WEBVTT - How are at-home DNA tests reshaping our identities? 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.159 Hi everyone, I'm Katie Curic and welcome to next question. 0:00:05.519 --> 0:00:09.959 Who Am I? That's considered life's most fundamental question, and 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:13.600 it's quickly followed by where do I come from? Sure 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:17.480 both are somewhat philosophical, but in the age of rampant 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:21.200 home DNA test kids, those questions have become something more 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.479 big business. More than twenty six million people around the 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:29.320 world have turned to home ancestry or DNA tests hoping 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:32.480 to find out who they really are. The simple test 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:35.680 connected her with the mom she had never met, a 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:38.640 reunion for a mom and her son after nearly three 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:42.000 decades apart. Her sisters, born fifteen months apart and adopted 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.680 at birth, never knew each other existed until these DNA 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:49.479 tests incredibly popular. But what happens when the news is 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:54.160 more than we bargained for? Disturbing results, emotional fallout, and 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:59.320 even privacy issues. So today my next question, what really 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:04.240 makes us who we are? I think our sense of 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:07.920 identity in the very beginning comes from the stories that 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:10.920 were told about ourselves from the time that we can 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:15.640 understand anything that's Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets, an 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:20.560 intimate podcast that explores the power of untold Stories. Danny's 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.720 also a prolific author, and the podcast was actually inspired 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:30.360 by her latest book, Inheritance, a memoir of genealogy, paternity, 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.319 and love. And the story that I was told was 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:37.440 that I was the youngest grandchild of this illustrious grandfather 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:42.120 and grandmother. Central to Danny's identity was her Judaism. She 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.760 spoke Hebrew and also her bond with her father, the 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:49.760 head of a distinguished Orthodox family, And there was this 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:53.880 family history that was something to be very proud of. Um. 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:57.240 And yet there was this sense that I had as 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:00.320 a child of I don't fit in, I don't long 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:03.600 and I don't know why UM. And when you're a 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.040 child and you have that feeling and you have nothing 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:11.320 to connect it to the instinct, I think our impulse 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:14.359 is to turn that against yourself. You know, there must 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:16.680 be something wrong with me, because I don't feel like 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.440 I belong and I should belong. Danny not only felt other, 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.680 she looked other two. I looked like you know, Heidi 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.640 had wandered, wandered over from the Alps into the Stuttle. 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:29.880 You know, it was like, really, when you looked at 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:31.880 a picture of me with all of my cousins. It 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:34.440 was like, who doesn't belong in this picture? And it 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:39.160 was me. But I managed to feel or to tell 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:42.920 myself that this was some sort of just strange genetic 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:47.000 quirk of faith that I just came out looking so 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.240 completely different. There's a moment that I write about in 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:53.200 my book where a friend of my parents who is 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.799 an elderly or you know, a Holocaust survivor, was over 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:59.120 at our house one day for Sabbath lunch and she 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:01.560 patted me on the head said, this is actually Jared 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:05.040 Kushner's grandmother. Um. She patted me on the head, Mrs Kushner, 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:07.079 and she said, we could have used you in the camp. 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:08.920 We could have used you in the ghetto, a little blondie. 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.400 You could have gotten the spread from the Nazis. So 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:17.839 that was literally the story of my childhood. And then 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:21.160 when Danny was fifty four, she randomly decided to take 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:26.200 a DNA test through ancestry dot com. My husband was 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:31.239 taking his own DNA test recreationally, you know, really his 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:34.880 his kind of like he smokes marijuana a little bit 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:41.880 like that probably was even less um purpose. Um, his 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:44.440 parents were elderly. I think he was doing it really 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.000 to kind of connect with his dad, and he just 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.520 asked me if I wanted to do one too. And 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:54.680 I'm haunted by this today because I so easily could 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.280 have said no. It was no big deal to me. 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.440 I thought I knew everything about where I came from, 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.440 but instead something it was inexpensive. It was no big deal. 