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Best selling author A.J. Jacobs (“AJ”) hopes that you can connect with him, now, in the Geni World Family Tree, and invites you to attend the Global Family Reunion in 2015 where you can jointly break the Guinness world record for the world’s largest family reunion ever. This will be a fun day with presentations by celebrities and famous scientists, music, comedy, games, interactive exhibits and food. Be in the world’s largest ever family photo. There will also be an opportunity to grow your family tree with thousands of relatives to meet, and experts from Geni and MyHeritage available to provide family history research advice. The event will also be a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s research and has teamed up with the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund.
Even if you can’t attend the event in person, you can connect to AJ now and then sign up for the live-stream and be a part of history.
A.J. Jacobs is a journalist, an editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, and author of four New York Times bestsellers. His journey to connect with his family and to organize this reunion has already been reported in The New York Times and on NPR and Good Morning America.
View AJ's family tree on Geni to see how he's connected to the World Family Tree.
The Global Family Reunion has launched a crowdfunding campaign, where you can get tickets and some really cool perks. All proceeds will go to fighting Alzheimer's. Check out the Global Family Reunion's crowdfunding page here. (This campaign is now closed).
Join Geni at the Global Family Reunion on June 6 in New York. Click here to get 25% off Global Family Reunion tickets!
How to Participate
First we suggest that you visit A.J. Jacobs’ Global Family Reunion website to register to receive information about the event.
Next find out how you are connected to AJ. The easiest way to do this is to start building your family tree on Geni. Just visit the Geni homepage to start your tree for free. Keep adding individuals to your tree until you get a Tree Match indicating a duplicate profile. Merge the duplicates to instantly connect with over 87 million people in Geni’s World Family Tree.
Once you’re connected to the World Family Tree, visit AJ’s Geni profile -- Geni will automatically calculate your relationship to AJ. If no path is found, don’t fret. AJ is related to all of the famous profiles in this project; see if you can find a connection to any of these profiles. A connection to one of these famous folks means there’s a connection to AJ. Just leave a message in the discussions with your famous relationship to ask the Geni community to help find your connection to AJ.
Try out our new tool to discover how you're related to A.J. Jacobs here
Finally, join this project and join the discussions to meet other relatives attending the event, ask questions, and receive updates from AJ. Together we can discover how we’re all related!
The Global Family Reunion team is looking for volunteers to help individuals find their connection to AJ. Contact Eowyn Langholf - GFR Cousin Coordinator or comment here if you'd like to help.
Notable Celebrity Connections
AJ is connected to over 78 million people in the World Family Tree. Here are just a few notable people related to AJ:
Click on any of the profiles in this project to find your celebrity connections.
Event Details:
When: June 6, 2015
Who: The event is open to the public. Every one of A.J.'s seven billion relatives on planet earth is encouraged to join. Those cousins who have a proven relationship to A.J. will get a bracelet and take part in the record-breaking Largest Family Photo.
Where: New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York
Follow the Global Family Reunion on Facebook and Twitter
Press
- A family reunion with 7 billion of your closest relatives The Times of Israel (October 1, 2014)
- President Obama is Sen. Ted Cruz's cousin! Really! CNN (September 18, 2014)
- Ellen Degeneres and Vladimir Putin are cousins. And you're probably related to them, too Vox.com (September 12, 2014)
- Magazine Editor Sets Out To Join The Global Family Tree NPR (August 23, 2014)
- Obama has 44 cousins in the Senate. Now can't we all just get along? The Guardian (August 7, 2014)
- We Are Family: A Family Tree of the Entire Human Race mental_floss (July 29, 2014)
- You're Probably Related to Ryan Gosling BuzzFeed (July 28, 2014)
- A.J. Jacobs Explains How the World is Related HuffingtonPost Live (July 23, 2014)
- Are You Related to A.J. Jacobs? Author to Host Biggest Family Reunion Ever and You're Invited Good Morning America (July 17, 2014)
- Everyone is related! A.J. Jacobs explains how Tommy Schnurmacher Show (July 7, 2014)
- Best-Selling Author A.J. Jacobs Determined to Show How We're Related People (June 22, 2014)
- The world's largest family reunion...we're all invited! TED (June 13, 2014)
- The Scramble: Are A.J. Jacobs, Lupita Nyong'o, and John Rowland Related? The Colin McEnroe Show, WNPR (March 3, 2014)
- Exploring 'turbocharged' family trees with AJ Jacobs Q, CBC Radio (February 25, 2014)
- Family Reunion in NYC! Extreme Genes (February 25, 2014)
- Are You Related to A.J. Jacobs? The Brian Lehrer Show (February 21, 2014)
- Crowdsourcing and the New Genealogy Boom On Point with Tom Ashbrook, NPR (February 12, 2014)
- Are You My Cousin? The New York Times (January 31, 2014)