-Welcome. How are you?
-Thank you. How are you doing, brother?
-I'm great. -You know, I was lucky enough
to get to sit down with you.
You went, and you did the investigation.
You went into the Meyers family for me,
and it was really a thrill of a lifetime.
-We went deeply into your family on all branches.
-You went deeply on all branches.
Was there anything that stood out about mine?
-Yeah, that you have the wrong name.
-I have the wrong name. -That's right.
-Yeah. We're not "Meyers."
-We found your original name. Can you imagine?
-Yeah. -Trakianski.
-Trakianski. -That's right.
-Which is not -- famously not a good showbiz name.
[ Laughter ]
-Your great-grandfather emigrated here in 1869,
through Castle Gardens. He was 15 years old.
-Mm-hmm. -And he was from Lithuania.
And he looked around, and he said,
"Trakianski's not gonna make it."
[ Laughter ]
-We had always known that.
We had known that "Meyer" had been a first name
that was then turned into a last name.
And I had had people in my family, you know,
cousins of my dad who tried really hard
to figure out the name, and we had gotten close,
but we'd never gotten that, and that was a big deal to my dad.
So, thank you so much for figuring that out.
-That's from your great aunt. I brought your Book of Life.
-Yeah. [ Applause ]
-You want to look at it?
-Yeah. This is very exciting.
The Book of Life is a big deal.
-This is -- For every guest,
we compile everything we find into a Book of Life.
-Yeah. -And this is yours.
-It was a big deal. -From your birth till --
Well, till whatever.
-No, it has all the way up to how I die.
-Yeah, absolutely. [ Laughter ]
That's why I don't want you to read the last page.
-Which I thought was weird, but all right.
-But I love it.
And, you know, we got the name from a black spiritual.
And it's called "Oh, write my name,
oh, write my name, oh, write my name
in the Book of Life." And that's why we named it.
Because I think that we all have ancestors
waiting to tell a story.
And our job is to find those ancestors on your family tree,
open the door, and let them talk.
-Yeah. -So let's let yours talk.
-All right. What do we got here?
-Well, first, turn to the page.
-All right. -Look at that.
-This is -- here we go. That's my -- this is --
The weirdest thing about this photo is,
my dad hasn't had a mustache for about five minutes,
and that's a photo of it.
[ Laughter ]
-All right, look at number two.
-All right, number two. Down here, I think.
-We're gonna find the original --
This is your original immigrant ancestors.
-Yeah, there we go. Morris and Rosa right there.
-There's the lovely Morris.
You were making cracks about your great-grandmother.
-What were my -- I said she was a --
I mean, look, obviously, she cuts a fashionable figure there.
[ Laughter ]
-You said she wasn't doing a lot of comedy-club routines...
-[ Laughing ] Yeah. -...is what you really said.
And they were orthodox Jews. -Yeah.
-And they were so orthodox that they had a son,
who fell in love with a Roman Catholic.
-Yeah, that's exactly how it went down.
-And they hid their love and hid their marriage
because they knew it would flip out the family.
-Yeah.
-Yeah, and that's on your father's side.
Keep turning.
On your mom's side, that is your great-grandfather.
-There's a little bit -- a lot of my brother, I feel like.
A little bit of me there.
That face, you could see a little bit of me, right?
-Yeah, I think so.
-And I'd be too afraid to be in any sort of uniform.
[ Laughter ]
-Now, he was your original English immigrant ancestor.
He came in 1905, and he settled in Missouri.
And he was a war hero. -Yes.
-He fought in World War I.
In fact, because he was British, he was so frustrated
that the United States was reluctant to get in World War I
that he went to Canada and enrolled,
and he was injured in a famous battle,
the Battle of Passchendaele.
-Yeah, my mother's side of the family is always very proud
about the fact that he was so proud,
so wanted to defend his home country
that he went to Canada to enlist.
-Yeah, he did. And he was a hero.
-Yeah. -So, would you do that?
-Uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[ Laughter ]
Well, I feel like I don't have to 'cause he did.
[ Laughter ]
Well, this is -- yeah. Tell everybody about this.
-All right, now finally, we always compare the DNA
of the guests in our database
with the DNA of the guests at hand.
-Yeah. -And if you share long
identical segments of DNA, that means you're cousins.
That you're really cousins.
Now, most of us have six degrees of separation with Kevin Bacon.
-Yeah. -You have one degree.
-One degree, everybody! There's my cousin.
Yeah. [ Cheers and applause ]
At family reunions, they call him the ugly one.
[ Laughter ]
Look how handsome Kevin Bacon is.
Kevin Bacon has been handsome forever.
-So let me ask you, what was the biggest surprise?
-The biggest surprise was the last name.
Mostly just to know there was a name that you didn't know.
I mean, that's just crazy.
The fact that you guys tracked it down was a big deal for us.
-Yeah, it was exciting for us, as well.
-You've done it, as well. You've dug into your own past.
Obviously, this is something that has been interesting to you
for a long time.
Was there anything about your family that you found
that was surprising to you?
-Yeah, we had a big family mystery.
My great-great-grandmother was a black woman on my father's side,
Jane Gates. She was a slave.
She had five children. They all looked mixed.
But she said, "You all have the same father,
but I'm not going to reveal his identity."
And now, C.C. Moore, our brilliant genetic genealogist,
using a technique called triangulation,
has found his identity.
And we're gonna reveal it in the next season.
So I finally am going to find out
the name of my great-great-grandfather,
who was an Irishman.
-What an incredible thing to track down.
-Isn't that great? [ Applause ]
-And I have to ask, you are a professor,
you've got this fantastic show where you get to interact
with famous people from all fields.
You won an Emmy, your Peabody.
Are your students -- Do they think you're cool?
'Cause it seems like they should think you're really cool.
-Hoo, man, I'm at Harvard.
I'm surrounded by egomaniacs among professors.
[ Laughter ]
I'm surrounded by people who wait all night long
for the Swedish Academy to call them to say
they've won the Nobel Prize.
I'm just a regular, regular dude.
[ Laughter ]
-Well, for my money, there's nothing regular about you.
Thanks so much for being here.
Thank you so much for doing this for me.
What a pleasure.
For more infomation >> Level 1 VS Level 2 VS Level 3 Locked Chests Opening!! (1.11.6)- Last day on Earth: Survival - Duration: 3:55. 
For more infomation >> US-Außenminister in Ungarn: "Werden US-Einfluss in EU gegen freiheitsfeindliches Russland ausbauen" - Duration: 3:56. 
For more infomation >> 2019 New Yamaha YZF-R5 489cc Compare Details With Honda CBR500R 471cc 2019 | mich motorcycle - Duration: 3:56. 
For more infomation >> Hari Won Nhã Phương bất ngờ trợ diễn làm Trường Giang Trấn Thành "toát mồ hôi" ở Thách Thức Danh Hài - Duration: 34:09. 
For more infomation >> Torta variegata cioccolato fondente e mascarpone bimby per TM5 e TM31 - Duration: 5:20. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét