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What's YOUR Story: The Moth Podcast

February 13, 2026·26 min·2 clips
An Ebony Magazine cover shoot literally saved Maxwell Pierce's mother's life — and therefore his own — by pulling his grandmother away from a sterilization procedure.
The call has already landed. A message from the Harlem Globetrotters is the kind of news nobody wants to read alone. Family gathers in the mother's living room. The storyteller watches a grandmother lean in, ready for every word of the contract. Then comes the line: they are officially a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, and the room erupts. But joy has a way of opening old doors. The celebration sends the storyteller back to a younger self on the trampoline, already reaching for something bigger. Family history comes with it. For 27 years, the grandmother has been naming relatives, honoring people like Marian Anderson, and keeping the family record alive out loud. Now the attention turns back to her. How do you give flowers to someone who has spent 27 years giving them to everyone else? The answer starts with art. Pacing in a Cincinnati apartment, the storyteller calls to ask about the grandmother's magazine covers. Her answer is clear. In the 1950s, she was at the top of a modeling career before her first daughter and education changed the path. Then the story darkens. After her first daughter, a doctor said her ovaries were bad and had to be removed. The storyteller cannot know how true that was, especially when sterilization of Black women was rampant. So the tribute gets heavier. This legacy holds beauty, family pride, famous relatives, and survival in the same hand. The Moth keeps its frame simple: these stories are true as remembered, and this one listens to what a family celebration reveals after the cheering quiets.

As heard by us

A family-room surprise opens into a hard inheritance story.

A call from the Harlem Globetrotters turns into a family-room reveal, then opens into a story about inheritance and relatives the speaker has only heard about.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a true story about a personal win that opens into family legacy.

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