The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Put to the Test

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

In this hour, stories of testing one's own limitations and discovering new wells of strength and resolve. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Director Meg Bowles. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.Storytellers:Living on the 44th floor, Lucy Danser has to face her fear of elevators. Albert Fox Cahn finds unexpected motivation to turn his health crisis around. Quratulain Fatima grows up refusing to take no for an answer.Tim FitzHigham takes on 10 world record holders. Podcast # 679

This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our main stages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows from New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more. The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth main stage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection. To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles and in this hour, stories of unexpected challenges.

From taking on the Pakistan Air Force to free climbing one of the tallest buildings in Doha. We'll hear stories of the things people do to overcome obstacles and sometimes face a very real fear, like our first storyteller, Lucy Dancer, who confronted her anxiety in an elevator. From the rich mix in London, here's Lucy Dancer live in a moth story slam. Okay, so this time last year, my boyfriend got a job for seven months in New York City and Mainly because the job came with a free apartment. I decided to go with him So he went out ahead of me and the day before I was due to join him

I called to ask for our address and he told me that we were going to be living in Midtown, Manhattan on He told me that we were going to be living in midtown Manhattan on the 44th floor of an apartment building with a view of Central Park and the Hudson River. Now, I know that this is an excellent address, but when he told me that, all I felt was absolute sheer terror. The reason for that, and keep in mind that my boyfriend knew this, is that I am scared of lifts. And when I say scared, I mean I was a 29 year old woman who had never used a lift unaccompanied. I was terrified of lifts and now I was gonna live on the 44th floor. So I flew out to New York and I can't say initially it was terrible, although I was uncomfortable.

New York is a hard place to have a terrible time in. I mean I saw Broadway shows and I ate amazing food and I drank incredible cocktails. Put it this way, on Instagram everyone was very impressed with me. But the truth was I had absolutely zero independence. Like so that I didn't have to enter or leave the apartment building without my boyfriend. I worked entirely to his schedule.

So I didn't make any plans. I didn't accept any invitations and I could never just pop home when I felt like it. So here I was in like my dream city and very soon I was just exhausted and I was miserable and just when I was about to give up as it so happens so often in my life my parents appeared on the scene and my parents aren't very easy to describe and I'm not gonna try too hard because my dad is here tonight but suffice to say

they are kind and loving and caring and maybe a little bit over involved in my life. Which is quite frustrating but it does mean that when I called my mom and I told her about all the amazing things I was doing and seeing and all the people I was meeting what she actually heard is I am desperately trying to fill every second of my day because I'm too scared to go home. And to her, this was totally unacceptable. And my parents were actually planning to come and visit pretty soon,

and my mom promised slash threatened that by the time they left, I would be using this lift like a champ. Sure enough, a few days after their arrival, I awoke to quite an aggressive banging outside my apartment door and I went outside and my mum and my dad were there facing the bank of lifts and they dragged me into the middle of them and they said this is day one of the lift tests and the first test is you will go one floor in a lift alone and I was immediately terrified

and so first of all my mum and me stayed there and my dad got in a lift alone. And I was immediately terrified. And so first of all, my mom and me stayed there and my dad got in the lift by himself and he went up and down a few times and all the time he was screaming at the top of his voice. And I believe this was supposed to show me that if something did go wrong in a lift, someone would eventually hear you.

But then I had to get in with him and we went up and down a few floors together and then we were listening out you know for any weird noises or lights or buzzes or whatever and so I could just get used to it and then we got off together on the 43rd floor and my job was just to go up one flight by myself to my mum, who was waiting there. And I pressed the lift for the button and it came and the doors opened and I did what I have done countless times before and I just let the lift go. And I did that about three, four, five more times.

And I said to my dad, please, I was crying and I was shaking and I was like, please, I can't do this. Just take me straight back up to my mom and I just want to go home. And he was like, no, no, no. We're gonna wait as long as it takes, but hopefully it won't take too long because it is nearly lunchtime. And finally I realized I had no choice, so I got in the lift. I pressed the button for the 44th floor and I screwed my eyes shut for the entire two-second journey. And then the doors opened, my mom was standing there with her arms outstretched,

and I ran into them, and she grabbed me and twirled me around and tried to push me straight back into the lift. But I moved out really quickly, because I had done it. I had done test day one. I had done one floor, and I was victorious. And they came back the next day,

