WILLIAM MULLIN: The morning of the final, everyone is wearing their best tennis whites-- except me.

IAN GOLDSTEIN: We both see flames coming out from underneath their door.

And when flames are coming out from anyone's door, you get out of the building as soon as possible.

ERIN BARKER: And as I gazed into his beautiful, hazel eyes, I knew I would never watch a movie with subtitles again.

(audience laughter) ♪ ♪ MULLIN: My name is William Mullin.

I live in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

And I am a project manager by day, but a storyteller by night.

Is there a particular type of story that you like to tell?

I always gravitate to my younger years.

And I always just find these nuggets of back then, I would always try to hide them, because I wasn't "normal."

OKOKON: Mm-hmm.

MULLIN: But, in my storytelling, I find humor now, because enough time has passed, where I'm like, "That is hilarious!"

What role does humor tend to play in your storytelling?

Comedy really tends to keep people engaged with a story, I believe.

Especially serious stories-- I really think comedy is important when you're telling an emotionally fraught story, because it helps the audience release the tension, and then you can get back on track with that serious narrative.

But without those breaks, it can be a little disconcerting for the audience.

I'm 13 years old.

And all my friends are distracted by girls' boobs.

(smattering of laughter) I want to be distracted, too!

So I look for five minutes, ten minutes, even 30 minutes one class.

And nothing.

Not a thing-- not even a tingle!

Around this same time, my parents bring my twin brother and I to tennis camp.

We had been playing tennis for a while, and it was the logical next step to improve our game.

And we arrived to this beautiful campus, with gorgeous clay courts.

And we meet the tennis pros, who are actually Division I college tennis players.

And I cannot keep staring at one of them.

He has golden hair, bronze skin, and broad shoulders.

His name is Brian.

And now I am distracted.

Now throughout the course of the camp, you're supposed to experience a different pro every day.

And the first day, I'm on Brian's court, and I'm so excited, and I notice, though, he's not paying enough attention to me.

So I remember when my friends in school want girls to pay attention to them, they do things like knock books out of their hand, or pinch them, or pull their hair.

I decide to pretend I sprain my ankle.

Ah!

And I fall down on the clay.

Writhing in pretend pain.

And here comes Brian.

And he's taking off my shoe.

He's rolling down my sock.

He's placing his hand on my ankle.

It's like I have my own Prince Charming.

(audience laughter) And then he goes, "It's not swollen, are you sure you're hurt?"

I'm like, "I just need a moment."

(audience laughter) And he helps me back up, and I have both of my hands on his shoulders, and it feels really good.

Now, the next day, I have to be on another court, but I manage to sneak back onto Brian's.

And he catches me, he's like, "William, you're supposed to be in Todd's court today."

And I think to myself, "Ugh, I don't want to go to toady Todd's court!"

(audience laughter) But, I have to play by the rules, so I rotate.

At the same time, there's this fellow tennis player named Adam.

And he's at camp with his sister, and Adam has jet black hair, piercing blue eyes and a killer smile I cannot get enough of.

And I want to be his friend-- everyone wants to be Adam's friend.

But I start talking up his sister, making her laugh, and before you know it, we're eating lunch together, we're hanging out during dinner, and I just sit right next to Adam and I stare at him; absorbing every single atom.

(audience laughter) So this is a problem, though.

I'm at tennis camp trying to, or supposedly, trying to learn to improve my game.

But I'm not paying attention to anything.

Every single minute is, "What court is Brian on?

Where's Adam?

Where's Brian?

Where's Adam?

Where's--?"

I'm hopeless.

My brother, on the other hand, is taking this very seriously.

He's arriving early to practice his serves, he's staying late to practice his volleys.

Now at the end of the two-week camp, there's a tournament.

And I draw Adam's sister as my first opponent.

And she is good.

She's big, athletic, she has all the shots.

And there's no chance I'm going to win.

But I want to win, because I know Brian's going to watch, and I want to win for Brian.

