logo
episode-header-image
Mar 2023
27m 53s

All in the Family

Sword and Scale
About this episode
From the moment Katie Fusco learned that she was an adopted child, she longed to understand where she came from and why she was put up for adoption in the first place. At age 18, just as she was about to graduate high school and head off to college, Katie decided to make contact with her biological parents. Unfortunately, this choice came with a hard lesson. ... Show More
Up next
Feb 2025
Where is Season 3?
Subscribe Now to This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Show kicks off March 3rd, 2025.  Available ad-free at swordandscale.com/plus 
9m 35s
Nov 2024
Mom
Kimberly Cargill was evil personified. She abused her children for years, circumventing the system to keep them in her clutches. Finally, the state caught on and what she did to keep from trouble was worse than the abuse itself. 
34m 47s
Nov 2024
Dad
In the tiny, rural village of Emerson, Nebraska, where only about 800 people live nestled in the northern, rolling hills, a series of inexplicable events begins to unfold. What seems like an ordinary morning turns into a nightmare as a young mother stumbles upon clues that hint a ... Show More
25m 59s
Recommended Episodes
May 2014
Katie Moves House
A Father's Day visit to a football match, all because of a house move. This is a special story for everyone who has been wondering about Katie's dad. Katie goes to see him, even though her mother does not really want her to. 
23m 31s
Jul 2023
A better life
When Susan was a teenager, she set out to find answers about her birth parents. As an adoptee, she longed to know where she came from. When she eventually reunited with her birth parents as a teenager, she thought she’d finally feel at peace. She couldn’t have known that many yea ... Show More
54m 16s
Jul 2023
A better life
When Susan was a teenager, she set out to find answers about her birth parents. As an adoptee, she longed to know where she came from. When she eventually reunited with her birth parents as a teenager, she thought she’d finally feel at peace. She couldn’t have known that many yea ... Show More
52m 16s
May 2020
Los niños de los desaparecidos (The Children of the Disappeared)
As the child of adoptive parents in 1980s Argentina, Tatiana Sfiligoy knew her family situation was unique. But it would be another decade before she uncovered the truth about what happened to her biological parents — including the role her country played in their disappearance. ... Show More
26m 49s
Oct 2018
Katie’s Grandma at School
In time for Halloween, Katie's Grandma is 100 years old ! She tells Katie the story of how she went to an English boarding school back in the 1930s and made a best friend from the USA, Amy. 
17m 15s
May 2022
Why was I adopted? Women looking for birth stories
What's it like being adopted into a country far away from your birth and into a family that looks very different to you? International and transracial adoptions both come with challenges for children and parents. Beatriz de la Pava talks to two women born in Colombia and South Ko ... Show More
31m 56s
Jun 2022
Stranger Love
Sarah and Eric became foster parents in the hopes of one day adopting. And when baby Coco came into their lives it looked like it could be for good. But that wasn't the case. Caring for Coco became much messier, more challenging and more difficult than Eric and Sarah ever expecte ... Show More
47m 34s
Jun 2023
Father's Day
In this Dateline classic, a woman from Washington State takes a DNA test, hoping to learn more about her family history. A remarkable discovery would change her family forever – and send her father halfway around the world to confront a past he thought he left behind. Harry Smith ... Show More
41m 15s
Mar 2019
Family Secrets
“I've been kind of a student of family secrets all my life,” writer Dani Shapiro says. All of her novels have centered around family secrets, and her memoirs have explored secrets in her own family history, some of which she didn’t know existed—until she took a DNA test on a whim ... Show More
51m 37s