Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Armchair Anonymous: DNA Testing About this episode Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us about a crazy DNA testing story.
Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 10,751 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
0:05 Speaker 01 Hi.
0:06 Dax Shepard? Fuck me, guys.
0:09 Speaker 01 You gotta listen.
0:09 Dax Shepard? So lucky.
0:11 Speaker 01 You gotta listen to this one.
0:12 Dax Shepard? This is dynamite. This is the most I've retold.
0:17 Speaker 01 Really, ever?
0:18 Dax Shepard? I've walked everyone I've seen since this episode through this episode.
0:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's a few.
0:24 Dax Shepard? Oh my god.
0:25 Speaker 01 I mean, really, all of them are incredible, but there's one that is seems impossible and it's not.
0:31 Dax Shepard? Yes. 12 people, maybe this has happened to. Yes, this is an incredible, over-delivered episode. Please enjoy crazy DNA testing stories. We get support from Quince.
0:45 Speaker 01 Okay, can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts. And Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself. Because let's be honest, self-gifting is a love language.
1:04 Dax Shepard? Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high-quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. Full-on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.
1:20 Speaker 01 It's the dream. The cashmere sweater is starting at $60, down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.
1:31 Dax Shepard? Well, I'm gonna tell you this. It just got chilly for the first time this year in California, and I'm so excited. And I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.
1:38 Speaker 01 It's great.
1:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.
1:43 Speaker 01 Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel-quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef-grade cookware. That's an amazing thing they offer here. And it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five-star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.
2:06 Dax Shepard? Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is supported by Helix.
2:31 Speaker 01 Okay, can we talk about how November is basically survival mode? Between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything. Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.
2:41 Dax Shepard? It really is the foundation. And I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.
2:52 Speaker 01 That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It took me like two minutes and they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip. It's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds.
3:10 Dax Shepard? Okay.
3:10 Speaker 01 Recently.
3:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
3:11 Speaker 01 That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it. And I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.
3:15 Dax Shepard? Temperature was all over the map.
3:16 Speaker 01 It was a mess.
3:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
3:17 Speaker 01 I need a new one.
3:18 Dax Shepard? Look, they've got over 20 mattress models. So whether you sleep hot, need extra back support, or you've got a partner who moves around all night, there's one built for you. Plus free shipping and a 365 night happy with Helix guarantee. That's a full year to decide.
3:33 Speaker 01 Helix has been named the most awarded mattress by Forbes, Wired and more. So it's not just us being enthusiastic, the experts agree.
3:39 Dax Shepard? Right now, Helix is running their Black Friday sale with up to 30% off. Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. Helixsleep.com/armchair.
4:18 Speaker 02 Hi.
4:19 Speaker 01 Hi.
4:19 Dax Shepard? Hello, April. Are you in a hotel room?
4:23 Speaker 02 I am actually at a place called Deloitte University. I'm in learning and development and I'm actually here all week delivering five different learning programs.
4:33 Dax Shepard? Which one do we need to know the most?
4:35 Speaker 02 I just wrapped up one called Future Forward. It was so fun. Lots of very interesting activities, lots of conversation about what the future of our workplace looks like. How to be agile and adaptable, all the buzzwords. Deloitte, the big accounting firm? That's right. We have our own hotel slash university. Wow, that's incredible.
4:56 Dax Shepard? When you're there for the week teaching, they give you a hotel room?
4:59 Speaker 02 They give us a hotel room.
5:00 Dax Shepard? Is there room service?
5:02 Speaker 02 There is not.
5:05 Speaker 02 But I will say they feed us well. There are break stations on every floor. There's a huge market, a place called the barn.
5:12 Dax Shepard? Oh.
5:12 Speaker 02 Oh, that sounds nice.
5:14 Dax Shepard? They've won me back.
5:15 Speaker 02 Do the hotel rooms have tissue boxes? There is in the bathroom. I should have thought ahead and brought it over.
5:22 Dax Shepard? Old me would have needed that, not new me, because I don't blow my nose anymore and I don't cough anymore. No matter how bad I want to.
5:30 Speaker 02 I noticed today you wanted to clear and you didn't.
5:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't think I have yet since I've.
5:36 Speaker 02 Much less editing for you. Exactly. He's taken one.
5:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but we're gonna lose something from it probably. I bet the guest feels more comfortable that I'm so gross and disgusting like, oh, cool, it's laid back. This guy's a gross monster.
5:49 Speaker 02 Still giving off laid back vibes.
5:51 Dax Shepard? Vibes. I'm a tank top, I suppose. Okay, so you have a 23 and me and or slash DNA story. April, let us have it.
5:59 Speaker 02 Okay, so I am one of four girls, so three sisters. I know my poor dad. Your lucky dad.
6:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he's gonna live six years longer because of that.
6:09 Speaker 02 That's right. Girl dads are the best and he really is the best. So I'm the second in line. And what first caught my attention as a child is that all of my sisters have blonde hair and blue eyes or green eyes. My dad has this bright blonde hair and these really bright blue eyes. My mom, red hair, green eyes. Okay. I came out dark, dark head of hair, really dark. Guys, second born, we can kind of chalk that up to like, okay, there's some genes in there that are going further back, like it happened.
6:39 Dax Shepard? Although if we are led to believe what we learned about Mendelian.
6:43 Speaker 01 Punnant squares.
6:44 Dax Shepard? Yes, the two greens and the blue should have all been recessive and we shouldn't have been able to have brown eyes with that mix.
6:51 Speaker 01 Be big R, little R, big R, little R, making two little Rs. So then there could technically be a combination that.
6:59 Dax Shepard? But since brown is dominant, you have to have two little Bs to get blue. So the mom had two little Bs and the dad had two little Bs. No one had a big B to give. Again, they might have oversimplified it for us.
7:10 Speaker 02 I thought about all this growing up. There's also the fact that my sisters are all very rambunctious. They love to dance, very social. I was like the antisocial child. Monica, I love to read Harry Potter, kind of off in my corner, very introverted. So just felt very different. And then tack on to that throughout our childhood, we would go out to eat at restaurants or even in school. People would ask us how we were related. We had the same last name, obviously they knew we were. When we said sisters, everybody often asked, are we full blood sisters? This is mid, late nineties, early two thousands. So that sort of got me questioning, I do feel different. What's going on here? So I did ask my parents a couple of times, is there something I need to know?
7:53 Speaker 02 Was always told no. I asked my grandparents, I was always told there was nothing more I needed to know. But I never let this go as a topic. So the running joke in my family to me was that I was the milkman's baby.
8:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
8:04 Speaker 02 Good, you guys have heard the phrase. So fast forward, I've asked this question to my mom, even into my adulthood.
8:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, because you're like, I'm an adult now. I can handle it if you had a fling.
8:15 Speaker 02 Right. And there's something fun about the mystery of it all, but same answer every time. I have two children, shout out to Brody and Bryn, their little arm cherries in the making.
8:23 Speaker 01 Oh, we love that.
