Navigating the Gray: The Moth Radio Hour
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What is the theme of this episode and why are the hosts discussing the ‘in‑between’?
This is the Moth Radio Hour, and I'm Fonzo Lacayo.
And I'm Aliza Cosme. We're the co-hosts of the Moth's podcast, Grown, a show about what it means to grow up.
But this week, we're your hosts here on the Moth Radio Hour. And today, we'll be listening to stories about being stuck in the in-between.
On Grown, we say you're never fully grown. There will always be those in-between moments in our lives, and how we navigate that time and space helps shape who we are. But there are many ways to feel like we're living in a gray area.
Take our first storyteller, Carl Cannon. Carl told this story in 2016 at the Cooper Union in New York City. Here's Carl.
I remember... the first time I walked into the Fort Leavenworth maximum security prison. No, not as an inmate. But as a military policeman recently assigned to prison duty for the first time. It made me think back to a time when I was 19 years old and I raised this, my right hand, and I joined the US Army to become a military policeman. This was 10 years later. 10 years later, I was a damn good military policeman who didn't want prison duty. Why? Maybe because what made me good had some of the people occupying that institution and I didn't want a reunion. So you got to know I did everything I could to get out of that duty. I even took an extra 30-day leave hoping that at the end of which the Army would change its mind.
When I returned from that leave, the Sergeant Major gave me two options. He said, one, take your ass down to that prison. Two, or face a court martial. Suddenly, prison duty didn't seem that bad. So I went into the four-wing housing unit with my trainer, a 15-year veteran by the name of Pierce. When we walked into that housing unit, I was stunned. They weren't locked down. They were all out and about. And do I need to repeat? I said maximum security military prison? That means Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. 40% of that population was being, was there doing a life sentence for murder. 100% of that population had been trained to kill. It's arguably one of the most dangerous prisons on the planet.
And they weren't locked down? I was a little nervous. It's not an understatement. We went into the guard cage and we were debriefed by the outgoing 12-hour shift. When they left, Pierce instructed me, go check the housing unit. I'm like, he said, look, sarcastically, rookie, you're in the housing unit. It has five floors. 50 cells on each floor, 25 face out to the right, 25 face out to the left.
How did Carl Cannon’s first day as a military policeman in a maximum‑security prison change his view of “us vs. them”?
It's like a warehouse. In the back of each floor is an unauthorized area for inmates. There's a clipboard. Sign off on it proving that you checked for trouble. Never forget that I went out into the population. I was there to observe the inmates. Moving amongst that population, I was quickly aware that they were observing me. I remember going by tables where they were playing cards and they would slap the cards down on the table and then look at me, all of them. They would slap the dominoes down on the table and then give me the look. It took me about an hour to finish That check, those housing unit checks. When I returned to the guard cage, Pierce looked at me and he said sarcastically, Rookie, where you been?
I said, I was checking the housing unit like you told me. He said, look, Rookie. All you have to do is go around the third floor, find that clipboard, there's a stairwell back there that the inmates can't use, use the stairwell, go up to the fourth floor, use that stairwell, go up to the fifth floor, you can be up to the eighth floor and back in this guard cage in 10 minutes. It's called a shortcut, rookie. He was so condescending, I wanted to hit him in his mouth. But that option sounded better than what I'd just been through. About 10 o'clock that night, he gives me this training script to read over the loudspeaker. I looked, and it was like music to me. I read it. It said, lockdown, lockdown, all inmates, lockdown.
Lockdown. He said, when you close the tears, when you shut the tears down, shut them down in sequence, start with the eighth floor.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What is the theme of this episode and why are the hosts discussing the ‘in‑between’?
0:13–3:57
2
How did Carl Cannon’s first day as a military policeman in a maximum‑security prison change his view of “us vs. them”?
3:57–15:52
3
What moment made Carl realize the power of respect and empathy inside the prison walls?
15:52–51:13