Family Twist: A Podcast Exploring DNA Surprises and Family Secrets
Family Twist shares real-life stories of DNA surprises, adoption, donor conception, NPE discoveries, and the secrets that reshape families. Hosted by Corey and Kendall Stulce, each episode explores what happens when the truth about identity, parentage, or family history comes to light. These revelations sometimes happen by choice, often by accident, and always with life-changing impact. Through candid conversations with adoptees, donor-conceived people, late-discovery NPEs, birth parents, and family members who are navigating unexpected truths, Family Twist looks beyond the initial shock. We explore what comes next. We talk about the relationships that grow or break, the boundaries that help or hurt, the grief that surfaces, and the unexpected connections that can heal. Kendall's personal journey plays an important role in the heart of the show. He was adopted at birth, searched for decades, and eventually discovered his biological family through a DNA test. His experience brings empathy, humor, and honesty to every conversation. Corey brings warmth and insight as the couple creates space for guests to share the real, complicated, hopeful, and often surprising moments behind their family twists. If you are searching for your people, untangling a difficult discovery, or simply fascinated by the truth behind modern families, this podcast will remind you that you are not alone and that your story matters. New episodes arrive every week, including in-depth interviews and shorter Story Snapshots that highlight powerful moments from our guests. Have a Family Twist of your own? Share it with us.
Episodes
She didn't tell me we were Jewish.
Those seven words changed everything.
Author Joan Moran joins Corey and Kendall to discuss her remarkable memoir, Suddenly Jewish, a story that spans generations, continents, and one life-changing family secret.
Joan grew up believing she knew her family's story. Then, just before marrying into a Jewish family, her mother revealed something she had kept hidden for decades. Their famil...
Can horror movies actually help us heal?
In this special crossover episode with Horror Heals, Corey sits down for a conversation that might surprise Family Twist listeners. While one podcast explores DNA surprises, adoption, and identity, and the other celebrates horror, both are ultimately about the same thing: how people make sense of difficult experiences and find connection through storytelling.
Whether you've nev...
Julie Ann Brumley expected a DNA test to answer a few questions.
She didn't expect to find a sister, a 100% Italian biological father, or an entire family where she could finally see herself reflected in someone else's face.
In part one of our conversation, Julie and Kendall compare reunion stories and talk about the moments that don't always make it into the movies: sitting through family stories you weren't there fo...
What happens when a mental health professional finds herself navigating a DNA surprise of her own?
In this deeply personal episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Angie Miller, licensed mental health therapist, wellness coach, speaker, and host of the Strong Mind, Strong Body podcast, for a conversation about identity, family secrets, and the emotional chaos that can follow a late-in-life DNA discove...
Nicole thought TikTok was being ridiculous. After posting wedding videos online, strangers flooded the comments insisting there was “no way” she was half white like she’d always believed. Some people were curious. Others were cruel. But the comments kept coming.
“You look Black.”
“That’s not your dad.”
“You should take a DNA test.”
So sh...
What happens when you spend more than 40 years sensing something about your life doesn’t add up… only to discover you were right all along?
In this deeply emotional and unforgettable episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Dr. Syb, a late discovery adoptee whose world changed forever just before her 42nd birthday. What began as a lifetime of unanswered questions became a journey through ...
What happens when your search for family stretches across decades, dead ends, sealed records, and fading hope?
In part two of this deeply personal conversation, Corey and Kendall continue their discussion with author and journalist Paul T. O'Connor. Together, they explore the emotional realities of adoption, foster care, identity, and the lifelong impact of family secrecy.
Kendall shares stories from his years-long se...
What would you do if, on the day you buried your mother, you discovered a hidden bundle of records labeled with one clear instruction: Please destroy these?
In this gripping first part of Corey and Kendall’s conversation with retired journalist and author Paul O’Connor, a lifetime of hidden family history begins to unravel through DNA testing, courthouse archives, old birth records, and one relentless sea...
