Family Secrets: Season 1 Trailer

Dani Shapiro dared to tell her family secret. In return, others told her theirs. Explore how family secrets shape us, distort us and … liberate us.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
I think that there was something always in the back
of my mind where I knew something was not quite
right with my family and my situation within that family.
I felt very exposed with this idea of this knowledge
that a lot of people knew something about me that
I didn't know myself. You know, it makes you feel
like you have a sign in your back or something.
I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, secrets that

(00:25):
are kept from us, secrets we keep from others, and
secrets we keep from ourselves. Two years ago, I made
the shocking and entirely accidental discovery that my beloved father,
a man I had written about my whole life in
an effort to better understand him, wasn't my father at all.
And when I dove deep down into the secret that

(00:46):
had been kept from me all my life and finally
revealed the secret to others, something amazing happened. People began
to tell me their secrets. When I heard her voice,
it's like myself started knitting back to other. It was
terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Sometimes secrets are
rooted in tragedy. What I'm thinking, maybe she didn't want

(01:09):
me to know when I was growing up, because it's
a scary story, right, little girls in this family die.
Sometimes secrets arise from shame. I remember the pants he wore.
He always worthy polyester pants which we had laugh at nowadays,
in blue shirts and a black tie. And he had
a certain smell. He was everywhere. Sometimes secrets are woven

(01:31):
into d n A. She pulled a obituary on a
newsletter on the table and she said, this man maybe
your father. We don't know. Only the principles don't and
they're all dead today. With the Internet and genetic testing
making information so easily available, secrets seldom make it to
the grave. And that's okay. I was so worried that

(01:54):
telling somebody the truth about the way I was treated
would signify that I was its story inferior or bad.
What in fact happened was the opposite. Because secrets fester
in the darkness, they grow larger and scarier, and they
have the power to shape our whole lives without our
even knowing it. But if we shine light on those secrets,

(02:16):
the most extraordinary thing happens. We realize that we're not alone.
And you feel it as waves in your body of
flinch and then it just calms itself, and it calms itself.
Family Secrets premieres on February. Listen and subscribe to Family

(02:37):
Secrets at Apple Podcasts or on the I Heart Radio app,
or wherever you listen to podcasts,