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TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. If you're a regular listener to our show, you know that we have a new co-host, Tonya Mosley. She's not only a great interviewer, she's a really interesting and thoughtful person whose life experiences inform her approach to journalism and what she chooses to cover. It's been great getting to know her better as we continue to work together. I want you to get to know her better, too.
So my guest today is our co-host, Tonya Mosley. She's had a wide-ranging career in journalism. She was an anchor of the NPR WBUR midday news show Here and Now. She worked as the Silicon Valley bureau chief of public radio station KQED in San Francisco. Earlier in her career, she was a TV reporter in several cities, including Seattle and Louisville. She created and hosts the Webby Award-winning podcast "Truth Be Told," which is meant to be a safe space for Black people to talk to each other and hear from experts in many fields about family, work, trauma, joy and more.
Tonya has described the podcast as exploring, quote, "how you can be in a world that doesn't always want you to be your true self." The fifth season is devoted to the therapeutic use of plant-based psychedelics - magic mushrooms - to heal trauma. Her focus is on healing racial trauma. As part of her reporting, she went to a retreat in Jamaica to take mushrooms in a therapeutic setting in an attempt to heal her own racial trauma. She grew up in Detroit in the '80s and '90s and says, quote, "it kind of felt like death knocking at your door." We'll talk about that later.
Tonya, welcome to your own show (laughter).
TONYA MOSLEY, BYLINE: I know, right? Kind of surreal. I know it's surreal for you, too.
GROSS: I'm looking forward to this. So the first time we met in person, you told me the story of how you got into journalism. And I know you wanted to be a journalist when you were really young. Like, how young, and what got you so interested in the field?
MOSLEY: You know, I actually don't have a memory of when I didn't want to be a journalist. I think what got me interested is a combination of things that all happened within the first few years of my life. My grandfather loved news. He loved newspapers. He loved watching television. He had the radio on in his home all the time. So I was just surrounded by it.
And I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. And because of how he exposed me to news, I then became interested in it because I wanted to connect with him.
GROSS: So you started your career in TV journalism after doing an internship at the Detroit Free Press. Why did TV appeal to you?
MOSLEY: You know, TV did not appeal to me until my senior year in college. And it was actually a moment of desperation that had me turn to television. I just knew I was going to be a print reporter. The Detroit Free Press was such an instrumental part of my childhood, and I went to the University of Missouri with the idea that I was going to be a print journalist. But my senior year I was so broke. So one day I'm just walking through campus thinking about, how am I going to make more money? I was already working at a coffee shop.
And I saw this flyer that said, hey - it was for this station, KMIZ, and they were looking for teleprompter operators. And I thought, OK, this looks like something that I could do and still finish my classes. So I went to a payphone, called. They told me to send a resume. I mailed a resume. And because I didn't have a phone, I put a friend's number down, and I forgot about it.
Finally, she saw me on campus and said, Tonya, this man at this station has been trying to get in touch with you. And so that is actually how I got into television. I started off as a teleprompter operator and then an audio operator, then camera, and then moved on to become a producer for the morning show and then the afternoon show.
GROSS: So what year are we talking about that you became a teleprompter operator?
MOSLEY: Yeah, 1998.
GROSS: OK. So let's hear a collage of some of your TV stories.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Start with Tonya Mosley, who's live tonight at Harborview Medical Center. Tonya?
MOSLEY: Well, Christopher Monfort is listed in serious condition here tonight at Harborview Medical Center. And sources tell King 5 he was not shot in the head as previously thought, but in the cheek.
Ferry service here at the Keystone terminal has been canceled for the night. And you can see why. The winds are extremely strong. They start to pick up around Oak Harbor and Mount Vernon. And we're hearing it's only expected to get worse.
It's transition time here near the UDub and lots of students are leaving for the summer, but they're leaving all of their trash. Now, they're encouraged to use dumpsters like this. But I want you to see this. Instead, it seems that corners and lots seem much more appealing.
