Finding Your Roots

Their European immigrant ancestors blazed unconventional trails in America, from capturing British ships for the American Revolution to crossing racia...

In this episode, we feature two African American politicians from different generations and opposite backgrounds. John Lewis grew up in a sharecroppin...

What's in a name? Well, a lot, at least when it comes to piecing together your family history. For former slaves, choosing a last name was one of thei...

What do Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have in common? They are both famous actors and both descend from prominent American families that have been in...

Pastor Rick Warren, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Sheik Yasir Qadhi are of three different faiths, all with complex family histories that profoundly shape...

Many American descend from a dense soups of European ethnicities; we could call them mutts, with ancestral roots across every country in Europe. Actor...

Samuel L. Jackson, Condoleezza Rice and Brown University President Ruth Simmons have each climbed to the pinnacle of their profession, yet each starte...

The three guests in this episode are all children of first- or second-generation immigrants and share the peculiar burdens of that heritage. In an epi...

Most African Americans struggle to trace their ancestors beyond Emancipation; slavery erased names and family ties with brutal efficiency. But what ab...

Michelle Rodriguez, Adrian Grenier and Linda Chavez all share Spanish colonial roots, yet each views their own identity very differently. In this epis...