Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update - Closure Call: Switch Sitch

Episode Date: April 20, 2025

We've got a special new episode you this weekend! It all started with a SHOCKING and mysterious Facebook message... Now, after a full year of trying to track this listener down, we finally have some answers and it might be the most emotional closure call we've ever had to do!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs by a Cat. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war this year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes,

we met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs Podcast, Season 2, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all

the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story

about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. Listen to Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way

out of some of the darkest places imaginable. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Had spent 24 of those years in jail. But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, You found it, the Second Aid Update podcast. It's Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. Thank you so much for being here, and we love hearing how you found us. I know we've gotten a lot of comments about viral TikToks, about people finding us, even on Facebook.

Oh yeah, or being forced by their friends to listen to us. Oh, that's always a good one. Love when people say that one, yeah. Yeah, that's always a good one. And today we got a special treat. It's a closure call. If you haven't heard one of these, you know, like you've said before, Jose,

it's kind of the most intense segment that we do. Yeah, and this one, out of all the closure calls we've ever done, definitely took the most amount of energy to make it happen for sure. I mean, think about it. Some people hold all this weight for so long to actually get that closure or have that conversation that they never had.

It can be crazy. And honestly, this one proves that our producer is amazing to actually get this person the answers that they needed. The fact that he can remember the next day to even follow up is impressive to me. Good thing he won't hear this to know we actually like him. That's a great point. That's a good point. Alright, hey, here's the closure call. Enjoy. Despite what everyone listening may think, it actually takes a lot of work to put on this mediocre radio show. Preach, Jeffrey!

Mediocre? That's a generous term. Yeah, thank you, Jeff. Because it's hard to get people to actually answer their phones for second date calls and phone taps. So many failed ones. I blame Gen Z. Yeah. You can blame us, I'm not answering. Sometimes we wait days or weeks to get a response, but nothing compares to what our producer had to go through

to make today's closure call happen. Because this all started when one of our listeners received a mysterious message on Facebook. And what it said was so shocking, she had to find out if it was true. Oh my God. And now, after a full year of our producer tracking this person down,

trying to convince them to respond, we finally got some answers. Whoa! And it might be the most emotional email that we've ever had to send. You're gonna understand why in your brand new closure call. Next. We've been doing the closure calls for a while now, but today is a first.

Because we reached out to someone that our listener has never even met before. Wait, what? What the heck? Never seen in person either. Why would you need closure for someone who is not part of your life at all? How does that work? These are good questions that we should ask her but they desperately need to get closure on this and from the little bit that I do know it is a very interesting very shocking mysterious story. Okay, because at first I was thinking why is our producer picking this person? Yeah

Let's ask some of these questions to Marissa and welcome to the show. Hey Marissa, how's it going? Hey guys, it's going okay. How are you? Are you like hitting up like Madonna to ask her why she's not making music anymore? She's actually still making music. Good Jeff. Thanks for the old reference. We can speculate, but let's just have Marissa tell us, what made you email the show for help? Okay, so this is kind of a crazy story. It kind of blows my mind too, but this, this chick named Aspen hit me up, instant or direct message.

Okay. And said she had a crazy story for me. Did she tell you the story right away or was it one of those like, I don't know, she's setting you up for a scam or something? Click the link. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Funny you mentioned that I thought it was a scam at first because it was so crazy, but she said she just found out that 30 years ago she was accidentally swapped at birth for another baby at the hospital. What? And that baby was me. What?

What? Whoa! Wait, she's claiming, how would she know? What? Yeah. She called us swap sisters. I was like, okay, that sounds really weird. Swap sisters?

Dude. It sounds like a show on TLC. She's saying your parents aren't your parents. They're her parents. Yeah, crazy, right? So I deleted it. Yeah. You deleted it.

You thought it was a scam. I would've had questions. No way, dude. I would think it's a... I mean, you can tell if you're related to it. Well, I mean, if you do a DNA test, I mean, you can do those tests and a lot of people are finding out stuff like,

oh, that's not really my dad, is usually how it goes down. Oh, Brooklyn knows, yeah, totally. Typically, you know who your mom is. Yeah, it kind of makes more sense. She sent me another message and she's like, this is not a scam. So I hit at my parents and I was like, mom, dad,

can you tell me about this? And they seemed totally shocked. Well, that's what happens with SWAT babies. The parents don't know. That's the big like to do about it, right? It's like back in the day, they'd take the babies into a room. Now you're never separated from your baby

after you give birth. Really? Yeah. Unless you ask them to take it away so you can sleep. So your parents who raised you, they didn't believe it. They thought it was a spam too, like some elaborate AI thing. Oh my gosh.

So wait, did you go to Aspen's page? Could you see any resemblance? Well, so she sent me some pictures and what's weird is the photos looked exactly like me of her parents. Wait, what? Oh, you look like her parents. Yeah.

Oh my God. I finally wrote back there and I was like, how do you know all this information? Yeah. And what else can you tell? What else can you tell me? Okay, what'd she say? Her last message was something totally mysterious She thinks her mom and dad might know about it, but they're so mad at me for bringing it up. They won't talk about it So she's saying she actually doesn't even know all the details. She just knows that their family all knows. It's like some big family secret.

And they don't want to. Yeah, I think she might have gotten in trouble for even reaching out to me. Oh, so they. So the fact that they don't want any information or, hey, drop it like that makes it sound like it is legit. But why? Because it's like, stop asking questions. Like, I mean, I guess like if you have an adult child, right? You've raised in your whole life and then you just then find out that they were swapped at birth. It's like

You can't just be like, I know you're 23, but we're sending you back to the hospital. Switch! What's that saying like, you know, not knowing is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Maybe that was their stance on it. So like, how are you feeling? I'm just kind of freaked out to be honest Like this is the weirdest thing that I think has ever happened to me if it's true

But yeah, and how long has this been going on you with the back and forth with this girl? This happened four years ago. Oh Wait, you've been sitting on this for four years. Did you get DNA tested with your parents? No, but I think I found my mom on Facebook, but she wouldn't respond. Wait you're already calling her my mom The woman I don't know what her name is but like no no that one for a fact and two like your mom is still your Mom yeah, that's crazy is still your mom. I mean, that's crazy. You've gotta be having like a whole identity crisis

because of this. And so your biological mom wasn't responding to your messages, and that's when you reached out to us? Right, my supposed biological mom that looks like me. Oh my gosh. Is that- We're on the case. Wait, is that who you wrote with our producer? You wrote the biological mom with the questions, right?

She actually emailed us about a year ago It turns out and our producer has been working on this every single week trying to soften up the mom in order to respond Marissa you know that we wouldn't have you on the show right now if she didn't answer us She finally answered after a year. Yeah, she said stop contacting We got her responses back a couple days ago. Oh my god Aspen are you sitting down? Are you in a safe place? Sorry? I mean Marissa. Yeah Okay, maybe you should lie down for this one because it could get kind of emotional but We can help give you some finality when we do your closure call right after this. Thank you. Just hold on. Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning.

This could be such an emotional closure call. I think we need to have some sad piano music for it. What? No. Wait, what? No, I said, I said sad piano, not bad piano. What is this? Oh, I see the mix up now. Okay, oh my God. Yeah, I see the mix up. See, this is why you have to listen to the music ahead of time. Stop this.

Let me get some sad piano music. Please. No, okay, no. This is not sad. This is fast piano. It's kind of impressive. Yeah. But it doesn't fit the tone. Stop. Is this your father? I feel like it's an evil train getting away. Bring the music down. No, no, no. Sad. Like emotional music. Okay. It's not evil- Bring the music down, no no no no, sad, like emotional music.

Okay. It's not as sad after the fast one. I know. Yeah, I wanna go back to the happy one. We're talking about Swapped at Birth. It just doesn't feel right anymore. I mean- You missed your window.

