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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: You might think that if you were a research subject,

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Speaker 2: it would change your life, That being in a study

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Speaker 2: would shape who you were, That because you are being observed,

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Speaker 2: you would be compelled to become a better version of

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Speaker 2: yourself then you might have otherwise. And all of that

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Speaker 2: might be true. But at the same time, it might

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Speaker 2: cause you to feel a great deal of internal pressure

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Speaker 2: to be exceptional, to be more than who you were,

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Speaker 2: to perform well inside the bell jar under which you

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Speaker 2: were trapped. Or perhaps both of these things could be

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Speaker 2: true simultaneously, an increased sense of your potential and the

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Speaker 2: simmering terror that you might fail to fulfill it.

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Speaker 3: That's Susannah Breslin, journalist and author of the memoir Data Baby,

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Speaker 3: My life in a psychological experiment. Susanna's is a story

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Speaker 3: about a childhood spent being studied, watched, in examined, and

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Speaker 3: yet somehow not ever really seen. I'm Danny Shapiro, and

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Speaker 3: this is family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us,

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Speaker 3: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we

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Speaker 3: keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your childhood,

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Speaker 3: the world that you were born into, and you know

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Speaker 3: what kind of place that was.

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Speaker 2: I was raised in Berkeley, California, in the late sixties

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Speaker 2: and seventies. My parents were intellectuals. My father taught at

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Speaker 2: the University of California, Berkeley. Both my parents were English professors,

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Speaker 2: and so there were a lot of books in our house.

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Speaker 2: There was a lot of encouragement of independent thinking, and

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Speaker 2: there was also a sense at that time, I think

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Speaker 2: that Berkeley was special, that the university was special, and

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Speaker 2: that my two bright parents, who had found each other,

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Speaker 2: were sort of special themselves and creating this special family,

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Speaker 2: I think, is how they originally envisioned it. The house

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Speaker 2: I grew up in was on a single block street

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Speaker 2: in the lower tiers of the North Berkeley Hills. So

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Speaker 2: it was stucco. Initially it was pink. Later my mother

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Speaker 2: painted it orange, and it was kind of a funny house.

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Speaker 2: It had a lot of French doors on the first floor,

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Speaker 2: so it got a lot of light. It had a

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Speaker 2: lot of sort of ornate wood carving, and then from

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Speaker 2: my parents' bedroom upstairs, you got this expansive view of

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Speaker 2: the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gay Bridge and

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Speaker 2: the Bay Bridge, and we also had an enclosed porch

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Speaker 2: on the second floor that we referred to as the study,

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Speaker 2: which was where my father wrote his books, so he

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Speaker 2: could often be found in there. He only ever learned

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Speaker 2: you had a type with two fingers, so he would

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Speaker 2: sit there and poke on the manual typewriter like a

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Speaker 2: chicken pecking, and he would close the French doors that

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Speaker 2: had these last panes on it. And so I would

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Speaker 2: come in sometimes and see my father writing in the

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Speaker 2: study and press my head against the glass, wishing I

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Speaker 2: could be with him. I think when my parents met

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Speaker 2: when they were getting their PhDs in Minnesota, there was

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Speaker 2: very much a sense that they were equals, and that's

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Speaker 2: part of why they liked each other. They were also

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Speaker 2: both incredibly tall. My father was almost sixty four and

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Speaker 2: my mother was five eleven, So I think they were

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Speaker 2: they had these big brains, and they were these tall people,

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Speaker 2: and I think they spelt well suited in that regard.

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Speaker 2: And my father got an opportunity to teach English at

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Speaker 2: UC Berkeley, so they came west. When my mother, once

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Speaker 2: they were in Berkeley, accidentally got pregnant with my older sister.

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Speaker 2: I think that the way she envisioned her life going

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Speaker 2: and the way it actually went split into two different directions.

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Speaker 2: Despite the fact that, you know, the feminist movement is

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Speaker 2: in full gear at that time, and my mother was

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Speaker 2: very much a feminist. The reality is she, you know,

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Speaker 2: was also a mother to first my sister and then myself.

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Speaker 2: I came along about three and a half years later,

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Speaker 2: and it was consuming, and it meant that my father

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Speaker 2: was able to pursue an intellectual and academic life the

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Speaker 2: way that he dreamed. He was at this fantastic university.

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Speaker 2: He was writing books, he was producing scholarly work and teaching,

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Speaker 2: and my mother was changing diapers and dealing with screaming

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Speaker 2: children and maintaining the house and shopping. I think she

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Speaker 2: sed us on our budget at thirty five dollars a week,

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Speaker 2: So her intellectual life suffered in support of his, which

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Speaker 2: was in part more helpings were then, But I think

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Speaker 2: she went along with it. But I think she was

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Speaker 2: in a lot of ways bored by her domestic life

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Speaker 2: and by her maternal life.

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Speaker 3: When Susannah's four years old, while her sister attends a

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Speaker 3: different school, she begins preschool at the Harold F. Jones

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Speaker 3: Child Study Center located at UC Berkeley. This is a

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Speaker 3: very special school, and it's thrilling to her parents that

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Speaker 3: she's selected to attend.

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Speaker 2: To me, it was just a preschool. It was an

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Speaker 2: incredible complex, and I remember walking up this funny zigzagging

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Speaker 2: ramp that takes you to this mess of concrete walkways.

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Speaker 2: It was designed by this barrier architect named Joseph Esherich,

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Speaker 2: and it had mid centry modern building. It had these

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Speaker 2: soaring stealings and the south facing wall was these big

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Speaker 2: glass doors that you could slide, so there was a

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Speaker 2: lot of ability to do what they encouraged, which was

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Speaker 2: self guided play, so you could play indoors, you could

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Speaker 2: go outside, and it was just this bright and wonderful place.

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Speaker 2: There was a lot of things to do. They understood that,

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Speaker 2: you know, children could guide themselves and learn autonomously, so

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Speaker 2: there was just a lot of freedom and I remember

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Speaker 2: just being really happy there. What I didn't know at

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Speaker 2: the time was that the preschool had been designed for

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Speaker 2: studying children, So there was a hidden observation gallery tucked

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Speaker 2: between these two bare classrooms, and researchers could go into

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Speaker 2: this gallery undetected and observe the students through this mesh

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Speaker 2: that had kind of an opaque screen over it. They

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Speaker 2: could hear what we were saying, and they could see

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Speaker 2: us playing, but we had no idea that they were there.

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Speaker 2: So there was this long sort of expanse.

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Speaker 4: On the east wall where unbeknownst to me, there were

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Speaker 4: researchers who were studying me and the other children who

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Speaker 4: were in the same studies.

