Sisters | Chapter 2

Speaker 1 There are millions of podcasts out there, and you've chosen this one. Whether you're a regular or just here on a whim, it's what you have chosen to listen to.

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Speaker 15 I remembered that Roberta really wanted a child. I remember remember that very much.
She was going to have a baby.

Speaker 16 I wasn't going to give up until... Right.

Speaker 15 She was going to find a way.

Speaker 15 And if it had to be the way she did, then that's what she had to do.

Speaker 12 I'm now decades removed from that little boy who was hung up on by his father. But even all grown up, I'd ruminate about who he was, about what was really going on.

Speaker 17 I tried to confront him several times, and it was just one lie after another and then I just had too many lies.

Speaker 12 When I was 38, already married with kids of my own, something happened that would set me down a new path. I found out this story was actually way bigger than just me.

Speaker 12 And more people than I could ever imagine were wrapped up in this.

Speaker 19 I actually even like had a dream. I was with my mom mom sitting with her in a car at a grocery store.
And she said to me, you know, I have something to tell you. There's a secret.

Speaker 19 And I said,

Speaker 19 what is it?

Speaker 19 I knew there was something that someone wasn't telling me.

Speaker 19 We struggle because on the one hand, it's like, do you tell somebody or do you let them continue with the life that they have?

Speaker 16 It's kind of like I feel taken. Taken is the wrong wrong word.
I feel, you know, played.

Speaker 17 I wasn't being honest.

Speaker 15 This is my other question because it's like, where did the lie begin?

Speaker 15 Where did the lie begin?

Speaker 12 From Waveland and Rococo Punch, this is Inconceivable Truth. I'm Matt Katz.

Speaker 12 Episode 2: Sisters.

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Speaker 1 There are millions of podcasts out there, and you've chosen this one. Whether you're a regular or just here on a whim, it's what you have chosen to listen to.

Speaker 5 With Yoto, your kids can have the same choice.

Speaker 6 Yoto is a screen-free, ad-free audio player.

Speaker 9 With hundreds of Yoto cards, there are stories, music, and podcasts like this one, but for kids. Just slot a card into the player and let the adventure begin.

Speaker 3 Check out Yotoplay.com.

Speaker 12 All right, now we're on the record.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 12 How do you feel about that?

Speaker 18 Um, I feel good.

Speaker 18 We're outside in our lovely garden, pretty much just hiding from our children so we can talk honestly.

Speaker 12 One of them's staring at us right now through the window.

Speaker 12 Okay, please introduce yourself.

Speaker 18 Hi, I'm Deborah Katz, married to Matthew Katz, aka Matt Katz. I'm his wife of 15 years,

Speaker 18 and

Speaker 18 we've been together how many years

Speaker 18 before that?

Speaker 18 I'm really bad with dates. And

Speaker 18 I'm remembering how long we've been together.

Speaker 12 You know what?

Speaker 12 It's going to be 19 years in January.

Speaker 18 Wow. Okay.
That's amazing. So I've seen a lot of your daddy issues

Speaker 12 through the years.

Speaker 18 And hopefully you find what you're looking for.

Speaker 12 When Deborah and I started dating, I actually wasn't looking for anything when it came to my father.

Speaker 12 This was one of the few stretches of my life where I didn't really have existential questions about him. After I found my birth father, Warren, when I was 16, we had a sporadic relationship.

Speaker 12 We hung out every few months, talked on the phone here and there.

Speaker 12 But sometimes on those phone calls, he'd say outrageous things to me, talking shit on my mom, whom he had stolen money from, Richard, the man who adopted me, who raised me, who I now call dad, and even my grandmother, my mom's mom, who had helped him out so many times.

Speaker 12 So I knew who my father was. It wasn't all great, but it was knowing.

Speaker 12 What do you remember about my relationship with him when you and I met?

Speaker 18 I knew what he had done.

Speaker 18 to you as kind of a child with just being absentee, obviously. And I knew what he had done to your mother, bankrupting her.

Speaker 18 I had no reason to probably like him. Yeah.

Speaker 18 You would have like phone calls every, like I would say, maybe like once a month the most. Right.

Speaker 18 Sometimes I'd kind of witness it, or sometimes you would be coming off the phone call after our drive home where you were talking to him.

