TUS01601- January -Self Evident Part 2

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme, live, in person, and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. Tell Us Something is supported this year in part by a grant from the Montana 250th Commission, which was established to coordinate statewide efforts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

The objectives of the commission include promoting civic engagement, and Tell Us Something, at its core, does this by encouraging community members to share and listen to the stories of those who live, work, and play here in Montana. We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their generosity.

This week on the podcast:

Scott Davis: The air starts getting hazier as we’re getting closer and closer to the fire. We’re coming up on people that are really [00:01:00] struggling in their event. Pretty much every single one of them is walking at this point.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme self-evident.

Ruthie Castle: I began to think, “What if I wasn’t an unruly kid? What if I was just trying to exist in a neurotypical society while being neurodivergent?”

Marc Moss: Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on January 20th, 2026, at the George and Jane Dennison Theater.

Emily Farrell: I live in a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees, sweeping majestic mountains, and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you, a belief that, for me, would not survive the upcoming weekend.

Marc Moss: The theme that night was self-evident.

Shayla Paradeis: I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest. And so I did. I [00:02:00] turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly.

Marc Moss: The University of Montana stands on the aboriginal territories of the Salish and Kalispel people. And we must acknowledge in the year of the 250th anniversary of the United States that our founding fathers arrived here as colonialists and stole this land from the indigenous people that were here long before Christopher Columbus made a wrong turn and landed here.

For millennia, winters were a time for indigenous communities that were here, and continue to live here, to come together, passing down history and wisdom through the art of storytelling. We recognize the deep, sacred relationship that they have with this land, and we are grateful for the opportunity to have shared our own stories in this place.

Remember this Tell Us Something [00:03:00] stories sometimes have adult themes Storytellers sometimes use adult language

In our first story, ash falls from the sky and a nearby wildfire casts an ominous glow over the high desert as Scott Davis pushes past total physical collapse in his first 100-mile race. With the air quality hitting dangerous levels and the race officially canceled, Scott must decide if his broken body can endure the final six miles of the race in the dark.

Scott calls his story Are We There Yet? 100 Miles of Ash and Fire. Thanks for listening.

Scott Davis: Thank you Driving into Central Oregon, it’s a hot August summer day, blue sky, high desert, dusty, and there’s a single black line of smoke rising off in the distance, which is a bit ominous ’cause I’m about to run my first ever hundred-mile trail race in [00:04:00] just two days in the same area.

It’s even more ominous the next day when at packet pickup, which is down in Bend, Oregon, ash is literally falling from the sky. The race organizers have told us, uh, they’re monitoring the situation, but they’re optimistic that the weather is, is gonna change and we’ll be able to actually have the race. So the race is meant to start in Bend, Oregon, do a lap around the Cascades, and then finish in Sisters, Oregon, a small town about 20 miles north of Bend.

And so the fire is then also a little bit north, um, of Sisters as well. So we’re starting further away and gonna slowly make our way closer. Um, but the morning of the race, uh, they were correct. We had blue skies, clear– You wouldn’t have guessed anything was wrong. And the race got off, I assume, normally.

It was my first one, so, uh, I didn’t really know. Um, but at mile 50– Well, I’ve ran ultras before, but this is the first time I’ve gone this distance. [00:05:00] And at mile 50, um, I’ve actually found myself in third place, not because I’ve gone out with the leaders, not because I’ve even necessarily passed a lot of people.

I mean, it’s a hot day, it’s really dusty, um, and a lot of the leaders have dropped out. Um, but being in third place is pretty good motivation. Uh, and even though my body is hurting quite a bit, I’m, I’m feeling optimistic that things are about to change, um, at this 50-mile mark. Uh, for one thing, I’m about to start running with my buddy Dustin, so I’ve got a pacer for the, the rest of the race.

He will accompany me for the next 25 miles. And, um, my body is hurting a lot. Uh, it’s been a lot of running, but we’re about to do the biggest vertical climb of the race, meaning it will start being more glutes and hamstrings, a little less quads. Um, and I’m thinking like, “Okay, I’m gonna get this second wind,” which maybe seems a little crazy, but the year before, I did my first ever 100K, [00:06:00] and halfway through the race, I just had this amazing second wind and I finished and, um, I got third place, and that was very, very cool and a little unexpected.

And so I thought, “All right. This might be another situation like that. I’m gonna start feeling better.” Um, my body, for context at this point, um, I’m so sore. I don’t know if you’ve ever been so sore you can’t really straighten your legs or muscles at all. Um, that started happening about mile 30. Um, we’re at we’re at mile 50 and I’ve got a long way to go yet.

Uh, this is the hottest part of the day and, uh, my second wind does not come. We- what does happen instead during this next 25 miles is the air starts getting hazier as we’re getting closer and closer to the fire. We actually start crossing paths with a 50-mile trail race that’s going on at the same time, so we’re coming up on people that are, uh, really struggling in their event.

Um, pretty much every single one of them is walking at this point. [00:07:00] Most of them are starting to wear masks. Several are sitting on the side of the trail, and at least three or four of them are legit laying down in the middle of the trail. Um, I kept running, not because I’m cruel, but Dustin, my buddy, did stop and check and make sure everyone was okay.

The fourth place runner, the only runner to really catch me, um, catches up to me at this point, and I ask him, “What does it look like on the course?” Because I’m really nervous that now there’s gonna be, like, a bunch of people passing me and I’m gonna lose third place. And he says, “Oh man, it’s carnage out there.”

Uh, which is an apt description both of the, the course, but also of my body, which again, I’m, I’m continuing to get more and more sore. Uh, my feet hurt so bad I would eventually get X-rays thinking I had broken them. I’ve got chafe the entire length of my thighs that I just keep slathering in Vaseline at aid stations, which then gets covered in the dust [00:08:00] of the high desert.

Oh. So I put more Vaseline on. Um, Dustin later would describe me as the dirtiest human he’s ever seen. And he is the parent of two, uh, three or younger children, so. Anywho, um, Dustin and I are able to keep my third place as we make it to the 75-mile aid station, and here I’m gonna switch, and my friend Zach is gonna now take me the rest of the way.

Uh, and it does not take long before… Well, uh, this is also the furthest I’ve ever been. Um, my 100K was my previous furthest, so now at mile 75, every single step I take is the furthest I’ve ever gone, and I am very aware of that. Uh, at, pretty quick into that stretch, um, that fourth place runner passes me looking fresh as a daisy by my standards, and I am…

My run is [00:09:00] slowing down to a jog, to a walk, to pretty much a shuffle, uh, and I’m just waiting for more and more people to, to keep passing me, right? Things are getting dark, um, both mentally and also because the sun is legitimately setting, and the sky is filling with ash from the fire. It’s getting pretty bad.

In our headlamps, the, the little stream that you can see, it’s just full of particles, um, smoke and ash. Um, and you can see at one point when we’re running along the ridge, you can see the glow of the fire off in the distance and hear the ambulances, um, and the fire trucks, right, attending to it, and we just keep on going.

Um, by the time we make it to the second to last aid station, we’re 13 miles from the finish. I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m gonna not be on the podium, right? I’ve, um, the fourth place guy is well past me. I am making peace with the fact that I’m gonna probably have to walk the rest of the way, uh, which [00:10:00] as a half marathon, that’s a long way to go, and I, I start crying to myself a little bit leaving that aid station thinking about this daunting task.

And, um, I don’t get to have my moment really because that fourth place runner, who’s now in third, is being carried back to the aid station. Um, he is– he fell and hurt his hip. Um, I, I don’t know what all happened, but I can say that if I had fallen, there’s no way I would’ve gotten up. Uh, so once again, I found myself in third place, though not necessarily feeling deserving of it and trying not to get too excited because I am walking so unbelievably slow that I can’t imagine anybody wouldn’t pass me.

Um, we’re doing like 23-minute miles, and I’m not exaggerating. Um, I, I had done my race prep plan and anticipate as like best case, worst case. My worst case was 17-minute miles, so we were wildly off course. Um- And so we’re [00:11:00] walking in the dark, and I’m just waiting, like, all right, people are, are gonna start passing us.

There’s just gotta be an army of these runners ’cause we’re going so slow, uh, and we don’t see anybody, right? It’s just, it’s just me and Zach and the air, which is so full of dust and ash. I had Zach look up what the AQI is, and it, it’s 250. Oh. Um, well, I don’t know for how long, but w- the moment that we checked, it was at 250.

Anything above 150 is considered unhealthy. Uh, like, you shouldn’t be out there. And we make it to the very last aid station, six miles from the finish, um, and they tell me that the race has been canceled. Oh.

