The Moth - Puppets, Pastors & Secret Agents: The Moth Radio Hour

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

In this hour, stories of considering "what's in a name," a dangerous CIA mission, and the rise and fall of an unusual musical act. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Director Meg Bowles. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.Storytellers:What started as a joke on social media becomes a passion project for Brently Heilbron.As the Chief of Disguise at the CIA, Jonna Mendez breaks a cardinal rule and becomes visible.Esau McCaulley prepares for the most difficult eulogy of his pastoral career.Podcast # 1000

This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowls, and in this show, we take to the stage at America's Got Talent, go on a mission with a former CIA operative, and stand with a clergy member as he prepares for one of the hardest eulogies of his career. Our first story comes from Brintley Hilbrin. He told it in Austin, Texas, where we partnered with the Paramount Theater. Here's Brintley, live at the Moth. About a year before I was born, my infant brother, Brian, and passed away of what they used to call crib death.

And in the Jewish religion, you often take the first letter of the dead person's name, so I was named after him. And I always felt like I had two lives to live. I put this enormous pressure on myself to succeed because to fail, meant I failed not just for one life, but for two. And in spite of my best intentions, failure

just seemed to follow me around. I failed at so many first dates. I wasn't particularly great in school, and then I pursued a career in acting, which is just a series of failures. And I got married in my early 20s, and when my marriage ended up failing, I was at the lowest point I had ever been at.

I felt I let down my wife and my kids and the big brother that I was at. I never knew. Now, I'm a classic, sensitive artist type, so I really tried to write appropriately mopey songs to meet the moment, but my sarcasm always got in the way. And so one day, it just manifested itself as a Facebook post that simply said, I'm going to start an emo puppet band called Fradile Rock. Within minutes, I started getting notification after, you know, I started getting after notification, people wanted in. Now keep in mind, this project did not exist,

but here were respected people in the Austin creative community that wanted to be a part of it. And the first person to respond was a guitarist that said, I'll be in that band. And then within the comments, the band fleshes out with bass and drums, and an old friend volunteered to make puppets.

And then by the end of the post, I was in fact in an emo puppet band called fragile rock. So I started to research, like, where these characters look like? And we came up with the like tortured lead singer, Milo S, with the bangs and the highliner and the good nature guitarist that's always auditioning and the Kim Gordon inspired cool of the bassist. And we made a video for a song called I Am Sad and So Am I, and started playing around

town and getting some notoriety. And soon, we were asked to play at South by Southwest. Right before the festival, some nerdcore sites like nerdist and boing-boing started picking up stories about us and buzz began to grow and even NPR ran a piece about us. And that led NPR's Bob Boylan to come to our show and offer us a tiny desk concert on the spot. A tiny desk concert for an emo puppet band. And it hit me, is this what I'm going to be known for?

Like, all those years of serious works produced nothing. Like, I can't be known for my searing portrayal of Laertes and Hamlet or like a pretentious one-person show where I play Lenny Bruce meeting Salvador Dali in heaven. No, an emo puppet band was the thing. And I felt like I was failing at success. Not long after, I got a message on Facebook that said, Hey, Brentling, I'm a senior producer at America's Got Talent,

and we would love fragile rock to audition for us. And I'm like, we have performed in front of 100 to 300 people, but this is freaking ABC, and they have 10 million viewers per season. I mean, this is the thing that's gonna put us on the national map. There's one catch. We had to mask everything but the puppets.

And that's not what we did. We, it's a very strings and all kind of project. Fraudger Rock, you see the band, you see the puppets, the puppeteers, you know, it's very Brechtian, which is my attempt at pretension, creeping out again. But we figure what's a little change? change when TV comes to Colin. So we figured it out, and then we

load up in a van, we head to Dallas for the audition, and they have us at the Fairmont Hotel, which is pretty posh. And when you audition for one of these shows, they put you in this room with like every kind of auditioning act imaginable.

It is a total carny hellscape. I am overwhelmed and I am exhilarated. And we auditioned, and I'm crouched down and my arm is outstretched and I am not a trained puppeteer in this position over time hurts like hell.

