Author AJ Jacobs is attempting to throw the world’s biggest family reunion, because creepy or not, we’re all likely linked genetically.
Several months ago, writer AJ Jacobs decided to start expanding his knowledge of his own family tree.
"I got an email from a man who'd read one of my books," Jacobs says. "He said, 'You don't know me, but I'm your 12th cousin.' He said he had a family tree with 80,000 people on it. At first I thought: This guy is going to ask me to wire $10,000 to a Nigerian bank account. But it turns out it's for real.
"Thanks to DNA testing and the internet, you can now build these massive, mega-family trees. It's all about collaboration and crowdsourcing. You have thousands of people working on the same family tree."
AJ Jacobs
So far, Jacobs' tree has a whopping 77 million people on it.
He's compiled it using crowdsourced genealogy websites, as well as sending off his saliva for DNA genetic testing.
Jacobs is attempting to throw the biggest family reunion ever on June 6, 2015, in New York to reunite everyone...
...like him and Nick Kroll, who is Jacobs' first cousin twice removed's wife's second cousin once removed's ex-wife's sister's husband's uncle's wife's brother's wife's second cousin once removed.
All 7 billion people on Earth are invited (theoretically!), and the proceeds from the event will go to Alzheimer's-related charities.
"My hope — and I know it's a little idealistic — is that once we realize just how closely we're all related, we will be a bit kinder to each other," Jacobs said. "A lot of the horrible things humans have done to each other were because one group thought another group was subhuman. We can't do that anymore. We share 99.9% of our DNA. We're not just the same species. We're the same family."
AJ Jacobs
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