M2 December 2025 Issue – Editor’s Letter

Normally, I like to grab a couple of features from the latest issue and use them to make some sweeping comment about whatever macroeconomic or political drama is playing out at the moment. I have just checked LinkedIn though, and it turns out there are already more than enough experts telling us what to think about the state of the world and I can’t really add anything.

So this month I am outsourcing the editor’s letter to one of comedy’s greats: Norm Macdonald and his moth joke. Norm first told his version on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien around 2009. He had only prepared enough material for one segment. During the commercial break they told him he had to do another seven minutes. With nothing ready, he grabbed a simple 20-second moth joke he had heard from Colin Quinn and, live on TV, stretched it into a seven-minute Russian novel of a story, for the sole purpose of padding out time before landing on a stupid little punchline.

I think about it a lot. Partly because of the story itself, that strange and universal feeling of drifting through a life you are not quite sure you chose, and partly because of Norm’s delivery. He is so unaffected by what anyone thinks of him. He is just taking his time and taking so much pleasure in a moment of weird creativity. It is beautiful to watch.

Anyway:

“A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office.”

“The podiatrist looks at the moth and says, what seems to be the problem, moth?”

And the moth says, “Doc, where do I even begin?”

“Every morning I drag myself out of bed and go to work for a man named Gregory Illinich Vasilievich. All day long I sit in that office and I push papers from one pile to another and then back again. I stamp forms. I sign things I do not understand. I file documents that nobody will ever read.

“I no longer know what my job is. I used to tell people I was some sort of bureaucrat, but even that felt like a lie. I do not think Gregory knows what I do either. He just knows he has power over me, and somehow that brings him joy.

“And my joy, Doc, comes in one tiny moment each day. It is the instant when I wake up and for a brief second I do not remember who I am. In that second I am happy. Then it all comes back to me, the office, Gregory, the years behind me, and it hits me like a cane. I put on my clothes and I walk the streets in a kind of fog, first here, then there, then here again, and sooner or later I end up at work.

“People gave up asking me what I do for a living. They know if they ask, I will just stare at them with these empty eyes and they are afraid whatever is inside me might be catching.”
The moth pauses, then carries on.

“At night I lie in bed and sometimes I turn and I see an old moth lying on my arm. When I was young, I loved her. I thought her wings were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Just to be near her felt like being close to a flame.

“Now I look at her and I see only the passage of time. Her very existence reminds me how long I have been living like this. She insults me simply by being there, this stranger who once was my great love.”

He looks down.

“When I was a young moth, I flew into a spider web. I remember it clearly. I smashed my wings against the silk, and the dust flew off them, but I only tangled myself worse. Then I saw the spider begin to move toward me.

“The old moths had told us stories about spiders. They said the spider would sink its fangs into your body and you would be paralysed but fully aware, while it slowly ate you.

“So I forced myself to go still. I thought, if I must die, I will not help him. The spider crept closer and closer and then it stopped. I waited a long time. When it started to move again, something in me snapped and I smashed my wings into the web one more time. This time the strands broke. I tore myself free and shot up into the sky.

“I felt joy like I had never known. I thought, I am free. But as I climbed higher, I looked down and saw there was still a single strand of silk hanging from me. At the end of it was the spider, racing up toward me. I realised I might die up there, high in the sky, a place no spider should ever be.

“I flew this way and that, twisting and turning, until finally the strand broke and I watched the spider fall away. I was safe.

“But lately, Doc, I have begun to feel that my whole life is that strand of silk. I feel that the spider is still coming, somewhere below me, and that I have already been bitten. I feel paralysed while life slowly eats away at me.”

“I have one child left. A boy. Stefan Mikhailovich Smakovnakov. When I look into his eyes, I do not see hope. I see the same cowardice I see when I catch my own reflection.

“It is that cowardice that keeps me moving from place to place. It keeps me walking here and there, saying hello and goodbye, eating though I have no hunger, lying down each night beside the old moth who used to be my great love. It keeps me in this strange parody of a life instead of changing anything. This cowardice frames my whole existence. It is what I am.”

There is a long silence.

Finally the podiatrist says, “Moth, your tale has moved me deeply. You are clearly in great pain, but I am only a podiatrist. I deal with feet. You need to see a psychiatrist and tell him all of this. Why on earth did you come into my office”

And the moth looks at him and says,
“Because the light was on.”