Speaker 12 Like, what would I say about them afterwards?

Speaker 18 Let's just say I never liked him

Speaker 18 because he didn't bring anything to your life. I remember you kind of coming off the phone calls

Speaker 18 frustrated. You know, he had no interest in what you were doing.
You would try to tell him about your life.

Speaker 18 He would kind of cut you off or he'd just talk about random stuff or, you know, your cousins at the time.

Speaker 12 His nephews, if I was like talking about, I was, you know, relatively early on in my career.

Speaker 18 Yeah, like if you got an award, I remember you try, you'd be kind of be proud to want to tell him about a journalism award or like

Speaker 18 something that you were covering.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And he would like change the subject and start talking about how his nephews were doing well and making a lot of money or something.

Speaker 18 Yeah. I think you just would come away from those conversations like

Speaker 18 unsatisfied. But it wasn't just you calling him.
He'd reach out at times and he would call or leave a message.

Speaker 12 I feel like he actually mostly, he was the one who mostly called. Yeah, like you waited for him.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 And I remember sometimes us like listening to a voicemail just kind of,

Speaker 18 he was always a character, you know? So we'd have like, we'd listen and we'd giggle a little bit. But honestly, like you would leave those conversations kind of sad.

Speaker 18 And so being like your partner, I was protective of you. And I like didn't like him because he, you know, a simple conversation would hurt you.

Speaker 18 I did get to meet him once, which was interesting. He was in town with a girlfriend at the time and we went to dinner in the neighborhood.

Speaker 12 Girlfriend, yeah, you don't remember that.

Speaker 18 Oh my god, he had like some girlfriend that I think was like divorced or widowed, and she had her own money.

Speaker 18 I think he kind of like insinuated that he always finds someone, always found somebody who seemed to be wealthier, a woman to like, yeah, like kind of help take care of him in a way. Yeah.

Speaker 12 So, what was your impression of him?

Speaker 18 Well, first thing was he was taller than you and he had dark features. You know, he had dark hair, dark eyes.
He had bushy hair eyebrows.

Speaker 18 And I remember him having like kind of a bigger bulbous type nose and feature-wise,

Speaker 18 didn't look anything like you.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 18 And so

Speaker 18 that was strange to me.

Speaker 12 Do you remember what we talked about at that dinner? Do you remember? Because

Speaker 12 I found him

Speaker 12 could be

Speaker 12 easygoing in terms of talking.

Speaker 12 I don't remember being awkward or difficult to get through.

Speaker 18 That's fair. He had a little humor to him, which I think you appreciated.
Right.

Speaker 12 He talked shit, which I appreciate.

Speaker 18 No, I mean, that's the thing is, I mean, obviously I'm married to you, so I love you very much.

Speaker 12 That's so sweet.

Speaker 18 And you're a very dynamic, interesting person.

Speaker 18 You know, like, if anything, the only thing he should have been been the most proud of is you.

Speaker 18 And he showed zero aspect of that. Yeah.
But I could tell you really wanted to have a relationship with him. You wanted to bond with him.
You wanted him in your life. And so that was tough.

Speaker 18 I tried to respect that, but I didn't see in any way how it was benefiting you. If anything, it was like

Speaker 12 hurting you to have him in your life. Yeah.

Speaker 12 I remember dinner ended and

Speaker 12 he gave me a hug.

Speaker 12 Sort of, maybe?

Speaker 18 Probably. I think, you know, he was.

Speaker 12 I think he was.

Speaker 18 He was clearly said like it was nice to meet you.

Speaker 12 He would tell me he loved me. I wouldn't say it back.

Speaker 12 And then that was the last time I ever saw him.

Speaker 12 Not long after she met Warren, Deborah and I got engaged, and I started obsessing over whether I should invite him to our wedding.

Speaker 12 I knew not inviting him and not inviting anyone on that side of the family could just totally end our relationship, could sever the relationship forever.

Speaker 18 He wasn't worth an invite. He didn't deserve an invite.

Speaker 12 But that's not why he wasn't invited.

Speaker 18 You remember the punch in the face.

Speaker 12 Right, because he told me on the phone one day

Speaker 12 after we were engaged, before invitations had been sent out, he was pissed about about something from the past.

