Author Topic: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?  (Read 62830 times)

Gregzs

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Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« on: July 09, 2013, 11:03:23 PM »
There were a couple seasons of the American version on NBC until they dropped it. The TLC channel will premiere it on July 23 with Kelly Clarkson.

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Who-Do-You-Think-You-Are-Preview-1067616.aspx

Eight of Hollywood's biggest celebs are delving into their family history to find out where they came from on TLC's Who Do You Think You Are?

Originally broadcast on NBC, Who Do You Think You Are? has been given new life by TLC with eight new episodes. Each hour, a different celebrity takes a globe-spanning journey to uncover mysteries about his or her ancestry.

Kicking off the series on July 23 is Kelly Clarkson, followed by Christina Applegate (July 30), Chelsea Handler (Aug. 6) and then Zooey Deschanel (Aug. 13). Additional participants include Chris O'Donnell, Jim Parsons, Cindy Crawford and Trisha Yearwood.

http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/who-do-you-think-you-are/videos/who-do-you-think-you-are.htm

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #1 on: September 09, 2013, 09:05:12 PM »
I have watched all of the episodes this season. The last one tomorrow is for Jim Parsons.

How is it that these supermodels are descended from royalty? Brooke Shields' a few years ago and now Cindy Crawford's boggled my mind. 

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21585027-new-website-celebrates-connections-between-britons-little-isle?fsrc=scn/li/cp/pe/thislittleisle

A new website celebrates connections between Britons

TRACING family trees is a popular British pastime. Television programmes show celebrities rummaging through old census documents. Websites help amateur sleuths track down distant relatives. A new project launched on August 26th provides another twist to the obsession.

“Kindred Britain” is a website launched by Nicholas Jenkins, an English professor at Stanford University in California. The project grew out of Professor Jenkins’s research into both his own background and that of W.H. Auden, a 20th-century poet. The website now holds entries on nearly 30,000 Britons. Visitors to the website trace relations between different people using clear infographics and interactive tools. Admirals, bankers, poets, painters, lawyers and politicians are all in the mix. Unlike traditional family trees, these include bigamists, same-sex couples and illegitimate children.

The project is an intriguing example of the “digital humanities”. Scholars are starting to interact with coders and website designers to make their research more accessible and data publicly available.

Certain affinities appear in the data. Poets are often related to each other whereas novelists tend to be linked by marriage. T.S. Eliot, a 20th-century American-born poet, is a distant cousin of the British bards Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley (a link presumably unknown to Eliot). In contrast links between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, perhaps the two most famous 19th-century novelists, are through several generations of marriages. As characters in novels are more meritocratic, so too are novelists.

Other connections are more unexpected. Gwyneth Paltrow (pictured), an American actress, is linked by marriage to A.C. Swinburne, a Victorian poet who dabbled in sadomasochistic verses. David Cameron, the prime minister, is distantly connected to Harold Pinter, a dramatist who once said that voting for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 was “the most shameful act of my life”. Kevin Bacon, a famously well-connected American actor, is related to the 16th-century philosopher Francis Bacon.

And yet despite its novelty, “Kindred Britain” touches on an older notion. Even within the sprawl of data, a handful of families are shown to have shaped British culture and history. The number of prime ministers related to each other may not be surprising. But the links between different walks of life are illuminating, for both literary critics and celebrity-spotters alike.


Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #2 on: June 14, 2014, 07:56:57 PM »
This was renewed by TLC. The imdb.com site only shows one episode profiling Cynthia Nixon slated for July 23, 2014. TLC mentions 6 episodes this season.

http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/who-do-you-think-you-are/videos/new-season.htm

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2014, 04:20:10 PM »
Marathons of last season start Sunday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon before the season premiere that night.

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #4 on: October 23, 2014, 10:11:37 PM »
The series on PBS Finding Your Roots started airing the current season in September. Ben Affleck's ancestry was covered on last week's episode.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #5 on: April 18, 2015, 10:37:33 PM »
The new season of Who Do You Think You Are started 6 weeks ago. I expected July like last year. Bill Paxton's ancestry is this Sunday night at 10.

Primemuscle

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2015, 10:52:08 PM »
I use the Ancestry program Family Tree to fill in the blanks in my ancestry. It a great tool. I strongly recommend it. My son is also interested in our family history. We share any information we gather. Our family tree is part of the huge data base the Mormon church maintains, so everything we find out is available to others, which is fine.

It is great to be able to trace your roots. It helps make you feel grounded. I feel bad for folks like my sisters who were both adopted and have had no access to their biological family history because the records were sealed. One of my sisters has tried very hard to locate her mother. At this point, her mom has probably passed. It is sad because my sister has a lot of health problems. Knowing the health history of her parentage could be very helpful. My other sister seemed disinterested in finding our about her biological family. She's passed on now, never knowing anything about her family.

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2015, 12:42:15 PM »
Ginnfer Goodwin tonight at 9

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #8 on: July 27, 2015, 08:03:08 PM »
J.K. Rowling (2 Aug. 2015)

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #9 on: August 09, 2015, 10:14:39 AM »
Alfre Woodard tonight.

