Finding Your Cousin

I periodically watch the PBS series, Finding Your Roots, hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, who is a history professor at Harvard and director of the university’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.  Each episode has two celebrity guests, and the research staff tracks down their ancestry.  But sometimes, even when I don’t watch I’ll record the show and fast-forward to my favorite part (and I suspect the favorite part of many viewers).  That’s when they’ve taken a DNA sample from the guests and compare it to the DNA samples previous guests on the show have given.  And see if there’s a distant match.  (It’s been on for about 10 years, so they’ve had a lot of guests.)  It’s a lot of fun when there’s a match – seeing the reaction -- and occasionally the matches are pretty amazing.
 
One of the funding organizations of the show is Ancestry.com, which put together a highlight real of just some of the “match moments.”
 
Semi-related side note:  You may recall that back during the Obama Administration, a well-regarded black man was entering his home in his well-to-do neighborhood – when he was detained by a policeman.  It got confrontational, and because it was so high-profile, President Obama brought to two men together to the White House for beers and to talk.  The man wrongly-detained, trying to get into his own home, was Henry Louis Gates.