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Finding Your Roots poster

Finding Your Roots (2012)

6.5 13 seasons 127 episodes Returning Series

Documentary

Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been helping people discover long-lost relatives hidden for generations within the branches of their family trees. Professor Gates utilizes a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by our ancestors and the world’s leading geneticists to decode our DNA and help us travel thousands of years into the past to discover the origins of our earliest forebears.

Watch S2 E1 Latest: S12 E10

Seasons & episodes

In Search of our FathersSep 23, 2014 · 1h 0m

Three famous guests — Stephen King, Gloria Reuben and Courtney B. Vance — know almost nothing about their fathers’ histories.

Born ChampionsSep 30, 2014 · 1h 0m

Billie Jean King, Derek Jeter and Rebecca Lobo learn about their family histories. King discovers that her grandmother was an orphan; Derek…

Our American StorytellersOct 7, 2014 · 1h 0m

Ken Burns learns that his Southern ancestors include Confederate soldiers and a slave owner; Anderson Cooper learns that an ancestor on his…

Roots of FreedomOct 14, 2014 · 1h 0m

Actor Ben Affleck discovers his mother's past as a Freedom Rider in 1964, NAACP President Ben Jealous learns how far his great-grandfather…

The Melting PotOct 21, 2014 · 1h 0m

Chef Tom Colicchio learns the hardships his family endured in Northern Italy; chef Ming Tsai traces his roots back 2,000 years; chef Aarón…

We Come From PeopleOct 28, 2014 · 1h 0m

Nas learns about his slave ancestors; Angela Bassett discovers that her family history includes an emancipation story; and Valerie Jarrett,…

Our People, Our TraditionsNov 4, 2014 · 1h 0m

Tony Kushner learns how the Holocaust impacted his ancestors; Carole King delves into the origins of her family name; and Alan Dershowitz d…

The British InvasionNov 11, 2014 · 1h 0m

Deepak Chopra, Sally Field and Sting’s ancestry demonstrates the extraordinary influence of the British Empire during the 18th and early 19…

Ancient RootsNov 18, 2014 · 1h 0m

Tina Fey, George Stephanopoulos and David Sedaris, three quintessential voices in American life, descend from ancestors that were part of t…

Decoding Our Past Through DNANov 25, 2014 · 1h 0m

Secrets encoded in their genomes challenge these guests’ ideas about their families’ histories and their identities today. This episode fea…

Cast

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.Self - Host