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Speaker 2: So there's a long history at the university of the

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Speaker 2: children of the university's faculty and staff being studied by

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Speaker 2: researchers and graduate students. Initially, this was done at this

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Speaker 2: big house on one side of the campus, and so

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Speaker 2: preschoolers would be studied by, say a professor who was

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Speaker 2: studying early childhood development. He could go into this little

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Speaker 2: shed and study the children playing in the yard. The

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Speaker 2: same way another researcher in another building was studying rats

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Speaker 2: in amaze. So the studying of children at the university

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Speaker 2: dates back to the late twenties. Over time, you know,

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Speaker 2: they sort of professionalized it, and the idea was, let's

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Speaker 2: create this preschool dedicated to this that serves both our

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Speaker 2: faculty and staff who need you know, convenient quality childcare

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Speaker 2: that was you know, affordable, and that also supplies us

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Speaker 2: with a sort of endless stream of children who researchers

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Speaker 2: can actually come in and study them. So there's been

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Speaker 2: many studies, and many researchers have studied various groups of

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Speaker 2: children at the university. And it just so happened that

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Speaker 2: by the time I showed up, they had created this

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Speaker 2: beautiful preschool that had been outfitted just for studying kids.

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Speaker 2: We would I also remember being taken out of the

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Speaker 2: classroom periodically. An adult would guide me across the concrete

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Speaker 2: walkway and we would go into what they called a

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Speaker 2: game room. At the time, I thought we were just

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Speaker 2: playing games in a room.

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Speaker 3: Susanna's parents have signed the dotted Line, which permits her

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Speaker 3: to be available as a research subject at ages three, four, five, seven, eleven,

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Speaker 3: and into adulthood. When Susannah is four, this place is magical.

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Speaker 3: It's just playing games in a room. But at around

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Speaker 3: age six, there's a home visit, which seems a little

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Speaker 3: odd to Susannah, but as many children do, she accepts

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Speaker 3: the reality of the world with which she's presented a

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Speaker 3: quote from the wonderful film The Truman Show, which is

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Speaker 3: also the epigraph in Susanna's memoir. The next year, however,

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Speaker 3: her acceptance of this reality begins to shift. She starts

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Speaker 3: to into it that there's something more going on here.

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Speaker 3: There's something she's sensing but not quite seeing.

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Speaker 2: So when I was maybe seven years old, I was

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Speaker 2: in one of the experiment rooms at Tolbenhall and sitting

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Speaker 2: across from a table from a man who was asking

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Speaker 2: me questions. I think one of the other researchers had

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Speaker 2: picked me up from school and brought me there. It

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Speaker 2: was right afternoon, and he was talking to me about myself.

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Speaker 2: I just knew that this was a place that I

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Speaker 2: was occasionally brought to. These people were very interested in me,

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Speaker 2: and I think I didn't fully understand why. At a

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Speaker 2: certain point, she said, do you want some candy? And

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Speaker 2: there was a bowl of Eminem's between us on the table,

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Speaker 2: and I in fact was starving because it was, you know,

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Speaker 2: some hours after school. But I hesitated in my response

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Speaker 2: to him. I sensed at the time that maybe this

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Speaker 2: was some sort of a test. I said I didn't

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Speaker 2: want any candy, even though I was hungry, because I

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Speaker 2: think I wanted him to think I was like a

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Speaker 2: big girl. I wasn't like a little kid, you know,

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Speaker 2: who is candy? So I declined, He you know, went

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Speaker 2: back to asking me these other questions, and then a

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Speaker 2: few minutes later said, oh, I have to go take

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Speaker 2: care of something. Do you mind waiting here while I

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Speaker 2: go do that? So he left the room as soon

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Speaker 2: as the door closed behind him. I leapt out of

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Speaker 2: my chair and sort of dove across the table for

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Speaker 2: the candy, and inadvertently knocked the bowl over in the process, which,

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Speaker 2: to my horror, sent Eminem's bouncing across the tabletop. Not

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Speaker 2: wanting to be caught making a mess, I grabbed candy

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Speaker 2: and stucked it into my mouth. Then suddenly I froze

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Speaker 2: and I could steel my cheeks getting hot, and I

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Speaker 2: looked into this mirror on the opposite wall, and I

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Speaker 2: could see my cheeks were pink, and I just had

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Speaker 2: this scent that there was somebody on the other side

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Speaker 2: of the mirror who was watching me. And I think

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Speaker 2: that was the moment where I sort of started to

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Speaker 2: understand there's more layers to this than I thought.

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Speaker 3: That's amazing. I mean, the idea that there would be

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Speaker 3: somebody on the other side of the mirror must have

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Speaker 3: been building somewhere, you know, in your very bright little

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Speaker 3: mind to then have that thought, because why would that

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Speaker 3: enter the mind of a seven year old child, there's

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Speaker 3: somebody watching me. It's just really interesting that, in terms

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Speaker 3: of that feeling that you had that's so so powerful,

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Speaker 3: that you saw your face, you saw your red cheeks,

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Speaker 3: you flushed because you were mortified and embarrassed. But you

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Speaker 3: were mortified, and we don't get mortified and embarrassed when

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Speaker 3: we're alone in a room.

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Speaker 2: That's right. I don't know what figured me two sense

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Speaker 2: that somebody was on the other side of the mirror.

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Speaker 2: I was very sensitive. I was very aware of the

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Speaker 2: beneath of the adults around me, sort of as a child,

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Speaker 2: and so I don't know if it was just some

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Speaker 2: sort of intuitive sense, or if as happened, sometimes the

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Speaker 2: person on the other side of the mirror cocked or sneezed,

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Speaker 2: or you know, the one way mirror malfunctioned a little,

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Speaker 2: and I actually, you know, could see some kind of

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Speaker 2: a shadow. There are these sort of profound scenes in

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Speaker 2: which all I have is the point of view of

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Speaker 2: the seven year old, and I wish I knew more,

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Speaker 2: but I am limited to what she knew.

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Speaker 3: We'll be right back when Susanna's mother first drops her

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Speaker 3: off as a four year old at the child's study center,

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Speaker 3: she says something she repeats often over the course of

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Speaker 3: their lives together. I don't want to be a mother anymore.

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Speaker 3: This is, of course, a stunning thing to say and

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Speaker 3: a stunning thing to hear. It's also impossible, whether one

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Speaker 3: wants to be a parent anymore or not. Once one

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Speaker 3: has a child, they're a parent no matter what happens.

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Speaker 3: So Susanna's childhood is marked by two extremes, being raised

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Speaker 3: by a mother who doesn't want to be a mother,

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Speaker 3: and being observed and studied in a secret, special club

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Speaker 3: for special care.

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Speaker 2: It's the home life that I had was very austere.

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Speaker 2: My parents were not warm, they were not touchy feely,

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Speaker 2: They were often sort of avoidant of emotional expression. I

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Speaker 2: was a creative, sensitive, emotional child who I think wanted

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Speaker 2: to have physical affection and a warm family environment. But

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Speaker 2: that's not what I got. So I spent a lot

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Speaker 2: of time in my room by myself, engaged in imaginative play,

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Speaker 2: you know, playing with my dollhouse, playing with my stuffed animals,

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Speaker 2: and making up stories. My mother at a certain point

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Speaker 2: started verbalizing that she didn't want to be a mother anymore,

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Speaker 2: but I think long before that I sent that of her.

