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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews podcast More What You Here,

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Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Danny
Shapiro was an author of over eleven

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books and the host and creator of
a hit podcast, Family Secrets. Her

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most recent novel, Signal Fires,
was named best Book of twenty twenty two

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by Time Magazine, Washington Post,
Amazon, and other national bestsellers. And

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I'm curious, Dandy, how this
all led to a podcast about family secrets.

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Thankfully, it's going to be with
you. So in twenty sixteen,

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I stumbled upon a really massive family
secret of my own. And this was

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after a lifetime of writing all these
books in which I was always exploring family

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secrets, and I never knew why
I wrote novels about the power of secrets

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and families. I wrote memoirs in
which I was trying to just kind of

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excavate and understand my own family.
But what I didn't know was that I

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was the family secret, and that
it turned out that my dad who raised

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me had not been my biological father. And that led to my memoir Inheritance,

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which came out in twenty nineteen.
And when I was writing about the

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story of making this really world rocking
discovery which I had absolutely no idea about.

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I found myself. When people would
hear about what was going on with

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me, they started telling me their
own family secrets. And one day I

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was talking to a friend of mine
who is a Buddhist mindfulness meditation teacher well

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into her eighties, a really amazing
storyteller, kind of a mentor of mine,

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and she was telling me a story
of a family secret of hers and

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the thought that went through my mind
was, would I wish i'd share this?

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You know, this is a riveting
story. And the very next thing

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that went through my mind was,
I wonder if there's a podcast about family

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secrets. And in twenty eighteen or
so, when I first had that thought,

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there wasn't. And I went to
my publisher and I said, family

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secrets, I mean, everybody has
them, and wouldn't it be amazing to

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do a show in which I really
drilled down and did a deep dive into

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one guest at a time and really
explored what it means to discover a family

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secret or what it means to keep
a family secret. And that's how the

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podcast was born, and the podcast
is Family Secrets. You can hear it

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on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere you
get podcasts. I can't help but think

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the aid of all of these services
that people are using to look into their

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family histories and their family ancestries through
DNA is seems to also be revealing some

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of these family secrets. Oh there's
no question about that. I mean,

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that is what reveals mine. And
that is true of some of my guests.

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Not not, not by any stretch, even most of them. But

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you know, stories the combination in
the time that we live in of easy,

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accessible, inexpensive, over the counter
DNA testing, which over thirty five

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million people have done, and then
the unintended consequences and discoveries Women who as

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very young, you know, teenagers, might have had a baby and had

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that baby put up for adoption,
those kyds of stories and never told a

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soul and you know, went on
and lived their whole adult lives and got

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married and had kids of their own
end and then that story comes out.

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Or men discovering children that they never
knew that they had, or people discovering

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half siblings or other families or secret
families, or you know, using either

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using of sperm donors or egg donors
to conceive children and never telling them.

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I mean, there it's an infinite
number of those kinds of stories. And

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then you also just have social media
and the Internet, in which it's very

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very hard to really, um have
a secret, stay a secret anymore.

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In twenty twenty three, I would
say so, Danny Shapiro is with us

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Family Secrets as the podcast. You
can hear it on the iHeartRadio app and

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everywhere you get podcasts. Does do
family Secrets seem to favor or seem to

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occur more often in a particular class
of family or is it across the board?

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Oh? I think it's absolutely across
the board. Um. I've had

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guests on my show. One is
coming to mind. Who was who came

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to this country? Um? Uh, you know on a on a on

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a boat fleeing Cambodia, um evident? And you know was was thought to

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have died on the boat and was
you know, being held in her mother's

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arms. And the captain of the
boat wanted to throw the baby over because

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because they thought that they thought the
baby had died, and the mother said,

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no, no, no, I
must bring my baby to land.

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And baby survived, and they you
know, they were they were, you

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know, very poor immigrant family.
I've had other guests who are um,

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you know from uh, you know, aristocratic families who have been you know,

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landowners forever and ever, and you
know, the secrets have to do

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with you know, their own histories. Um No, I think that.

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I think that it is a human, human trait because one thing that I've

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really learned about family secrets is that
where there is a secret, underneath that

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secret, there is almost always fear
and shame. And you know, fear

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and shame are part of the human
condition that you know, money, class,

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education, privilege, none of that
protects us from those very human emotions.

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That answers my next question. The
primary motivator for keeping family secrets,

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Yeah, it thrumbs beneath the surface. I mean, why do we keep

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a secret. We keep a secret
because we're afraid that if anyone knew,

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they wouldn't understand, or they would
shun us, or they would feel somehow

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ostracized from their community, or that
people would look at them and think that's

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crazy. I've never heard anything like
that before, when, in fact,

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what's so ironic about that is that
always there is a way, you know,

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there's a way in which we're all
deep down so similar as human beings

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that to actually be honest about what
it is that's haunting us almost inevitably causes

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empathy, not know, a sense
of shunning or punishing or distance. But

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it's it's very hard to get past
the fear and feel that it's okay too,

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to tell the truth of who we
are. And and also to not

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do that is to remain siloed,
is to remain isolated, which only sort

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of perpetuates it and creates its own
vicious cycle. Danny Shapiro the the podcast

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is Family Secrets, and you can
hear it on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere

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you get podcasts. Are all families
just a little dysfunctional? M I.

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I've never run across a family that
doesn't have a little dysfunction. It's because

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it's a it's a system that involves
people, that involves human beings, and

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you know, none of us are
perfect. And you know, I think

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one of the reasons for the success
of Family Secrets the podcast is that all

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families have them all family I mean, they might be you know, kind

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of garden variety, not very big
deal. Really, Oh, is that

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all that there is? Kind of
secrets or they or they might be world

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rocking secrets. But but either way, you know, I think sometimes there

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are secrets that are kept in the
name of love, and that also creates

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its own dysfunction. You know,
parents not parents wanting to protect their children

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from you know, knowing things that
they did when they were young, or

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um or from you know, something
that they think might be disturbing, and

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yet you know, it's it's still
there, it's still kind of in the

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air somewhere, kind of shimmering and
and doing its own kind of haunting and

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and that creates a kind of dysfunction, even if it's a very functional dysfunction.

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Danny Shapiro Family Secrets is the podcast. You can hear it on the

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iHeartRadio app and everywhere you get podcasts. And as you can tell, your

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research has uncovered all kinds of interesting
things to talk about on the podcast.

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And I thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you so much.

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LEAs great to talk to you.
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons

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from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation