Hey, my family, we have some exciting news, one of our beloved hosts, John Goode, has just released his brand new book, Midas. He tells us that he was about halfway through writing a different book when the idea for Midas showed up in his mind and wouldn't allow him not to write it. Midas is the story of this man that bleeds gold, not metaphorically, but literally. The novel explores what this unique condition means for his relationship with his friends, family and society.

Midas also includes two brand new stories HAIN'T and Hanzi. Midas by John Good is available now on Kindle and in paperback on Amazon. From Prick's, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles, and in this hour, stories of unexpected challenges from taking on the Pakistan Air Force to free climbing, one of the tallest buildings in Doha. We'll hear stories of the things people do to overcome obstacles and sometimes face a very real fear, like our first storyteller, Lucy Dancer, who confronted her anxiety in an elevator from the rich mix in London.

Here's Lucy Dancer Live and a moth story slam.

OK, so this time last year, my boyfriend got a job for seven months in New York City and mainly because the job came with a free apartment. I decided to go with him, so he went out ahead of me. And the day before I was due to join him, I called to ask for our address and he told me that we were going to be living in midtown Manhattan on the fourth floor of an apartment building with a view of Central Park and the Hudson River.

Now, I know that this is a excellent address, but when he told me that all I felt was absolute sheer terror and the reason for that and keep in mind that my boyfriend knew this. Is that I am scared of Lefse. And when I say scared, I mean, I was a 29 year old woman who had never used a lift unaccompanied. I was terrified of lifts and now I was going to live on the fourth floor. So so I flew back to New York and I can't say initially it was terrible, although I was uncomfortable.

New York is a hard place to have a terrible time in. I mean, I saw Broadway shows and I eat amazing food and I drank incredible cocktails. So, like, put it this way on Instagram, everyone was very impressed with me.

But the truth was I had absolutely zero independence like, so that I didn't have to enter or leave the apartment building without my boyfriend. I worked entirely to his schedule, so I didn't make any plans. I didn't accept any invitations, and I could never just pop home when I felt like it. So here I was and like my dream city. And very soon I was just exhausted and I was miserable. And just when I was about to give up, as it so happens so often in my life, my parents appeared on the scene and my parents aren't very easy to describe.

And I'm not going to try too hard because my dad is here tonight.

But suffice to say, they are kind and loving and caring and maybe a little bit overinvolved in my life, which is quite frustrating, but it does mean that when I called my mom and I told her about all the amazing things I was doing and seeing all the people I was meeting, what she actually heard is I am desperately trying to fill every second of my day because I'm too scared to go home. And to her, this was totally unacceptable and my parents were actually planning to come and visit pretty soon and my mom promised threatened that by the time they left, I would be using this left like a champ.

Sure enough, a few days after their arrival, I worked quite an aggressive banging outside my apartment door. And I went outside and my mom and my dad were there facing the bank of lifts. And they dragged me into the middle of them and they said, this is day one of the lift tests. And the first test is you will go one floor in a left alone, and I was immediately terrified. And so first of all, my mom and me stayed there and my dad got in life by himself and he went up and down a few times.

And all the time he was screaming at the top of his voice. And I believe this was supposed to show me that if something did go wrong in a lift, someone would eventually hear you. But then I had to get in with him and we went up and down a few floors together, and then we were listening out, you know, for any weird noises or lights or buzzers or whatever. And so I could just get used to it.

And then we got off together and the forty third floor. And my job was just to go up one flight by myself to my mom who was waiting there. And I pressed the left of the button and it came and the doors opened and I did what I have done countless times before and I just. Let left go and get that about three, four or five more times, and I said to my dad, please. I was crying and I was shaking and I was like, please, I can't do this.

Just take me straight back up to my mom and I just want to go home. And he was like, no, no, no, we're going to wait as long as it takes, but hopefully I won't take too long because it is nearly lunchtime.

And finally, I realized I had no choice, so I got in the left, I pressed the button for the forty fourth floor and I screwed my eyes shut for the entire two second journey and the doors open. My mom was standing there with her arms outstretched, and I ran into them and she grabbed me and told me around to try to push me straight back into the left.

But I moved out really quickly because I had done it, I had done test day one, I had done one floor and I was victorious and they came back the next day and it was two floors and three floors. And a few days later, they had to go home. But they called every day to check. I was still doing it. Finally, I did all 44 floors and suddenly I was living that life in New York that I'd always wanted to live.

I was I started taking acting classes. I made some friends. And then one day I came back to the apartment alone ever had done before. And I realized that from our window you could see the sun setting over the Hudson River. And it was beautiful. And I would never have known that was even there if I hadn't learned how to use a lift. And sometimes when I was doing really cool things on meeting nice people in New York, I stopped and I felt quite guilty that for my parents entire trip to New York.

They mostly just saw the inside of my buildings left. But I guess that there are some tests that you can't do by yourself and maybe it's okay to be a little overinvolved sometimes, but.

Lucy Dancer is an author, playwright and comedy producer. She lives in London with her boyfriend from the story now her husband and their dog, Mabel. She says on a basic level, her fear is much lower. She has no issue using an elevator with other people. It's just the fear of being trapped alone. She once had a job where she had to go to a building in central London with a lift that you operated using a pass, one of those plastic key cards, and she would get to work early and wait until other people got in the elevator before she would press the button to her floor.

She says she's just had to learn to accept that she's never going to love elevators. You could see a picture of Lucy and her parents during their visit to New York on our website, The Morag.

Our next story comes from Albert Foxconn. He shared it at a moth story slam we produced at Housing Works in New York City in partnership with local public radio station WNYC. Here's Albert live at the Monk.

Growing up, I wasn't just unathletic, I was anti athletic, I was a kid in gym class arguing, no, you are exposing us to a risk of stroke and embolism.

So, no, I will not do those jumping jacks. And you might have noticed I have a penchant for arguing, which is probably how I ended up as a lawyer, specifically a civil rights lawyer, even more specifically a civil rights lawyer working on behalf of the Muslim community, which only comes into this story to explain that 2017 was a bit hectic.

And in the aftermath of the Muslim ban and the hate crime surge, as I was pulling all nighter after all nighter, the work started to take a toll on my health. And suddenly the lifestyle issues I had been putting off became a real concern. And an increasingly somber set of meetings with increasingly sober specialists told me that I had to drastically change my life immediately.

So my best friend from college and I did what Nerd's always do in our times of need.

We turn to math specifically a spreadsheet, a collection of rules and formulas with the goal of making sure that we stayed on track.

We would check in with each other every week about diet, about exercise, and we needed a penalty, a price to pay if we didn't live up to our end of the bargain.

And we thought long and hard about what we could do that would actually make us take this seriously. And so one afternoon I finally gave in and I wrote a check that he would keep in safety.

A check to the NRA for ten thousand dollars and every morning when I wanted to hit the snooze button every morning when I want to sleep in, I would picture Wayne LaPierre, the NRA spokesperson, at the foot of my bed, a Cheshire cat grin, a gleam in his eyes, just holding up the check and mouthing the words thank you.

And that was enough to get me going.

And at first I was just going out to walk for a little bit. And then the walking turned into schlepping and then schlepping turned into running and just half a mile a mile.

And then one Sunday I actually ran for five kilometers for the first time and felt like this was actually becoming a part of who I was. I wasn't just pretending to do the exercise thing. So in a moment of irrational exuberance, I signed up for races. I signed up for five and a half marathon, and I instantly regretted that choice.

And as the race drew near, I knew that it was all a terrible mistake. And when it was the night before, I couldn't sleep at all. Had these mental images of crawling towards the finish line as these white little runners went by, like the like the roadrunner just stopping long enough to look at me and go beep beep before speeding beyond.

And when I got to the race, I was ready for it to all implode after a couple miles. But then mile after mile it was working.

I was still there, there were actually people slower than me for the first time in my life. I was ecstatic at the thought of being mediocre, like I was there in the middle of the pack. Well, slightly behind the middle.

But as we got to mile 11 and I saw the hundreds of people that had gathered at the last big kill, I took out my headphones and I heard the chants and the cheers and saw the the nerdy signs. And it would have seemed so corny just a couple days before. And now it seemed like the one of the most generous things I had ever seen. It brought me to tears. And when I finally got to the end, I mouthed the silent thank you, the first and the last that I'll ever say to Wayne LaPierre.

Now, the challenge ended after a year, but I'm still running and I even signed up to do the full marathon in November. And as I've kept going with all the races, I've gotten a collection of all these little medals, I don't know what to do with them. They've just gathered around the apartment. But there is one award that has a place of prominence.

It's a little black frame at the foot of my bed with that check that I know will never be cashed.

And every time I look at it, it's a reminder to me that so often the things that we think are impossible we can do if we have the support of our friends and maybe even an enemy.

Thank you. Six months after telling the story, Albert Foxconn ran and finished the New York City Marathon.

He said there was a lot of laughing, a lot of crying and more than a few mental images of Wayne LaPierre chasing him uphill.

He's still running, but the majority of his energy these days is spent working at a non-profit he founded, which focuses on protecting privacy and civil rights as social media surveillance and facial recognition become more and more a part of modern life.

To see pictures of Albert and find out more about the work he does. Visit our Web site, the MCG.

Do you have a story of a time you were put to the test and surprised yourself or when something totally unexpected happened? We'd love to hear it. Just go to our website and look for tell a story and you can find all the info for how to do it.

My name is Barbara Stevens. Wellesley, Massachusetts. Unmap in 1945, the day the war in Europe was declared over, people all over this country rushed to the centers of their towns and cities to celebrate. I was in New York City so happy that my brother, who was a pilot in Europe, would no longer be in harm's way. I hadn't seen him in over two years. I hurried to Times Square to be among the thousands of happy strangers who are laughing, hugging and kissing each other so happy everyone was celebrating the war's end in Europe.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my left shoulder and turn to hug another stranger. It was no stranger. I saw my brother. His voice said it was my brother home from the war. He had landed the night before New Jersey and heard the good news and rushed to Times Square. What a miracle of us finding each other among tens of thousands of people.

My name is Jesse Johnson. I live in Seattle, but I grew up in pretty rural Wyoming and I was born on a dude ranch. My parents were the caretakers and when I was a little kid, I had these horrible recurring nightmares of bison charging through the walls of my room. It was also a show that I had such horrible nightmares that my mother, amazing person she is. She went in and wrote a book for me, a picture book about how I, Jesse tamed buffalo bones, a terrifying bison.

And and it worked totally. Three year old me turn me into having no more nightmares. Flash forward. I'm eight years old in third grade and I ride the bus to school and I am just I'm terrible on the bus and I get in trouble all the time. And the mother keeps telling me if you get kicked off the bus, you have to ride your bike to school. It was ten miles away and I didn't listen. And sure enough, I got kicked off the bus and they won.

I'm writing down these old country roads and come over the top of this rise and I stop at the bottom of the hill, right in the middle of the road is this giant bison. And there is no one around me at all anywhere. There's no cause. It's early in the morning and I'm looking at this thing. I'm looking at something and oh, my God, this is my fear pouring back at me. And I remember I remember this wonderful book about how I overcame that.

And I stood there astride my bike and stared down at this creature that was twenty times bigger than I am. And we made eye contact and it took a long time. And eventually it snorted and tore off into the sagebrush. And I rode like hell to school. I was terrified, but. But a book, a book saved me.

You can find out more about our pitch line and record your own story right on our website. Or you can call in by phone and tell it to us at eight seven seven seven nine nine moth. That's eight seven seven seven nine nine six six eight four. We'd love to hear from you.

Coming up, a woman refuses to take no for an answer from the Pakistan Air Force when the Moth Radio Hour continues at.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRICK'S.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from Prick's, I'm Meg Bolls. We met our next storyteller, Carolyn Fatema, during a workshop the Moss Global Community Program did in partnership with the Aspen Institute's New Voices Fellowship. After the workshop, we invited her to share her story at a mainstage event we produced at the Union Chapel in London. Here's Carolyn Fátima, live at The Moth. It was 20, 30 March, and I was eight years old, my father entered the room in his Air Force uniform, his boots were shiny and his buttons looked like gold.