and it was two floors and three floors, and a few days later they had to go home. But they called every day to check I was still doing it. Finally I did all 44 floors. And suddenly I was living that life in New York but I'd always wanted to live. I was, I started taking acting classes, I made some friends and then one day I came back to the apartment alone earlier than I ever had done before and I realized that from our window you could see the sun setting over the Hudson River and it was beautiful and I would never have known that was even there if I hadn't learned how to use a

lift. And sometimes when I was doing really cool things or meeting nice people in New York I stopped and I felt quite guilty that for my parents entire trip to New York, they mostly just saw the inside of my buildings lift. But I guess that there are some tests that you can't do by yourself and maybe it's okay to be a little over involved sometimes. Lucy Dancer is an author, playwright and comedy producer. She lives in London with her boyfriend from the story, now her husband, and their dog Mabel. She says on a basic level her fear is much lower.

She has no issue using an elevator with other people. It's just the fear of being trapped alone. She once had a job where she had to go to a building in central London with a lift that you operated using a pass, one of those plastic key cards. And she would get to work early and wait until other people got in the elevator before she would press the button to her floor. She says she's just had to learn to accept that she's never going to love elevators. You can see a picture of Lucy and her parents during their visit to New York on our website, themoth.org. Our next story comes from Albert Fox Khan. He shared it at a Moss Story Slam we produced at Housing Works in New York City in partnership with local public radio station WNYC. Here's Albert, live at

the Moss. Growing up, I wasn't just unathletic, I was anti-athletic. I was a kid in gym class arguing, no, you are exposing us to a risk of stroke and embolism, so no, I will not do those jumping jacks. And you might have noticed I have a penchant for arguing, which is probably how I ended up as a lawyer. Specifically, a civil rights lawyer. Even more specifically, a civil rights lawyer working on behalf of the Muslim community, which only comes into this story to explain that 2017 was a bit hectic. this story to explain that 2017 was a bit hectic. And in the aftermath of the Muslim ban and the hate crime surge as I was pulling all nighter after all nighter

the work started to take a toll on my health. And suddenly the lifestyle issues I'd been putting off became a real concern and a increasingly somber set of meetings with increasingly sober specialists told me that I had to drastically change my life immediately. So my best friend from college and I did what nerds always do in our times of need. We turned to math. Specifically a spreadsheet, a collection of rules

and formulas with the goal of making sure that we stayed on track. We would check in with each other every week of rules and formulas with the goal of making sure that we stayed on track. We would check in with each other every week about diet, about exercise, and we needed a penalty, a price to pay, if we didn't live up to our end of the bargain. And we thought long and hard about what we could do that would actually make us take this seriously.

And so one afternoon I finally gave in and I wrote a check that he would keep in safety. A check to the NRA for $10,000. And every morning when I wanted to hit the snooze button, every morning when I wanted to sleep in, I would picture Wayne LaPierre, the NRA spokesperson, at the foot of my bed, a Cheshire hat grin, a gleam in his eyes, just holding up the check

and mouthing the words, thank you. And that was enough to get me going. And at first I was just going out to walk for a little bit and then the walking turned into schlepping and then schlepping turned into running. And just half a mile, a mile, and then one Sunday I actually ran for five kilometers. For the first time I felt like this was actually becoming a part of who I was. I wasn't just pretending to do the exercise thing. So in a moment of irrational exuberance, I signed up for races.

I signed up for a 5k and a half marathon. And I instantly regretted that choice. And as the race drew near, I knew that it was all a terrible mistake. And when it was the night before, I couldn't sleep at all. I had these mental images of crawling towards the finish line as these life little runners went by like the road runner, just stopping long enough to look at me and go beep beep before speeding beyond. And when I got to the race, I was ready for it to all implode after a couple of miles, but then mile after mile it was working. I was still there.

There were actually people slower than me. For the first time in my life, I was ecstatic at the thought of being mediocre. I was there in the middle of the pack. Well, slightly behind the middle. But as we got to mile 11 and I saw the hundreds of people that had gathered at the last big hill, I took out my headphones and I heard the chants and the cheers and saw the nerdy signs and it would have seemed so corny just a couple days before and now it seemed like one of the most generous things I had ever seen. It brought me to tears.