8:24 Speaker 02 I'm looking at both of them and I'm like, they really look like me and my husband and they really look like each other. Biologically speaking, now I can look at my dad and my mom and say, something's not adding up here. So I decide at thirty, I'm going to take a DNA test. I don't tell anyone. I get the DNA test, I take it, it comes back several weeks later. And there's nothing earth shattering. I get some third, fourth cousins, but there is one person who comes up. He's a first cousin. And I don't recognize the name, so I message the guy. And he responds back a couple of days later and he tells me that he's actually adopted. Oh, so that's confusing. Not a lot to go on.
9:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so I was gonna say, your results, independent of any other information, are useless. You need your three sisters to take it, or your mom or your dad. The only thing you could have done is figured out through this cousin.
9:14 Speaker 02 This is where in the TV show that you take the hair out of the hairbrush.
9:17 Dax Shepard? Oh, sure, sure.
9:19 Speaker 02 I was trying to crack this nut without anyone knowing, just so I could have the results myself, but not break open any big secrets of the family. I was trying to be very demure, very mindful. My two younger sisters look just like my dad. Older one looks like my mom. So I talked to my younger sister and she said she's gonna take the same DNA test. And a few weeks go by and we both get the email and we say, okay, we're gonna call each other before we open it. And we opened it. We are half sisters, niece or aunt.
9:45 Dax Shepard? Wow. What would be more confusing, you're a little sister's aunt? I gotta try to figure out that on the family tree.
9:53 Speaker 02 What's the feeling when you open it and you see it? I felt like this is my lifelong mystery solved. I knew that something was up the whole time and I was right. My family's still my family. My mom and dad divorced, by the way, when I was eighteen, so they're not together anymore. And I think maybe she doesn't know who my dad is. Or maybe she's just not a hundred percent sure and that's why she never wanted to tell me. There are some secrets she doesn't wanna confess to, but now I have these results. I know for sure there's nothing more to hide and I wanna know who the person could be. So I call her up and I say, Mom, Misty and I took a DNA test and guess what? We're half sisters. She really took it like a champ. And she was very matter of fact. She said, okay, his name is Jim.
10:36 Speaker 02 He was ten, twelve years older than me. He was going through a divorce. He's got two other kids. I mean, it should bombshell after bombshell. She knew this guy and they dated for a little bit. But here's the real kicker. She met him because she was working at a pharmacy and this man drove the Borden's Dairy Milk truck.
10:55 Dax Shepard? He actually was the milkman.
10:58 Speaker 01 No, no, no.
11:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, wonderful.
11:02 Speaker 01 That's so good.
11:03 Dax Shepard? It's got a bow on it.
11:04 Speaker 02 And that was the part of the conversation that I stopped and I laughed and I said, do you mean to tell me that I really am the milkman's baby?
11:13 Dax Shepard? Clearly she was still actively married to your dad because kids came before and after you. It wasn't an extramarital experience.
11:20 Speaker 02 There was a separation. She was only 21 when I was born.
11:23 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
11:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, she's horny.
11:25 Speaker 01 Of course.
11:26 Speaker 02 Very young, very much haven't figured out life yet.
11:29 Dax Shepard? Now, did your dad know?
11:30 Speaker 02 There's a little bit of some drama here. My mom says that he knew, but when I went and talked to him, because really I wanted to thank him for knowing that I wasn't his biologically, but still raising me the same as my sisters, never treated me any differently. He got really emotional when I had the conversation with him because he said he really didn't know, that she had sort of alluded to it once, but then took it back and never brought it up again.
11:53 Dax Shepard? I gotta really work through, if I found out Delta wasn't biologically my daughter, obviously I couldn't love her less.
12:03 Speaker 01 Exactly.
12:03 Dax Shepard? Nothing there would happen, but would I have any heartbreak that I have nothing to do with that magic?
12:09 Speaker 01 Oh, see, that's your ego.
12:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
12:11 Speaker 01 I would feel deceived, not by the kid, but by the partner.
12:15 Dax Shepard? The sexual partner.
12:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:17 Dax Shepard? You know, I just adore her so much. I don't think I'd really give a shit.
12:20 Speaker 01 I don't think your feelings towards her would change at all.
12:23 Dax Shepard? Correct. And I almost think I would be grateful that Kristen had chosen what she did because I feel this way about her and I love it so much. And I think I would agree with the decision. But we're not divorced and your folks were divorced when you told them this?
12:39 Speaker 02 They were not together when I told them. And I'll tell you, my grandparents are actually who had the hardest time with it because I'm so close to them. And of course, this is my grandpa on my dad who raised me side. He will still find old pictures of distant relative family members that he thinks I resemble.
12:54 Speaker 01 Oh.
12:54 Dax Shepard? He's still living in another reality.
12:57 Speaker 01 That's okay.
12:58 Speaker 02 I love him. He's my pop off and that'll never change.
13:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:01 Dax Shepard? So did you go find Jim?
13:03 Speaker 02 I found him. I got to. Give my younger sister a little surprise. I didn't actually mean to tell her in that way. I just messaged her to ask her for her dad's contact info and I didn't give her a reason why. And she joked back to me and said, why are you my long lost sister?
13:20 Dax Shepard? Oh my God, the cliches are coming through. Yeah.
13:24 Speaker 01 Careful what you joke about.
13:26 Speaker 02 I did get to meet him and kind of hear about his family history and very pleasant guy. But my life worked out the exact way it was supposed to because he even said he wouldn't have been in a place to be a really great father for me at that time in his life. So it really worked out.
13:41 Dax Shepard? Well, you have a great attitude about all this. You just took it as I was validated. I knew. So it's a victory and I don't feel sad about it.
13:48 Speaker 02 I appreciate that. Now I know there's a history of breast cancer in the family. Never knew that before. So these are good things to know.
13:55 Speaker 01 That's true. Thanks for sharing that.
13:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that was great, April.
13:58 Speaker 02 Of course. Thank you guys so much for having me. Would it be okay? Can I take a picture of us?
14:02 Dax Shepard? Of course.
14:03 Speaker 01 I'm gonna look in the camera.
14:05 Dax Shepard? And I'm gonna flex. I'm not really, but a little bit.
14:08 Speaker 02 All right, everybody. Stay G.
14:09 Dax Shepard? Wonderful.
14:10 Speaker 01 So nice to meet you.
14:11 Dax Shepard? Good luck with the rest of your week of teaching.
14:13 Speaker 02 Thank you so much.
14:14 Dax Shepard? Bye bye.
14:17 Speaker 01 What a nice woman. So good person for that to happen to because that could really take someone down.
14:23 Dax Shepard? Yep.
14:23 Speaker 01 I would have a very hard time with that. Luckily, I look like my parents almost exactly.
14:29 Dax Shepard? You know, I know enough to know I don't really know how I'd feel about it, but certainly when I think about it, it wouldn't bother me either.
14:34 Speaker 01 I wouldn't be mad at anyone, but I would feel untethered. I don't even know who I really am.
14:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but you and I both are so identical to our dads and that's the only one you can find out.
14:47 Speaker 01 My dad.
14:47 Dax Shepard? Then your mother has a type. Because she obviously fucked a guy that was identical to your dad. And same with my mom. That means she fucked my grandpa or something.
14:56 Speaker 01 Ew.
14:57 Dax Shepard? Well, I'm just saying, I'm such a shepherd. It's insane.
