In her new podcast, Everything’s Relative, writer and therapist Eve Sturges talks with individuals whose lives have been upended by DNA surprises.

She sits down, for example, with Joy, who was told at age 10 she had been donor conceived and who, growing up, had little if any interest in finding out about her birthfather. But when facts later emerged to demonstrate how much like him she was, she became driven to learn everything she could about him—a process she likened to dating—and thus developed a profound relationship with a man she’d never known, the birthfather who died many years earlier. As Sturges observed, Joy didn’t know she was missing pieces until the pieces fell into place.

And there’s Mesa, who, before learning that she was an NPE (not parent expected), had had a tumultuous childhood and already was no stranger to trauma. Her discovery triggered a bewildering identity crisis; suddenly she had a Hispanic heritage about which she knew nothing. Finding out that she had no connection to the family she’d grown up thinking were “her people” and wanting to connect with her biological family turned her life upside down. In situations such as these, Sturges observed, where NPEs reach out and connect with their biological families, they in some ways also must become disconnected from the families they’ve known.

One guest, who chose to remain anonymous, shared the heartache of learning that the birthfather he never knew had known about him and had always suspected that he was his father. And although “Anonymous” was able to meet a half-sister and learn about his deceased father, nothing could quite compensate him for all he’d lost. “I can’t hug him,” he said. “I can’t talk to him. I can’t look at him.”

Sturges doesn’t control the conversations, add narration, or overproduce. Rather than interview them formally, she lets them reveal their stories, prompting occasionally, chiming in from time to time, and— remember she’s a therapist—asking guests how the experiences make them feel. For the earliest episodes she found guests who lived in her Southern California locale and taped the podcasts in their homes, creating a casual, intimate atmosphere that gives listeners the impression they’re eavesdropping on a couple of friends chatting over a cup of coffee.

In these freewheeling talks, her guests let loose, acknowledging the gamut of emotions provoked by their NPE journeys. When the DNA discoveries were recent, the emotions can be raw, and when the guests have had some time to absorb, there’s reflection. Sturges and her podcast participants make no effort to tidy their thoughts or make them more palatable to those who may not understand. They say it as they feel it. These are conversations about shame, anger, betrayal, frustration, rage, grief, and even, sometimes, joy. There are tears and laughter, irreverence and profanity—all inspired by what’s described as the “mind fuck” that is the NPE experience.

Still in its first season, Everything’s Relative provides a community and platform from which NPEs and others affected by their discoveries can share their stories. People who’ve only recently learned of the change in their genetic identity may think their experiences are unique and feel extraordinarily isolated and lonely. Listening to the podcast, they quickly find they’re not alone, that their feelings and reactions are often much the same as those of other NPEs.

Sturges sums it up this way: Everything’s Relative is “where we talk about all the unexpected shit that happens when you mail in a DNA test.” And while that sounds lighthearted, these conversations fill an aching need and serve a serious purpose. As one guest said, “Listening to the podcast makes me feel normal.” It’s validating, she added, to know that someone else is going through the same craziness. Krista, an NPE and fellow therapist, tells Sturges, “The more we share our stories, the more we normalize them—as abnormal as they are—the easier it will be for those that come behind us.”

Here, Sturges talks about how the podcast came about and what she hopes it will achieve.Professionally I am holding back on the details of my story because—trust me, it’s a good story with at least one extremely interesting character—I’d like to explore different avenues of production resources to tell my story and I don’t want to give it all away just yet. It might be a book, a separate podcast, or a film project someday. I can’t give away all the spoilers in my first season!

My story isn’t over—my life is still happening, and the layers of this discovery are still unpeeling. There are very real and alive people involved, including the mom and dad that raised me, the siblings I grew up with, and the new siblings who have appeared. As I navigate my experience, I am also navigating a lot of relationships and different emotions and reactions from the people in my life. I’m approaching the details of my story delicately because I am giving the people I love a little bit of time to catch up and process their own experience within this journey.

