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
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” moments that shape identity...
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’re not an orphan. I’m your mo...
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 shar...
She logged back in.
After months of denial, after accusing AncestryDNA of switching samples, after trying to shove the results back into the box, Alicia Sharon Denise Williams opened her DNA account again.
The first cousin matches were still there.
This time, she did not look away.
In Part Two of this three-part late discovery adoptee story, Alicia takes us into the moment curiosity turns into confirmation. What starts as on...
Reunion is not always soft.
In Part Three of this powerful late discovery adoptee story, Alicia Sharon Denise Williams steps into the aftermath of truth.
After learning she was adopted, after uncovering sealed Michigan adoption records, after discovering both biological parents had passed away, she begins reaching out to siblings.
The first response is rejection.
A phone call to a biological half brother’s mother ends with h...
What happens when your story begins in one country, is rewritten in another, and then calls you back decades later?
In this powerful episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Sandi Morgan Caesar to explore a life shaped by early loss, international adoption, racial identity, and an unrelenting search for truth.
Sandi was born in Panama to a 14-year-old mother and spent the first year of h...
A Netflix documentary about fertility fraud lit the fuse.
After watching Our Father, a question would not let go: how do you actually know donor conception was handled ethically, and how do you know the story you were told is true?
So a DNA test gets ordered. While waiting for the results, the question gets asked at home. The response is silence first, then the truth. An anonymous donor. A social father who knew. Years of ...
What happens when the truth about your origins arrives decades late and everyone else already knew?
In this episode of Family Twist, Kendall talks with Keith Sciarillo, a late-discovery adoptee who learned later in life that neither of the parents who raised him were biologically related to him. Even harder, siblings and family members knew the truth long before Keith did.
Keith shares what it is like to grow up inside a f...
What happens when the truth doesn’t arrive as a single moment, but hides in plain sight for years?
In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Dr. Nicole Price, a DNAngels Board Advisor whose discovery that her father wasn’t her biological parent came not from a sudden match, but from something she didn’t notice for nearly a decade. A small line of text. A quiet warning. A truth everyone else already ...
What happens when a father and daughter meet for the first time, in adulthood, and decide to build the relationship in public, in real time?
In this episode of Family Twist, Corey sits down with Joseph McGill Jr. and his daughter Charity Barriere Muhammad, who reunited just six months ago and are already preparing to share their story on stage together at Untangling Our Roots Summit 2026 in Atlanta, March 19–22, 2026.
Last March, Corey attended Untangling Our Roots Summit in Denver for the first time. He went alone, unsure what to expect, and quietly wondering if he belonged there at all.
In this solo episode, Corey reflects on walking into a room where everyone already spoke the same language. Adoptees, donor-conceived people, NPEs, MPEs, birth parents, adoptive parents, partners, spouses, and allies, all in one space, without hierarc...
What happens after the truth comes out, when the search begins and there is no DNA test, no internet, and no clear roadmap?
In part two of this two-part episode, we continue our conversation with Marylee MacDonald as she takes us into the long, painstaking search for her birth family. This was a time before commercial DNA testing, when finding answers meant microfilm machines, legal notices buried in newspapers, and caref...
What happens when the story you were told about your adoption turns out to be a lie, and you find out at the moment you need support the most?
In part one of this two-part episode, we talk with Marylee MacDonald, an adoptee who always knew she was adopted and believed she had a tragic but simple origin story. She was told her birth parents had been killed in a car accident. The door was closed. The past was settled.
Until ...
What do you do when a DNA test proves that everything you believed about your race, your ancestry, and your family history is not true, and at the same time the world becomes more dangerous for the people you have just learned you belong to?
That is the question at the center of Kara’s story. Kara grew up believing she was African-American, with a family history rooted in ancestors who had been enslaved in Texas. When she...
In Part One, Lisa shared her extraordinary adoption reunion story. A closed adoption, a lifetime of questions, a birth family who lived down the street, and the shocking discovery that she likely cared for her own biological grandfather in the ICU. It was a story about caregiving, identity, and the power of finally finding your roots.
Part Two takes us into a very different kind of discovery.
This episode explores the emot...
With the Trump administration moving to reclassify nursing so it no longer counts as a professional degree for federal student aid, this episode couldn’t land at a more urgent moment. Nursing organizations warn that limiting access to funding threatens the very foundation of patient care, and in our household, where nurses are family, this news hits hard.
Today’s guest, Lisa, is a nurse practitioner, an adoptee, and someo...
What happens when you discover a whole set of siblings who grew up in the donor’s home, but you are not sure they even know you exist
In part one, a simple birthday DNA kit rewrote everything Nick thought he knew about his identity. He learned he was donor conceived at thirty-six, discovered fourteen half siblings, and realized his parents had carried the truth for decades.
But nothing prepared him for what came n...
What if a simple birthday gift revealed a secret your parents had been carrying for more than three decades?
For his 36th birthday, Nick’s siblings gave him a 23andMe kit. It seemed like a fun way to learn more about his ancestry, until his parents sat him down with a truth that changed everything. Nick discovered that he was donor conceived, while his brother was not.
In this first part of Nick’s story, he shares what it ...
What happens when a single email from a stranger confirms the secret you have been living with your whole life?
In this episode, Rich Boerner returns to Family Twist to share the second half of his extraordinary story. In Part One, Rich discovered the truth about his father after finding a Polaroid tucked inside his mother’s old address book. That discovery shattered the story he had grown up believing and opened the door...
What if the father you spent your life wondering about turned out to be someone you already knew?
As a kid growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, Rich Boerner learned not to ask too many questions. His mother had her version of the truth and repeated it word for word whenever he asked. His father was a man from Milwaukee who left when he found out she was pregnant. That was all she would say.
It was a story that ...
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