My little brother's followed in their own little uniforms with gold stars stacked on their shoulders. It was the day of Pakistan's and with military parade. They were going to see the parade. I was not. I was sulking. Although my father asked me to join and asked me to come, but I wanted to wear the uniform, he told me you can't wear a uniform. Girls can go to the first.

I really wanted to go, but not in my ugly frog that showed my stick like legs while my brothers looked all happy and in their own little shiny uniforms. Growing up, I was a small, stubborn girl. I had two younger brothers. I acted like their protector.

I would chase the kids who harass them, I would jump up, rolled over in the mud and dispense a few punches to teach them a lesson for a short, sweet while I held the title of Big Brother before using it when my brothers grew up a little and left me out of the fight and games.

We Pakistanis love cricket the most, probably after God, I was an avid left hander, I played cricket with the boys in the area because Nogo played the sport.

So I was a star cricketer in the making, so I would put on my trousers and my T-shirt, much to the dismay of my neighboring aunties who thought it was such an ungodly dress for a girl, they thought I was nuts because I played hockey and cricket with boys, scare up walls and kept my hair the shortest. So now the star cricketer. Is dreaming, and then the boy's captain told her that, oh, you cannot be part of the team because girls are supposed to look nice.

Learn to cook and stay silent and not play cricket. I really wanted to be a boy because boys could do anything they wanted to. My father was my idol. We would take long walks along lush green paths, my hand in his and talk about things, I would ask him why can't I get into the Air Force?

And he tells me. Oh, it's for boys, you need to be strong to get in. We live in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and girls and boys can't work physically closely. I would only do selective thing stronger that I could do. So I started running and swimming and more than often I was found hanging from the monkey bars in the local park. I dreamt of becoming a boy. Anything to get into the Air Force, such was my desperation.

When I was growing up in Pakistan, women only became teachers or doctors and then went on to get married. When I was 17, I decided I wanted to become a banker, not that I knew anything about banking. It was because it was one of the few options available for women at the time. Banking was my available different then one gloomy winter evening, the kind that makes you sad.

My father entered the home beaming. He lit up the room. He said to me better, which means my son, sit down. I have some news for you.

And then he showed me this white and black advertisement by the Air Force for the recruitment of women for the very first time under the orders of the president. He said to me, and I still remember his words, that you must have prayed very hard to make them recruit women. So I gave the initial test and I passed, but the final selection exam coincided with the date of my banking exam. I was devastated. I thought it's not meant to be.

But my father believed he was in my abilities, made me lie to the Air Force. To change the date, if we never change the dates, but miraculously they change the dates and I gave the selection exam and passed it, I passed the medical exam.

But before the training did, I felt violently ill. Doctor could not find anything wrong with. Except anxiety. I was ashamed to admit, but I was afraid. I was afraid to fail. It was the first time I was leaving the warmth and comfort of my home. The day of the training came, I met seven other girls at the gate of the academy and a male trainer who was pretty serious. We had a lot of luggage with us and we were very happy in Pakistan, it is culturally expected that men would come and help you with your luggage.

So we were waiting, but then we saw boy recruits putting their luggage on their heads and started running. The male trainer looked at us and said. What are you waiting for? One and a girl objected. Oh, we have a lot of luggage.

To which he replied that it was not his headache, we were not at a wedding reception, and if we do not start moving now, we will miss the attendance call of the academy and we will have to do loops around the academy all day with the same luggage.

It was how the military academy operated and it did not intend to change for us. So off I went, dragging my luggage, causing the day I ignored my father's advice to not take too much luggage.

It was the first time that Air Force Academy was seeing any women. We were told to not to speak to the male cadets because any hint of scandal or rumors would jeopardize our chances of completing the training and would even end.

Coming off women into the workforce in future, Sauvie, a handful of unschool women were given the task to clear the path for future women into the Air Force. Boys were as confused, it was as the status quo of the academy was shattered, since we could not interact with each other outside supervised spaces, we were suspicious of each other.

Five days into the training, I was a classic case of impostor syndrome, waking up at four a.m. in the morning doing mandatory punishments life, no makeup can not go to home for four months. And eating tasteless, huge meatballs, not so fondly called Grenade's was.

Making me question my choice to join the Air Force, I really wanted to run away. But I could not I could not read the patriarchal structure of military say that women are not made for its leader. So I stayed. Made friends for life and completed my training.

I graduated as commissioned officer in Pakistan Air Force. My father came to my graduation in his uniform, looking tall and handsome, and I was in the uniform that was fun, that was forbidden to me before, and I saluted him as I you that said thank you for letting me be who I wanted to be. And he smiled.

First ed piece, I had to walk 15 minutes to my office. Everyone at the road stopped and stared at me. They had never seen a woman in uniform.

It was as if a UFO has landed and an alien has alighted out of it.

I felt naked. Vulnerable. It was odd. My subordinates, my soldiers give me equal respect as they give to their male superiors. It was the superiors, they were the problem. They thought it was just inducted women for a cosmetic change.

They were reluctant to give me any real work. I had to try very, very hard to gain their trust. When I was flying officer, I had to work under a supervisor who was notorious for making advances towards women. During my one year at the base. He inappropriately touched me, made explicit sexual comments and jokes. And one time when I was supervising a vocal exercise in front of my soldiers. He came from behind. Put his hands around me, and when I protested, he said, oh, it's just fatherly affection and gaslighted my protest.

I never reported him. It's not easy to talk about sexual abuse. Being one of the first women came with a lot of pressures and a lot of expectations, the way I failed in my training and in my service. Made possible for the women to enter the Air Force. I regret that I did not report him. It could have stopped the predatory behavior.

Pakistan's Air Force now holds one of the largest contingent of women officers in the Islamic world, ranging from pilots to engineers to ground support officers. I can proudly and safely say that I and my fellow women did well. On 23 March 2002, I asked my father to join me on the Pakistan Days Parade.

I was not a little girl anymore and I was in uniform. I saw the two girls looking at me. At my shiny boots, at my gold buttons, at my blue uniform and dreaming dreams to do the impossible. With tears in my eyes. I stood under the shining spring sun shoulder to shoulder with my father and saluted the passing parade. Thank you.

That was Karata Land, Fatiha Crosslin was the first woman to join the Pakistan Air Force after retiring in 2010. She went on to serve with the Pakistan administrative service. Thailand's father died in 2005.

She said it had always been one of his dreams for her to study at either Oxford or Cambridge, which she eventually managed to do. She completed her master's in public policy from Oxford on full scholarship. Cracklin has worked on economic development in conflict ridden areas of Pakistan. She's also established an organization called Women for Peace Tech that works on empowering women through technology. I think it's safe to say her father would be proud. Coming up, the story of a man who took on 10 world record holders when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange PUREX Doug.

This is the moth radio hour from Prick's IMAG Bolls. Our last story comes from writer and comedian Tim FETs Hyam. You may have heard a story Tim told a few years back about his attempt to cross the English Channel in a bathtub. He also holds several world records for unusual feats, including paddling a paper boat down 160 miles of the River Thames and personally inflating the world's largest balloon. All these feats done for charitable causes. So it's not surprising that the BBC approached him for a rather unusual documentary project.

Live from the Bridge Theatre in London. Here's Tim Fitzsimon. I received a phone call from somebody at the BBC and they said, Tim, we've decided we'd like to give you a shot as a documentary series. And I thought, brilliant, this is finally my time to shine. I'm going to be like a David Attenborough. This is going to be incredible. I'm going to get I'm going to get a real chance here. They said we're going to give you 10 episodes, 10 episodes, 10 1/2 hour episodes of a documentary series.

They said, well, we would like you to do is we'd like you to to go round the world meeting ten world record holders and we'd like you to challenge them at their own world records.

I looked at the producer and I said, So what you're saying is you. You want me to lose? Quite badly, 10 times, and she said, well, do your best.

Now, the thing with this is that they didn't tell me who I was meeting, where I was going or what I was doing because they didn't want me to be able to train.

Because they thought that might help, this led to me meeting the world record holder, who has a very peculiar record, he has the fastest reflexes in the world, and they decided I would challenge him to the sport of arrow catching.

They get world championship arches, they put them not much further away than the front row. They fire arrows at you. And you attempt to catch the arrows, the world record holder went up and he caught eight out of 10 arrows traveling of between 70 and 90 miles an hour.