Speaker 12 And he said, if I ever saw Richard

Speaker 12 on the street, I would punch him in the face.

Speaker 12 This was something I couldn't stand for. I was four when Richard married my mom, and he had raised me.
He adopted me. I took his last name.
And so that clinched it.

Speaker 12 No way would I invite a guy to my wedding who had threatened to punch my dad, even if that guy was technically my father.

Speaker 18 At some point, he realized that he wasn't invited, invited, which he was annoyed about.

Speaker 12 Yeah, he was pissed. Pissed enough to stop talking to me again, just like when I was a little kid.
He stopped calling, stopped returning my calls. A couple of years went by like this.

Speaker 12 Total silence, total separation. But then in 2011, I dialed him up because I had some news.

Speaker 18 You got up the courage when I got pregnant.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I figured somebody, just like somebody would want to know if they had a child out there they'd want to know that they have a grandchild out there so I thought it was the right thing to do even if he didn't want to talk to me but I thought it was the right thing to do to call him up and tell him that he was going to be a grandfather for what I thought was the first time yeah yeah

Speaker 18 and he said I don't care

Speaker 18 That was literally his reaction was I don't care.

Speaker 12 He said I don't care and then he said just for good measure just just to fucking twist the knife, he said, no one in the family likes you. Meaning, nobody in his family.

Speaker 12 I remember I was really upset after this call. This was...

Speaker 18 No, like it was over the top.

Speaker 12 I was pretty upset. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Just mean. And just so selfish.

Speaker 18 Every time he acts like shit, you're like, I can't believe another situation is happening.

Speaker 12 That was the last time I spoke to him. Ever, ever.
Yeah, so, right. And then a few years go by.
We have one daughter, Sadie. A couple years later, we have one son, Ruben.

Speaker 12 And then we decide to take DNA tests.

Speaker 12 Deborah and I bought and took the DNA tests as joint wedding anniversary presents for our very Jewish wedding, by the way, with the rabbi and the broken glass and everything.

Speaker 12 So we spit in the little vial, sealed it up, sent it to ancestry.com, and waited.

Speaker 12 So what did you get, babe? What'd you get?

Speaker 18 I mean, I am full 101% Ashkenazi Jewish from Eastern Europe.

Speaker 18 I mean, I have like dark features a little bit, so I was like really hoping for a little bit of like Portugal or Spain because, you know, they were like offering those Portuguese

Speaker 18 citizenships, but

Speaker 12 I thought my results would be the same as Deborah's, but that's not what happened at all.

Speaker 12 According to the test, I was just half Ashkenazi Jewish, which means just about half of my DNA came from Eastern European Jews.

Speaker 12 Not all of it, as I thought for the first 38 years of my life and had never any reason to believe otherwise. No, this test said actually I had half non-Jewish roots in Ireland, Scotland, or England.

Speaker 12 And this,

Speaker 12 this was totally out of left field.

Speaker 12 Yeah, we started like trying to make sense of this and it didn't make sense. So that was one thought we had was that my mother.

Speaker 18 I mean, you know, my was she adopted? Like, remember, we were going down that path.

Speaker 12 At one point, we thought, you know, there was talk that Roberta's mother or grandmother had come through England on the way from Poland, which was something that happened.

Speaker 12 The boat would take you to England. You'd be there for like six months.
Maybe shenanigans ensue.

Speaker 12 And somehow something happened there. That was one of our theories.

Speaker 12 So then my mom decides to do it, right? Did I buy it for her for her birthday, maybe?

Speaker 18 I don't don't remember, but she did it because she is, she is a good mom. Yep.

Speaker 12 Whatever you need.

Speaker 18 So she did it and she once came back 100%.

Speaker 12 Not only did she come back 100%.

Speaker 18 But she also came back your mother.

Speaker 12 She came back. Which she should know because she gave birth to you.
Right.

Speaker 12 You know, these ancestry tests, they show you your relatives. And she literally came back as my mother.
Yes. Then it became, okay, it's Warren.
Is Warren Irish?

Speaker 12 So then do you remember the theories we had about Warren?

Speaker 18 Well, yeah, because you knew Warren's parents. You knew their history because the journalist, and you actually, when you, the few times you spent with them, you got their history.

Speaker 12 You interviewed them. You interviewed them.

