Host: Meg Bowles
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Meg: [00:00:11] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. And in this hour, we'll have three stories that will take us from an uptown neighborhood in Chicago to the Navajo Nation, and then across the ocean to behind the scenes of the Tour de France.
Our first story comes from Shannon Cason. He told it at the historic Zeiterion Theater in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here's Shannon Cason, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Shannon: [00:00:41] We were coming down the stairs when they were coming in. A new family had moved into the three flat building. We lived in Chicago. They were moving into the basement apartment, which is really small for a family. I stopped, talked to the husband, my wife talked to the wife, and our two-year-old daughters introduced themselves on the porch. They had a two-year-old and we had a two-year-old me. The father smiled looking at our little girls. Kids introduced themselves by what they have like, “This is my doll. Well, this is my bear.” [audience chuckles]
The father said that they were moving from the shelter down the street and happy to have a place to call home. I told him, “I know how it is, man. If you need anything, just give a knock upstairs. Anything.” We left and they went inside. The very next day, I get a knock at the door. It's the father. He's asking for money for a train fare to go downtown. I told him, “It's no problem. I'm headed downtown myself to go to work. We can just walk together. I'll swipe you through.”
We walk down the sidewalk, and it's a long line of three flat buildings like ours. And across the street is this big apartment building. The uptown neighborhood in Chicago. Super diverse. It's Asians, Africans, Europeans, Americans, all of us. You can get Starbucks coffee from one building, a fifth of Henny from the next building. Mexican food, Thai food, Ethiopian food or some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, all on your way to the train. The side we're walking on has this big church with a shelter in the basement, and then it's the corner store. There's guys who hang outside at the corner. There's been some shootings at the corner.
I ignore the guys on the corner. They sell drugs on the corner. It's gangs in Chicago, if you hadn't heard. I don't know. [audience chuckles] I'm from Detroit, so I'm not clueless. I know, like, if you're not from a certain area, it's best just to keep your eyes open but go unseen. They ignore me. I ain't got nothing to do with what they doing. It's none of my business. I was a little concerned that my new neighbor knew all the guys on the corner really well. [audience chuckles] But we talked on the train, laughed. He was a cool guy. His name was Jesse.
So, one night, I get a knock at the door. It's after midnight. My wife works late. She wasn't home. It was the mother from downstairs. She was asking to borrow $20 for some baby diapers. First off, it's after midnight. The baby should be asleep. The store is closed. The other thing, I guess she forgot that we have a two-year-old, too. So, when I gave her a few baby diapers to make it through the night, she looked disappointed, [audience laughter] which made me suspicious.
Another night, I get another knock at the door after midnight. My wife went home. It was the mother. She had her daughter in her arms, and she just passes her daughter over to me and she says, “It's an emergency. She's in a frantic.” And says, “If you could just watch her for the night.” I got her daughter in my arms. She didn't wait for answer. She just leaves. I go to the window and I can see the mother get in the car with this guy who wasn't Jesse and drive off. I knew it was drugs. Be real with you, I knew it was crack, meth, something, nothing. You ain't that hyper that early in the morning or late at night unless it's drugs or the pursuit of some drugs. The thing is I have a heart towards people with addictions. I got some on my own. It's not drugs, but I'm not a stranger to community rec rooms and church basements myself.
In the morning, my wife, Cindy, she makes breakfast for everybody. And the girls, they play in the living room. My daughter Zoey, she brought every toy she ever got into the living room. Kids are like show offs. I tell her, “Zoey, which toy you going to let Ashley have?” And Zoey give me that look like, “What?” [audience laughter] But Zoey is generous. She gave her this doll better than I expected. It's this little doll with a bonnet and pigtails coming out of the bonnet. My wife, Cindy, she calls Ashley's mom and tell her that we'll just keep the girls another night, because the girls are having fun. And that evening, they share the bed and I tuck them into the Dora the Explorer covers.
So, one night, I'm coming home from work, from the train. I pass by the corner store, and the corners are empty. It's nice, like a regular neighborhood. I pass by the big church with the shelter in the basement, the big apartment building across the street. I get to my place. All the guys who would normally be at the corner are sitting on my porch smoking with Jesse. I just stood there for a sec. I can't ignore it now. I ain't got nothing against a little puff-puff past, but not on my porch. The thing is I grew up worse neighborhoods than this uptown Chicago neighborhood. This is nice. This is great.
Honestly, I worked my ass off to get to this point in life. I’ll be damned. My family grew up around the same drugs and violence that I saw growing up just at a distance at the corner, but not on my porch. But I don't say anything. I just go inside. They had been smoking in the basement apartment, and it was seeping up into our place. And my wife, she isn't as passive as me. She went straight downstairs, banged on the door like the police, said, “Y'all got to stop smoking down here. My daughter in the house, coughing.” They just went outside to the porch. I went downstairs to talk to Jesse. I'm like, “What's up, man?” He just shook his head. I'm like, “How many people you got living down here now?” He said, “It was just them, but the guys from the corner would come in and out, but they hard to get rid of. They like roaches.” I told him, “Man, y' all go have a tough time there, because my wife hates roaches.” [audience laughter]
Cindy had saw some guys from the corner selling drugs in front of our house, and she yelled out the window to him, “If I see it again, I'm going to call the police.” She told me when I got home from work, like, “Baby, you can't just go yelling out the window to a bunch of drug dealers and gang members that you go call the police. If they get caught, who they going to point at? You smarter than that, baby.” She was just frustrated.
Cindy saw some guys selling drugs again, and she told me she was going to call the police. I stopped her. “You don't call the police.” I grew up in Detroit in the 1980s crack era. I got this programming in my mind, you don't call the police. First, it's a distrust of the police actually doing something to help the situation. Another thing is retaliation from the people that you're telling on. Snitches get stitches. But then, I thought about that little girl and all the men coming out of that small basement apartment, and the dazed look on her face when I see her or how when she stayed with us, she didn't want to go home. I got to confront this stupid way of thinking. I just can't ignore it.
So, another night, I get a knock at the door after midnight. I'm frustrated now. It's the mother or father from downstairs. I open the door, and it's the police. They tell me to go back inside, lock the door. I could see them all in the little foyer in their vest and gear and one of the officers has a battering ram. I go back inside. I can hear them bust down the door. Boom. I can hear wrestling and scuffling down below. I hear the police yelling and cussing.
I go in to check on my daughter, because my wife wasn't home, and she was still asleep. She didn't even know anything was happening. But I can hear the guys from the corner downstairs screaming at the police, and then it just goes silent. I go to the window, and I can see the police carting all the guys from the corner out to a wagon, and then I see the family Jesse, his wife, and Ashley.
One of the officers is carrying Ashley, and she's in her pink pajamas against his, dark blues and black. She has that little doll that Zoey gave her with the bonnet and the pigtails. I want to go out and tell the officer that we could just keep Ashley until all this is taken care of. But I don't want to go out. And the officer think, I'm with everybody else. We all look the same to the police. I go out, and now I'm arrested and my daughter is in some officer's arms. It's best for me just to stay where I am. None of my business.
For the next few days, the corners empty. No smoke in our apartment, no people sitting on our porch. Then about a week after that, same guys on the corner. They don't say anything to me. I ignore them, they ignore me, we live in two different worlds. At least it sounds good, but I don't know if that's true. I get to my place, and I can hear the landlord downstairs. So, I go down there and see if he go discount my rent for all this stuff we've been putting up with. I'm shocked to see the landlord with the family, Jesse, his wife, and Ashley.
Me and Jesse talk on the porch while our daughters play. And Jesse say, “You didn't have to call the police, man.” I tell him, “I didn't. And I didn't. I don't call the police. I can't be a part of putting more black men in prison as stupid as that may sound or something, but I don't call the police.” But I told him I should have did something, man because you need help. He nodded. He said they had to move. They hadn't paid rent for a year. I asked him what he was going to do. He didn't know. He asked if we can keep Ashley just till he got himself together. I wanted to say, “Yeah, but we can't just take their little girl. I mean, we struggling to make it ourselves. It don't work like that.
We looked at our little girls playing on the porch, and I looked them in the eyes and I said, “Man, whatever it takes, take care of that little girl. Whatever it takes.” I gave him my number, I said, “If you need anything, give me a call. Anything.” Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:13:03] Shannon Cason has never heard from Jesse again. But he says, even though addiction can be a powerful and debilitating thing, he wants to believe that in Jesse's case, addiction didn't win. He could see in his eyes how much he loved his daughter. You can hear more of Shannon's stories by checking out his podcast, Shannon Cason’s Homemade Stories, that he produces with WBEZ in Chicago.
Coming up, artist Melanie Yazzi shares stories from a childhood spent on the Navajo Nation, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[Ryland by Julian Lage]
Jay: [00:13:53] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
[Ryland by Julian Lage]
Meg: [00:15:04] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. The Moth produces Mainstage events across the country, and we make a point of inviting people from the local communities to take the stage and share their stories. I met our next storyteller, Melanie Yazzi, when I was directing at Mainstage in Boulder, Colorado. When Melanie took the stage that night, she was adorned in all this incredible turquoise and silver jewelry. She had a beautiful, quiet energy that completely transfixed the audience. You could literally hear a pin drop. Here's Melanie Yazzi, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Yazzi: [00:15:41] When I was little, I grew up on the Navajo reservation. My parents were educators. They taught Head Start. Because they both were working, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They lived in a very rural area. These were my mom's parents. We would be out in the middle of nowhere. They were dirt roads, and this was a time period when some people had cars, but a lot of people still had wagons and horses, and that's how they got around.
I remember waking up early in the morning, and hearing my grandfather pumping the kerosene lamps to get them started, because there was no electricity. I would smell bacon and eggs, and my grandmother would be making tortillas and potatoes for us to eat. My grandfather would be getting ready to go take the sheep out. I remember just thinking, this is a really beautiful time. We would have breakfast together. This cold air would come in the morning, and we would be just being with each other.
My grandfather would go out to the corral, and I would then help my grandmother mix milk for the lambs. We would mix up this milk, and put them in these large containers of Coke and 7UP, and put the nipples on, and go out to the corral, and feed the lambs. I also remember part of my job was to siphon out the water we didn't have running water. And I would take that hose and siphon out water for the dogs. Our dog dishes was a tire that my grandfather cut in half. We'd put the food in there, and all the dogs would come running.
They always had really weird names. I was trying to remember some of the names, like Mop, Bucket, [audience chuckles] and Daisy, Boots. What's your name? [audience laughter] Those were really their names. It was really strange. But they'd all come and eat out of this trough. After that, then we would go inside. In the one room where we all slept, there was a bed where my grandma and grandpa slept. It was like a queen bed. We had fixed that. One of my uncle's beds was off the side. It was a twin bed. The rest of us, slept on mattresses and cushions on the floor. So, we would get all those cushions together and fold them up and put them against the wall to get this space cleaned up.
This room that we slept in altogether was then transformed into my grandmother's studio. She is a traditional Navajo weaver. We would get that space ready. There were two windows on either side of the room, and the light would be coming in the morning. In between the two windows was her loom. I remember we used to sew these flour sacks together to make these white sheets that would go over the loom and the rug to keep it clean. And then, we would lay out the cushions in front of the loom for my grandmother and a sheepskin for me to sit with her. Because my job was to be with her and be her companion and help her. She would be carding wool or spinning.
There were times when she would make the yarn into these balls. Part of my job was to stand there with my hands out, and she would wrap the yarn around my hands. I get tired as a kid, and I would just bend over and lay on my back, and transfer the yarn over to my feet. [audience laughter] I'd be laying on my back, and I'd be touching her skirt, and just smelling my grandmother. Often people would ask me like, “What reminds you of your grandmother?” And I said, “You know, it's BENGAY.” [audience laughter] I'd smell that, because she's always saying she ached, and she would wear that. Every time I would smell it, I would think of her. So, I'd be with her, and she would be talking with me. As my feet were in the air, she would pet my feet, and say beautiful things to me, and just encourage me to be a good person.
One day, we were driving to off the reservation. It's like an hour to get to a town from home. We get there, and I remember being really little, and all the adults were talking in the car dealership. I looked over, and they were unraveling and rolling out this rug across the hood of the truck. My grandmother was there talking with the car dealer man. They were going on, and you're supposed to be good and sit there. So, we were later driving back home in a brand-new truck. I remember my grandpa leaning towards me and saying, “See how important her weaving is?” She supported us in many ways, and it was really beautiful.
As I started to get older, I started getting into art making. I loved making art. I started making prints in high school, got into printmaking, and in undergraduate school. And this question would always come up from people, because they'd say, “You're an artist?” And I'd say, “Yes.” And they'd say, “You're Navajo?” And I'd say, “Yes.” They'd say, “So, you must be a traditional Navajo weaver.” And I'd say, “No.” “You must make jewelry.” No.” [chuckles] They'd look at what I'd make. Sometimes people would be disappointed that I wasn't carrying on this tradition.
And so, at one point, I asked my grandmother, “What do you think of what I'm doing and what I'm making? Sometimes I think I should be weaving like you.” My grandmother said, “I didn't grow up going to school or learning English.” She's speaking in Navajo, and she says, “But the way I see it, you're weaving thoughts and ideas and these designs in a different way, something like I can't do. And in that way, I see you as a traditional weaver.” It's really amazing to hear that from my grandmother and gave me strength to move forward with what I do. I moved forward in my life making art, and thinking about and remembering this strength she gave me.
As I move forward in my life, I kept going through this questioning. I was teaching at different universities, and I ended up coming to this university here in Boulder, and I remember there was always this question of, “Should I be here? I really should be back home. My parents are educators. They've given up everything to be there. Should I be there, too?” And this weight of like, “Where should I be? What should I be doing? Was always inside me.”
My grandmothers had since passed, and I was asked to help with a project at the university at the Natural History Museum. It turns out our Natural History Museum on campus has one of the largest Navajo rug collections in the US, and I helped with this project. All the time, I was looking in the database for Thelma Baldwin, looking for her rugs, and nothing would come up. So, the exhibit comes, and I call my parents and my uncle and tell them, “You should come to Boulder and see this exhibit that I helped put together. It's really beautiful, and there's some rugs from where our people are from, and you should come see them.”
So, my parents came. I was really excited. We were coming into this room with all of these rugs on the walls and on platforms. My mom got really quiet. I started to point. But before I even showed her, she said, “That's my mom's rug. That's your grandmother's rug.” I stop. I look at it. I said, “Mom, how do you know?” And she says, “Because I was carrying you. I was pregnant with you when she was weaving that rug.” We walk up to the rug and look at the label. And the label says, “Mrs. Thelma Baldwin.” Because during that time, women were known by their husband's names. And all my life, I was told to be a strong Navajo woman and always keeping my name.
It was amazing to find her rugs there. And then, my uncle found some other rugs that belonged to her. And then, off to the side, I see my dad getting a little emotional. And I said, “Dad, are you okay? What's wrong?” And he said, “This is my mom's rug.” We were just amazed, because my dad's mom didn't weave a lot of rugs. We look at the label by her rug, and it says, “Anonymous.” We call the people at the Museum and tell them the story. And they're saying, “We're so glad that you could share this.” And then, I tell myself, this is where I'm supposed to be. They're here, and I'm here. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:27:19] That was Melanie Yazzi. Melanie is a printmaker, painter, and sculptor, and teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In my work with The Moth, I have the privilege of meeting and working with some fascinating people. And you really do become bonded with them when you listen to their stories. While I was in Boulder, Melanie invited me to her house where we sat at her dining room table working on her story. And before I left, she gave me this beautiful Navajo necklace made of stones, turquoise, agate, white marble. And they're carved into animals called fetishes.
She believes they serve as protectors to keep one company while they travel through life. She told me how much the experience of working on her story had meant to her. And then, she looked me in the eye and she told me that by helping people share their stories, that made me a story guide. She gave me this gift, so that I would have these beautiful animals to care for me and to protect me while doing this important work.
I'm not going to lie. I got a little choked up. I literally had a huge lump in my throat. On the surface, The Moth is entertainment. It's storytelling. But many of the people we work with are not entertainers. They're just regular people like you and me, and it's a big deal for them to get on a stage and share their story in front of a sold-out audience. It takes a lot of guts. And that necklace is now a reminder of that. I travel around with it, and it's become a bit of a good luck charm with every Mainstage I direct. In fact, as I record this, I'm on the road, and it's in my suitcase.
Coming up, an insider story one of the greatest sports scandals of our time, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[pleasant piano music]
Jay: [00:29:12] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
[pleasant piano music]
Meg: [00:30:22] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. And our last story comes from author and journalist David Walsh.
[applause]
He told this story at a show we produced in London at the beautiful Union Chapel. The theme of the night was Leap of Faith.
David: [00:30:40] I first encountered Lance Armstrong at the Tour de France. He was then a 21-year-old riding the race for the first time. I was a 38-year-old sports writer writing his first book on the tour. I had this idea that my book would be like a sport in Canterbury Tales. I know, grandiose. [audience chuckles] I'd always been a dreamer. I was going to interview 13, 14 people on this three-week pilgrimage to Paris. They would tell me their stories, I would write their stories, and in that way, I would tell the story of the Tour de France.
I met Lance at the "Chateau de la Commanderie, a beautiful hotel 10 miles south of Grenoble, where he and his teammates were staying. We sat down and we spoke for three hours. I liked him, and I think he liked me. I was sure that as a young 21-year-old from Texas, he had to be overawed by this enormous sporting epic on the old continent. He said, “Nah, wasn't like that for him.” I said, “But come on, you know? You're here to learn, right?” And he said, “No, I'm here to win.” Of course, he knew that he couldn't win the race, the overall victory, but he felt he could win one leg of it. I thought that was stretching it.
Four days later, he did win a leg of that year's Tour de France. He laid it out for me who he was. He said he had this desire. It almost felt like a rage. When he got to the end of the race, he would shake like mad. He'd feel his heartbeat go up to 200 beats a minute. And at that moment, he said he often thought about his mother, Linda, who'd had him when she was age 17, who'd raised him more or less as a single parent. He felt she didn't raise a quitter. And no matter what happened, he wasn't going to quit. And he looked at me, Lance did, and he said, “That's not physical. This isn't good legs or lungs.” He said, “Man, this is heart. It's soul. It's just pure guts.” I listened to him and I thought, “Wow, 21 years of age. We're going to hear about this guy.”
Two years later, I was coming home from a trip, because sports writers, we travel a lot. One month you're at the Tour de France, the next month it might be the Olympics, the next month it might be something else. This time, I was coming home from the Rugby World Cup. I'd been in South Africa for four weeks. Got to the airport in Dublin, was driving home. As I turned into our house, I looked into our front garden and saw lots of our neighbors. I saw some of the school teachers that our kids had. We had six kids. I saw the parish priest, and I just knew that something terrible had happened. I knew that once I opened the door of the car and spoke to somebody, my life would change forever.
I opened the door and someone, I don't remember who, told me that John, our 12-year-old son, our oldest boy, had been killed off his bicycle coming from a Gaelic football match an hour before. You can imagine how shattering, devastating, horrible that was. For all of us, life would go on, but it would be a lesser life without John. We sat down as a family and we thought, how do we try to deal with this? I was of the view that we would talk about John as much as we could, we would keep his memory fresh, we would try as best we could not to have the subject, a hidden, forbidden subject. I went and spoke to people who had known John, you know friends, parents of his friends, his rugby coach, his Gaelic football coach, his teachers.
One story stood out. One of John's teachers at Kindergarten National School in the midlands of Ireland said to me that she remembered John for something that happened when John was six or seven. She was reading the story of the Nativity. “You know, Mary and Joseph had come to Bethlehem and sought a place in the inn, but all the inns were full and they ended up in a stable. And it was there that baby Jesus was born, and the shepherds came, and then the three wise men came and they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And then, Mary and Joseph went back to where they came from and they lived a very modest life, because Joseph was just a humble carpenter and they didn't have very much.”
And John's hand went up. And Mrs. Toomey, his teacher, said, “Yes, John.” And he said, “Miss, you say that Mary and Joseph didn't have very much. What did they do with the gold that these three wise men brought?” [audience laughter] And she said, “John, I've been reading this story for 33 years, [audience laughter] and nobody has ever asked me that question. And the honest answer is, I don't know.” [audience laughter] And I said, “Mrs. Toomey, that's the most beautiful story. Because for me, it's the most pertinent question in that journalism, which is my profession. That's it in a nutshell. What did Mary and Joseph do with the gold? You ask the obvious question. [audience laughter] People may laugh at you, people may think you're an idiot, but that doesn't deter you. If you're unsure, you ask.”
I thought going on in my journalistic career, I was going to take that with me. I met Lance Armstrong again at the 1999 Tour de France. This was six years after that first interview in Grenoble. We had both changed since that first meeting. I was now a more inquiring journalist, a little bit harder in my approach. Maybe a guy less inclined to believe in fairy tales. Lance too had changed. He'd been diagnosed with testicular cancer, stage 3, the ultimate form. Doctor said he had a 50% chance of surviving. But he came through it, changed. What had happened was that he'd come close to losing his life. And coming back, he decided he wasn't going to get so close to losing again.
That Tour was a famous, maybe now infamous tour, because Lance had ridden this race four times. He'd never been a Tour de France rider. His best placing was 36th. He didn't like the big mountains, he couldn't do the time trials, the stuff you have to do to win the Tour de France. Then he gets cancer, life threatening. He spends two years out of the sport, he comes back and he's the dominant rider in the race. He wins everything. Everybody applauds, because this is the most life affirming story you've ever heard. Guy back from cancer winning the Tour de France. I sat or stood at the side of the road and I felt emotionally flat.
This was a story I just didn't believe. How could it be that a man is transformed into a super champion by a two-year illness? People said, “But after all he's been through, he would never go and take drugs, would he?” And I thought, if he's come back to make sure that he achieves what he wanted to achieve, it might very well be the thing he would do. So, I watched and watched him very skeptically. Everything I saw convinced me that he was using performance enhancing drugs, which were pretty widespread in the sport.
I remember on the day he won his first Tour de France, I wrote my first seriously questioning piece in The Sunday Times. There was a sentence that said, “There are times in life when it's right to applaud the champion. There are other occasions when you'd better advised to keep your arms by your sides.” This is an occasion for keeping our arms by our sides. Because what we need here is not acclamation of the new champion, but an inquiry. That story got the most vitriolic negative reaction to any story I've ever done in 38 years of journalism. Every reader who wrote or emailed disapproved of what I'd written.
Keith Miller from Glasgow wrote me a letter that said, “Mr. Walsh, you have the worst cancer of all, cancer of the spirit. That one got past my exterior walls. I had a problem now in that basically I had said Lance Armstrong was a fraud. Innuendo, you could say, “No real proof. I had to find some proof.” I went looking for witnesses to Lance's doping who would become my sources. I spent two years on the trail, and I ended up with three people, Stephen Swart from New Zealand, Emma O'Reilly from Dublin, and Betsy Andreu from Michigan in the US, all of them had been on the inside at one time.
Swart, a former teammate. Emma O'Reilly, a former worker in Lance's team. Betsy Andreu, wife of Lance's former best friend. They all told me, he doped. They gave me evidence. They'd witnessed it, they'd got drugs for him, they'd heard it. Betsy Andreu turned out to be the most interesting of all. She and her husband had been great friends of Lance. They'd visited him during his cancer treatment in Indiana University Hospital. While they stood in a room, they heard Lance tell his doctor that, yes, he had used performance enhancing drugs. Betsy knew what she heard.
I wrote the story and thought what I'd written would be substantial proof and that it would end for Lance. It didn't work out like that through those early years. Lance said at one time, looked at me at a press conference and said, “Mr. Walsh, extraordinary accusations must be followed up by extraordinary proof. And you haven't come up with extraordinary proof.” I wondered, why was ordinary proof not enough? [audience chuckles] But I knew Lance was an icon to the cancer community. He was a demigod in the sports world. Different rules applied to him. There were sponsors, there were race organizers, there were the sports authorities, there were television broadcasters, there were journalists. And pretty much all of them were looking the other way.
This was a story, a life affirming story, so good that nobody wanted to consider it might be a fraud, even if the evidence was obvious. I became easily the most unpopular journalist at the Tour de France. I drew comfort from an old line of Marge Simpsons. [audience laughter] Yes. She once said, “There's no shame in being the pariah.” [audience laughter] And honestly, I didn't feel ashamed. Betsy Andreu became my sports editor from hell, really. She would ring me and she'd say, “Did you see that story in the Seattle Times?” And I'd say, “What story, Betsy?” She'd say, “The one about Lance.” And I'd say, “No.” She said, “Read it and follow it up.” We would speak on the phone lots and lots of times. And she was always there, like my inspiration.
I never wanted it to be personal. I mean, I understood why Lance Armstrong doped. He felt it was his only way to win. He wasn't prepared to walk away, and he wasn't prepared to lose. I got that. I still felt it was wrong, and that I had every right to question him, and I never wanted it to be personal. He nicknamed me the Little Fucking Troll, [audience laughter] and it became really popular with all the journalists to refer to me as that. And he called Betsy the Crazy bitch. Betsy and I, we used to laugh about this. When I emailed her, I'd say, “Hi, Crazy Bitch, how are you today?” [audience laughter] And she'd say, “I'm good. Little Fucking Troll. How are you?” [audience laughter]
Only once did Lance get under my skin. I was in a bookstore, and I was leafing through the latest Lance book, Armstrong's War by Daniel Coyle. You know, you go to the index, look for your name, see the pages. I start reading this section where Lance Armstrong is discussing in very derogatory terms, my relationship with our son John, who was killed. He had heard that I had described John as a favorite son. And he said, “How can he describe him as a favorite son? That's sick.” And he said other things.
I knew Daniel Coyle, and I got out of that shop, and I called Daniel and I said, “How could you have written that in the book?” And he said, “If you're that upset--” I said, “I am this upset.” He said, “I shouldn't have written it.” And he said, “All I can say to you, is that Lance said a lot of things about your relationship with John, and I didn't put in the worst.” That didn't make me feel a lot better. I went away, and time passed. And I thought, you know what? I'm glad Daniel Coyle put that piece in his book, because it's there now between two covers. What it does is that it shines a pretty bright light on the darker side of Lance Armstrong.
In the end, the Feds got involved. Well, the Feds in the US, they're not like journalists. They deal in things like subpoenas and affidavits. And you can't sue them. [audience laughter] And the Feds say to you, “If you lie to us, it's perjury. And if you commit perjury, we'll make sure you go to prison.” That's why Marion Jones ended up in prison. She perjured herself with those guys. They had 26 witnesses, all of whom, said Lance Armstrong was a cheat. 11 of them were former teammates. Lance Armstrong had said, “You must have extraordinary proof if you're going to bring me down.” This was extraordinary proof.
It all ended for Lance, officially on October 22, 2012. I was driving on the M25 around London. I knew there was a press conference in Switzerland, and I decided that I had to hear it. I called into a Starbucks Cafe in one of the services off the M25, plugged my computer into the internet, got the press conference. Lance was stripped of his seven titles, given a lifetime ban from cycling. They were saying, he deserved to be forgotten. I felt strangely flat, anticlimactic almost. I rang Betsy Andreu and I said, “Betsy, how are you feeling? You've seen the press conference?” “Yeah, I have,” she said. She said, “I just feel anticlimactic about it now.” And maybe what we both didn't realize at that time was that the hunt in life is always better than the kill.
I said to Betsy, “You know, today is John's birthday, October 22nd. He would have been 30 today.” And Betsy said, she said, “Maybe this is his little birthday gift to you on his birthday.” And I thought, Betsy, that's a nice thought. Afterwards, in the days and weeks and years that followed, people said, “You must feel vindicated about the way this turned out.” And I said, “No, I don't feel any sense of vindication, because I'd known from the very first that I was on the side of truth. And even in the darkest moments, that was enough.” Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:50:45] David Walsh is chief sportswriter with The Sunday Times in the UK. In 2012, he was judged Journalist of the Year in the UK for his 13-year campaign to show that Lance Armstrong was not a true champion, but an athlete who cheated. Walsh wrote three books about Armstrong, including the bestseller Seven Deadly Sins.
After David wrote the first article accusing Lance Armstrong of using performance enhancing drugs, Armstrong sued The Sunday Times to the tune of £1 million, seeking damages from David and Alan English, who was then the deputy sports editor. The Sunday Times was forced to pay Armstrong £300,000. But after his confession, the paper launched a high court bid to have that money paid back in full, plus expenses. They ultimately reached a confidential settlement.
That's it for this episode. We, we hope you'll join us again next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Jay: [00:51:49] Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, and Jenifer Hixson. Production support from Mooj Zadie.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruast. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Julian Lage, and Stellwagen Symphonette. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick, at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.
The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.