From AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES (2006) through the first season of FINDING YOUR ROOTS (2012), Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been helping people identify relatives hidden for generations. Professor Gates employs a team of genealogists and the world’s leading geneticists to uncover the origins of a diverse group of 30 guests. Each of the 10 episodes will feature three guests bound together by an intimate, sometimes hidden, link, as Gates treks through layers of ancestral history, uncovers secrets and surprises, and shares life-altering discoveries.

The British Invasion
Sally Field learns that she descends from William Bradford, who arrived on the Mayflower and helped his fellow Puritans establish their new lives in colonial America. Her ancestors sided with the British crown during the war for independence and paid the ultimate price. Deepak Chopra’s family made a similar gamble while living under harsh British rule in India – his grandparents pledged their loyalty to the British in hopes of achieving a higher place in society, and his father chose to fight alongside British soldiers during WWII. Sting’s ancestors, who fueled Great Britain’s world dominance during the Pax Britannica by building its merchant ships and working in its coal mines, toiled under unbearable working conditions and Dickensian poverty.