Speaker 18 So you knew exactly where your family had come from.

Speaker 12 10 years earlier. 15 years earlier.
Yeah. Warren's parents had escaped Russia, they told me, and they started a Jewish butcher and a synagogue with some other families from the old country.

Speaker 12 So I knew they were definitely Jewish. So then it's like, okay, was Warren adopted somehow? I was thinking, you know, Warren was born in 1941 and he lived in Queens.

Speaker 12 You know, you'd have Jewish families maybe on one block and Irish families on the next block.

Speaker 12 So maybe there was an Irish family with six kids on the next block over, and the old man went to war, dies, you know, fighting the Nazis.

Speaker 12 So maybe the mother's got this new kid comes along, she can't take care of him. There's a nice Jewish family down the block.
She

Speaker 12 quietly adopts him out. That was what we decided.

Speaker 18 We had all these ideas, right?

Speaker 12 Tell me what your grandmother Elsie said to me, may she rest in peace, when we first met while we were dating.

Speaker 18 Yes, so this would be 2005.

Speaker 12 2005.

Speaker 18 Okay, in 2005,

Speaker 18 I would visit my grandma regularly. She lived in central New Jersey.
So I would drive up from Philly and take her out to lunch. So I was excited for her to meet my, you know, new boyfriend.

Speaker 18 And we're sitting across from her. She was a charming, funny, unique lady.
So she's looking him like all around in the face, just staring straight in.

Speaker 12 She's really looking at me.

Speaker 18 Really looking at you as you're talking.

Speaker 12 She's got the blondish hair and the reddish tinted skin. Yeah.
And I'm, you know, hairless

Speaker 12 on my, you know, not like a hairy. Yeah.

Speaker 18 So she's like, she's like, you're Jewish? And you're like, yep, I'm Jewish. She's like,

Speaker 18 you're not Jewish. You're Irish.
So this is like way before that. I mean, over 10 years from when you met herself.

Speaker 18 And then she said that she was going to call you, and you were going to have to bleep this.

Speaker 12 She used a slur for Irish people and said that that was going to be her nickname for you. Her nickname for me was going to be Mick.

Speaker 18 I was like, Grandma, oh my God. I'm so embarrassed.

Speaker 12 Grandma Elsie had come up in the Bronx, where the Jews hung out with the Jews, the Irish hung out with the Irish, and you got by by figuring out quickly who was who.

Speaker 12 Apparently, I looked like the Irish guy down the block.

Speaker 12 It wasn't the only time Deborah and I had heard that.

Speaker 12 Our Irish friend Nancy, before we became friends, she'd said she'd see us in our neighborhood and refer to us as the Jewish girl married to the Irish guy.

Speaker 12 And now, when I look in the mirror, I'm starting to physically make more sense to myself. So, yeah, there is something to this.

Speaker 1 There are millions of podcasts out there, and you've chosen this one. Whether you're a regular or just here on a whim, it's what you have chosen to listen to.

Speaker 5 With Yoto, your kids can have the same choice.

Speaker 6 Yoto is a screen-free, ad-free audio player. With hundreds of Yoto cards, there are stories, music, and podcasts like this one, but for kids.

Speaker 9 Just slot slot a card into the player and let the adventure begin.

Speaker 3 Check out Yotoplay.com.

Speaker 20 When cool, creamy ranch meets tangy, bold buffalo, the hole is greater than the sum of its sauce. Say howdy, partner, to new Buffalo Ranch Sauce, only at McDonald's for a limited time.

Speaker 12 At participating, McDonald's.

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Speaker 12 $600 up for money.

Speaker 12 I'm Mike Katz. I'm speaking with Mother Jones senior editor Wes and Zena about his most recent story on White's

Speaker 12 2018 my stress dream my nightmare about a stressful work situation unfolded in real time in real life in front of a real audience I'm in the studios of WNYC public radio in New York and I'm in front of the microphone live on the air

Speaker 12 usually I'm a reporter but today I'm hosting the noon radio show I'm filling in for only like the third time ever

Speaker 12 i'm excited i'm scared

Speaker 12 and i don't entirely know what i'm doing uh so have the number of people trying to leave this movement why why is that do you think well i'm halfway through the live show when we get to a break and a producer comes into the studio

Speaker 12 matt the next guest isn't here after we air the headlines at the top of the hour you have to fill 30 minutes with callers find something to talk about

Speaker 12 oh

Speaker 10 Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh.