But I do notice she's not exactly agile on the court.

So I start drop shotting her.

Now, the drop shot in tennis is an amazing shot.

You put some backspin on the ball, and it just lands dead on the surface, it doesn't even bounce, and clay court is the perfect surface for this.

So I drop shot her, I drop shot her, and she can't get to anything.

She starts yelling at me, accusing that I'm cheating.

And Brian is sitting there watching our match and I notice and he's just chuckling, looking at me, shaking his head.

And I love that, and I win the match!

In my next match, I employ the same tactic.

Dink, dink, dink-- and I win!

The next one, dink, dink-- and I win!

Dink, dink-- and I win!

And dink all the way to the final!

Where I meet... ...who else, my brother.

(audience laughter) Who has been steamrolling the competition with his laser-focused play.

Now, the night before the final, Adam's sister approaches me with Adam not so far behind.

She goes, "You know what?

I used to like you.

"But you play dirty.

I'm going to root for your brother tomorrow."

And then Adam says, "Yeah," and they walk away.

And I'm pretty hurt, but it just propels me more to win that match for Brian tomorrow.

So the morning of the final, my brother and I reach the court, and there's about 30 or 40 people standing around, and everyone is wearing their best tennis whites-- except me.

This morning, I decide I want to stand out for the final.

And I'm wearing skintight, bright blue, Ocean Pacific corduroy shorts.

(audience laughter) With what I can only describe as a mid-riff fish net top, with a neon Nike logo emblazoned across the chest with a matching neon headband.

(audience laughter) I look like an '80s aerobics instructor.

(audience laughter) I walk out there, and you know, I only remember the details about what I wore that day because there was a picture taken of all the players that day that hung in my bedroom for years.

And if I had that picture tonight, and I handed it to each and every one of you, and asked you, "Who do you think the gay kid was?"

(audience laughter) There'd be no doubt who you'd point to.

So the match starts, and I just start, dink, dink, dink, to my brother.

He loses it, he yells, "Do you even know how to play tennis?

You don't even have a forehand!"

And the whole crowd is for him.

And they're rooting for him, they're try-- they're pulling for him.

And it doesn't bother me, I just keep dink-ing, and dink-ing, and dink-ing, and dink-ing-- and I win!

And I... (cheers and applause) I drop to the clay like I just won at Roland-Garros.

And I stand up, and I thrust my arms into the air.

And the crowd is silent.

(audience laughter) There's a lot of eye-rolling, some tepid applause, but I don't care.

But the best part is Brian hands me the trophy.

And he gives me a big hug and I do not want to let go.

And a few hours later, my parents come and pick us up.

And on the ride home, I can't help but feel this uneasiness in my stomach, realizing I didn't exactly "fit in" with the other kids at camp.

It would take me years to realize what that feeling was about.

And years still to actually be honest with myself about who I am.

Well, I'm in my 50s now.

And I've been an out and proud man for decades, and I live in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

(cheers and applause) Where I still play tennis at a club where almost every male member is a homosexual.

(audience laughter) It's so ironic!

And amazing and, like, mundane, at the same time.

And I'm happy to report I still have that drop shot that drives people crazy.

Thank you!

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ BARKER: My name is Erin Barker.

I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, my family is from West Virginia, I live in New York City with my husband, Justin, and my daughter, Maggie, and our dog, Wally.

And I'm the executive director of a science storytelling organization called The Story Collider.

Are there particular periods in your life that you enjoy revisiting as a storyteller?

My parents had an interesting divorce.

And so I think I felt the need to explain myself a lot growing up.

And so I feel very interested in that time of my life, and I tell a lot of stories from that time.

Has it ever been a struggle for you to be so open and vulnerable on stage or is that something that came to you naturally?

Sometimes there is that feeling after I tell a story of, like, "Oh no, I wish I could reel that back in," that sort of feeling, of overexposure, but I think I feel really fortunate in that I have a very supportive family and very supportive friends.

So I've never really had any problems with that before.