Here’s the thing, though. Um, oh, I forgot a very important detail. In addition to all of the smoke, um, before I make it to this aid station six miles from the finish, uh, I start to pee a Coca-Cola brown color. Oh. [00:12:00] Uh, this is a sign of rhabdomyolysis, which is a condition where your muscles start breaking down and release a protein into your body, um, that your kidneys can’t really process, and it can l- lead to kidney failure if not treated.

Um, but I was with Zach. He’s a veterinarian, so I felt fine. H- h- he’s got my back. Um, and we, we make it to this last aid station. We’re six miles from the finish, and I find out that the race is canceled, but here’s the thing. So all racers are being sent home. Um, volunteers have, are going to evacuate their homes ’cause the fire’s expanding, and they just can’t keep volunteers out anymore.

But I’m at the last aid station, and I don’t require any more volunteers, so the race directors have offered to let me finish, um, if I so choose. So, uh, if I can just get this broken body, um, the last six miles across the finish line, in spite of everything telling me I should probably stop, including my own body, um, [00:13:00] we kept on going.

Uh, we had two more hours of slow trudging through the dark. Finished in third place. I got a hold a big, dumb novelty check that was $250 and didn’t even pay for my X-rays. Uh, And, uh, as we packed up and, um, were driving back to the Airbnb, which definitely should have been a hospital, I am now realizing. Uh, didn’t know at the time, but, uh, I said to everyone in the car, um, “I love my body too much to ever do that to it again,” but we’ll see.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Scott. Scott Davis is a bit of a masochist, as two of his favorite things are wildly unpopular in our culture: running ultramarathons and mathematics. One of those [00:14:00] he does professionally, teaching math at Missoula College, while the other is just for fun. A self-described cartoon enthusiast, he has 15 cartoon-related tattoos and counting.

Scott Davis is powered equally by curiosity, a drive that borders on unhealthy, and a high-carb diet. In our next story, after a childhood defined by unexplained meltdowns and a desperate attempt to mask her way through a remote religious upbringing, Ruthie Castle, a graduate student in mental health counseling, finds herself arguing with a professor about how to diagnose neurodivergence.

Her search for clinical answers leads her to become her own guinea pig in an assessment that finally challenges everything she was ever told about being an unruly child. Ruthie calls her story Under The Mask. Thanks for listening.

Ruthie Castle: Growing up, I had a capsule wardrobe before it was trendy to [00:15:00] have a capsule wardrobe.

This meant that I had about five outfits that I would wear on repeat. They were predictable and dependable. I knew exactly how they would feel on my body, where they would touch me, what the textures were like, and I could be certain that I had already cut off the tags or I could wear it inside out. The issue was when my parents would get me a present, a piece of clothing from a thrift store for my birthday.

It wasn’t one of my five, and I felt like I had to wear it. I felt compelled. If I didn’t wear it, it wouldn’t feel loved. It wouldn’t feel like it was enough. It didn’t feel appreciated. So I would force myself to wear it instead of one of my normal five outfits. And the texture wouldn’t be right. The fabric was wrong.

The neckline was different. There was tags in unexpected places. And so inevitably, this would lead to a complete meltdown. If the texture was too much, I had too many sensory issues. [00:16:00] I couldn’t hear what was going on. I couldn’t make sentences. Everything shut down. And to be fair, I was well known for these meltdowns.

It could happen because I was getting my fingernails trimmed, because I was getting my hair brushed, because there was a change in plans, and suddenly I would go nonverbal. I would start biting. I’d claw and cry endlessly. And at a certain point, I knew that these were unreasonable based on the stimulus that was causing them, but it felt like I had no control over them.

I grew up in a religious community, um, about 30 minutes outside of the closest town, and that town had a population of 3,000 people, so it was a very remote upbringing. I was told by the adults in this community that I was too rowdy, I was too loud, and then I’d be too quiet, and I would [00:17:00] share too much, and then I wouldn’t share enough.

I would say things that were rude, but I wouldn’t understand why they were rude. And so I watched the kids around me, trying to figure out how they effortlessly fit this middle ground that I could never seem to find. If I was told that I was too loud, I wouldn’t find a middle area. I’d swing exactly in the opposite direction and go non-verbal for a while When it came time to go to college, naturally I chose a large public school that was known as the party school in the state.

And I remember my first week there during orientation week, I went to a frat party. And it was sticky, it was hot, it was loud, and there was so many people. And very quickly, I realized the rest of the world does not operate the way that the community that I grew up in does. So I did what I did then, I watched people.

I learned to dress like the other girls [00:18:00] dressed. I talked about what they talked about, even if I didn’t find it interesting, and used a lot of substances to try to cope. At the time, I wrote this off as being a little different. Like, yeah, I’m a little bit odd, I’m a little bit quirky, and this is just because of the way that I grew up.

Like, I’m homeschooled, I wasn’t well socialized, and I’m just having trouble adapting to this Fast forward about seven years, and I am in my grad program. I’m getting a degree in clinical mental health counseling. And one of the first classes that you have to take as a part of this program is called Skills Class, and it’s an experiential class where essentially you are pretending to be a therapist for one of your classmates, starting in like fifteen-second increments and then building up to thirty minutes.

And all of these sessions are recorded. There’s a little camera up in the corner of the room, and you take these recordings, [00:19:00] and you show them in front of your supervisors, your professors, and your classmates to get feedback both on what you’re saying and the interventions that you’re using, but also just how you’re showing up as a physical form in the room.

Pretty quickly, I’m getting feedback that I need to dress more professionally, for one. So I start to dress more professionally, even though it’s c- uncomfortable and a sensory nightmare again. I’m told that I can’t cross my legs because that shows that I’m closed off to the client, so I learn to sit with my feet flat on the floor, my hands in my lap.

I’m told that I need to make more eye contact, which is weird because they’re just a camera in the corner of the room. How can they tell if I’m looking at the person’s forehead or at their eyes? But I realize that these are just hoops that I have to jump through if I wanna get this degree. The next semester, we are in diagnosis class, and we are learning how to do a differential diagnosis to tell apart autism spectrum disorder and [00:20:00] complex PTSD.

It will probably be a surprise to none of you that I tend to be a bit of a wallflower. Um, I sit in the back of the class. I only talk if it’s necessary for participation. But suddenly, I found myself arguing with the professor. I could not understand how you’re supposed to tell these two diagnoses apart that essentially have the exact same criteria and presentation in a person.

So I’m doing all of this research in my free time outside of class, trying to figure out how to tell these two things apart. I’m sending the professor articles, and I just, I can’t seem to wrap my mind around it. So I decide that the best way to figure this out is to go in for an assessment myself. I’m gonna use myself as a guinea pig and see what questions these professional assessors are asking to figure out how to tell these two things apart.

I go in for the [00:21:00] assessment and it’s ridiculously easy. Um, first question that he asked me is if I can hear things that other people can’t hear. Um, I respond, “You know, that’s kind of… I don’t know what other people can hear, but yeah, like, I can hear electricity in the walls and I can hear the lights.” He asked me how I would eat a plate of Thanksgiving dinner, and I was like, “Well, duh, obviously you eat your way around the plate taking a bite of each food so they all end at the exact same time.

Like, this stuff is easy.”

So I’m feeling confident. I’m like, “I’m nailing the shit out of this assessment.”

No surprise, um, came back and he had diagnosed me with autism and ADHD. And originally, I’m super defiant. I’m like, “There’s no way that I’m neurodivergent.” Um, the way it had been explained to me my whole life from therapists was just that I had complex trauma, and that’s why the symptoms were what they were.

I [00:22:00] start to do research again and learn from people’s first-person narratives instead of just these research articles written by people who are not neurodivergent, and things kind of start to make sense. I get flooded with all these memories of childhood, and I began to think, “What if I wasn’t an unruly kid?

What if I was just trying to exist in a neurotypical society while being neurodivergent?”

So now I took a year off after the program, kind of just to de-stress, um, after how stimulating and how overwhelming that was, and more and more these memories are flooding back in. Things are starting to make more sense. Viewing myself through this lens, I have way more compassion for myself. I do research on how there’s such a strong correlation [00:23:00] and comorbidity between autism spectrum disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, especially if you were undiagnosed, which is very common for females.

We’re very good at masking and observing people’s behavior like I did at the frat party. So I get to this place of why can’t I be both? Why can’t I be neurodivergent and also have experienced trauma? Currently, I am working full-time as a therapist, primarily with neurodivergent, neurodivergent adults who have also experienced trauma.