And when I finally got to the end, I mouthed a silent thank you. The first and the last that I'll ever say to Wayne LaPierre. Now the challenge ended after a year, but I'm still running and I even signed up to do the full marathon in November. And as I've kept going with all the races, I've gotten a collection of all these little medals. I don't know what to do with them. They've just gathered around the apartment, but there is one award that has a place of prominence.

It's a little black frame at the foot of my bed with that check that I know will never be cashed. And every time I look at it, it's a reminder to me that so often the things that we think are impossible, we can do if we have the support of our friends and maybe even an enemy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Six months after telling the story, Albert Foxconn ran and finished the New York City Marathon. He said there was a lot of laughing, a lot of crying, and more than a few mental images

of Wayne LaPierre chasing him uphill. He's still running, but the majority of his energy these days is spent working at a non-profit he founded, which focuses on protecting privacy and civil rights as social media, surveillance and facial recognition become more and more a part of modern life. To see pictures of Albert and find out more about the work he does, visit our website, TheMoth.org. Do you have a story of a time you were put to the test and surprised yourself or when something totally unexpected happened?

We'd love to hear it. Just go to our website and look for Tell a Story and you can find all the info for how to do it. My name is Barbara Stevens of Wellesley, Massachusetts. On May 5, 1945, the E-Day, the war in Europe was declared over. People all over this country rushed to the centers of their towns and cities to celebrate. I was in New York City so happy that my brother, who was a pilot in Europe, would no longer be in harm's way.

I hadn't seen him in over two years. I hurried to Times Square to be among the thousands of happy strangers who were laughing, hugging, and kissing each other so happy everyone was celebrating the war's end in Europe. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my left shoulder and turned to hug another stranger. It was no stranger. I saw my brother. His voice said, Sis, it was my brother home from the war. He had landed the night before in New Jersey and heard the good news and rushed to Times Square. What a miracle of us finding each other among tens of thousands of people. My name is Jesse Johnson. I live in Seattle but I grew up in pretty rural Wyoming and I was born on a dude ranch

and my parents were the caretakers. When I was a little kid, I had these horrible recurring nightmares of bison charging through the walls of my room. It was awful. It was so bad. I had such horrible night terrors that my mother, an amazing person she is, she went and wrote a book for me, a picture book about how I, Jesse, tamed Buffalo Bones, this terrifying bison, and it worked. Totally three-year-old me turned me into having no more nightmares.

Flash forward, I'm eight years old, I'm in third grade, and I ride the bus to school and I am just, I'm terrible on the bus and I get in trouble all the time. My mother keeps telling me if you get kicked off the bus you have to ride your bike to school. It was 10 miles away and I didn't listen and sure enough I got kicked off the bus and day one I'm riding down these old country roads and come over the top of this rise and I stop and at the bottom of the hill right in the middle of the road is this giant bison and there is no one around me at all anywhere there's no car this early in the morning and I'm looking at this thing I'm looking at myself

I'm thinking oh my god this is my fear pouring back at me. And I remember this wonderful book about how I overcame that. And I stood there, I strided my bike and stared down at this creature that was 20 times bigger than I am. And we made eye contact and it took a long time. And eventually it snorted and tore off into the sagebrush. And I rode like hell to school and I was terrified. But a book saved me. You can find out more about our pitch line

and record your own story right on our website. Or you can call in by phone and tell it to us at 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. We'd love to hear from you. Coming up, a woman refuses to take no for an answer from the Pakistan Air Force when the MOTH Radio Hour continues.

from the Pakistan Air Force when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. As the executive producer of The Moth, I travel many times a year to direct Moth mainstage shows and meet new storytellers. From the markets of Nairobi to the beaches of Australia and the historic streets of London, I love meeting locals and finding new stories to share on Moth main stages. While I'm away, hosting my apartment on Airbnb

would be a great way to make some extra income and share my home with travelers who will love it as much as I do during date ranges that work with my schedule. Have you thought about hosting with Airbnb? Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. We met our next storyteller Karatulan Fatima during a workshop the Moth's Global Community Program did in

partnership with the Aspen Institute's New Voices Fellowship. After the workshop we invited her to share her story at a main stage event we produced at the Union Chapel in London. Here's Karatalan Fatima live at the Moss. It was 23rd March and I was eight years old. My father entered the room in his Air Force uniform. His boots were shiny and his buttons looked like gold. My little brothers followed in their own little uniforms with gold stars decked on their shoulders. It was the day of Pakistan's annual military parade. They were going to see the parade. I was not. I was sulking. Although my father asked me

to join and asked me to come, but I wanted to wear the uniform. He told me you can't wear uniform. Girls can't get into the Air Force. I really wanted to go. But not in my ugly frock that showed my stick-like legs, while my brothers looked all happy and plump in their own little shiny uniforms. Growing up, I was a small, stubborn girl. I had two younger brothers. I acted like their protector.

