The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Question Marks

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

In this hour, stories of questions—asked, answered, implied, and open-ended. From personal inquiries in professional situations to domestic decisions. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Director Jenifer Hixson. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Shahab Asta's mother questions his classroom antics. Grace Ambrose says yes to a casual relationship. Dr. Tonya Matthews considers how to respond to an uncomfortable interview question.  Ladislao Loera wonders if he has what it takes to be a caregiver.  Rabbinical student Aaron Potek answers tough questions. Podcast # 938 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. My Annex. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson. In this episode, stories about questions,

the ones we ask, the ones we don't, and what happens either way. There's a Chinese proverb that says, he who asks a question is a fool momentarily, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. Storytellers in this hour may or may not agree. Our first storyteller is quite young when he first steps up to question authority. This is Shahab Astha, or Hobby, as his mom calls him,

at a Moth showcase in Chicago, where we partner with public radio station WBEZ. Here's Shahab. When I was a kid, I used to get in trouble from time to time. I'm sorry, can we start that over? Because when I was a kid, I used to get in trouble all the time. It's not thought if I was a bad kid, but I was a kid. I liked to talk and play, and I wanted to make people laugh. That was what was important to me.

And in the first grade, I had Miss Worth. Anybody out here have Miss Worth? She was amazing. I love me some Miss Worth. She always had candy in her pocket. Sweet old lady, so nice. I love Ms. Worth. Well, my mom used to get called into conferences with Miss Worth all the time.

And this time, my mom says, Miss Worth has pictures of you up out of your seat just at someone's desk, talking and playing in the middle of class. And actually, let's take a minute. Let's take a second. Miss Worth had pictures. This was the 80s, y'all. She didn't have no camera on the supercomputer slash phone chilling in her pocket.

That means that Ms. Worth had to come into class with a 35 millimeter camera, take some pictures, bring her to Walgreens, drop them off, wait a week, come back later, pay $6.95, pick them up, call my mom in, and show her exhibit A. If nothing else, that's dedication. I love Ms. Worth. But my mom said Ms. Worth would, like, cry and she would pull out her hair as she told her how hard it was to get me to stop misbehaving in class. I didn't feel good about that. I didn't feel good about that. I love Ms. Worth. She'd think I don't love Ms. Worth.

My mom, my mom was the purveyor of guilt trips, though. So I didn't believe my mom, if I'm being honest. I couldn't trust my mom. I caught her slipping money under my pillow once. You need the two fairy. Come on now. But my mom, she decided she's not going to use the guilt trip this time. She says, no, I'm going to reason with this kid. I'm going to use logic and reason. And she says, Hobby, you're not funny. Yeah. Nobody thinks you're funny. Everybody's laughing at you. Nobody's laughing at you. Nobody's laughing with you. Hobby, you're not funny. I don't know what to say to that. Man, at the time, I'm only six, but I dedicated my whole life to making people laugh. That was everything for me. That was everything. I'm not funny. So I decided then and there that I needed to up the ante, y'all,

Because if I was at a 10 before, I was at a 12 now, I was at everybody's desk talking about, I was like, set up, set up, punchline, set up, timing. Punchline. People love me. People were laughing. I had so many friends. It was good. It was good. I'm now funny. Fast forward many years. I'm probably, I'm in my mid-20s, probably like 27-ish. And my mom is in the hospital, and she's always in the hospital when they're kids, so we didn't think anything of it, you know.

It was like Thursday, you know. She was in there for a week, though, and she was going to be getting out. And she was supposed to be getting out, like, the next day. And remember I mentioned her being the purveyor of guilt trips, right? She was amazing with guilt trips. I knew I was going to be at the receiving end if I didn't show up to the hospital and visit her. It was late one night. I was tired, I was sweaty, and whatever, I just coming home from the gym.