The number of Braille readers among the blind has dipped dramatically. Only about 1% of library users actually use Braille. That's down 9% from 10 years ago. Technology has taken over.
In Seattle, Tonya Mosley, King 5 News.
GROSS: OK (laughter).
MOSLEY: Why was I yelling, Terry? What's (laughter)...
GROSS: Your voice sounds a little different. I think some of that is experience and age and some of it is the difference between TV and radio.
MOSLEY: True. Yes, absolutely. You're announcing more so on television.
GROSS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's so true. What was it like having to think about your hair, your clothes, your makeup, and being judged on that, which is one of the great advantages of radio, is that you're not judged on your hair or your lipstick or your lack of lipstick.
MOSLEY: Oh, yeah. So, you know, I always consider myself on the edge of TV-attractive. I mean, like...
GROSS: (Laughter).
MOSLEY: ...I believe that I'm attractive, but in the TV world, I was on the edge of that. I mean, I'm Black. I'm not skinny. I prefer to wear my hair short. I wear glasses. You know, it was difficult for me. We'd have consultants come in and talk with us about how to speak, what to wear, how to style our hair, what makeup to use. And while I really love adornment, and I love expressing myself through my hair and makeup and clothing, for the purposes of my job, all I really cared about were the stories.
And so I was a very nervous television reporter. Those clips that you played - there was always, like, a script in my mind that was happening, two of them at the same time. So the first was the story that I was sharing with the public, but the other was my appearance. I was always very aware of it, and it was very stressful. I mean, it was - it really is part of the reason why I transitioned out of news. Because something happened in the mid 2000s where the look for television became even more vampy. And at that time I knew I could not really compete in that sphere. And I also could feel it in my career. Like, I wasn't exactly the look of the time.
GROSS: Were there times in your TV jobs where you were the only Black reporter at the station?
MOSLEY: Oh, almost every place that I ever worked. I worked in lots of markets. There was either one person or myself. There were always a few more people of color and Black people specifically in the background - so behind the scenes. But as far as on air, oftentimes I was the only Black person at a station that I worked for.
GROSS: Did that affect the stories you were assigned or the stories you wanted to cover?
MOSLEY: Yes, in that I kind of became someone who had to explain Black culture to newsrooms or fight a little bit harder to cover stories on certain parts of town. I remember when I was working in Seattle, the first week I started, a photographer, a very well-meaning guy - we were driving through a neighborhood that was considered a Black neighborhood, and he said to me, so, you know, I want to give you the lay of the land. This neighborhood is not the place to be. And this is not the area that you want to cover. And I thought, like, he has no understanding...
GROSS: (Laughter).
MOSLEY: ...Of who he's talking to. I mean, this is exactly where I want to be. And this is exactly the community I want to cover. And it really says a lot that you actually don't see this community as part of the greater coverage that we're supposed to do to serve this community.
GROSS: It's almost like a metaphor for how Black communities have been invisible to certain benefits of being in America.
MOSLEY: It's true. And, you know, the thing about television news that might be different that - actually, it's not might. It is different than public radio. Public radio folks are so nice and so considerate. Also, you know, there's just a different sensibility and news purpose. But in television, everyone's pretty blunt. So in news meetings, you know, folks will say, we don't care about that story or that's not important, or why should we care? And for me, I always had to fight against who I was in this moment to tell teams why we should care, which was pretty exhausting towards the end of my career in television.
I had gained a reputation of being able to do what I wanted pretty much in the way of news stories because I just worked so hard to get there. But it always was a little bit of a fight. My stories would never be the 1A story, for instance, you know? It would always be second block stories or the end of the first block of the news program. And that's because we just really didn't see value in certain communities unless we were covering crime. So if I was covering crime, of course, that would be the lead story. And that just became more and more challenging to me over time.
GROSS: So let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is FRESH AIR's new co-host, Tonya Mosley. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF AWREEOH SONG, "CAN'T BRING ME DOWN")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with our new co-host, Tonya Mosley.