I would chase the kids who harassed them. I would jump up, roll over in the mud, and dispense a few punches to teach them a lesson. For a short, sweet while, I held the title of big brother before losing it when my brothers grew up a little and left me out of their fights and games. We Pakistanis love cricket the most probably after God. I was an avid left-hander. I played cricket with the boys in the area because no girl played the sport. So I was a star cricketer in the making. So I would put on my trousers and my t-shirt, much to the dismay of my

neighboring aunties who thought it was such an ungodly dress for a girl. They thought I was nuts because I played hockey and cricket with boys, scale up walls and kept my hair the shortest. So now the star cricketer is dreaming and then the boy's captain told her that oh you cannot be part of the team because girls are supposed to look nice, learn to cook and stay silent and not play cricket. I really wanted to be a boy because boys could do anything they wanted to. My father was my idol. We would take long walks along lush green paths, long walks along lush green paths, my hand in his, and talk about things. I would ask him, why can't I get into the Air Force?

And he'd tell me, oh, it's for boys. You need to be strong to get in. We live in Islamic Republic of Pakistan and girls and boys can't work physically closely. I would only do selective listening. Stronger? That I could do. So I started running and swimming, and more than often I was found hanging from the monkey bars in the local park. I dreamt of becoming a boy.

Anything to get into the Air Force, such was my desperation. When I was growing up in Pakistan, women only became teachers or doctors and then went on to get married. When I was 17, I decided I wanted to become a banker. Not that I knew anything about banking. It was because it was one of the few options available for women at the time. Banking was my available different. Then one gloomy winter or evening, the kind that makes you sad. My father entered the home, beaming, he lit up the room.

He said to me, beta, which means my son, sit down, I have some news for you. And then he showed me this white and black advertisement by the Air Force for the recruitment of women for the very first time, under the orders of the President. He said to me, and I still remember his words, that you must have prayed very hard to make them recruit women. to make them recruit women. So I gave the initial test and I passed, but the final selection exam coincided with the date of my banking exam. I was devastated. I thought it's not meant to be.

But my father, the believer he was in my abilities, made me write to the Air Force to change the dates. Air Force never changed the dates, but miraculously they changed the dates. And I gave the selection exam and passed it. I passed the medical exam. But before the training date, I fell violently ill. Doctor could not find anything wrong with me, except anxiety. I was ashamed to admit, but I was afraid. I was afraid to fail. It was the first time I was leaving the warmth and comfort of my home.

The day of the training came. I met seven other girls at the gate of the academy. And a male trainer was pretty serious. We had a lot of luggage with us and we were very happy. In Pakistan, it is culturally expected that men would come and help you with your luggage. So we were waiting. But then we saw boy recruits putting their luggage on their heads and started running. The male trainer looked at us and said, What are you waiting for?

Run! And a girl objected, Oh, we have a lot of luggage. To which he replied that it was not his headache. We were not at a wedding reception and if we do not start moving now we will miss the attendance call of the academy and we will have to do loops around the academy all day with the same luggage. It was how the military academy operated and it did not intend to change for us.

So off I went, dragging my luggage, causing the day I ignored my father's advice to not take too much luggage. It was the first time that Air Force Academy was seeing any women. We were told to not to speak to the male cadets because any hint of scandal or romance would jeopardize our chances of completing the training and would even end coming of women into the Air Force in future. So we, a handful of unsure women, were given the task to clear the path for future women into the Air Force.

Boys were as confused. It was as the status quo of the academy was shattered. Since we could not interact with each other outside supervised spaces, we were suspicious of each other. Five days into the training, I was a classic case of imposter syndrome. Waking up at 4 a.m. in the morning, doing mandatory punishments, tackless life, no makeup, cannot go to home for four months and eating tasteless huge meatballs not so fondly called grenades, was making me question my choice to join the Air Force. I really wanted to run away, but I could not.