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Speaker 2: I think when she said out loud, I don't want

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Speaker 2: to be a mother anymore, what she was really saying

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Speaker 2: was I don't want to be this person anymore. I

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Speaker 2: don't want to be in this situation anymore. And I

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Speaker 2: think in her mind that's reasonable. Her life had not

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Speaker 2: gone the way she had wanted, and why couldn't she

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Speaker 2: want things to be another way? She wasn't the type

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Speaker 2: of person who was going to sit there and think

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Speaker 2: by saying I don't want to be a mother anymore,

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Speaker 2: how is my child going to hear that? Because the

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Speaker 2: child is going to hear my mother wishes I didn't exist.

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Speaker 2: And that was in a way I tried to conform

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Speaker 2: to that. Okay, I'll make myself invisible, I'll make myself scarce,

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Speaker 2: but it was impossible for me to make myself completely invisible.

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Speaker 3: When Susanna's around eleven, her parents divorce. Naturally, this big

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Speaker 3: life event becomes part of the study. Susannah's called in

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Speaker 3: for meetings with researchers who perform a Rorschach test to

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Speaker 3: try to understand how she's feeling about this new development

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Speaker 3: in her family dynamic and if they could understand that,

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Speaker 3: then maybe they could understand larger parts of Susanna's psychology

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Speaker 3: and personality as a whole.

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Speaker 2: When Jack and Jean Block conceived of the study in

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Speaker 2: the late sixties, there was this paradigm crisis in personality

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Speaker 2: psychology and there were these questions around whether or not

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Speaker 2: personality traits were real. Did people have these traits that

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Speaker 2: shaped their behavior or was people's behavior largely informed by

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Speaker 2: the situation in which they found themselves. The Blocks believed

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Speaker 2: that personalities shaped human behavior and remained relatively over the

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Speaker 2: course of one's life. But that was a theory, and

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Speaker 2: the only way to prove it is to study a

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Speaker 2: cohort of children from childhood into adulthood. This is a

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Speaker 2: herculean task, right, This is a thirty year project. It's

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Speaker 2: a longitudinal study, by which its nature is that it's

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Speaker 2: prone to failure. It's costly, you know, can you even

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Speaker 2: make it to the finish line? And what have you

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Speaker 2: found when you get there? And so that was the

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Speaker 2: intention was to have this group of kids, of which

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Speaker 2: I was wanted to demonstrate that when you study the

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Speaker 2: personality traits of a preschooler, you will actually have a

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Speaker 2: strong sense of who that child is going to be

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Speaker 2: as an adult when you come back to them twenty

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Speaker 2: years later, you'll see those same personality traits over the

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Speaker 2: course of my growing up life. I was, in many ways,

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Speaker 2: is an ideal labrat for their experiment. They were also

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Speaker 2: interested in depression. So a teenager becomes depressed, can you

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Speaker 2: if you look back at them in preschool, can you

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Speaker 2: actually see signs of that depression coming? And it turns

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Speaker 2: out the answer was yes. When they were studying us

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Speaker 2: and our parents were getting divorced in like the late

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Speaker 2: seventies and early eighties, this is coinciding with this big

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Speaker 2: divorce boom. The study has already been you know, following

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Speaker 2: us for over a decade, so it really, for the

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Speaker 2: first time, gave them as researchers, a front row seat

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Speaker 2: to how does divorce actually affect a child? Is it,

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Speaker 2: you know, is a divorce fundamentally problematic to a child?

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Speaker 2: Or is it the ways in which the parents navigate

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Speaker 2: the force and their own independent relationships with the children

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Speaker 2: and actually shape how the child responds to it. And

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Speaker 2: another thing that they were interested in that was a

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Speaker 2: fit for me when I became an adolescent was they

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Speaker 2: were also interested in adolescent drug use and what the

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Speaker 2: relationship was between our you know, experimenting with drugs and

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Speaker 2: our mental well being. So there were a lot of ways.

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Speaker 5: In which, you know, my parents divorced, my own struggles

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Speaker 5: with depression, and then the you know, experimenting with drugs

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Speaker 5: and sex, sort of out of control behavior as a teenager.

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Speaker 2: It's not great for me, but for a research and

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Speaker 2: there was like kids the gold mine. I really struggled

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Speaker 2: a lot as a teen Once my parents got divorced,

301
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Speaker 2: I think my world kind of imploded. My father started

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Speaker 2: a new family, and my mother became terribly depressed and

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Speaker 2: really didn't emerge from that depression about a decade. So

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Speaker 2: I felt very much on my own.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 2: I would go as like a fifteen year old up

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Speaker 2: to UC Berkeley sprat Row and allow myself to be

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Speaker 2: led off into dark rooms by frat boys who had

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Speaker 2: no idea how old I was, and I was running

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Speaker 2: away from home and really got myself in quite a

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Speaker 2: bit of trouble. I think that there was this kind

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Speaker 2: of sea sawing or push pull because periodically I would

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Speaker 2: be called by the Block study to be a set

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Speaker 2: where they would occasionally send us birthday cards, or you

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Speaker 2: would just get a call from them, or your parents

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00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:38,840
Speaker 2: would get a call from them, and they were just

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Speaker 2: checking in to see if you're still living in the

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Speaker 2: same place. They were checking their contact information. So the study,

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Speaker 2: you know, was periodically a part of my life, but

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Speaker 2: it was always sort of in my head. You know,

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Speaker 2: I have these sort of absent minded professor parents, but

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Speaker 2: I also have this kind of third parent, which was

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Speaker 2: the study that I knew was following my life and

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Speaker 2: had been for over a decade at that point, that

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Speaker 2: was interested in who I was, that was keeping track

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Speaker 2: of who I was, and that gave me a sense

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Speaker 2: of myself as special. I am part of something bigger

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Speaker 2: than myself. At that time, you know, I sort of

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Speaker 2: know that I'm in a study. There's these other kids

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Speaker 2: in the study. I don't know who they are, but

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Speaker 2: we're all part of this research that's somehow going to

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Speaker 2: you know, benefit humanity in terms of understanding how people

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Speaker 2: become who they are, and that was meaningful to.

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Speaker 3: Me years past. And the study continues. Susanna navigates adolescence

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Speaker 3: under the watch of what feels like three very complicated parents, Mom, dad,

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Speaker 3: and the study. But sometimes it seems like the study

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Speaker 3: is the only one really watching where her parents, especially

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Speaker 3: her mother, are less involved in her life. Her teenage

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Speaker 3: years are fraught and reckless, but during college she develops

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Speaker 3: an interest in writing. This bullies her and connects her

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Speaker 3: to her parents in a way intellectuals that they are

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Speaker 3: perhaps pursuing a career in writing and journalism is a

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Speaker 3: way to get her parents approval or at the very least,

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Speaker 3: their attention. In nineteen ninety six, Susanna's father suddenly dies.

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Speaker 3: Susannah is twenty seven, embarking on her life as a writer.

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Speaker 3: When this asteroid hits, she seeks a distraction, a vocation,

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Speaker 3: something besides grief to fill her up.

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Speaker 2: When my father died, I was really devastated. We have

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Speaker 2: had a complicated relationship, but I felt like I knew

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Speaker 2: my father at least liked me, which was not really

351
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Speaker 2: the sense that I got from my mother. So when

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Speaker 2: my father died suddenly of a heart attack, it just

353
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Speaker 2: exploded my brain and I struggled a lot mentally. I

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00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 2: had anxiety attacks, and at the same time, I think

355
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Speaker 2: I had felt intimidated by the fact that my father

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Speaker 2: was an English professor and a writer of books. And

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Speaker 2: when he died it kind of opened up place for

358
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Speaker 2: me to step into my own as a writer, having

359
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Speaker 2: just graduated from a writing program where I'd gotten a

360
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Speaker 2: master's and you know, I was looking for something to

361
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Speaker 2: write about that was interesting and that it also on

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Speaker 2: an emotional level, would allow me to escape from the

363
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Speaker 2: unhappiness I felt in the wake of my father's death.

364
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Speaker 2: I didn't want to think about hand lying dead on

365
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Speaker 2: the floor. I wanted to think about anything but that.

366
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Speaker 2: And within about a year of him dying, I ended

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Speaker 2: up going to San Francisco with a girlfriend and we

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Speaker 2: went into a strip club on Broadway, and it was

369
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Speaker 2: totally fascinating to me to see this group of men

370
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Speaker 2: that focused on this woman dancing on the stage. It

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00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 2: was very voyeuristic, and it was all about people who

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Speaker 2: were seeing and people were being seen. And I think

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Speaker 2: there's a way in which that resonated for me as

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Speaker 2: somebody who grew up being studied, being looked at. I was,

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Speaker 2: you know, the child and the teenager and the young

376
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Speaker 2: adult who people were looking at and considering. I was

377
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:53,640
Speaker 2: always the thing, the subject. I wasn't the one asking

378
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 2: the questions, I was the one answering them. And when

379
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:01,359
Speaker 2: I found this sort of subterraine in sex world, in

380
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:06,160
Speaker 2: all its complexity, that I could write about and go

381
00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 2: through and be distracted from all the bad things in life.

382
00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 2: It was just a kind of revelation. And I was

383
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Speaker 2: the one who was doing the looking, and I was

384
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Speaker 2: the one who was asking the questions. So it was

385
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:23,639
Speaker 2: a way for me to sort of invert that paradigm

386
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Speaker 2: from a passive position into an active position.

387
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:35,320
Speaker 3: This world becomes Susanna's beat as a journalist. One night,

388
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:38,399
Speaker 3: she goes to see the porn star Jenna Jamison dance

389
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,160
Speaker 3: at the Legendary of Pharaoh Theater in the Bay Area.

390
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:45,159
Speaker 3: Jenna's publicist invites Susanna to come visit one of the

391
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Speaker 3: porn movie sets if she ever finds herself in La.

392
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Speaker 3: Susanna does just that and falls in love with La.

393
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 3: She stays for several years and becomes fascinated by the

394
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Speaker 3: porn world. She dedicates herself to the porn beat, writes

395
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:04,400
Speaker 3: hundreds of compelling pieces about sex and the adult movie industry.

396
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Speaker 2: The author Martin Amos once referred to the porn industry

397
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 2: as a rough trade, and I think it is. It's

398
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 2: a complicated place, but it's it's like there's a difference

399
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:25,639
Speaker 2: between having a chicken on your plate and going to

400
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 2: the slaughterhouse where they kill the chickens. And I think

401
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 2: seeing how porn got made and sort of what that

402
00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:37,880
Speaker 2: did to people was a lot for me to look at.

403
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:42,400
Speaker 2: You know, Intellectually, it was fascinating, but it was sort

404
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 2: of a rough place to be, and I think it

405
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 2: became something that I kind of got burned out on.

406
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 2: It made me feel negative about, you know, what people's

407
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 2: human interests are when you kind of remove the constraint

408
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 2: of polite society and see what people do when there's

409
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 2: no rules at all, which is how the porn industry

410
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 2: can feel at times. You see people do bad things

411
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:16,639
Speaker 2: to other people. So I think that took a toll

412
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 2: on me. As we got older, I had less of

413
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 2: a connection to the study. When we were thirty two,

414
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:29,239
Speaker 2: they wanted to do the final assessments of us, but

415
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 2: they couldn't afford to, you know, bring us all back

416
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 2: to Berkeley to be assessed in person, so they sent

417
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:39,239
Speaker 2: us these huge questionnaires for us to fill out that

418
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 2: echoed a lot of what they had been asking us

419
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 2: over the years, and so I dutifully filled mine out,

420
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 2: and I think I sort of felt like, you know,

421
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 2: I hope they think I turned out okay, they don't

422
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:57,080
Speaker 2: think I'm too too far out to the left. The

423
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 2: study had been a part of my life for thirty years,

424
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 2: which lives longer than my relationship with my father, right

425
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 2: and father died when I was twenty seven, but it's

426
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:11,479
Speaker 2: not until I'm thirty two that the study ends, So

427
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 2: the sense that that was coming to an end, I

428
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 2: think it is bittersweet for me.

429
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 3: Eventually, Susannah burns out on covering the porn industry in LA.

430
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:28,640
Speaker 3: She moves to New Orleans. Then two years later, Hurricane

431
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 3: Katrina decimates the city. Of course, this catastrophe is all

432
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 3: over the news. Susanna's mom knows she's living in New Orleans,

433
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 3: and even though they're not close, even though her mom

434
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:43,800
Speaker 3: doesn't want to be a mother, still Susannah is stung

435
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 3: that her mother doesn't call it a check and make

436
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:49,880
Speaker 3: sure she's okay. For Susannah, this is a breaking point,

437
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 3: the ruin all around her and the ruin of a

438
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 3: relationship with her mom.

439
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 2: It became clear about forty eight hours before that Hurricane

440
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:06,960
Speaker 2: Katrina was just going to be unlike anything that had

441
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:11,480
Speaker 2: come before it, and I was able to get out

442
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,520
Speaker 2: of the city in time. I think the first bands

443
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 2: were hitting as we were still trying to get away

444
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 2: from the city, and it was harrowing to think about

445
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 2: what would have happened if I had remained in New

446
00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 2: Orleans and I fled to Baton Rouge with a bunch

447
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 2: of other refugees I didn't know. And during that time period,

448
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 2: my mother never called to see if I was alive,

449
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 2: and eventually I connected with my sister who said my

450
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 2: mother had not called her either to see if I

451
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 2: was alive. At this point, the city has flooded. It

452
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 2: is on every you know channel on TV. It's hard

453
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 2: to mince and I just could not. I was livid

454
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 2: and could not understand how she could leave me for dead.

455
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 5: Ye.

456
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 2: At the same time, this is not out of character, right,

457
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 2: I don't want to be a mother anymore. Is this

458
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:16,200
Speaker 2: sort of passive aggressive way of her saying I wish

459
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,640
Speaker 2: you didn't exist and yours?

460
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:19,200
Speaker 4: You know?

461
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 2: It seemed like she wished that I would just disappear,

462
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:28,120
Speaker 2: like the hurricane would just consume me, and she would

463
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:33,120
Speaker 2: be released from motherhood at least in part and I

464
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 2: just essentially cut off contact with her. At that point,

465
00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 2: it seemed like maintaining a relationship with Hurricane at an

466
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 2: incredibly high cost, and the cost was all mine to pay.

467
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:49,200
Speaker 2: It was extremely difficult for me to go no contact

468
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 2: with her. My belief about what happened is that I

469
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 2: actually paved my mother exactly what she wanted when I

470
00:31:56,800 --> 00:32:00,000
Speaker 2: went no contact with her, and that it was actually

471
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:06,479
Speaker 2: still complying with what she wanted. So I don't know

472
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 2: that it made things easier for her, but it may have.

473
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:30,479
Speaker 3: Will be back in a moment with more family secrets.

474
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 3: Susannah leaves New Orleans and moves to Chicago. She's in

475
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 3: her thirties. She doesn't have much of a family, she's

476
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 3: estranged from her mother, doesn't really have a relationship with

477
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 3: her sister, and isn't in a romantic relationship either. So

478
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:49,360
Speaker 3: she goes on a dating app without particularly high hopes.

479
00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 2: I went out on a date with a guy who

480
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 2: I thought seemed moderately interesting. I couldn't discern whether or

481
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 2: not he was interested in me, and kind of wrote

482
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 2: it off as possibly a one off. He asked me

483
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 2: out again A few days later. I went out again.

484
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 2: We spent that day together going around Chicago, and spent

485
00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:25,520
Speaker 2: the night with him, then spent the weekend with him,

486
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 2: and I think fell in love with him very quickly.

487
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 2: And so when he asked me nine days after our

488
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 2: first date if I wanted to go to Las Vegas

489
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 2: that weekend and get married, I thought, why not. I'm

490
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 2: not getting any younger, and I didn't have kids and

491
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 2: with their derby, and so Offrey went and got married

492
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 2: in the same chapel on the south end of the

493
00:33:56,520 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 2: Vegas Strip where Angelina had married Billy Bob Thornton. I

494
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 2: believe with the vile of the blood around her neck, right,

495
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 2: I remember that. You know, I was forty three by

496
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 2: the time. And part of the reason for that was

497
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 2: that my mother had said as far back as I

498
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 2: can remember, probably starting around after my father left, she

499
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:19,160
Speaker 2: would say, never get married, you like Gloria's Dina. Never

500
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 2: get married. She stopped saying that when Gloria's dne and

501
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:25,120
Speaker 2: got married, but her idea was, you know, men just

502
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:27,839
Speaker 2: sort of kill your life. They want you to take

503
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 2: care of them, but they don't want to take care

504
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:36,000
Speaker 2: of you. And I sort of followed that missive for

505
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 2: a long time, and then got married very quickly. I

506
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 2: was diagnosed with breast cancer four days after I got married.

507
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 2: It was very early stage, but it was a type

508
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 2: of breast cancer that was more rare and more aggressive,

509
00:34:53,840 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 2: and the type of cancer troubled the various doctors that

510
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:04,120
Speaker 2: I spoke to. So things went very quickly from being Oh,

511
00:35:04,160 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 2: my god, I've met the love of my life and

512
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 2: I'm married. Look at the ring on my finger, to uh,

513
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 2: you know, am I going to have to have bulk

514
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 2: my breast removed? Am I going to survive this? Do

515
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:17,880
Speaker 2: I have to do temo? Then I'll be bald? This

516
00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 2: is like a nightmare. Once I am told I have

517
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:26,400
Speaker 2: this raar and aggressive type of breast cancer, it becomes

518
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 2: clear to being very quickly that I am of great

519
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:33,319
Speaker 2: interest to the oncologists who I'm coming into contact with.

520
00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 2: I assume that they spend their day is just dealing

521
00:35:37,520 --> 00:35:42,240
Speaker 2: with boring, garden variety breast cancers. So when somebody shows

522
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 2: up with some unique kind then you're of interest to them.

523
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 2: They have, you know, their own research that they're doing

524
00:35:50,719 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 2: and maybe you fit into that. So I was, you know,

525
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 2: in this private room getting my chemo dose pumped into me,

526
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:03,759
Speaker 2: high on benz Adreen or whatever I was on, and

527
00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:06,919
Speaker 2: an oncologist who wasn't my own collegist knocked on the door.

528
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,239
Speaker 2: He says, hey, I've got my interns today. Can we

529
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:13,240
Speaker 2: come in and I'm going to present your pace to them.

530
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:15,439
Speaker 2: So everyone files in, you know, in their little white

531
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:17,879
Speaker 2: jackets and staring at me, and they're in this half

532
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 2: circle and he starts going over my case. They're asking

533
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 2: me questions about, you know, my diagnosis and sort of

534
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 2: remarking to each other about it. And I think that

535
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:33,680
Speaker 2: that very much resonated with me. This is not weird.

536
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:36,840
Speaker 2: This is totally familiar to me. This is exactly like

537
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:39,520
Speaker 2: when I was being studied, when I list in those

538
00:36:39,560 --> 00:36:43,359
Speaker 2: experiment rooms of a kid in Tolman Hall. I am

539
00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 2: now a human lab rat for the second time in

540
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 2: my life. Who would have thunk?

541
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:52,960
Speaker 3: And that really seems like it brought the study back

542
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 3: to you in this way. It had, as you said,

543
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 3: it had receded into the background, because after age thirty two,

544
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:02,319
Speaker 3: you had graduated out of the study. You know, that

545
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 3: third parent was also gone, and yet now it felt

546
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 3: like it had come back with some real questions for you. Yeah,

547
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:13,760
Speaker 3: you know, if you studied a kid, could you predict

548
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:16,279
Speaker 3: who that kid would grow up to be? Were the

549
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 3: clues to who you became, or at least who you

550
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 3: had become at that juncture in your life in your

551
00:37:25,680 --> 00:37:29,040
Speaker 3: early forties? Was that always there? Could that have been predicted?

552
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 2: I think until I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I'd

553
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 2: had a pretty charmed life. Help wise, I had had

554
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 2: not a single other major health issue in my life

555
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:46,279
Speaker 2: other than kidney stones. I'd never even broken a bone.

556
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:51,439
Speaker 2: So colliding in this very extreme way with something that

557
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 2: you know was causing all these doctors concerned, was you know,

558
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 2: making me sergeants open up my body and remove parts

559
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 2: of myself? Was this head on collision with facing my

560
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 2: own mortality and conjured up all those questions people have

561
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:15,399
Speaker 2: when they find themselves in those situations, which is who

562
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:18,920
Speaker 2: am I? What have I done? Is this who I

563
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 2: was supposed to be? You know, I'm this bald, incapacitated

564
00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 2: person who is unclear if I'm going to make it

565
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:31,279
Speaker 2: through the next couple of years. You know, based on

566
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:36,320
Speaker 2: a mathematical equation that my oncologist keeps running through his brain.

567
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 2: And I really forced me to take a look at

568
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 2: who I was and how I had gotten there, and

569
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 2: if I made it through this, what was I going

570
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 2: to do with that opportunity, because obviously I wanted to

571
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 2: make it through it. It wasn't really until we subsequently

572
00:38:56,719 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 2: moved to Florida so my then husband could pursue work

573
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 2: opportunity that these questions became even more cute and immediate.

574
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 2: I was told I was cancer free, and I was

575
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:11,479
Speaker 2: happy to be that way. But I was living in

576
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 2: a you know, plan development in southwest Florida, you know,

577
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 2: behind a gate and a housemaid of cinder blocks, what

578
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 2: is not working a lot. My husband was the breadwinner,

579
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 2: and there was this view beyond our backyard pool of

580
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 2: this man made lake that would periodically shoot a stream

581
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,359
Speaker 2: of water into the air. And it was so far

582
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 2: flong from how I thought I would end up. You know,

583
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 2: I had grown up in Berkeley, you know, the child

584
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:46,879
Speaker 2: of academics, and I was in the study that made

585
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 2: me feel like, ah, you know that, like my life

586
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:52,480
Speaker 2: is sort of unique, special, this is promising. And then

587
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:56,839
Speaker 2: I'm just in Florida playing a supporting role in what

588
00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,399
Speaker 2: feels like the story of someone else's life, story of

589
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:03,640
Speaker 2: the person I was married to and then I'm really

590
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 2: started to think about the study and think it must

591
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:08,759
Speaker 2: have kept a file on me. There must be a

592
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 2: file in some cabinet at UC Berkeley that had all

593
00:40:12,520 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 2: this data about me. Did they foresee who I would become?

594
00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:19,880
Speaker 2: Is there are there answers to the questions that I

595
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 2: have that are locked in the study. I'm a journalist.

596
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 2: I can find what they knew about me. Can that

597
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 2: shed some light on how I understand myself? Yeah?

598
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 3: That was such an extraordinary part of your story is

599
00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 3: that you have the skills, you know, you have a

600
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 3: long career as a journalist that enables you to do

601
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:46,439
Speaker 3: essentially the detective work that you need to do.

602
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I was in Florida, I sort of

603
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 2: start to investigate the study and figure out what the

604
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 2: story is behind the study. And by searching the block

605
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:07,120
Speaker 2: study online, I uncovered that there's an archive at Harvard

606
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 2: that has some of the data from our study, and

607
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:16,960
Speaker 2: I'm able to access this data online. It was padlocked,

608
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 2: but I was given permission to access the data. And

609
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 2: it's really by digging around in the data that I'm

610
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:31,760
Speaker 2: able to sort of triangulate various sort of data points

611
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 2: about myself to identify my sort of number in the study,

612
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 2: or my code name in the study. To protect our anonymity,

613
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:46,919
Speaker 2: the study had given each one of the participants three

614
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 2: digit number, and I was able to figure out that

615
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 2: I was seven fifty eight, which was a really strange experience.

616
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:01,160
Speaker 2: I come to this thinking, yeah, study, you know, I'm

617
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:04,160
Speaker 2: very special to them. They're very special to me. They're

618
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 2: kind of like this third parent. This is this meaningful

619
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 2: part of how I understand myself, and in many ways

620
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:15,040
Speaker 2: I shaped the story of my life. But I'm actually

621
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 2: just a number. Perhaps I was not special at all.

622
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,839
Speaker 2: I was actually just a data point, because that's what

623
00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:30,359
Speaker 2: that looks like here. And that became part of a

624
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 2: different way of understanding myself and relationship to the study,

625
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,239
Speaker 2: which was, you know, sort of like the researcher's point

626
00:42:38,280 --> 00:42:42,120
Speaker 2: of view, where this is not so much a child,

627
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 2: but a bucket of data from which I, the scientist,

628
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 2: will extract the information that I need. And it did

629
00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 2: cause me to rethink some of my experiences in the study.

630
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:57,720
Speaker 2: For example, when I was an adolescent, I was telling

631
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:02,440
Speaker 2: my researchers things that my parents didn't know, like drugs,

632
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 2: you know that I was experimenting with and people that

633
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:08,840
Speaker 2: I was having sex with, and the study knew those things,

634
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:14,320
Speaker 2: and I knew that, and there had been no intercession

635
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 2: by them. Now, that wasn't their job, right. They were

636
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 2: there to observe my life, not step in and change it.

637
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:27,720
Speaker 2: But it did make me feel more like the relationship

638
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:32,360
Speaker 2: with the study had been fundamentally transactional, and that I

639
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 2: had offered up my data on a plate to an

640
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 2: entity that had consumed it and used it for its

641
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 2: own purposes which were not necessarily aligned. In twenty fifteen,

642
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:49,920
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, I've got to go to California

643
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:54,560
Speaker 2: and go back to the place where the study started,

644
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 2: the place where my life started, and start seeing what

645
00:43:57,640 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 2: I can find there. The first thing I did after

646
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 2: I left the airport was I drove past the hospital

647
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 2: in Oakland where I was born, and then from there

648
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 2: I drove to Berkeley, where I went to the Child

649
00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:14,840
Speaker 2: Study Center and stood in front of it, and a

650
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 2: guy walked out of the building and was walking towards me,

651
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:22,880
Speaker 2: and I called out to him and said, are you

652
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:27,839
Speaker 2: a teacher here? And he was walking down the ram

653
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:29,839
Speaker 2: in front of me at that point like didn't look

654
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 2: at me and shook his head, and then he sort

655
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 2: of gave me a wide berth on the sidewalk and

656
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 2: was starting to walk away towards campus, and I called

657
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 2: after him, are you a researcher? And he stopped and

658
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 2: he turned around halfway towards me, and I said I

659
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:49,319
Speaker 2: was one of the kids who had studied here, and

660
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 2: he looks at me and then he says, yeah, a

661
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 2: lot of you come around here. And I thought, it's

662
00:44:56,760 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 2: like we're these little ghostly specters, like hovering around this

663
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 2: place where you know, something happened to us that we

664
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:08,720
Speaker 2: don't fully understand. So I knew that I had a story,

665
00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:11,439
Speaker 2: and I knew that there were other people who had

666
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:14,600
Speaker 2: shared in that experience, and that there was a way

667
00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 2: this sense of like you're just the subject. It was

668
00:45:18,080 --> 00:45:20,879
Speaker 2: almost like being told that again, like we're the researchers.

669
00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 2: You don't you don't really get to access what we're doing,

670
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 2: but we get to access everything that's going on in

671
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 2: your brain.

672
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,480
Speaker 3: During this same trip, Susannah also arranges to see her

673
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 3: mother for the first time in a decade, but this

674
00:45:39,280 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 3: isn't a visit to reconnect. It's a formal interview. There's

675
00:45:43,600 --> 00:45:46,440
Speaker 3: a tape recorder in between the two of them. When

676
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 3: Susanna asks her mother why she'd put her in the study,

677
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:54,719
Speaker 3: her mother replies, well, I just wanted more time for myself.

678
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 3: She said, she wanted to finish her pH d. She

679
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:00,880
Speaker 3: wanted to read books, she wanted to be doing something

680
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 3: other than parenting.

681
00:46:03,560 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 2: So I think that this study in a way for

682
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:09,440
Speaker 2: her was a kind of babysitter. And so it also

683
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:12,879
Speaker 2: sort of made sense that it sort of had this

684
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 2: parental element in my life. It was pop to look

685
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 2: back at my life and see how much of the

686
00:46:20,239 --> 00:46:24,480
Speaker 2: influence came from people who are all all brains and

687
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 2: low in heart, you know. And it was kind of like,

688
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 2: I'm the person you get when you allow a human

689
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,279
Speaker 2: child to be raised by robots, you know, get this

690
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:41,279
Speaker 2: sort of hyper intellectual thing that like find meaning in

691
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:45,400
Speaker 2: life by being studied by researchers. It's a just weird.

692
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 3: It strikes it strikes me that they didn't exercise the

693
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:51,719
Speaker 3: heart out of you.

694
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, my whole life. I thought it was my father's

695
00:46:56,280 --> 00:47:00,440
Speaker 2: idea that i'd be put into the study, that he

696
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 2: thought I was special, that his putting me in the

697
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:08,880
Speaker 2: study was sort of evidence of that. And I don't

698
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 2: know that that's not true, because when I showed up

699
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:14,600
Speaker 2: and said to my mother, now, whose idea was it

700
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:16,640
Speaker 2: to put me in the study? And she says, oh,

701
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:19,839
Speaker 2: it was mine. I don't know if that's true. It's

702
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 2: very in line with like my mother would seek to

703
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 2: co opt any narrative she encountered that centered herself. So

704
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:31,640
Speaker 2: obviously at that point my father was dead, I couldn't

705
00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:34,600
Speaker 2: ask him. It's still a bit of a mystery as

706
00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:37,799
Speaker 2: to whose idea it was, or or maybe it was

707
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 2: both of theirs. Don't really know.

708
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 3: Was that the last time you saw your mother?

709
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:43,319
Speaker 5: It was.

710
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:48,799
Speaker 2: My mother, by and large, was an unhappy person the

711
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 2: last time I saw her. She seemed unhappy. At that time,

712
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:59,960
Speaker 2: I was unhappily married, and I certainly saw from stunding

713
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:02,720
Speaker 2: time with my mother that if I didn't do something,

714
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:06,280
Speaker 2: I was going to end up like her, unhappy forever.

715
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:10,640
Speaker 2: And I did not want to spend any more time

716
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 2: living any more of my life being unhappy, especially since

717
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:20,840
Speaker 2: I had had breast cancer and the future was uncertain.

718
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:25,239
Speaker 2: It felt like, you know, time was imperative. You know,

719
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 2: this unspooled over a much longer period of time. But

720
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 2: I think just a sense that things must be better

721
00:48:34,320 --> 00:48:38,239
Speaker 2: than this situation that I found myself in. I was

722
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:42,439
Speaker 2: able to sort of with that belief project myself out

723
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:45,800
Speaker 2: of the marriage and back to California, the place where

724
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:50,000
Speaker 2: everything had started. So after my marriage, I moved back

725
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:54,520
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles, which I like because it's warm. And

726
00:48:54,560 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 2: then I heard about this program, the Investigative Reporting Program

727
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 2: at UC Berkeley, where you could work for them, be

728
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 2: on campus for a year as an academic fellow while

729
00:49:08,680 --> 00:49:13,920
Speaker 2: pursuing your investigative project. And I thought, God, that just

730
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 2: sounds perfect for what I want to do. I would

731
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 2: be on campus, I would have access to things I

732
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 2: wouldn't have other wine, and this is just like going

733
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:27,319
Speaker 2: back to the epicenter at the original earthquake. I want

734
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 2: to get this. At the same time, I didn't, and

735
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 2: frankly still don't view myself as a serious investigative journalist,

736
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 2: you know. Interest think of that as like a guy

737
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 2: in a fedora for some reason. And so I didn't

738
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 2: think I was going to get it, but did, and

739
00:49:44,520 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 2: it just felt like something I had to pursue. And

740
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 2: so I moved back to Berkeley to research this study

741
00:49:54,680 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 2: in Berkeley for a year and moved into a in

742
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:01,719
Speaker 2: law apartment of a house that was, you know, less

743
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 2: than a mile from the house in which I grew up.

744
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:08,879
Speaker 2: I'm a big believer in like immersion journalism, so being

745
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 2: able to embed myself into, you know, the place where

746
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:17,360
Speaker 2: the book took place was important to me. I like

747
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 2: to kind of live the story.

748
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:22,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you're like living the story of the story

749
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:26,200
Speaker 3: that you had lived. There's so many layers to it.

750
00:50:26,239 --> 00:50:31,480
Speaker 3: And it also seems that getting the fellowship finally gives

751
00:50:31,480 --> 00:50:34,360
Speaker 3: you the permission really to actually do the research.

752
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:40,440
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I moved back to Berkeley, I was

753
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:43,719
Speaker 2: given part of a shared cubicle to work at, you know,

754
00:50:43,760 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 2: and I set up my computer and I'm you know,

755
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 2: I'm around all these people, you know, a Pulitzer, they

756
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:55,040
Speaker 2: write for important newspaper. There's all these important work being

757
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:58,879
Speaker 2: found here. And I sort of sat down to sort

758
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:04,839
Speaker 2: of work on this project writing it, and was as

759
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 2: steinied there as I had ever been before. But what

760
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:13,120
Speaker 2: being there allowed me to do, I think three days

761
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:16,800
Speaker 2: after I got there, was to walk out the front door,

762
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:22,080
Speaker 2: across the street, down this wooded path on campus, across

763
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:25,320
Speaker 2: a bridge, over a river, up a hill, and stand

764
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:30,240
Speaker 2: on a rise where I could look at Tolman Hall,

765
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 2: which coincidentally was empty and was about to be torn

766
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:41,719
Speaker 2: down over the exact period that I would be pursuing

767
00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:45,160
Speaker 2: this s fellowship here. And I knew when I saw that,

768
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 2: and when the guy and maintenance handled me a tee

769
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:53,000
Speaker 2: to the building so I could come and go as

770
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:58,399
Speaker 2: I please, that this one just an incredible opportunity for

771
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 2: me to be able to go and revisit let somebody

772
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:05,839
Speaker 2: else refer to as a memory palace, to walk through

773
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:09,840
Speaker 2: the memory palace and sort of understand the story that way,

774
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:13,040
Speaker 2: before I got the key, I was able to sneak

775
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:18,239
Speaker 2: in to Tolman Hall and walk into rooms where I

776
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 2: was now where the researchers had been on the other

777
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:23,839
Speaker 2: side of the one way mirror, and I could look

778
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 2: into and stand in the very experiment rooms where I

779
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 2: had been studied, and that sort of broke open the

780
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:34,600
Speaker 2: story for me in a way that wouldn't have been

781
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 2: possible any other way. Finding my data from the study

782
00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:43,279
Speaker 2: was more complicated than that. At a certain point I

783
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 2: was able to track down my file from the preschool,

784
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,320
Speaker 2: and what should actually had to get somebody else's permission

785
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:54,799
Speaker 2: to access my own data but part of what was

786
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:58,520
Speaker 2: in that file was a whashler I believe it called

787
00:52:58,680 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 2: IQ test that I I had been given when I

788
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:06,320
Speaker 2: was about four, and where I could see myself attempting

789
00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 2: to fill out these mazes, to draw this line between

790
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 2: a baby chick and the mother hen who are separated

791
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:18,719
Speaker 2: by this maize. Through these series of increasingly complicated mazes,

792
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 2: I'm able to follow the line. But in the last maze,

793
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:26,960
Speaker 2: which is the most complicated, I watched the pencil line

794
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:29,280
Speaker 2: where I'm trying to find my way through the maize,

795
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 2: and a certain point I'd just give up.

