Stories That Live In Us

139 Episodes

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Solving Dolly’s Secret: When DNA Connects You to Hollywood Royalty (with Michael Lynch) | Episode 137

2026-11-1237:43

When an unexpected DNA test showed almost zero trace of his grandfather's German roots, Michael Lynch realized an eighty-year-old family secret was staring him in the face. What began with a silent 1925 baby book and a handful of confusing shared matches quickly turned into an unforgettable investigation through historic California newspapers, unexpected half-cousins, and Hollywood royalty. Join Michael and me as we unravel the unspoken truths of his mother Dolly's parentage and discover what...

When Family Secrets Surface: Escaped Camps, Hidden Children, and DNA (with Erika Hanchar) | Episode 136

2026-11-0548:59

How many times have you hesitated to dig into an old family mystery because you were terrified of what you might find? In this episode, I sit down with writer and photographer Erika Hanchar (host of the Granddaughter of Immigrants podcast), who inherited a cryptic bedside stack of untranslated Ukrainian records at nineteen and spent twenty years unraveling the silence her grandparents took to their graves. From escaping a WWII forced labor camp in a stolen supply truck to a surprising Ancestr...

A Person Dies Twice: How Family Stories Keep Us Alive | Episode 135

2026-10-2922:09

What will your family remember about you when you're gone? And how do we keep the stories of the people we love alive for generations? When I pulled over on an empty desert road near Utah Lake and handed my 18-year-old nephew the keys to my convertible, I felt my late Aunt Rhonda sitting right there with us. She was a larger-than-life woman who never had children of her own but left an unforgettable legacy of love. From a wild ride down Sunset Boulevard in the 1990s to a quiet moment beside U...

All the Beautiful Things: What Really Brings People Back to Faith (with Shelley Graham) | Episode 134

2026-10-2250:01

How many times have you sat across the table from a child or sibling who sees faith completely differently than you do, and felt an aching gulf between you? In those moments, our first instinct is usually to defend what we believe, but my guest today is here to help us flip the script. Playwright and BYU theatre professor Shelley Graham joins me to share the incredible stories behind her verbatim stage production, All the Beautiful Things, revealing what actually brings people back to faith a...

The Countess of Cons: Uncovering Scandalous Ancestors (with Deborah Holman) | Episode 133

2026-10-1537:15

"When I noticed a yellowed piece of paper physically taped over a portrait in an old family book, I knew there was a secret waiting to be found." My guest today, author Deborah Holman, set out to uncover that hidden identity and ended up spending two years untangling the unbelievable life of her husband’s great-grandmother. We’re talking about a 19th-century woman living under dozens of aliases, pulling off high-stakes cons, breaking into 50 homes in a single weekend at age 60, and keeping h...

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