I could not let the patriarchal structure of military say that women are not made for its rigor. So I stayed, made friends for life and completed my training. I graduated as commissioned officer in Pakistan Air Force. My father came to my graduation in his uniform looking tall and handsome. And I was in the uniform that was forbidden to me before. And I saluted him, a salute that said thank you for letting me be who I wanted to be. And he smiled. First day at base I had to walk 15 minutes to my office. Everyone at the road stopped and stared at me. They had never seen a woman in

uniform. It was as if a UFO has landed and an alien has alighted out of it. I felt naked, vulnerable. It was odd. My subordinates, my soldiers, gave me equal respect as they gave to their male superiors. It was the superiors they were the problem. They thought Air Force had just inducted women for a cosmetic change. They were reluctant to give me any real work.

I had to try very, very hard to gain their trust. When I was flying officer, I had to work under a supervisor who was notorious for making advances towards women. During my one year at the base, he inappropriately touched me, made explicit sexual comments and jokes. And one time when I was supervising a war exercise in front of my soldiers, he came from behind, put his hands around me and when I protested, he said,

oh, it's just fatherly affection and gaslighted my protest. I never reported him. It's not easy to talk about sexual abuse. Being one of the first women came with a lot of pressures and a lot of expectations. The way I failed in my training and in my service made possible for the women to enter the Air Force.

I regret that I did not report him. It could have stopped the predatory behaviour. Pakistan's Air Force now holds one of the largest contingent of women officers in the Islamic world, ranging from pilots to engineers to ground support officers. I can proudly and safely say that I and my peer women did well. On 23rd March 2002, I asked my father to join me on the Pakistan Days Parade. I was not a little girl anymore and I was in uniform. I saw a little girl looking at me, at my shiny boots, at my gold buttons, at my blue uniform and dreaming dreams to do the impossible. With tears in my eyes, I stood under the shining spring sun, shoulder to shoulder with my father,

and saluted the passing parade. Thank you. That was Karatalan Fatima. Karatalan was the first woman to join the Pakistan Air Force. After retiring in 2010, she went on to serve with the Pakistan Administrative Service. Karatalan's father died in 2005. She said it had always been one of his dreams for her to study at either Oxford or Cambridge, which she eventually managed to do. She completed her master's in public policy from Oxford on full scholarship.

Karatalan has worked on economic development in conflict-ridden areas of Pakistan. She's also established an organization called Women for Peace Tech that works on empowering women through technology. I think it's safe to say her father would be proud. Coming up, the story of a man who took on ten world record holders when the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the public radio exchange prx.org. This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Meg Bowles. Our last story comes from writer and comedian Tim Fitzhyam. You may have heard a story Tim told a few years back about his attempt to cross the English Channel in a bathtub. He also holds several world records for unusual feats including paddling a paper boat down 160 miles of the River Thames and personally inflating the world's largest balloon. All these feats done for charitable causes. So it's not surprising

that the BBC approached Tim for a rather unusual documentary project. Live from the Bridge Theatre in London, here's Tim Fitzhine. I received a phone call from somebody at the BBC and they said Tim we've decided we'd like to give you a shot at a documentary series and I thought brilliant this is finally my time to shine I'm gonna be like a David Attenborough this is gonna be incredible I'm gonna get it I'm gonna get a real chance here they said we're gonna give you ten episodes, 10 episodes, 10 half hour episodes of a documentary series.

They said, what we would like you to do is we'd like you to go around the world meeting 10 world record holders and we'd like you to challenge them at their own world records. I looked at the producer and I said, so what you're saying is you want me to lose, quite badly, ten times. And she said, well, do your best. Now the thing with this is that they didn't tell me who I was meeting, where I was going or what I was doing. Because they didn't want me to be able to train. Because they thought that might help.

This led to me meeting the world record holder who has a very peculiar world record. He has the fastest reflexes in the world. to the sport of arrow catching. LAUGHTER They get World Championship archers, they put them not much further away than the front row, they fire arrows at you, LAUGHTER and you attempt to catch the arrows. The world record holder went up And you attempt to catch the arrows. The world record holder went up and he caught eight out of ten arrows, travelling between

seventy and ninety miles an hour. Then it was my turn. Three arrows were fired. Three arrows were fired. Three arrows hit me, and the paramedics were called. Then they sent me off to meet the greatest free climber in the world. A man called Alain Robert, he climbs the world's tallest buildings without a safety net or a harness and I'm afraid of heights. I also can't climb. I've never been climbing and so they sent me for half a day on a climbing wall with Alain Robert.

We then got flown out to Doha in the Middle East to climb up the outside of the Torch Building in Doha, which is one of the world's taller buildings. Dear goodness me, I'm from East Anglia. We don't have any hills in East Anglia. It is famously flat. As an East Anglian, anything above one metre above sea level makes me nervous. And I stood outside the Doha Torch building, and I looked up at this building. And this cheerful Scottish man walked past me, and I said, oh, wow, what do you do? And he said, oh, I'm the head of health and safety

for the entire BBC. I said, oh, wow, do you come on all of the shoots? And he went, no, just this one. And then the safety team arrived, and the safety team were all Royal Marines. And I have a slight history with the Royal Marines. When I was rowing my bathtub across the English Channel, there's a sentence you maybe didn't think you were gonna hear.

I got made an honorary Commodore in the Royal Navy and obviously, it's quite a high rank. It goes first Sea Lord, second Sea Lord, Princess Anne, me. And I was sort of nervously shaking at the bottom of the building and one of the Royal Marines came over to me and said, so we're here to do the safety. I said, great, great. Well, I don't think I'll be going that high. I'll probably just stay around the one metre mark. And he said, but you rode the Channel in the

Bath. And I went, yes, yes, that's true. And he went, and you're a Commodore. And I went, yes, but it's only honorary and we should be very clear about that. And he said, you are going to climb this building. We in the Royal Navy do not fail. I said, at sea. We're in a desert. And he said, you are going to climb this building. So the instructions were really clear. I had to climb up the building on the outside

using the anti-climbing grill. There's an anti-climbing grill wrapped around the Doha Torch building, specifically designed to stop experienced climbers from climbing up the outside of the building. LAUGHTER So I thought, well, I'll just go for that one metre mark and we'll take it from there.

So I started to climb up the building. I carried on climbing. I just kept focusing on just one finger at a time. The next finger, keep going. Just do your best. Don't give in. Keep going. And I climbed up the building and I just kept going.

And midway up the building, suddenly all the minarets went off, all over the call to prayer went off. And I just thought to myself, if anybody needs prayer right now, it's definitely, I've got to be up there. And I kept climbing up the building, climbing up the building. The extraordinary thing about this is that I actually made it up the building, climbing up the building. The extraordinary thing about this

is that I actually made it up the building. That's kind. In just under two hours. Alain Robert, 34 minutes. The final thing I wanted to share with you is they sent me off to meet a man who has an extraordinary world record. This is the guy who has the highest resting tolerance in the world to G-Force. This man is like a superhero. He has the highest resting tolerance to G-Force. We all know what G-Force is. It's the stuff you experience on a rollercoaster

when you go really fast down in the rollercoaster. But this guy has the highest tolerance to G-Force. We all know what G-Force is. It's the stuff you experience on a roller coaster when you go really fast down in the roller coaster. But this guy has the highest tolerance to G-Force in the world. He's a wing commander. He's in the Royal Air Force. He was chosen because of this G-Force tolerance to break the world land speed record. He's the only man in the world to drive a car at over 700 miles an hour. He's a phenomenal human being. And they sent me to challenge him to G-Force. So we got sent to a top secret government facility. This is where every single Royal Air Force pilot takes the G-Force test. You've probably seen it.

If you've ever watched Moonraker with James Bond, it's the big iron girder with two flight cockpits at either end. And it's inside this bunker. It's an extraordinary building which was built in the 1950s. There's big signs going danger, G-force testing in progress, there's sirens that go off in that classic 1950s way of... It's amazing and there's phones that come down from the ceiling, and you can pull them down, and you can say stuff into them.

And in the middle of this entire bunker is the senior Royal Air Force scientist who has glasses, a squint, a comb-over hairstyle, a beard that he's pulled bits out of in exciting moments of G-Force testing over the years. And I got into this facility. And the test is really pretty simple in terms of G-force testing.