15:00 Speaker 01 But I just think then that would be very telling for nurture. Obviously, they are my. Parents, so none of this is helpful. So not going with it, my parents. Also, I just read something recently that made me upset. It's a ding ding ding to this. Green eyes are the most rare.
15:16 Dax Shepard? You didn't know that?
15:17 Speaker 01 I just wanted it then.
15:18 Dax Shepard? My mom has green eyes.
15:20 Speaker 01 I want it.
15:21 Dax Shepard? Okay, I'll ask her, I guess.
15:23 Speaker 01 Can you check with her on how she did that? You could have had them.
15:26 Dax Shepard? I think I'm right about that eye thing.
15:28 Speaker 01 You're right.
15:28 Dax Shepard? You have to have both recessive. You can only pass on a recessive.
15:32 Speaker 01 Cause they both have little Rs.
15:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, little bees.
15:35 Speaker 01 I like Rs.
15:36 Dax Shepard? I think there are more genes than just one to determine eye color. So I think it was given to us a little simplistically.
15:43 Speaker 01 I think so too, but that was so fun, making those little squares.
15:48 Dax Shepard? Hi, can you hear us?
15:50 Speaker 03 I can hear you. Can you hear me?
15:51 Dax Shepard? Beautifully. What name are we gonna use for you?
15:54 Speaker 03 I couldn't decide. Honestly, everything felt silly. So whatever you guys want.
15:58 Dax Shepard? Okay, you ready for a wild one?
16:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:01 Dax Shepard? Brooklyn.
16:02 Speaker 01 I get it.
16:03 Dax Shepard? Doesn't she look like a Brooklyn?
16:05 Speaker 03 Oh, I like it.
16:05 Dax Shepard? You have a candle. You've set the scene.
16:07 Speaker 01 This looks like a spa.
16:08 Dax Shepard? Are you just out of a treatment? Are you just out of a Swedish or a deep dish?
16:12 Speaker 03 I really wish.
16:13 Dax Shepard? Are you allowed to tell us what part of the country you're in, Brooklyn, even though we're using a fake name?
16:17 Speaker 03 I am in New Jersey.
16:19 Speaker 01 Almost Brooklyn.
16:20 Speaker 03 Which is super weird because I kept getting Cedar Point ads today. I don't know if it has anything to do with you, but I live nowhere near there.
16:27 Speaker 01 It definitely has to do with.
16:29 Dax Shepard? Well, you're probably six hours away. Worth the drive, in my opinion.
16:35 Speaker 01 Oh my God, do not do that. Just go to your nearest Six Flags. There's one close.
16:39 Dax Shepard? Someone wrote in the comments, they didn't acquire Cedar Point, they merged and the current CEO is the CEO of Cedar Point.
16:47 Speaker 01 It's Six Flags over Cedar Point.
16:49 Dax Shepard? Everyone shut your mouth. Okay, sorry, Brooklyn. Okay, so you're in New Jersey and you have a tasty DNA story because you don't want to use your real name.
16:57 Speaker 03 Yes. Just to set the scene, my parents met when they were 13. They had me when they were 21, my sister when they were 24. So they were always the cool, young parents. And everyone was always like, oh my God, your parents are still together. They're so young. So fast forward 2019 and my dad was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis.
17:17 Dax Shepard? What on earth is that?
17:18 Speaker 03 It is an autoimmune disease that essentially fuses your spine together. So it's super painful. It's not anything that's curable. So at that time, he was going to a lot of doctor's appointments. The day after Christmas in 2019, we knew he had a doctor's appointment. I'm home, I'm cleaning up after Christmas and dad calls. And he says, I need you to come to the house right now. I was like, okay, is everything okay? I don't want to talk about it, just come over. I immediately called my sister, I said, did dad call you? And she said, yeah, what the hell's going on? I said, I don't know, I'm on my way. In my head, dad's dying of cancer. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was supposed to be at the doctor. I am near tears. This is that kind of talk.
18:00 Speaker 03 So I get to the house, they're not crying, but my mom, you could tell she has been crying. So we sit down and say, what is going on with you guys? And my dad said, me and your mom were out today, we were on the way to the doctor and your brother reached out to us on Facebook.
18:18 Dax Shepard? Excuse me?
18:19 Speaker 03 So he starts telling us the story when they were 15. My mom got pregnant.
18:27 Speaker 03 She just hoped it would go away and it didn't.
18:30 Dax Shepard? They tend not to.
18:32 Speaker 03 That's the problem with those.
18:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:34 Speaker 03 They're kind of permanent.
18:35 Dax Shepard? Hard to get half pregnant.
18:45 Dax Shepard? We get support from No Bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.
18:55 Speaker 01 That's when you really need to ground yourself.
18:58 Dax Shepard? Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole No Bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex and the Drive Two. I like the Drive Two because it's a hybrid. And I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called Box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping on the little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.
19:35 Speaker 01 And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.
19:39 Dax Shepard? And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.
19:47 Speaker 01 They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines. And it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of the closet.
19:56 Dax Shepard? Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week.
20:05 Speaker 04 With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Steven, Brandon and Bruno, the business owners of Sand Cloud, reinvested their 2% cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at capitalone.com/sparkcashplus. Terms apply.
20:33 Speaker 05 Confidence, it's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life, the power of promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska. And in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.
21:11 Speaker 03 So she has my brother. They essentially take him away. She doesn't get to see him, doesn't get to hold him. Does not know where he's going. So this is my full biological brother from both of my parents.
21:26 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
21:27 Dax Shepard? Wow, and he's older than you.
21:29 Speaker 01 Crazy.
21:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, so he's six years older than me. And so my parents are looking at us like, we are so sorry. I know we should have told you, but we never thought we'd ever see him again, but we knew they did twenty-three in Maine. But we kind of just thought it was like for fun, not knowing they were looking for my brother. But the funniest part about it is I wasn't upset because I was just so glad my dad wasn't dying.
21:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
21:52 Speaker 03 All I could think about was like, oh, my God, it's just a brother. It's really not that big of a deal, guys.
21:57 Dax Shepard? It's a bonus, but I can definitely imagine for your parents, as I would get older and have kids and have this experience with my kids, it would retroactively make me go like, oh, my goodness, our child's out there. We must see that child.
22:13 Speaker 01 Also, if this really was you, let's say it's you.
22:15 Dax Shepard? It's me.
22:16 Speaker 01 Can you imagine the kind of guilt because your life is really good and your children's lives are really good? And to think, well, what happened to that kid? And what if they didn't end up in as good of a situation? That's a lot.
22:28 Dax Shepard? I'm not shocked they were looking.
22:30 Speaker 03 I think for them to hold on to that so much, you know, if somebody asks, oh, is this your oldest? And in your head, you're like, yeah. I was twenty-eight when we found out, so that was a really long time for them to hold on to that. So we end up meeting my brother. It was right before COVID happens. We found out that he was married to his high school sweetheart and had an eight-year-old son.
22:53 Dax Shepard? Just like mom and dad.
22:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:55 Speaker 03 But so the weirdest part of it all is how often our paths really crossed throughout all of our lives. He was adopted by a family that's fifteen minutes down the road from where I grew up. His adoptive mother was a beauty queen and his father was the mayor of this New Jersey town that I lived in.