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:07.640 He was doing it, and I said sure and so 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:10.760 and that's that's why there was no purpose or suspicion 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.840 or anything. You got the results back and it showed 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:20.719 you were fifty two percent Eastern European Ashkenazi, but the 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:24.800 rest was a mixture of French, Irish, English and German. Initially, 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.320 did you say they got my results mixed up with 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:32.640 somebody else? I completely did. I. Um, I initially thought that, 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:34.919 and I thought that for a while. Actually made my 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:39.440 husband call ancestry dot com and get a supervisor on 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:41.159 the phone, which is something that happens a great deal 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.159 in those companies these days. Um. And he was told 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.400 that those kinds of mistakes are never made, which I 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:50.520 do think is true. UM. But yeah, no, I thought 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:52.560 this is a mistake. And then you talked to your 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:56.600 half sister, explain how I know she's a good bit 0:04:56.640 --> 0:05:00.360 older than you. Um, and this was your father's daughter 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.120 from a previous marriage. Yes, so she's fifteen years older 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:06.880 than I am. And I had recalled that she had 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.400 mentioned at one point early on in the DNA testing 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.120 world that she was an early adopter of it, and 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:15.600 she had she had done it. So I reached out 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.280 to her, actually really at my husband's very strong suggestion, 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:21.599 because I was really just kind of sticking my fingers 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:23.240 in my ears and going, la la, la, la la, 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.440 there must be a reasonable explanation here. But so she 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:32.120 sent her KIT number. It's what it's called her results. 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.560 And there is a site called jet match where you 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:38.960 can compare to kit numbers to see what your most 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.800 recent common ancestor is, in other words, what what your 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:47.320 level of genetic relationship is. And when that came back, 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.800 and um, it was in this kind of foreign language 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:54.479 that I didn't understand. My husband did. Um. It showed 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.400 that we were not related in any way, shape or farm. Correct. 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:00.400 We were not sisters, were not half sisters. We are 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:04.120 most recent common ancestor was many generations earlier, which all 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:05.919 people have. You and I would have it with your 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:07.680 Jewish mother, you know, we we all would we all 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:12.440 would have it. So you said, holy shit, I said, 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:16.039 holy sh it. Um, I knew that it meant that 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:20.800 if if we weren't sisters, that my father was either 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:23.080 not my father or not her father. I knew it 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:25.800 meant he wasn't my father. Everything the pieces of the 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:30.360 puzzle clicked into place so quickly that there was just 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:34.520 this sense of of course, of course, like all of them, 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.800 from Mrs Kushner to the way that I felt that 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:41.960 sense of otherness. Even within my shock, there was also 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:44.960 this sort of backward looking sense of oh, my god, 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.599 this makes perfect sense, so a bit of relief in 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:53.599 a way. I didn't feel relief instantly. I felt um devastated. 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:58.839 I adored my dad. And I also knew very quickly 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:04.720 that it meant that I'm that my biological father. It 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:07.679 must have been a sperm donor. I knew it wasn't 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:09.640 that my mother had an affair. Why did you think that? 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:12.960 Because I would have thought, oh, maybe it was the 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.720 Swedish milkman. Yes, yeah, that would have been a completely 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:18.720 reasonable If you're looking at these results, the first thought 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:20.920 that most people would have would be my mother must 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:25.520 have had an affair. I had just enough clues, which 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:27.400 is miraculous to me when I think about it now. 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:29.920 I had just enough clues to be able to piece 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:36.040 it together. Danny knew that her parents had struggled to 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.640 get pregnant, and that they had sought help at a 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:43.520 fertility institute in Philadelphia, where her mom was artificially inseminated. 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:47.160 But what Danny would come to find out after getting 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.840 her DNA results is that the sperm that was used 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.120 was not from her dad. It was from a donor. 