I talk about this here and there in the podcast, but one of the challenges of this type of discovery is the time-consuming nature of it. I would love to visit my newfound siblings. I have a lot of questions for them! They live all over the country. Organizing a trip like that costs a lot of time and money, not to mention emotional resources and the logistical organizing of school and employment. I’m not in a place to drop everything as it is and dive deep into another world. I have three children, a husband, and an active professional and social life in Los Angeles. I struggle enough to find time for my everyday existence, let alone a whole new world of people and histories that I didn’t know about. I hope that doesn’t sound cold, but I have to take care of myself and my loved ones first.In spring 2018, a man reached out to my husband with details of my early life that were eerily specific. He claimed to believe he was my biological father. Having never questioned my paternity before, I figured the best thing to do was a DNA test. It confirmed that this man was correct. A whole history I had never known was revealed to me about my parents’ early 20s and the first years of their marriage.

This affected me in all of the ways that NPEs describe: I felt shocked, confused, angry, and dizzy. I understood the phrase “walking around in a daze” more than ever before. Nothing has changed and yet everything feels different. It’s affected my relationship with my parents the most deeply. We are all struggling to reconcile our different perspectives with one another. We have tried reasoning with one another by talking, fighting, emailing, letter writing, and lots of crying. Each of us has our own journey of grief to explore. Therapy is helping each of us individually. I like to think that our family love is stronger than this unexpected variable, but time will tell.My parents and siblings have always known about the podcast; they are supportive but not exactly enthusiastic. We have never seen eye-to-eye about what should or shouldn’t be kept private.It’s true. I have not yet tested with a mail-in kit like 23andMe or Ancestry. When the man who turned out to be my biological father contacted me, I arranged a test with a company that focuses on the legality of DNA and not so much the community-building. I went to a facility where a nurse roughly scrubbed the inside of my cheeks with Q-tips and shipped them to a lab for me. I received a letter in the mail confirming our relationship 99.9999%. I then did it again with the man who raised me, and the results were 0%.

I intend to do the tests soon, though. I want to learn more about the ins and outs of what people are talking about, and I also suspect there will be more surprises in my genetics and my heritage. It seems like the least I could do, considering my podcast!The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. I think the episodes offer intriguing stories to people who are not in the NPE world, and they offer solace to those who are. There’s no real way for me to know, but I like to think that these stories help listeners make their own decisions about how to handle an NPE reality.Every guest has thanked me for giving them the opportunity to tell their story. I think the “regular world” underestimates how much pressure there is to keep quiet about our experiences. Right now, almost everyone comes to an NPE discovery feeling isolated and confused. By participating in the movement to be seen and heard, my guests feel empowered. It feels good to be of service; they all express the hope that this project helps others feel less alone and less silenced.I strongly believe that sharing stories is a part of creating community, and a part of creating history.My biggest blind spot was the world of fertility clinics, sperm donation, and assumed anonymity. Episode five sheds some light on the subject, but I suspect it’s only the tip of the iceberg. I’m fascinated by the different players involved and the psychology behind each person’s actions. Another surprise has been the vast difference between each individual’s personal beliefs about the definition of family and what this new technology is doing to affect that. More than anything, everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere, but the ins and outs of how that feeling is achieved is different for everyone based on a plethora of factors.More than anything I think people are struggling with the dishonesty of their parents. I think this speaks to the overwhelming belief (or misbelief) that we know exactly who our parents are. Learning that there’s a lifetime of choices we weren’t previously aware of is unsettling. Parents are the first people to shape our world; some disruption of that shape is a normal part of growing up, individuating, and developing empathy. An NPE-type discovery, however, can completely destroy the shape. It’s too much for a lot of people to handle.I imagine I’ll stick with the NPE and DNA-discovery topics for now, but I’m open to the show evolving as stories come to me. I’d really like to expand beyond the person who directly had the NPE, though, because I want to explore all the perspectives. I’d like to talk with mothers about their decisions to keep paternity a secret from their children, to men who didn’t or did know they had children out in the world, to men who contributed sperm for money in college but are now being approached by adult children asking for answers. I want to hear from every person involved.Yes, I work with genetic identity issues, and it’s almost entirely due to my personal experience. Also there are so many testimonies online from NPEs who have had bad experiences with therapists who don’t understand what they’re going through. I’m determined to be a better therapist for the growing NPE world and also to educate the mental health community about this tidal wave of need that’s headed its way.There are very few in-person support groups for NPEs, although there’s a growing need. I will start a support group this fall that I will facilitate as a therapist. I am also available for individual therapy, but the group offers people an opportunity to share their experiences and learn from each other.I started exploring the idea of a podcast within a support group on Facebook. I asked the community to help come up with a title, and I posted updates as the project came together. Throughout that process, people volunteered to participate. I kept the first handful of interviews local because I wanted to meet in person and have the experience of talking face to face. I’ve got the technology now to interview people from anywhere though, so the circle is expanding. I am always actively seeking new stories!Subscribe to Everything’s Relative on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. And Look for Sturges on Facebook and on Twitter @evesturges.