23:14 Dax Shepard? Wow.
23:14 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
23:16 Speaker 03 They had two biological daughters before him and then adopted him. Him and I commuted to Manhattan on the same trains all the time. We have the same stories of being stranded because of train delays in the same places at the same time. My mom's cousins knew his sisters in high school.
23:35 Dax Shepard? Listen, you're lucky you never dated them. That's really. This is the most important part.
23:41 Speaker 03 That's why this stuff gets tricky.
23:44 Dax Shepard? Cause you would meet them and you would feel this crazy familial thing that you would not chalk up to that. And it would be very confusing.
23:52 Speaker 03 Exactly. My brother's a good looking, successful guy. Is he single? No, still married. Oh, yeah. I forgot his high school sweetheart. Damn it.
24:02 Dax Shepard? Get her out of the picture.
24:03 Speaker 03 His brother in law lived a couple of houses down from me in the same town. Oh, my God. This is bizarre. But your parents didn't know that? No, they didn't know any of that. And that's what's so strange. But there's pictures of my brother in the newspaper with his dad. My parents have probably looked at those pictures, not really knowing it was him.
24:22 Dax Shepard? Well, it's really great news that he ended up with a wonderful family.
24:27 Speaker 03 Yes. Totally. And then for him to reach out to us and see my parents are still together. I mean, he got two more sisters.
24:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he's like, I'm good on the sisters. Is there a cool brother I can hang with? So have you guys become close?
24:41 Speaker 03 He was in my wedding. We've all gotten super close. We've gone on vacations with his in-laws. Oh, this is lovely. You can see my mom feels complete. Yeah.
24:52 Dax Shepard? And do they have a sweet relationship?
24:54 Speaker 03 Oh, my gosh. Yeah. My mom is like constantly stealing her grandson to babysit. She annoys them all the time, the same way she annoys me.
25:01 Dax Shepard? And do his adoptive parents feel at all threatened by any of this? Or they're totally cool with it?
25:06 Speaker 03 They were totally cool with it. His adoptive mom lives in Florida now, so she's not local anymore. And his dad did pass away. But his sisters have reached out to me. They messaged me on Instagram and they could not be any sweeter. So it was really a wild, cool thing.
25:19 Dax Shepard? Big win.
25:20 Speaker 03 This is.
25:21 Dax Shepard? Really glad you didn't date. Just really keep coming back to this.
25:27 Speaker 03 Considering he's like a full brother too.
25:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:30 Speaker 03 It'd be really bad.
25:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, that'd be real, real bad.
25:34 Speaker 03 Maybe do 23andMe before dating anybody.
25:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah, let's do it in your teen years.
25:40 Speaker 01 I'm scared to find stuff out on there, though. It's hard to find a partner. If I really fell in love with someone, I would not want to find out they were my full brother.
25:49 Dax Shepard? It's better to not know that.
25:50 Speaker 01 I just don't want to know.
25:51 Dax Shepard? That's right. Just have a child that's a cyclops and then ask yourself, why'd that happen?
25:56 Speaker 01 Worth it.
25:57 Dax Shepard? Oh, well, Brooklyn, that was kind of an uplifting story.
26:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I liked that a lot.
26:01 Dax Shepard? Life-affirming.
26:02 Speaker 03 Well, and thank you, guys, for everything you do. You guys are not just my favorite podcast. You're actually the only podcast that I will listen to.
26:09 Dax Shepard? Good. Don't stray. We don't know how we'll hold up to competition.
26:12 Speaker 03 All the others are either too light, too dark. You guys really just kind of fit right in the middle.
26:17 Dax Shepard? Thank you. We aim to. Delightful meeting you, for real.
26:21 Speaker 03 All right. Thank you, guys, so much.
26:22 Dax Shepard? All right. Take care.
26:24 Speaker 01 These are surprisingly happy stories.
26:27 Dax Shepard? I know. I'm kind of relieved.
26:28 Speaker 01 Me, too. But I want some bad ones.
26:30 Dax Shepard? How could they even go bad? They're always gonna probably be this, right?
26:34 Speaker 01 Well, it could have gone incest.
26:36 Dax Shepard? Can only hope.
26:37 Speaker 06 Well, you got a twofer coming up next.
26:39 Speaker 01 What's that mean?
26:40 Dax Shepard? Oh, two people. Wow, this is a first.
26:42 Speaker 01 Oh, this is exciting. I'm nervous.
26:44 Dax Shepard? I'm butterflies.
26:45 Speaker 01 I was gonna say something.
26:47 Dax Shepard? Something gorgeous. Dating your brother. What if you found out you weren't related to your brother and then started dating him?
26:51 Speaker 01 Oh, like, oh, my God, this is the best news? I've always been so attracted to you and I haven't been able to figure it out.
27:00 Dax Shepard? That would be a story, is that siblings found out they weren't siblings and promptly started dating.
27:05 Speaker 01 But really, we know that's not gonna happen, because the pheromone exchange.
27:09 Dax Shepard? Yes, you mapped each other's stank.
27:12 Speaker 01 And stuff. Ew.
27:15 Speaker 01 Hello?
27:16 Dax Shepard? Hi. Hi. Is this big A, little a, R O N? It is. Aaron, you'll be our first dual caller. Is there Jessica also joining us?
27:27 Speaker 07 She'll be here momentarily.
27:28 Speaker 08 Okay, exciting.
27:30 Dax Shepard? Now, this cool painting behind you, there's a butterfly and airplane and it looks to be flying over like Mexico City or something. What's happening in this photo?
27:38 Speaker 07 Jess put that together. It's kind of a collage. She'll have to tell you the story of that.
27:43 Dax Shepard? Okay, a lot is riding on Jess's appearance.
27:47 Speaker 07 She's the more charismatic of the two of us.
27:50 Dax Shepard? Well, don't sell yourself short, Aaron. Where are you guys at?
27:54 Speaker 07 We're on Vashon Island, Washington State.
27:58 Dax Shepard? Okay, Jessica has joined us. Jessica, the painting collage, what city are that butterfly and that airplane above?
28:05 Speaker 08 Oh, he's facing the wrong way. Okay.
28:09 Speaker 08 Absolutely nothing. That is actually a painting I did in college over a very ugly palm tree from one of those mall furniture decorating stores that you go to in grad school and you're like, sure, this is four feet by two. It's gonna take up the whole room and it's gonna cost $39.
28:28 Speaker 08 So I've just dragged that thing around for years.
28:30 Dax Shepard? What is the relationship here between you and Aaron?
28:33 Speaker 07 Well, we're gonna tell you that-
28:34 Speaker 08 Oh, this is gonna come up.
28:35 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay, okay, okay.
28:37 Speaker 08 Let's jump in. We need to know.
28:38 Speaker 07 Technical matter. Jess, did you start recording?
28:41 Speaker 08 I'm doing it as we speak.
28:42 Dax Shepard? This is such a couple already though, because she's like, you're facing the wrong way, and then he's in charge of tech.
28:49 Speaker 07 If I have it facing the window, it's usually just like a bright white nothing.
28:54 Speaker 07 Alright, so I've been selected to start the story. So it's 1984. I'm 28 and let's say I'm between things. I've recently returned from a year of teaching English in the Canary Islands. Instead of staying in paradise for some dumb reason, I come back to the US and then don't know what to do with myself. So I move into my mom's basement and start driving a taxi. I also start dating a German woman, Kirsten, and it gets kind of serious, but then she goes back to Germany for work. We decide, however, to keep dating and have a long-distance relationship. Then one day in the local newspaper, I see an employment ad seeking sperm donors to help infertile couples. Okay.
29:38 Speaker 07 It turns out that infertile couples means lesbian couples about 95% of the time, but I only learned that much, much later. Since Kirsten and I are being monogamous, this jerk-off job, as it were, seems both like easy money and a good outlet for my sperm. I get hired and I wind up donating. They pay me, so I don't know why they refer to it that way, but I wind up donating about twice a week for a year.
30:03 Dax Shepard? Oh, so 104 trips.
30:06 Speaker 07 Probably a little less than that.
30:08 Dax Shepard? I tried to do this at UCLA because they were paying good money for UCLA sperm. And I went in and did a deposit and then they said, your sperm count isn't high enough.
30:18 Speaker 07 Too low.
30:19 Dax Shepard? So you're more virile. You're more manly than I was.
30:22 Speaker 07 My condolences.
30:25 Dax Shepard? Were they looking for a cab driver living in mom's basement when they?
30:30 Speaker 07 Despite that career profile, I went to Johns Hopkins, so maybe that helped. That definitely helps. Okay, so at this end of this year of donating sperm, I moved to Germany to be with Kirsten. That relationship doesn't last too long, but in any case, I go on with my life and I don't give the sperm donation much thought. I'd signed a mutual confidentiality agreement with a sperm bank and DNA testing doesn't exist yet, so I just assumed I'd never learn anything about any children born. I don't ever get involved in a serious relationship and have children the standard way. So fast forward 30 years to 2016 and I begin to see ads for 23andMe. I immediately understand that if I get a DNA test, I might be able to find my progeny and I'm intrigued.
31:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
31:16 Speaker 07 But I procrastinate signing up for about a year. But finally, I order the test, spit in the test tube and mail it off. Having no idea what the odds of finding any of the children are. A few weeks later, I get the results back.
31:28 Dax Shepard? Hold on one second. I do want to ask, when you spit in the test tube, what would have been your guess of how many kids resulted from these 100 plus or minus trips?
31:39 Speaker 07 I did do like a kind of back of the napkin calculation based on odds of conception. It seemed like 60 to 70 children might be possible.
31:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, this is wild already. Okay.
31:54 Speaker 07 So I get the results back and find exactly one child, a son named Bryce, age 20, who lives in New York. I was in Pennsylvania at the time. I see this result and I'm like, yikes, what do I do now? I spend about a week thinking about what to write to him. And he's also on 23andMe, so I wonder if he's noticed me or been notified about my existence. And I wonder if I'm failing some sort of unwritten DNA test results getting etiquette. I write to Bryce and let him know that I'm interested in connecting. I tell him a little bit about myself. He writes back to me in about five minutes flat and he writes back with an email that starts,
32:33 Speaker 07 dad, exclamation point, which is really alarming because I'm wondering what expectations does this guy have of me? But it turns out he's just joking around and having fun.
32:44 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay. He's got your sense of humor.
32:46 Speaker 07 Very smart and funny. We make a positive connection and pretty soon he connects me with another of my kids, Maddie, who's also about 20, a daughter who he found through a different service. In fact, he's found in total five other children, so I immediately go from one to six. Except for Bryce and Maddie, all the other ones are younger. They don't really come into this story. Bryce and Maddie and I wind up corresponding with each other. We have like a Facebook chat going. We get to know each other a bit. We exchange life stories and pictures. Our resemblance to each other is pretty striking. There was no doubt that the results were accurate. But they are young college students in their twenties. They have other things going on in their lives.
33:29 Speaker 07 So after not too long, things go dormant and, you know, we occasionally like each other's Facebook posts. A few months pass and then in early 2017, I get a kind of confusing message through 23andMe from a daughter named Alice, aged 11, but really it's her mother Jessica that's writing.
33:50 Speaker 07 And this seems like a good place to bring Jethion to tell her side of the backstory.
33:54 Speaker 08 Okay. Yeah, that's me.
34:15 Speaker 08 So my backstory is a long, long time ago, I was married to a woman and we had two daughters using an anonymous sperm donor. I carried the first and she carried our youngest and we used a sperm bank randomly. Our gynecologist was like, I'm registered at this bank. So we picked a donor. We had sperm shipped overnight. It comes in like a giant helium tank on dry ice. You put on gloves and you lift out this little smoking, half a chapstick cap of sperm. Oh, wow. Okay. We went through that entire process and had our first daughter, Alice. You have your first baby, you're over the moon. You're like, she's obviously perfect. Let's replicate her. So we used the same donor again and had our youngest daughter. And by the time
35:00 Speaker 08 Alice was 11, I was divorced and I was dating a man who coincidentally is also named Aaron David, like Aaron here.
35:08 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. That seems impossible.
35:11 Speaker 07 When he learned this, I was like, oh, they just made a mix up at the Bureau of Boyfriends.
35:17 Speaker 08 And Alice at the time was really, really sick of hearing her grandma talk about like, oh, we're from Kent, we're from Romania, we're from all these places. She knew I never knew my father. She obviously knew she grew up with two moms and an anonymous donor. And she was like, you know what? 75% of me is a mystery.
35:34 Dax Shepard? Why did you not know your dad?
35:35 Speaker 08 I just never did. It was the 70s. I had a single mom. It was not discussed in the Midwest and you didn't go looking because you're Midwestern, I guess.
35:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a secret.
35:47 Speaker 08 But Alice is Gen Z and has no such qualms. She just wanted the map of her countries. Being 11, she wasn't at the place that Bryce and Maddie as college students were. She wasn't like, who am I? Where do I come from? She was like, I know who I am. Eleven, I'm cool.
36:01 Speaker 07 Yeah.
36:01 Speaker 08 At the time, I'd never heard a DNA story of people finding adoptive parents. So she asks Grandma for this present for Christmas. Grandma is more than happy to provide. And six weeks later, we get the results and I click the DNA relatives tab and it's just father fifty percent shared DNA. My reaction was the same as Aaron's. You're like, what am I going to do about this now? He's probably getting a notification right now. The clock is ticking. I Googled, I did what anyone would do. I had no idea sperm banks had branches. So we had ordered from the DC area. So luckily he went to Johns Hopkins because I found a guy on LinkedIn, right age, the right degrees in the DC area.
36:43 Speaker 08 So I went to Facebook and he had all of his school pictures K to twelve. And I got chills at that moment. It was no doubt in my mind, here's my daughter with a nineteen sixties boy bowl haircut. I wrote him that confusing note and just said, hey, I'm the mom. I'm open to talking. Write me back if you want pics.
37:02 Speaker 07 Yeah.