♪ ♪ When I was in high school, I was a big time underachiever.

I had a stunning 2.5 GPA that I was very proud of.

Uh, but I liked hanging around serious students, though, because it made me feel a little bit smarter.

I dated a lot of National Merit scholars.

I liked guys with really big... ...S.A.T.

scores.

(audience laughter) That was my type.

Guys who read a lot of serious literature, and saw a lot of serious films that they would drag me to for my intellectual betterment.

I saw "The Pianist," which has a hilarious title, but is not a hilarious film... (audience laughter) ...it turns out.

Uh, but when I went to college, I realized that dating these guys, it was not making me feel smarter.

It was actually just making me feel dumber, and bored, and I wanted to try something new.

I wanted to date someone who was more like me.

So the first day of college, I met this person.

I met Kurt.

And I knew right away that he was the one for me, because first of all, his name was Kurt.

(audience laughter) And if your first name is Kurt, and your last name is not "Vonnegut," you're probably not the greatest mind of your generation.

Let's just be honest.

Second of all, the first thing he said to me, was he told me a long and involved description of his recent construction of a beer bong.

Uh, which I admired.

And as I gazed into his beautiful, hazel eyes, I knew I would never watch a movie with subtitles again.

(audience laughter) And what followed was an amazing time in my life.

I saw the movie "Dodgeball" with no judgement.

I ate my weight in Gushers fruit snacks.

I watched an entire season of Family Guy in one sitting.

It was just really a beautiful time in my life.

But after a while, I started to wonder if maybe Kurt was a little too much fun.

If I had to trace it back to one specific moment, it would be the moment I was sitting in my dorm room, minding my own business, and all of a sudden, Kurt ran in, jumped on me, and farted on me, and began laughing hysterically.

That was the moment I really began to wonder if we were really the same kind of person.

(audience laughter) You see, Kurt had a dream.

His dream was to one day buy a boat and drift aimlessly around the world like a character from a Jimmy Buffett song.

And somehow I just couldn't picture myself on that boat, watching Family Guy, and being farted on for the rest of my life.

(audience laughter) So I thought, what Kurt needs is a goal.

Just so he can grow up a little bit, nothing too ambitious.

Uh, Kurt loved to play golf, and he smoked a lot of weed.

And this, to me, spoke to someone who was very in tune with nature.

(audience laughter) And so I suggested this to him, and he good-naturedly agreed, and he changed his major to environmental studies.

And his first class that he was gonna take was gonna be a plant biology course.

And just to help him get started, I said I would take it with him.

It was called Plant Biology 101: Plants and People.

So the first day of class, we sit down, our professor walks in, he is dressed head-to-toe like a lumberjack: a red flannel shirt, boots, he's got the suspenders.

He's actually carrying an axe.

(audience laughter) And we keep waiting for him to bring it up at some point during class; he never brings it up.

(audience laughter) The next day he comes to class, he's got a new lumberjack outfit on, same axe.

Again, never brings it up.

And the next day, and the next day.

And we really want to ask him, but we're all too worried that he might be insane, so we never do.

But after a while, I stop thinking about the axe, which he just sort of casually lays on the podium while he lectures.

And I started listening to what he's talking about, and he's talking about forest fragmentation.

Which is something that happens when people move into the suburbs.

When people move into the suburbs, forest gets cut up into little chunks.

Which means animals start to wander outside the forest and into human territory.

And it means there's less interior forest and there's more edge forest, which means there's more light and wind, and pollution permeating the forest, which changes the conditions and makes it uninhabitable for some species, and I had never known about any of this before, and it's totally blowing my mind.

And I look over at Kurt, to see if he is similarly shocked, and he is either stoned, or asleep with his eyes open, it's hard to tell.

But our big project in this class is we're supposed to get an aerial photo of our hometown from the year we were born and an aerial photo of our hometown from the present day.

And compare the forest cover and how it's changed.

And Kurt decides that it's too much trouble to even get the aerial photos, he's just gonna make up all of the numbers for his project, and go back to watching Family Guy.

But I get really into this project.

I've got the photos spread out on the floor of my dorm.

And I'm taking all of these measurements with my compass.

And I'm taking meticulous notes, and I'm getting really concerned about the eastern woodrat, and I'm having a lot of feelings about voles.

And Kurt comes in and he offers me some Gushers, and I'm like, "No, Kurt, I don't have time for you right now."

I'm really worried about the timber rattlesnake and its impact on the food chain.

So a week goes by, and we get our papers back in class.

And Kurt has a D, which we both agree is actually pretty good, considering he just made everything up.

(audience laughter) And I get my paper back, and to my surprise, scrawled across it in red ink is, "You have a future in this."

And I'm totally stunned, because nobody has ever told me I have a future in anything, much less plant biology of all things.

Uh, my professor was wrong, I'm sorry to tell you.

(audience laughter) I am not speaking to you today as a plant biologist.

I did not have a future in plant biology.

But I also did not have a future on Kurt's boat.

I was not meant to drift aimlessly, it turned out.

And so after college, I moved to New York, and I started a non-profit organization called The Story Collider, that helps scientists talk about their work in a way that gets people as excited about science as I got in my professor's class.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ GOLDSTEIN: My name is Ian Goldstein, I'm from Long Island, originally, now I live in Brooklyn, New York.

And I am a producer at a magazine publisher.

Can you tell us a little about The Autoimmune Saloon?

Sure, yeah, The Autoimmune Saloon, that was a show, uh, it's a comedy show, about chronic illness.

I have Crohn's disease, as you know, a chronic illness.

And I've had it for about 20 years, and so as the years have gone on, there's been a lot of traumatic moments, hospital visits.

And you start to realize that, oh, throughout all of this, there are a lot of funny moments that happen.

So I wanted to put a show together where I knew other people who have had chronic illnesses have stories, and have funny stories, and, anytime I've told someone about the show, they're like, "Oh, what a funny topic," like, sarcastically, but it's, it actually really is, I think it is, it can be funny.

And I think it's, in the medical world, the humor is absolutely needed.

Tonight, when our audience hears your story, what would you most hope that they take away with them?

One is that, anything can happen at any moment.

And I think also the aspect of, you do get through it, though.

And you, you move on from it.

So I'm living in this very small Brooklyn apartment, where my bedroom has no window.

Before I moved in, I went on Reddit, on the internet, to see, ask like, is this safe to move into an apartment that, like, has no window?

At least my bedroom has no window.

And all the answers were like, "No, that's a fire hazard.

Don't move in."

So I moved in.

(audience laughter) And, I don't know, it was a really cozy, it was a cozy apartment, a cozy bedroom-- it was a cozy fire hazard.

(audience laughter) So I've been living in this apartment for about five years.

I was living with my roommate, Gabriel, and my roommate's girlfriend, Anupama, and I was dating my girlfriend, Becca, for about two-and-a-half years, and the relationship was going really well.

But it was getting to the point in the relationship where her coming over and sleeping on my twin bed that had Oreo crumbs on it, it wasn't gonna work anymore.

She wanted me to move in with her.

And while part of me wanted to move in, I was reluctant.

And so she says to me, "When are you gonna grow up?"

The truth is, I didn't know.

I wasn't trying to be, like, that man-child, from every single Adam Sandler movie.

The truth is, I was scared.

I was scared because I had grown up with parents who are divorced.

And I never really had a model for what a good relationship looked like.

There was one night in January 2020, where I decided, I'm gonna make banana bread.

And it comes out so good, and I take pictures of it, I send it to friends and family-- the pictures, you know, like you do, right?

And, and so, and I'm excited to share a piece with Becca, and so I go to sleep that night very happy.

I wake up at 2:00 A.M. to the sounds of very loud banging and stomping.

And I'm not sure what's going on, I'm very noise-sensitive, so I'm like, "All right, I'm just gonna ignore it, I'm gonna go back to sleep."

