Without us realising, an enormous DNA database has been created online. It holds the secrets of your true identity and promises to reveal untold family connections. But what happens when online ancestry tests reveal more than you had bargained for?
Across two series, Jenny Kleeman meets the men and women whose lives changed forever after they opened a box that contained a DNA test. Exposing scandals, upending identities, solving mysteries and delivering life-changing news - Jenny investigates what happens when genealogy, technology and identity collide.
In a brand new bonus episode, Searching – available on BBC Sounds from 22 February, 2025 – Jenny meets a family who are in a race against time to find the baby they believe was switched at birth.
Without us realising, an enormous DNA database has been created online. It holds the secrets of your true identity and promises to reveal untold family connections. But what happens when online ancestry tests reveal more than you had bargained for?
Across two series, Jenny Kleeman meets the men and women whose lives changed forever after they opened a box that contained a DNA test. Exposing scandals, upending identities, solving mysteries and delivering life-changing news - Jenny investigates what happens when genealogy, technology and identity collide.
In a brand new bonus episode, Searching – available on BBC Sounds from 22 February, 2025 – Jenny meets a family who are in a race against time to find the baby they believe was switched at birth.
An at-home DNA test - taken by chance when a game of golf is rained off - forces one man and three women to reassess everything they thought they knew about their families.
It’s the perfect gift for the person who already has everything. It promises to tell you who you really are, and how you’re connected to the world. A present that will reveal your genetic past – but could also disrupt your future.
In the first series of The Gift, Jenny Kleeman looked at the extraordinary truths that can unravel when people take at-home DNA tests like Ancestry and 23andMe.
For the second series, Jenny is going deeper into the unintended consequences - the aftershocks - set in motion when people link up to the enormous global DNA database.
Reconnecting and rupturing families, uprooting identities, unearthing long-buried secrets - what happens after technology, genealogy and identity collide?
Presenter: Jenny Kleeman Producer: Conor Garrett Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Editor: Philip Sellars Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke
The Gift is a BBC Studios Audio production for BBC Radio 4