The Moth - This Should Be A Movie: The Moth Podcast

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

We're almost at the Oscars, and to celebrate, we have two stories that feel especially cinematic. This episode was hosted by Jodi Powell. Storytellers: Jitesh Jaggi discovers why his father never taught him to drive. Nick Vega’s fake ID business hits an unexpected snag. 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

Fade In, a recording studio in New York. It's small but cozy, with sound-dampening mats on the wall and two mics on either side of the table. One of the mics is unused, but in front of the other mic sits or protagonist. Close up, the face of Jody Powell, younger, 30s. Her expression is one of excitement. She's ready to share stories, ready to welcome listeners to The Moth podcast. Welcome to the Moth. I'm Jody Powell.

There are moments in our lives that feel especially cinematic. Maybe it's not when you're recording a podcast, but maybe it's your first kiss with a long-time crush, your belly and nuts and you can almost hear the music swell. Or at a trap meet when you're in second place and you're right about to catch up to the frontrunner and you feel just like Rocky Balboa. Or maybe it's just a golden hour view of the Montana countryside

that looks exactly like a moment from a Terence Malick film or Summer in Harlem, painted by Spike Lee, Dominoes, Firehydrants, and Al Green's love and happiness on the score. On this episode, to celebrate the Oscars, we've got two stories that feel a specialist cinematic, one that's more independent coming of age, the other a bit Judd Apatow. First up is Jutesh Jaggi,

who told this story at a Chicago Grand Slam, where the theme was deal breakers. Here's Jutesh, live at the mall. I had made it to the last round of the interview when I almost got rejected. Do you have a driver's license? They asked. We can't give you the job without one. They didn't mention if they were also offering to buy me a car. But I didn't say that. Instead, I said, I'm on it. And that is how I found myself among teenagers also taking the driving test.

Learning driving as an adult was harder than I thought, especially as an immigrant. I was used to seeing cars drive on the other side of the road. That's like learning how to write for the first time, but you can only grab the pen with your feet. So I get an instructor and we practice in the parking lot of a jules. On more than one occasion, he had to use the passenger side brake to stop me from going inside the store. Somehow he convinced me that I was ready to take the test, so I go to the DMV. Now, the DMV is a unique place in that neither the people receiving the service nor the people providing the service

want to be there. The person who was going to test me acted like I had dragged him out against his will and bound him to the passenger seat. He was pissed at me already and I'm like, I haven't even started the car. The result? Fail, fail, fail. No, literally. Thrice.

At that point I had to accept that maybe it's not just the DMV. Maybe I'm a bad driver. How come you're 30 and still don't know how to drive? My instructor asks me, and I give him every excuse. Oh, where I come from in India, there's so much traffic and we have cheap rickshaws. And then he asked, your dad never taught you how to drive. That gave me pause As he steered me away from the store entrance again

I had still not gotten over the hurt from 10 years ago When I asked my dad if he would please teach me how to drive And he said, no You don't need to learn how to drive I was too stunned in that moment to say anything And then I never brought it up again What I didn't tell the instructor was my father's profession He was a taxi driver

for 20 years than a car mechanic for 20 his job was to make sure people can drive and I can barely tell the gas pedal from the brakes so that night I call him my father and I never confront him and I told him how hurt

I was and look how laughable it is to be a cab driver's son and not know how to drive but it wasn't about the driving I told him you infantilized me dad you made me feel like a child and part of me still feels that way. Like I can't have a grown-up job and drive to it myself like a grown man. He listened. And then he said, what did your uncle do? I said he was a car mechanic. So what did your other uncle do? I said he was a car mechanic. So what did your grandpa

do? I said he was a cab driver. He said, you see, generations of our people have worked menial, manual jobs for cash tips. It felt like we were under a curse to work with our hands under the sun and we just wanted somebody, an eldest son at least, to work in one of those air-conditioned offices. I did not teach you

because I was so afraid if you would start to consider driving for your work. I simply couldn't bring myself to teach you what was following us like a curse for generations. I wanted a better life for you than men before you. A week later, I go back to the DMV. And this time to my car, this end, Fred.

This loving embodiment of the Midwest. He's so sweet. He's giving me tips on how to find parking when I will have my license, and I haven't even started the car yet. We take a lap and I drive us back to the DMV and he steps outside and he comes back with my first ever driver's license. And I look at it and I say,

thank you, Dad, Fred. Now eventually I did get that job and I did work in a lot of air-conditioned offices but these hands they love it. It's in my jeans and I drove myself here tonight and I drove wonderfully.

