[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It, I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. Listeners, you probably know Matt Katz from the WNYC newsroom. He's reported on topics like immigration, public safety, politics, but what you may not know is that Matt has spent years investigating a really personal story, and it's a story about his father. It wasn't a journey he expected. Matt's parents divorced before he turned two. His dad, Warren, was a part of his life for a while, but his presence was inconsistent at best. Warren didn't do normal dad stuff like give Matt birthday presents, or even tell Matt where he, Warren, lived. He'd be late for visits or wouldn't show up at all, and when Matt did see his dad, they'd do things like go to betting parlors or crawl under a fence to skip out on paying admission to a zoo.

Warren was a cipher who eventually dropped off the grid, and while Matt didn't understand who he was, he thought he knew who he was, his dad. This is until he took a DNA test and the results upended Matt's sense of identity and raised questions about fatherhood, medical ethics, and what family really means. Matt tells the story in a new podcast called Inconceivable Truth. The first two episodes drop today, and I'm really delighted to welcome Matt here in studio to talk about it. Hey Matt.

Matt Katz: Hi, Kousha. This is amazing. Thank you for doing this.

Kousha Navidar: It was wonderful to listen. I listened to the first two episodes, so many questions. One of the things I find remarkable and, I think, admirable is your willingness to be vulnerable and open. You talk about how you learned to read a clock at a young age because your dad was always late. How has gambling affected your mom, and just how abandoned you felt by him. Honestly, it's hard to listen to, especially knowing you and not feeling sad and enraged on your behalf. I imagine that some people who had an experience like yours might just want to close the door on their dad and move on, but for you, it's spurred a lifelong quest to learn more about him. What do you think it was that made you react that way?

Matt Katz: I think as a kid, since he was such an in-and-out of my life presence or lack of a presence, I was always wondering about him and searching for him. I'd be a little kid and there'd be those old phone books somewhere, and I'd look up his last name and see if I could figure out where he might be living. I ended up tracking him down when I was 16, like a budding journalist.

It was innate in me to search for him and to wonder where he was and I continued doing that into my adulthood as he came into my life again as an adult, and then disappeared from my life. Then in telling this whole story, it just feels like something that's always been in me, searching for him, searching for this father figure, searching for my paternity. It's almost been an innate urge and I wanted to tell this publicly because, A, I'm a reporter and this is how I process the world around me. I ask a lot of questions and then try to interpret it as accurately as possible.

Second of all, a lot of the things I experienced over the course of this, and we will get into some of the specifics, people will relate to it because a lot of it is something of a new phenomenon, and some of it is an ancient phenomenon, because so it's about medical technology, as you mentioned. It's about family relations and paternity. I'm hoping that in sharing my story, some people might find some degree of support in knowing that whatever they're experiencing in their lives, they're not alone.

Kousha Navidar: There are so many pieces of the story along the way that somebody could relate to. Just ideas of identity in general, I think. It's important for us, maybe not to get into the TikTok of the timeline, because listeners, you should listen to the podcast for that. What I wanted to talk about is maybe the first big twist that comes after you take a DNA test for ancestry.com. You assumed you were going to be a 100% percent Ashkenazi Jewish from Eastern Europe, but it didn't turn out that way. What did you find out?

Matt Katz: I never even question my 100% Jewish identity. My mom is Jewish. My father, I had actually, at one point when I was in contact with him, I interviewed his parents, my grandparents, and found out, they were Russian Jews and came over in the early 20th century, so I had no question about my identity, but I took this ancestry test because I was interested in history. I'm interested in which shtetl my people might have been kicked out of in the old country. I didn't know exactly where they were from. The results were shocking. I was 50% Jewish and then at the time it said I was 50% British or Scottish or Irish. It has since confirmed that I'm 50% fully Irish. This made no sense. More than a year goes by, my mother takes the test, she comes back as my mom and as 100% Jewish, so we know that.

Kousha Navidar: That's taken care of.

[laughter]

Matt Katz: That's taken care of. Then I'm coming up with all these theories about my birth father. Was he adopted by the Jewish family down the street when he grew up in Queens? Maybe the Irish family down the road sent him off to the Jewish family and he was really an Irish guy? I couldn't make any sense of it. That was a theory that I came up with and it was kicking around in my life for a couple of years until July of 2018. I am in your seat, Kousha. I am guest hosting the precursor to All Of It. It was called Midday on WNYC and our guest canceled or didn't show up. The 1:00 PM guest just didn't show up.

