Last episode
Rags to Riches
s12e10 · 2026-04-15
Running · US
Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.
PBS Documentary
What it is
Since the premiere of his groundbreaking series African American Lives through the first season of Finding Your Roots, 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.
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Episode guide
10 this season · 131 totals11e01 Larger Than Life 2025-01-08 01:00
Larger Than Life
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. introduces actors Lea Salonga and Amanda Seyfried to ancestors who are every bit as dramatic as the characters they've played on stage and screen. Moving from a naval base in the Philippines to a small town bakery in Pennsylvania to steamships on the Atlantic Ocean, Lea and Amanda hear stories of relatives who survived wars, murders, and heart-wrenching ordeals.
s11e02 La Famiglia 2025-01-15 01:00
La Famiglia
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the Italian roots of Joy Behar & Michael Imperioli.
s11e03 Stranger Than Fiction 2025-01-22 01:00
Stranger Than Fiction
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. reveals inspiring ancestors of novelist Amy Tan & poet Rita Dove.
s11e04 Dreamers One and All 2025-01-29 01:00
Dreamers One and All
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. traces the ancestry of actor Sharon Stone & model Chrissy Teigen.
s11e05 Family Recipes 2025-02-05 01:00
Family Recipes
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the ancestry of celebrity chefs José Andrés and Sean Sherman, traveling from small-town Spain to Native American lands in the Dakotas to reveal his guests' hidden connections to history—and to food.
s11e06 Latin Roots 2025-02-12 01:00
Latin Roots
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. traces the family trees of musician Rubén Blades and journalist Natalie Morales - interweaving stories from across Latin America. Along the way, both guests learn secrets that their ancestors tried hard to conceal.
s11e07 The Ties That Bind 2025-02-19 01:00
The Ties That Bind
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. meets actors Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard—a married couple who whose ancestors had some remarkable similarities. Telling stories of soldiers, settlers and criminals, Gates compels the pair to reimagine their family trees.
s11e08 The Butterfly Effect 2025-02-26 01:00
The Butterfly Effect
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. introduces actors Debra Messing & Melanie Lynskey to ancestors who made bold decisions that forever reshaped their family trees. Moving from shtetls in Eastern Europe to a fruit stand in NY City to the wilds of New Zealand, Gates introduces his guests to relatives who took great risks, overcame enormous hardships—and unwittingly transformed the lives of their descendants.
s11e09 Moving on Up 2025-04-02 00:00
Moving on Up
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the long-lost roots of actor Sheryl Lee Ralph and historian Lonnie Bunch—two African Americans whose ancestor's broke boundaries and forged families as they moved from slavery to freedom.
s11e10 Finding My Roots 2025-04-09 00:00
Finding My Roots
In a unique and highly emotional episode, actor Laurence Fishburne is joined by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.—who finds himself a guest on his own show for the first time. Both men have been haunted by profound family mysteries for years. Cutting-edge DNA detective work will solve those mysteries—introducing Laurence and Henry to ancestors whose names they have longed to hear.