So after your TV career, you moved to public radio. And among the things you did, you were the Silicon Valley bureau chief at KQED in San Francisco. And you were an anchor, a host, of Here & Now, the NPR-WBUR midday news show that's carried on a lot of stations, including WHYY, where we produce FRESH AIR. And your move to Here & Now coincided with the COVID lockdown. So you were not only living in LA while the show was produced in Boston, you were not able to get to a studio because the studio was shut down, so you were working out of your closet. Closets have the best soundproofing in most homes. So one of the stories that you had to cover was the extended news coverage of the January 6 insurrection.
MOSLEY: Yeah.
GROSS: I want you to set the scene for us. Here you are, 3,000 miles away from the action. What was it like on your end to be anchoring coverage of what was happening on January 6?
MOSLEY: It was one of the most stressful times of my entire life. If - I want to take you back to that moment, that time period, Terry. My stress level was on 10 - I mean, stress hormones - every single day I'd leave that little closet after spending the day on air. And it would take me hours to come down. And then, you know, rinse and repeat. So that particular day - we had already been covering Trump every day on the hour, every hour. And you never knew what was going to happen. There was always breaking news, which meant there was always special coverage. And it always coincided with the noon hour, the midday.
So we had ended our show. And I was going to leave the closet, go get something to eat, hang out with my kids. And we got the notice that, hey, there is something happening at the Capitol. So I ran back in my closet, put on my headphones. But because it's a closet, I did not have a television. So I had one computer screen, my laptop. I turned it on, went to a livestream of it on YouTube through CNN, and at the same time, you know, receiving the countdown - we're going on in two minutes. Oh, no, we're going on in 30 seconds. No, we're going on now.
GROSS: Oh, no (laughter).
MOSLEY: So if you hear all the - you can kind of hear the chaos in the first few moments of that live broadcast. And for two hours, myself and my colleagues just kind of riffed. We were trying to figure out and - what was happening. The delay in that live feed was something like, maybe, 15 to 20 seconds. So every time I would see something happen, I'd have to call to the reporter that was out there, the NPR reporter, to kind of get clarity on what was happening. It was really - yeah, it was very stressful, Terry.
GROSS: Well, it sounds it. One of the things that you saw was Confederate flags and antisemitic T-shirts, because this was a hate event as well as an insurrection. And I'm wondering how that affected your stress level and your just upset level. I mean, it was such an upsetting event. And to have to be covering it at such a distance while witnessing it in real-time must have been so hard. But seeing all the hate, how did that affect your stress level?
MOSLEY: In the moment, I don't remember having any emotion about it. But I think that's normal. You know, when your job is to face trauma or to face horrific events, you, in the moment, disassociate. It's fight or flight. You are like, I have a job to do, and I'm focused on this. And I have to really pay attention to detail and report this out as I'm seeing it and also be accurate and be fair. But it was clear to me that this was something different.
It wasn't until we were done with the special coverage and I had a moment to decompress that all of what you're talking about, all of what I saw with the Confederate flags and the people running into the Capitol, became clear to me. And I had a moment of mourning. Honestly, I remember my entire body just breaking down. Maybe it was the flood of stress hormones leaving my body. And I was immediately tired. I had to just lay in bed. And I laid in bed until the next morning.
GROSS: Tonya, another story that was, you know, very upsetting that you covered in your days on Here and Now, the NPR WBUR midday news show, was the George Floyd protests and, you know, the murder of George Floyd. And before that, you had won an Emmy for your televised piece "Beyond Ferguson," also about a police shooting of a Black man. Was that a story that hit home personally for you?
MOSLEY: Every time a Black person is killed by police and I have to cover it, it affects me personally. It affects me profoundly. I don't think there is a story about police violence that I don't cry over when I go home at night. And it's because it's so close to me. I've seen it all of my life, even if it is, quote-unquote, "justified," it is a life that is lost. And it's another tick on our history with Black people and interactions with law enforcement.