The second season of novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro’s riveting “Family Secrets” podcast recently launched in iTunes’ Top 10, a testament to the fact that humans have a deep desire to see what’s behind the curtain, to get at the truth of what we hide or what’s been hidden from us. The author deftly satisfies this urge, indulging our voyeuristic impulses as she unburdens guests of their long-held deepest secrets and bears witness to the lasting impact, both of the secrets themselves and of their ultimate revelations.

But there’s nothing sensationalized or salacious about these secrets or their disclosures. Even as guests detail stories we might never have been able to imagine, sometimes mournful and often harrowing, they reveal a slice of common humanity. Shapiro in each episode homes in on the core emotions from which virtually all secrets arise and which all secrets arouse—shame, guilt, fear—feelings that resonate for everyone and, thus, stir empathy and compassion.

Listening to each episode is like looking into a lighted room on a dark street—something that seems both furtive and intimate. There are moments so revealing you want to look away, yet you can’t help but linger to see just a bit more. These are, to a one, painful conversations; we listen as each storyteller presses an ancient bruise, but the pain is only prelude to the relief that comes from unleashing the story that’s been kept locked inside them or had been kept hidden from them.

Shapiro is no stranger to family secrets. She’s written about them tenderly through nine books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her tenth, the bestselling “Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love,” details her discovery that she was a family secret, that she’d been donor conceived, her father’s sperm having been mixed with donor sperm at a fertility clinic. It explores not only her anguish at learning that her dear father wasn’t in fact her father, but also the sense of betrayal and the rudderlessness she felt after learning of this genetic disconnection. There, as here, she discusses the ways in which we are formed as much by what we don’t know, what we merely suspect, and what we might intuit as by what we do know.

The podcast arose out of the author’s understanding that her story isn’t unusual. In the age of the Internet and with the rising popularity of direct-to-consumer DNA tests, it’s become increasingly difficult to hold back the truth. Secrets, she observes, have existed throughout the ages, but “are tumbling out at a staggering rate.” The goal of her conversations with her guests, Shapiro says, is to “shine a bright light into the dark hidden corners of the unspoken and discover together the power and beauty that comes with finally knowing the truth.”

She succeeds admirably. The stories move listeners to tears at the same time that they promote a deeper understanding of the traumas that all too often remain below the surface. They raise the unsettling truth that we are—all of us—both unknowable and fundamentally similar.

The first episode of the second season focuses on a secret that’s both heartbreaking and—rare among these stories—truly beneficial to those who were kept in the dark about it. Jon Mehlman details what he and his wife, Marla, judged to be a “loving choice”—to withhold from their young daughters the fact that Marla, suffering from metastatic breast cancer, had been told by her doctors she had roughly 1,000 days to live. And in the second episode, Sascha Rothchild, a Los Angeles television writer, tells the astonishing story of how her father, in the grip of dementia, inadvertently revealed his secret sexual past—how the man she and her mother thought they knew had been someone quite different.

Among the first season episodes are two involving secrets and shame circling brutal instances of violence and sexual abuse. Another involves the soul-shaking solution to a family mystery; in “Don’t Duck,” Sylvia Boorstein, famed author, psychotherapist, and mindfulness meditation teacher, tells a chilling tale of learning that she’d had an aunt who had died in childhood and whose existence no one acknowledged. At age 82, she remains profoundly shaken by the discovery. Her story, which she’d previously shared with her friend Shapiro, became the inspiration for the creation of the podcast.