I decided I got to go see my mom, or I'm never going to hear the end of it. So I go into, I go to the hospital, I go into her, Roman, she's there. Also, my little brother, my little sister there, and my family has this thing where, we just play the dozens, right? If any of you are familiar with it, it's just where you make fun of each other. You just just tell me y'all, forgive me. They're just cracking on each other, making jokes, and it's never malicious. and mean. It's always, this isn't one of the jokes, but it would be something along the lines of

your breath is so bad. If Colgate was the actual gate, I slam it shut on your mouth. Silly, but sweet, whatever. Let me tell you, I did my best set that night. My little brother was rolling, my little sister laughing, and my mom, my mom got this loud, bellowing laugh, permeates, walls, floors, and doors. We were all, loud family, but she was the loudest one. The nurse came in three times, told us, y'all need to keep it down. Third time, she comes and tells us, you know, it's time for you all to go.

It's, you know, busy hours over. And we're like, yeah, we get it. We're sorry. You know, whatever. And I don't remember saying it, but I know, I know I said to my mom, but I love you. Because that's just, it's a habit of mine. And it's a habit that I intentionally created because

when I was a kid, my little brother, brother's uncle died and I couldn't remember. Yeah, he's my little brother's uncle. He's not my uncle. He's a different father. You know, that's a different story. But, um, so my little brother's uncle died and I couldn't remember the last thing I said to him and I felt really bad about that. So I decided I will always say to people that I care about, but I love you, you know. Um, so I know I said that. Bye, I love you. I'm glad I went to see my mom that night, because it was the last time I saw her alive and conscious. About a week later, my brothers and I, my brothers and my sisters and I, there's six of us, were standing around her bed, and we're making the tough decision to let her go.

and I remember I took her hand, I put it on my cheek while we're waiting for her to take her last breath. And I was thought of myself as a rebel. Maybe I was looking for acceptance. I don't know. About a year later, out of nowhere. I mean, apropos of nothing, you know what I mean, just sometimes spirit comes to you when it comes to you, you know. But I'm driving and I hear my mom's words in my head, hobby, you're not funny. Nobody thinks you're funny.

Everybody's laughing at you, nobody's laughing with you. Hobby, you're not funny. And I thought to myself, that's what I thought. That's not what I thought. I said, really, Ma, I'm not funny? Because I literally had you dying laughing. You literally died laughing. I did that.

That was me. And it dawned to me. For the first time in my life, I won an old. argument with my mom. And I could hear her laugh in my head. And it was beautiful. I loved hearing it one more time, you know, hearing her laugh. You don't know how much time you have. It's cliche, whatever, we're going to do that. You don't know when you see someone if it's going to be the last time you see that person. So when it's somebody that you care about, I'd say make it a point to make those words count.

Make them meaningful, you know. I'm going to leave you with. Bye, I love you. Shahab Habi Astha. Shahab titled this story, There's Nothing Bigger than the Little Things. As you could probably tell, Shahab has maintained his status as class clown

well into adulthood. He does stand up and improv around Chicago. A U.S. Army veteran, Shahab co-owns past tense, custom woodworks, where I'm sure he makes all his clients crack up too. Shahab says his mom had six kids, so six sets of eyes remember her, and they love to get together to talk about her epic laugh.

To see a picture of Hobby and his mom, visit the moth.org, where you can also download the story. Our next story is from a grand slam in Asheville, North Carolina, where we partner with Blue Ridge Public Radio. The theme for the evening was comfort zone, and the storyteller had some questions about that. Here, live with the moth, is Grace Ambrose. When you are young, divorced, and never talk about a partner,

it's fun to watch people try to figure you out through a series of what they'd like to think are very casual questions. After being as elusive as I can for fun, they typically just come out and ask, do you date? The phrasing of the question is funny to me. Like, do you run? Do you bike? Do you date? Dating, an active verb that we try on for sport. This is something that I warned my friend about when he called to tell me that he too was getting a divorce.

We had been friends for many, many years, but we had never had a conversation quite so personal. In the first phone call, I told him a little bit more about how my ex and I had gotten to that point. point. In the second phone call, he told me their version of that story. And the phone calls just kept coming. It was delightful to find camaraderie with an old friend about something that's usually so isolating. After many months of this, he said that he would love for us to spend even more time together, but that given everything, he thought we should date casually.

Now, being asked if I'd like to date casually is a little bit like me picking up a novel that's written in Latin and being asked how I feel about it. It might be good. It might be exactly what I'm looking for. The problem is I have no fucking idea what it's about. Instead of telling him this or asking a follow-up question of literally any kind, And I agreed emphatically.