And so that one was particularly hard because I had been in my closet for all of that time covering some of the worst news in the history of our nation. And here we were with another one. And this was a flashpoint because the entire nation seemed to rise up. There was something about the quiet and the stillness of the pandemic that allowed us to see ourselves a little more clearly. That's the positive thing that I saw come out of it.
But with that, I was also faced with a reality that I've seen in every single newsroom that I've been in. You asked me, were there times where I was the only Black person in a newsroom? Yes. And there's a cost that comes with that. Oftentimes there's not an understanding.
And so when George Floyd was murdered and people were taking to the streets, again, I had to be a translator for my team. And I was broken. I did the job, but it was so tremendously hard. And I knew that I - I was almost to the point of talking to my husband about, what, you know - is there something else I could do? Could we still survive and I not have to cover this? Like, what are our finances like? It was a really dark period.
GROSS: How did your personal knowledge of police brutality affect how you covered George Floyd and other protests against police brutality and police shootings?
MOSLEY: It's interesting because oftentimes we have, like, this warped notion of what objectivity is in this country, and especially when it comes to journalism. Somehow we feel like, you know, not having a connection to something makes us better at covering it. But we all have connections to everything that we cover. You have a point of view. Bias is a natural human trait.
And so, you know, I had heard for many years, even before George Floyd, that, oh, you know, will you be able to cover stories that involve your community, Black people? Can you be objective? Can you be neutral? Which is - there's no such thing. And how I would always think about that is, we don't say that to white reporters or to white journalists. We don't say you covering the day-to-day events where you only talk to white people, can you do that and still hold your objectivity?
And so I actually think it makes me a better journalist to have experienced firsthand some of the things that I'm covering, because I understand all sides of it. And I'm able to maybe tap into parts of a story that others don't think about.
GROSS: You have this, you know, interesting combination of fearlessness and vulnerability. I mean, I think of you as being pretty fearless professionally, both in how you've worked your way up in journalism and also the stories you've covered and how - you know, how well you've covered them. And at the same time, beneath that was this constant sense of vulnerability.
MOSLEY: And, you know, maybe it's because I've been so close to death, in a way that death seemed like it was a probable outcome for me early in life. And so while I still have a lot of fear around it, especially as I get older, which is funny, you know - when I was younger, I just felt like, OK, I might die young, and this is just a reality. I think that might have to do with it, is just what I've seen over time and in my understanding that the possibility that I may not, you know, live long is a reality.
GROSS: Let's take a break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is FRESH AIR's co-host Tonya Mosley. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross. And this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MCCOY TYNER AND BOBBY HUTCHERSON'S "ISN'T THIS MY SOUND AROUND ME?")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with our new co-host, Tonya Mosley. I want you to get to know her better and to get a sense of her work outside of FRESH AIR. She's had a wide-ranging journalism career in TV, radio and podcasting.
She was a host of the NPR WBUR midday news show Here and Now, was the Silicon Valley bureau chief at public radio station KQED in San Francisco and was a TV news reporter in several cities, including Seattle and Louisville. She created and hosts the Webby Award-winning podcast "Truth Be Told." The current season is about the use of psychedelic mushrooms in a therapeutic setting to heal trauma. Tonya's focus is on racial trauma. She speaks with people who have taken guided mushroom trips and felt transformed by the experience. And she talks with therapists and reports on her own trip on psychedelic mushrooms in a therapeutic setting.
I want to talk with you about the current season of "Truth Be Told," which is about the use of psychedelic mushrooms like ayahuasca (ph) or psilocybin in a therapeutic setting to heal trauma. And that's something that's being researched in the U.S. - the use of, you know, hallucinogenics in a therapeutic setting. So you decided to focus on, can mushrooms heal racial trauma? Is that something that Black people should be seriously looking into? So you went to a retreat in Jamaica, where there is no legislation restricting the use of mushrooms. And you wanted to experience a trip, a mushroom trip, for yourself and see if that was helpful for racial trauma that you've experienced over the years.
So I want to play a clip from one of the episodes that's an example of some of the racial trauma that you experienced growing up. And this relates to what you were just saying before about being exposed to death at a young age and wondering how long you'd be able to survive.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MOSLEY: I was 6 years old the first time I experienced a drive-by, sitting on the porch with my mom on the east side of the city. What I remember most is how everyone fell to the ground and when it was over, just like that, dusted themselves off and resumed like we didn't all just almost die. The lesson I learned that day - keep it moving.
The summer before high school was the first time I lost a friend. Her name was Tanya McWhorter (ph). We not only had the same first name, we also shared the same initials. We'd pass notes in the hallway and sign them TM with a circle around it, like the trademark symbol. She was the last person I saw the day before summer break. We promised each other we'd plan a trip to Cedar Point Amusement Park. By mid-July, she and her 10-year-old cousin were brutally raped and murdered by a next-door neighbor. I didn't go to her funeral. Pretending like it didn't happen somehow seemed like the right thing to do.
But I couldn't pretend with Frank Miles (ph). A few weeks before homecoming my senior year, he was shot and killed in front of our high school. A news crew arrived before an ambulance could get there. He bled out right there in front of us. He was 15.
GROSS: So that's a clip from the new current season of Tonya's podcast, "Truth Be Told." Tonya, did you live with constant fear, or did you try to brush it off, like you say you did when you were 6, and the message you got was just keep it moving?
MOSLEY: Yeah. I have to say this before I answer your question...
GROSS: Yeah, go ahead.
MOSLEY: ...Because, you know, my mom said when she knew that I was doing this - she said, please don't talk bad about Detroit. And that's just - I think everyone feels that way about where they live, but especially with Detroit. Because they're - you know, growing up there in the '80s and the '90s with so much economic divestment, people were just desperate. And there was so much crime. It was constant.
And I will say, you know, that is the complexity of being from a place like Detroit. I did live in fear, but it was also a place with so much love. And so I felt a combination of things. Like, I felt held and safe and connected to community. But I did feel fearful constantly and mostly fearful for my future. In the moment I felt like, I'm just doing what I need to do to get through, and dreaming about a future where I could be out of this place and feel safe. And so, if I'm honest with myself, it's part of why I've never gone home permanently, because there was so much desire as a child to get out of there so that I could feel safe.
You know, I still hold a tremendous amount of survivor's guilt around being able to make it out. It has allowed me, though, to see that these types of things happen everywhere, you know? I've lived in seven cities and states, and in every case, there's crime that happens. There are people who die randomly, people who were targeted. And it's just part of life. And it's the way that life works. And in many ways that has given me solace. But in many ways it also retraumatizes me every time I experience or see a shooting that happens - a school shooting, for instance, or a wave of crime that happens.
The friends that I lost who were - who held the same dreams that I did, that we talked about our lives in this moment. You know, I talked about Frank Miles, who was shot and killed in front of our school. But my best friend Leta Melindez (ph), who didn't live past 17, my friend Karen Treadwell (ph), who died at 22, Tanya McWhorter, who died when we were 13 years old - and these were all people who I always thought were more talented than me, that had so much to give to the world. And so I do feel oftentimes a tremendous amount of survivor's guilt because I know the potential that they held and so many people hold in these communities.
GROSS: Were these friends shot?
MOSLEY: They died in lots of different ways. Frank was shot. Leta died in a car accident. Karen Treadwell died in a house fire. And Tanya McWhorter was murdered.
GROSS: Yeah. That's a lot to deal with. Did any of the things that you tried to brush off, you know, any of the violent events that you witnessed or that - you know, your friends' murders. So these things that you tried to brush off and just keep moving forward, did they surface while you were on your mushroom trip, trying to deal with racial trauma?
MOSLEY: Yes and no. Like, after January 6 and I felt completely broken down, a lot of the things that I had experienced in my life started to surface. And I think it was in combination with the quietness of the pandemic and being stuck in the house and alone with my thoughts more really brought them to the surface for me. So I'd already been dealing with so much of that consciously.
But when I went to Jamaica - and I was afraid of what would come up for me. I thought, like, oh, my gosh, now I'm really going to sit in it. What actually ended up happening was that I had an experience with my family - my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles. It was a beautiful thing because I didn't understand before I took psilocybin that, that would be the thing that I'd need to contend with, is my relationship with my family and that connection.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is our new co-host, Tonya Mosley. I want you to get to know her better. So we'll be right back and talk some more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JULIAN LAGE GROUP'S "IOWA TAKEN")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with FRESH AIR's new co-host, Tonya Mosley.
Your experience during your trip was largely about family. And your grandmother was your guide. So...
MOSLEY: Yes.
GROSS: Not that your grandma was literally there, but in the trip, she was your guide. And she's 97 years old. What does it mean in this context that your grandmother was your guide during your mushroom trip?
MOSLEY: Yeah, two things. You know, I for some time have - I'm very close to my grandmother. I grew up right around the block from my grandparents. And so she was a constant figure in my life growing up and as an adult. We talk at least once a week. But I think that what she represented in the journey was a connection to self. I have been running for so long. And when I say running, it's in two ways - one, running away from the trauma that I experienced as a child, but also just trying to find myself. And seeing her in my journey, I think, allowed me to come back to myself, to say, you don't have to be dictated by fear in your life. You need to come back to who you are. And the foundation of who you are is us, your family. And what my grandmother represents is myself. She represents me.
GROSS: What role did she play in your life, especially during your formative years?
MOSLEY: As I mentioned, she - I grew up right around the block from her. And just seeing her move through life - she is a community person, deeply rooted in community. All of the neighbors know her. She has deep, meaningful connections with her neighbors and with her church. And she loves to talk. She loves to tell stories. And I love to hear them. So I would sit at her knee and listen to all of her amazing stories about growing up, her day-to-day life. She's still my favorite storyteller.
And when I was a kid, she was the president of the deaconess board in her church. My family knew that I loved to write. And they knew that I loved to speak. So they would always use me to write speeches for them. I'd always do the papers for friends and family, their school papers, because they knew that I could write - or they thought that I could write them better than they could. And so for my grandmother, I would write her speeches for the deaconess board. She would dictate to me what she wanted to say, and then I would type them out for her.
GROSS: One of the stories that comes up in an earlier season of "Truth Be Told" is your father, who you never really got to know. You saw him maybe four or five times. You learn more about him at his funeral than you ever knew during his lifetime. Is that something that came up during your trip? And did the trip help you work through that? Because you - I know you went through a long period of being really angry about him.
MOSLEY: The first time I remember meeting my father, I was 13 years old. And I knew who he was by then. My mother had told me about him. And I knew that he owned some car repair shops in the city. So I knew where to find him, but I had never met him. And a good friend of mine, we wanted to go to Cedar Point amusement park. And we had no money. And so she didn't know her father either. And we made this pact like, hey, let's write our fathers and say, give us money for Cedar Point amusement park.
So I wrote him this long letter saying, I'm going to be somebody. And you don't know me, you don't need to know me, but the least you can do is give me $50 so I can go to the amusement park. And he actually did. He showed up at our house and gave me $100. And I wouldn't see him again until I was in my 20s, and then a few more times before he died. He was a rolling stone. I mean, he had lots of children. I found out that I went to high school with my brother who I didn't meet until many years later. And so I've reconciled that part of myself. You know, I never knew him. And I'm OK with not knowing him.
GROSS: Is there anything else you feel comfortable talking about, about trauma that was - or, like, family issues that you saw in a new way because of this trip?
MOSLEY: One of the most powerful experiences during my psychedelic trip was interacting with two of my uncles who died by suicide. My Uncle Benny (ph) was, like, the light of my life growing up because I was the light of his life. I was the apple of his eye. He gave me my first subscription to National Geographic and Time Magazine, and he'd send me roses every year for my birthday. And it felt so grown up, you know, when you're in the single digits. And I felt like we were so much alike. And so when he died by suicide, I thought it was my fault.
Now, being 9 years old, I mean, of course it wasn't my fault, but because I thought we were so much alike - I don't know. I internalized that his death somehow was connected to me. And I lived with that in such a heavy way all of my life. And you know, when someone dies by suicide, oftentimes they're erased from the family because the pain is so deep. And so we never really talked about him. We never really worked through that.
And it was during my psychedelic journey that I faced him. We sat down under a tree together, and we held hands, and it was nonverbal. But he imparted this message to me that there was nothing that I could have ever done to stop what happened, and it wasn't anyone's fault in our family, but that I should talk about him and that my children should know about him because they are connected to him just like I was. That was the greatest gift, honestly, Terry, that I could have ever gotten in my life. I remember in that moment the weight of it just lifted from me, and I felt so strongly that, oh, yeah, my kids do need to know my Uncle Benny. I've never talked to them about him.
GROSS: Were there any parts of the trip where you felt out of control or threatened? Because things can turn momentarily bad on a trip.
MOSLEY: Yeah. I did not have a bad experience. Except for when I needed to go use the restroom. And they tell you, don't look in the mirror. And...
GROSS: Oh (laughter). Yes.
MOSLEY: Do you know, you know...
GROSS: Yes.
MOSLEY: ...That "Twilight Zone" episode where their faces are, like, pigs? Like, I don't know. Like, there's a - the faces are drawn really low. I forget what episode of "The Twilight Zone" that is, but they're distorted faces. When I looked at myself in the mirror, my face was definitely distorted. But no, I didn't have a bad experience or see something that was traumatizing, that was too traumatizing for me to handle in the moment.
GROSS: You know, one of the things about taking a psychedelic trip is it could be a very transcendental experience where you feel this kind of oneness. You feel your place in the world in a more spiritual way. And I'm wondering if you experienced that, and if that connected to church because you grew up with church or if it connected to something else.
MOSLEY: Yes. I have two answers for this. This is so good. OK, so, the one thing that is true about me - it may be like one of my greatest attributes and also my greatest weaknesses - is that I just - I am a workaholic. I am a perfectionist. I love to be in control. I love to know all the answers. I'm going to research so that I know all the answers. If I need to be somewhere at 7, I'm going to be there at 6:15 or 6:30. And something happened where I just can't do that anymore (laughter).
I don't know if I should be telling my employer that, but, like, I'm much more normal and balanced. It's almost like my body doesn't allow me to do that. And I think that what that meant was that I was able to process a lot of my trauma, the trauma that was kind of fueling that type of workaholic behavior, that sense of always having to be up on it. I feel much more balanced now. I'm now learning how to sit in that balance because it's counter to who I've been all of my life.
And as far as the spiritual component of it, what was amazing is that I saw that I am just part of something much bigger. I'm so insignificant. My work is important, but it is not the important thing. It's important in my mind, but I'm part of a collective. That was such a gift, which, as someone who grew up in a religious household, really also allowed me to see faith in a different way or religion in a different way. I still believe, but I'm not really tied to the dogma of religion. I understand its greater purpose and the ways and the mechanisms by which people understand is just cultural, but it has nothing to do with who's right or who's wrong. It's such a gift.
GROSS: So does it feel liberating to not be quite as driven?
MOSLEY: It feels liberating. And at times I'm still working through it because it makes me fearful.
GROSS: Oh, and - uh-huh. Right.