Kousha Navidar: What time was it?

Matt Katz: This is one o'clock.

Kousha Navidar: It's one o'clock right now. Just want to point that out.

Matt Katz: You can appreciate the anxiety that results in when you're hosting in your live radio show. The producers at the time, they're like, "Let's just go to callers. Let's do a call-in segment." I'm like, "Well, what am I going to talk about?" This guest was an actress who wrote about her family's immigration experience in a book for young people because her family had been deported. I'm like, "Okay, immigration, immigration. What do I-- what can I talk about that would be good for callers?" I'm like, "Oh, well I have a strange immigration anecdote to share."

Kousha Navidar: What's the name of that actor? Name and shame. [laughter]. No, I'm just kidding. Go on, go on, go on.

Matt Katz: I purposely, I actually forget but I also am avoiding mentioning it because it turns out I'm very grateful to her because what happened next was amazing. First of all, I told my spiel on the air. I said, "Listen, folks, you're back, you're listening to WNYC, and turns out I want to tell a little story. I took an ancestry test. A genealogy test. Turns out I'm half-Jewish. I always thought I was 100% Jewish. I'm trying to figure out why. Do you have any interesting stories about your ancestry, about your genealogy?" This being New York City, we had a wonderful segment. Callers were from all over the world and they were great. It was a great segment.

Kousha Navidar: We have a clip of exactly what you're talking about. Let's listen to what Matt experienced right now together.

Caller 1: Through some of the census records, I found out that my father had a brother that died as an infant, but was never spoken about.

Matt Katz: Huh?

Caller 2: I found out that I was actually a descendant from an illegal immigrant who came in through Ellis Island.

Matt Katz: Let's talk to Tony over in Brooklyn. Hey, Tony. Are you there?

Tony: I am there--

Matt Katz: Some of these stories were nuts. One guy called in saying he's got a family tree of 1300 names. I couldn't believe it. I had like 10 people on my family tree. I was jealous.

Caller 3: It's an amazing thing and I'm so happy that you guys are doing this little segment here.

Matt Katz: Well, I'm so glad you called.

Caller 3: You've got to get it across to the people. They have to ask their relatives where they're from. There's so much to learn out there.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking with Matt Katz, who is the writer and host of the new podcast, Inconceivable Truth. You also might know him from WNYC as the Public Safety Reporter, and listeners, we just heard almost six years ago his experience, hearing from you that set off a new part of his life, finding out who his father really was. Listeners, if you want to join the conversation with us right now, we're here for you yet again. If you've had any ancestry surprises, call us or text us at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC or you can always DM us on Instagram, we're @AllOfItWNYC. Matt, it is amazing to listen almost six years ago to those clips. What did it feel like to have all those people calling in it?

Matt Katz: It made me feel not alone. It made me feel like a lot of people are on this journey to figure out where they're from and a lot of people are finding out surprises when they take DNA tests or they uncover records from their ancestors, and it was inspiring. It felt like I could find out more. Then right after that, I found out so much because a listener to that segment, his name is Lou. Lou, I will never forget you. Lou, if you're out there, give us a call.

Kousha Navidar: Shout out.

Matt Katz: Lou emails me after the show and he says, "Listen, if you want to know why you're not fully Jewish, you have to join this Facebook group, this private Facebook group. It's for essentially Jewish genealogy nerds, for people who have researched their Jewish genealogy and have been able to figure it out and they discuss how to do this. A few days later I'm like, "All right, I'll join this group," and again, say my spiel, "Hey, I thought I was 100% Jewish, took an ancestry test, turns out I'm half-Jewish." The responses come in pretty immediately. A woman writes and she says, "It's probably your father." That's all she says. I'm like, "What?" I message her, she's like, "I can help you." There are these people online, they're called Search Angels, and they research other people's ancestry. They help them through this process.

I give this woman, this stranger, access to my ancestry.com test so she can see my DNA results. It was less than two hours later when she writes me a note and she's like, "I figured something out, you have a half-sister, and her name is Tara Collins." I'm like, "A half-sister" That doesn't make any sense. I was just signing up for this to figure out why I'm half-Jewish and all of a sudden I have a half-sister. I checked this woman's work, she was totally right. It was a little confusing on the DNA site because they don't really know how to account for half-siblings.