796
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:40,360
Speaker 3: You really can't make this stuff up. On Susannah's third

797
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:43,719
Speaker 3: attempt with the maze, she finds no path from the

798
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:47,359
Speaker 3: baby chick to her mother. She simply can't find her

799
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:50,719
Speaker 3: way out. The metaphor here is breathtaking.

800
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:57,920
Speaker 2: When I was a little kid, cried a lot. My

801
00:53:58,040 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 2: sister used to call me a cry baby, and I was,

802
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:06,720
Speaker 2: you know, I think, anxious and sad and lonely.

803
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:11,720
Speaker 6: And when I got through my adolescence and became an adult,

804
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:17,680
Speaker 6: I'm six 's one and became a journalist, and I

805
00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:21,200
Speaker 6: kind of created a persona where I was, you know,

806
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 6: this sort of unblinking.

807
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:25,960
Speaker 2: I don't give a shit. I'll go places where no

808
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:29,239
Speaker 2: one else will go. I'm a daredevil. I write these

809
00:54:29,280 --> 00:54:33,759
Speaker 2: stories nobody else can get. Kind of a badass. And

810
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 2: when I went back to look at my own true

811
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 2: story of my life, I had to look at that

812
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:47,879
Speaker 2: little girl that I was, and that was agonizing forward

813
00:54:47,960 --> 00:54:55,279
Speaker 2: me to see this sad, lonely, ignored, vulnerable child who

814
00:54:55,440 --> 00:55:01,800
Speaker 2: clings to a study like it's sometime I love substitute parent.

815
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:06,480
Speaker 2: It is a kind of tragic story, and really there

816
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:10,399
Speaker 2: is no point at which someone sort of steps in

817
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:15,399
Speaker 2: to save her. Although you know, if you believe time

818
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:19,160
Speaker 2: at a flat circle, I do come home as an

819
00:55:19,200 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 2: adult to bear witness to the child that I was.

820
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:26,960
Speaker 2: So in a way, I am creating my own observer

821
00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 2: effect by going back and looking at what happened, and

822
00:55:32,600 --> 00:55:35,960
Speaker 2: in perhaps in some way by just seeing the truth

823
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 2: of what happened, I'm transforming myself in the process. But

824
00:55:42,560 --> 00:55:46,320
Speaker 2: it was really difficult, especially in regards to my mother,

825
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:55,239
Speaker 2: to admit and face how damaging her lack of maternalness

826
00:55:55,280 --> 00:55:59,719
Speaker 2: towards me hadn't been and how she had never fixed it.

827
00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 2: That was something that I just had tried not to

828
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:08,640
Speaker 2: look at the story of the relationship between my mother

829
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:13,480
Speaker 2: and I is an American tragedy. It's just complicated. You know.

830
00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:17,240
Speaker 2: She was smart, and she was feminist, and she was driven,

831
00:56:17,520 --> 00:56:20,839
Speaker 2: and a lot of those things are great, but they've

832
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:25,640
Speaker 2: also had really negative consequences for a little girl that

833
00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:31,760
Speaker 2: I was. It's incredibly difficult for me to talk about

834
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:34,800
Speaker 2: that little girl that I was, to share that story,

835
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:36,600
Speaker 2: to put that story out in the world.

836
00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:41,600
Speaker 3: There were the specifics of your life, your particular father,

837
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:44,960
Speaker 3: your particular mother, the way that they were, the sort

838
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:48,399
Speaker 3: of emotional paucity of the way that you grew up,

839
00:56:48,880 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 3: you know. And then there's the question posed by the

840
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:53,960
Speaker 3: block study, which is, you know, if you study a kid,

841
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:57,600
Speaker 3: can you predict who that kid will grow up to be?

842
00:56:58,719 --> 00:57:01,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, even though I spent thirty years as a willing

843
00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:07,759
Speaker 2: research subject, I sort of disagree fundamentally with even the

844
00:57:07,800 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 2: concept of the block study, which is that a person

845
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 2: can be understood as a constellation of data points, that

846
00:57:18,280 --> 00:57:22,880
Speaker 2: by studying another human being you can somehow know them

847
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:29,360
Speaker 2: in their totality and even potentially foresee their entire life

848
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:32,840
Speaker 2: path or who they will become. And I think that

849
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:37,440
Speaker 2: there is something about people that is beyond the grasp

850
00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 2: of science, that science doesn't take into account. And I

851
00:57:42,760 --> 00:57:48,120
Speaker 2: think there is something in myself that was beyond the

852
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:52,600
Speaker 2: studies grasp, which was sort of a will to survive

853
00:57:52,920 --> 00:57:58,439
Speaker 2: all of these different things that I encountered. And they

854
00:57:59,680 --> 00:58:04,560
Speaker 2: didn't fully appreciate how much studying me would shape my

855
00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:10,280
Speaker 2: life and who I have become. And so in a way,

856
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 2: I don't know how they can answer the question when

857
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:20,040
Speaker 2: by studying us they have played a role in shaping

858
00:58:20,120 --> 00:58:20,720
Speaker 2: our lives.

859
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:38,560
Speaker 3: Here's Susannah reading one last passage from data Baby.

860
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:42,960
Speaker 2: A long time ago, in a city nicknamed Berserkly, we

861
00:58:43,200 --> 00:58:48,120
Speaker 2: the cohort, were children. Our parents were professors and mail carriers,

862
00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:53,400
Speaker 2: architects and bus drivers, civil servants and housewives. We were

863
00:58:53,440 --> 00:59:00,120
Speaker 2: of different races, classes and ethnicities, raised Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim,

864
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 2: or to be non believers, the daughters and sons of

865
00:59:03,560 --> 00:59:07,200
Speaker 2: people who, by chunts or choice, happened to be living

866
00:59:07,240 --> 00:59:10,600
Speaker 2: in the Bay Area. In the nineteen sixties. We were

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Speaker 2: at ground zero of the free speech movement. As the

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Speaker 2: civil rights movement and the feminist movement spread across the land.

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Speaker 2: We were the kids prophesied in Free to Be You

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Speaker 2: and Me, a nineteen seventy two album produced by Marla

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Speaker 2: Thomas and the Msfoundation for Women that promotes gender equality, tolerance,

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Speaker 2: and the radical notion that anyone can achieve anything, the

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Speaker 2: title track of which foreshadows a land in which the

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Speaker 2: children are free.

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Speaker 3: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Acur

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01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 3: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

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Speaker 3: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

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01:00:08,520 --> 01:00:10,960
Speaker 3: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

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01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:14,400
Speaker 3: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

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Speaker 3: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

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Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder and if you'd

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Speaker 3: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,

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01:00:26,440 --> 01:00:28,320
Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.