Host: Catherine Burns
[overture music]
Catherine: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. And I'm Catherine Burns.
This time, we'll hear stories about genetics. We're learning more and more about our DNA. For better or for worse, genetics can shed light on mysteries in our lives, but can also sometimes reveal things that folks would rather have kept in the dark. DNA can shake the family tree, settle disputes, stir up old secrets and pass on traits our beloved, or maybe feared.
That's the case in our first story, told by many-time Moth storyteller and host, Mike Birbiglia. It concerns the genes that get passed down from grandparents to parents to children. We recorded Mike at a show we did one evening in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Cemeteries are outdoors, obviously, so you can hear the sound of crickets and even a few planes going by. Here's Mike Birbiglia, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Mike: [00:01:07] Thank you, guys, so much. This is a really special thing. I'm really honored to be a part of. It’s an ominous thing to tell a story in a graveyard. I've never done it before. It's particularly timely for me, because yesterday, I turned 41 years old. [audience cheers and applause]
Yeah, I celebrated with my wife, Jenny, and my daughter, Una, who's four. But it's gotten me thinking a lot about mortality, because my dad had a heart attack at 60, and his dad had a heart attack at 60. And so, I'm just setting aside that whole year, and I'm getting an Airbnb by the hospital [audience laughter] and I'm keeping a flexible schedule. [audience laughter] It's not just that. I actually have a lot of medical issues. I have a dangerous sleepwalking disorder. I had a bladder tumor when I was 19.
And two years ago, I went for my annual checkup. My doctor took blood and he called me and he said, “You have Lyme disease.” And I was like, “And?” [audience laughter] “Diabetes” And I was like, “One at a time. Everybody is going to get a chance.” [audience laughter] But it was truly shocking. 39 years old, diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. He said, “Is there anything in your diet that might be spiking your blood sugar?” I said, “Sometimes I eat pizza until I am unconscious.” [audience laughter] He said, “I think that might be it.”
I have terrible habits. I travel for my job. I never drink the tiny liquor bottles in the mini fridge, but I am triple digits on glass jars of peanut M&Ms. If you suck on a peanut M&M long enough, it is just a peanut. [audience laughter] And if you suck on that peanut long enough, you can taste pure shame. [audience laughter] But at a certain point, the shame pivots into pride and you start to think, actually, this is pretty healthy. [audience laughter] I have been meaning to eat more nuts. And then, you start eating a couple hundred and you get a sugar high and you think, I should run a marathon, and then you don’t and then you end up with type 2 diabetes. [audience laughter] That’s unfortunate.
My doctor wanted to put me on medication. I really did not want to do that. I said, “Let me give it a shot. I am going to try to change my diet drastically.” He said, “You have to cut red meat and sugar and fries.” And as he is continuing, I am just thinking about sugar fries, [audience laughter] which is not even a thing, but I was singing a song about it and everything. [audience laughter] So, I give it a shot for a few months and I lose a few pounds. I go back in and my numbers are lower. But he has me take a pulmonary test, which is this thing where you are essentially simulating blowing out a candle, but it is a little ball. And he goes, “Do it.” And I go, “I just did.” [audience laughter] And he goes, “Oh, wow. I guess do it again.” And I go, “I just did.” And he goes, “Well, if I were going by just this, I would say you are having a heart attack right now.” And I said, “Well, am I? Because if I were having a heart attack, I would ask you.” [audience laughter] I was not having a heart attack. I want to make that clear.
But he was worried. He sent me to the cardiologist. They both agreed that I should be doing cardio five days a week. As a matter of fact, they both suggested that I start swimming at the YMCA. This was a sore subject for me. I spent a lot of my childhood at the YMCA in Worcester, Massachusetts. I went to the nursery school. I spent hundreds of hours with the half-blown-up basketballs and the rowing machine that’s also a fan, [audience laughter] and the vending machine room that has a coffee maker that also makes soup. [audience laughter]
So, two years ago I walked to my Brooklyn YMCA. I don’t need directions. You just follow the chlorine smell. [audience laughter] They are not shy about their use of chlorine in the [chuckles] YMCA pool. I go up to the front desk and I had made an arrangement for a lesson with a woman named Vanessa. And she said, “Where is your swim cap?” And I go, “Oh, I don’t wear a swim cap.” And she said, “Well, it is mandatory, unless you are completely bald.” And I said, “I don’t like how you leaned on the word completely. [audience laughter] I am not actually bald at all. I have four distinct tufts of hair that form this Voltron that is my hair.”
She said, “You can borrow my extra.” And so, I put on Vanessa’s swim cap and I look like a condom. [audience laughter] We walk into the pool area, which is basically pure chlorine. And she says, “Hop into the instructional lane.” Now, the instructional lane is also the walkers and joggers lane. And so, she asked me to do the crawl to show her what I got. I try. but these aggressive elderly walkers are just blowing past me. One of them drops an elbow on my head. I am like, “Vanessa, is it always this crowded?” And she goes, “No, it is because it is the spring and everyone is getting ready for the summer.” And I go, “Oh, they want a body like this,” which was a joke. It is not a great joke. It is not stage-worthy, but it is the conversational, witty repartee you might have to forge a bond with a swimming instructor. [audience chuckle]
She did not hear it. [audience laughter] And she just goes, [screams] “What?” And I go, “They want a body.” I go, [screams] “They want a body like this.” [audience laughter] And everybody in the pool looks over, all the elderly walkers and toddlers and the lifeguard, and they are like, “Has this guy seen his own body?” There are mirrors everywhere at the YMCA. [audience laughter] And for the people only listening to this and not seeing me, I do not have a swimmer’s body. I have, what I call, a drowner’s body, [audience laughter] where it seems like I am drowning at all times, even when I am not in water. [audience laughter]
And so, after about a half hour of this, I get out of the pool and I dry myself off with 15 or 20 of those YMCA dish rag towels. [audience laughter] I even put two on my feet, because Vanessa explains that there is fungus in the puddles. And I was like, “This place is a death trap. [audience laughter] I have to get out of here.” But she says something significant to me. She says, “You know, you can take the lessons, but really, you are going to have to come back on your own and practice.” And so, that’s what I did. For the next two years, I went swimming at the YMCA. I also did Pilates, [chuckles] and I did yoga. I even did, believe it or not, kickboxing.
About a month ago, I went to my doctor, and he took blood, and he called me and he said, “You reversed the diabetes.”
[cheers and applause]
Thanks. I was quite shocked by this. I am thinking to myself like, what was it? Was it the diet or the exercise? And so, the next time I saw my doctor, I said to him, I go, “What do you think it was that reversed the thing?” He said this really simple phrase that stuck with me. He said, “You chose to live.” And I think that’s true. I think I really did. I think I chose to live. I think I really want to see my daughter grow up, and go to high school and maybe college. And in 19 years from now, she will be 23 and she will be out of school and maybe out of the house and I will be 60 years old. Like my father and his father, I will have a heart attack. [audience laughter] But there will be a difference, because I will be checking in to my Airbnb. [audience laughter] And if I have any say in it, I will choose to live.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:11:15] That was Mike Birbiglia. Mike is a comedian and storyteller. His show, The New One, went all the way to Broadway and won the Drama Desk Award. He expande on the show in his book, The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad. The show was also taped for Netflix, and is available along with his last two shows, Thank God for Jokes and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.
Mike is now a well-known writer and comedian, but he told his first story way back in 2003 at The Moth show we produced for the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. I got to work with Mike on the story. It was actually the first Moth story I ever directed. So, we got our start together. Here is Mike talking about his history with The Moth.
Mike: [00:12:01] I had always thought about storytelling as something I wanted to do. But whenever I would try to tell stories as stand-up, I was a stand-up comedian at the time. I really felt insecure, or that I was losing the audience’s attention. So, when the folks at The Moth asked me to perform at Aspen, it seemed like a really exciting opportunity. What I did not realize was that it would change the way that I perform the rest of my career.
So, I told a story in Aspen, which was an early version of a story that would end up in my solo show, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend. It was about my first girlfriend in high school, and how I was so excited, but that she told me not to tell anyone that she was my girlfriend, because she actually had another boyfriend. And that was a pride-swallowing event in my life. I had literally never told people, never mind a group of strangers.
