Busy Phillips

Hi there, and welcome to The Moth.

I'm Busy Phillips.

I'm an actress, author, and podcast host.

I'm obsessed with storytelling in all forms, which is why I am so excited to be here hosting The Moth.

I recently became very obsessed with the Tony Award-nominated play Liberation, which weaves together the stories of seven women in the year 1970, searching for their own individual liberation while debating how to effect real change in the collective.

It also asks the question, as women living now 56 years in the future, how did we get back here, fighting for our rights and equality again?

On this episode, we've got three stories that'll take us from the middle of the ocean to a nude spa in Santa Fe to a rest stop in Texas.

But all of them are about breaking free, about finding yourself, about liberation.

Plus,

I'll have a chat with the playwright and director of Liberation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Bess Wohl, and the Obie-winning Whitney White.

Our first story is from Amanda Burrell, who told this at a New Bedford, Massachusetts main stage, where the theme of the night was lost and found.

Here's Amanda Burrell, live at the Mock.

That was Amanda Burrell.

Amanda is a military veteran, classically trained chef, travel journalist, adventure and endurance athlete, injury connoisseur, occasional cover model, explorer of inner worlds and meditation instructor.

Yet when asked what she does, she just says, when.

When I think about the times in my life when I've felt liberated, I immediately think back to talking about my own abortion on my late night talk show, Busy Tonight, in May of 2019.

That was right when the very first of the extreme abortion bans started being passed in a few states' legislatures.

And I remember feeling like,

Well, if there's one reason I have this platform in this moment in time, maybe it's actually for this reason.

I was terrified, but I knew that it was the right moment and the right way for me to use my own story to help other people, especially women, understand the importance of sharing their own stories.