Finding Your Roots
Title card from the second season
Also known as	Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Genre	Family history Genealogy Documentary series
Written by	Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Directed by	John Maggio Jesse Sweet Caitlin McNally Jack Youngelson Sabin Streeter Julia Marchesi
Presented by	Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Composer	Michael Bacon
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	11
No. of episodes	116(list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer	Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Producers	Rachel Dretzin Leslie Asako Gladsjo Dyllan McGee Peter Kunhardt Stephen Segaller
Running time	51–53 minutes
Production companies	Kunhardt McGee Productions Inkwell Films Ark Media
Original release
Network	PBS
Release	March 25, 2012 (2012-03-25) – present
Related
Faces of America

Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an Americandocumentary television series hosted byHenry Louis Gates Jr. that premiered on March 25, 2012, onPBS. In each episode, celebrities are presented with a "book of life" that is compiled with information researched byprofessional genealogists that allows them to view their ancestral histories, learn about familial connections and discover secrets about their lineage.

All episodes air on Tuesdays.^[1][2] Season 11 began airing on January 7, 2025, and ended on April 8.^[3] Season 12 is currently scheduled to premiere in January 2026.^[4]

The series uses traditional genealogical research (written records) andgenetics (DNA testing) to discover the family history of well-known people. Genetic techniques includeY-chromosome DNA,mitochondrial DNA, andautosomal DNA analyses to infer both ancient and recent genetic relationships. The show's professionals typically spend hundreds of hours researching each guest.^[5][6]

Each celebrity guest is given a "book of life", which contains all the information discovered about the guest's genealogy by researchers. Included in or within the book are comprehensive genetic results, a family tree that is as complete as paper research allows, copies of historical records used to assemble each tree and photos of newly found family members. In some episodes, particularly ones in which originalDNA profiling research must be used to establish a past ancestor's parental link, guests are reunited with long lost relatives. However, in most episodes, each guest is predominantly shown seated opposite Gates as he guides them through their book of life. To show correlations between the guests' family stories, each episode cuts back and forth between two or three guest stories. To draw further correlations, Gates uses examples from his own genealogy quite frequently. Examples of this would be a grandmother of his having multiple children with awhite man whose name she had never revealed, as well as Gates's membership into theSons of the American Revolution.

In addition to celebrity guests, everyday people are sometimes featured in an episode to create a third or fourth story line. The non-celebrity guests are usually a group of peers. One example of this would be the episode in which Gates has his friends at his local barbershop take a DNA test to determine their ethnic makeup, with each friend betting on their percentages ofAfrican,European, andNative American genetic heritage. Another episode uses a similar guessing game with students at a local school. Singular secondary guests includeRobert Downey Sr. and Margarett Cooper, the latter being a friend of Gates's.^[7] The finale of Season 10 featured three ordinary people who wanted to solve mysteries.^[8]

The series has seen two past incarnations on PBS, both of which were hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. In 2006 and 2008, the seriesAfrican American Lives aired. Both seasons of the series consisted of a season-long storyline as well as an allAfrican American cast. In 2010,Faces of America aired. Though it continued to use the season-long plot from the prior installment, it was the first installment to be hosted by Gates which included Americans of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. Starting withFinding Your Roots in 2012, the series changed from a season-long plot to having plots extending only within a single episode. In doing so, it has allowed the series to extend its number of episodes each season to ten, as opposed to the prior four episodes a season.^[9]

The show's third season was postponed byWNET after it was discovered that actorBen Affleck had persuaded Gates to omit information about his slave-owning ancestors.^[10][11][12] The series returned on January 5, 2016,^[13] although "Roots of Freedom", the second-season episode featuring Affleck, was pulled from all forms of distribution by PBS.^[14]

In 2016,Cal Thomas ofThe Baltimore Sun wrote that the show was "The most compelling television you will ever see."^[15] In 2015, it was nominated for anNAACP Image Award for Outstanding News/Information – Series or Special.^[16] Lauren Sarner ofNew York Post wrote, "Finding Your Roots has become a phenomenon."^[17]

• African American Lives
• Ancestors in the Attic
• Faces of America
• Who Do You Think You Are?
• Genealogy Roadshow

• Official website
• Finding Your Roots atIMDb 

• 2012 American television series debuts
• 2010s American documentary television series
• 2020s American documentary television series
• American English-language television shows
• Genetic genealogy
• American historical television series
• PBS original programming
• Television series about family history
• Television shows about American slavery
• Television series about the history of the United States
• Works about genetics

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from October 2018