MOSLEY: Part of what made me - yeah. Part of what made me that way is almost because I had to be. You know, when you are the only person of color in a situation, it just happens naturally where there's more scrutiny on you. And so I always felt like I had to be better than everyone else, or I had to make sure that I was twice as good. Because, you know, if I made one mistake, everyone - their eyes are on me. And so that was always my fear. And so sometimes when I am not as driven and I'm just doing my work, I - that fear creeps up in me that it's going to come back to me, that, hey, you know - I'm going to be hypercriticized.
GROSS: My guest is FRESH AIR's new co-host, Tonya Mosley. We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SAINT SINNA'S "REAL FLOW")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with our new co-host, Tonya Mosley. We've been talking about her life and her career in journalism and how they connect.
So working with you now - and you've been contributing interviews to our show for a couple years, but it's only since June that you've been a full-time co-host on our show. And I'm wondering if you're going through a process of finding out who you are in the context of FRESH AIR as opposed to who you were in the context of Here & Now or Silicon Valley bureau chief or TV reporter or creator and host of your podcast because I think they're all in some ways the same but slightly different Tonyas.
MOSLEY: I am. I'm going through a profound shift in understanding of who I am and, really, all of my experiences culminating into one person. To be a Black person in the United States means that you have - you know, you live in duality. There is the person that you are at work. There's the person you are at home. And to a certain extent, we all have those personas. But it's even more so for a person of color because you're seeing yourself as white people see you, and then you're seeing yourself as you see yourself. And all of that is kind of coming together into one person for me. Like, I want to bring to this show the fullness and the richness of all of my experience, all of my thinking and being myself.
And, you know, that means unlearning all the things I learned, in many ways, in television news on how to speak, how to ask questions, what's important, why it's important. Yes, I'm serving all audiences, but there really is no way to serve all audiences truly. You really have to lean into your curiosities in a way that gives people something new. You know, if it's truly coming from my curiosities, then that will allow people to see things in a new and different way or experience a topic that they thought they knew in a new way that lets them not only understand the person I'm interviewing but also understand my point of view as a Black person in this country, the way I view the world.
You know, I recently interviewed Jeremy O. Harris, the playwright, and he said something really interesting about his Broadway play, "Slave Play." They had mirrors in the theater that allowed the audience-goers to see themselves and see the people behind them and on the sides of them. And in the beginning, folks would see that, oh, you know, there were certain parts of the play that only white audiences laughed at. Then you would hear a wave of laughter from Black audience members. And they realized they were laughing at different things. But over time, within that space, towards the end, they were laughing at the same things because white audiences were able to see, oh, this is the way - this is the humor of this audience, of these Black people in this audience. And I now see it and vice versa.
GROSS: Literally see it because of the mirrors.
MOSLEY: Exactly - literally see it.
GROSS: And see each other. Yeah.
MOSLEY: Yes. And so I think the misconception that we often have in journalism is that the white way is the right way. The white way is the neutral way, is the objective way. And everything else is kind of, like, a side view. It's not the main view. And that's flawed because if we all think of ourselves as equal, that's not true. All of our vantage points really sit in the center, but it's making space and room for that experience and that lens on the world.
GROSS: Tonya, it's really been great to have this conversation. I'm so glad we did it. And I just want to say I'm so grateful that you agreed to co-host our show. I'm so happy to be working with you and to hear your work on our show.
MOSLEY: Terry, thank you. And thank you for being so generous in spirit and generous in sharing the mic. And it's truly an honor and a pleasure to be co-hosting the show with you.
GROSS: Tonya Mosley is FRESH AIR's new co-host. Her podcast is called Truth Be Told. Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, Tonya will talk about the serious and increasing dangers caused by the rising temperatures of climate change. Her guest will be Jeff Goodell, author of the new book "The Heat Will Kill You First: Life And Death On A Scorched Planet." It examines the causes and consequences of rising temperatures and how to slow this threatening trend. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @NPRFreshAir.
FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Ann Marie Baldonado, Therese Madden, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF REGGIE QUINERLY'S "REFLECTIONS ON THE HUDSON")
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