And so, I was so nervous when I told the story on stage in Aspen that I was literally trembling. Sometimes I will tell people who want to try storytelling that I think if they are nervous about telling a story, that it is actually a good sign. So, as a fan of The Moth, that’s what I have always found the most compelling and exciting about their shows.
Like, when people tell their most embarrassing and gut-wrenching confessions in a way that we can all relate to, I think that is really special. I mean, I remember after performing at The Moth for the first time, I thought, I think I am better at this than just traditional stand-up comedy. I think this is what I am supposed to do. So, now it is, I think, more than 15 years later, and this is what I do.
Catherine: [00:13:37] That was Mike Birbiglia.
Coming up, a family takes a DNA test just for fun. But then, that is when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[upbeat music]
Jay: [00:14:08] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:14:19] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I am Catherine Burns.
In this show, we are talking about genetics. DNA does not lie. And having access to our own genetic histories has fundamentally shifted the world. That was the case with our next storyteller, Carmen Rita Wong. She told her story at the Tarrytown Music Hall in the Hudson Valley, where we partnered with Music Without Borders. Here is Carmen.
[applause]
Carmen: [00:14:47] So, I was born in uptown Manhattan in the 1970s to a Chinese father and a Dominican mother. Now, there was no mistaking that my mother was my mother, Guadalupe Otagracias Gomez de Reyes, [audience laughter] aka Lupe. She was the constant in my life and very much my Latin mama.
Now, when I was a toddler though, she divorced my Chinese father, Papi Wong, as I call him. But my older brother and I still saw him on the weekends, and here and there. We loved it, because he would take us to Chinatown shopping or to our favorite restaurants. I loved the ones that had the fancy chopsticks that we went click-click. And even though he did not live with us, I was raised as his daughter. I was raised as a Wong.
Now, my mother did not stay single long. She remarried, and we picked up and moved from Harlem to New Hampshire. [audience laughter] Now, I got to say, my stepfather, my new dad, Charlie, he was like a dad out of the Golden Books when you were kids, right? He was a white guy, wore a suit and tie, carried a briefcase to work every day, and came home at the same time Monday through Friday to dinner on the table. Well, little Carmen thought she had hit the American Daddy Jackpot. [audience chuckle]
But here is the thing. The best thing he gave me were my four little sisters, who I loved and adored, pains in the butts. But I loved them so much. I wanted to be a part of that family. I wanted him to be my daddy too. But he wasn’t. And so, I grew up always feeling like an outsider, like an other. And you better believe in 1980s New Hampshire, I was an other. [audience chuckle] I might as well have been an alien that landed there, an unwelcome alien in a place that was supposed to be my home.
The little kids would make fun of me, pulling up their eyes or bucking their teeth, or all these new creative slurs were thrown my way for being brown. Every once in a while, the grown-ups would get on that train. When I was in fourth grade, at a parent-teacher conference, Sister Rachel said to my mother, my Latin mother, mind you, that the reason why I was getting all these straight A's, well, it was because “It’s Carmen’s Chinese side.” [audience laughter] Now, I may have been only nine years old, but I knew enough to be insulted and embarrassed for my mother and me.
I liked Sister Rachel a lot less after that. Because here is the thing. Even though my mother was not the Asian parent, she was what some people would call a tiger mom, right? Lupe expected excellence from me at all times. If I dared to bring home anything but an A, she would say, [in Chinese accent] “Well, are you an A or are you a B?” [audience laughter] Lupe saw education as a way of escaping her fate. Working full-time at 15 years old to help support her family, married off by her father at 19, and there at that conference night, in her 30s, pregnant with her fifth child, she wanted more from me.
So, in the car ride home from that parent-teacher conference though, I was still pissed. I just had to ask. I just had to say, “Mommy. Mommy. Sister Rachel said I am smart because of Poppy, because I am Chinese.” And my mother, the parent who was actually present, the one who would kick my butt if I did not do well in school, she just kept her eyes straight on the road, and there was a little smile. She shrugged and she said, “That’s okay.” And in that smile, which was more of a smirk, I realized there were a lot of things my mother was not telling me.
See, Mommy came from a world of secrets. In the 1950s, 1960s Dominican Republic, this was a place where speaking your mind or telling the truth could get you beaten, or killed or kidnapped in the middle of the night, like my grandfather, who was tortured, but then who later escaped the hospital dressed as a woman by his sisters. [audience laughter] I mean, this is talk about secrets. This is cloak and dagger on a family level. This was my mother’s normal.
By the time I was in my 30s, my mother received a devastating cancer diagnosis. And for the first time in her life, she was about to lose control of the narrative. My stepfather, Charlie, called me months after we found out that she was sick and said, he needed to see me urgently and alone. A couple weeks later, I am sitting across the kitchen table from him, and he says to me, “Carmen, Papi Wong is not your father. I am.” The first thing that came to my mind was, “Ai ya... I’m not Chinese anymore?” [audience laughter] And two, “Damn you two.” All these years that I had so much wanted to be a part of that family, that picture book American family, his family, and they both knew. It was painful.
Now, I had to confirm this story, of course, with my mother, who I then told. She confirmed it, pretty much, with a lot more dramatic flair. She was mostly just upset that he had gotten to me before she did. But Mommy, you have stage four colon cancer, how long were you going to wait, right? So, there were many tears and questions and blame, but I made peace with my mother before she passed the following year. My relationship with Charlie, however, unfortunately, has never been exactly the same. How could it be? Well, years go by, and now we are living in a time when genetic testing is available to everybody, to the public, and affordable. There is one thing my family loves, it’s a sale. [audience laughter] So, last holiday season, we all bought up a bunch of 23andMe and took the test at the same time.
Now, I got my results back first. I am opening that app. What I am expecting to see is, I am expecting to see a confirmation of this family secret, right? I am expecting to see that I am half Charlie, which is Italian, and then half my mother, which would be African and Spanish. Well, that is not what I saw. Portuguese. It says I am half Portuguese. I frantically texted my sister Nina. She texted right back. She said, “Oh, do not worry about it, okay? Relax. Once we all get our results back and we connect, right? Because once we see our relationships and we connect our data, then we will know what is right, right?”
So, I pick up the phone and call my brother. He says pretty much the same thing. He says, “Do not worry about it. You know what? Maybe it is a mix-up. Once we connect and see our relationships and we are all linked up, then you will see. Plus, Italy and Portugal are kind of close to each other.” [audience laughter] So, no. No, that is not what happened. Once we all connected-- Now, remember my sister Nina, my baby sisters, I am supposed to be the same as her. I was supposed to be full siblings and there it was in large, extra-large font, half-sister. There was a third father. Six kids in my family, and I did not share a father with any of them. I felt so alone. But damn it, I was going to solve this mystery.
So, I went digging in the past and I dug up my godmother, who I had not spoken to in 20 years. I tracked her down, and I called her up and I said, “Pimpa.” This is her nickname. We called her Pimpa. I said, “We all took this genetic test and we found out that I have a different father from everybody.” She was really surprised, because Pimpa, she thought she knew all my mother’s secrets. She was my mother’s best friend. She lived down the hall from us growing up. And she was a scholar now. She was a dual PhD. She looked at historical records to find shipwrecks in the Caribbean. My godmother was a treasure hunter. [audience laughter] That’s what I wanted right now. That’s what I needed.
But she was surprised. Because even though she knew as well, it seems like everybody knew, that Papi Wong was not my father, she also thought that it had been Charlie. I said, “No. Pimpa. Says I am Portuguese.” “Oh, [audience laughter] the Argentinian optometrist on Delancey Street.” “What? [audience laughter] What was his name?” “Ay, mija, how can I remember his name? That was almost 50 years ago. Listen, your mother—don’t judge your mother. She was lonely. Papi was already kicked out of the house. And so, she was dating. I was babysitting your brother when the dates would come and pick her up. So, yeah, there was Charlie and then the optometrist. She had a part-time job at an optician on Delancey Street. But he is dead.”
My heart could barely take it. You know, have people really thought about the fact that with genetic testing, we are looking at the end of family secrets? You are looking at a member of probably the last generation whose parents could futz around about their futzing around? [audience laughter] Really? Here is the thing. My origin story, as I like to call it, or mystery, is still happening to this day. But here is what I do know. I know that Lupe did everything she could, and came so far and did so much to give me options.