What happens when a sperm donor from the 1990s suddenly discovers he has children decades later?
This is one of those stories that could only happen right now.
A decision made in the early ’90s, when anonymity was expected and protected, collides with modern DNA testing, where secrets don’t stay buried.
In Part 1 of this conversation around the documentary Dad Genes, we sit down with Aaron and Jess to unpac...
What happens when a sperm donor from the 1990s suddenly discovers he has children decades later?
This is one of those stories that could only happen right now.
A decision made in the early ’90s, when anonymity was expected and protected, collides with modern DNA testing, where secrets don’t stay buried.
In Part 1 of this conversation around the documentary Dad Genes, we sit down with Aaron and J...
What happens when your story starts with secrecy… and ends with a global family?
In this milestone Episode 200 of Family Twist, Kendall sits down with author, musician, and adoptee Zara, whose life began in England during the forced adoption era of the 1960s, a time when young, unmarried mothers were often given no choice but to relinquish their children.
Zara always knew she was adopted. What she didn&rs...
What happens when a life-altering DNA discovery becomes a feature film… and then gets unpacked in a room full of people who truly understand it?
In this special live episode of Family Twist, Corey sits down with filmmaker, actor, and storyteller Lisa Brenner at Untangling Our Roots.
Lisa shares the real story behind her film One Big Happy Family, inspired by discovering at age 40 that the father who raised her ...
What happens when you go from being an only child… to one of twelve overnight?
In this episode of Family Twist, and Kendall sits down with Elizabeth Barbour, an adoptee, adoptive mom, and reunion expert who has spent more than two decades living the reality so many are just beginning to face.
Elizabeth shares her story of searching in a pre-DNA era, making that life-changing phone call, and hearing the words ma...
What does adoption feel like for the person who never had a choice?
In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall talk with Leslie Pate Mackinnon, LCSW, a birth mother, therapist, and one of the most respected voices in the adoption and donor conception space.
As a teenager, Leslie placed her two firstborn sons for adoption during a time when young women were often given little say in the outcome. That experience...
What would you do if a simple DNA test revealed that the man you believed was your father wasn’t your biological parent?
In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Laura Olmsted, founder of DNAngels, to talk about the moment a family history project turned into a life-changing DNA discovery. What began as a curiosity-driven test while building a genealogy scrapbook for her grandchildren qu...
What happens when a family secret rewrites your identity?
In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall welcome author Gail Lukasik, whose work explores the powerful impact of hidden family histories and DNA discoveries.
Gail reads a moving excerpt from her book What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed, inspired by the flood of personal stories she received after shar...
What happens when a child asks a question the adults in the room aren’t ready to answer?
In this episode of Family Twist, Corey sits down with Dr. Vicki Sanders, a psychologist who has spent decades working with adopted and foster children, and the families raising them. Her work lives in the spaces most people avoid, the pauses, the deflections, the “we don’t need to talk about that right now&rdquo...
What does adoption feel like for the person who never had a choice?
In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall talk with Leslie Pate Mackinnon, LCSW, a birth mother, therapist, and one of the most respected voices in the adoption and donor conception space.
As a teenager, Leslie placed her two firstborn sons for adoption during a time when young women were often given little say in the outcome. That experience...
What if your father’s childhood was a handful of strange fragments, a “castle,” a room with 25 beds, hunger, silence, and a single forbidden question.
Filmmaker David Quint grew up sensing his dad was different, but nobody explained why. His father, Urban, had been raised in a 700-year-old Swiss castle that served as an orphanage, then at age 12 received a letter that changed everything: “You&...
She thought she knew her story.
In 2021, a casual AncestryDNA test reopened questions Alicia had quietly carried her entire life. Why did she never see her original birth certificate? Why was her birthday often forgotten? Why did her brother feel like he belonged in a different way?
Then a first cousin match appeared.
And everything started to unravel.
In Part One of this three-part series, Alicia Sharon Denise Williams...
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