37:03 Speaker 08 Yeah. Oh, wow. He wrote back. He'd already written a bio for Bryce and Maddie. So I read it to Alice and she wrote her own life story back to him, which was very short. But because she was eleven, me and Aaron started texting. We just both found it fascinating. We formed this friendship. Six months later, that summer, because Bryce and Maddie are college age, we all decide that we're going to meet in Seattle. And he threw a huge party on the roof of his place and we all came and I was cool with that, especially with such a young daughter that there were two other siblings there. It was not going to be a big deal. But we all decided we were going to spend basically two weeks together. And Aaron does this huge hippie fest in Eugene every summer.
37:44 Speaker 08 So we all pile in my car and we drive back down there and we go to this hippie fair. Instantly, Aaron and I were the parents in this scenario. We're throwing sandwiches to the backseat and do you have everything? Got to make sure everybody's happy.
37:57 Speaker 07 We're both playing parents and yet we are actually the biological parents of one of the kids.
38:02 Speaker 08 Eugene was where I was living at the time. He had been in a band in that area. He had commuted every weekend. We could have passed him and the girls in grocery stores. We had some one step removed people in common. So weird how close our paths had always been to crossing. So during that trip, we took a walk one night just to be alone and talk and sort of have our first date. And it was like the wildest first date I've ever been on because we went to a cemetery by my house because all the kids are back in the house.
38:28 Dax Shepard? You're on your first date, but you already have a child that's 11 years old.
38:31 Speaker 08 Yeah, right. And what happens on this first date is
38:33 Speaker 07 That's a good icebreaker.
38:34 Speaker 08 That most of it telling him what our, in quotes, daughters are like.
38:39 Dax Shepard? Can I ask quickly how your ex-wife felt about you connecting with Aaron?
38:45 Speaker 08 Ex-wife was not in the picture at that point, but I can tell you for sure she would not have been supportive.
38:50 Dax Shepard? I got you. Okay.
38:51 Speaker 08 I'm a little bit more open about that kind of thing. We went on this whole trip together. We kind of played family. So we came back to Seattle with him and we started dating and the rest is history. It kind of progressed from there. You know, I met and got together with my daughter's bio dad 12 years after she was born.
39:08 Dax Shepard? Wow. So how long have you guys been together now?
39:11 Speaker 08 Since 2016. So like, yeah, nine at this point. Alice is in college.
39:15 Dax Shepard? Wow. Oh, my God. So you ended up, Aaron, raising your daughter from 11 on?
39:22 Speaker 07 Only sort of. Alice should probably be here to speak for herself, but she has never considered me to be her father, her other moms, her other parents, even if a parent hasn't been so great to her recently.
39:34 Speaker 08 I think Alice would double down on that and be like, that is why we cannot let her off the hook because gay family is family. She was just like, my mom's already out of the picture and that really hurts. I'm not ready to pull someone else into that and risk that again.
39:48 Dax Shepard? And from what you've already told me about her personality, it's on brand.
39:52 Speaker 08 It's definitely on brand for her and it felt a lot safer for me. I tried to Google this and no one else on the internet had been in this situation before. There was no answer to, how do I date my kid's dad?
40:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
40:03 Speaker 08 I tried to be a good mom about this and it felt better because I knew that she wasn't just gonna like run into his arms and then it was gonna end and I was gonna be The worst mom on the planet.
40:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.
40:16 Speaker 08 Wow.
40:17 Dax Shepard? What about the younger daughter?
40:19 Speaker 08 My youngest daughter, what actually happened to estrange my wife and me is she withheld that daughter and abandoned Alice. So Alice hasn't seen her sibling in that amount of time either. Alice is completely adamant that this child is not her sibling just because it's Aaron's. It's not like Maddie is now substitute sister or is as much sister. We've kind of come full circle, like love definitely makes a family, but biology also can make some sort of family too. And both are not the whole enchilada and both are not nothing either. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah.
40:50 Dax Shepard? Well, this might surprise you that the most shocking part of this whole story to me is that they keep the sperm for so long. I would have thought I either had kids in that window of time I was jerking off at the place.
41:02 Speaker 08 Yeah.
41:03 Dax Shepard? I would not think there could be a 20 year span.
41:06 Speaker 08 I actually found him because one of the vials they sent me had a date on it, you know, January 1994. And I was like, 94? I graduated high school in 94. It's 2004 when I'm trying to get pregnant. And I was like, he already had a masters by 94. Okay, here's his age. Let's start Googling. Right, right. I did not expect that that was 10 year old sperm.
41:26 Speaker 07 They sold you expired sperm.
41:28 Speaker 08 I got expired sperm, man. Wow, what a story.
41:33 Dax Shepard? What a story.
41:34 Speaker 07 We are now aware of, I believe, 22 of my children.
41:38 Speaker 08 Okay.
41:38 Dax Shepard? 22.
41:39 Speaker 08 Wow. I have a spreadsheet.
41:41 Speaker 07 I've only met four.
41:43 Dax Shepard? Does it stress you out at all?
41:45 Speaker 07 No. Whenever I discover one, I write them an email and tell them a little bit about myself and say, I'm open to connection, though strangely, other than Bryce and Maddie and one other, Emily, who happens to live near us. I guess we had a Zoom meeting with one family of three, but. Most of them just haven't been that interested.
42:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:05 Dax Shepard? Right. Wow, this is a wild story.
42:08 Speaker 01 This really is. This is the most interesting meet cute I've ever heard.
42:13 Dax Shepard? Absolutely.
42:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:14 Speaker 07 After my piece was published in the New York Times and Jess also had a piece published by the BBC, we did get some movie interest.
42:22 Speaker 01 Uh huh, I could see that.
42:24 Speaker 07 Game of it.
42:25 Speaker 08 I think the problem is there's not an obstacle in our story at all.
42:29 Speaker 07 They would have to invent that.
42:30 Speaker 01 Sure.
42:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah, well, we're good at that.
42:31 Speaker 01 Creative license, that's allowed.
42:33 Dax Shepard? We know how to do that. Well, you guys, this was delightful. What an interesting story. What's the name of the New York Times piece and the BBC piece in case people want to read it? I think that might interest people.
42:42 Speaker 08 No idea, but his New York Times, I mean, that's kind of how it got out. He wanted to write a modern love with his creative writing degree on it. So there's a modern love that's like, am I in a chromosomally arrayed relationship?
42:55 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's a clever title.
42:56 Speaker 07 Right, that's not the title, though. It is the modern love column and the title is First I Met My Children, Then My Girlfriend, They're Related.
43:05 Speaker 01 Oh, that's nice. I like that.
43:08 Dax Shepard? It's tasty. Okay. I like your title, though, a lot, Jessica. I don't know if that was a first draft.
43:12 Speaker 08 That might be the subtitle on it.
43:14 Dax Shepard? Well, wonderful meeting both of you. Thank you for telling us that story.
43:17 Speaker 01 Doing it this way. This was fun to have both of you.
43:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you laid it out beautifully.
43:20 Speaker 08 Thank you so much for having us.
43:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, take care.
43:23 Speaker 07 Bye.
43:25 Speaker 01 Wow, meet cutler.
43:28 Dax Shepard? I guess that sperm stays good for a fucking goat's age, huh?
43:31 Speaker 01 But it worked out.
43:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's great.
43:33 Speaker 01 Alice.
43:35 Dax Shepard? Taylor, can you hear us?
43:37 Speaker 09 Yeah, I'm sick, so I'm sorry. My voice is all.
43:39 Dax Shepard? You're gonna have to get healthy before we can talk to you. You're gonna have to call us back.
43:43 Speaker 09 I had some cold. I thought it went away. Now it's back.
43:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, these colds.
43:47 Dax Shepard? These are the new colds. They're for three months. That's just how fucking colds are now.
43:51 Speaker 09 Apparently.
43:52 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you have a wild DNA story.
43:54 Speaker 09 I do. I'm a twin. We are the babies of seven. About six, they divorced and my dad moved out with his friend girl. Went to another state and kind of left my mom to raise all of us.
44:05 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
44:06 Speaker 09 He made it really clear that he had left. When I was about 16, she was completely over me and my shit. And so she booted me out here to live with him, just me, left everybody back where they were.
44:16 Speaker 01 What about the twins?
44:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and are you guys identical or fraternal?
44:19 Speaker 09 It's a boy, so he stayed back. We were freshmen in high school, but I was a pain in the ass. I have a 17 year old right now and like, God bless her.
44:28 Dax Shepard? I know I'm caught between. So my brother was really, really challenging. And now that I think of his story and I write about it, I realize he really needed someone that had a lot of capacity to help. I just feel bad for both people in the story. Like I feel bad for my mom and I felt bad for my brother. So you probably needed a lot of help.
44:47 Speaker 09 I am so blessed by my children that I'm like, how did you do it? And she's like, I sent you.
44:52 Dax Shepard? I didn't.
44:54 Speaker 09 So she sent me here and I was nice and sassy and I was like, you know what? Why'd you leave? Like, what's your problem? Was she worth it? And he's like, wasn't the only one. For all I know, you're some Jack guys, baby.
45:05 Dax Shepard? Oh.
45:06 Speaker 09 I understood that this Jack guy was like a colleague of my mom's. I'd heard the name, but I'm like, you're deflecting. You're just trying to take the attention off what you're doing. I was very much not here for it.
45:15 Dax Shepard? Also, Jack guy sounds like a term, like a certain kind of guy, like he works at.
45:19 Speaker 01 Guy.
45:20 Dax Shepard? Well, that would be great, but I was thinking more like he works at a mechanic shop, like he's jacking up cars or like a jack jockey.
45:25 Speaker 09 Different industries for sure. But yeah, fair enough. He didn't harp on it. He never really had a lot of nasty things to say about my mom. He was always very kind. He's like, she loves you. But he was tired of being the only one taking the blame. And he kind of wanted to get his story out there, but then we didn't talk about it again.
45:40 Dax Shepard? And did he and the friend girl have any children?
45:42 Speaker 09 No, that happened for about a year. And then after I had my third son, my mom mailed me my baby book. And the baby book had all these like cards and crap in it. And in it, there was a literal Western Union telegram, yellow with the tear on it and everything that said, congratulations on the twins. I'm so happy. Jack.
46:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay. This is curious. Yeah.
46:04 Speaker 09 A little curious. I tried digging and I can't find anything and I just move on. So a couple of years later, me and my twin decided we were both going to try ancestry and 23andMe. We wanted to prove that they were full of it. And everyone said the origins are off. We weren't really doing it for DNA purposes. We were just trying to play with it. And we were kind of right, like his came up a little bit Irish and mine came up a little Scottish. And then the rest of it was just Eastern European. Didn't think anything of it. 2022, I got back in this Jack fix and I was like, I'm going to figure this out. So I started digging through 23andMe, which had matches that were like fifth cousin nonsense. So I was bored. So I was like, I'll log into my brother's ancestry because he would have different matches. And sure as shit, I open up, it says, parent, child, match, my brother and Jack.
46:48 Dax Shepard? Hold on a second.
46:48 Speaker 09 Why didn't yours say that? Jack only did ancestry. Oh, you did different ones?
46:53 Dax Shepard? They divided and conquered.
46:54 Speaker 09 Oh. I don't like to blow up my family over nothing. So I'm like, I'm gonna do my own ancestry because I had done 23 so that I can catch my breath.
47:01 Dax Shepard? You told your brother, obviously. He already knew.
47:04 Speaker 09 Not at this point.
47:04 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow, okay.
47:06 Speaker 09 We don't live in the same state anymore, so I just let it be. And I didn't know how to process, you know, that's a lot.
47:10 Dax Shepard? This is a fucking mess.
47:12 Speaker 09 I do my own, ironically, Father's Day is the day I get mine back. I open it up and there is no Jack to be found. And it says that me and my twin brother are half siblings.
47:22 Dax Shepard? Wow.
47:23 Speaker 09 It's called super feet on case. I don't know how to say it. No. It's very, very rare. There's like 10 cases in all of America.
47:29 Dax Shepard? Whoa. Wow. So your mother was carrying two different people's child?
47:36 Speaker 09 Isn't that wild? At literally the exact same time.
47:39 Dax Shepard? Yes.
47:41 Speaker 09 I'm upset. Don't even know how to tell my brother that he's the only one of us seven that's not.
47:45 Dax Shepard? Well, do you know, though, the other fives, have they done ancestry?
47:50 Speaker 09 None of them have.
47:51 Dax Shepard? We don't know how much Jack was in or out of the picture.
47:54 Speaker 09 My dad has got black hair and blue eyes and my twin is the tallest out of everybody. He's like 6'1". I'm 4'11" and he's blonder and so is Jack after doing lots and lots of fun research. So then I decided to go crazy on my ancestry and connect some more dots and just try to make sense of it. And I couldn't, I couldn't connect any more dots. So they have these things called DNA angels. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but like huge shout out to them. They do it for free. They'll log into your ancestry and they'll help you connect some dots from fifth cousins all the way down to like maybe who your grandfather's father was. So I call them, I'm like, help me. So she logs in and about 10 hours later, she calls me and she's like, I'm really sorry, but you're not your dad's either. What?
48:34 Dax Shepard? Oh, plot fucking twist.
48:40 Speaker 09 Stop it. Stop. She's like, it's one of these three men, they're all brothers, they connect to a grandfather that my DNA connected to.
48:46 Dax Shepard? Mom was busy.
48:47 Speaker 09 She sure was. U S Y busy. So I just started at the top of the three men. He's the oldest out of all of them, closest to my mom's age. His name is James. And about two hours into researching, do I not land on a photo of Jack, James, my mom, all at a conference the year of my birth? I mean, there's like 10 of them, but those three were in the middle. It's like my mom was in the middle and Jack and James. And I continued to find out Jack was the president of this company and they were the trustees.
49:17 Dax Shepard? Okay, now hold on.
49:18 Speaker 09 Was it a threesome? I ask that question a lot. I've done so much investigating. The only thing I don't know is, do they take tur-? Right.
49:25 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes, it was one night and then the next night.
49:26 Speaker 09 Did she like go down to the bar after? Exactly, because it would have to be that fast.
49:32 Dax Shepard? There's a lot of permutations here.
49:33 Speaker 09 I think it was an orgy. Even if she hyperovulated, the studies show it has to be within a couple of days.
49:39 Dax Shepard? Okay, so have you discussed any of this with your mom?
49:42 Speaker 09 No, I haven't confronted her.
49:43 Dax Shepard? You haven't?