And when I get to work every day, I’m wearing outfits that feel comfortable for me, even if they’re not considered professional. I take off my shoes when I walk in the office. I turn on all of my low mood lighting, no overhead lights, and I get my snacks out, and I sit crisscross applesauce in my chair [00:24:00] modeling for all of the clients that I’m seeing what it’s like to unmask and be in a space where they are radically welcomed, loved, and accepted.

Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Ruthie. Ruthie Castle would rather talk about her dogs, Pippin and Tigger, than herself. She eats copious amounts of beans and oatmeal on a daily basis, and she read 82 books last year. She spends her free time finding bones, rocks, and other treasures in the plentiful public land around Missoula.

Coming up after the break

Emily Farrell: I live in a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees, sweeping majestic mountains, and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you. A belief that, for me, would not survive the upcoming weekend. [00:25:00]

Shayla Paradeis: I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest.

And so I did. I turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thank you to our story sponsor, The Good Food Store, who helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com. The next Tell Us Something event is September 23rd. The theme is Pursuit of Happiness.

Tickets are on sale now. Get yours at tellussomething.org. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast, where people share their true stories around a theme live in person without notes. I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on January 20th, 2026 at the George and Jane [00:26:00] Dennison Theater in Missoula, Montana.

Opening the second half of the Tell Us Something podcast, Emily Ferrell’s world is upended when her magical grandfather flies her and her sister into the heart of the Ringling Brothers Circus to become guest performers. What starts as a dream of running away with the circus turns into a night of sensory overload and a lonely moment of panic that redefines what it means to be brave in a story that we call Send in the Clowns.

Thanks for listening

Emily Farrell: It’s the summer I turned five and I live in Condon, Montana also known as the Swan Valley a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees sweeping majestic mountains and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you a belief that for me would not survive the upcoming weekend [00:27:00] I’m pretty sure this is one of my earliest memories.

I’m getting on a small Cessna 182 with my mom and my three-year-old sister, Shelley. This plane has just landed in the middle of a field between the Mission Mountains and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and to me at the time, this all seems pretty normal because the pilot was my grandfather, who we called Grack

Grack was the kind of grandpa who could make an ordinary day into something completely magical. And one of my favorite memories of Grack are his infamous candy trees at our family cabin near Seeley Lake. Every summer, Grack’s trees would grow sugar-coated peach rings from their branches that my cousins and I would harvest [00:28:00] and then gobble up on the back porch before we had even had breakfast.

But today, there were no candy trees because GRAC was taking us to see the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus in Billings, Montana. And at the time, my mom’s cousin, my Aunt Sarah Jane, was the performance director of this circus. So as my mom was loading us up onto this plane, she informed Shelly and I that we had both actually been invited to be in this circus.

Ooh. And we were all about it. Um, we could not believe our luck. We were so down, and for the next two and some-hour plane ride, the two of us were just vibrating in the back of that airplane like a couple of little hummingbirds. We absolutely wanted to be in that circus. And so as you can imagine, as we arrived at [00:29:00] the event center and smelled the popcorn and the zoo animals, our anticipation hit a fever pitch.

And walking into that building, the room was enormous, and there was movement going on in every direction. And at this point, the circus hadn’t even started yet. Uh, we got there a little bit early to meet up with Sarah Jane and find out about this being in the circus business. And as we entered this room, the three rings came into view, which is where the performers did their performances.

Um, there were women in rhinestone leotards that caught every light. There were elephants in these elegant blankets with gold tassels on the ends. And then there were the clowns. There were so many clowns, like, just clowns everywhere, stretching, talking, warming up, and some of them were even smiling and making eye contact with [00:30:00] us.

We found Sarah Jane, where she took us to see the elephants, and I got to ride one. And little me loved elephants. I loved elephants because they were so grand that the earth would shake as they walked, and I loved elephants because around this age, I took a ballet class and the teacher asked me to demonstrate a ballet jump.

And if you don’t know what a ballet jump is, it’s when you throw your foot forward as you jump across the room, and this lady said that my ballet jumps looked more like an elephant than a ballerina. But I actually thought that was really awesome because I had always wanted to be an elephant and stomp around and take up space and be big, ’cause I was little.

And so when I got on that elephant, I just felt it, you know? I felt like I was borrowing a body that wasn’t my own, and I felt like the star of that show [00:31:00] After I rode the elephant, Sarah Jane took us to see the clowns that we would be walking out to be in the circus with, and these clowns were like a completely magical family of souls.

Some of them were on stilts, some of them were on unicycles, and all of them were just completely whimsical and cute. Now, leading up to this circus, my little sister and I had been watching a video about this circus on repeat, and one of the acts that both mystified and completely terrified us was a man named Tahar the Alligator King.

And Tahar was a Moroccan alligator wrestler with striking good looks, big muscles, and a clean-shaven, shiny, bald head. Tahar was known for hypnotizing his alligators [00:32:00] and then putting his shiny, bald head right between their jaws So as my sister and I are standing with these clowns, we’re on the edge of the ring as the show begins, and Tahar was performing his act right in front of us.

And this is when I remember my excitement beginning to quietly turn into significant anxiety. I started to become very concerned about where Tahar and his alligators might go next, and whether they might make their way toward my three-year-old sister. But luckily, I didn’t have too much time to spiral because at that moment, Tahar’s act was over and the clowns were whisking us away into the ring.

But at this point, I’m completely overstimulated. I’m sweating. I’m worried about rogue reptiles and holding onto this clown’s hand like it was my only lifeline. The [00:33:00] clowns led us out around the perimeter of this circle as the ringmaster announced us as the circus’s special guests. And that was it. That was our big moment I wish that I could say it was more magnificent, but I think I was more excited to get back to my seat, ’cause Grax scooped me up, and from the safety of his lap, I continued to watch the show.

And the three rings w- sta- continued in constant motion as the ringmaster, uh, announced where to look, like a traffic cop of awe and wonder. My mom pointed out Sarah Jane, who was standing on a podium directing the performers and wearing a top hat, a coat with tails, and neon hot pants There was a man who was shot out of a cannon, which I later learned was the most dangerous job in the circus.[00:34:00]

And as I watched this spectacle unfold, I remember just being completely transfixed by the way these performers were able to blend the lines between humans and animals. People were flying around like birds, elephants were doing dances on tiny stools, and tigers were jumping through hoops of fire. Uh, as the performance ended, Sarah Jane invited us to see the train where the performers and the animals all lived together.

And I’m pretty sure this was the part that, uh, fantasi- or f- made me the most excited, because I began to fantasize about running away with that circus. And Sarah Jane’s train car was as magical as I possibly could have imagined. It had a little bed on cables that went up and down, and windows on both sides, and to me, it felt like a tiny fort [00:35:00] on wheels And at this point, I’m pretty sure my sister and I were completely exhausted, ’cause the next thing I remember, my mom was putting us to sleep in this little space.

And as I was drifting off, I was totally in my fantasy of running away with this circus. Until the train lurched. I sat straight up. The car was dark. There was just some soft light coming through the windows. My sister was asleep. My mom was gone, and I wasn’t sure if I had dreamt this or if I had, uh, if it had actually happened, but in that moment, my f- fantasy completely collapsed and I started to panic.

I wanted to look for my mom, but I thought if I got off that train, it might take off with my sister in it, so I just stayed there, trying to be very brave and very quiet at the same time. [00:36:00] And as I sat there, I thought about the show, and I thought about the elephants and the flying and Sarah Jane’s hot pants, and I couldn’t get over the way that these performers seemed to bend the laws of nature.

And then I started to think about Grack and how he had always kinda had his own kind of magic like this with things like the candy tree. As we got older, becoming teenagers and then adults, the candy tree grew barren for many years. But now, Shelly and I both have kids of our own, and most of my cousins do too, and I’m happy to report that the candy tree blooms peach rings quite regularly now.

My oldest is 16, so I’ve been a mother for quite a while, but sometimes it still feels like I’m just per- performing the role, and underneath the responsibility, and the bills, and the work, sometimes I just feel like I’m a kid [00:37:00] who’s in the costume of being a parent. Sometimes I even feel like I’m all alone in a, in a box on wheels, and I can’t control where I’m going.

And then I remember that I’m still the very bravest big sister, stomping around and taking up space like an elephant doing ballet. And I know that little me would be so proud. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Emily. Emily Farrell is a communication major at the University of Montana, as well as a mother, writer, and lifelong learner. A dedicated puzzle enthusiast, she enjoys playing cards, sampling fine cheeses, roller skating, and kicking her kids’ butts in Mario Kart. Emily grew up in the Seeley-Swan Valley, where she developed a deep love of catching [00:38:00] frogs, building snow forts, and jumping into ice-cold rivers and lakes.

Her work and life are shaped by curiosity, humor, and a strong conviction that connection, much like play, is both an art and a discipline. Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Shayla Paradise has a profound encounter in a Montana cedar grove and begins her lifelong quest to truly listen to the natural world.

This journey eventually carries her across the globe to a sacred ceremony in the Australian bush, where an unexpected lesson from an elder and a conversation by a river change her entire understanding of what it means to belong to the Earth. Shayla calls her story The Shape of Embodied Listening.

Thanks for listening

Shayla Paradeis: I was twenty three years old the first time I heard the [00:39:00] trees. I was walking in my favorite forest in northwest Montana It’s this beautiful old growth grove of cedars. And right before I came back to the parking lot, right before stepping out of the woods, I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest.

And so I did. I turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly. And as I did, I felt this sorta emulating energy coming out of me almost like a wave, as if the being that is me had somehow come out of this body into the field around me, and I could send a thank you.

And then I immediately felt something come back, like [00:40:00] this warm touch on the back of my heart that sent this warm sensation all throughout my body, and I realized we have real communion with nature

And since then, I’ve been on a journey of cultivating that practice, and I’ve been treating it like it’s my job to listen to nature and have communion with it, and to be good at that practice, to take it seriously, and to kinda keep growing and keep listening and cultivating that skill And throughout that process, it has brought me to some incredible teachers, uh, some of them indigenous elders.

One in particular in Western Colorado, a sweet old man named Chi. And still unknown to me, he could somehow tell that I was doing something that I didn’t really know I was [00:41:00] doing, and he helped me learn a few practices, like calling in the four directions, setting sacred space, or saying hello to country.

So when you get somewhere and you get out of your car, you offer it your vibration before you do anything else, and basically stand there and say hello. Offer yourself. And these teachers that I’ve been working with eventually connected me to elders in Australia. So in the spring eq-equinox, our spring equinox, their fall equinox of twenty twenty-four, I got invited to go to a ceremony called the Rocky River Corroboree, and it was hosted by a man, a custodian of the land of the Rocky River.

Uncle Lewis Walker is his name, and I was asked to attend and to stay at the [00:42:00] healer’s camp I arrived, uh, as the sun was setting, by plane in Brisbane, and then I rented a car and drove on the left side of the road down windy paths in this sort of jungle bush of wild grasslands and eucalyptus trees. And I got there in the dark to camp, and, uh, I got out of the car, and I just felt buzzy and sort of like I didn’t belong.

I had really strong imposter syndrome. And I don’t identify as a healer, so I didn’t know why I was invited to be at this camp. And the next morning when I woke up, I went for a little walk to say hello and kinda get oriented. And when I got back to camp, one of the elders scolded me for wandering. I was like, “Oh, no, I did bad,” and I’m already an American and so afraid of cultural misappropriation in this situation and not sure that I belong and nervous.

And [00:43:00] right after that conversation, everybody stands erect in the camp, and this man is walking toward us in a long black robe with red trim, no smile on his face, real serious eyes, and it’s Uncle Lewis Walker. And he comes into camp, and he says, “Where are the Americans?” And I was g- hiding behind the outer circle.

But there were only three Americans present, so I stepped forward, and he looked at me with real pinpoint focus, just met me with his eyes, and then he drew out, and then he pinned right back in And he went, “Good.” And he smiled a little bit. So that helps me relax and, and enjoy the ceremony, uh, which started that night with Uncle Lewis Walker standing on the stage, r- a grass stage, with a banner over him [00:44:00] that says, “One Blood” in red writing on yellow fabric.

And there’s a big fire in front of him, and we’re on a plateau where his voice in the microphone echoes over the river valley. And he started the ceremony by inviting us all to cleanse ourselves and make eucalyptus smoke, which we did. We brought these branches in, and there’s probably 250 people at this gathering.

We threw in these branches and cleansed ourselves in the yummiest smoke I’ve ever been in. And then we started to dance, ceremony dance, to the didgeridoo. And the first song was for the kangaroo, so everybody dances like the kangaroo, and then the emu, and then the eagle, and then the goanna, where you crawl on the ground all around the fire to the didgeridoo.

And then we sit with embodied animal [00:45:00] spirit, and we listen. And Uncle Lewis Walker told us a story about the Pleiades, the seven sisters. And he said that in his lineage and in his oral tradition, it has been long known that there are eight sisters, and that the eighth sister is this unseen energy bet- between them all.

The woman who put out the fire by bringing the water. And he says he calls this gathering in part for all of us to understand how important it is that we access that energy to bring the water to put out the fire, and to come together to do it at this crucial time.

After his ceremony, I was introduced to a [00:46:00] woman named Ria. Ria was getting a PhD, and she’s from a colonial background like myself, in listening to river. And she had a real relationship with this land and a great relationship with Uncle Lewis Walker. He was really one of her mentors. And she took me to this beautiful part of the camp, the women’s camp, they call it, and it was a soft swimming hole.

And we went for a nude swim together and we sang and we listened to song, and I felt like a mermaid. It was amazing. And I could kind of feel this beautiful blending of my song and her song, hers of river and mine of forest. It was really quite a splendid experience. And when we were walking back to camp together, I asked [00:47:00] her, “Ria, what do I do with all of this?

Like, how do I carry this back to the people that I come from and share it in a way that’s useful or appropriate or respectful or tangible?” And she just looked at me and laughed, and she said, “It doesn’t work like that. Like, right now, where we’re standing, it has so little to do with what you’re doing or saying or even thinking.

What’s going on right now is that those magpies are interacting with you, and those cicadas are reacting to your vibration. There’s stuff happening all around you. It matters very little what you make of it or how you shape it.” And I had this huge aha moment as the shape of how I think changed [00:48:00] It’s a dialogue, of course.

So while I’ve been spending so much of my time thinking there’s this, like, cultivation of this linear growth that just keeps adding and getting better, it’s really that there’s this ever-tethered, ever-present shape, multidimensional, that we are and that everything else is, and that we can’t really do it wrong

And so while I had been looking so deeply into nature and wanting to listen, nature had been also looking very deeply back into me. Our journey is our offering

Marc Moss: [00:49:00] Thanks, Shayla. Shayla Paradise is a walking ecosystems storyteller who identifies as a wild animal. Although she looks a bit out of place in some social settings, she is mostly well-behaved and has managed to walk across entire countries five times without a smartphone to navigate. Her narratives from meandering experiences over 18,000 miles of through-hiking are poetically expressed in her book, Footprint of a Heart, and through events as a public speaker and singer-songwriter.

Shayla is a believer in beauty, a seer of connectivity, and is consistently mesmerized by the experiences of being human. Lately, she has been activated to remind us of what we have by telling stories of the Earth, animals, and stars. Next week on the Tell Us Something podcast.

Linda Grinde: I could smell horse sweat and leather and, and gun smoke in the air, and I was holding my rifle and felt the weight of it against me and the [00:50:00] sweat running down my neck, and I could taste the salt and the dirt on my face.

And I looked around and I saw my friends standing up in the back of these wagons.

Nora Mahmoud: One day after the lesson, a student called Lily raised her hand and asked a question. “Can one person change the life of someone?” I looked at her and answered, “Well, Lily, one person, one conversation, one teacher, one place can change the life of someone.”

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme the power of place.

Madeline M: I was drooling all over the flashlight and about 15 minutes in and I’m just crying and I’m like, “Please, take them, take them.” Nothing’s happening. I, I kinda stick ’em in my armpit and then I go back into the barn. I finally call Andy and I pl- say, “Please, like, get down [00:51:00] here.

I, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Cathy Scholtens: We tore into that chocolate like a pack of wolves. You just take a bite. If you didn’t like it, you just spit it out, just threw it on the ground. It was insane, and we weren’t saying much, okay? It was very quiet. We just … And then we heard it.

Marc Moss: Tune in for those stories on the next Tell Us Something podcast.

The next Tell Us Something event is September 23rd. The theme is Pursuit of Happiness. Tickets are on sale now. Get yours at tellussomething.org Thanks to our media sponsors MissoulaEvents.net, Mike’s Print and Copy, Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104.5.

And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, Float Missoula and [00:52:00] Joyce of Tile. Thanks to Cash for Junkers, who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzin’ and can be found on their album, which you can stream at cashforjunkersband.com. You have been listening to the Tell Us Something podcast

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme, live, in person, and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. The next Tell Us Something live event is right around the corner.