That was Ditesh Jagie. Jitesh is an immigrant writer and poet from India, currently living in Chicago. As an educator, Jitesh loves teaching the joys of storytelling and giving keynotes on the power of the personal story. We'll have links to where to find him on our website, the moth.org. He tells us that his dad is not retired and only drives for leisure. There's a few moments of my life that feel like a movie. It's the summer holidays in Jamaica,

and I'm making my way from my grandmother's house. Goodies tied up in a bag and a cool drink to keep my company. I stopped by my aunt's house, and my aunt announces that she and her family are going to the big fare. We have never been at this point, and my family, we don't really have the extra money. But I perk up, and I ask my aunt, hey, do you think we could go? And she says yes.

And I sprint uphill to my house. I go through tiny pathways, and I don't stop to take a very necessary. and I burst into my house and I announced it to my mother and my sister. And my sister and I, we squeal and we run laps around the house and we are just giddy and delight and we're like, oh, we finally get to go and we quickly start to get dressed. And we put on our clothes, humble clothes or matching jeans short and t-shirt with like cartoon characters on it and my mother sits us down to make her here and she combs it and plats the end

and put beads all over the best way we can. Put on our Sunday best. and we sit on the veranda and we're just jittery with anxiety, and we hear our aunt's car approaching. But instead of stopping, my aunt rolls right by. She doesn't stop. She doesn't pick us up. And my sister and I, I honestly think we may be cried for days. All our lives, all we wanted to do as kids was go to this fair. And I have to tell you that I'm sure my aunt doesn't even remember this story.

Honestly, I think she probably forgot she even told me that we. we could join, but every time I tell it, I cry a little, even now, years later, because I go right back there. The wound is gone, but the taste of it still feels so real. That moment became a scene in the movie of my life, one of the quiet ones, the kind that stays, sad, tender, a little humiliating and somehow full of love. At the moth, we believe we all have those moments, the ones that mark us, even if no one else remembers them happening. After the break,

another story of a moment that feels like a movie, back in a bit. This is I wrote Glass of This American Life. Do you know our show? Okay, well, either way, I'm going to tell you about it. We make stories, old-fashioned stories that hopefully pull you in at the beginning with funny moments and feelings

and people in surprising situations and then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening. That's right. I'm talking about stories to make you disappointments and ignore your loved ones. This American Life, every week, wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back. Our next stories from Nick Vega, who told this at a Seattle StorySlam where the theme was business.

Here's Nick, live at the mall. If you're going to produce fake IDs for most of your senior class, you should probably anticipate someone doing something stupid to get you caught. And you shouldn't be all that surprise if that someone ends up being you. You should only hope that the stupid thing that you do isn't lock the keys to your dad's car inside while you're at a nightclub in Sayerville, New Jersey called hunkabunkah. That's what happened to me. But first, the IDs. Up until a couple of years ago, New York State driver's licenses were not like most states are today, which are glossy and smooth.

Ours were really flimsy and grainy and matted. So if you had black, white, and red colored pencils, a can of hairspray in a steady hand, you could alter your date of birth. I had all three of these things. so I had a small business on my hands. I started out by doing it for me and my friends, and it was really easy for me. We were all born in 1983, so all I had to do was change the three into a zero,

and 83 became 80, and on our 18th birthdays, we were all 21. Same photo, good to go, go to bars, have fun. I could even change an 81 or an 82 into a 78 or 79, but I charged more for that because it wasn't as easy. And so we called this method chalking, and I called myself the chalk king, and I really wish I'd know.

I made that part up, but I did. I charged $10 if I had to change one digit and $20 if I had to change two. And as words started spreading throughout the school that these were working and we were going into bars, more and more people started handing me their IDs before long. Every single day I was going home with a pocketful of some people's driver's licenses. And it was really fun. I was getting known and I had no idea whose ideas I was chalking, but I was making more money than I was working at the YMCA, so I was happy.

My only real rule was, don't take them into New Jersey. It's a whole nother beast. Getting into bars on Staten Island and Brooklyn was easy, mostly because it was kind of lenient. As long as you had something that looked like anything, they would really just kind of let you in. But New Jersey, they really, like they were looking for fake ideas. They had black lights, they had sandpaper, they had nail polish remover, and they also had a real disdain for New Yorkers. They hated us coming down to their bars, see Jersey Shore for reasons why. Until, of course, one day I broke my own rule because a girl I had a crush on said that her and her friends were going to go check out Hunkabobob.

Bunkah in Sayerville, and I said, oh, the ID will work, and I'll come with you. So I grabbed my two friends, Paul and Anthony. I borrowed my dad's Ford Tempo, and we drove to New Jersey. I was really excited to go see this girl. I even went to the store in the Staten Island Mall called Trends and bought a powder blue club shirt. I had never been to a club before, and I thought this was what you're supposed to wear. Of course, she didn't show up.

