script they went everywhere. encompass in pairs and groups and watched each other in order to get to know them better. I assigned letter writing an essay writing, though Many of them were computer majors, they didn't know the existence of the internet. Although many were science measures they didn't know when a man for I walked into moon, the outcome of knowledge about anything other than their great leader was shocking

I was under us strict set of rules to never tell them anything about the outside world, once a student said he listens to rock n roll, the birthday and Surely they all say that when you list songs about the great leader and when you learn at this hour but he looked around to check who might have heard him and he froze, and the fear that I saw on his face was so palpable that I knew that whatever punishment that would Oh with the slit was something beyond my imagination. So I changed the topic. What really disturbing?

but that was that I had been waiting for that slip. You know what I can't understand that world better, but when that sleep happened, I became nervous and worried and the begin to question what it was that I was doing that Then I began to notice something strange about my students. They lied very often very easily. The lies came into frontiers. Sometimes they lied to protect their system. There was a bill. on campus Paul Communist Sung, ISM Study Hall, which means great leader, is M Study Hall, where they went. To study great leader studies every day and they had the card is building twenty four seven. so I will see them guarding the building all night. But if I asked them, I was your night they'll say this

happily well, and that really rest it sometimes they would just regards tat lies that they had been taught I'll say you know. The scientists in their country changed blood types from a to B. Sometimes they lie for no apparent reason as if their line between truth and I just wasn't clear to them, Initially, I was really upset and repulsed by these ran penalize, but span months and months there with them. In that locked compound, I began to really understand their predicament in and I fell such empathy. And love, and they were so easy to love but impossible to trust. There were sincere, but they light, but if all you ve ever known, where lies

then how can you expect them to be any other way? It's as if their great humanity was in constant conflict with the inhumanity of their system But then I was there pretending to be something I'm not in order to get to the truth of the place. In that world lies wearing necessary for survival. But then one day a student asked me about. national assembly. There was no way. I could explain that without bringing up democracy d and the outside world, but I've always nervous. You know that other students at the table were watching them conversation. So I answered as on this

and as vaguely as occurred that night I couldn't fall asleep. I was afraid that the student was trying to make tricked me into saying something. So he could report on me and I was in fact writing a book in secret. I had pages and pages of note hidden on usb sticks, which I kept on my body at all times, and I thought, if those weren't discovers than would I disappear. The way my uncle had and with my mother does have to repeat the life of heartbreak than my grandmother live through being in North Korea. If you tap into that fear that beneath the propaganda is

bone? Shilling me depressing that night I felt more alone and more afraid than ever, but then the next day I ran into a friend of his, and he said he thinks, like you. Then I realized student was not making reports on me. This tuna was in fact genuine. You curious. Now this was even worse. I was now afraid of the consequence of that curiosity that I might have inspired my role. There was to plant a seat of doubt, but then what would happen to the student that I might have

reached, would then be punished for questioning the regime, or would he be doomed to a life of unhappy ass. I was no longer sure if our truth, the truth of the outside world would in fact help them. I adored my students, I call them my young gentlemen and they open That to me, little by little through those letters that I signed in those letters. They talked about missing their mothers, their core of friends and also being fed up with the sameness of everything, because their lot. Ives, who are only about the great dieter doing you break there ever got? Was playing group supports.

Some evenings. I would watch them play soccer and basketball and now a marvel at the beauty and decision the baron, energy and joy and grace of their youth, and I wanted to show them tell them about this incredible world outside filled with infinite possibilities that they so deserved. But I knew that I couldn t all I was capable of doing in ways to observe that, while their bodies balance their mind remain stuck in that timeless vacuum that had nothing but their great leader, my last day came javelins. I'm contenders death was announced. The world everything came to a sudden end

and I saw my students from the distance as they were hold away to a special meeting. They her face looked at me, but their eyes didn't see me it's as if their souls had been up that of them and they had just lost their, oh god, their parents, and the reason for everything in their world. I never got say goodbye to them. The horror of North Korea goes beyond famine and gulags. To survive. Their real human beings have to not only believe in the lies. great leader, but also perpetuate them, which is a mental torture,

It's a world where every citizen is complicit in the deprivation of their own humanity. Towards the end of my stay as soon as that to me, we always think of you as being the same. Our circumstances are different, but we think of you as the same as us. We really want you to know that would truly think of you as being the aim, but are we really the same? Maybe we were at some point. But three generations of the great leader have now happened, and for seventy years the world sat back and just watched which to me that's all,

It is indefensible, lies, run so deep there, because a centre is rotten and that rottenness is irrevocable. What would happen to my students, my young gentlemen, as they become the soldiers and slaves of their great leader? Kings are one if my uncle managed to survive. Would it be the same boy that had jumped off that truck. Don't you think you can see is the only right to have lived under cover and North Korea murmurs of journalism she's the

There are the New York Times best selling nonfiction book. Without you, there is no US undercover among the sons of North Korea's elite and the award winning novel the interpreter born and raised in soul. She lives in New York City, This has been an hour about the mysteries we encounter in life there rarely open and Chad, but the space in between might just be where the best stories lie. That said, this episode of the moth radio, our thank you to all of our story tellers and this episode for sharing with us and to you for listening. I hope you'll join us next time. The moth word you our was produced by me, Jerry Allison, cavern burns. always salmon, who also hosted this. Our co producer is Vicki Merrick,

oh sure, producer, Emily Couch this. these were directed by cavern burns with additional grand slam? Coaching by Jennifer aims The rest of the moral leadership team include Sarah Haber, Miss Sarah Stinginess, MEG Balls, Kate, tellers four Birmingham Marine ok, is an rust, Brandon Grant go glare, dusky sergeant Johnson and all they cause. The moss would like to extend a special Thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which provided sponsorship for the two thousand nineteen allays lands where Michel cost Olano told their story was always are true, is remembered and affirm by the story. Tellers music is the drift other music in this hour from still wagons infinite. The boy and Mr Oi, so icy Khatami. MEL, Thou and guy, we receive funding from the national endowment for the arts.

radio hours produced by atlantic public media in its whole Massachusetts and presented by their eggs for more about our podcast for information pitching as your own story and everything else a website- the moth dot org. Where Michel cast Olano told their story.