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #10 on: August 29, 2015, 02:47:29 PM »
Bryan Cranston's episode aired last week. It will air again as part of tomorrow's marathon before the last one of the season with Tom Bergeron.

The Breaking Bad actor's grandfather was an actor as well as his father. Until he found this information he didn't know his grandfather was.

TuHolmes

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #11 on: September 02, 2015, 12:03:04 PM »
I've never gotten into this show for whatever reason.

There is just something about it... Maybe it's just that I don't care where people came from, what matters is where they are going as individuals.

Must just be me. A lot of people seem to enjoy it.


Primemuscle

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #13 on: April 06, 2016, 01:47:46 PM »
I've never gotten into this show for whatever reason.

There is just something about it... Maybe it's just that I don't care where people came from, what matters is where they are going as individuals.

Must just be me. A lot of people seem to enjoy it.


Where someone is going is clearly more important than where they came from. My family tree is historically rich. It is interesting to discover both the good and the bad about our ancestors. Many people don't seem to have roots, especially not in a time when divorce and blended families prevail. My sisters were adopted. They had no idea the makeup of their biological and intellectual histories. The surviving sister has never stopped trying to find her birth mother.


Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #15 on: April 02, 2017, 07:07:44 PM »
Jessica Biel's ancestry tonight


Gregzs

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Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #17 on: July 27, 2017, 07:31:47 PM »
Larry David and Bernie Sanders Are Apparently Related

http://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/celebrity/larry-david-and-bernie-sanders-are-apparently-related/ar-AAoUAbg?li=BBmkt5R

At a Democratic candidates forum in November 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, raised the most urgent question in American politics: Is he really Larry David?

The answer, most likely, is no. But the former presidential candidate and the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star are apparently distantly related.

Sanders is a "third cousin or something," David told reporters at a Television Critics Association event on Wednesday. The comedian, who impersonated the senator on "Saturday Night Live" during the 2016 election, said he learned about the genealogical connection while filming an upcoming episode of the PBS series "Finding Your Roots."

"I was very happy about that," David said, according to Variety. "I thought there must have been some connection."

David, who scored an Emmy nomination for the spot-on impression of his fellow Brooklyn native on "SNL," explained how he came to play the part.

"This Bernie Sanders thing," David told reporters, according to Variety. "During the first debate between Bernie and Hillary, ["SNL" creator] Lorne Michaels got emails and calls during the debate, saying that I should be doing Bernie Sanders."

That's when Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, the inspiration for Jeremy Piven's character on "Entourage," stepped in to help close the deal.

"Ari Emanuel called me up and said, 'What did you think?'' And every time I watched Bernie Sanders, I would repeat everything that he said, because I know that I can talk like that. So I started talking to Ari, the agent, I started talking to him like Bernie."

The rest is television history.

Sanders even appeared with David in a February 2016 sketch. The "Seinfeld" creator played an aristocratic gentleman on a sinking ship who debates the merits of democratic socialism with the senator's rumpled commoner.
"Curb Your Enthusiasm," David's semi-autobiographical sitcom, returns to HBO in October.

Sanders did not immediately respond to news reports about his expanded family tree.

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #18 on: October 11, 2017, 06:09:42 PM »
The Finding Your Roots episode with Christopher Walken, Fred Armisen, and Carly Simon airs this week. Larry David and Bernie Sanders was last week.

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #19 on: December 03, 2018, 08:18:20 PM »
Mandy Moore


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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #20 on: December 06, 2018, 07:03:30 PM »
Josh Duhamel next Monday.


Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #21 on: December 17, 2018, 06:44:04 PM »
Regina King


Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #22 on: January 27, 2020, 09:28:49 AM »
The series on PBS Finding Your Roots started airing the current season in September. Ben Affleck's ancestry was covered on last week's episode.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/


Sigourney Weaver, Amy Ryan, and Justina Machado join Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on #FindingYourRoots tomorrow! Tune in at 8/7c on PBS to find out why their family histories are filled with secrets and lies.

IroNat

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #23 on: January 27, 2020, 11:56:55 AM »
Of course you only want to know about your good ancestors.

You don't want to know about your great-great-great-great-grandfather the ax murderer.

Gregzs

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Re: Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?
« Reply #24 on: February 06, 2020, 10:18:36 PM »
N.J. man’s 9 kids all meet for the first time thanks to online DNA testing


To say George Papageorgiou was a rolling stone is an understatement.

A Greece-born Lothario driven by the allure of women, his travels across America left a trail of broken hearts, unfulfilled promises and fatherless children.

But with just one-click of an online DNA testing link made nearly two decades after his death, the ashes of Papageorgiou’s scattered sins rose as a Phoenix, connecting the nine pieces of a fractured family’s heart.

“My aunt said to me, ‘Demetre, it’s not like your father killed anybody. He just had sex with a lot of women,’” says Demetre Papageorgiou, 46, George’s second youngest son and the co-director of documentary short "9 Degrees.”

The doc, a Tribeca Studios film set to premiere at the New Jersey Film Festival on Saturday, tells the story of five brothers and four sisters, separated by distance and decades, coming together for the first time thanks to 23andMe.com.

“My mom kept calling me,” Demetre remembers, harkening back to the day in February 2017 that changed his life forever.

“When I finally called her back she tells me, ‘This guy named Chris Bone from Dallas, Texas, called and said, I know this crazy, but I think your dead husband is my father.’”

Though shaken by the news, Cynthia Papageorgiou, George’s long-suffering widow, was not altogether surprised to learn of her unfaithful husband’s extramarital child.

Escaping the abusive father who ripped him from his 12-year-old mother’s arms at birth, a 22-year-old George jumped a merchant Navy vessel out of Poulitsa, Greece landing him in Elizabeth in 1958.

After marrying his first wife, Mary Lou, and having four kids with her between 1960 and 1963 — one of which was given up for adoption as a baby due to financial issues — George abandoned his family for the nomadic life of traveling salesmen.

It wasn’t until 1972, after welcoming at least three more children with as many women during brief dalliances, that George met and married Cynthia in Chicago.

The couple welcomed sons Demetre and Charles Papageorgiou in 1973 and 1975, respectively, with the fragile nuclear family bouncing from home to home throughout the Midwest.

George’s cheating never stopped. His incessant adultery not only strained his marriage, but also caused an irreparable rift between him and Demetre. Their relationship remained troubled until George died of cancer at 65 in 2001.

Though initially indifferent to having a face-to-face with his dad’s alleged son, Demetre, at the urging of his younger brother Charles, agreed to join him in meeting Chris and another half-brother he’d connected with through 23AndMe.com, retired Mt. Olive police officer Sgt. Mike Pocquat.

At first sight, the four men knew they were family.

“Me and (Charles) go to a Marriott to go meet (Chris Bone and Mike Pocquat). We walk through the door and we see two guys walking towards us,” Demetre recalls of the moment he first laid eyes on the men claiming to be his dad’s sons in March 2017.

“My brother goes, ‘That’s not them is it?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s them.”

Immediately, Demetre saw the late George Papageorgiou’s physical features, mannerisms, and even the way he walked perfectly mirrored by two men who’d never met his father.

He was sure Chris and Mike were his brothers.

“I knew right away. It was undeniable.”

From there, Chris — who spent most of his life in desperate search for a dad he never knew — spearheaded a siblings meet-up with George’s three children from his first marriage, his oldest son George and two daughters Denise and Darlene Papageorgiou, all living in Florida at the time.

Mike, the fourth child of George and Mary Lou Papageorgiou, was the baby given up for adoption.

As the seven siblings begin bonding, Chris discovers two more sisters, Shelley Dunlap of Phoenix and Angela Smart of Culver City, California, through online DNA testing.

Within months of George’s nine kids all learning of each other’s existence, Mike invites his newfound relatives to his home in New Jersey for a first-ever siblings meet-up.

“It was overwhelming,” Demetre — who tapped longtime friend and fellow filmmaker Kalim Armstrong to video document the brood’s big reunion — says of being under the same roof with all eight of his brothers and sisters in July 2018.

“There’s an immediate sibling connection. Like you’ve known these people, but you’re still conscious of the fact that they’re strangers. But they don’t feel like strangers,” Demetre recollects.

“Everyone was just kind of open to it all and into it, which is one of the things that’s so unique about our story.”

As chance would have it, Kalim — co-founder of production company Vacationland Studios in Brooklyn — just so happened to be sharing an office space with two award-winning documentary filmmakers working on video projects for 23AndMe.com

“When I first started discussing doing a documentary with Kalim I learned most stories of long-lost DNA relatives (reconnecting) are not like ours. Most of these stories are not happy stories because a family is fractured ... and usually, there’s an unhappy (event that caused it).”

After hearing the sordid tale George Papageorgiou and the Papageorgiou nine, the “9 Degrees” documentary came to life, seeing cameras capture everything from the tribe’s introductory interactions to their emotional family pilgrimage to George’s small hometown in Greece.

“This is the single greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Demetre rejoices of his newly conjoined clan. “It’s completely changed my life in every way. For all of us it has.”

Though the Papageorgiou pack isn’t sure whether their infamous and long-departed daddy is responsible for any other left behind little ones, the nine siblings — almost all of whom have one or more online DNA testing profiles — are happy to welcome more of their biological brothers and sisters into the fold.

“I used to joke that the only thing I got from my dad were these incredible genes that help me look 20 years younger than I actually am,” laughs Demetre. “But it turns out I was wrong because I have this incredible family as a result of it all.”

The New Jersey Film Festival is being held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

https://www.nj.com/news/2020/02/nj-mans-9-kids-all-meet-for-the-first-time-thanks-to-online-dna-testing.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=nj_facebook_njcom&utm_campaign=njcom_sf&fbclid=IwAR1auRg-7XrH8pGlweVBlVJXP722Ixx4-86Kav4_zg3oczPZde2MX56h5uA