Speaker 12 And I'm scrambling, like, okay, I've already been promoting this upcoming segment on immigration, so I guess I better vamp on that. What if I just get people's immigration stories?

Speaker 12 Like, how did they get here?

Speaker 12 Okay, shit. We're back in five, four, three, two, one.

Speaker 12 With immigration at the top of the national conversation these days, we thought we'd take a few minutes to hear your immigration story.

Speaker 12 Specifically, is there something that you're now learning about your background that you weren't aware of before? Are you on ancestry.com and finding long-lost relatives?

Speaker 12 Are there surprises in your family history? Anything crazy going on in your family history? Disappointments? Unanswered questions? We want to hear from you now. You can call us at 212.

Speaker 12 But then I was like, if I'm asking them to tell their stories, then I should also tell my story. And of course, at the top of my mind was this family mystery we still hadn't figured out.

Speaker 12 Like, how in the world was I Irish?

Speaker 12 So far, it was kind of a secret, just my family knew. I told some friends over drinks, but now, without really any time at all to think it through, I was going to reveal it live on the radio.

Speaker 12 I've had some surprises of late. I guess I'll get us started here.

Speaker 12 I grew up thinking I was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish from Eastern Europe, but I spit in a cup and sent it to Ancestry.com last year and found that, at least according to their DNA analysis, I'm just 43% Ashkenazi Jewish.

Speaker 12 Another 43% of my DNA indicates I'm from England, Scotland, Ireland.

Speaker 12 Listening back on this, I was clearly trying to sound kind of matter-of-fact about this whole thing. But these DNA results I got were not something I could reconcile with my lived experience.

Speaker 12 And then the calls started coming.

Speaker 12 Let's talk to Mitchell over in Brooklyn. Hi, Mitchell.
Hi. Deborah over in Newark.
Oh, hello. See if April in Somerville's there.
April? Hi. Hi there, April.
Tell me your story.

Speaker 12 The phone lines filled up. It was a pretty beautiful experience for me, a convening of all of these people who, like me, were longing to connect with ancestors.

Speaker 12 And some had already found success doing so. Ellen in Westchester.
Hi, Ellen.

Speaker 21 Hi, Matt. Thank you very much for taking my call.

Speaker 21 And I was fascinated to hear your story just now because it mirrors mine very closely, including almost to the exact percentage, the results from the DNA test.

Speaker 12 Are we cousins, Ellen? Are we related?

Speaker 21 We probably are. I hope we are.

Speaker 12 Let's go to Michael in Jersey City. Hi, Michael.
Hey, man. How are you doing today, buddy? Doing great.
Doing great. What's your story?

Speaker 22 Through some of the census records, I found out that my father had a brother that died as an infant, but was never spoken about.

Speaker 23 I found out that I was actually descended from an illegal immigrant who came in through Ellis Island.

Speaker 12 Let's talk to Tony over in Brooklyn. Hey, Tony, are you there? I am in.

Speaker 12 Some of these stories were nuts. One guy called in saying he's got a family tree of 1,300 names.
I couldn't believe it. I had like 10 people on my family tree.
I was jealous.

Speaker 24 It's an amazing thing. And I'm so happy that you guys are doing this little segment.

Speaker 12 Oh, I'm so glad you called. I've got to get it across.

Speaker 12 People, they have to ask their relatives where they're from. There's so much to learn out there.
Yes. And I can only encourage you.

Speaker 24 You're doing a great job here.

Speaker 12 Thanks so much. It's so important for us to understand where we come from.
I really appreciate everybody calling in with your stories. That was wonderful.
This is midday on WNYC.

Speaker 12 We'll be right back after the break.

Speaker 12 The half hour of radio was like a high, just hearing all these people who had uncovered family secrets and histories, the type of information I craved myself.

Speaker 12 But more than that, it would actually set in motion a years-long quest to uncover my own family secrets. And it started with an email from someone who was listening to the show that day.

Speaker 12 Pretty mundane email, really. It was from a guy named Lou.