We are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana. The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org. Tell Us Something is supported this year in part by a grant from the Montana 250th Commission, which was established to coordinate statewide efforts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

The objectives of the commission include promoting civic engagement, and Tell Us Something, [00:01:00] at its core, does this by encouraging community members to share and listen to the stories of those who live, work, and play here in Montana. We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their generosity.

This week on the podcast.

Where I saw my fellow waiters like me, artists, writers, photographers, actors, dreamers, all waiting for their big break.

Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme self-evident.

I went to the Easter dresses they had, and I was, like, flipping through dresses. And I turn around.

My mom was standing right there, and I was, like, so scared.

Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on January 20th, 2026, at the George and Jane Dennison Theater.

And I knocked on the door, and this big burly guy [00:02:00] with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.”

The theme that night was “Self-Evident”.

I read Into the Wild, and I just ate that up. Alaska, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. It was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity.

The University of Montana stands on the aboriginal territories of the Salish and Kalispel people, and we must acknowledge in the year of the 250th anniversary of the United States that our founding fathers arrived here as colonialists and stole this land from the indigenous people that were here long before Christopher Columbus made a wrong turn and landed here.

For millennia, winters were a time for Indigenous communities that were here and continue to live here to come together, passing down history and wisdom [00:03:00] through the art of storytelling. We recognize the deep sacred relationship that they have with this land, and we are grateful for the opportunity to have shared our own stories in this place

Remember this Tell Us Something stories sometimes have adult themes Storytellers sometimes use adult language In our first story, Francis Davis is an aspiring novelist who receives a letter that promised to change everything. He had won a prestigious $50,000 arts grant. As he celebrates the windfall with his fellow dreamers and artists in the South Philly arts scene, a strange coincidence involving a famous jazz writer and a second piece of mail begins to cast a shadow over his sudden fortune.

Francis calls his story The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Thanks for listening[00:04:00]

It was 1994 Frances Davis won $50,000 in an arts grant and I’m sure my life was about to change

I was living in South Philly working part-time as a caterer

And I came home one day, find a piece of mail that I took up to my one-bedroom apartment above an accounting office. It was from the Pew Charitable Trust Walked into my apartment, opened the letter. There were two pieces of paper. The first piece of paper, “Dear applicant, we regret to inform you. We’ve read with interest, but please apply in the future.”

I was a loser. I was a [00:05:00] loser. I was a loser. But the second piece of paper, the list of winners, there was my name. Francis Davis. Francis Davis. Francis Davis. I was a winner. I was a winner. I was a winner That afternoon, I was working a party at Rittenhouse Square, 15th and Locust. I gathered up my secondhand tuxedo, put it in the garbage bag that I used to haul around, and walked to work, where I saw my fellow waiters like me, artists, writers, photographers, actors, dreamers, all waiting for their big break Mine had come in

As we set up the [00:06:00] tables and chairs, the bars and the food stations, the decorations, strung lights in the trees, I told all my fellow waiters the good news. I was a winner. Fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars. I could take off a year, maybe two, write my novel. They were happy. They congratulated me Maybe a little jealous.

One girl who had broken up with me by telling me she’d like to do things looked at me like maybe she had misjudged

It was one of the best nights of my life. By the time I had changed out to my tuxedo, I told nearly everyone in work the good news. Serving the fancy food to my patrons, the rich and [00:07:00] influential of the arts community of which I would soon be part

I felt great. That night, my coworkers took me out, bought me drinks, slapped me on the back. I told stories. But when I went home, there was the two pieces of paper on my kitchen table. The rejection letter, “Dear applicant,” the list of winners. There was a number at the bottom of the rejection letter. I called the number, left a message.

“There’s been a mistake. I’m a winner. My name is among the winners, but there’s also a rejection letter. Could you call? Could you explain my quandary?”

I must confess, about two years [00:08:00] previous to this, I was in my West Philadelphia apartment with a, my girlfriend at the time. We were watching a VHS movie. We’ve rented from Blockbuster The Conversation by Francis Ford Coppola and the phone rang And I went to the kitchen to answer it. I picked it up.

Person on the line identified themselves as a reporter. They said I was Francis Davis. They began to praise my book, how much they liked my book, how much they liked my writing, my book of jazz. I let them go on. I had received a call like this more than once

When he stopped talking, when he asked when would be a good time to set up an interview, I had to tell him the truth. There were two Francis Davises. Two [00:09:00] Francis Davises. One, the famous jazz writer who’d written a book on Miles Davis. Me, a short story writer published by his friends in zines I hung up the phone, went back with a fresh bowl of popcorn, finished the movie with my girlfriend.

We laughed about it

You might guess what happened. I got a call Monday morning from a very sorrowful cl-clerk, “We’re sorry. We’re sorry. There’s been a mix-up. There’s been a mistake.” But it was my mistake The rejection letter was right. The list of w- won- winners was right. There was two Francis Davises. But he had done nothing wrong.

But I ask you, had I done anything wrong? Wouldn’t you have done the same? Enjoyed the weekend. [00:10:00] Live a little bit in your head as a dreamer

So I went back to work that Monday. There was an indoor party, this one at the Franklin Institute for bankers And I knew what I had to do

But I couldn’t. I served the prime rib, the garlic whipped potatoes And between the entree and the dessert, I wandered upstairs, the second floor of the science museum where there’s a giant replica, fiberglass replica of the human heart. You could walk into it. There was a set of stairs up the right ventricle into the aorta, down the left ventricle.

The da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum of the [00:11:00] heartbeat. Facts Were drummed in as well. The average human heart beats two billion times per lifetime. I knew what I had to do. I walked down and told all my coworkers, “There was a mistake. There was a mistake. There was two Francis Davis. I actually didn’t win the fifty thousand dollars.”

Let me tell you, if you tell a group of dreamers, artists, writers, musicians who would die for fifty thousand dollars, fifty thousand dollars may be a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in today’s money, and you had to tell them you didn’t win, they will laugh at you They will look at you with a mixture of pity and ri-ridicule.

The girl who had said she liked to do things when I told her the news she [00:12:00] looked at me and scoffed like something had been confirmed

But I was not wrong. I was not wrong. I was not wrong because two weeks after this, I get a call from Lois Welch, the creative writing director, U- University of Montana, the MFA program. She was offering me a full fellowship. “Francis, come to Montana. Would you like to come to Montana? Are you interested? We loved your work Yes, Lois.

Yes, Lois. Thank you so much. But I thought, “Is this a mistake? Is this a mistake? Is this a mistake?”

But it was the truth I left. I disappeared to Montana

18 months after this news broke, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber was [00:13:00] found in a cabin outside of Helena

When the news broke, I thought of my coworkers back in Philadelphia who by this time must have figured that I’d gone, disappeared. I wondered when they thought, heard about Ted Kaczynski, if they thought about me. I wondered if they believed me now I wondered if they thought about me. I wondered if they believed me now

Thanks, Francis. Francis Davis was born and raised in Philadelphia and has lived most of his adult life in the West. He has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska. [00:14:00] Francis loves American working class literature and teaches college writing, creative writing, and literature at Gallatin College.

He’s also recently been certified as a hot yoga instructor and teaches at Headwaters Hot Yoga in Missoula. Francis published a collection of short stories, West of Love, and his stories have appeared in Story, Natural Bridge, and Weber: The Contemporary West, among many other publications. Francis Davis has also worked as a journalist throughout the state of Montana and has earned a variety of writing fellowships from around the country.

In our next story, Adria L. Jwart spent years as a functional alcoholic in order to bury her true identity. Adria finds herself in an intensive treatment center where the ultimate lesson is learning to love yourself enough to survive. Her journey toward recovery leads her to confront a childhood memory in a Kmart clothing aisle and a deep-seated fear of being, [00:15:00] quote, “an abomination,” leading to an act of truth-telling that accidentally goes viral on a global scale.

Adria calls her story Prestigious Education. Thanks for listening

Many a times people have, uh, queried me about my education. It’s like, “Um, you’re very well educated. You’re, uh, very articulate, well spoken.” Well, for an Indian. Just kidding. Lots of Natives have heard that before, but, um, and they’re like, “So where’d you go to school at?” Or, um, “Where’d you graduate from?” And I just jokingly, not jokingly say, “Watch East.”

And they’re like, “Oh, where’s that at?” “Well, it’s, uh, back east.” “Oh.” “It’s very, uh, prestigious. They only have like 50 people in there at a time.” But the fact is Watch East is actually stands for like [00:16:00] the Worm Springs Addiction Center Treatment for Change or something. It’s like an acronym for that. And East means they had another location out in Glendive, Montana.

So it’s very eastern Montana. Basically West Dakota. Yeah.

But the fact is, I am– That is one of the hardest things I ever did, was graduate from that place. It was an intensive treatment place where for six months, day in, day out, seven days a week, you, like, dealt with your own self and inner soul and being and just let everything out, or tried to anyway. Because, um, one of the things they teach you there is, uh, the number one cause of relapse is resentment.

So what does that mean? Well, resentment is like you always have these reasons to go back to drinking. Okay, you’ll be going good. You’re sober for two years, and then, um, wait, what about my… You know, [00:17:00] something maybe happened when you’re a kid or whatever, and you’re holding something against your… Anyways, whatever haunts you, it always comes back and gives you a reason to drink, including at yourself.

It’s like, “I’m doing good. I’m doing well. I’m doing… You know, everything’s going well. My job is good,” and then all of a sudden, “No, you don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve this happiness. You’re a piece of shit. You know? You’re a piece of shit. You’re a felon.” I know I can say that about myself.

And so you just kinda slide, “Yeah, I am,” and you just give up on yourself and start drinking again or s- whatever your drug of choice is. And, um So, um, it’s one of the things that you also had to combat that was, uh, you have to love yourself enough to quit drinking. What does that mean? Um, well, basically means, like, I know you can use, like, a reason for, like, not to drink.

Like, “Oh, my, uh, you know, I’m gonna quit drinking for my wife,” you know? [00:18:00] But heaven forbid, what if your life-wife leaves you and then you don’t have that reason no more? Or, “I do it for my kids.” Well, you can use your kids as a, you know, reason to help give you strength and everything. Ultimately, it comes up…

You have to, um, you have to do it for yourself. You have to love yourself enough, and that’s, uh, something, um, you know, I took from that place. And, um, there’s one other thing that they made me do is, like, they found out I was a bohemian, artsy person. And so they had me do all these big murals there, but one of the murals said, uh, “Your story still matters.”

And underneath it, even though the place had only been there since, like, nineteen– the late nineties, there was, like, thirty-six or forty names or something, and two names actually popped up while I was there, and these were names of people who had died while still on paper after leaving that place. So it was very, like, a stark reminder of, um, you know, [00:19:00] what could happen or what the reality was.

Like, one day, they, like, had us all, like, grab a piece of paper. One, two, three. So paper one, they opened it all up. We all stood over there. It was like, “You guys all relapsed.” Paper two, “Y’all died of your addiction.” Paper three, “You recovered. You’re living in recovery. Which one do you want?” And that was the thing.

Th-they straight up said, “This place has a one-third addiction recovery rate.” So we– That’s basically– That’s the honest truth of this place is, like, two-thirds of you aren’t gonna recover, and it’s, like, even worse for other places. It’s only, like, ten percent. But anyways, um, the thing about Not loving yourself enough to drink.

It’s like I got out of there and I hadn’t been thinking about relationships. I didn’t really love myself enough, just been a functioning alcoholic for the last eight years. And I was just like [00:20:00] thinking about getting into a relationship, but there was stuff haunting me from back before when I was like a teen and little kid and everything, and that was my gender identity.

And I never really thought about that too much until, you know, I started thinking about relationships again. It was just something I had to deal with. So, um, so I think back to when I was a little kid. I was in a Kmart Blue Light Special, and I’m shop– my mom is shopping for Rustler jeans. I had to try on Rustler jeans.

I hated those jeans so much. They were so uncomfortable and whatever. And I was just like, “Mom, I gotta go look at toys.” “Okay, sure, whatever.” And I ran off to the toy section, except I didn’t go to the toy section. I went to the Easter dresses they had, and I was like, uh

This works as a prop. Um, it’s like flipping through dresses. [00:21:00] It’s like, “Hmm, wonder if they have this one in my size?” And I turn around, my mom was standing right there, and I was like so scared, so embarrassed. And she– I, like, I literally said that out loud, and I thought she was gonna be mad at me ’cause she’s evangelical Christian.

But she just looked at me, not with a look of judgment, w-with, like, sadness in her eyes that her kid was, you know, a queer kid in Montana, in eastern Montana, that was gonna have a tough life, and it was something they’d probably have to hide, and there’s nothing she could do about that to protect her. So-

I remember a few months later, I’m in the church, at a church camp, some random, one of the many church camps that got in up around Livingston, Montana in the boondocks. I’m [00:22:00] sitting there praying on a prayer bench, like crying my little eyes out, asking for forgiveness. Like, “Please, God, I don’t wanna be an abomination.

I don’t wanna be an abomination.” And that was because I read in the Bible that if you wear clothes, if you’re a male, wear women’s clothes, you’re abomination unto the Lord, and that course meant you’re going to hell or you’re gonna burn, and I didn’t want that. I’m just crying my little eyes out and stuff, and that’s one of my, um, most intense memories of, uh, whatever growing up.

But there was also another instance of, uh… I saw this person on the– this movie, Little Big Man, and, um, there’s a Heemane character in there, which is, uh, basically the Cheyenne word for trans. Um, yeah, it’s born women, heart and soul of that of a– or born male, that heart and soul of that of a female trans, [00:23:00] basically.

And, um, and I, I kind of– It was just like nice having a word of that person. Maybe that’s what I am. But at the same time, it was like, it’s a comedic movie. Even though they treated the character respectfully in hindsight, at the same time, it was just like, that’s a character people also laughed at, and you didn’t wanna be that.

It was like, “You look tired, Little Big Man. You wanna come to my teepees and rest on soft furs?” Cue everyone laugh at character. It’s like, I don’t wanna be that. So So, um, yeah, so it was just something I kind of kept hidden and everything, and I act- when I was a, being an artsy bohemian and everything, about 16, 17, I started, you know, being more bisexual in the closet and stuff, and, you know, I was what they called a closeted femboy with the girlfriend I had.

But then after that, about 25, I was a, had what you call a, lose my twink death or [00:24:00] whatever. And I just like, “Well, I guess I missed that window.” Be- ’cause I was gonna actually try to go to school here or in down south and just, like, get away and just so I could transition, but it just never happened, and I figured that window had, that opportunity had passed.

So, so cue fast-forward about 10 years later. Um, my brother is murdered, and I’m, like, turned a functioning alcoholic until I couldn’t function anymore, until I’m in the treatment place. So I get out of there, and I’m thinking about this whole time, this whole, um, situation of, well, I’m just, like, ashamed of myself.

I’m sitting there where as a Native activist, #decolonize and, you know, love yourself enough to quit drinking. I couldn’t even love myself who I was, who I truly was, this Hiamani character. And to truly decolonize, I ha- had to accept who I was as a Native person, [00:25:00] which is a Hiamani, and, um, it was just something that…

So I wrote about it in some article. Gotta wrap this up here. You know, it was like a… I never thought the, um, character was like, um, or it was like, it was like a line in there. It said, uh, maybe I would have been, uh, decolonized. Maybe I would have been more, um- In my gender identity or something in the article, and then, um, it became this…

Uh, you know, I figured a few hundred people would read it online in Indian Country. Then, and then all of a sudden, I start getting all these emails and people actually wanting me to speak, and this is a great article. And I was like, “Well, what’s going on? I didn’t expect them to… Oh, congratulations on coming out tonight.”

I was like, “I wouldn’t expect that many p- people to see it.” But apparently, Jake Tapper of CNN had retweeted the article, so when I came out, it was just, like, announced on CNN, basically. But, um, so I guess I… [00:26:00] Yeah, I guess I’m out. I g- There was no, uh… But anyways, the thing is, I just, you know, for self-realization, that one kid, that little kid that’s crying, the one in the church camp, that kid, I wish I could just go back to him and just say, “You know, you are not an abomination.

You are who you are. You’re a himane. And you know, I wasn’t gonna, I wouldn’t promise your life’s gonna be easy, but at the same time, it’s just like, just love yourself enough to be you, and your story still matters.” And maybe I’d remember that when I’m feeling suicidal or unwanted later. Anyway, thank you

Thanks, Adria. Adria Zweit is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and transgender two-spirit journalist. Her writing has [00:27:00] appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today, among other publications. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Indigenous Transilience.

You can also find her on Instagram Coming up after the break

And I knocked on the door, and this big burly guy with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.”

I read Into the Wild and I just ate that up.

Alaska, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. It was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity.

Stay with us. Thank you to our story sponsor, The Good Food Store, who helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com. The next Tell Us [00:28:00] Something live event is right around the corner.

We are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana. The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast, where people share their true stories around a theme live in person without notes.