The majority of the guests in the first season discuss secrets related to some aspect of misattributed parentage, genetic disconnection, and genealogical bewilderment. An early episode of that inaugural season, “The Very Image,” begins, appropriately enough, with the sound of whispers, a signifier of a truth running through many of these stories—that everyone knows the secret except the person most affected by it. Shapiro talked with Jim Graham about his discovery that his father wasn’t the gruff and distant man who raised him, but instead had been a Catholic priest. In conversation they reveal the lengths to which the church went to keep Graham from ever knowing the truth, an effort he ultimately thwarted. In a letter Graham shares with Shapiro, a particularly sensitive and perceptive nun who knew his father encapsulates the predicament of so many of Shapiro’s guests when she refers to “the pain of unknowing.”

In “Open Secret,” Steve Lickteig similarly relates coming to learn that everyone knew something about him he didn’t know—that is sister is actually his mother. In “One Drop,” Bliss Broyard recalls the moment in adulthood when she and her brother learned what everyone around them knew—that their father, literary critic Anatole Broyard, was an African-American who passed as white. “Little White Lie” is the story of Lacey Schwartz, who was raised in predominantly white Woodstock, New York in a Jewish Family in which her dark skin was essentially ignored. She knew, deep down, she wasn’t the child of both of her parents, yet that knowledge wasn’t confirmed until high school, when she was bussed to a school where the black students implicitly accepted her, and further, when, after including a photo with a college application, she was admitted as a black student. At its core, says Shapiro, this is “a story about the extraordinary capacity that we human beings have to believe what we want to believe, to bury our own secrets even from ourselves, and at the same time the capacity we also have to shed those secrets, to move past them and become wholly ourselves.”

Of these episodes about genetic identity, the one I found most resonant and shattering is “Zygote Baby”—in which Jane Mintz, a clinical interventionist, searches for and connects with her biological mother. This narrative touches on feelings that will be all too familiar to many readers—the great emptiness inside us that comes from lacking knowledge about our past and the unshakable feeling of being “other.” Mintz, by all accounts, had a good life and was highly successful. Yet, she says, “My whole life I felt like there was a black hole in my soul so deep and wide and I felt like I didn’t deserve to feel that way.” There was a sense, she says, of not feeling entitled to the pain of not knowing one’s origins. “You always feel on the outside of life, and there’s no evidence for why you should feel that way, so there’s incongruence.” Her description of finally meeting her mother is extraordinarily moving and illustrative of the highs and lows and the promises and pitfalls so often associated with reunions.

While not all listeners may agree with Shapiro’s choice at times to bring her own experience, as detailed in “Inheritance,” into the conversation, I find it to be one of the key strengths of the podcast, elevating the episodes from mere recitations of events to conversations that give and take and uncover the deeper threads that run through all the stories. Her literary skills let Shapiro set the stage for the revelation of the secrets. She adds just enough descriptive detail and context at various points, keeping the pace and moving the narrative forward. She knows instinctively when to step back and let the guest have the floor and when to interject to summarize, amplify, or invite a deeper discussion. Her commentary, rather than distracting, highlights what’s universal about these experiences. As the podcast moves from story to story, Shapiro points to the thru lines and acknowledges the echoes from guest to guest about knowing, keeping, or revealing secrets. It’s a way of saying “I see, I understand, I’ve been there.”

What every secret has in common, Shapiro says “is the silence rooted in shame, trauma, and the desire to protect.” In almost all cases, though, the secrets are toxic. “Family Secrets” is evidence that releasing these painful experiences can be both detoxifying and transformative. The telling of stories and the sharing of secrets lets others know they’re not alone.

New episodes drop every Thursday, and all of season one and the bonus episodes, including listener stories, are available now at iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow on Twitter at @famsecretspod and @danijshapiro.

Most podcasts in existence today owe a debt to “This American Life,” a public radio program and podcast aired weekly, each week’s episode a selection of stories on particular theme. On the air for more than two decades, it’s a stellar model of narrative journalism, created, produced, and hosted by Ira Glass and about everything and anything, from national politics to the smallest of stories about people you’ve never heard of.

The theme of a 2005 show was “Go Ask Your Father,” stories about children who find out something they’ve always wanted to know about their fathers — although not necessarily something they ultimately want to know. In each case, the subjects confront (or wish they could confront) a parent about a nagging concern. In a heartbreaking prologue, we hear from a child named Aric Knuth, whose father, a Merchant Marine, was gone from his life for six months at a time in Aric’s youth. Over the years, the boy records audiotapes, sends them to his absent father, and pleads for tapes to be returned in kind. He’s shattered when all he gets in return is radio silence.