49:44 Speaker 09 I told my twin, which kind of like ruined our relationship. No. So he called Jack because I'm sitting on it for months. And then he comes out here for our birthdays and I'm like, so guess what? And he's like, Mom got Eiffel Towered. And I was like, that's not funny. What's that mean?
49:58 Dax Shepard? What does that mean? She knows a lot of code words.
50:00 Speaker 09 Just think about an Eiffel Tower.
50:01 Dax Shepard? Oh, oh, sure. Like a wobbly H, sawhorse. Yeah.
50:05 Speaker 09 I don't get it. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I do, I do. He calls this guy because I had this guy's phone number. Mind you, both these two men are married 50 years plus. So they were married to these women and they still are. He calls him and he's like, hey, guess we parent child matched on ancestry. And Jack's like, your mom and I agreed we'd never have any contact with you. So bye. Oh, my God.
50:25 Dax Shepard? Well, he's afraid.
50:27 Speaker 09 Sure. And I'm not out here to hurt him, but he could have been like, here's a few medical things you might need to know. Exactly. Minimally, I'm sorry that this happened.
50:33 Dax Shepard? Here's 5,000 bucks.
50:34 Speaker 09 Well, Jack had no kids.
50:35 Dax Shepard? Maybe he thought he was sterile.
50:37 Speaker 09 Well, he knew about us, though.
50:38 Dax Shepard? Oh, and he sent a telegram.
50:39 Speaker 09 But he doesn't probably know that I'm James's. He probably thinks he has me and my brother out there.
50:45 Dax Shepard? He's like, okay, I don't need to talk to you, but is your sister going to call? Because I need to tell her. I don't want to talk to her either.
50:50 Speaker 09 If her sister calls, it's going to be a longer conversation.
50:54 Speaker 09 He's not my dad, so I can't say anything to him. And then I looked up mine and he was once upon a time the Supreme Court Justice of a southern state. So I decided to leave that alone. Holy moly. And he's got kids and grandkids and I'm not ruining anyone's life. It doesn't change who I am. But are you like, what am I?
51:12 Dax Shepard? So yeah, what impact does this have? Because we've talked to some people today who have had this experience. And some of them are like, it doesn't matter. It's cool to know. And that's still my parent and I don't really care.
51:21 Speaker 09 Yeah, I went to a conference on it. They're called NPE, non-parental event or non-expected parent. And a lot of people are just crying like, the mailman's my dad and my mom lied my whole life and it's my identity. And I'm like, no, it's not. You are who you are. Your blood's blood. You know, I grew up with step siblings. My kids have had a stepdad. I don't identify with who was in the room that night. I identify with who I turned out to be and the people that cared to stay in my life. I have great relationships with people that are blood and that aren't.
51:45 Speaker 01 Yes.
51:46 Speaker 09 I'm bummed. And I can see why my mom always had just this undercover, I'm not so sure about her, get rid of her. She just didn't like me.
51:52 Dax Shepard? I can't imagine though, that she assumed the twins were from two different men, even though she had sex with two different people.
51:59 Speaker 01 There's no way.
52:01 Speaker 09 That would just not only spoil her, your dad left and cheated. Not only did he do that, but you doubled down. You know, and to tear down a woman in her late seventies, it's just like, what's the point? I told one of my sisters, the other sibs don't know, and she's like, you've got to tell her. And I'm like, no, I don't.
52:17 Speaker 01 I mean, the only reason I think to tell her is like, she is a medical marvel.
52:20 Dax Shepard? History.
52:21 Speaker 01 Literally. I mean, there probably is just 50 cases this has ever happened.
52:27 Speaker 09 Yeah, I think that they said in just America, there's 12. And then the other countries, there's more, but you don't have a lot of documentation on this. How many twins both do it? You just assume one's DNA is the other's.
52:38 Speaker 01 Wow.
52:40 Dax Shepard? This is twisty and turny.
52:42 Speaker 01 Growing up though, did you think you and your twin had twin abilities?
52:48 Dax Shepard? Well, they did share a mom.
52:49 Speaker 09 Right. And like, we shared a room and we shared a lot of time together. And I always thought we had this special bond.
52:55 Dax Shepard? Are you left-handed?
52:55 Speaker 09 No, my little boy is though.
52:57 Dax Shepard? Maybe he'll be president.
52:58 Speaker 01 Sure.
52:59 Dax Shepard? Over index.
53:02 Dax Shepard? What a story.
53:03 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
53:04 Dax Shepard? That's a barn burner.
53:06 Speaker 01 Thank you so much for sharing it.
53:08 Speaker 09 Yeah, you guys, it was super fun. I do need to give a shout out to one of my friends, Rebecca. She actually used your story to ask about dyslexia and she gives it to her students at the elementary school she teaches at. And she loves, loves, loves you guys. She got me interested in you guys' podcast.
53:21 Dax Shepard? Thank you, Rebecca.
53:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's lovely.
53:23 Dax Shepard? Shout out. Well, lovely meeting you.
53:25 Speaker 01 I'll be thinking about that one for a while. That one's gonna stick.
53:29 Dax Shepard? Yep.
53:30 Speaker 01 Have a great day.
53:31 Dax Shepard? Take care, feel better.
53:32 Speaker 09 Thank you. Bye.
53:35 Speaker 01 This one really got out of hand.
53:36 Dax Shepard? I feel like we need to do this again.
53:38 Speaker 01 I'm sweating.
53:39 Dax Shepard? Four for four. They also grew in intensity.
53:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:42 Dax Shepard? There was like a natural progression that felt scripted.
53:46 Speaker 01 Oh my god, bon ami.
53:47 Dax Shepard? Bon ami. Voix joie de vie. Fallé fou français, fairly me bouche.
53:53 Speaker 01 Are you gonna go look into your?
53:55 Dax Shepard? DNA. I feel like now I'm not anyone's, don't you? All those stories make you feel like, oh shit.
54:00 Speaker 01 Who are my, everyone?
54:01 Dax Shepard? Who am I?
54:02 Speaker 01 Who am I?
54:03 Dax Shepard? Who's my mom?
54:04 Speaker 01 Isn't that the book?
54:05 Dax Shepard? Are you my mommy has a great book? Are you my mom? Are you my mom?
54:09 Speaker 01 I thought it was, are you my mother?
54:11 Dax Shepard? It could be mother, but.
54:12 Speaker 06 It's mother.
54:13 Dax Shepard? Fuck.
54:14 Speaker 06 Sorry.
54:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's so formal.
54:17 Speaker 01 Sorry and thank you.
54:18 Dax Shepard? No wonder people said no. They're like, you're stuck up. I'm your mother. I'm your mom.
54:22 Speaker 01 Mother, if you didn't grow up with them, they're your mother.
54:26 Dax Shepard? The little bird asks a bulldozer if it's his mother. Are you my mother? It's a very sweet story. All right.
54:34 Speaker 01 I love you.
54:34 Dax Shepard? Love you.
54:37 Speaker 06 Do you want to sing a tune or something? We'll do a theme song.
54:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, a rhyme dish. On the fly, a rhyme dish. Enjoy.
Previous Alison Wood Brooks (on the science of conversation) Next Nikki Glaser Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated