More of Us | Chapter 4

Speaker 1 Parents, when you visit California, childhood rules. If you don't remember how awesome childhood is, just ask yourself, what would kids do? Dance to a giant organ played by ocean waves? Yep.

Speaker 1 Camp in floating treehouses hundreds of feet off the ground? Check. Jump in a big tub of mud on purpose? Call it rejuvenation.
We don't care.

Speaker 1 Just pack your fun pants and let childhood rule your family vacation. Discover why California is the ultimate playground at visitcalifornia.com.

Speaker 4 We all take good care of the things that matter.

Speaker 5 Our homes, our pets, our cars.

Speaker 6 Are you doing the same for your brain?

Speaker 10 Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 3 Studies have found that up to 45% of dementia cases may be prevented or delayed by managing risk factors you can change.

Speaker 7 Make brain health a priority.

Speaker 13 Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment.

Speaker 14 Learn more at brainhealthmatters.com.

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Speaker 2 At participating McDonald's, this podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 I do this thing that my kids hate. When they have weekdays off from school, I call myself Principal Daddy and I take them to museums and try to make them learn stuff.

Speaker 2 So there we were, May 2019, waiting in the ticket line at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philly. My kids were sort of percolating around while I stood there, checking my email.

Speaker 2 And there she was in my my inbox, finally.

Speaker 2 It was Tara, the medium and mystic in California I'd followed on Instagram.

Speaker 2 I'd seen so many of her photos, like a swirly, enigmatic painting that she'd made of ravens and selfies after meditating, all with a closed-mouth smile that looked just like mine.

Speaker 2 I'd written to her repeatedly, and now here was an email from her.

Speaker 2 My ears were ringing, my heart was racing, as if the old war cannons in the museum had come alive with explosions.

Speaker 2 Tara wanted to talk.

Speaker 2 From Waveland and Rococo Punch, this is Inconceivable Truth. I'm Matt Katz.

Speaker 2 Episode 4:

Speaker 2 More of Us.

Speaker 3 We all take good care of the things that matter.

Speaker 5 Our homes, our pets, our cars.

Speaker 6 Are you doing the same for your brain?

Speaker 8 Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 3 Studies have found that up to 45% of dementia cases may be prevented or delayed by managing risk factors you can change.

Speaker 7 Make brain health a priority.

Speaker 13 Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment.

Speaker 14 Learn more at brainhealthmatters.com.

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Speaker 17 Hey, this is Helena.

Speaker 2 Hi, Helena. It's Matt.

Speaker 17 Hey, Matt, how are you doing?

Speaker 2 I'm all right. How are you feeling? I'd been in touch with Helena for a few months.

Speaker 2 She was the first half-sister I had connected with, and now a second half-sister, Tara, the one I had first found on ancestry.com, who up until this point hadn't returned our messages.

Speaker 2 She was now expecting our call.

Speaker 2 Okay, I guess I'm going to conference in Tara.

Speaker 2 Hi guys. One second.

Speaker 17 Hi, Matt.

Speaker 2 Hi, Tara.

Speaker 17 Hi, hi. So is it Helena?

Speaker 17 It is. You got it right.

Speaker 2 I'm so glad we were able to connect with you. I had tried you several ways and that I was a little gun shy about trying you again, but we figured

Speaker 2 letter might be a good way of doing it.

Speaker 2 After trying to reach Tara online and failing, Helene and I finally sent her a letter via certified Mail. Together, we workshopped the language and decided to be direct.

Speaker 2 According to Ancestry.com, we are all half siblings.

Speaker 17 I didn't even read the letter. I like opened it up.
I saw the word half-sibling. I have a roommate.
I said to her, I have half-siblings. And I just handed it to her.
And I go, I knew it.

Speaker 17 Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 17 I am nothing like my dad's family. They're all really, really tall, and I'm not.
And my mom and dad both had dark hair. And looking back, it seems so obvious.

Speaker 17 And I even said to my dad's sisters, maybe seven years ago, I said, do you think there's a chance that they used the wrong sperm?

Speaker 2 Helena and I told Tara that we had struggled with whether we should keep trying to reach her. Maybe Tara wouldn't want to know that her dad might not be her biological dad.

Speaker 17 Do you tell somebody, or do you let them continue with the life that they have? Like, it is so hard for us. We don't know.

Speaker 17 No, no, I think it's just, it's like, I believe in like the truth setting us free. Like, I really do.
Like, there's a lot of shame in secrets.

Speaker 2 Tara's mother passed away several years ago, so we can't ask her questions about what she might have known about where the sperm came from. But Tara knew her parents had struggled to have kids.

Speaker 2 Her older brother is adopted, and in college, an aunt told Tara that her parents received some kind of newfangled fertility help to conceive her.

Speaker 2 So, Tara, when you got our letter,

Speaker 2 so you had an idea, but you didn't have any information beyond what you suspected?

Speaker 17 It's like an intuition. You just sort of always know.
And I mean, I actually even

Speaker 17 had a dream years ago. And I remember it vividly.
I was with my mom, I was sitting with her in a car at a grocery store.

Speaker 17 And she said to me, you know, I have something to tell you. There's a secret.
And I said,

Speaker 17 what is it? And in the dream. And she said, there's other kids.

Speaker 17 Oh, wow. Yeah.

Speaker 18 And I was like, w what do you mean?

Speaker 17 And she's like, there's other kids. Like, you have siblings.

Speaker 2 Well, here we are.

Speaker 2 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 17 And then I was like,

Speaker 17 well, this makes so much sense. I knew there was something that someone wasn't telling me.

Speaker 2 Tara hadn't yet brought this up with her father, but we could now at least rule him out as having been our donor dad.

Speaker 2 He couldn't have been donating sperm while also getting medical help to conceive a child with his wife. Still, this doesn't bring us much closer to understanding who exactly our father is.

Speaker 2 All three of us were apparently conceived in New York. Tara and I were born 16 days apart.
Helena, nine months before that. We don't know if Tara's parents also went to my mom's doctor, Dr.
DeBrovner.

Speaker 17 The doctor is still alive?

Speaker 2 Not only is he still alive, he lives across the street from my parents. It's crazy.
But the strange piece of this is Helena and I have a, our mothers have had different doctors.

Speaker 17 And he told her that he

Speaker 17 could get her pregnant with a donation from one of the doctors in the hospital. So he told her that he got a donation from three different residents or medical students.

Speaker 17 And then he mixed them all together so that he would never know who it was.

Speaker 17 What?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That was very common. That's how they did it.

Speaker 17 Yeah. We've learned a lot about that.
This was a really common process back in like the 60s and 70s.

Speaker 2 Before we reached you, I mean, well, I was getting somewhat like depressed that we were were at a total dead end. It seemed like we were.

Speaker 2 And, you know, the reality is we may never know the name or identity of

Speaker 2 who he is. It's possible.

Speaker 17 Like, I wonder if he even knows. I mean, he must, but I wonder if he even remembers.
You know what I mean? Like,

Speaker 17 he could have just donated it.

Speaker 2 If he's alive.

Speaker 17 Yeah, exactly. If he's alive.
Once you start digging with this kind of stuff, it is probably like a never-ending thing. Like, there's probably more to discover here, you know.

Speaker 17 So much, especially like this idea of like how many

Speaker 17 of us are there, right? Like, can't imagine it's just three.

Speaker 2 We compared notes on each other physically, like how we're all on the short side, but we round up our height to the nearest inch when we tell people how tall we are, and how in certain pictures we make the same face.

Speaker 17 And, like, Helene, we have like an energy and essence. It's so interesting because it's not my mom's side of the family.
So, I'm like, what you and I have is so clearly from our dad.

Speaker 17 Like, I can see there's something about you that's like, oh, that's from our dad, too.

Speaker 17 I am so excited to have a sister. I've always wanted a sister

Speaker 17 sad.

Speaker 17 It is exciting. It is.
It's like, yeah,

Speaker 17 totally.

Speaker 17 It feels like

Speaker 17 I got two. I got one of each.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I know.

Speaker 17 Wild, right?

Speaker 17 Yeah, no, I think of it as a gift. Like, and just like, I'm just grateful.
Like, it, it's, like, putting together a lot of, you know, answers to questions that like I didn't even know I had.

Speaker 2 We caught each other up on the last four decades of our lives. We talked about where we had lived and worked and studied.
Turned out the three of us came at least close to crossing paths.

Speaker 2 I had lived in the same cities as each of my sisters while they were living there. We could have walked by each other or chatted in a bathroom line at a bar.

Speaker 2 Helena actually met her husband at a bar where I used to hang out at the time when I used to hang out there.

Speaker 2 She got married in the park where I took my wedding pictures and we ended up having kids at around the same time. The two oldest got their training meals off within two two days of each other.

Speaker 17 I'm just going to warn you guys that I have to get on another call at 2:30.

Speaker 2 Okay. So we have

Speaker 17 a few minutes. I think we have the rest of our lives.

Speaker 2 That's great.

Speaker 2 I feel relieved. It's so wonderful to make this happen.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 regardless of whether we

Speaker 2 find the old man, I'm glad that we've connected and we can have a relationship.

Speaker 2 It's wonderful.

Speaker 2 The phone call I had with Tara and Helena could not have gone better. I left it feeling happy, hopeful, but I wasn't any closer to finding out the identity of our father.

Speaker 2 Unless we got more matches on the DNA sites, it seemed like we could go forever without being able to find out who he was. And I wanted to know who he was.

Speaker 2 But there was something else I could do. A little bit aggressive, but maybe exactly what was called for here.
Some on-the-ground shoe leather reporting following one of my strongest leads.

Speaker 2 It was June 2022. My kids had a week off from school before summer camp, and they had never been to Europe.
Also, the cheapest tickets to Europe at that time were to Ireland.

Speaker 18 You're driving, we think,

Speaker 18 to the location where my great-great-grandfather lived approximately 120 years ago.

Speaker 18 Oh my goodness, this is a very narrow road that doesn't appear like it's meant for

Speaker 18 Toyota rentals.

Speaker 2 Since I learned I'm half Irish, I'd read some Irish poetry, a James Joyce book, and a thriller about the Troubles. But I wanted to actually experience this place where half of my family was from.

Speaker 2 And I had some ideas about how I could dig up more information about my family and the identity of my father.

Speaker 2 So I rented a car, and one morning I told my kids that today might be boring, we might find nothing, but it was time to search for some family ghosts.