It’s Glass’s way of jumpstarting the conversations with a provocative dilemma — one that’s likely to resonate with anyone who’s been hurt or lied to by their parents. “I know this is the saddest tape in the world that we’re starting the show with this week, and I’m just doing it so I can talk about this choice,” he says. “As adults, we have this funny choice. Are we going to sit down with our parents and talk about the stuff that hurt us and didn’t make sense to us when we were kids? And it’s hard to know if it’s worth it sometimes, if it’s just going to make your parents feel bad. And what are they going to say, anyway?” No spoilers here about Knuth’s conclusion, but he raises an intriguing question that might cause listeners to think differently about dissatisfying heart-to-hearts with parents about events that happened long in the past.

In the next story, Glass turns his attention to a man whose question for his father is one many of us have asked: are you really my father? In the episode, “Make Him Say Uncle,” Glass talks to Lennard Davis, a professor in the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois in Chicago, about his quest to determine whether his father really was his father. It’s a story Davis later explored in his 2009 memoir, “Go Ask Your Father.”

In his signature style, Glass lets you in on the story from the beginning, with the tale told as if it’s unfolding as you listen. It’s set in motion in 1981 by a bizarre phone conversation between Davis and his Uncle Abie, a man his father warned him all his life not to emulate. Whatever Abie did — deeds as simple as reading in bed — Davis was instructed not to do. Whoever Abie was, Davis was urged not to be. The message was clear: Uncle Abie was the black sheep of the family and everything he did was bad or wrong. Davis’ father encouraged his son to be like him and more like his brother in all the ways Davis felt different from both of them.

When Davis was 31, his mother had already died and his father was hospitalized with cancer. Uncle Abie showed up and said he had a secret to tell him, but he couldn’t reveal it until his father died. After his father’s death, when Abie called to discuss furniture that belonged to his brother, Davis reminded him about the secret, and his uncle tried to evade the question. But Davis pressed him. “I kind of nudged him and finally he said, OK, I’ll tell you the secret. And I said, what is it? And he said, I’m your father. And there was just this — this was just completely out of the blue. There was no clues in my upbringing. There was nothing. And my father had just died, and I’m in the process of mourning him and thinking about my connection to him.”

Abie then told a story Davis found preposterous: Abie’s brother — Davis’ father — came to him with a jar and told him he needed semen. Abie went in the bathroom and returned with the semen. Then Abie added a wrinkle: the semen was mixed with semen from Davis’ father. “I was in a complete, total state of shock,” said Davis. “And I just thought, wow, whose movie am I in? The whole thing was completely bizarre.” Surely, he thought, artificial insemination hadn’t been performed as early as 1949, and if it had been, they couldn’t possibly have mixed the semen. But his research told him it had been, and they did. Glass describes the mixing of sperm as being like a firing squad in reverse, where “each person would choose to believe they weren’t the one who hit the prisoner. And in this, everybody would choose to believe they were the one.”

After his father’s funeral, Davis confronted his cousin, Abie’s son, and told him the strange story. His cousin both startled and relieved Davis when he revealed that Abie had been delusional at the time, had even been committed to an institution because he’d been hearing voices. Given this new information, and influenced by his wife’s encouragement, Davis set aside the whole matter and got on with his life, until 15 years later, when it began to preoccupy him. He talked again to his cousin, who admitted that he’d lied all those years earlier — that his father told him the same story when he was very young.

Glass and Davis explore the feelings this strange story evokes — Davis’ recollections of never feeling as if he belonged in his family, his thoughts about the possibility his father isn’t his father and the dreaded Abie might be, and about who he hopes his father will turn out to be. The conversation is raw and moving, with painful pauses and tense moments of suspense — as when, for example, Davis opens an envelope from a DNA lab that contains the answer to his questions — that leave you guessing, along with Davis and Glass, about what will be discovered.

It’s a fascinating conversation about what it means to be family, about how we respond to family secrets and reckon with shifting identities. It reveals how individuals can respond to these questions and revelations in ways that seem universal and in others that are unique and surprising.

The show’s entire archive is available on iOS and Android and at the show’s website. Tune in to find out what was in the letter from the DNA lab.