I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on January 20th, 2026 at the George and Jane Dennison Theater in Missoula, Montana. Opening the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Mark Matthews is a freelance journalist assigned by the Washington Post to cover a high-profile assassination attempt at the US Capitol.

He thinks he’s found the scoop of a lifetime in a small Montana mining town. After tracking down the shooter’s best friend and securing what he thinks of [00:29:00] as a bag of gold in the form of a delusional handwritten manifesto, Mark discovers that in the world of big city journalism, landing the story is only half the battle.

Mark calls his story Front Page News. Thanks for listening.

So, uh, in, um, on July 22nd, 1998, when I was working as a freelance journalist, I got a phone call from The Washington Post. And the editor told me that a resident of Montana had apparently driven to Washington, DC, to try to assassinate Senator Conrad Burns.

His name was Russell J. Weston, and he went by the nickname Rusty because of his red hair. So when Rusty went to the Capitol Building, he tried going around the metal detector, and a security guard confronted him, and he took out a pistol, and he shot the man dead. [00:30:00] And then he ran down a corridor and got into a gunfight and was injured himself and arrested.

The editor want- wanted me to drive over to Rimini, Montana, which is about 15 miles west of Helena, to get some information about Rusty, and that’s, that’s where he was living at the time in a small shack. So this was a couple years after I graduated from J-School, and I’d built up a pretty good freelance, uh, business.

And, uh, what I would do, I would take a local story that I wrote for the Great Falls Tribune, give it a regional twist and sell it to High Country News, and then give it a national slant and sell it to The Washington Post If it dealt with Native Americans, I could sell it to Indian Country Today or if it was a dam removal on the Clark Fork to Engineering News-Record or if it was about a Black lab to the Retriever Journal[00:31:00]

So I, but I’d never got an assignment, uh, to go cover a breaking news story of national interest, so I was pretty excited, uh, when I was driving down from McDonald Pass on Highway 20, uh, down to the flatlands, and I found the dirt road going to Rimbey. And I drove over there to check it out. And it was a old mining town.

There were just a few cottages, shacks, and, um, log cabins and a spat- um, smattering of, uh, modern houses in, in the trees. So next morning, I went back to Rimbey and the first person I ran into was an elderly gentleman who called himself the mayor of, of Rimbey. And he invited me into his house and, uh, talked to me for about an hour.

And he told me how Rusty would stand in front of this, um, satellite dish and shout into the dish, “I am here. I am [00:32:00] here.” And apparently he thought the FBI had set that up to spy on him. And I later learned that he had spent time at, at the mental institution in Warm Springs and had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic After, after talking to the elder- elderly gentleman, um, I went down to find, uh, where Rusty lived, and it was easy to find ’cause there was a, a gaggle of reporters already assembled there, about 30 reporters and two giant vans with, uh, satellite disks on the roof from the television stations.

But nobody could, um, enter the property ’cause it was cordoned off by the FBI, and agents were trying to determine if Rusty had booby-trapped his shack And none of the other neighbors really interested in being interviewed, at least for that day. [00:33:00] And the FBI finally entered the shack. It didn’t blow up, and the reporters dispersed.

And I drove into Helena to call up the, the Washington Post and give my report. And the editor said, “Why don’t you hang around another day and see if you can dig something up?” So I did. And the next day, I got to talk to some of the neighbors, but they didn’t give me any new information. And kind of, uh, in a deje-dejected state, I started heading back to Helena to call into the Post and, um, stopped at a mom-and-pop gas station at the outskirts of town.

And while talking to the proprietor, I said, “Did, did you know Rusty Weston?” And he said, “Oh, sure. He used to stop in here all the time, buy cigarettes and groceries.” And during the conversation, I found out where his best friend lived and a descri-got a [00:34:00] description of the house, and it was just off Highway 20, just outside of Helena.

And I drove over there, and I found the house, and I knocked on the door. And this big, burly guy with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me, and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.” And he invited me in. And he told me this nice story about how he and Rusty worked for an entire summer excavating an old gold mine, uh, in the forest.

But after a while, he got very angry and emotional, and he stood up, and he started just gesticulating and pointing his stubby finger at me ev-every time he said something. And he started berating the Forest Service and then the government in general. And it turned out they were mad at the Forest [00:35:00] Service because, uh, the mine was in a wilderness area, and they couldn’t build a road into the mine to take out the tailings.

And then he went off about everything, everything about the government, and I started getting nervous. And then he said, “Wait a second.” And he walked into another room, and I thought, “Should I run out the door? Is this guy gonna come back with a gun and shoot me?” But instead, he came back with a piece of paper And he handed it to me.

He said, “This is a letter that we wrote to Senate- Senator Burns.” And this is only part of, of what it said. It was full of misspellings, and you could see that Russ probably had a hard time growing up, and he had been described as a loner, uh, by his high school mates. He said… He wrote, “Mr. Burns, I have seen the speech made by the representative of Iraqi at [00:36:00] Geneva, Switzerland.

Iraqi is making the same accusations as myself. Organized crime coming from the Office of the President of the United States. Criminal acts perpe- perpetrated by criminal faction in control of the US government. I know and have evidence of this. I would like to make my case to the United Nations and make public through advertising.

Myself and many influential persons are asking for the arrest of George Bush, B-U-C-H, and his outlaw band of criminals. We are mad as hell. We demand peace in the Gulf, withdrawal of troops for the purpose of capturing the outlaw Reagan-Bush outlaws.” Signed Russell E. Weston Jr. I felt as if I had a bag of gold in my hand.

I could just picture the headline, front page, Washington Post, my [00:37:00] article, my byline. So I turned to the fellow and I said, “Could I borrow this to take it to photocopy?” He said, “No.” And without thinking, I said, “I’ll give you 50 bucks.” “No, okay.”

So I photo– got it photo- photocopied it. Um, and then I went into the Associated Press offices in Helena so that they could fax it to The Washington Post. And then I went and wrote my story. And at that time, you had to call it in and dictate it to a stenographer. And they said, “Well, the paper’s already gone to the presses tonight, so it won’t come out tomorrow, but the next day.”

And I drove home feeling ecstatic. I had, I had out-scooped all the other reporters. And, uh, I woke up the next morning and emailed The Washington Post an invoice for two days work and fifty dollars to [00:38:00] gain access to this thing. And this is when it will be self-evident that the so-called fake media actually works under strict moral and ethical standards.

Because two hours later, I got a call from The Washington Post, and the editor asked, “Did you really pay for this information?” “Well, not really. I paid blah, blah, blah, blah.” And she said, “We’ve argued with the– with our lawyers for an hour, and they said we can’t use it.” So, so no headline, no front story, no byline.

But I did get my fifty bucks back

Thanks, Mark. Mark Matthews was born in 1951 in Lynn, Massachusetts. During the 1980s, he lived in a fishing shack perched on a [00:39:00] dock at South Freeport Harbor in Maine. In 1989, he moved to Montana. Mark has spent the last 50 years of his life sculpting, painting, writing, making music, and teaching people of all ages the community-inspiring patterns of American folk dances.

Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Christian Bazano is hoping for clarity and a Deadliest Catch-style adventure. He heads to Bristol Bay, Alaska, to work on a fishing boat. Between 20-hour workdays, stinging jellyfish, and the relentless melancholic gray of the ocean, Christian discovers that the intellectual endeavor he planned is quickly dissolving into a battle to keep his own sanity from cracking.

Christian calls his story Lessons From the Last Frontier. Thanks for listening.

When I was 25, for no particular reason, I signed on to a fishing vessel for the sockeye salmon season in Bristol Bay, Alaska. [00:40:00] It was a 10-week season. I signed on as a deckhand. Uh, it was 2022. I say no particular reason, but I actually had a lot going on in my life at the time, kind of pushed me to do such a thing.

For starters, when I was in high school, I read Into the Wild, and I just ate that up. Uh, Alaska, it was, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. Um, it was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity. At the time, uh, I was pursuing my graduate degree, my master’s in philosophy, and philosophy had provided me a, a structure, an analytical way of looking at the world around me.

And in that structure, I could point out, this is where I’m gonna get some clarity to some of life’s biggest questions. Why am I here? What am I doing? What’s my purpose? And now Alaska was wrapped up in this as well. Alaska was gonna point me in a direction that I needed to go. I probably watched too much Deadliest Catch and a few other things that I [00:41:00] thought this would be a, a journey.

You know, I wanted an adventure. I wanted to get away. I wanted to be a part of something. I wanted something new. And while philosophy had provided a, a larger structure, it was in these tangible things like fishing in Alaska and another number of other experiences I had done that, that would give me the answers I was looking for.

And I’m in a bar in Naknek, Alaska. And Naknek is, if you have Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, uh, you follow them up, that’s Bristol Bay where the fishing happens, and Naknek is a, a little tiny fishing town. And when you think large scale mountains, your picturesque Alaska, it’s not really that. This is a, a tundra, dilapidated buildings, and it’s a fisherman’s village.

And one of two bars are in Naknek, and I was sitting in one. This is the day before we head into the water. Myself and Spencer, the other deckhand, are, are sitting at the bar [00:42:00] and, and the bar is pretty packed, but there’s not a lot of talking going on. No music was playing, and I remember that, which is just, uh, kind of emblematic of the, the environment that we were in When I was a kid, I watched The SpongeBob Movie, and there’s the Salty Spitoon.

Um, that’s what it reminded me of, of just these pirate figures in this bar and, and I was SpongeBob in this case. I just didn’t really belong there. And we’re talking to this older gentleman. He’s, he’s on my left. Spencer’s on my right. We’re both new deckhands. And the conversation happens, ki-kicks up, and, and I can tell he’s not really interested.

He’s actually looking straight ahead and, and doesn’t turn to acknowledge us once. Should’ve been my cue to fuck off, but I was just kinda pressing him, just so excited. And the conversation turns to, “Are you, like, w- are you excited for what’s about to happen? How do you feel about this season?” And he says, “Yeah, I’m, I’m really excited, and everything’s going to plan, and it should be a good year,” X, Y, Z.

The conversation turns just more [00:43:00] general and, and we ask, you know, how things are going, and he, he, he tells us he’s a captain, and if everything goes to plan, it’ll be a good year as long as he doesn’t have the problems that he had last year. And so I look at him and I say, “Well, what problems did you have last year?”

And then he goes, “Oh, just with my deckhands.” And Spencer and I, we cast our first glance at each other, and I say, “Well, what happened to your deckhands?” And so this man, he’s sitting at the bar, and he’s got a hand on a bottle of Budweiser. On each knuckle is a callus maybe the size of a golf ball. He’s got a, a baseball hat pulled down really low, long hair, and a, a thick beard.

Um, I kinda picture him like Neptune, but really he was just probably what most fishing captains look like. He had a flannel that was ripped open from top of his shoulder down to the middle of his forearm, the kind of flannel that in Missoula we pay $30 to $50 for. And, but he, he earned this flannel. Um, and yeah, and so we ask, I ask, “Well, what happened to your [00:44:00] deckhands?”

And rather flippantly, he takes his hand off his Budweiser, puts it in the air, and he says, “Well, one broke his femur.” Spencer and I look at each other again. And he says– puts his hand back on the bottle, “And the other, he just cracked.” Spencer and I look at each other again. Spencer leans forward and his voice kinda breaking, he goes, “W- what is cracked?”

And for the first time in the whole conversation, the man actually acknowledged that we exist. He turns and he looks at us, and he was like, “You boys must be green.” Greenhorn being the, the term for, for newbies in Alaska, which we certainly were as we probably were like, “Yeah, we’re, yeah, we’re new. You can tell.”

And the conversation kinda died there, and with the excitement of getting into the water the next day and everything that was happening, just really didn’t think anything of it I’m about four weeks into the, the season, and I’m standing on the bow of the boat, and the bow is the front, and it’s just me out there.

And for some context to fishing in Alaska, the boat is 32 feet long, um, [00:45:00] so maybe not much longer than this stage. It’s a pretty small boat, and most crews have four to five people. My crew was myself, Spencer, and our captain, which was good because we made a lot more money, uh, that you get paid at the very end of the season based on how many fish you catch.

Um, but it was bad because we just got our asses kicked for pretty much the whole time There was about 15 to 20 hour days, uh, pretty much on end, never ending, of, of fishing. Um, but fishing felt more tangential to the experience than anything else. It was really just try not to get egregiously injured, maimed, or killed, um, while you’re fishing.

And we use fish hooks with these really sharp pointers to, to pull fish out, and each fish weighs about eight pounds, and in the few hours of rest you would have, your hands would be so tight that you couldn’t move them, and you’d have to heat them up on a stove to get your nerves working. And just in the sleep deprivation and the waves coming over the side, and again, I, I watch too much Deadliest Catch and, and I, [00:46:00] I recognize that.

I romanticize it a little bit more than I should have. I had bought this leather journal, and it was probably like 50 or 60 dollars, and this Alaska experience was also gonna be a-an intellectual endeavor. I was going to write and document and figure some things out. And I have a, a journal entry on the first page, and it begins with, “The adventure begins.”

And I started that on the day we flew up. It takes about two days to get there. And it was… It’s this very well-written entry I have and, and that’s the only fucking time I ever wrote in the journal. I never got to it again after that. And pretty emblematic of everything that was happening and just, yeah, the nonstop picking fish, and there’s jellyfish coming over the side stinging your face.

And, uh, I got what I asked for, that’s, that’s certainly true. And I’m standing on the bow of this boat. You know, my life has now led up to this singular moment, and I’m looking out at the gray. And this time in Alaska, there’s [00:47:00] 24-hour daylight, but it, it’s not actually daylight. It’s just a gray that doesn’t really change.

And no matter what time of the day it was, it pretty much looked the same. I’m looking out, and I’m noticing where the skyline meets the horizon, and it’s this gray, this, this melancholic, somber gray. It’s palpable. You can feel it. It’s, it’s, it’s got substance to it. And I’m looking where the, the waterline meets the horizon line, but then I’m actually not sure if that is where they meet.

And then I’m thinking, “It’s all just one gray.” And then I’m thinking, “I think I’m gonna be here forever, and I don’t think I can leave.” And I just started to spiral. And in that, somewhere it, it hit me. I, I, I understood. I understood. I was starting to crack. You know, I got it now But somewhere in there, which r- in reality was, uh, the borderline psychotic break I was having, um, in my lapse of sanity, [00:48:00] I had a deeper acknowledgement.

I was looking at this all wrong. Alaska was gonna be this means to an end. I was gonna walk away with some newfound knowledge about who I was, what my point being here is. And, and I had it backwards. Um, you know, and maybe it took something like this for me to recognize, but philosophy, where it had failed was, was in that pursuit.

You know, I think, we all think at the end of the day that that thing we’re working for, it’s coming. It’s coming. One day it’s gonna be there, and that’s just what our focus is. And then one day it is there. We’ve, we’ve arrived and, and we’ve got what we wanted, but we probably don’t feel very different from how we’ve always felt.

We’ve thought of life by analogy of a journey, a pilgrimage, with success or that thing at the end is, is the point of it all. And, you know, the, the analogies or the… Yeah, the analogies ring true. It’s the journey, not the destination. Ferris Bueller tells you to look up or you’re gonna miss it. You know, when [00:49:00] you’re a kid and you’re looking at your iPad in the car and, and it dies and the world is ending.

Instead, you just look out your window. All these things that we hear told to us repeatedly, and we, we don’t think too much of it. But again, we’ve had it all wrong. It’s, it’s a musical thing, and we’re supposed to sing and dance and laugh while the music’s being played around us. Brian Andreas, an artist, he says, “There are things you do because they feel right.

They may make no sense. They may make no money. But maybe that’s the reason we’re here: to love each other, to eat each other’s cooking, and to say it was good.”

Thanks, Christian. Christian Bazzano moved to Montana almost six years ago from his home in Tennessee. He spent many years of his life doing seasonal work in various roles across the Northwest, from guiding whitewater to sawyer to ski operations to Alaska commercial fisherman. [00:50:00] Christian has his master’s degree in philosophy and works for an environmental education nonprofit

You have been listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tune in next week to hear the concluding stories from the Self Evident live storytelling event.

The air starts getting hazier as we’re getting closer and closer to the fire. We’re coming up on people that are really struggling in their event.

Pretty much every single one of them is walking at this point.

I began to think, what if I wasn’t an unruly kid? What if I was just trying to exist in a neurotypical society while being neurodivergent?

I live in a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees, sweeping majestic mountains, and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you.

A belief that, for me, would not survive the upcoming weekend. [00:51:00]

I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest. And so I did. I turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly.

Listen for those stories at tellussomething.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our media sponsors MissoulaEvents.net, Mike’s Print and Copy, Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104.5. And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, Float Missoula and Joyce of Tile.

Thanks to Cash for Junkers, who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzin’ and can be found on their album, which you can stream at cashforjunkersband.com. The next Tell Us Something live event is right around the corner. We [00:52:00] are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana.

The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org.