Speaker 12 Lou was a listener who wrote to me a lot to comment about whatever I was reporting on on the air. This email contained no formalities, no dear Matt, just.

Speaker 12 First, let me say that I know little about this stuff, Lou says.

Speaker 12 But while Lou says he doesn't know anything about genetics, he does know a guy from synagogue with a PhD in genetics, and that guy told Lou that DNA tests may not be that accurate for testing Jews because we're a small percentage of the population and the DNA database doesn't have enough information on us.

Speaker 12 So maybe my results are wrong. But maybe not.

Speaker 12 Lou says you got to do more research, and it gives me a link to a private Facebook group called Tracing the Tribe. It's a place for Jewish genealogy nerds.
A couple of days passed.

Speaker 12 One night I'm giving my kids a bath. Some nights bath time is joyous and adorable.
Other times it's... it's, you know, it's just kind of annoying.
And this was one of those times.

Speaker 12 So I step away for a minute to waste time on Facebook, and I remember Lou's email. Alright, what the hell?

Speaker 12 I dash off a quick note on tracing the tribe, giving them my spiel, asking to be admitted into the group. They let me in immediately, and I write a post.

Speaker 12 Hi all, new member here. I'm starting to dig deep into my family history after my interest was peaked following an Ancestry.com DNA test.
I believed I was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish. Turns out...

Speaker 12 I'm British, Scottish, or Irish. I've been tracing my family tree to make sense of this.
I know DNA tests aren't necessarily accurate, but I would like to solve this mystery. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 12 Exclamation point.

Speaker 12 The first person to respond was Blunt. Hate to break it to you, but sounds like you have one non-Ashkenazi parent.
When this happens, it usually means your father isn't who you expected.

Speaker 12 Okay, Facebook conspiracy person, that's ridiculous. Except this person turned out to be what's known as a search angel.

Speaker 12 This is what they call someone who understands how to research genealogy and by the grace of their own hearts helps people find their relatives.

Speaker 12 The search angel asked for access to my ancestry account so she could look around.

Speaker 12 That was at 10.41 p.m.

Speaker 12 Minutes later, minutes later, she writes, okay, I believed I figured it out.

Speaker 12 She says that she has found someone that I share a lot of DNA with, a very close relation. Then she says this, and I think this match is your half-sister.

Speaker 12 What the?

Speaker 12 I'm happy to walk it through with you. I'm sure this is all quite a shock.

Speaker 12 Um yeah, I'm shocked, I'm confused, doesn't make sense. I've just been trying to figure out why I'm half Irish or whatever, and all of a sudden I have a half-sister?

Speaker 12 It's now 11.45 p.m. And I'm trying to slow this all down, trying to process this.
But my search angel keeps dropping bombs. She found my half-sister's Facebook page.
Her name is Tara Collins.

Speaker 12 So now, I mean, okay, search angel lady, I write, how did you find her? Three question marks. On Ancestry, Tara had a tree labeled Collins Family Tree.

Speaker 12 From there, the search angel found her mother's name and then found her mother's obituary elsewhere online.

Speaker 12 It's midnight. We're just going back and forth.
I asked for the obituary for Tara's mother. I background people for a living as a journalist, so I checked my search angel's work and it was rock solid.

Speaker 12 The woman who is showing up on my Ancestry.com account as my close family was indeed named Tara Collins.

Speaker 12 And my search angel said Tara Collins and I had too many DNA centimorgans in common to be anything other than half siblings. Centimorgans, I'm now learning, are how genetic connections are measured.

Speaker 12 Thank you very much, I write the search angel. I guess I'll reach out to her.
I appreciate your help.

Speaker 12 No problem, she wrote. I know it's all shocking, but I promise it gets better.

Speaker 12 Tara Collins, turns out, is the coolest person I've ever encountered on the internet.

Speaker 12 I loved her Instagram account, just beautiful pictures of plants and flowers and trees, thoughtful affirmations, whimsical pictures of friends.

Speaker 12 I learned that she's an energy healer, a medium, and a mystic in Southern California.

Speaker 11 You're gonna breathe in

Speaker 18 and breathe out.

Speaker 15 Breathe in.

Speaker 12 It's now the middle of the night and I'm scrolling through everything she's ever posted.

Speaker 11 I want you to feel the sensation as if your best friend is about to approach you.