But we auditioned, we keep getting called back and then a couple days later I received a two-word text, You're in. We were going to America's Got Talent. Within a week, we are flying out to LA on AGT's dime, three musicians, seven puppets, puppets, puppeteers, a coven of significant others. And when we get there, the producers start oozing with these confidence-building questions

like when you win the contest, not if, but when you win this, what are you going to do with the million dollars? And suddenly, this thing that like I never knew I wanted became the most important thing in the world. And I was certain we were gonna win. So we're behind the curtain, ready to go on. The band is 25 to 30 feet away. We're usually right next to them.

I can't see or hear them a problem. And I'm giddy, and I'm nervous, and I'm a little bit frantic, and I'm crouched down. We have these TV monitors, to kind of see what our puppets look like, and I can hear the rumblings of 5,000 people in the audience. And then I hear Simon Cowell say something to one of the celebrity judges. And on that night, we had Mel B., Scary Spice,

Howie Mandel, Canadian, and my childhood comedy hero, I had all his records. We had Heidi Klum, supermodel, and of course the infamous Simon Cowell. And I noticed our mics aren't quite working properly. And my stomach drops like I'm on a roller coaster. And I feel claustrophobic for the first time cramped down behind a partition. But the curtain rises.

The band starts playing and we start singing. And it would have been great. if we had played and sang at the same time. That first buzzer came in hard and fast. And I can't see it, but I know there's a bid reg X in front of one of the judges,

and I'm like praying. It's not Howie Mandel. We stumble on for a few more seconds, and that second buzzer comes like lightning, and that's when the boo. start. First, a confident group by the judges and it grows by the thousands. We stumble on like a wounded gazelle and finally that third buzzer comes and puts us out of our misery. It is over before it began. And I just wanted to slink off stage and head back to Austin but oh no, I forgot

how these shows work. You see, even after the mercy killing comes, the feedback. Now keep in mind, these are just our puppets that they're going to be talking to. We are still crouched down, mortified. The first person to speak was Mel B. She said, this is just too mean.

I don't like mean. And I'm like, holy shit, I'm too mean. I am too mean for scary spice. The second to talk was Howie Mandel. And he said, this project is totally without merit. Whoever came up with it should be embarrassed and ashamed. And I'm like, oh, Howie, it was me.

It me. That one hurt. Now, I don't remember what Heidi Klum said But up next was Simon Cowell. And I try to preempt this nightmare by having my puppet say something like, Hey, Simon, I'm just like you. We're like misunderstood geniuses that everybody hates.

Nothing. Crickets. In fact, he seemed to inhale my comment. Like the sea sucks in the tide before a tsunami hits. And then he said, and I will never, ever forget this. He said, if I were a dead toddler, then maybe I would enjoy this terrible thing. And I think to myself, Jesus Christ, that's the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me. But I didn't think it.

I said it out loud. Into the microphone, completely breaking character. It was a natural reaction to the worst thing anyone has ever said to me. And we were then invited to rise so we could take it all in with our human eyes, where I got to see the stone, angry faces of celebrity judges, at the scorn and rejection of 5,000 pissed off people. And when we got off stage, a producer clarified that what Simon actually said was deaf toddler,

not dead, but it hardly made it better. Oh, here's the kicker. The show was so bad, such an epic fail, They didn't even air it. Right? Here's a show built on people failing, and we didn't make the cut. It failed at failing.

When I got back to Austin, though, a realization hit me. When you are in an emo puppet band built on the foundation of divorce, Failures kind of baked in to the project, you know. So we leaned into it. And we started putting the judge's quotes on our promotional materials. Fragile Rock, totally without merit.