You can't say it with frustration, you're frustrated at the music. Yeah, I know, I'm not. But Swapped at Birth, this is something that you don't hear about much anymore, thankfully, because the hospitals are better at not doing it. But 30 years ago. Or they're better at hiding it. Yeah, maybe that's the case. 30 years ago, though, it did happen

to one of our listeners, Marissa. Maybe. Who got a random message on her socials from a girl named Aspen, claiming to be her swap sister. Yeah. Saying they were accidentally swapped at the hospital and they've been raised by each other's parents for years. Which by the way, I wouldn't Google search the term swap sister.

I just think that you're going to end up with something that you don't want to see. That's not an official term. Aspen came up with it. Yeah, it sounds like a psychic. The thing is the details about it were a little bit sketchy and there was some hesitation to answer everything. Right. That's why a year ago, Marissa reached out to us asking if we could contact her biological mom for her

and hopefully get her some closure on what really happened. I usually hit us up a year in advance. We don't get to it just because we're lazy. I apparently our producers been working on this. A lot. We're running out of time thanks to all the bad piano music, so we better just get to it. We sent four questions to Marissa's mom.

Marissa, are you ready to hear some answers to this? I know you've been waiting a long time. Yes. Yes, I am. What musical track do you want him to play behind it when he reads it? That's not important. Why are we focusing on music? Maybe it's not your tears in the back, bro.

Can you start crying during this? I'm joking. I'm joking, Mar'm joking Marissa. I mean this is crazy, cause I mean you're gonna finally know hopefully, you're gonna hear from the mom. Yeah. Yeah, I mean this has been a long time coming,

just getting some of these answers I've been looking for, you know, it's just been such a mystery. Let's get to the first one, and this is gonna be the first time I've read the answers to, I was just handed the sheetet with what she wrote back You needed to pre-read them Jeff so that you weren't crying The producer boy went through all this I'm sure

I needed to focus on the piano music is what I needed Let's get to the first one You needed to focus harder so it would have gone better but sure Question one we said your daughter Aspen reached out to me years ago telling me you were my real biological mom right is this true so She wrote back. Oh my gosh. Are you ready for this? Yes, please okay, because if you said no we would have had to stop the segment and that would have been really annoying Yeah, but she wrote back it is true

But Aspen didn't reach out to you. I did. Oh, what? I need to calm down. Wait, I'm confused. I'm confused. So she faked to be an Aspen? She says, I made up a fake Facebook account for her

because I was too ashamed to speak directly to you. Oh my gosh. I'm sorry. So is Aspen the girl that you were really swapped with? Oh yeah, Marissa Yeah, you okay. Do you have all the answers you need or would you like to continue? Hey check on her. She sounds upset. You okay? Just talking it's amazing and shocking and I

Can't thank you guys enough for reaching out to her and helping me, but. I mean, it's not all. So wait, so wait, you just believe her straight out the gate? Like this is a woman who's faking to be Aspen. Yeah, I mean, I really don't know what to believe. I'm really curious to know what she does next. It sounds like you almost wanted to be real. Well, let's get to the second question,

which was, tell me what you know about me getting swapped at birth. How did you find out about that? She wrote back Well, honestly when I reached out four years ago. I made it up I knew I wanted to speak with you But I didn't know how to do it without making it seem like I was a terrible parent Because the truth is I gave you up for adoption at birth but I didn't know how to do it without making it seem like I was a terrible parent,

because the truth is I gave you up for adoption at birth. Oh, the twists and turns in this. She said, I'm sorry again. Whoa. Wait. So she still is your mom, but it wasn't a swat. Okay, so she was ashamed to admit the truth. Did you know you were adopted by your mom?

No. By your parents? No. Maybe the parents didn't know that they adopted her. No, they definitely. That could be in the dark, but the mom would be pretty clear. There's a lot of paperwork involved, Jeff. But why would your parents not come clean with you when you approach them about being swapped at birth? They would know you were like gonna find something out. They weren't lying. I don't know. I think it was just too much for them, you know, and then just mentioning swap things. We're getting a lot of text in at 7-8-5-9-2 from listeners who are supporting you, by the way, Marisa. So keep those coming. We're gonna forward those to her after the segment so that she could read them all. But this is already going way different than we thought this call was gonna be.