Speaker 12 In one post, she wrote, I wish my life had background music so I could understand what the hell is going on.

Speaker 12 Yeah,

Speaker 12 same.

Speaker 12 There was a picture of her at the beach in Bali, arms in the air, looking at the ocean. And so it goes, she posted.
I think, I love that village old song.

Speaker 12 She certainly looked like she could be my sister. Same shape in the face, it seemed, and the eyes, maybe the coloring.
She posted a selfie taken at the end of a five-day silent meditation.

Speaker 12 She captioned it, Here's your reminder that it is all a bit closer than you may think.

Speaker 12 Hmm. All I was thinking about was how much she looked like me in the photo.
There was no question this was my half-sister.

Speaker 12 I had just turned 40 less than three weeks earlier. I celebrated in Amsterdam with a bunch of friends.
Now, halfway through life, I was getting a half-sister.

Speaker 12 And as I keep scrolling, I find a series of Instagram posts showing Tara with a bunch of her friends blowing out her birthday candles, her 40th birthday candles.

Speaker 12 My jaw fell to the freaking ground. So my half-sister is 18 days younger than me?

Speaker 12 How does that even happen?

Speaker 12 Tara posted often about her niece and nephew, her brother and father. Was I related to them too?

Speaker 12 My mom clearly didn't give birth 18 days after I was born, and my mom is 100% my mom. So does that mean Tara's father is my father?

Speaker 12 Or could this mean that Warren was both a secret Irish guy living as a Jewish guy and impregnating another woman within weeks of impregnating my mom? Like, it didn't make any sense.

Speaker 12 I went on to ancestry.com and I sent Tara a quick note. I was really vague, so as not to scare her off with a word like half-sister.
I was probably too vague.

Speaker 12 Hi, Ancestry.com indicates we may be first cousins. I'm doing some research on my genealogy and trying to figure out who may be family.
If you're also curious, let me know. Best, Matt.

Speaker 12 She never wrote back. I sent her a private message on Instagram.
She never wrote back. I contacted her through her website.
She never wrote back.

Speaker 12 And so I did what you do when you're desperately trying to piece together some super crazy revelations about your siblings and maybe your father and maybe everything you ever knew about yourself.

Speaker 12 I signed up for 23andMe, the other main DNA database.

Speaker 12 I spit in a cup, shipped it in. And six weeks later, after returning from my in-law's house in New Jersey, where we were breaking our fast for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur,

Speaker 12 I got an email from 23andMe.

Speaker 12 Nothing about a father.

Speaker 12 But I was being alerted to a DNA match indicating I had a half-sister. I figured Tara Collins signed up for this site, too.

Speaker 12 Then I clicked through. It was not Tara.
It was someone completely different.

Speaker 12 So I have two half-sisters? I messaged this sister immediately. This time I was direct.

Speaker 12 23andMe says you're my half-sister. I would be very curious to chat.

Speaker 12 Moments later, moments later, I'm still staring at my phone and a message pops up. She responded.

Speaker 12 She says she's been looking for me for years.

Speaker 25 I've been on 23andMe for about five years now, hoping to find someone like you. You see, my mom was artificially inseminated, and so we never know who my dad was.
Turns out we likely share a father.

Speaker 25 I am so excited, but I can guess this might be a lot for you to process.

Speaker 12 Her name is Helena.

Speaker 12 What she's telling me in this moment, while I'm standing in the kitchen putting away leftovers for my post-Yom Kippur meal, would keep me up nights, would set me down a strange and exciting path toward understanding who I am and where I came from.

Speaker 25 If you wish to know more, I am very happy to tell you all I know.

Speaker 12 Helena told me her story through a bunch of messages that night. She was in her 30s when she first learned that her parents had had trouble conceiving, so they went to a doctor in Manhattan.

Speaker 12 It was the 70s, and the doctor was using donor sperm to get women pregnant.

Speaker 12 Her mom later said she didn't know who the donor was and never had.

Speaker 12 When Helena was about six months old, her mother went back to the doctor who had helped her conceive. Her mother introduced the doctor to baby Helena.

Speaker 12 Oh, I was hoping she would be his, the doctor said. He is a very good-looking guy, although has bad acne.

Speaker 12 Could that guy, the very good-looking guy with acne, could he be my father? According to our DNA, It seemed he must be.

Speaker 12 Over the next few days, Helena and I learned we had both lived in Philly at the same time. We had met our spouses there.
We had lived blocks from each other.

Speaker 12 Helena got married across the street from where my wife and I had our wedding rehearsal dinner, and in the very spot in a park where we had taken our wedding pictures.

Speaker 12 We each had two kids, a boy and a girl. She asked, Do you have super long fingers? Mine are like super duper long.
I'm also blind as a bat.

Speaker 12 Average length fingers here, but I'm also blind as a bat.

Speaker 12 By the time we got in touch, Helena had already done a ton of research to try to find the identity of the donor, the man who apparently was also my biological father.

Speaker 12 She is undeniably smarter than me, a professor and PhD in information systems.

Speaker 12 She clearly likes to solve puzzles, so she'd look at family trees and obituaries of people who matched on 23andMe as our second or third Irish cousins.

Speaker 12 And from there, she figured out that on one family line, we came from the lynches of Macroom, County Cork, Ireland.

Speaker 12 When she told me this, I immediately Google imaged Macroom. Lovely little pastoral place, old town with an old castle in the middle.
I'm scrolling through these photos.

Speaker 12 I see a church, beautiful, another church. And then I'm like, I wonder where the synagogue is, where my people would have gone.

Speaker 12 So I keep scrolling and then I realize, wait a second, there is no synagogue because there were no Jews there because I'm not Jewish on that whole side of my family.

Speaker 12 Helena and I knew that one way to find our father would be by connecting with cousins with close DNA who would be willing to help us figure it out. So we teamed up.

Speaker 12 Each time Helena identified a close relative on the DNA sites, I'd contact them. She'd tell me what questions ask.

Speaker 12 But inevitably, when they wrote back, they'd ask me what my father's name was.

Speaker 12 And I would tell them I don't know, and I'm actually looking for my father and hoping you can help me because I'm 45 and have these siblings, and etc., etc.

Speaker 12 That would just shut them down. They would ghost me, not return my messages.
It was like they were thinking, Oh man, that sounds messy. I don't want to get involved in that.

Speaker 12 I get it. Yeah, it was messy.
And all of that mess swirled in my head. Warren, our father-son trips to the bedding parlor, reuniting with him at Bennigan's while Kelly waited in the car.

Speaker 12 Him saying he wanted to punch Richard, him ghosting me again.

Speaker 12 And now, DNA and sperm donors, and finding an energy healer sister on Instagram and investigating my roots with another sister.

Speaker 12 I knew who I needed to talk to next. I would let this settle, and then I'd sit sit down with my mom.

Speaker 12 Next time on Inconceivable Truth.

Speaker 26 I will preface by saying that like I love you very much for being my mom, obviously, and in reality and then just going above and beyond my mom for the last 40 years and two months.

Speaker 26 I have a couple questions and there's no judgment whatsoever. And my like search for my ancestry is not about like replacing you or dad at all.
I'm just like trying to figure out like,

Speaker 12 you know, where I kind of came from.

Speaker 26 Okay.

Speaker 12 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 12 Emily Foreman is our producer. Natalie White is our intern.

Speaker 12 Special thanks to WNYC archivist Andy Lancet.

Speaker 12 Our executive producers are Jason Hoke at Waveland and John Parati and Jessica Alpert at Vercoco Punch.

Speaker 12 For photos and more details on the series, follow at Waveland Media on Instagram, X, or Facebook. And you can reach out via email at podcasts at waveland.media.
That's Waveland, W-A-V-L-A-N-D.

Speaker 12 If you like the series, please leave us a review. And as always, don't forget to tell a friend or a relative.

Speaker 12 I'm Matt Katz. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 12 So that was a mind fuck. Yeah.

Speaker 18 There's a lot of swearing in your podcast.

Speaker 12 Oh, sorry.

Speaker 18 Is this for adults only?

Speaker 12 I mean,

Speaker 12 you think our children will hear these words for the first time? Is that what you're worried about? I don't know. I mean,

Speaker 18 friends will be playing this in their cars with their children.

Speaker 12 I mean,

Speaker 12 the idea that you're the one enforcing

Speaker 12 language is pretty funny.

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