Fragile Rock, the embarrassed and ashamed tour. You know, I put myself out there on a national stage, and it could not have gone worse. But I put myself out there. You know? And I think that that's the thing that people regret. Not going for it. Not trying. I think anyone here worth their bones will tell you that the road to success is paved with many, many failures.

and I had a brother named Brian who never had the chance to fail but I think we can all agree that I have proudly done enough for both of us. Thank you. Brintley Hilbrin is a writer and performer based in Austin, Texas. When he's not touring with Fragile Rock,

he works as a high school drama teacher helping grow the next generation of creators. After Brintley left the stage that night in Austin, the host got up in front of a sold-out crowd, 1,300 people. A crowd of 5,000. But I want y'all to tell, to show Brentley Hillbrun, what the sound of 1,300, loving and adoring and supportive fans sounds like, give it out one more time. I was in the audience, and I got to say, it was a wonderful moment, and one I know

Brentley appreciated, especially since Austin happens to be his hometown. I so. Am I Fragile Rock's failure on America's Got Talent didn't stop the world's only emo puppet band. They just celebrated their 10-year anniversary and released a new album called Micro Famous. You can find out more about Brintley

and see pictures of his fragile rock adventures on our website, the moth.org. Coming up, a woman comes face-to-face with a notorious terrorist when The Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. Our next story comes from John A. Mendes, who took the stage at the Somerville Theater in Massachusetts, where we partner with local public radio station WBUR.

Here's John A Mendes. So I was standing in a hallway outside of the Oval Office in Washington, D.C. I was standing there with six men. I didn't know. I was chief of disguise at the time at the CIA, and I was wearing a disguise, but they had no idea. It was slow because the meeting in the Oval was going long.

We were going to go in and brief President George H.W. Bush, and we were kind of stuck for a few minutes. Then finally the doors opened, and we went in, And the president is sitting in the Oval Office behind the resolute desk with these wonderful windows behind him. He's backlit. And there was a semicircle of chairs in front of that desk. There were six chairs. And I went to the one that I already knew where to be.

I had to step very carefully across the presidential seal in the carpeting. And I didn't want to step on it. Took my seat. Everybody else took their seat. And I went first. This was the president's morning briefing. I was going to give the first speak, and then I was going to be the first one to leave. I was wearing the first animated full-face mask that my disguise office had produced, and I was going to brief the president wearing it, and he had no idea. I took him pictures of himself when he had been head of CIA. Oh, he had a mustache. He had some different glasses. It was a was a small disguise. I said, we've gotten much better since you left. He said, like, what? I said,

I'm going to take it off and show you. He said, wait, wait, not yet. And he said, okay, take it off. And I did the Tom Cruise peel way before Tom Cruise did it. And I had the mask up in my hand, up in the air. The hair is still attached. It's a face and its hair. The men in the semi-circle, some had been listening, some had not. John Sununu, who was next to me, had not been listening, and he let out, I don't know if I would call it a shriek or a squeal. He was startled, and next to him was Bob Gates, who had also been with CIA, and he just smiled. And on the far end was Brent Skowcroft, who was kind of scowling at me holding my head up in the air. there was a White House photographer in the room

and she was going around taking pictures it was a moment this was something we'd worked on for 10 years and we were very proud of so first one to brief I was then the first one to leave I went out to the outer office where the president's dog Millie had just had puppies and I was

actually on the floor playing with the puppies when the photographer came out and said what did you just do now I know she took the pictures because I could hear the shutters clicking. And I said, I can't talk about it. It's classified. I was in CIA's office that resembled Q in the James Bond movies. We made all the toys for James. We made all the audio bugs, all the disguises, secret white concealment devices. We didn't think a lot of James. He wasn't technical, but we made him whatever toys he thought he needed. And we were more than

happy to provide them. So that in this office of Q, I was one of the very few women that was working my way through it. I started out in clandestine photography. I had been a photographer when I joined the CIA at Amateur, and I was now teaching foreign agents around the world and how to use our cameras to collect intelligence for the United States government.

Now you think camera, but you don't know what I'm talking about. My cameras would fit in a lipstick. a cigarette lighter, a key fob, a fountain pin. You could put it in a button behind your, you could put them anywhere. And so I'm training all of these agents in how to use those cameras, how to be safe, how to get the information back to us. It was an interesting place to begin. Because I was in the CIA and undercover, everything I did,

every trip I took, every operation I took part in, I was typically using false documents, false name, and false look. I was wearing disguise everywhere I went. The foreign agents that I was training, they all knew me as Jane from Washington. That was my cover name. It was not very exciting, but it worked really well. There was a lot of obfuscation. There was a lot of problems with neighbors and good friends who had no idea where I worked.

or what I did. And so I told a good number of lies to them to try and cover the constant travel that I was undertaking. It was a bad method of keeping your old friends, but I made a lot of new ones. And eventually I moved on to disguise. A disguise was a fascinating new field that I wanted to be in. I went to Hollywood and got involved with the areas of deception, illusion, and magic behind the scenes in LA. So we were playing both sides of the game. We could provide almost anything that our case officers needed to do their jobs. Always undercover, always with false documents, always with disguise. The whole point was never to be seen.