Her and her friends decided to do something else that day. We tried to make the most of it, so we just went into the club anyway, until we realized that even though our ID said that we were 21, inside this nightclub, we really did just look and feel like stupid teenagers. And so we decided to just leave. And so it was about midnight when we walked out, and I realized that I had locked the keys to my dad's car inside. This was 2001.

We didn't have cell phones. I didn't have enough money to call like a tow trucker or a roadside assistance, and I certainly couldn't call my dad, because I had broken his number one rule of don't drive into New Jersey, borrowing his car. So I went inside and I talked to the Bouncer and I said, hey, do you have like a slim gym or a coat hanger or something to help me get my car door open? And so he said, you're going to have to wait until after the club closes.

Now the club closes at two. Bouncer would be off work at 3. My dad wakes up for work at 3.30 to go sanitation. This was not going to happen. This was not going to work out. So I did the only thing I thought to do since this was a nightclub in Sayerville. every 20 or 30 minutes, a patrol car would roam around the parking lot, just making sure no one was up to any dirty business.

And so I flagged the cop down, and I asked him, hey, we're locked out of my car, can you help us in? And he said, sure. And he was eyeing us the whole time. And he popped the car door open in about 10 seconds. And then he just stood between me and this open door. And he goes, were you just inside there? He goes, and I said, no.

And he goes, don't lie to me. I saw that powder blue shirt going in about an hour ago. And so he goes, there's no way you boys are 21. He goes, let me see your license. And I reluctantly handed it to him. And he didn't say anything. He just reared back and hawked a lugie right on my license. And then he used his gloved hand and his uniform and he rubbed it and rubbed it.

And the next word is out of his mouth were, oh, there you are you are you boys got those two, let me see him. So my friend Anthony and Paul hand him to him. And he goes, these are really good. Who makes these? I thought it would be obvious, don't say anything. obvious don't say anything, but impulsively, I guess when you're asked a question that you know the answer to, my friend Paul just without hesitation said, he does. He makes them.

And so he goes, all right, he goes, where do you boys live? And we're like, you know, he looked at the idea. We're like, we live on Staten Island. And he goes, where do you go to high school? Here, I was about to say a different school than where we went to. But impulsively, when asked a question that he knew the answer to you, my friend Paul chimed in, we go to Totten. Bill. And I'm just standing there, you know, in disbelief. So he gives us a huge grilling,

and he's threatening to take us to a holding cell and make our parents come pick us up. He's threatening to, you know, charge us with all these things. I beg and I plead, and finally he lets me go. And he says, don't ever come back here, don't ever try this again. Go to school on Monday, and we're in our six-period math class and my teacher, Mr. Asher, who's a big guy who's actually a bouncer himself on the side. He told us. us all to take out our driver's licenses, which we all do. And he circles the room with his little hole puncher punching a hole into the corner of all of our licenses that instead of 1983, say 1980. And he gets to me and he puts one right in the middle of my forehead.

And he goes, see me after school. The photo of the forehead, not my actual forehead. So after class, I go and I talk to him and he goes, I heard you met my brother on Saturday. And I said, yeah, I said, he was really nice to let me go. And he said, yeah, don't pull that shit again. And he goes, oh, and he probably would have let you go, but he said, that powder blue shirt gave you away. There was no way, there was no way that someone that wore that shirt was in their 20s. Good to know. For all my friends that had holes punch on their licenses, the fee to get a lot of the fee to get

a new license issued in New York was $6. So I did the noble thing. I kept my $4 profit and I paid for their, I paid for all of their licenses to be replaced and I rechalked them all for free. Thank you. That was Nick Vega. Nick is a Seattle-based writer, storyteller and quiz master from New York City. He's the co-founder of Bar Stories live on stage. His work blends sharp wit, hustle, and emotional honesty usually learned the hard way. Wow. I can't believe the podcast is almost over. You know, as I stand here in the recording studio, I have so many people I want to thank for this opportunity. I've dreamed about hosting a podcast since I was a little girl, and I've got to say thank you to all our Moth listeners, Moth storytellers, or funders, my grandmother, my aunt featured in the story, my sister, my dear, dear, dear mother,

a next-door neighbor, my pastor, and my English teacher, you know, it's an Oscar's episode. We had to do a little bit of an Oscar's speech. Genuinely, though, thank you for listening. From all of us at The Moth, we hope your life feels cinematic, in the warm, beautiful, worth remembering and sharing type of way. Jody Powell is a director and educator at the Moth who enjoys listening to and seeking stories from beyond the main.

corridors. Originally from Jamaica, she currently lives in Harlem. Jutev's story was coached by Larry Rosen. This episode of the Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Jonesse, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of the Mawals' leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Clucay, Jennifer Hickson, Jordanale, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Orenia. The Moth podcast is presented. by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, the moth.org.