Speaker 19 These beautiful yellow flowers

Speaker 19 line the roads.

Speaker 2 Oh, just spectacular views of the

Speaker 2 valley. Wow.

Speaker 2 We're on the road somewhere in rural County Cork. Deborah is in the passenger seat, kids are in the back, and we're looking for my dead ancestors, hoping they can somehow point the way to my father.

Speaker 2 We have some information, like we know that a man born in the mid-1800s, Micah Lynch, is our closest known direct ancestor.

Speaker 2 That's because we've connected with enough third cousins on DNA sites, and they've posted these family trees which link to all kinds of old records.

Speaker 2 Problem is, these are big families, and the tree fans out pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 I have no idea which one of great-great-grandpa Michael Lynch's many kids is my great-grandparent, and which one of his or her many kids is my grandparent, etc.

Speaker 2 So I take the one clue I do have. It comes from the 1911 Irish census.
It lists the address of Michael Lynch in 1911.

Speaker 18 This is exciting, guys. We're like on a treasure hunt.

Speaker 2 So the census gave me an address, but it wasn't a normal street address. It just had a number and something called a townland.

Speaker 2 So I pulled up old maps of the townland and I used a website that converts townland addresses into GPS coordinates.

Speaker 18 Without question, this area where we are,

Speaker 18 our ancestors

Speaker 18 lived,

Speaker 18 farmed,

Speaker 18 walked,

Speaker 2 married, baptized, all around here.

Speaker 18 What do you think great-great-grandpa Glench would say if he knew that his Jewish progeny was driving a hybrid Toyota.

Speaker 2 Well, according to the 1911 census, Michael Lynch spoke Irish and English and lived somewhere right here. A rolling, verdant countryside, sheep and cows in pasture.

Speaker 2 The GPS took me right to an old, seemingly abandoned farmhouse with walls of stone sunken into the ground.

Speaker 18 All right, let's go check out this old house. Look, there's...
I don't think anybody lives there.

Speaker 18 It could be, yeah. And look, there's something growing out of the chimney.

Speaker 2 We peer inside and see what appears to be some fake flowers in the window. The place looks like someone just left knowing they were never coming back.

Speaker 18 Creepy. Creepy? Yeah.
Because it's old and grown over. There's moss.

Speaker 18 Whoa, that one's... This house is open.

Speaker 18 The door is open on that house. Because it's abandoned.
I dare you to look in. No,

Speaker 18 I looked in. I went in.

Speaker 18 Oh, God.

Speaker 18 Oh, the thorns. The thorns are protecting this house.
Yeah, because no one wants you back there.

Speaker 18 These look like houses from a horror movie. I'm going back to the car.

Speaker 2 My daughter Sadie got a little freaked out walking through this overgrown property in the middle of nowhere. Understandable.

Speaker 2 So, Ruben and I went on our Scooby-Doo adventure while Deborah and Sadie waited by the car. Be careful.

Speaker 2 Traipsing through with my son, climbing over fences, imagining these people I'm related to working this land, being a little freaked out about the whole thing.

Speaker 2 It was just so fun.

Speaker 1 You think your ancestor, one of your ancestors could have lived here?

Speaker 18 Yeah, I definitely do.

Speaker 2 We took some selfies and then moved on, looking for more clues. I asked neighbors if they knew the lynches.

Speaker 2 After Michael Lynch's wife died, he lived with one of his ten kids, a daughter, and her children. She must have been taking care of him as he was getting older.
Her name was Ellie Lahan.

Speaker 2 And while neighbors I talked to around Kauru Gagula had no recollection of the lynches, I was told the Lahanes still lived around here.

Speaker 19 And they're farmers. Uh-uh.
So it literally would be just over the mountain.

Speaker 2 She sent me to a shop in the village, the only shop in the village, which really looked like a one-story house. An elderly woman working the counter told me where to find the Lahans.

Speaker 18 Keep going over the road and first road on the left.

Speaker 19 First road on the left. And you will find them there.

Speaker 18 That's the Lahans. Okay.
Thank you so very much. Why should you?

Speaker 18 And this is the house.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 2 I knocked on the door.

Speaker 18 Hi there, my apologies for the interruption. My name is Matt.
I'm from the United States. I'm here with my family down the road, and I'm researching my Irish family history.

Speaker 18 You better come in because I wouldn't have a clue what my husband is.

Speaker 2 A woman let me in, brought me into her kitchen, and sat me down with her husband. Hi there, sir.
How are you?

Speaker 2 We soon realize he is not the Lahan I am looking for. My ancestors came from a different Lahan family that lived here decades ago and moved on.

Speaker 2 The people of the village gave each Lahan family nicknames, the Popes and the Yanks, to differentiate them from one another.

Speaker 18 So it's just a nickname.

Speaker 2 They were known locally as the Popes. I don't know if.

Speaker 2 So I stumbled across the wrong Lahanns. That's the bad news.
But this is the amazing news. This Lahan happened to be the local historian.
He gets up from his kitchen table.

Speaker 2 My family is waiting outside in the car, by the way, unclear what's happening inside. and he pulls from a shelf a book that he helped her write.

Speaker 2 It's called Tales of the Lawny Valley, and it lists every family who lived in this area going back more than a century.

Speaker 2 And it says what came of their descendants: who died, who left for England, who left for America.

Speaker 2 And so we started going through the book, and he finds it: a listing for Ellie Lahan, my great-great-grandfather's daughter.

Speaker 18 Oh, Lane.

Speaker 18 That was Lehan married Ellie Lynch. Ah, that's it.

Speaker 2 About a hundred years ago, this is exactly it.

Speaker 18 Patty

Speaker 17 Lynch.

Speaker 2 And then Mr. Lahan realizes he had actually known Ellie Lahan, my great-great-grandfather's daughter.

Speaker 18 I knew her. You knew Ellie? Ellie.
Barely. She was an old woman like you.

Speaker 2 Mr. Lahan tells me that when he and his father would go rabbit hunting with their dogs on Sundays, they'd sometimes see Ellie, an old woman then, over on that side of the mountain.

Speaker 2 She'd She'd be sitting there, and Mr. Lahan's father would call out to her, say hello.

Speaker 2 Most of Ellie's kids had left for England and America by then. Just one of her children stayed behind.

Speaker 2 Mr. Lahan says the last son was waiting for her to die, and when she did, he left too.

Speaker 18 Small bit of land. Yeah.
Troublesome.

Speaker 2 There were plenty of troubles in Ireland at the time. It's why there's far more people with Irish DNA in America now than in all of Ireland.

Speaker 18 If I get all the answers, I'll come back and let you know. Margaret, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 I left the local historian's home with a copy of his book. It listed a bunch of names that I could research once I got back to the States.
Names of my great-great-grandfather's descendants.

Speaker 2 Not just Ellie, but all of her children. One of those people could be my grandparent.

Speaker 2 So then we drove into the nearby town of Macroom to get some dinner. And that's when Deborah spotted Lynch's bakery, like Michael Lynch, my great-great-grandfather.
We stopped in.

Speaker 2 Cupcake, bread pies, and chocolate. As the kids perused the cupcakes, I sat down with the owner, Humphrey Lynch.

Speaker 2 Humphrey, who started the bakery? My great-great-grandfather.

Speaker 19 Wow, that was here since 1869.

Speaker 2 Humphrey, we would quickly figure out, is my fourth cousin once removed. He says much of our family emigrated to San Francisco.

Speaker 2 I connected on the DNA sites with cousins from San Francisco, so this checked out. Can I get a picture of you?

Speaker 2 Humphrey gave some cupcakes to my kids and Lynch's bakery tote bags to me to bring back to my siblings.

Speaker 2 Shaking the hand of an actual relative hit me in the gut. I was getting closer to resolving this whole thing.

Speaker 2 Before we left the country, I went out one night by myself in Dublin. I saw the sloppiest sidewalk makeout session I'd ever seen.

Speaker 2 I got yelled at and then hugged by two very drunk, very young men, and I passed a guy bleeding from his face and heard his girlfriend say to him, why the fuck are you blaming me?

Speaker 2 You're the one who head-butted a window.

Speaker 2 What a country. I liked it here.

Speaker 2 I stopped in at the bar at the Irish Whiskey Museum and told the bartender I usually drink Scotch. God bless, he said, and he brought me a flight of Irish whiskeys.

Speaker 2 I told him I had just found out I was Irish. He was confused why I couldn't tell I was Irish by just looking in the mirror my whole life.
As I left, he called me a fellow Irishman.

Speaker 2 Pulling at these ancestral roots was exciting, it was fun, but I did not lose sight of the fact that for other donor-conceived people who find out they were donor-conceived decades into life, it can be emotionally draining, devastating.

Speaker 2 When I got back stateside, I call someone who has not been able to reconcile her roots in the same way that I have.

Speaker 2 Her experience started with a family secret, secret, and it's turning out quite different from mine.

Speaker 2 Welcome back to Listen to Your Heart. I'm Jerry.
And I'm Jerry's Heart. Today's topic, Repatha, Evelokimab.
Heart, why'd you pick this one?

Speaker 2 Well, Jerry, for people who have had a heart attack, like us, diet and exercise might not be enough to lower the risk of another one. Okay.

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Speaker 16 Do not take Repatha if you're allergic to it. Serious allergic reactions can occur.
Get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing or swallowing.

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Speaker 16 Common side effects include runny nose, sore throat, common cold symptoms, flu or flu-like symptoms, back pain, high blood sugar, and redness, pain, or bruising at the injection site.

Speaker 2 Listen to your heart. Ask your doctor about Rapatha.
Learn more at Rapatha.com or call 1-844-RAPATHA.

Speaker 4 We all take good care of the things that matter.

Speaker 5 Our homes, our pets, our cars.

Speaker 6 Are you doing the same for your brain?

Speaker 10 Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 3 Studies have found that up to 45% of dementia cases may be prevented or delayed by managing risk factors you can change.

Speaker 7 Make brain health a priority.

Speaker 13 Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment.

Speaker 14 Learn more at brainhealthmatters.com.

Speaker 19 I've pretty much kept it very privately. So this is the first time I've done anything of this sort.

Speaker 2 How are you feeling about that?

Speaker 19 You know, it's been something that I've been a little bit more interested in talking about. So my parents are very secretive about it.

Speaker 19 But what I've been working on over the past couple of years is that, you know, this isn't their story. Sure, a piece of it was their story back in 1977 and 1978 when they were trying to have children.

Speaker 19 But once they had a child, it stopped being their story. And it became my story.

Speaker 2 I've spoken to many other donor conceived people who found out later in life that their father isn't their father. Lauren is one of them.

Speaker 2 I met her through that Facebook group for the children of mothers who went to Dr. DeBrovner, the group that gave me the doctor's contact information.

Speaker 2 I immediately wanted to talk with Lauren because I'm desperate to learn from other people who were conceived the way I was and who are also processing it all now.

Speaker 2 Like my mom, Lauren's mother went to Dr. Dubrovner for help conceiving.

Speaker 2 Lauren and I were born within a few months of each other, grew up a few towns away from each other, and were raised Jewish and white, or Ashkenazi Jewish.

Speaker 2 Lauren and I both had long thought that all of our ancestors lived in Eastern Europe for hundreds of years until the turn of the 20th century.

Speaker 2 So did you grow up like going to synagogue, get bot mitzvah, the whole thing?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I did.

Speaker 19 So, you know, I went to Hebrew school until I was 13. You know, I had a bot mitzvah.

Speaker 2 And do you, do you remember sitting in synagogue? Because I remember this. I remember sitting in synagogue and just kind of being a little bored and looking around.
I still do that

Speaker 19 if I go.

Speaker 2 You like look around and feel like you're different from everybody else in the building. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Like I would look around to see if there was anyone else that looked like me.

Speaker 19 And there never was.

Speaker 19 So like there were all these things when I was growing up that I knew that I didn't match.

Speaker 2 That's because Lauren, as she remembers it, looked different.

Speaker 2 The other Jewish kids noticed that her skin was darker and they kept asking if she was adopted. I have a tiny sense of what this might have been like.

Speaker 2 I definitely remember at Saturday morning services at my family's synagogue and at Hebrew school, and when I studied in Jerusalem during college, I'd be compared to other white Jewish boys and told I looked goyish, Yiddish for not Jewish.

Speaker 2 My unknown Irishness must have made my skin a little redder, my features a little lighter. But it was subtle enough that I never wondered if I wasn't really Jewish and Ashkenazi.

Speaker 2 But Lauren's situation was different, and Lauren wondered.

Speaker 19 And the other thing that I was aware of when I was a little girl that was really different was my hair.

Speaker 19 So my mom had a lot of trouble, like my hair was really curly, and she had a lot of trouble dealing with my hair. So when I was three,

Speaker 19 they took me to a hair salon in Queens so they could straighten my hair.

Speaker 19 And if I said anything, my mom would be like, Well, your hair is not curly, it's just ugly, or it's really frizzy and poofy, and that's not that's not how you look beautiful.

Speaker 19 So, we would do this every six or nine months, and they'd put like relaxers in my hair, and I would sit there, and it would be like this burning feeling. And that's how I knew it was working.

Speaker 19 And so, I wouldn't say anything because I knew that the more it hurt, the better it would look. Cause I would always get these compliments on how much better my hair looked.

Speaker 2 Lauren had a lot of disturbing experiences like that during childhood. Experiences she couldn't fully process at the time that she now sees in a new light.

Speaker 2 The thing is, her parents seemed to know something was up because they kept trying to keep her looking as white as they could.

Speaker 19 Like on Long Island, a lot of people do that above-ground swimming pool that was basically like a pot in the middle of the backyard.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 I was only allowed to go in the pool once the sun was setting because my mom didn't want me to get really tan. So I would put on like, in order to use the pool, I had to use like really high SPF.

Speaker 19 And I had a younger brother that was four years younger and he could go in the pool whenever he wanted because he didn't tan the way I did.

Speaker 19 And then adding to that, like I grew up in this very Italian Irish neighborhood. And so there were just a lot of comments about my appearance.

Speaker 19 You know, I was called the N-word, but didn't make any sense, you know, because I was Jewish.

Speaker 19 You know, it just, I was very aware of those differences. And I never knew how to, like, I would ask my parents about it, but their response would always be, you know, like it was on my head.

Speaker 19 Like I was put on like the Black Law Students Association list in law school. It was very hard for me to like, randomly, without me even asking.

Speaker 19 That sort of thing would happen all the time.

Speaker 19 Like finally ended up joining the Hispanic Law Students Association because it made more sense. Cause like at least like I didn't feel like the weirdo that didn't belong anywhere.

Speaker 2 Lauren's white Jewish mother had in fact grown up in Colombia and Lauren spoke Spanish. But she worried that she was unintentionally living a lie.

Speaker 19 Then there was a story that hit a little too close to home. This was a professor at a university near me, and she was Jewish, but pretended to be Puerto Rican.
So I was like starting to freak out.

Speaker 19 I was really scared that like I would be found out as a liar, which I wasn't, but I wasn't being 100% honest either.

Speaker 2 With each new move in Lauren's life, inevitably there was a new clarification or correction that she needed to make about her identity. Like when she made partner at her law firm.

Speaker 19 a black lawyer called me and she started going off we're so excited you know we haven't had a black woman make partner this is the first time

Speaker 19 and i'm sitting there so awkward and i'm trying to like figure out how to interrupt her excitement and be like i'm actually not black you know

Speaker 19 so

Speaker 19 finally i'm like i've got to figure this out

Speaker 2 And so the annual Christmas sales for consumer DNA kits rolled around and Lauren sent in her sample. The results astonished her.

Speaker 19 I open up my email and I see right away, like big purple on the continent of Africa. I was super confused.

Speaker 19 I'm like, that's, I'm like, clearly they messed up because my dad's white and my mom is definitely not black. That makes no sense.
And I didn't know what to do with that information.

Speaker 19 It's like the world stopped.

Speaker 19 And then I was like, I can't tell my mother

Speaker 19 because, like, how am I going to have this conversation with her? So, like, what do you do with this information, right? Like,

Speaker 2 so what did you do?

Speaker 19 Well, I was numb. I just like kind of like lay there

Speaker 19 finding out that your parents weren't, or at least one of your parents, at that time I didn't know,

Speaker 19 but at least one of your parents wasn't honest. You know, like my parents lied to me.
And also, I felt so stupid,

Speaker 19 you know, because I was asked so many times over the years, and I was just like,

Speaker 19 How could I not know? Like, because I knew, but I didn't, you know, there were all these clues, they were like screaming clues, but I didn't really know.

Speaker 19 And then having to go through life and not matching your identity is tough because you never feel like you belong anywhere.

Speaker 2 Turned out her mom was her mom, an Ashkenazi Jew, but her father, the sperm donor, was black.

Speaker 2 Through a DNA search angel, Lauren learned about the man who contributed half of her DNA. He grew up in the Bronx, spent some time in Florida, raised kids of his own.

Speaker 2 He died long before Lauren found out about any of this. Eventually, Lauren confronted her mother.

Speaker 2 Turned out she knew and remembered that she had been inseminated with donor sperm.

Speaker 19 And she said, why are you going digging around into things that have nothing to do with you?

Speaker 2 Lauren's parents said they went to Dr. Dubrovner and her parents said Dr.

Speaker 2 DeBrovner told them that donor sperm would be mixed with her father's sperm to boost its motility, to get it across the finish line.

Speaker 2 This was the medically false information that so many would-be parents were told in the 70s. Dr.

Speaker 2 DeBravner also told them that the donor sperm would come from a Jewish medical student of Ashkenazi European descent.

Speaker 19 That's what they were supposed to get. They were completely lied to in every aspect about who the donor was.
You know, they didn't ask for a Jewish plumber.

Speaker 19 They asked for a Jewish doctor. And why did they ask for a Jewish doctor?

Speaker 19 Because they thought that they would get like a smarter, more capable child, which is ridiculous, but that's what they thought. So what does it matter whether he's a doctor or not?

Speaker 2 It didn't even happen anyway. Lauren's father was not a medical student.

Speaker 2 And that's making me wonder, what the hell does this mean about my situation, about this supposed Irish Catholic doctor I've been looking for all these years?

Speaker 2 How much of what the doctor told me is true?

Speaker 2 Lauren, meanwhile, is still trying to understand how her parents never told her, even though they suspected that her biological father was not the white Jewish man she always knew.

Speaker 19 There's a whole level, you know, of cognitive dissonance that was going on in order for them to keep it up.

Speaker 19 Like when I was 19, I had my nose thinned out.

Speaker 2 Their idea. What do you mean, thin? Is that like a plastic surgery?

Speaker 19 Yeah, exactly. To look, to have my nose look thinner.
Because they told me, like, you know, my, I believed that my nose I'd broken it as a child, and that's the reason.

Speaker 19 But then when I looked at pictures of like the person that I figured out was my biological father, I have the same, I had the same nose.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 19 they just didn't want, they wanted me to fit a mold

Speaker 19 because they didn't want anyone to know, you know.

Speaker 19 They still don't want anyone to know.

Speaker 19 I felt really stupid. Like when this whole, when I found out the truth, like I felt so stupid.
And then, you know, I was just like, well, like, cause like, how did you not know? Because I knew.

Speaker 19 I really did. Like, in a lot of ways, I knew, but

Speaker 19 like, I knew and I didn't, like, I couldn't comprehend my origin being a lie.

Speaker 2 you know when i when i first heard your your story it was during this like moment of racial reckoning in the country right and you know through this process i find out i'm half irish and that my family was likely catholic and that was a mind for a fully jewish kid who went to synagogue every week growing up right but i'm just a now a different kind of white guy in the end i still present the same to the world i still identify as a a white Jewish man.

Speaker 2 The revelations that you made carry like so much more weight from my perspective, like culturally and politically. I mean, yeah, I had no idea.

Speaker 19 Like, that I'm still working through a lot of that stuff. I mean, I think part of it too was also what does that mean for me?

Speaker 19 It was like, what does it mean within the context of the country and what can I claim and not claim? So I think it's easier for me to feel

Speaker 19 comfortable in my own skin. Yeah.

Speaker 19 But the problem is also

Speaker 19 that I don't know how to identify myself because I didn't grow up, you know, knowing with certain experiences. Like I didn't grow up in the Black community.
So there's like a giant hole there.

Speaker 19 I didn't grow up knowing or thinking of myself as a Black person.

Speaker 19 I didn't grow up with Black family members. I didn't grow up, you know, understanding how to process microaggressions and racism and things like that.

Speaker 19 You know, so there's one piece, like, how do I define myself? And then the other piece also is how do I fit in my family?

Speaker 2 In the Jewish tradition, children inherit their religious identity from their mothers. So Lauren, like me, isn't any less Jewish, technically, but it's complicated.

Speaker 19 I mean, you've seen Federal Or on the Roof. Like, that's the story we grew up with, or I grew up with, was like,

Speaker 19 you intermarry, you're an outcast.

Speaker 2 you're not one of us you rejected us you don't belong because we're this like tiny minority and if you've all your only job is to make sure you pass along yeah you that identity to the next generation right that's your only job that's my only job that's my parents job and right my very existence is like a failure

Speaker 19 and made it harder because if you don't fit in, it's hard to feel connected. So there's like this huge emphasis on identifying who's in and who's out.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 absolutely. I mean, it's this idea that we,

Speaker 2 your ancestors survived

Speaker 2 thousands of years.

Speaker 19 They survived the Holocaust, the Inquisitions, the pogroms, all this, and you're like ruining it.

Speaker 19 Like it doesn't matter. Like when you get married, as long as they're Jewish, you know, this is you Jewish.
Like as long as they're Jewish. Like that's the thing.

Speaker 2 Like that's all they care about.

Speaker 19 The first question they ask if you meet anyway, is he Jewish?

Speaker 19 My brother told me that at one point, my mom asked him if he would date someone like me. Like, they were concerned about my suitability.

Speaker 19 They would never have accepted me, would they?

Speaker 19 I haven't fully navigated yet this feeling of disloyalty to my parents.

Speaker 19 You know, right now, like even this feels a little disloyal to them.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 19 Because my parents don't want anyone to know.

Speaker 2 You know, I imagine whatever decisions your parents made as they were trying to get pregnant and then afterwards were done like in what they thought would be in your best interest.

Speaker 2 That's what they say.

Speaker 19 I think that there's some element of truth to that for sure. But I think it stopped.
They stopped doing that at some point.

Speaker 19 Like

Speaker 19 I still continue to not feel like I fit in as a Jewish person. Like, yes, I was bought mitzvah and I went to synagogue and all my relatives are Jewish.

Speaker 19 But like when I walk down the street, that's not what people see. But then I also don't really feel like I'm really a black person because

Speaker 19 I never thought of myself that way.

Speaker 19 I'm still working through this piece of like, what do I do with this information? Because I still feel like I'm a secret.

Speaker 2 Secrets have surrounded paternity since the dawn of time. Infidelity and infertility.
closed adoptions and forbidden love. But now with DNA and the internet, so many secrets are being exposed.

Speaker 2 Thanks so much for

Speaker 2 sharing this with me, Lauren.

Speaker 19 Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to hopefully hearing how your mystery gets resolved.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I gotta find them.

Speaker 19 There's a peace in knowing.

Speaker 19 Even if the answer isn't necessarily what you want it to be, or the person isn't who you want it to be, all of those different things that can happen, there's a peace in knowing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what I'm hoping for.

Speaker 2 On January 12, 2022, I woke up to a text from Helena. Holy shit, she wrote.
We have a brother.

Speaker 2 I always wanted a younger brother. Someone to beat up a little, someone to share my wisdom or not about girls.
Someone to actually be impressed by my Billy Joel CD collection.

Speaker 2 The man I had thought was my birth father before all of this started had no other children.

Speaker 2 My two sisters from my dad Richard's first marriage were several years older, so I never had the chance to live with them. On my mom's side, I didn't even have first cousins.

Speaker 2 So I always wanted relatives around my age. Information from relationships with biological siblings can help you understand yourself.

Speaker 2 And without those mirrors around you, you wonder what another version of you could be like.

Speaker 2 Well, I finally found out.

Speaker 2 The brother who had just signed up for Ancestry.com was, in fact, my little brother. He and Tara and I were all born in the same month.

Speaker 2 Once we DNA matched as half-brothers, I messaged him immediately. I told him everything we knew, that we had a sperm donor father, that the men we thought were our biological dads were not.

Speaker 2 It took him three months to get back to us. His email subject line when he finally wrote back read, ancestry, colon, wow.

Speaker 2 I called him up. The first thing he said to me, dude, I lost my mind when I got your message.

Speaker 2 From his father, my brother inherited season tickets to the New York Giants.

Speaker 2 He brought me to a game, and I got a glimpse into his world at a telegate party that he ran for probably 150 of his friends.

Speaker 2 As I stood there drinking whiskey out of solo cups and eating non-kosher sausages, several of his friends, who didn't even realize we were related, turned to me, pointed to my brother, and said something like, I fucking love that guy.

Speaker 2 He's my little brother, but somewhat hilariously, he's like twice my size. Taller, stockier.
We have an Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, and twin situation going on.

Speaker 2 He thinks our voices sound alike and carry the same way. He likes the Yankees, I like the Mets.

Speaker 2 And just like I had crossed paths with my sisters at various times in my life, this brother, I took classes at the college he went to when he was going there.

Speaker 2 We've now spent some nights out together, and they were excessive in every good way, in laughter, emotions, drinks. He's hilarious, and he feels feels deeply and often.

Speaker 2 But he's still processing this whole new situation, so I'm going to keep his name and voice out of this podcast.

Speaker 2 The good thing is, he does want us in his life, and that's why he called me one day last year and said, we're going to visit Tara in California, and Helena is going to come too.