You wanted to be invisible. being seen could get you killed or the foreigners that you were working with. This was a dangerous, dangerous game. So I was visiting a CIA station in the subcontinent. I was there to do a routine photo assignment, and the chief station said we have an emergency. I've been contacted by a terrorist, who I met once before when he was in some real trouble.

And he's in trouble, this terrorist. He is being sought by his own terrorist organization is chasing him. Interpol is chasing him. The security service of the country that we are in right now is chasing him. This man is desperate. He is dangerous. And he's telling me that he knows of a plan to bring down an American commercial jet. I have to meet this man.

If there's information, I have to get this information. So suddenly we go into high gear. He said, I'm not going to meet him in true face. I need a disguise. We sent, I sent some people out to buy him a Chalwar Camis, which is the local costume, the city that we were in. I colored his hair black. I gave him horn-rimmed glasses, a little bit of makeup on his too pale skin.

I gave him a big cigar and a file. And I said, the meeting's in that hotel. You walk in the lobby like you own the place, I mean with authority. Just go in there. Ahead of him, six CIA officers, I was one. We went ahead of him to set up around the lobby. He said, I'm scared to death of this guy and I'm not going in there alone. I want eyes on what's happening.

So we went ahead. We set up all around the lobby. Somebody was at the bar. Somebody was reading a newspaper. And I went in and I saw a rug shop at the back of the lobby. with three walls of glass. And I thought, perfect. It's a glass box.

I will park myself in there. I can see the lobby. I start looking at rugs. The man starts serving me tea. I'm counting knots. I'm looking at the lobby. I glanced up to my right and to my right across a hallway through a glass wall

and then through another glass wall. In the newsstand is the terrorist. The terrorist was a little man. He was about five foot four. wearing his short-archemise, and he was staring straight at me. I'm kneeling on the floor. He's in the newsstand, and he's staring at me was like a laser. He had the most penetrating look, and he just held my gaze.

You're not supposed to make eye connection in a scenario like this. Eye connection is recognition. It's personal. You don't ever do that, but I was frozen, as it turned out. I couldn't break it. And he wanted me to know that he knew. He wanted me to know that I was seen, that he saw me. I haven't mentioned that he was flanked by two really big, what would you call them?

They weren't soldiers. There were Pashtuns, I think, and they had Kalishnikovs, long guns. Imagine a Hyatt Hotel lobby. with a little man in a shell-archimese and two guards with long guns. No one in that hotel was walking up to this man and saying, excuse me, sir, could you put the guns down? Everyone was scared of this guy. He's looking at me.

I'm frozen. And all I could think was, this is possibly, this is it. They will possibly kill me. It will mean nothing to them. And I found myself hoping. that if they killed me, that I would be made a star in the CIA's lobby. We have a whole wall. We have a wall of stars, and every star represents a CIA officer that's been killed overseas,

usually undercover, in the line of duty, in a foreign country. And I thought, oh, my God, that's how you end up on the wall. I briefly wondered what my insurance company would say, learning that I had been killed in alias. I wasn't sure, you know, in a false name. I wasn't sure how that would work. But that was a brief moment. I was scared to death. I almost couldn't breathe.

My heart was racing. My pulse was pounding. I was cold, but I had sweat running down my back. my heart was in my ears. I have never been that close to that kind of evil and it simply was stunning. And while I sat there frozen, he broke that look, turned on his heels with his guards and walked out into the lobby. And I watched him go and I thought, this is what luck looks like. if you ever think you're lucky that was the day that I thought

I was lucky doing the kind of work that I did cost me a lot of things it cost me a lot of friends none of my neighbors none of my friends back then knew what I did where I was who I worked for

it's probably one of the reasons that a lot of people at the CIA we marry each other we know who we can trust and they're the people inside that building with us Over the years, I changed. When I first came to CIA, I was a young female officer looking for a job, something worth doing something that would make a difference.

Over time, the job, the work changed me entirely. I discovered that my ambition receded and that my need for recognition disappeared. I discovered that invisibility actually suited me. I traveled all over the world. I came back to the States and eventually was promoted to Deputy Chief of Disguise and then to Chief of Disguise, where my duties included managing a worldwide staff that was rather difficult to manage,

and I enjoyed the work very much. After I retired, I hung a picture in my library, rather discreetly, a picture of that moment in the White House, in the Oval Office. And what you see in the picture is the semicircle, the group of men, the woman talking to the president. And before the masks that I was wearing, before those masks were declassified, people would stop in, and they'd look at that picture, and they'd say, hmm, who's that, who is it? Did you know her?

Who's that woman in that picture? Was that a friend? And I would say, well, yes, thank you. I knew her very well. I knew her very, very well. We were really, really close. Thank you. Donna Mendes worked at the CIA for 27 years

and retired as chief of the disguise division. For those 27 years, she lived her life undercover with the recurring fear that she would die and no one would know who she really was. And the people she loved wouldn't be. know what happened to her. She would just disappear. She said her most interesting work happened when she was in Moscow, where she developed masks that could basically make a twin for a CIA officer. For instance, an officer would be under surveillance by the Russians, and they might

walk into a store and the Russian surveillance team wouldn't follow them in, but rather wait for them to exit. And when the officer who was in the twin disguise would exit the store, the surveillance would follow them instead, leaving the other officer free to get on with their important work. She said her work in Russia was her favorite, maybe because it was her most difficult. Lives were really on the line. And for officers, disguises were like body armor. Since retiring, Jona does a lot of speaking engagements, and at one such event at the

Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., a former officer came up to her and asked if she remembered him because he remembered her. He'd come to her spy lab for a disguise, and he told her that he always hoped their paths would cross again so he could tell her thank you, because the disguise she made for him saved his life. Jana Mendez is the author of a memoir entitled In True Face and is currently working on a novel inspired by true events from her days in the CIA. You can see pictures of Jana and find out more about her on our website, the moth.org. And while you're there, why not pitch us your story? Stories big or small, we'd love to hear from you. To pitch us your story, you can go to our website and look for tell a story, or you can call

877-799 Moth. That's 877-799 Moth. The best pitches are developed for Moth shows all around the world. Coming up, a man uncovers the deeper story of his namesake. when The Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Did you know that the Moth offers free storytelling workshops? Hi, my name is Chas Giovanni, and I'm a longtime storytelling instructor with The Moth.

My job is to help people find, shape, and tell true personal stories. For students, we do this through free workshop programs throughout the year. Our workshops bring students together to brainstorm stories and then give them the tools and guidance they need to tell them. Workshops are offered in person in New York City and virtually for students around the country. Workshops are available year-round. To learn more and apply, visit the moth.org slash edu.

This is the moth radio hour. I'm Meg Bowles. Our final story comes from Esau McCauley. He told it live on stage in Canada, where we were presented by the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Here's Esau McCauley, live at the Moth. My first name, Esau, is not one that you hear very often. In fact, I've never met anybody in person who shares my name,

apart from my father who named me after himself. We got our name from my grandfather, who was a Baptist minister, and he got this idea in his head that he wanted to give his son a biblical name. There's a problem. He couldn't read. And so he decides he wants to let the Lord choose the name. And so he goes and he grabs a large Bible and he points his finger at the word. Now my family had one of those old King James Bibles, and I've always thought my name could have been like thou or wither.

But it lands on the word Esau. I kid you not, probably a line from the book of Malikad that says, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. But my grandfather gives that name to my father, in turn gives it to me. Now, for those of you who don't know, Esau is the older brother of Jacob. There's probably tons of Jacobs here living their best lives because Jacob is the hero of the story in the Bible, who goes on to have a great future. Esau, by contrast, is the unchosen, the one whom nobody wants. He actually trades his future inheritance for a pot of stew.

