DNA, Secrets & Inheritance

What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?

In 2016, celebrated writer and memoirist Dani Shapiro took a genetic test on a whim, believing that she knew her history well – the daughter of Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews, raised on her father’s stories of their family and ancestors. But her DNA revealed that the man she’d known as her father for her whole life was not biologically related to her. With this news, her history – and the entire life she had lived – suddenly crumbled beneath her.

Shapiro’s instant New York Times bestselling memoir, Inheritance, published to wide acclaim earlier this year, is about secrets – secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. Hear how Dani Shapiro lost and found herself via DNA testing, and how her life has changed since publishing Inheritance. She is joined by Dr. Abraham Verghese for this fascinating exploration of genealogy, paternity and love.

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