What they do is they stick you in the cockpit of the plane on the end of the big iron girder, and they speed the thing up going round and round and round. You have to do various tests, bit of maths, few light tests. They spin around and round, they get faster and faster and faster, and at the moment you pass out, that's the end

of the test. That is your G-force tolerance completely established. At the moment you lose your conscious mind, that is the test. Now, I'm quite tall, so normally tall people aren't very good with G-force. They thought, the doctors thought, that my G-force tolerance would be about three, maybe, three and a half, perhaps. Wing commanders is 6.1, 6.1 G, it's the highest ever tolerance measured on a human being,

6.1 G. And I got into the cockpit and the RAF scientists, sirens went off, the lights were going, danger, G-force testing in progress. And I was in the cockpit of the plane, whooping around. And he said, take it up to 2G, take it up to 2G. Now start doing some tests. Here's a light, can you see the red light and the white one? And what's three plus four?

And it was whooping around at 2G. Take it up to 3G, 3G, 4G, Take it up to three, three G, three G. Four, four G, take it up to four. It's an incredible feeling. You're going round and round and round. It feels like something is pushing down on your entire body. My eyes began to just pop out a tiny bit and I was still doing all the light testing.

Oh, there's the red one, there's the white one. Two plus two is four, I can do that, that's great. And we're going around at four G. That's the most you will ever have felt in your life for a very short time in a funfair, because that's the law. You can't go above 4G. Take it up to 4.5, 4.5. And the thing with this test is the G is constant.

It keeps going. 5G, take him up to 5G, 5G. He left the microphone open. I heard him turn to the producer. I was just still doing the test, the light test, the maths test. He turned to the producer and said, I don't know when he's going to pass out. Take him up to 5.5. 5.5G.

This is an incredible experience. I felt like there was some giant animal sitting on top of me, crushing me down. My eyes are sticking out on stalks. I'm still doing the light test. I'm still doing two plus two. I'm still amazingly conscious. I heard him go, take him up to six, 6G, 6G.

No, not only does he seem to be showing no visible effects of G-force at all, he actively seems to be enjoying it. 6.1, 6.1. Even I knew at this point that I was the joint highest G-force tested person in the world. Still doing the lights test, still doing the maths test.

6.2, 6.3, stuff it, take him up to 6.5. Whooping around faster than anything I've ever known in my life. He carried on going. He went, take him up to 6.5. Whooping around faster than anything I've ever known in my life. He carried on going. He went, take it to seven, 7G, let's see what happens. 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, this is incredible. Still doing the Dites test, still doing the maths test. At 7.3, things began to slow down.

I could see it all slowing down gently, and we stopped, and I thought, well, I must have failed the test. I didn't pass out. And I got out of the GeForce testing machine, and I sort of weaved over to the wing commander, who was still standing there looking at the test, his record in tatters.

And I said to him, that's quite an experience, isn't it? He looked at me and he went, oh, you're a freak. Now then the RF scientist ran downstairs with his hair, what was left of it just going everywhere, his glasses suddenly on the side, and he looked at me and he just went, that's the highest resting tolerance to G-force ever recorded. And I said, but I didn't pass out. And he said, I know, we had to abandon the test because we don't know the effects of 7.4G even on a dead body. I said to him, what can I do with my new superpower? I said, like, can I fly a plane?

He said, I don't know. Can you fly a plane? I said, no. He said, then no, no, you can't fly a plane. I said no. He said then no, no you can't fly a plane. And so I tell you this story, because if you try things that you've never tried before, and you push yourself and you give it a go, sometimes just occasionally, your own self will astound you. Thanks for listening.

That was Tim Fitzhigher. The BBC series was called Superhuman Challenge, although he says the working title became Kill Tim. It's sometimes repeated on BBC Worldwide and Discovery. was called Superhuman Challenge, although he says the working title became Kill Tim. It's sometimes repeated on BBC Worldwide and Discovery. Tim shared some YouTube links and photos from the show, and we'll put them up on our website so you can see them. After hearing his story and watching the clips, I was surprised by just how serious and dangerous the series was. Tim got frostbite on his feet during one challenge and had to be carried out. He did make it through all 10 episodes, but seven of the 10 involved the paramedics in some way or other.

Tim said in an email, I loved every single second. It was so much fun, a roller coaster of surprise and discovery. I think every time I managed to get through round over a personal fear, that was the best feeling. Which seems to be true for everyone we heard in this show who made it over their personal hurdle and lived to tell the tale. That's it for this hour. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour. 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-Giness, and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Emily Couch. The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support

of The Moth's global community program. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift, other music in this hour, from The Batteries Duo, Wolf Peck, The Westerlies, and Pokey Lafarge. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else go to our website, themoth.org.