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:57.840 It sounds crazy now, but back then, when infertility was 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:02.240 considered private and shameful, it was common practice to mix 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.840 the father sperm with donor sperm. This allowed for at 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:10.680 least the possibility of biological parenthood. Couples were told this 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:13.560 as a treatment, and it will help boost your chances. 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:18.120 There was always this sense that it was the child 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:22.160 would never know anything. It was cloaked in secrecy. Parents 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:29.760 who underwent any kind of UM donor you know, uh 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:34.439 donor procedure would be told go home, never tell anyone, 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:36.840 don't tell your own parents, don't tell your siblings, don't 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.000 tell your friends. The child will never know. It's better 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:43.319 for everyone that way, and there was every reason to 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:46.200 believe that would be the case. No one at the 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:49.880 time could have imagined that fifty years later, finding out 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:52.480 the truth would be as easy as sending your spit 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.280 to a lab and getting the results in a matter 0:08:55.400 --> 0:09:00.120 of weeks. Once Danny found out her shocking results, it 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.160 took her only thirty six hours of googling before she 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.600 was looking at YouTube videos of the man who was 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:10.520 her biological father. It will stand, I think forever is 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.840 the most surreal moment of my life. Um, the first 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.360 so he's he's a retired physician and a medical ethicist, 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:24.520 which of course is another bizarre chapter. I mean, you 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:27.040 can't make can I curse on this? You can't make 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:29.720 this ship up? You can't. I mean we already said 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:33.959 holy ship, So why not a few more excell um? 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:36.720 And he he lectures. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.400 and he lectures quite often, and so on this YouTube 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:44.120 video he was giving a lecture on medical ethics. And 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:50.840 what I noticed, and I notice is too subtle a 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:53.280 word for what I sort of it's kind of like 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:56.480 went into my blood stream, was that the way that 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.839 he was gesturing with his hands, um, is how I 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.120 ester with my hands. I'm doing it right now. It's 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.360 how I speak when i'm speaking, especially when I'm speaking 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:09.000 in public. And it was also extremely familiar to me. 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:11.760 I lecture a lot, I stand behind lecterns, I run 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.200 a Q and A. He was standing behind a lectern. 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:16.280 He was running a Q and A, and I do 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:18.760 look very very much like him. But that's not what 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:22.280 I was noticing. I wasn't seeing myself in this seventy 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:24.880 eight year old man, but I was seeing a quality 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:29.120 of familiarity that I realized I had never seen before 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:33.440 in my life. I mean, there was no question that 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.200 this was that I came from him, and yet he 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:41.000 was a complete stranger. So do you remember emotionally it 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:44.440 must have been so complicated what you were experiencing as 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:48.400 you watched him. Take us back to that moment. I 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.840 was shaking from head to toe. Um, I felt ice cold. 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:55.640 Um the room. I was in a hotel room in 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:59.599 San Francisco, and the room felt like it was tilting in, 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:05.240 like literally the ground was shifting. Um. I remember the 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.319 feeling of walking into the bathroom for the first time 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:10.200 after I had seen his face, and looking at my 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.880 face in the mirror and suddenly seeing my face, the 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.000 face that I had been looking for all those years 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:19.920 as a little girl, always having the sense that there 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:22.920 was something I wasn't seeing. I saw it there. It 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:30.719 was um. It wasn't comforting, it was um deeply disturbing. 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:33.720 I mean, I walked around in a state of um 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:40.920 kind of dizziness and breathlessness for weeks. I would say, 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:45.320 I mean the roots of my family tree that I 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:49.160 had understood and that I've been confident about. I mean 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:51.800 confident in the sense that we don't we don't think 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.600 about what you know, we we we are who we are, 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:57.120 we're told we come from who we come from, if 0:11:57.160 --> 0:11:59.840 we are, and and then that's that, and we just, 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.200 you know, never really consider it ever again. And suddenly 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:08.080 now there was this whole new world, There was this 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.720 whole new story, and this was this was within me. 