Who Do You Think You Are? Do You Want to Know?

In the world of Who's Who, we already heard on Tonic that Scott Brown and Barack Obama are distant cousins, which, you gotta admit, was a bit surprising. And that's the thing about ancestral history — you just never know what you're going to find when you shake the family tree. Which explains why Hollywood A-lister Sarah Jessica Parker was stunned to learn she's linked to the Salem witch trials — all explored in the new NBC show Who Do You Think You Are? that launches tonight at 8 pm. EST and follows celebs verité-style on their personal quests to find their family roots.

The show is an Americanized version of a similar very popular British show and this latest stateside edition is expected to gain traction in the US, too. That comes as no surprise to researchers like D. Joshua Taylor at the New England Historical Genealogical Society who has been helping with some of the WDYTHYA ancestral rooting around because more people than ever are hooked on finding out who they are.

Sepia-toned photos and crumbling birth certificates aside, there is something fascinating about looking back at history as a way to ground us in the present and in this way, those celebs who inhabit the stratosphere of stardom are just like us back here on terra firma. Parker travels from her native Ohio to New England in search of her mother's family reflecting a yearning many of us have — A-lister or not. The show's producer former Friends-ster Lisa Kudrow presumably was intrigued enough about her own ancestry (she's featured in episode 3) to take this challenging project on, following other celebs on the who-are-we-mystery-tour like Parker's husband Matthew Broderick, Susan Sarandon, Spike Lee, Brooke Shields and Emmitt Smith. But it's not just some oddball vanity project — rather it's an opportunity to see that in a weird way, we all sprout from the same common gene pool.

Sure shows like WDYTYA, PBS's Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and even ABC's Find My Family and WEtv's The Locator all spur a prurient interest in someone's familial background, but Tom Champoux of the New England Historic Genealogical Society tells me that more people than ever are interested in their own family history. He thinks that some of that emerging genealogy interest stems from the economy, that people are home more with time on their hands, but he also thinks Facebook is a factor. Champoux says, "There's a possibility that as people are more connected electronically, they are looking to connect more personally, too."

Photo by Rubenstein via Flickr.