The banging and stomping gets louder and louder.

And so I finally get up, and I go in the living room, and I see Gabriel there, and we look at each other, like, what is going on?

And then the fire alarm goes off, and we open our door, and we see across from us, there's smoke coming out from underneath the apartment door across from us.

Gabriel runs to go get the fire extinguisher.

When suddenly, we both see flames coming out from underneath their door.

And when flames are coming out from anyone's door, you get out of the building as soon as possible.

And so I go back to my room, and I think, "Okay, like when a fire's happening, what do you take with you?"

So I grab my laptop and my phone, and immediately, I start running downstairs, and I call 9-1-1, and Gabriel and Anupama are alerting everyone in the building, they're banging on everyone's door, "Get out!"

I get outside and I don't have any shoes on.

And it's January in New York so I have my bare feet are touching the concrete.

And our neighbors are outside, there's fire trucks coming.

I see one neighbor coming toward me, he's about six-foot-two, slicked back hair.

Looks like a finance bro.

And I'll just say, uh, me and finance bros, we don't usually get along well.

My neuroses mixed with their cockiness is not a good combination.

(audience laughter) But so, so he's, he's coming toward me.

And he's holding out these expensive-looking brown slippers.

And he hands them to me, and I put them on.

And it feels like I'm putting a warm, shaggy rug over my cold feet.

And I'm like, "This is what rich person's slippers feel like."

(audience laughter) Nice.

Gabriel and Anupama then-- they got a Lyft to their friend's.

And I'm calling friends and family, and nobody's up; it's almost 3:00 A.M., nobody's awake.

So I make the decision, I'm just gonna go right to Becca's.

So I get in a Lyft.

And I think of three things while I'm in the Lyft.

One, if the fire burned up my room, at least I don't have to clean my room?

(audience laughter) Two, at least this will be the worst thing that happens to me in 2020.

(audience laughter) And three, oh my god, I left the banana bread in the oven.

(audience laughter) Don't worry, the oven was off, it's not what caused the fire.

What actually caused the fire was an overused extension cord, and that was in the apartment across from us.

And sadly the two people who were in the apartment they did not get out.

They died.

And it's only been in the years since, from talking to my roommates, and talking to other people who lived in the building, that I realized how much of a trauma is actually is.

Anytime we smell smoke, hear the bang-- any sounds of banging, or stomping, it triggers flashbacks to that night.

So I'm in the Lyft, going to Becca's, and I get to the apartment, and she's still sleeping, not answering texts.

And I get to the, the apartment door, and I go to the buzzer and I ring the buzzer a bunch of times, and I'm gonna ask all of you, if it's 3:00 A.M., and someone's ringing your door, would you answer it?

(audience members saying "no") One person said yes, but I... (audience laughter) the answer is no, probably, I would assume.

So, I would not, I wouldn't even answer it at 3:00 P.M.

I'm... scared of everything, really.

But I hear, I hear a voice on the intercom, finally after all these rings, it's a male voice, and he says, "Hello?"

And it's Becca's roommate-- it's her roommate-- Ryan.

And I said "Hi, it's Ian.

Can you let me up?"

And then Becca texts me and says, "Are you okay?"

And I just said, yes.

My response was so cryptic, 'cause I was so distraught, I was so out of it.

And I later learned that Ryan and Becca thought I was being held at gunpoint.

Which, if I was being held at gunpoint, I don't think I'd be able to text, at all.

(audience laughter) So they let me up, and I see Becca and Ryan, and Becca gives me a huge hug.

And she looks at me with her big brown eyes and she says, "You can stay here for as long as you need."

And in that moment, I felt safe, I felt comforted, and cared for and loved.

And all the fears I had of moving in together just dissipated 'cause I knew it was going to be okay.

Becca and I have been now living together for three years, with our cat named Roger.

(audience laughter) We have baked banana bread, and we also have a window in our bedroom.

(cheers and applause) Thank you.

Thanks.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