So I don't know if the third question is gonna be relevant still cuz again We write all the questions before we know the answers But the third question was how do I know this is really my biological mom? My parents who raised me are both shocked and know nothing about it. Do you have any proof? That's still a valid question. I mean valid question still Like what if this is still someone who's I I mean she already lied about, you know, being. She made up a whole story on it. What did she say?

She wrote back, there are birth records that I had you, and we both have the same color blonde hair as I've shown you in the pictures I sent. I'm not sure I'm ready for a DNA test, but it would also prove it as well. I'm sorry. You're not ready, lady? What? What are you talking about? She keeps saying I'm sorry. You're not ready, lady? What? What are you talking about?

She keeps saying I'm sorry at the end of every answer. So she clearly feels pretty bad. Yeah. Ugh. But she shouldn't feel bad. You have a great life. Like, I mean, if she couldn't provide you with what you needed as a child.

Yeah, well said, brother. I don't understand. So that means my parents are lying or something. Or she's lying. I mean, somebody's not telling the truth in this situation That's for sure maybe trying to protect you one party is trying to protect you from something But let's go to the fourth question because we are running out of time here It says is there anything else that I should know about what happened

We like to leave it kind of open in general for them to fill in the blanks Well, thank God we did. Yeah, we didn't know what the hell was going on It's definitely taking a turn But your mom wrote back she said there is obviously a lot to tell you But I'm sure you're angry at me about how I handled it I am getting older though, and I just wanted to have a chance to get to meet my daughter and know you She says I don't expect you to forgive me, but I would love to meet up with you in person if you're willing I Guess I just need some time to think about it

I mean, I'm curious, you know, but I have so many unanswered questions at this moment even for my parents who raised me You know I know it feels like you have a lot to deal with before you even think about meeting up with this woman who claims to Be your biological mom. Yeah. Like who's your dad then too? Like there's so many unanswered questions here. But again, this is a woman who like we've tried to reach out to on Facebook and is clearly used to lying. We don't know if any of this is actually true. I would.

So I wouldn't necessarily come in with guns blazing. I totally agree. I would come in super guarded. I mean, like I said, somebody's lying to you. My instinct would be this woman because you don't even know her. You know, you would trust your parents more. You need to bring your current parents with the biological mom and have them meet and maybe something will become clear. What does your birth certificate say? I don't know. I haven't really looked at it. Go get it. We'll wait. Maybe come back with it later. But I'm sorry. I know this is a lot of information that was just tossed on you. We'll give you some time to process. But do you feel like maybe it helped get you a step towards closure? I'm feeling a lot more questions to be honest. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I was thinking it opens everything up, doesn't close anything. We'll stay in touch with you and hopefully we can do a closure call update and figure out what's really going on if you do meet up with your biological mom if she is your biological mom yeah okay thank you guys all right I just want to give you a hug right now give me some happy piano music to play us out please okay that was a successful closure call All right. That was a... That's dramatic.

It's a successful closure call. I know. Successful, Jeff, at all. All right. Well, it was a closure call. Yeah. With zero closure. It's Brooke and Jeffrey.

And now it's the other one. In the morning. That's what you get when you email us for help. Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts.

This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. this year. A lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs Podcast Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche.

Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pitman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.

I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries to hear how they reach the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use. I'll be joined by innovative leaders like Chairman and CEO of Elf Beauty, Tarang Amin. Legendary singer-songwriter and philanthropist, Jewel. Being a rock star is very fun, but helping people is way more fun. And Damian Maldonado, CEO of American Financing. I figured out the formula, I just have to work hard, then that's magic.

Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math, and the ever important creative spark, the magic. Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm ready to fight. Oh, this is fighting words. Okay, I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a bestselling author with the second most banned book in America.

Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back. Part of the power of black queer creativity is the fact that we got us, you know? We are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.