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:16.800 I was the story. Danny wanted to meet her biological father, 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.440 but she had to convince them. It was a delicate 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:26.200 dance to get there. And I think ultimately one of 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:28.360 the ways that we got there is that we were 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:32.280 each respectful of each other. I was persistent, but I 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:37.480 was also very respectful, very conscious that I sensed he 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:40.440 was concerned about his privacy. I think he worried that 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.600 if there was me, there might be twenty others behind me. 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:49.760 So my biological father, again a medical ethicist, had given 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.240 I think a great deal of thought to this after 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.960 he realized that he had a biological child in the world. 0:12:57.200 --> 0:12:59.080 He had never told his wife a fifty years that 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.480 he had been a donor. It was insignificant, you know, 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.200 it was. It just hadn't needed some money, needed extra money, 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:09.120 and you know, there's the added bonus of I'm doing 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.160 I'm doing a good thing, I'm helping a family. But 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:15.480 it was promoted as kind of it's not a bigger 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:18.120 deal than giving blood basically, which we of course know 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:22.360 it's very, very different. So he did agree to meet 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:26.240 me after a bit of a back and forth, and 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:30.480 we met for lunch at a restaurant in New Jersey. 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.760 He and his wife were traveling east and my husband 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:36.040 and I. So he did tell his wife he had 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.640 he told me. He told his wife instantly after getting 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:43.480 the email, and he also told his kids. It's they 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.360 they have a really lovely, very open family where there 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:49.200 aren't a lot of secrets, and they you know, had 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:53.800 a family meeting and talked about it. So we went, 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.160 we went to lunch, and we had this four and 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.880 a half hour lunch sitting in this darkening restaurant in 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.160 New Jersey. UM, and I think the biggest takeaway, I mean, 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.480 I had many takeaways. It was again surreal to see 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.280 yourself in a stranger. UM. We see ourselves and the 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:13.880 parents who raise us all the time, but we take 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.440 it for granted. And suddenly there's this person who I 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:22.080 don't know, but I'm seeing absolutely like gestures and traits 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:25.000 and I'm seeing where I come from. But the biggest 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.920 takeaway was afterwards, and it was in the days afterwards. 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:33.320 It was the first time that I started to feel 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:39.280 reconnected with my dad. I started to feel like, no, 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:41.280 this man that I just had lunch with, he's not 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:45.120 my dad, he's not my father. I do come from him. 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:48.040 The language that came to me afterwards was It's like, 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:50.400 he's the country that I'm from. And I've never set 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.280 foot in that country, and I haven't climbed its mountains, 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:55.480 and I haven't eaten its food, and I haven't breathed 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:59.280 its air. But it's my country and I come from it, 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.360 and and the people who we love and my father 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.880 loved me into being my father. I think about every 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:08.720 day my father. As I'm talking to you, I have 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:12.200 chills up and down my arms that I've decided means 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:16.760 that he's up there listening. Um, it's a profound soul connection. 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:21.800 But I actually needed to meet the man that I 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:26.080 come from genetically and biologically to have that feeling, to 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:30.840 return to that feeling when we come back. How One 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:34.320 woman turned her own d n A surprise into an 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:39.160 expansive support network for others who were shocked by their results. 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:58.960 In two thousand seventeen, Catherine St. Clair also decided on 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:01.800 a whim to take a d n A test. She 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.520 was at work when she checked her results and was 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:08.360 shocked to find out her brother was in fact only 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:11.400 her half sibling. I put my head down on the desk, 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:14.360 and the emotional part of me was going, oh my god, 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:15.640 oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god, oh 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.040 my god. And the logical part of me was trying 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:20.720 to calm myself down, saying, you're still the same person. 