Growing up, the kids in my church didn't make fun of me, and they would say to me, why are you named after the loser in the Bible? I used to have this fear that I was going to make some big mistake that was going to cause everything to unravel, kind of like the biblical Esau, kind of like my father. My earliest memories of my dad, the guy who shares my name,

was if it was addiction of drugs. I remember when I was about nine or ten years old, he came home one night, and he was high on something, and I heard him screaming, and so I slid into the bottom of my transformer sleeping bag. It glowed in the dark. Optimus Prime was in the center,

and Optimus Prime was the one who protected the innocent. But that night, Optimus had failed. And I heard this crash outside of my room, and I was so worried about my sisters and my brother and my mom, I got out of the sleeping bag and went into the hallway. My father had punched a hole in the wall. My mom was on the other side of the locked bedroom door

yelling, our shared name. Esau, Esau, get out of here before the police. police come. And that that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, would the police arrive before things got too bad? And they did, and they took him to jail. And that was kind of my childhood. My father was in and out of jail. But over time, the addiction switched from something violent to something much more depressing, like this diminished man, a husk of a man who was just looking for his next high. And as a result, I grew up without him. He promised to come to him a high school graduation. He also missed my college graduation and my wedding and the birth of my four children.

My wife gave birth to them. I was just there. Nonetheless, I managed to make something of a life for myself. And despite the name Esau, the unchosen, I actually became a clergy person. Maybe because in the absence of my father, there was the church that was there for me as a source of hope or joy, maybe even the presence of God. I wanted to give that to other people. Eventually, my father did manage to get clean. Around the time that my sister, my older sister was getting married.

And despite the fact that he missed my wedding, he showed up for hers. And people who know addicts know the addicts are rarely one thing. They're not just the person who's addicted. They can also be funny and charming and quick-witted, the person who everybody loves. And it was that version of my father who showed up that day. And everybody was having a good time. I remember we're taking photos and the different groups are coming in and out to meet with the bride and the groom.

And me and my father, we were awaiting our turn, and we found ourselves sitting next to one another for the first time in years. And so I turned to him. I wasn't angry anymore. The anger had long ago shifted to curiosity. And I said to him, Dad, why did you leave us?

Why not have this all the time? And he looked at me, like it was a question that he knew he was eventually going to happen. to answer. And he said to me, son, I don't rightly know. No revelation, no grand special moment. But after that, we tried to stay in contact. We called each other on our birthdays. I called him on Father's Day, and we said, I said, I love you, Dad. He said, I love you, son. Not because we felt close to one another, because that's what you said when you were family. My family and I moved to Rochester and my father got a job driving a truck. And he was going to Buffalo. It was about an hour

and a half away. And he said, I'm going to stop by and see you all on the way back. And for the first time of my life, he kept the promise. This huge 18-wheeler came rumbling down the road. It scandalized my fancy neighborhood I was living in. In those neighborhoods, you can only have an 18-wheel if you're coming in or if you're moving out. You can't visit an 18-wheeler. But the 18-wheel is stopping front of my house. And I stood there in their doorway, and my poor children saw the truck, and they were amazed by it, and they ran past me to the truck, and they climbed to the inside, and they were shocked by the idea that you could drive a truck and sleep in the back, because there was a bed right there, and they had the time of their lives. They hunked the horn, and it was just some kids

playing with their grandfather. And it was just so ordinary. I could cry. A few weeks after that visit, I got a call in the middle of the night. It was my sister, Latasha, my older sister. She was weeping. She told me that my father had had a heart attack while driving the truck in California, and his 18-wheeler had veered off one overpass down to the other, and he had died on impact. And I sat there, listening to my sister weep, not knowing what to do. The next morning, I got a call from my mother, and she told me that my siblings and her had been having a conversation, and they decided they wanted me the clergy person to deliver the eulogy.

And for those of you who don't know, clergy have a particular job in eulogy. We have to tell the truth. They have to put their story of the person in the context of the wider purposes of God. We normally sit down with the friends and the family and we say to them, tell me about the person who has passed away. Help me understand their story. I would have to do that with my father, someone I barely knew. I'd sit down with my mom, my sisters, my brother,

my aunts and my uncles. I did the work. I did my job. I sat down and my uncle told me this story. He told me in 1957 their father, Gus, the one who named us, Esau. He came home one day and it was cold and so he lit a fire in the fireplace and that fire quickly got out of control and he shot up the wall. And on the other side where the fire was burning the brightest were twin boys who were sleep in their veteran. And despite my grandfather's valiant attempts, he couldn't get in to save them. And he was forced to flee with the rest of his family while the two boys burned to death inside. My father was born a few years after those flames, almost a replacement child. There was a problem. Any mistake that he made was cast against what those boys would have been. They were smart. They were charming. They were funny.

future of the family. My father, Esau, was cold, aloof, and a failure. He was, for most of his life, actually, Esau, the unchosen, the one no one wanted. I sat down at the dinner table with my uncle, and he told him about the last time they spoke with their father before he passed away. And my grandfather said to my dad, you're only ever going to cause your mom pain. Then he passed away. The day that my father died, he called my mom. He had been attempting to win her back over the years to zero success. And he said, baby, I'm going to win you back.

And my mom says, I don't got time for this. I'm going into a movie. And my father strangely turned somber. And he said, all I can do is pray. And he died 10 minutes later. The eulogy took place at the church where I grew up, or me and my mom and my siblings to attend the most every Sunday, usually without my dad. But that Sunday, we're actually all together.

I stood in the pulpit, my father was in the casket, my family was weeping in the pews. But I stood up, and I did my job. I told the story. I told about the ways in which his addiction shaped the early years of my life and how it harmed me and it took me a long time to find forgiveness, but also told them about the wrongs done to him as a child, and that sometimes monsters aren't born, they're created. But I also told them about his getting clean later in life and the fact that he apologized to me and my mom and my sibling for the things he had done wrong. and how he kept thinking that everything was going to turn out all right at the end, that he was on his way home to his family.

But he ran out of time. He ran out of road. Sometimes we don't get the fairy tale endings that we might like, but our wanderings are instructive in their own right. I finished the eulogy and I sat down, not knowing whether or not I had failed or succeeded. But my father's story in our relationship had been something I had been drawn to my whole life, running it over and over in my hair, trying to make sense of it.

And I think during that eulogy, I found a sense of an ending, some empathy for him and some peace for myself. I have two boys, and I named them Luke and Peter. I want a normal name's no drama. But you know what? I have read the story of Issaan Jacob, probably more than anybody who walks his earth. And while it is true, it is true that Esau makes tons of mistakes

and that he does cause a lot of trauma. But it is also true that in the story, Esau was manipulated by his brother Jacob. And as a result of that manipulation, Esau threatens to murder his brother, leading to over a decade of estrangement. When they finally meet, Esau doesn't take revenge.

He runs to his brother, throws his arms around him, hugs him, and kisses him. Esau finds his way to forgiveness in the end. The people were wrong. Esau was not a failure. Neither was my dad. And if I could do it all over again, I would probably name one of my sons, Esau the third. Thank you. Esau McCauley is the pastor of a church in Naperville, Illinois.

He's also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois. He's the author of a memoir entitled How Far to the Promise Land and a children's book entitled God's Colorful Kingdom Storybook Bible. Esau said that despite the fact that he chose to end the Esau tradition by naming his son Luke, his son has repeatedly said that he plans to name his son after his father. father. So maybe one day, there will be an Esau Daniel McCauley, the third. You can find out more about Esau and his podcast for Holy Post Media on our website, the moth.org. There you can also find and share the stories you've heard in this hour and others from the Moth archive. You can also find information about the events we host year-round

and follow us on all the major social media platforms. Find a show near you and come out and tell a story. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. Thanks again to all the storytellers in this hour, and thanks to you for listening. We hope you'll join us again next time. This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison,

and Meg Bowles, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer, Emily Couch. The Moth's leadership team includes Christina Norman, Marina Clucay, Sarah Austin Janess, Jennifer Hickson, Jordanale, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Patricia Urania. Special thanks to Honey Yacan, Roland Gulliver, and all the folks at the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Mall Stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the drift, other music in this hour from Fragile Rock, Epidemic Sound, and Blue Dot sessions. Podcast music production support from Davy Sumner. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and to learn all about the moth, go to our website, the moth.org.