I know that Charlie, I used to talk with him about the stock market to bond and I ended up hosting my own finance daily TV show on CNBC. And Papi Wong, well, he taught me the street hustle that helped get me there. I got a good deal. But I rail at my mother’s ghost sometimes, Lupe, for leaving out this incredibly important little detail of my life. I ask her to visit me in my dreams, to drop me a hint or a clue as to who it is I am looking at when I look in the mirror.
The morning after I talked to Pimpa, I called my sister Nina. I said, “Nina, what if I never find out who this man is?” And Nina, who is super Zen, said, “You know, does it really matter, girl? Because you know who you are. You know who you are.” She is right. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:27:10] Carmen Rita Wong is a former national TV host, advice columnist and professor, currently working on her fifth book, A Memoir. We recently sat down to discuss how this story came about and what’s happened in the aftermath of all these revelations.
So, I was having breakfast with you, and at the end of the breakfast, you ended up telling me this story. But at the time, the story ended with you finding out that Charlie was your father.
Carmen: [00:27:38] Oof, oof. [laughs]
Catherine: [00:27:39] And then, so, you agreed to tell the story and then you came to the office a month later.
Carmen: [00:27:45] Mm-hmm. We had the meeting scheduled. And the night before I had gotten the results with my family that it actually was a third man, daddy number three.
Catherine: [00:28:00] Because I remember you saying, “Before we start, I have something to tell you.” [Carmen laughs]
Carmen: [00:28:04] No. I said, “Plot twist.”
Catherine: [00:28:06] Yes, you did.
Carmen: [00:28:08] Ther mystery continues.
Catherine: [00:28:09] Continues. At the end of the story, you are searching for the daddy who is the optometrist on Delancey Street. But then, yesterday, you sent me your bio and I read it and dun, dun, da.
Carmen: [00:28:25] It was not the optometrist on Delancey Street. Not Argentinian at all. I did speak with my stepfather, with Charlie, and finally broke the news to him and new revelations came out. Here is the funny thing, is that I was so concerned about his reaction, because I had been living with him as my father, stepfather, for so many years. I did not want to hurt break his heart. But instead, I was the one who fell apart, and he was holding me together. But then, I picked myself up and said, “Okay, Dad, so do you know who the hell this is? Can you tell me anything?”
And he said, “You know, I used to pick up your mother from this clinic in the Bronx. She was working there, and I would go and drive and pick her up. There was this Cuban doctor. I had bad feelings about this Cuban doctor.” And I was like, “Okay.” And then, of course, just like the optometrist, I was like, “Well, at least he was a doctor.” [Catherine laughs] And then, 23andMe had an update on its system. So, they sent me a notice and said, “We have a more specialized report for you.” And there it was. It had the origins, the most direct origins outside the US of my family, and half of it was Havana, Cuba. So, that’s where we are heading. I hired a genealogist, and we are tracking down my mother’s work records, because no one can remember who this man is, and we are just going to try to figure it out.
Catherine: [00:29:56] That was Carmen Rita Wong. To see a photo of Carmen’s mother and Papi Wong at their engagement party, go to themoth.org.
While you’re there, you can call our pitch line and leave us a two-minute version of a story you would like to tell. By the way, for a future show, we are looking for stories about animals. Dogs, cats, tarantulas, llamas, geese. Bring 'em on. The number to call is 877-799-M-O-T-H. Or, you can pitch us your own story at themoth.org.
Coming up, a woman must make a difficult decision when faced with her family’s genetic history. And later, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist has to scramble to get his green card renewed. That’s when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[whimsical music]
Jay: [00:31:16] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Catherine: [00:31:30] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns.
Our next story was told at one of our open-mic StorySLAM competitions here in New York City, where we partner with Public Radio Station WNYC. Here's Beth Bucher, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Beth: [00:31:47] So, 10 years ago, I underwent genetic testing for the breast cancer gene. I did this, because when I was five years old, I watched my mother die of breast cancer. She was 26 when she was diagnosed and she was 30 when she passed away. And her mother had also died when she was five years old. My older sister died of a rare genetic liver disorder when she was only nine months old. So, it really only felt natural to me to try to figure out why this kept happening to people in my family. And the person that had a front-row seat for all of this pain and death was my Aunt Anna.