It was somewhere, we had the DNA centimorgans were close enough, we're somewhere between like a first cousin and a full sibling. It just said close relative. It just had initials. I never had clicked on the profile. I finally do, I check her work. There was an obituary that the search angel was able to use to figure out her name. I immediately Google her, obviously, Tara Collins, and she looks like me [laughs]. I feel like I'm staring back in the mirror. I message her on her website.

She's an energy healer in Venice Beach, California, and I don't hear back. Then I message her on Instagram. I find her Instagram profile. I don't hear back, but I'm checking her profile every day. I'm consumed by this. I had just celebrated, Kousha, my 40th birthday days earlier. Days earlier. I'm looking at her Instagram profile and she posts something about her 40th birthday party. She's two and a half weeks younger than me, how in the world do I have a half-sibling who's two and a half weeks younger than me?

What happened after that is I'm like, "You know what? I've got to get the other DNA test." I've got to get every DNA test available. I get a 23andMe account, which is the other main consumer DNA kit out there. On Yom Kippur of 2018, I'm coming back from my in-laws' house and I get a message from 23andMe, "Your results are in." I look, I'm half-Irish, again, half-Jewish. It confirms what ancestry.com says, and then I get a message, you have a half-sister. I'm like, "Oh, I guess this is the same Tara Collins." It is not, it is another half-sister. That's when she revealed the big reveal to me

Kousha Navidar: That is where we go into the first episode. It is from there a chronicling of many close relationships in your life. Trying to figure out what's real, what have you misunderstood and what are other people's perspectives on this? I'd love to touch into that a little bit. You talk to your mom. You talk to your adoptive father. You talk to your friend, your wife in very intimate settings. What was it like capturing those moments on tape for you?

Matt Katz: It was really wonderful. I feel like I'm closer to my mom. I'm closer to my dad. The man I call my dad was who my mom remarried after she divorced the man I thought was my birth father. He adopted me. I changed my last name to his. I feel closer to my kids even. I decided to tell this story over eight episodes in a series of conversations, really.

I wanted to have conversations with the people closest to me, my oldest friends from grade school to my little kids today. Listeners can learn my story as I talk it through with all of these people, and my siblings. I now have three half-siblings. It turns out, and this is one reveal, there's many more. Turns out we all have the same father,obviously. That father was a sperm donor and that was news to my mother. That is confusing to people, obviously. That's something I sort through in this podcast.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking to Matt Katz, the writer and host of the new podcast, Inconceivable Truth. He's also the public safety reporter for WNYC and the Gothamist. The first two episodes of Inconceivable Truth are out today, and there are eight episodes total, which will be released weekly after today. Matt, we just got a text that I want to read that I think you'll enjoy. It says, "I remember Matt telling part of his story on Hillary Frank's beloved, yet retired podcast The Longest Shortest Time."

Then I remember hearing Matt on that 2019 segment. It was a great look into Matt as a person. All the kids out there, myself included, who overcome trauma and thrive in life like Matt has done. He is an asset to WNYC, proud of his courage. Matt, it's clear that a story like this resonates with a lot of people. I think for a lot of people, a question out there is about identity. You thought that you were 100% Ashkenazi Jew from Eastern Europe. You find out you're 50% Irish. In those moments, did you feel less Jewish? How did it impact your own identity?

Matt Katz: It impacted the way I see myself in the mirror, was the first thing I felt. I literally now see a half-Irish, half-Jewish guy when I look in the mirror. I never felt like I really looked like the other kids at Hebrew school. I felt like my face was a little redder. My hair was a little lighter, straighter, my hair was straighter. It just felt like a little bit different. Now, I make sense to myself physically, which is a small thing, but a significant thing. As far as my ethnic identity, I am associating and learning this world of being an Irishman, took my family to Ireland, started reading Irish poetry and some Irish novels. I am starting to identify with some of the cultural elements, but I really don't feel any less Jewish.

I've thought a lot about this, and I think that comes down to a perception of this identity that is really related to the family I came up with. My cultural and ethnic identity is so tied to the family that I know and grew up with, and that is a Jewish family who would have Passover Seder every year and go to Shabbat services. I had a Bris for my son before I knew any of this. The reason why I did that is because Bris is the oldest covenant with God in the Jewish tradition, and you get circumcised at eight days. I love the idea that I had this done, and everybody in our male side of the family had this done for generations, maybe thousands of years now. I know that's not true.