Then it was my turn. Three arrows were fired, three arrows hit me and the paramedics were called. Then they sent me off. To meet the greatest free climber in the world, a man called Alan Wobble, he claims the world's tallest buildings without a safety net or a harness.

And I'm afraid of heights.

I also can't climb, I've never been climbing, and so they sent me for half a day on a climbing wall with Alan Wabble. We then got flown out to Doha in in the Middle East. To climb. Up the outside of the torch building in Doha, which is one of the world's taller buildings, did goodness me, I'm from East Anglia, we don't have any hills in East Anglia.

It is famously flat as an East Anglian. Anything above one metre above sea level makes me nervous. And I stood outside the Doha torch building and I looked up at this building. And this cheerful Scottish man walked past me and I said, oh, wow, what do you do? And he said, Oh, I'm the head of health and safety for the entire BBC. I said, oh, wow.

Do you do you come on all of the the shoots and, you know, just this one.

And then the safety team arrived and the safety team were all Royal Marines, and I have a slight history with the Royal Marines when I was rowing my bathtub across the English Channel.

There's a sentence you maybe didn't think you were going to hear.

I I got made an honorary commodore in the Royal Navy, and obviously it's quite a high ranking goes first sea lord, second sea Lord, Princess and me.

And I was sort of nervously shaking at the bottom of the building and one of the Royal Marines came over to me and said, so we're headed to safety. I said, great, great.

Well, I don't think I'll be I'll be going that. That high, I probably just, you know, stay around the the one metre mark. And he said. But but you wrote the challenge of off and I mean, yes, yes, that that's that's true. And you went and you're a Commodore and I mean, yes, but I mean, it's only ornery and we should be very clear about that.

And he said. You are going to climb this building, we in the Royal Navy do not fail. I said at see? We're in a desert and he said, you are going to climb this building, so the instructions were really clear.

I had to climb up the building on the outside using the anti climbing grill.

There's an anti climbing grill wrapped around the Doha torch building specifically designed to stop experienced climbers from climbing up the outside of the building.

So I thought, well, I'll just go for that one metre mark and we'll take it from there. So I started to climb up the building. Carried on climbing, I just kept focusing on just one finger at a time, the next finger. Keep going. Just do your best. Don't give in, keep going. And I climbed up the building and I just kept going.

And midway up the building, suddenly all the minarets went off all over the the call to prayer went off.

And I just thought to myself, if anybody needs prayer right now, it's definitely I've got to be up there.

And I kept climbing up the building, climbing up the building.

The extraordinary thing about this is that I actually made it up the building. In just under two hours alone, Ruber, 34 minutes, the final thing I wanted to share with you is they sent me off to meet a man who has an extraordinary world record.

This is the guy who has the highest resting tolerance in the world to G force. This man is like a superhero. He has the highest resting tolerance to force, we all know what G4S is, the stuff you experience on a rollercoaster when you go really fast down in the roller coaster. But this guy has the highest tolerance, the G4S in the world. He's a wing commander. He's in the Royal Air Force. He was chosen because of this G4S tolerance to break the world land speed record.

He's the only man in the world to drive a car at over 700 miles an hour. He's a phenomenal human being.

And they sent me. To challenge him to force, so we got sent to a top secret government facility, this is where every single Royal Air Force pilot takes the G test. You've probably seen it if you've ever watched Moonraker with James Bond.

It's the big iron girder with two flight cockpits at either end and it's inside this bunker.

It's an extraordinary building which was built in the 1950s. There's big signs going danger g force testing in progress. There's sirens that go off in that classic 1950s way of.

It's amazing and there's there's phones that come down from the ceiling and you can pull them down and say stuff into them, and in the middle of this entire bunker is the senior Royal Air Force scientist who has glasses, a squint, a comb over hairstyle, a beard that he's pulled bits out of in exciting moments of G4S testing over the years.

And I got into this facility and the test is really pretty simple in terms of G4S testing. What they do is they stick you in the cockpit of the plane on the end of the big iron girder and they speed the thing up, going round and round and round. You have to do various tests.

But in maths, if you like tests, they spin around around. They get faster and faster and faster. And at the moment, you pass out.

That's the end of the test, that is your force tolerance completely established at the moment, you lose your conscious mind. That is the test.

Now, I'm quite tall, so normally tall people are on force because they thought the doctors thought that my G4S would be about three, maybe three and a half, perhaps when commanders is six point one, six point one, it's the highest ever tolerance measured on a human being, six point one.

And I got into the cockpit and the RAAF scientists sirens went off. The lights were going danger, G4S testing in progress. And I was in the cockpit of the plane whipping around and he said, take it up to a G, take it up to G now start doing some tests. He's like, can you see the red light and the white one and what's three plus four?

And it was whipping around it to 2G to three 3G 3G for 4G take about a four. It's an incredible feeling. You're going round and round and round. It feels like something is pushing down on your entire body. My eyes began to just pop out a tiny bit and I was still doing all the like testing. Oh, there's the red one. There's the white one person to person who is for. I can do that. That's great. And we're going around 4G.

That's the most you will ever have felt in your life for a very short time in a funfair, because that's the law. You can't go about 4G, take out a four point five, four point five. And the thing with this test is the G is constant. It keeps going five G take him up to five G, five G. He left the microphone open. I heard him turn to the producer. I was still doing the test like tests, the maths test.

He turned to the producer and said, I don't know when he's going to pass out. Take five point five, 5.5 G, this is an incredible experience, I feel as if some giant animal sitting on top of me, crushing me down my eyes are sticking out on stalks. I'm still doing the lion test. I'm still doing two plus two. I'm still amazingly conscious. I heard him go take him up to six six six G. No, not only does he know seem to be showing no visible effects of G force at all.

He actively seems to be enjoying its. Six point one, six point one, even I knew at this point that I was the joint task force tested person in the world, still doing the lights. They're still doing the math test, six point to six point three stuff. It take him up to six point five, walking around faster than anything I've ever done in my life. He carried on going even take it to seven seven G. Let's see what happens.

Seven point one, seven point two, seven point three, this is incredible, still doing the digits tests, still doing the math tests at seven point three, things began to slow down. I can see it all slowing down gently. And we stopped and I thought, well, I must have failed the test. I didn't I didn't pass out.

And I got out of the forced testing machine and I sort of weaved over to the wing commander who was still standing there looking at the test, his record in tatters.

And I said to him, that's quite a that's quite an experience, isn't it? He looked at me and went, Oh, you're a freak. Now, then the chief scientist ran downstairs with his hair, what was left of it, just going everywhere, his glasses suddenly on the side, and he looked at me and he just went, that's the highest resting tolerance to G force ever recorded. And I said, I didn't pass out. And he said, I know we had to abandon the test because we don't know the effects of seven point four G even on a dead body.

I said to him, what what can I do with my new superpower? I said, like, can I fly a plane? He said, I don't know. Can you fly a plane? I said no. He said, no, no, you can't fly a plane. And so I tell you this story, because if you try things that you've never tried before and you push yourself and you give it a go sometimes, just occasionally. Your own self.

Will astound you. Thanks for listening. That was Tim FETs via the BBC series was called Superhuman Challenge, although he says the working title became killed him, it's sometimes repeated on BBC Worldwide and Discovery. Tim shared some YouTube links and photos from the show, and we'll put them up on our website so you can see them after hearing his story and watching the clips. I was surprised by just how serious and dangerous the series was. Tim got frostbite on his feet during one challenge and had to be carried out.

He did make it through all 10 episodes, but seven of the 10 involve the paramedics in some way or other.

Tim said in an email, I loved every single second. It was so much fun, a roller coaster of surprise and discovery.

I think every time I managed to get through round over a personal fear, that was the best feeling, which seems to be true for everyone we heard in this show who made it over their personal hurdle and lived to tell the tale.

That's it for this hour. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour. Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Habermann, Sarah Austin Jinnah's and Jennifer Hickson, production support from Emily Couche.

The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of the Moth's Global Community Program. More stories are true, is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the drift.

Other music in this hour from the batteries duo Vulfpeck, The Westerly's and Pokey Lafarge.

You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison with Viki Merrick and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is presented by parsecs. For more about our podcast. For information on Kitchenettes, your own story and everything else, go to our Web site, The Moth Dog.