Speaker 2 Next thing I know, I'm checking into a hotel.

Speaker 2 I am, yeah, I think my brother is already here, but there might be a key. My brother,

Speaker 2 I think. That was surreal.
I just used the phrase, my brother, in public for the very first time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Four of us siblings spent the weekend together.

Speaker 2 We wandered around and rented scooters through Santa Monica and Venice Beach. We had long dinners and lunches, drank and laughed, and even cried just a little.
We even told strangers we met our story.

Speaker 2 And beginning your

Speaker 2 The following afternoon, Tara and Helena talked to me on tape before we went to dinner. I set up three microphones and a recorder right in the middle of the hotel lobby.

Speaker 2 Helena got there first, and she immediately made fun of me.

Speaker 19 You know, you look like a complete bird right now, and everybody is like weirded out by that.

Speaker 2 Nobody even notices.

Speaker 19 Every single person they're all giving me looks like They're like, you're going to go sit with the weirdo

Speaker 2 in the corner with a microphone. Yeah, you are.

Speaker 2 When Tara came down, it was immediately clear that Helena and Tara were dressed almost identically, wearing purple. Our brother came down a few minutes later.
Sure enough, he was wearing purple.

Speaker 19 Peach color last night.

Speaker 19 I know, I was having a weird, like, twinny feeling with you right there. And I was like, what? And I didn't even realize because of the clothes.

Speaker 2 You guys look unusually alike today. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 All weekend, we kept looking for and finding these similarities, meaningful coincidences,

Speaker 2 and wondering where our father is or was.

Speaker 19 Listen, my biggest thing is I'm good when it comes to ancestry and DNA.

Speaker 19 What I don't have are live people, like track down where these people are, track down who they are, track down a picture, a high school yearbook or something of them.

Speaker 19 And like, that is the type of thing that I'm like, I feel like I can do that.

Speaker 2 That's where I fall.

Speaker 19 Like, I'm not useful. I need somebody else who has other skills.

Speaker 19 You know, like a PI type.

Speaker 2 Hello?

Speaker 19 We need somebody who knows how to stalk somebody. You know, like, like, who can get who can look into public records and figure out what's going on?

Speaker 2 I'm a journalist. That's what I do.

Speaker 19 Well, I don't know what you do.

Speaker 2 I do a lot of Twitter. I'm a journalist.

Speaker 2 No, but I do. I mean, I can do that sort of research.
I have a couple,

Speaker 19 I haven't narrowed down to two people, but there are two things wrong with those two people. A, I have not contacted any of them.

Speaker 2 B,

Speaker 19 I feel weird. I feel like there's something weird.
I feel like there's some, I want to have more information before we reach out to them.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 On it.

Speaker 2 Time to get us some answers about how this happened in the first place. What's really going on?

Speaker 2 Next time on Inconceivable Truth. A combination?

Speaker 12 A combination. That was my question.

Speaker 2 Where did the sperm come from? That was so unethical. It's very bizarre.

Speaker 13 I don't know how you're going to ever find out who actually donated that sperm.

Speaker 2 Inconceivable Truth is a production of Waveland and Rococo Punch. I'm writer and host, Matt Katz.
The story editor is Erica Lance, mixing by James Trout.

Speaker 2 Emily Foreman is our producer. Natalie White is our intern.

Speaker 2 Special thanks to the Lahanns of Bally Negree, Ireland, for the history book, Tales of the Laney Valley, and to the Lynches of Lynch's Bakery in Rakroom, established 1869, for the cupcakes and tote bags.

Speaker 2 Our executive producers are Jason Hoke at Waveland and John Parati and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch. For photos and more details on the series, follow at Waveland Media on Instagram, X, or Facebook.

Speaker 2 And you can reach out via email at podcasts at waveland.media. That's Waveland, W-A-V-L-A-N-D.

Speaker 2 If you like the series, please leave us a review. And as always, don't forget to tell a friend or relative.
I'm Matt Katz. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 Sadie, what did you think of today?

Speaker 1 It was tiring, but fun, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm going with Sadie.

Speaker 1 It was tiring, but it was fun. We got a cupcake.
And we also

Speaker 1 were talking to this dude. And

Speaker 1 there's like a lot of dudes. If you guess what I've got, what's written on my hand, I'll give you $5.

Speaker 2 If you tell me who my father is, I'll give you $5.

Speaker 2 Hey guys, back to the playground again, huh? Yep.

Speaker 19 You know what this playground could use?

Speaker 12 A wine country.

Speaker 2 Heck yeah! And some waves, so we could go surfing on it.

Speaker 2 I love that! A redwood forest would be cool. Oven! Ah, ski slopes.
Let's do it. Um, ten or girl goes shopping.
Yeah, baby. Wait.

Speaker 2 Did we just invent California?

Speaker 19 Discover why California is the ultimate playground at visitcalifornia.com.

Speaker 4 We all take good care of the things that matter.

Speaker 5 Our homes, our pets, our cars.

Speaker 6 Are you doing the same for your brain?

Speaker 8 Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease.

Speaker 3 Studies have found that up to 45% of dementia cases may be prevented or delayed by managing risk factors you can change.

Speaker 7 Make brain health a priority.

Speaker 13 Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment.

Speaker 14 Learn more at brainhealthmatters.com.