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Dr. Mercy has heard from many twins that she would love the novel I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb, whose books have been popularized by the Oprah Book Club and the merits of his fictional style. The 40-year-old ‘hero’ is an identical twin whose brother has paranoid schizophrenia. The novel covers their childhood, family history (which includes twins), and his psychotherapy with a psychologist who helps him integrate these pieces of his psyche. Dr. Mercy will be discussing the patterns of twinship attributed to the characters in the novel and their importance in the structure of the novel. Tune in and hear how Wally Lamb, a celebrated fiction writer and teacher, handles the twin theme. #1 New York Times Bestseller and Oprah Book Club selection: "Thoughtful . . . heart-wrenching . . . . An exercise in soul-baring storytelling—with the soul belonging to 20th-century America itself. It's hard to read and to stop reading, and impossible to forget." — USA Today Dominick Birdsey, a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut, finds his subdued life greatly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation. Dominick is forced to care for his brother as well as confront dark secrets and pain he has buried deep within himself—a journey of the soul that takes him beyond his blue-collar New England town to Sicily’s Mount Etna, the birthplace of his grandfather and namesake. Coming to terms with his life and lineage, Dominick struggles to find forgiveness and finally rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his troubled twin. I Know This Much Is True is a masterfully told story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal—an unforgettable masterpiece. I Know this Much is True - Amazon -
Pamela Daniel and Dr. Mercy met several years ago at a Twinless Twins conference in Denver, Colorado and became fast friends.
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This show will explore the actual experiences of two female identical twins during childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Lee and Jesse will relate stories from their early lives illustrating their alikeness and differences, their comfort with other children, their position in the family, and the advantages and disadvantages of twinship. They will also answer the questions: 1. How is it different to be the first born or the second born? 2. How do you see yourselves as different from each other? 3. How do your parents see you as different from each other? 4. How did you relate to each other in School? 5. What did you share? Friends? Belongings? 6. Did you have some secrets from each other and from the world? 7. How did your sister influence your career? 8. How did your twinship affect your view of health and wellness?
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Karey Baker is the mother of two 6-year-old twin boys who were diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis.
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Dr. Mercy has reached out to organizers and potential participants in the Twins Day Festival happening this weekend in Twinsburg, Ohio. She is hoping to connect with people attending the festival during Twin Talk show time to discover what brings them to the festival, what do they love about it, and what experiences do they carry home into their lives. The festival begins officially Friday, August 6 with a day of activities devoted to twins and their families. The following two days are open to the public. Anyone in the neighborhood of Cleveland may want to attend the weekend festivities including a parade Saturday morning, twin contests, and twin talent shows. The festival is an ideal place for researchers to connect with twin subjects for cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, and booths at the festival are purchased by agencies for their research. Dr. Mercy will discuss some of the studies during the show or later in the Twin Talk series.
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Sandy and Dr. Mercy met each other at the International Twins Association convention in Tempe, Arizona.
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Dolores Nick (74), grandmother of three sets of twins, will describe her experiences. In her words, ‘the identical boy twins Skyler and Spender (18) dress the same everyday. The boys elected to share a college dorm room and want to marry twins. The identical girl twins prefer to dress differently. Sierra and Savana (12), best friends, have been through a lot of medical problems. Sierra is a three time cancer survivor, first diagnosed at three and again at five and six, now cancer free. For both sets of twins, it's never "I" it's always "We;" there is sharing, no personal space, and always someone to play with and talk to. Shane and Shyanne, 10-month fraternal twins, are different as night and day. They were "womb mates" and little else is the same. They don't interact much with each other, as of yet, but seem to look for each other if one is sleeping and the other is awake. Shane was supposed to be the "vanishing twin"......but never vanished. It's truly a remarkable miracle that he is here.’
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Denise and Deanne live on opposite coasts, Denise in New York and Deanne in California. Has this geographic separation taken a toll on their twinship? One twin was extroverted and sought the companionship of her peers; the other was closer to the family and sought approval there. They were close in their younger years and supported each other in hard times. How did they find themselves so far apart in adulthood? What forces and factors shaped each twin? How are they alike and different? How do they communicate now in maturity? Do they still think of each other as identical twins and how do they express this bond? This twinship is a fascinating story of twins with primarily non-shared experiences. Their genes, aptitudes, intelligence, and interests are very similar, yet they have lived in two very different worlds both familiar to them from childhood. Hear them discuss the choices they have made as women and identical twins.
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Dr. Mercy will discuss the experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect, research recently published by Daryl Bem. Daryl J Bem is a social psychologist and emeritus professor at Cornell University. He received his PhD in 1964 from the University of Michigan and taught there before going on to join the faculty at Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, Harvard, and Cornell. He had a distinguished career in psychology, then turned his attention to parapsychology; the self-perception theory of attitude formation and change has been named after him, and he was invited to co-author one of the core international psychology textbooks, known by generations of students as ‘Hilgard and Atkinson’.
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This show will explore the actual experiences of two female identical twins during childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Lee and Jesse will relate stories from their early lives illustrating their alikeness and differences, their comfort with other children, their position in the family, and the advantages and disadvantages of twinship. They will also answer the questions: 1. How is it different to be the first born or the second born? 2. How do you see yourselves as different from each other? 3. How do your parents see you as different from each other? 4. How did you relate to each other in School? 5. What did you share? Friends? Belongings? 6. Did you have some secrets from each other and from the world? 7. How did your sister influence your career? 8. How did your twinship affect your view of health and wellness?