Now, my Aunt Anna, she took my mother in after their mother died, and she raised her along with her eight children. Eight children. Just let that sink in. [chuckles] And then, when my mother died, she took in me and my brother and she became a mother all over again. She raised us with her brood of eight adult children. And man, she just did it and she did it well. She did it in that Irish Catholic, blue-collar way, you put your head down and you do what you need to do to take care of your family. She did it with quiet strength. But when I say quiet, I mean quiet. We did not talk about death. We did not talk about cancer. She never talked about what she had seen in her life.
Until I was older and in college and on breaks, I would drive down to see her in Southwest Philly, and we would sit around the table and drink bad coffee and talk about life and family, juicy stuff. And then, after enough of that, she started to actually open up about that time. She told me this story about my mom when she was in the hospital, which was a lot. My mother died a blind quadriplegic with steel rods holding up her skull. She suffered [sobs] unimaginably. But that day, when Anna went to see her, she went in and my mom was so happy, and she was smiling and she was excited. She grabbed Anna’s hand and she said, “Ann, Ann, you’ll never believe what the nurses told me this morning. They’re doing liver transplants. They’re doing it. They’re doing it!”
That was the thing that would have saved my sister’s life. And in 1975, they were not doing that. It has really always amazed me that my mother was able to find this joy and this happiness, despite being trapped in total hell. I tried to remember that when my own genetic test results came back, and they were positive for the BRCA1 mutation, which was not a surprise. But it took my risk from 12% to somewhere around 60% to 87% risk of getting the disease that seemed to get everyone. And then, around that time, we buried Anna, [sobs] because she got cancer and she did not tell anyone, because she did not want everyone to go through the same thing that she had gone through, and she did not want anyone to see what she saw. And so, quietly, she died.
And at that point, I had enough. I was really done. So, I elected to have a prophylactic mastectomy. I made that decision ferociously. I made every decision after that fearlessly, and with strength. I was resolute, right up until I was alone in a very small room in the hospital that morning with my plastic surgeon, and bare-ass naked [chuckles] with my hospital gown around my waist. He was making all these marks on my breasts with this dark blue grease pen. And I got [sobs] so scared. I was so alone.
And then, in that same instant when I got so scared, I felt over on the right-hand side of the room that there were people there. As much as you all are here right now, they were there. It was my grandmother, and it was my mother, and it was Anna and it was my sister. I was calm, and warm, and happy and excited. I thought about my mother, and I looked over in the corner and I went, [whispers] “Look, Mom, they’re doing it. [audience chuckle] They’re doing this.” And that really is the spirit with which I’ve moved forward after this, is every time I’m walking through this world and I see something awesome or amazing or just beautiful, I look up at the sky and I share it with them and then I tell them, “Look, guys, I’m doing it.” Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:37:02] That was Beth Bucher. Beth is a passionate educator of students with learning disabilities and ADHD. Having ADHD herself, her mission is to show her students what they're really made of, and prove to them that no matter what label life throws at us, we can learn to live beyond it. Since this story aired, Beth celebrated her 40th birthday and underwent her final risk-reducing surgery. She’s now considered to have the same cancer risk as the general population. She says that she’s never been more thrilled to be average. To get a link to Beth’s website and to see pictures of Beth and her family, go to themoth.org.
[soft melancholic music]
Our final story is a classic Moth tale that came out of our many-year-long collaboration with the World Science Festival. As part of this annual event, we would ask some of the greatest minds in the world to stand on stage and talk about themselves. In our experience, most scientists would rather be in a lecture hall talking about anything but themselves. But every year, a few step up.
[applause]
One year, we were thrilled to have not one, but two Nobel laureates on stage. Here’s one of them, the geneticist Paul Nurse, live at The Moth.
Paul: [00:38:26] I’m a geneticist. I study how chromosomes are inherited in dividing cells. But my story tonight will be more to do with my own genetics. You probably gathered I’m English. [audience laughter] I was brought up in the 1950s and 1960s in London. My family was not very rich. I had two brothers. I had a sister. My dad was a blue-collar worker, my mum was a cleaner. My siblings all left school at 15, and I was a little bit different. I did quite well at school. I passed exams, and then I somehow got into university, got a scholarship and then did a PhD. But I wondered, why am I different to the rest of my family? Why did they all leave school at 15, which is, in fact, what happened?
Well, I did not really have much of an answer, but I felt a bit unsettled about that. You know I wondered about it occasionally, but I carried on with my life. I got a job at the university, I got married, I had two children, Emily and Sarah, and just got on with things. Then my parents, who were living in London, they retired to the country. We used to visit them regularly. But the truth was, it was a bit boring. They lived in the middle of nowhere, nothing much happened there. And my kids, who were perhaps 9 or 10 or 11, got a bit bored when they went there.
Sarah, my 11-year-old, had a project at school. And the project was family trees. I have to tell you, family trees are very bad projects [audience laughter] to have at school. And I said, “I’ve got a great idea. I know you get a bit bored at Grandma’s. Why don’t you talk to Grandma about her family tree?” So, we get there, we have dinner and then off Sarah trots, takes Grandma next door to talk about her family tree. Five minutes later, in comes my mum, absolutely white. Absolutely white. She comes over to me and she said, “Sarah’s been asking me about my family tree, and I have to tell you something that I’ve never told you.” I was in my 30s by this time. I was in my 30s. [audience laughter]
She said, “I never told you.” But what my mum said is, she said, “Actually, I’m illegitimate.” This is what my mum said, “I’m illegitimate.” She had been born in 1910. Her mum was not married. She had been born in the poorhouse. She was not from a wealthy family. She was brought up by her grandmother. Her mother had married somebody else who I thought was my grandfather. But that was not the case. My grandfather was unknown, so I had lost a grandfather. Then she turned to me and said, "And actually, it is the same for your father too." [audience laughter] So, in two sentences, I had lost two grandfathers. [audience laughter]
Well, this was a bit of a shock. And then, I began to think about it and I thought, well, maybe this is where I got some exotic genes from somewhere, and they recombined and that is why I am a bit different. And then, I remembered that my middle name was Maxime, and I got it from my dad, who was called Maxime William John. He was a farm worker in the country that is where he came from in Norfolk.
And I tell you, in Norfolk, farm workers are not called Maxime, usually. [audience laughter] This is a French-Russian aristocratic sort of name. [audience laughter] It did seem a little odd, so I began to imagine that perhaps, I had exotic grandfathers, a French-Russian aristocrat and blah, blah, blah, and that was why I ended up how I was. And so, that seemed all okay, that seemed a reasonable explanation. I forgot about things, and I got on with my career. I became an Oxford professor, then a departmental chair, then they knighted me and then I got a Nobel Prize a few years ago. [audience laughter] So, that is all hunky-dory.
[audience laughter]
And then, in 2003, I decided to come to New York City. Both my parents had died, they lived into their 80s and 90s. And so, I came with my family to New York City to be president of Rockefeller University on the Upper East Side. A couple of years ago, 2007, I thought I should try and get a green card. Have you ever seen those poor bastards all there queuing up when you come into immigration? They are all people like me who have to wait there for an hour and a half and have their fingerprints all done. Anyway.
And so, if you have a green card, a residence card, you avoid that, okay? So, I applied for a green card. Huge amount of paperwork. You have no idea, how complicated it is. Sent the thing off, waited a number of months, came back and I was rejected. [audience laughter] I thought, how come I am rejected? I am a knight, I have got a Nobel Prize, [audience laughter] and I am president of Rockefeller University and they reject me for a green card? I know Homeland Security has high standards, but I mean, [audience laughter] this did seem more than a little ridiculous.
