Your genealogy chart can tell you who married whom and where your great-grandparents lived. It won’t tell you who passed along the family sense of humour, the perfectionism, the urge to make things — or the tendency to say, Why not?

This solo episode began with a random conversation and became a rather entertaining trip through Agnes’s own family.

We wander through:

• A family of makers whose creations look nothing alike
• The possibility that what travels isn’t the noun — it’s the verb
• Perfectionism appearing differently in different people
• Judy Wilkins-Smith’s deceptively simple prompt: “Turn the coin over”
• Agnes’s mum, wordplay, crosswords and expressions that still live in her grandchildren
• What we inherit versus what gets handed down through stories and repetition
• The patterns we consciously decide to stop
• Mum buying her first computer at 78
• A great-grandmother heading to South Africa to retrieve her husband
• And Monny, the alleged Spanish princess who refuses to stay quietly in the family mythology

After 60, we have an unusual vantage point: enough generations behind us, beside us and ahead of us to start noticing patterns.

Forget names and dates for a moment. What does your other family tree look like?

Listen below and then share this episode!