And I agreed emphatically to casually dating because at this point, we were talking every day. I'd known him for years. I trusted him intrinsically, and I had already told him my hardest stories. Let's just get to kissing already. So I followed his lead as he taught me how to casually date. And a key thing I learned in this process is that in order to keep it casual, one of the things you have to do is just keep telling everyone that it's casual. People would be like, oh my god, how's it going with that guy? Oh, good.

You know, it's good. We're just keeping it really casual. And if you say casual anytime, anyone says his name, then you're good. No other adjustments need to be made. In fact, other than the overuse of the word casual, it looked quite like a real relationship. Early on, I told him I was having terrible insomnia up every night from one to three in the morning. each night after that he would send me an audio recording of him reading from a book on evolutionary biology so when I woke up in the middle of the night I could be lulled back to sleep by the bore of science

casually we were long distance but would talk on the phone for hours at a time I got to be the person that he called in those tough early days of divorce which is something I'll always be proud of We planned and took trips together, knew every minutia of each other's day-to-day lives, and were, you know, just super cash. We'd rented this little cottage in the middle of nowhere,

and we were laying in the sun listening to our oh-so-casual shared Spotify playlist of all the songs that remind us of each other. I snuggled into him, took a deep breath, and thought, I am so in love with this man. Ooh, that's not good. Because, while I may not know Latin,

well, I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to love them. What happened next was a series of terrible conversations. In the last of these, he told me that when he thinks about dating me in a real and honest way, It sparked feelings of And per the rules on the moth I'd like to emphasize here that this is a true and direct feelings of quote An impending sense of doom

We don't talk anymore And I miss him But when you take a friendship out of its comfort zone like that It's super hard to put it back Turns out that when you start dating someone because of that trust and friendship and camaraderie and vulnerability shared, that is exactly what you miss the most in the end. These days, when I wake up at one in the morning, I roll over, turn on my light, and take out my book on evolutionary biology.

That shit's fascinating. But no. The answer to the question is that I do not date. I do not know Latin. And the only difference between him and me is that I know that about myself. Thank you. That was Grace Ambrose.

She says she continues to learn her lessons one dramatic scene at a time. These days, she's much more likely to be hosting parties for a gaggle of children or traveling around the world solo than making playlists with a man. She's a social science researcher and a huge fan of storytelling. In a moment, a situation where endless questions are unavoidable, the job interview, when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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I'm Jennifer Hickson, and we're hearing stories that involve questions. Our next one was told at the Charleston Music Hall, where we had help from our friends at South Carolina Public Radio. Dr. Tanya Matthews is an important voice in Charleston, and here she is live at the Moth. Okay, picture this. Okay, picture this, medium-sized conference room, and I am sitting at the head or maybe the foot, of a medium-sized conference room table.

The setting is classic, right? crown molding, low light, single window, books and awards on the shelves, newspaper cut out celebrating the accolades of this institution that I'm sitting at, across from me at the table, three white men. Classic. Okay, so I am in the final stages of my first executive interview process for a museum. I'm competing to be the vice president. If I get it, I will be leading three museums, three research centers, my division alone will have more than a hundred staffers at this institution whose annual budget challenges the $20 million mark. It's endowed, it's got a centuries long history, and I will be the only of two ever African

American executives. In fact, I would be the first African American female executive and potentially the youngest executive they have ever hired. All right. So, the first gentleman is the would-be boss, right? So he is the CEO, if I get the job. The other two gentlemen in the room at the table are, shall we say, critical stakeholders

in the work that I will be doing if I'm successful at getting the position. And this is what you need to understand about executive interview processes. One, they are very, very long. But the longer you stay in there, the more interested they are in you. Two, if you ever make it to the room with the big dogs,

you are in the running. Them's the big dogs, I'm in the running. Let's do this. All right, so it's been a very long day. We are coming to the end of this day, but the energy is still high. The interview has gone really well. The repertet has been good,

and I'm already working on my concluding remarks. in my head. Okay, so then we begin the dance of the conclusion of the interview. And one of the gentlemen says, you know, thank you, Dr. Matthews. We were so excited to have you in this process, classic standard, yada, yada, yada. And we are excited to see that you are also as interested in us as we are in you, classic standard, yada, yada, yada. And then he turns to his colleagues and he said,

but I also want to share with the group that I have done some of my own independent research. on Dr. Matthews, and I have found out a few cool new facts about her. Not classic, not standard. Dear God, Google, what have you done? Okay, so I'm wondering where we're going with this, and the gentleman continues. He says, so I have discovered that Dr. Matthews is a poet, one of those performing poets. You know, they call them spoken word artist. So please understand that at this time and period, this is the rise of,

the era of slam poetry, competition, poetry, deaf poetry jam is on the television. Poets are loud and challenging the status quo in every other verse. This is what he's talking about. And he says, well, but you know, I mean, I like what she is doing so much better than some of this other stuff that I've been hearing lately. Her work just seems so much more nuanced and intelligent and articulate. And he goes on, you know, making it clear that he prefers this.

And I'm thinking, you know what, I'm going to let this left turn just wash off my shoulder get back to practicing my concluding remarks. And then we'll be good to go. But then after he finishes sharing all of this with his colleagues at the table, he turns to me and he says, so, you know, Dr. Matthews, given all of this, I was thinking how wonderful it would be, would you mind closing out our interview today by reciting some of your poetry for us? I have always been good at hearing the question behind the question. It's one of the reasons I'm good at school. It's not just about understanding the material. It's about understanding the

particular answer that the teacher actually wants. And so I was listening, and I was listening, and I heard the question behind the question. And to my read and my understanding, the question was not, would I recite a poem? The question was, would I perform? Luckily for me, I had figured out my answer to this question about 10 years earlier in a raucous debate about Bill Clinton and black people.

I was a freshman at Duke University when Bill Clinton first got elected president. And sometimes shortly after the election, I'm wandering through my dorm, and I overhear a conversation between two of my classmates. Male classmate, female classmate, both happen to be white. The gentleman is in a complete tizzy because he has decided that since Bill Clinton went on to the Arsenio Hall show and played the saxophone, all the black people voted for Bill Clinton, and so now Bill Clinton owes the entire election to black people, and to pay them back, he is going to have to fill the White House and all of his cabinet with a whole bunch of black people.

My female classmate thinks this entire premise is absolutely ridiculous. And she says, okay, okay, okay, okay. So let's say that's true. What difference does that make? He can just hire a bunch of qualified black people to fill all those positions, and the country can just keep moving on. To which he replies, no, no, that won't work. There aren't that many qualified black people

to fill all those positions. And this is when my female classmate catches me out of the corner of her eye. And she said, look, there's Tanya. What about Tanya? We just elected her president of our freshman thing, and even you didn't have a problem with that. He could just fill the White House with people like her.

Without missing a beat, my male classmate says, no, that doesn't make sense. That's not right. Tanya is different. not like everyone else. Tanya doesn't count. That of course is when I got into the conversation. Laced up my tennis shoes and everything. What had happened as I stepped into the conversation was an amalgamation of a lot of things and as I spent several hours in this debate with these with these two of my my classmates I went

through all the sensations from hurt to anger to guilt to finally epiphany. See, I was raised with the cultural concept of black excellence. This is excellence with a tinge of responsibility. Black excellence is about understanding that your excellence is not yours alone. It's about understanding why you must be excellent, which is code for, you grow up, you do good, you do well, people will see you, they will change their mind about you and when they change their mind about you, they're going to change their mind about all black people. This, yeah, right? You too. So if you are a certain kind of kid on a

certain kind of trajectory and you have a certain kind of grandma, you have had this conversation. A nice little to who much is given, much is expected, shout it with a dose of heaps of all of the sacrifices that were made to get you to that point. But the sacrifices aren't the point. the impact is. And what had happened when that gentleman told me that I didn't count

a lot of that shattered, right? Because apparently me just showing up and being in his world didn't change the way he thought about all black people. Yes, it changed the way

he thought about Tanya. But I had simply become his exception to the rule. And that's when I started to understand the gravity of the situation. That was the moment I decided I was not going to walk away from that or any other conversation. I was raised not to be the exception to the rule. I was raised to change the rule. I was not naive enough to think that I could change his whole world view. But I do think I managed to sow in a seed or two of doubt into his perspective, just as he had sowed a seed of a new realization into my perspective.

See, I was at Duke University living the dreams of my ancestors. I was showing up and showing out every day, all day, on the day by instinct. Right? I was raised. to do this. But what I was understanding is you don't change the world by moving through it instinctually. You change the world by moving through it intentionally. And that when I decided to stay standing in that conversation and debate, there was no difference between that decision. And when I decided to stay sitting in that conference room chair and recite a poem. The first line of the poem that I recited was, Jesus is a 12-year-old black girl with

pigtails from Greenmount Avenue. The poem was called Lazarus. It was an extended metaphor about a little black girl trapped inside an urban environment, suffering through the American institutionalizations that would keep her there, and she is working to save her father from death row. The reception to the poem was contemplative. If you are ever asked to perform in an interview, and you choose to do so, do so intentionally,

it is the only outcome that you can control. Now, arguably, someone who looks like me that spends time in spaces like that will always be required to do some level of performance, but that is not the point. The point is about how we choose to show up. FYI, I got the job. And it turns out that the gentleman who asked the poetry question, well, that was my CEO. And I stayed in conversation with him through all of those years.

and to the point where to this day we are now the best of colleagues, and he is one of my strongest sponsors in my career as a museum professional. And so it turns out that Black Excellence does a lot of things. He even sent me a birthday card a couple days ago. Fun final fact. In preparing to tell this story, I was using my AI assistant, to read through my drafts. I forgot to say I'm an engineer.

Yeah, I love AI, yeah. So I'm using my AI assistant to read through the drafts of this story and the AI doing its own thing is summarizing the key takeaways. And I kid you not, one of the written-out key takeaways was Tanya decides to stand her ground, define herself, and because of this,

probably does not get the job. So it turns out that not Not only does black excellence know how to change the rules, it also knows how to break the algorithm. That was Dr. Tanya Matthews. She's now president and CEO of the International African American Museum in Charleston. Side note, her former boss was one of the references that helped her get the job. The museum is located at the historically sacred site of Gadsden's Wharf, the former port where nearly half of the enslaved Africans brought to the United States first landed.

In addition to being a published poet, Dr. Matthews is also the founder of the Stemannista Project, a movement to engage girls in their futures with STEM careers. To see a picture of Dr. Matthews at the museum, visit the moth.org where you can also download the story. Ever get a question that stopped you in your tracks, or maybe an especially harrowing job interview? We want to hear about it. Please call the Moth pitch line and leave us a one to two minute message with the relevant details. We listen to all the pitches, and maybe one day you'll end up on one of our stages and later on the Moth radio hour.

Don't be shy. You can pitch us a story right on our site or call 877-799. moth. That's 877-7-99-M-O-T-H. We hope to hear from you. In a moment, a man questions whether he has what it takes to be a caregiver, and a rabbi in training fields an inquiry that is way over his head when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic. public media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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On Simpsons Declassified, we're diving into the mysteries that keep the Simpsons forever young. Have you ever wondered how the Simpsons regularly predicts future events? Who better to ask than the show's creators, performers, and writers, the celebrity guests? Be sure to follow and listen to Simpsons Declassified wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson. Some of the toughest questions you'll ever encounter are internal. Can I do this? Do I have what it takes? Our next storyteller, Ladi Loera, had to wrestle with a few.

He told this at the Miami Grand Slam, where we partner with Public Radio Station WLRN. Here's Lottie. I am not a fan of scatological humor. I find it to be kind of tasteless. In my family, we were not raised to talk about bodily functions. If anyone happened to pass gas and we were all in a room together, everyone just stared forward and no one talked about anything at all. Then I met Chris.

Fart jokes, poop jokes, whoopy cushions, he thought they were hilarious. And I admired his braveness. And while I was never able to take part of those jokes with him, I did fall in love with him. Today, Chris and I are headed to the hospital. He's about to have several more feet of his insides cut out, and because of this, the doctors have decided to also install a colostomy. They whisk him off to surgery, and they send me to another room to watch a video about the colostomy, which I think is weird because I'm not sure why I'm going to be that involved.

Chris's colostomy, after all. But as I'm watching the video, I notice that everything is being done two and for the person with the colostomy by a pair of disembodied floating hands from my perspective. Oh, no. Am I the person that's in charge of this? Am I the one that has to empty the bags and clean the scrotum? Am I supposed to be doing all this myself? This is all kind of icky.

And shouldn't someone have told me this was happening? I mean, no one even mentioned this to me at all. This seems like a lot to be taking on right now at this last minute. The surgery goes well. And that night they wheel in a cot for me so that I can spend the night in the hospital with Chris. sometime past midnight Chris wakes up screaming get a nurse

so I run to the hallway and say something's wrong please come help and two nurses come running in it turns out that Chris had managed to dislodge his colostomy bag as it was erupting so he's all soiled on the left side of his body in bed the nurses start cleaning him up and I can only imagine how

disconcerting it must be for Chris, to wake with a new orifice on his body that he has no control over and it's going to do whatever it wants to, regardless of whether he wants to or not. And I look at him, and his face is all twisted, and it's twisted with the indignity of the situation. It's twisted with the knowledge that this is our life now. It's twisted with the realization that things are not going to get better. And he starts to cry. The nurses are cleaning him up and they have no idea what to do in this situation. And I am still dealing with the horror that this is going to be my job when we get back home.

I don't have time for a crying Chris right now, so I yell at him. Hey, shit happens. Chris whiplashes his head at me. Did you just make a poop joke? Yes, I did. Chris turns to the nurse that is closest to him, and he is glowing with pride. Sixteen years together,

and that is his first ever poop joke. Chris then lets out this giant laugh, and I cannot help myself. I start laughing right along with him, and the nurses are looking at each other, trying to decide what is going on here, but there's too much joy. They start laughing with us, too, and I know in that instant, this hospital room is the happiest place in this entire hospital complex. As the laughter subsides, I go to stand. next to the lead nurse as she starts to train me for my new job.

And I look at Chris, and he is not sad, because he knows that I will do anything and everything I can for him. And I have learned that I am more capable than I ever thought possible. I have learned that sometimes biological functions are humorous, and I've learned that love has a weird way of making itself known, even in the crappiest of circumstances. That was Ladi Loire. Lottie is a native Texan who calls Austin home and runs a storytelling show called Testify. Lottie sent me this update on his story. Chris was given a year to live when diagnosed,

but stayed around for four years instead. He passed away in August of 2010. I told him stories about our pets and held his hand as he died. Lottie says he's a fan of the world but doesn't want to explore. His idea of traveling the globe is going down a new aisle at the grocery store. Lottie was lucky enough to find love again, and he's now happily remarried. To see a picture of Lottie and his first husband, Chris, visit the moth.org, where you can also download the story.

Our final story was told in New York City. where WNYC is a media partner of the moth. Questions are a big part of the story, as are the answers. Here's Aaron Potech. So I'm accompanying the dean of my rabbinical school to a college campus to help him do some recruiting. We divvied up the roles. He would give the inspiring talk,

and I would drive him back home. That's how that works. So it was actually It was an interesting talk that he gave He talked about how religious Jewish law Or halakhah Actually comes from the same word as path And how the law should really be a path to God

Afterwards a student raises her hand And asks, is there a law that you feel Isn't on the path to God? And I'm thinking, wow, that's a tricky question Thank God I'm not up there At which point he says, Aaron, come on up here and answer this question So there I am in front of a bunch of college students who are just a few years younger than me.

I have no idea what I should say, what I could say. So I take a risk, and I say, actually, I'm kind of bothered by Leviticus 1822, the law that prohibits gay sex. I'm not gay myself, but I feel like that's not really helping anyone connect to God. and I sit back down and the rabbi moves on he doesn't talk about that doesn't ask me to come up for another question

that was cool six months later I'm the scholar in residence at a conference in Washington, D.C. for Jewish college students from across the country and a student comes up to me and says that you'd like to speak to me and so I say, okay, we sit down.

I figure I probably offended him with something I said because I'm so radical. So we sit down and actually I was shocked because he comes out to me. And he's an Orthodox guy, and he's struggling with how to reconcile these seemingly incompatible identities that he's holding. And orthodoxy has not been,

great to gay people, to say the least, and I'm kind of curious why he's trusting such personal and sensitive information with me, the guy who's decided to make a life out of promoting and defending this world. And I ask him why he told me, and he said that six months ago he was at that talk and that my answer about Leviticus 1822 somehow identified me as an ally, and he was hoping that I might be able to give him something that other Orthodox rabbis and leaders haven't been able to give him. And I was kind of stuck because the truth is there really is nothing I could say. I can't just say, oh, you know, ignore that verse.

Don't worry about that one. I mean, he was coming to me as an Orthodox Jew, and, you know, we both believe that the Torah, the Bible, was written by God every part of it, and to reject a verse would be to deny a fundamental part of our identity. But at the same time, to just tell him that God discriminates against him for the way that God made him, that was troubling for both of us. Now, this wasn't the first time that I was in completely over my head. I've counseled married couples on their sex life, and I've never had sex myself.

I hear it's great. But something about this guy's... It's real. It's laugh at my life. It's cool. But something about this guy's question was particularly troubling and challenging for me. Because I knew he wasn't just asking about Leviticus 1822. He was lonely.

He was hiding his identity from his community. And he needed to believe that somehow in the end, even though it seemed impossible, he'd be able to hold on to these religious values, and it would all be okay. He'd find love in that community. And it was so hard because that tapped into a deep insecurity of my own. All I've wanted my whole life is to be in a healthy, loving relationship, but despite working so hard towards that goal, at that point, I had nothing to show for it. And I was wondering if God really cared about me finding love,

I felt like sometimes it might be easier to just throw away all these laws that felt so inhibiting and just maybe that way I could find love but this wasn't the time to talk about my problems if you think you've got it bad let me tell you so

I shut it down and I was there I tried to help him I said listen I don't know what to tell you I don't know why God would make a law like this but I do know that God wants you to find love and that the God that we believe in can be present in a gay relationship

just as much as he can be present in a straight relationship and that I don't know, that him and his future partner will figure out how to bring in all these religious Jewish values that he has into his relationship. And I left and I wondered if maybe I should have told them to just leave orthodoxy, but I didn't. And about a month ago, I got a call from him.

He wanted to talk. I was like, okay, great. What is it this time? We hadn't spoken since that last conversation, and he wanted to tell me that he wanted to thank me for that conversation that we had had. He was now in a relationship with another Orthodox guy, and because of our conversation,

he was able to believe that love was possible for him. I asked him if God was present in his relationship and he said yes and he said that he was happy for the first time in a long time and I hung up the phone and I just started crying it was really awkward I was driving

windshield wipers cannot wipe away these tears but I cried because I was just so overwhelmed by irrationality, it didn't make any sense, like how my one little throwaway line over a year ago had led to this moment, how an orthodox rabbi to be had counseled another orthodox guy into a gay relationship, how someone who had serious doubts about the existence of love was able to help someone else believe in it. None of it made any sense, but somehow

through that irrationality, I reconnected to my faith. A faith in myself. a faith in God, and a faith that I, too, would find love one day. Thank you. That was Aaron Potech. He serves as the senior rabbi at a place called Sixth and I, which is a Center for Arts, Entertainment, Ideas, and Jewish Life in Washington, D.C. He reports that he's been dating someone special for the last few years, years, and has even broader to a moth story slammer too.

To see a picture of Aaron giving a sermon and another one of him officiating his first gay wedding, mazzledop to all, visit the moth.org. You can share these stories or others from the moth archive and buy tickets to moth storytelling events in your area through our website, the moth.org. Find a show near you come out to tell a story. And you can find us on social media, too, of course. Remember, you can pictures your story by recording it right on our site, the moth.org, or call 877-799 moth. That's 877-799-6684. The best pictures are developed for moth shows all around the world.

I want to thank all the tellers in this hour and encourage everyone to be inquisitive because there are a lot of great stories out there just begging to be told, if only you'd ask. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour and we hope you'll join us next time. This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Jennifer Hickson, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch.

The rest of the Mawth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Sarah Austin Janice, Kate Tellers, Marina Clucce, Leanne Gully, Suzanne Rust, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Pennsylvania. Patricia Ureña. Most stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift, other music in this hour from De Wally and Philippe Budo, Victor Krauss, Adam Ben Ezra, Felix LeBond, and Croca. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to a special thanks to a national endowment for the arts.

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. Thank you.