So, I looked through all the paperwork, and I eventually found out they did not like the documentation I had sent with my application. So, I went through it and I picked out that they particularly did not like my birth certificate. So, I got my birth certificate out. It was a so-called short birth certificate, which we have in Britain, which names who you are, where you were born, the time you were born, your citizenship and so on. It does not happen to quite name your parents, okay? So, perfectly official document, but that is what I had. And so, I thought, well, I can go and get the long certificate. I knew the registry office would have it. So, I phoned up London, the registry office and said, "Please send that in the post." I told my secretary in my office, "When it arrives, bungle it all up again, send it off to those silly jerks in Homeland Security." [audience laughter]
I went on holiday for a couple of weeks, went to New Zealand, came back, undoing all the mail, looking at my emails and so on. Several people in my room. I had my secretary, her assistant, my wife who came in, my lab manager was around, so quite a few people around. And then, I remembered that I told my secretary to get this package sent off. So, I asked her, "Did you manage to do that?" She turned to me and she said, "Well, I didn't do it," she said, "because the certificate arrived, I looked at it and I thought, maybe you got the name of your mother wrong." I said, "Of course, I didn't get the name of my mother wrong. Don't be absolutely ridiculous." So, she handed me the certificate. Everybody started to look at me. It's a bit of a strange conversation to have.
So, I open it, I look at it and there the name Nurse is my mother. And I say, "Well, not a problem there." And then, I look at it again, and the name was Miriam Nurse. And that was the name of my sister. It was not the name of my mother at all. It was the name of my sister. So, I’m looking at this thinking, oh my God, the registry office have cocked up again. [audience laughter] And then, I look a bit further, and where it says father, there's just a line, just a dash, no father. And then, my wife comes up and says, "You know what this might mean, Paul?" [audience laughter]
I was a bit slow, actually. [audience laughter] I really did not quite realize what it might have meant. And then, slowly, the clouds roll away. My sister was 18 years and one month older than me, okay? Now, I have not told you, but not only had both my parents died, who are actually now my grandparents, but also my mother, she died early of multiple sclerosis, three or four years before. So, I had nobody. That whole generation had died. I had nobody to confirm if this story was true.
However, on the birth certificate was the place where I was born, and it was my great aunt's house about 100 miles from London in a city called Norwich. And my great aunt had a daughter who was 11 years of age when I was born. So, I phoned her up and said, "Do you know anything about this?" And she said, "Yes, I do." She said, "Your sister became pregnant at 17, and she was sent to her aunt's in Norwich, 100 miles away from home." This is like a Dickensian novel, as you can see. [audience laughter] "And she gave birth to you. And her mother, my grandmother, came up and pretended that the baby was hers. She sent your real mother back home. And several months later, she took you back with her, pretending that she was your mother."
We all lived together in this two-bedroom apartment for two and a half years. And then, my real mother got married and left home. There's a photograph of me in this wedding. And my mother, my real mother, is holding the hand of her husband in one hand and my hand in the other. Because you realize, this was her leaving me with her parents. She never told her husband. So, the whole thing was kept secret for over half a century. Now, at the same wedding, I crawled under the table, a gateleg table, which had the wedding cake. I managed to move the leg, and the wedding cake fell off the table [audience laughter] and smashed into pieces. I wonder whether I was revolting at the thought of my mother being taken away. Now, this was a tragedy, I am sure, for my mother.
I was brought up happily, a little dully maybe, by my grandparents, but this was, I am sure, a tragedy for my mother. She had three children, and she kept four photographs of babies by her bed. I only learned this after her death. Three were her legitimate children and I was her fourth, illegitimate, child. Well, what’s the final irony here really? I am not a bad geneticist, and my rather simple family kept my own genetic secret for over half a century. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:48:56] That was Paul Nurse. Dr. Nurse is the former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. Along with two fellow scientists, he was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle. Dr. Nurse was knighted by the Queen in 1999 in honor of his work in cancer research.
When I wrote to Dr. Nurse and asked if he had any updates on the story, he wrote, “The only new thing to add is that I’ve had a DNA analysis carried out and definitely have close relatives that I don’t know, and so may be related to my unknown father. At present, I’ve not had a response from them.”
That’s it for this episode. We hope you’ll join us next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:59] Your host this hour was The Moth’s Artistic Director, Catherine Burns, who also directed the stories in the show. The rest of The Moth directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch. Special thanks to the World Science Festival.
Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Kerala Dust, Khruangbin, Wolfgang Muthspiel and B. Fleischmann.
The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.