Family Secrets

On part two of Dani’s conversation with Libby Copeland, Dani and Libby discuss the fallout on the other side of a major DNA revelation, and why DNA testing could make secrecy around a person’s origins a thing of the past. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this special bonus episode of Family Secrets, Dani speaks with Libby Copeland, author and journalist, about the psychological and emotional complexities that face families who have kept secrets, and families who have had secrets kept from them. This is an intimate conversation about the deepest parts of identity exposed by unexpected DNA results.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dani and Bessel respond to questions from the audience about trauma, and how art—and writing in particular—can help people heal. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In January, Dani hit the road for a series of live conversations with some of her favorite writers, artists, and thinkers. Her first stop: Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she sat down with renowned trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, for a discussion about how we move forward after traumatic events—a topic nobody could have predicted would apply to each and every one of us just a few months later. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For years, Steven Romo just didn’t talk about the bleak landscape of his childhood—not with friends, and certainly not with his colleagues at the TV station where he works as an anchor. Until a headline that reminded him of his upbringing inspired him to open up about what he’s been through, giving everyone a glimpse at the pain he kept hidden beneath his polished, professional exterior.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this special bonus episode, Dani speaks with Stephanie Wittels Wachs, actress, activist, and co-host of the hit podcast Last Day, which shines a light on the real human stories behind epidemics we usually only think about in terms of their staggering — yet seemingly abstract — statistics. Recording from their respective homes, Dani (sitting in her PJs in her son’s old room) and Stephanie (holed up in the closet that serves as her makeshift studio) discuss trauma, the collective grief we’re all feeling in this era of social distancing, and making meaning out of tragedy — which is exactly what Stephanie did after losing her beloved younger brother, the comedian Harris Wittels, to a heroin overdose.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Janny Scott grew up on an 800-acre British-style estate outside Philadelphia with a loving, gregarious father who was always the life of the party. But underneath her father’s light exterior was a darkness he struggled to keep at bay—a lifelong effort that would eventually cause him to self-destruct. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Axton Betz-Hamilton was in middle school, her family’s mail started going missing. Her parents told her that they’d been the victims of an identity thief, and that the perpetrator was likely someone close to them. Slowly, they began to shut out the world, enveloping Axton in a bubble of paranoia and secrecy—an atmosphere that didn’t allow her to see what was right in front of her until decades later. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Growing up, Adam Frankel idolized his father and his father’s father, eventually following in their footsteps to become a successful speechwriter for politicians like John Kerry and Barack Obama. But at the age of 25, Adam discovered a truth that caused him to question everything—including his place in the lineage he’d molded his life around.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For most of her young life, Lisa Brennan-Jobs bounced back and forth between two very different homes—that of her mother, who raised Lisa alone for the first few years of her life and struggled to make ends meet; and that of her father, Steve Jobs, who lived exactly the way you’d expect the founder of a multimillion dollar tech company to but struggled to relate to the daughter he initially denied was his. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.