Nobody on the male biological side of my family had this done beyond me because everybody was Irish Catholic. Yet, I still look back on that moment, that Bris, with very warm feelings because it was just a way of connecting with past generations and passing something along to my son. It didn't matter the specifics of the tradition or the religious nature of the tradition. It was just the idea of bringing our family together, having this Bris, having this circumcision, having some Nosh together. That's what felt important. That's what connected me to other generations, regardless of what religion was tagged on.

Kousha Navidar: It sounds like, for you, a lot of this is about finding connection. It does sound like you would've had the Bris even if you knew what you knew now. Is that fair to say?

Matt Katz: Absolutely. My daughter's getting bat mitzvah this year, even though we now know she's only a quarter Irish.

Kousha Navidar: How does it change?

Matt Katz: Sorry. She's three-quarters Jewish, a quarter Irish.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners with Math degrees set us up. Call us 212-433-WNYC. Matt, how does it influence your relationship with your kids?

Matt Katz: First of all, it has helped ease the awkwardness of having the birds and the bees conversation, because when you tell your 6-year-old daughter that you were conceived by a sperm donor, you have to go through the mechanics of what that means. My kids, I feel like now know a lot more about all that stuff than their friends. My son did a project, he had to do a project about his family genealogy, and he now knows far more about his ancestry than most other kids, just because I've done so much research to try to figure out where my people were from.

The arc of this podcast that I did, Inconceivable Truth, eight episodes, is me trying to find the identity of my real birth father. To do that, I had to dig into my distant relatives. I had to figure out who my cousins were that I was connected to via DNA on the ancestry sites. I went to Ireland and went to my great-great-grandfather's farm to try to see if anybody knew of this family, and I got some amazing clues when I did. I recorded it all. I think my kids have a larger sense of how we all fit into the world across generations.

Kousha Navidar: So many people listening right now are texting us, and I just want to point out a funny text that we got, a text that somebody called you Matt MacKatz.

Matt Katz: It is good. Pretty good one.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: A lot of folks struggle with maybe not exactly this or maybe exactly this or a version of this. This idea of where you come from, who you are. We have a caller that I'd love to get to. Larry in Easton, Pennsylvania. Hey Larry, welcome to the show.

Larry: Thank you, thank you. Yes, I have a similar story. I thought I was 100% Jewish. I found that, I did an ancestry test. I also found documents. My mother was going into a nursing home and she kept the adoption, the original adoption documents. I found out that way as well. Through ancestry I connected with some of my relatives. It turns out that I'm 50% Italian, Sicilian, and 50% Jewish.

Kousha Navidar: Larry, thank you so much for that call. Listen, callers, we would love for you to send us your stories. We are getting more calls than we have time for, unfortunately. If you want, you can DM us on Instagram @AllOfItWNYC. Matt, you hear stories like Larry. There are so many stories that maybe aren't easily talked about, which is part of the reason why what you've made could make a big difference in folks' lives. What do you hope folks walk away with or discover through hearing your story?

Matt Katz: They're not alone. These consumer DNA tests have triggered an absolute social upheaval and have overturned people's because they reveal-- For the breadth of humanity, if there was adultery, if there was infidelity, if there was adoption, children would never know. Now, there's a scientific way of knowing, and there's a lot of people finding these things out. They're finding out halfway through life their parents aren't the people they thought they were, and they're not alone. I hope when people listen to this, listen to the show, they will understand that and know that there's some way of feeling whole again by going through the process of this discovery.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, you talk about being alone and not being alone, and that's so interesting to think about with what you experienced because you were born with a mother and a person you thought was your father. Then you had an adopted father. Then you didn't have aunts and uncles, but you found half-siblings. For you, I've got to ask, how do you define family?

Matt Katz: These half-siblings are the best piece of what I've gotten out of this whole thing. I have an expansive view of family now, obviously, and I have this text chain with these siblings. We have the picture on the text chain is a DNA strand. We've spent a lot of time together. We've bonded. I feel enriched by having more and more biological family in my life, and non-biological family, like my adopted father. I have an expansive view of family, and I think in this crazy mixed-up world we're in, I think that's how a lot of people view these things and view life and family and love.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, it's expansive and it's your journey to to define it. If you would like to hear that story, you can listen to Inconceivable Truth, it's a podcast. We've been joined by Matt Katz, the writer, the host, sits just across the window about 13 feet away from here. He's the public safety reporter for WNYC and the Gothamist. The first two episodes of Inconceivable Truth are out today. Every week after that, for the next six weeks, we'll have another one out there. Matt, thank you so much for joining us.

Matt Katz: I'm so appreciative, Kousha. Thanks so much.

 

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