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:23.240 Nothing has changed. You're the same person you were when 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:25.400 you woke up this morning. This is just new information. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:30.720 You're okay, Um, But but the emotional part of me 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:35.280 was totally freaking out. Within weeks, Catherine created a discreet 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:39.040 and vite only Facebook group called d n A NPE 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:44.920 Friends NPE meaning not parent expected. When I first created 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:49.720 this group, I was expecting that I would probably find 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:52.240 four or five more people like me and we could 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:55.360 help each other. And I set a lofty goal. Wouldn't 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:57.400 it be wonderful if we could find as many as twelve? 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:02.600 I had no idea how normal this was. I felt 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:04.840 like a freak. I felt like I was going to 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:09.160 be viewed as a bug, and I hated that feelings. 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:14.000 But it was actually really comforting to see people coming 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.920 in droves. Our group right now is pushing, and that's 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:22.280 just for our main group of n P SUM. We 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.439 actually have over a hundred groups. We have a support 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:27.480 group just for the mothers. We have a support group 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:31.199 just for the fathers UM. We have regional groups so 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:33.160 that people can plan to get together and have meet 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:34.840 and greets, because we found that to be a very 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:39.159 comforting healing experience to have physical gatherings where everyone can 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:43.399 hug each other and talk. It's amazing. It's miraculous to 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.160 me the amount of healing that's happening and we're still 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:48.600 bringing people in, probably about a hundred and fifty two 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:52.560 hundred a month. When Catherine found out that her biological 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.679 father wasn't the man who raised her, she couldn't believe 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:58.360 how little the company did to help her in this 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.119 very difficult time. She couldn't even get a representative on 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.200 the phone. The best she could do was message someone 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:08.520 through her computer using the live chat feature on the 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.960 company's website. When I was doing the chat with this woman, 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:14.560 it would have been better if it had been a 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:18.240 phone call. And with that phone call, they said, Okay, 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:21.359 we're going to send you this packet of information. We 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:23.679 take this phone number down right now. This is a 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:26.520 hotline that you can call. Here is a Facebook group 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:29.840 that you can join where you can get emotional support. UM. 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:35.200 Here's here's a website that offers links to um mental 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.879 health professionals in your area. UM. I feel like that 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:43.680 they should have more of an obligation to provide those 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:46.840 kind of tools and resources to these people. And they're 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:49.639 about to be even more people like Katherine and Danny. 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:55.040 Considering the fact that by two this global DNA testing 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.840 market will see as many as one hundred million people, 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.000 that's a three heard of the US population by the way, 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:06.280 and more people, of course, means big Bucks. In two years, 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:10.400 revenues are expected to double, topping three hundred and forty 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:17.639 million dollars. I believe that if an organization is making 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:23.600 a significant financial profit off of a product that is 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:30.440 opening up these Pandora's boxes, they should feel an ethical responsibility. Legally, no, 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:35.040 they don't have illegal responsibility, but ethically they should feel 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:40.920 a responsibility to provide whatever tools or resources are needed 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:47.520 to their clients to help them through this. When we 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:50.040 come back, we'll ask one of those organizations if they 0:19:50.119 --> 0:20:06.320 can and are doing better by their customers. One of 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:09.600 the biggest players in the at home DNA testing space 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:14.120 is twenty three and Me. Recently through a genetic testing service, 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:16.800 twenty three and Me they found out about each other. 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.480 They found each other after they both decided to try 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.560 twenty three and me, and it wouldn't have been possible 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:26.160 without a DNA test from twenty three and Me. I 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:29.760 was really curious about all this ancestry hype, so I 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.200 ordered an at home kit from twenty three and Me. 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:37.960 Spit into a tube okay, kind of pink because of 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:40.879 my lipstick. I hope that doesn't screw it up, and 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.440 then I sent it off to some strangers in Silicon 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:47.919 Valley to be analyzed. Okay, I'm ready to seal it 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.159 up and send it off and find out who I 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:58.320 am and where I came from. So the Ancestry Composition 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.439 Report analyze, this is your d NA UM and then 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.600 we base your results on your genetic similarity to the 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.640 forty five reference populations that we have. That's Julianna Centron, 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:14.200 a customer care representative at twenty three, and me who 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:20.359 helped me understand my results, which were not all that surprising. 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:25.359 I'm basically half Northwestern European, mostly British and Irish with 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.920 a little French and German thrown in, and half Ashkenazi 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:32.480 jew which makes sense since my dad was Presbyterian but 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:36.159 my mom was Jewish, but I did learn something about 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:40.199 the Jewish half. Most people associate this with being a 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:45.200 religion um but human geneticists have actually found that um 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:50.280 Askenazi Jews are a genetically similar group, and so because 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.480 they're a close knit population and genetically share long stretches 0:21:54.520 --> 0:21:58.840 of DNA, we're able to actually identify ash Nazi Jewish 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:03.199 ancestry separate it from other European ancestries UM, you know, 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:07.600 such as Eastern European or German UM because of those 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:11.879 distinct genetic markers. But what if I had uncovered a 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:15.800 huge family secret hiding in my DNA? Could I expect 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:19.560 any support from twenty three and Me? Julianna says, I'd 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:22.320 be able to get a trained customer care representative on 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:25.960 the phone. But more than that, the company launched just 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:29.480 last year a support page that sounds a lot like 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:32.399 the one Catherine sank Clair laid out, and it was 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:36.160 developed to help customers or any of their connections navigate 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:39.119 these relationships that they learned through twenty three and Me. 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:43.320 We worked closely with genetic counselors to gain insight into 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:46.000 what their patients were asking for and needed, and we 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:49.199 developed this resource UM, you know, for those that are 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:53.320 looking for more information. It actually links to customer stories 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:56.560 UM and these are real customers that have learned about 0:22:56.680 --> 0:23:00.480 unexpected relatives. I think it makes it so that, you know, 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:04.120 customers finding out this type of information don't feel alone 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:07.000 and realize that there are other people out there that 0:23:07.280 --> 0:23:09.040 you know, are kind of going through the same thing. 0:23:09.760 --> 0:23:12.520 Another thing that we offer, um you know, is additional 0:23:12.560 --> 0:23:16.600 resources within that page, things like better Help and talk Space. 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:20.199 They're not companies that were affiliated with but we do 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:22.920 link to them, um you know on our website through 0:23:22.960 --> 0:23:28.639 the report. Connecting customers to professional counseling sites like better 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:31.560 Help and talk Space seems like a step in the 0:23:31.640 --> 0:23:35.320 right direction, especially when some studies estimate as many as 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:38.840 ten percent of people who take at home DNA tests 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:43.480 will find out a parent isn't their biological parent. That 0:23:43.520 --> 0:23:46.159 means millions of families are about to come face to 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:52.200 face with some difficult truths, but for many, learning those 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:59.159 truths is still worth the initial trauma. Danny Shapiro, this 0:23:59.280 --> 0:24:02.720 whole experience ants obviously changed you, would you say for 0:24:02.760 --> 0:24:10.199 the better without question. It's the feeling was initially of 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:14.040 I don't know how to withstand this. Um. I just 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.119 felt like who am I? Who am I? I'm not 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:21.719 who I thought I was, And it moved over time 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:29.080 to this place that was one of great liberation because 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:32.719 the truth had been withheld from me and I had 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:34.720 sensed that. I think it's what made me a writer. 0:24:35.280 --> 0:24:39.040 I think, whether my novels or my memoirs, all my 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:42.480 novels thematically were in one way or another about family secrets. 0:24:42.880 --> 0:24:45.840 They all were about the corrosive power of them. Why 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:48.720 was I writing about this? I didn't know. It just 0:24:49.240 --> 0:24:52.159 was kind of territory. I kept returning to. It's like 0:24:52.200 --> 0:24:54.760 my superpower almost. That's what it feels like to me. Now. 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:59.600 It's really made me quite fearless in the world, and 0:24:59.640 --> 0:25:10.600 it's all so given me a sense of purpose. If 0:25:10.640 --> 0:25:13.840