Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org.  David's "Family Histoire" news tells us about a Connecticut couple who have been married longer than any other couple in America!  How long have they been married and who are they?  Catch the podcast.  We also hear about the passing of a woman who was America's oldest surviving veteran.  David will share with you where and when she served and her remarkable age.  Then, the two talk about a new cruise ship, set to sail in 2018, that is the modern replica of another ship that sank in 1912.  Can you guess what it is?  Plus David's "Tech Tip" has to do with an exciting new announcement by MyHeritage.com.  And he shares another free database from NEHGS.  Listen to hear what it is.

In the second segment, David returns and talks with Fisher about their highlights from the recent Roots Tech Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, focusing first on new products, including those from the winners of the Innovator's Summit.  They also talk about a new data storage service that uses a life insurance company model to assure your data stays within your family's control for generations! (Fisher talks to the founder next week.)  David also reviews JRNL, a product having to do with keeping a digital journal, and a French company that serves as a social media base for your family and family history, only without the databases.  Fisher then plays back an incredible family history discovery from Roots Tech.  (Hint: She obtained an ancestral item dating back to 1812!)  Fisher and David also talk visiting with keynote speaker, the renowned historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, backstage.

Then, Dr. Kasia Bryc of 23andMe joins the show to talk about what their research is saying about how we come together as couples!  Are they the differences or similarities that bring us together?  Is there a genetic tie here?  Dr. Bryc has some Valentines Day insight.

Then, Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, the Preservation Authority, returns with great advice on managing your various formats and bringing them together in a presentable way.

That's all this week on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show!

Transcript of Episode 126

Host Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 126

Fisher: And you have found us! America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com

It is Fisher here, The Radio Roots Sleuth, your host on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out, and it is our first show back since Roots Tech, the largest conference on family history in the world that was just this past week or so in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I’ve got to tell you it’s taken me just a little bit to get my voice back. Because it’s loud, I had a little bit of a cold working and so trying to talk through that I got a little bit squeaky there for a while.

But I’m back and in full health and excited to break down Roots Tech, with David Allen Lambert coming up here in just a few minutes, and later in the show we’re going to do our DNA segment with Dr. Kasia Bryc from 23andMe.com and we’re going to talk about what DNA says about people and how they come together. A little love thing going on with DNA as we celebrate Valentine’s Day weekend.

Let’s check in now with David Allen Lambert, the Chief Genealogist for the New England Historic Society and AmericanAncestors.org, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Hello David!

David: Greetings from Beantown Fish! I hope that you survived Roots Tech, I know that it was an amazing time for me from beginning to end, lots of fun especially at the ‘My Heritage’ after party.

Fisher: Oh yeah, watching you work the karaoke microphone sir, was something I’m still recovering from. I want you to know that right now.

David: [Laughs] Well, I hope that’s a good recovery.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: When Thomas MacEntee, mentioned he was singing, I was like “Well if he can do it, I can croak!”

Fisher: You were good! I was impressed, I had no idea you had it in you.

David: Yeah well, it’s all that musical theater, I guess occasionally the windpipes are good for more than just radio.

Fisher: [Laughs] All right. What’s going on with Family Histoire News this week? Fill us in my friend.

David: Well, first off to you and your lovely bride a Happy Valentine’s Day weekend.

Fisher: Thank you sir.

David: How many years you’ve been married?

Fisher: This summer it will be 35.

David: Well for me it’s going to be 28. But we don’t hold a candle to a lovely couple out in Connecticut; this is John and Ann Betar’s 83^rd Wedding Anniversary.

Fisher: Gosh 83! What were they married at like 6?

David: [Laughs] Well, he’s currently 104 and she’s currently 100. So it looks like he was a 21 year old and a 17 year old that fell in love and got married. They’ve known each other since the Great Depression, and fell in love. In fact, he used to give her rides to school in his 1932 Ford Roadster.

Fisher: [Laughs] And he’s still driving I understand by the way at 104.

David: It’s amazing, and it’s amazing thing to think that technology has embraced so many of our older friends and listeners. This couple this weekend have actually decided to tweet the secrets of their marriage.

Fisher: They’re on Twitter? Oh that’s insane!

David: So, definitely need to follow them. I’m sure they’re going to get more following than the U.S. President ever got on his tweets.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: So that’s a great, great story. We tip our hats in remembrance of another person who was a centenarian, a gal from Boston, Massachusetts, Alice Dickson, who was born here in 1907.  She was an African American veteran with the 6888th battalion in World War II and when she died on the 27^th of January at 108, she was America’s oldest female veteran of World War II.

Fisher: Oldest living veteran period.

David: Yeah that’s true. But she’s definitely someone who’s seen a lot of history, and our heart goes out to her and her family and friends.

I can’t tell you the winter that we’re having. I know that the country is wrapped in cold weather all the way down to Florida. But I was thinking, I’m so looking forward to our cruise it just has a warm feeling.

Fisher: Right!

David: Even though it’s in the fall.

Fisher: Yes in September. Find out about it on our Facebook page, by the way.

David: Absolutely. They can see both of us and hopefully they’ll have karaoke. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] Oh please spare us that!

David: I know about a certain person and their great singing is on the other end of this mic so I want to just let you know you’ll be in for a good surprise with Fish singing as well.

Fisher: [Laughs] Oh boy!

David: Okay. I had an idea. In 2017 hopefully we’ll have another cruise. 2018 I’ve already got a ship lined up for us.

Fisher: Tell us what it is.

David: Well, it is called... you may have heard of it before...  the ‘Titanic’

Fisher: Shut up!

David: Yes the Titanic is not being raised from the ocean bottom and being refloated. A company out of Australia is building Titanic 2, this vessel is going to rival the size of the ship plus 13 feet apparently.

Fisher: Wow!

David: It’s going to launch and go from China to Dubai in 2018. So maybe we can convince them they need a genealogical talk.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: And maybe our listeners by then will already be out in Dubai, into China, there’ll just be a demand that they want Fish and Dave Lambert right there on the cruise. It will be our third annual, taking the Titanic by storm.

Fisher: No, no, no wait a minute! Let me ask you this. Would you like to go on a cruise on the Titanic?

David: Hmm that’s a really good question. I’ll take about 10 seconds to answer it. Yes!

Fisher: You would?

David: Because I’ve been fascinated with the Titanic since I was 11 years old.

Fisher: Sure.

David: And I think that somebody’s going to the detail of trying to replicate it. Just to look at it docked would be interesting.

Fisher: That’s true.

David: But you know that the cruise that they’re taking from Southern China to Dubai is not really an iceberg territory.

Fisher: [Laughs] Good point!

David: If they didn’t recreate it in April of 2018 to go from South Hampton to New York, but hopefully when they do that it’s going to be in the much warmer weather.

Fisher: That’s true and they’re going to have better technology anyway. They’ll have wifi.

David:  And more lifeboats, lifeboats on this boat will be adequate for every passenger, and it’s costing approximately five hundred million dollars to build.

Fisher: Wow! All right.

 David: So we’ll see how that one develops. So that’s a really exciting one. You know with tech tips going on there’s so many things that we’re going to talk about what happened at Roots Tech. But I want to just give a shout-out to our sponsor ‘My Heritage ‘and the exciting news about the audio app that is available from MyHeritage.com, now you can record your stories and put it right on your ‘My Heritage’ account, so that’s going to be great.

Fisher: That’s great! That’s a great advance no question about it.

David: All you have to do to get to it is go to www.MyHeritage.com/mobile. Well talking about technology, NEHGS as you know, listeners of Extreme Genes get to go on as a guest user as anybody else, spread the word, and we have free database that lasts for a month and the new one that we’re sponsoring is the marital records of Lincoln Maine from 1829- 1890, so if you have some ancestors that lived up in Maine back in the 19^th century check it out, and more exciting databases to come.

Fisher: All right. Good stuff David! Thanks so much, now you’re coming back for another segment?

David: I will.

Fisher: And we’re going to talk about some of the highlights from Roots Tech. We’re going to actually hear a story from a listener that I met. That will just blow your mind, its good stuff! It’s coming up in three on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 2 Episode 126

Host Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

 

Fisher: And we are back! America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com

It is Fisher here your Radio Roots Sleuth, with my good friend David Allan Lambert, he is the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org and this is our annual breakdown of Roots Tech, the Roots Tech Conference in Salt Lake City in Utah which took place last week. David I think for the most part I think the things we generally take away from this thing are the products that are out there. The new innovations and the new inventions in fact, that enhances our efforts to discover and preserve and share.

David: I tell you, Roots Tech is really the place for the innovators summit and all the new products by vendors that are already in the field and brand new ones that have just started. It never ceases to amaze me. Some great things, some really amazing things that I hope our listeners can try out and download. Most of them are free.

Fisher: Well let’s start with this one ‘Forever’. Now this is one of the gold sponsors that were there at Roots Tech, in fact I’m going to talk to the founder of the company and have him on the show next week, but this is a really interesting concept.

David: It really is, and what ‘Forever’ is it allows you to one, they offer a scanning service so you can box up your pictures and send them. They have software if you want to digitize them yourself and actually create online books etc. and online displays. You can invite your family to be part of it, but the biggest part of it is their data storage. Now I’ll tell you about this, Fish, it’s amazing.

Fisher: Right.

David: You have the possibility of getting an account with them for your lifetime plus a hundred years.

Fisher: Now the question would be, that anybody would ask, is how anybody can guarantee that something is going to last in the cloud for a hundred years beyond your lifetime? And this is where it gets a little bit different.

David: It is, in fact they basing it on the model of an insurance company. I actually asked them “So how do I know whose going to be alive in a hundred years?” so your heirs assign heirs and it becomes your legal property. You don’t have to worry “Oh my goodness am I going to find somebody that’s going to be able to read my USB drive in a hundred years from now?” They going to refresh all that data, they going to keep it standard part of the operating part of the company and that will be to actually make sure that the date of transitions into your lifetime plus a hundred years. I think it’s amazing to think that this has so many applications both on the family history level and small historical societies and libraries have some great ideas that I want to talk to them about. I think it’s more far reaching then just genealogy.

Fisher: Sure. Also we had the innovators summit that was the first day that was on Wednesday, and that’s where all these people come in either with new inventions or something they have innovated and there’s a hundred thousand dollar prize money involved in this thing, and the winner was a company called Tap Genes.

David: They were very interesting indeed because a lot of people test their DNA to know about their family health history, but their concept is crowd sourcing and using your own social media connections to reach out to cousins to track family health history, fascinating and obviously big, big winner for innovative summit.

Fisher: Well it can affect your treatments.

David: Oh absolutely, and I think for instance, I am a type two diabetic, I mean I want to let my other cousins know. I mean some of them it may not come up because I don’t see them but their kids get diagnosed at least they know the route they may have followed through. There are so many different great people at the innovative summit, another one that I wanted to mention which was an intriguing new product is ‘JRNL’ and it’s pronounced journal but its spelled JRNL.

Fisher: Yeah just get rid of all the vowels.

David: Exactly! In jrnl.com I’ve encouraged people as one of my new year’s resolutions as I mentioned was to keep a journal to share. This is a way to do it electronically in a secure environment. You can invite people like your cousins and friends to participate, you can put in photos, videos, etc. and it’s an exciting new product and I’m looking to see that company grow and take off with what they’re offering and I’m going to give it a try. It’s free to start, and as everything else there is a premium level where you want more space for things, you pay, but I’ll give it a try and maybe it will give me a chance to remember to keep a journal.

Fisher: Right [laughs] good point.

David: Next one that I saw and I do chat with him a bit, is Family City, which is a French company all the way over from Paris, France, they came to Roots Tech. It’s sort of a .com for social media to connect your family and share what you’ve already done but with no data bases.

Fisher: Nice.

David: The price is free so famicity.com. Another thing, I don’t think anybody thinks about so much into technology but books, but on a very basic level.

Deanna Novak from Kids Heritage Inc. from Orlando Florida was there, and what she offers is the groundbreaking old technology, a book.

Fisher: Yeah that’s right. She was my neighbor actually in the neighboring booth, and it’s just absolutely astonishing because if you’ve got a kid and you want to introduce them to their family history, she basically has a template with countries for instance, if you can give her four countries that your family descends from, they’ll put that in there and it can go up to six, then they customize the book with the kid’s name and birth date in there and maybe a little greeting from somebody. It’s a hard bound kid’s book and it tells them about the countries and their heritage. How cool is that.

David: It really is. In fact I was lucky to get one for Hanna, and she’s already enjoyed it, my twelve year old, listens to Dad ramble on about pedigree charts and genealogy and DNA tests, but this is a real good way to get your kids interested and of course incorporate your own family stories, and there’s a spot in it that you can put in your own family tree. So they can have that and it’s really a nice little product.

Fisher: Absolutely.

David: You talk to a lot of people at Roots Tech did you get any interesting stories while you were there?

Fisher: You know I did and in fact one of them I got on tape because I just thought it was so uniquely special. You want to hear it?

David: I’d love to hear it.

Fisher: All right listen to this; this is Ellen from Idaho;

Ellen: My story is that I found a cross-stitch sampler that my third great grandmother made when she was eight years old, from the internet. So there was a lady in Canada that found it in an estate sale, didn’t know anything about it, fell in love with it, did a Google search on the name that my third great grandmother cross-stitched on there, her name, so she did a Google search on Mary Elsie Collinson, found some information that one of my distant cousins had put on the internet.

This distant cousin lives in Australia. The Australia cousin emailed my family and said “There’s a lady in Canada that has a cross-stitch that was made by your third great grandmother. So I emailed this lady in Canada, I said “This is my third great grandmother, I really want to have this” and she said “I knew that this was a risk if I did a Google search” she said “I don’t know, I love the piece so I’ll get back to you” I thought I’m never going to hear from her again. A couple of days later she emailed me back and she sad “I love this piece, but if you let me have it for two years and if you still want it, contact me and I’ll sell it to you for market value.” I wrote it down in my calendar for two years from then. 

Fisher: Your two years are up.

Ellen: I wrote her back and said “I’m still here, I want it” and she said “I was hoping that you would forget but I figured that you wouldn’t” [laughs] so we made arrangements and she had sent me pictures, so we made arrangements for me to purchase it from her. So now I have this piece that was cross-stitched when my third great grandmother, Mary Elsie Collinson was eight years old, in England. I still haven’t tracked down how it got to Canada, there are two little branches of the family that go there but I can’t get it to the right place yet, but when she was eight years old she made this and now I have it hanging in my living room.

Fisher: And now what year are we talking about?

Ellen: It was made in 1812. Isn’t that incredible? It just brings me to tears every time I walk by it.

Fisher: Did you hear the dropped jaws from all the people around us as she was telling that story, David?

David: A 200 year old family heirloom found via the internet.

Fisher: Yep.

David: Doesn’t that make the internet all the worthwhile just for that?

Fisher: Well you know I found an original movie of my father playing in a big band in the 1930’s on eBay, years ago. It’s a treasure.

David: Unbelievable stuff. The things that are titanic in the industry are a lot of the .com names but a company that I’d never heard of before it produced something mammoth in fact this titanic or mammoth chart was the 30 by 100 foot long chart with over two hundred thousand names. Did you see it?

Fisher: I had a picture taken in front of that thing yeah [laughs] they even have pictures, they have life size pictures of people climbing up it, and it’s just astonishing. I’m sure it’s the largest in the world. It was from genealogicalwallcharts.com. Two hundred thousand names on there and these lines went back to Moses.

David: You know I was wondering how to get some of the stuff I got at Roots Tech back in my suitcase, that would be a little difficult.

Fisher: Yeah [laughs] how do they pack that up?

David: I don’t know but I bet you all the data fits in the USB drive.

Fisher: Right [laughs] that’s true.

David: We get so micro on some levels of our research and so macro on others.

Fisher: That’s absolutely true. We’re talking about the Roots Tech Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah that took place this past week. The largest in the world, twenty five thousand people attended over four days and another hundred and twenty five or so another hundred and twenty five thousand watched online from live streams, and of course the keynote speakers were very important there. We got to meet one of them David.

David: Oh we did, my good friend Vinny at NEHGS and I had the honor to do her genealogy for her.

Fisher: Right.

David: Doris Kearns Goodwin, quite the lady and the historian’s historian as I like to say.

Fisher: And she’s so very pleasant too, just really nice to be around.

David: Well especially when you’re dressed as the first President of the United States, I don’t think she could say no to want to chat with you.

Fisher: [Laughs]

David: I mean there might be a book in the works just on that conversation alone.

Fisher: We did a photograph as if we were actually dancing the quadrille or something and she just loved it. It was really fun and you can see the picture.  It’s on our Facebook page for Extreme Genes so check that out, and a lot of fun.

David: It really was and I’ll tell you there were just so many happy people at that conference. One thing that Roots Tech does besides the technology is the networking. Between sitting with people at breakfast all the way up to the after party with MyHeritage.com it’s bonding. I mean I have more Facebook friends now than I did when I went, and I’ve got a pocketful of business cards and lots of emails to send and phone calls to make, so it’s a really good networking opportunity to make no matter where you sit in the industry and genealogy and if you’re just a family historian. I think there are so many people that go to it every year now just like the national conferences that have been along for over twenty years.

Fisher: All right David thanks for coming on. It was great being with you last week.

And coming next; we’re going to talk to Dr. Kasia Bryc of 23andMe DNA and she’s going to be talking about what it is that they’ve learned through DNA about how we are attracted to each other over this Valentine’s Day weekend, on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.         

Segment 3 Episode 126

Host Scott Fisher with guest Doctor Kasia Bryc

Fisher: And, welcome back to Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, and it is so good to have DNA day. I always enjoy talking to the experts of 23andMe, about some of the things that they discover about us as people, and I've got Doctor Kasia Bryc back on the line. Good to have you on the show again, Doctor!

Kasia: Great to be here! Thank you for having me.

Fisher: I am very excited about this study you did about real world couples, 15,298 of them, and you did a little analysis on them and since it is Valentines weekend, fill us in on what you discovered.

Kasia: Yes, we looked at - like you said – fifteen thousand couples and their children together and looked at correlations amongst senior types. So, what that means is, we looked at whether two people had the same trait or hobby or whatnot that they've reported and found that the vast majority of traits that we looked at, couples were more similar. So, there was the correlation. For example, athletes were coupled with athletes, skiers hung out with skiers, hikers with hikers. We looked across a lot of different traits of people who spoke a second language.

Fisher: Now, wait a minute, wait a minute! We have always heard that opposites attract. You're destroying this.

Kasia: [Laughs] So, we're looking at the data and the data seems to suggest that for the vast majority of traits, people were more similar to each other. Of course there were a few exceptions.

Fisher: Okay.

Kasia: So, some things were different. So, opposites attracted, so night owls tended to be with morning people. If one of the couples attracted mosquitoes the other happily didn't.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Kasia: And people with good direction were maybe partners with people without such great sense of direction.

Fisher: That's funny you say all those things, because that is the case in my marriage. I am a…

Kasia: It's certainly the case with mine.

Fisher: Yeah, I’m a late night person and my wife is very early. She attracts mosquitoes. She is my best mosquito repellent, because they all go to her and not to me.

Kasia: Same here.

Fisher: And then, she's very good at directions and I'm not, of course I wouldn't ask for them anyway, right?

Kasia: Well I, I happen to be the directions person in the relationship.

Fisher: Sure.

Kasia: But yes, I mean, it works out great. [Laughs]

Fisher: Okay. So, this is an interesting study, because you're finding similarities have more to do with it than differences, although, obviously people do complement themselves often and that's  very useful in keeping people together, I think, right? If you all have the same skills, there wouldn't be much to keep you going. Is there some kind of genetic predisposition to this? There's obviously a correlation, but is there a causation that brings this about? What is DNA showing us?

Kasia: Yeah. So, the big question is always, does correlation imply causation, and in this case, we're just looking at correlation, so we don't know what's causing what. We can certainly speculate and it's certainly fun to do so around Valentine’s Day, but we don't know which came first, but we definitely see that there's definitely a lot of similarities among couples, you know, and that doesn't necessarily tell us, you know, why they fell in love. Whether they fell in love because they had all these in common or maybe they grew these shared interests in common after becoming a couple. So, we don't know which came first, but it certainly leads to couples sharing a lot in common.

Fisher: Do you notice the same thing with physical types?

Kasia: So, we definitely saw some interesting tidbits, for example, couples who had similar BMIs or happier.

Fisher: Yeah, that would make sense. I mean, you don't usually see people who are really, really skinny with people who are really, really overweight. That's not as common.

Kasia: And it's very odd that there's a correlation between that and happiness. So, I'm not sure what to read into that or how to read into that.

Fisher: Um-hum.

Kasia: So, luckily for me, my husband is very tall and there's no such effects for height, so you don't have to be similar heights to be happy, which is good, because he's much taller than me. [Laughs]

Fisher: Well, so, the bottom line is it kind of makes it a little more difficult really, doesn't it, to determine what sides certain traits came from if similar people are attracted to one another. It could come from either or both, right?

Kasia: Yeah, it's hard to say, hard to say. We had this recent study on morning-ness, whether you're a morning person or night owl, and we definitely saw lots of genetic variants that are associated, like whether you like get up early in the morning - like my husband - or whether you like to sleep in late, like me.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Kasia: And so, [laughs], there's a lot of interesting variants that we found, some that were known previously, but also a handful that kind of makes sense but what hadn't been seen before, and then, we can do things that take it a little bit further, so we can look at whether being a morning person correlates with other things, like Body Mass Index or BMI or insomnia or depression or how long you sleep. So we can ask all these interesting questions because 23andMe customers tell us so many interesting things about themselves.

Fisher: Right and this is something that there's no names attached to the surveys that you do. It's just among the customers in general, correct?

Kasia: Yeah. So, we're looking at aggregated data on the back end so, there's no names. We have no identifiable names, any sort of identifiable information on the customers when we're doing research; we're just using the correlation using genetic data and aggregate to make the inferences.

Fisher: Right. So, there's no association with name or anything. So, it's all private and it adds to this development of this amazing database. Now, I read somewhere in this article that you people put together, that there's something about being almost like fourth-cousins.

Kasia: Yeah, so there was a study recently that looked at whether friends were genetically similar. So, whether there was any correlation between whom you called a friend and how they were related to you genetically.

Fisher: Right. Not necessarily related though, right?

Kasia: Not necessarily related, but the result was that individuals who were friends were more genetically similar than you would expect and there were something along the lines of, as similar as their fourth-cousins are more similar to each other than any two individuals at random. So, it basically shows that you're more likely to be friends with people, who are more similar to you, something like that.

Fisher: It kind of makes you wonder then, how are we ever going to come together with our differences if our natural tendency is always to be together with people who are more like us and like-minded and look like us and think like us, that type of thing, doesn't it?

Kasia: That is sort of the way that the world works in some cases but I think that there's also a strong argument that people who are put in the same place at the same time also tend to mix, irrespective of background. So, one of the research we did, looking at individuals living across the U.S., it was that people who identified as European-American, African-American and Latino, you know, it's clear that there's been an ongoing process of what we call admixture, basically, people from different backgrounds, but DNA coming from different parts of the world mixing together.

Fisher: Um-hum.

Kasia: And I think that will be the case in the States, at least, that that's been happening for a very long time, and you can definitely see the effects of that by looking at the DNA. You can see individuals with ancestry from Africa, from Europe, from the Americas. So, you can definitely see assorted mating, meaning mating like-with-like, but also different individuals coming together as well.

Fisher: Yeah. It's a melting pot, isn't it right now, going on, I mean two generations or so, most families will be mixed families in the United States, wouldn't you say?

Kasia: I don't know the latest research on that, but I'm definitely looking at the genetics and see that there's individuals who carry bits of ancestry, even when they may not realize it. So, there's a large proportion of individuals - especially in the South - who identify as white, who carry bits of African or Native-American DNA.

Fisher: Um-hum.

Kasia: And they may not know about it.

Fisher: Okay, and likewise, the African-Americans who find they have European blood and Native-American blood too, right?

Kasia: Yeah, so you see African-Americans - especially from Oklahoma - who carry appreciable amounts of Native-American ancestry, and that sort of traces back to historical migration. Oklahoma was formerly Indian Territory where the trail of tears migration ended, and you can sort of see the historical migration in the DNA of people there today.

Fisher: Wow! It's just a fascinating field, and of course you do so much there, not only to determine more about how people are alike or unlike, but also to match up cousins, so that we can extend our family tree lines, and that's why it's so much fun. Doctor Bryc thanks. We're out of time. I wish we had more, but we're going to get back with you people again next month and have another DNA day and find out what's on your minds.

Kasia: Great, thanks, looking forward to it!

Fisher: All right, I am too, and we'll talk to you then. Coming up next, it's Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show.

Segment 4 Episode 126

Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: It is preservation time on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com

Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com

Hi Tom, how are you? How’s our Preservation Authority?

Tom: I’m really, really good. Roots Tech was awesome! I’m trying to put things together so hopefully by next week’s show I can answer some of the questions that came to me at Roots Tech.

Fisher: Yes so much. So much stuff to cover but it was an amazing show. Hey, we’ve got another question here and this one comes from Olympia Washington, where they listen to us on KMAS, 1030 AM and the question is this “Tom, I have all kinds of different files on a flash-drive and I want to make a compilation video, how do I do this mixing and matching all these different formats?” Great question.

Tom: That is. That’s an awesome question. That’s kind of little bit what we talked about last week. But since they’re all kinds of different formats, again you’re going to need to find out what your end result is. In this case you want a playable DVD.

Fisher: So you have to somehow standardize all these into one format and decide what it is yes?

Tom: Exactly! We have people bring us in a disk and say “Hey, I played this on my DVD player, it won’t play.” We look at it and go “Well this is a BluRay disk that’s why it won’t play on your DVD player.” Or they give us a DVD and say “Hey, you know this plays on my computer why won’t it play on my DVD?” so I pop it into my computer and look at the file types to see what kind they are, so if you’ve got all miscellaneous kind of file types what you need to do is organize them… okay I’ve got all these AVI’s, I’ve got these MOV’s, I’ve got QuickTime’s, I’ve got MP4’s, whatever you have if you can get them to play on your computer you can save yourself a lot of money.

If you’re on a MAC, just open them into QuickTime, if you’re on a PC usually the Windows’s program that comes with it will open it, and if you look down in the corner usually it will automatically pop up a little time code like a little clock and it will say ‘okay, you’re on chapter 1, there’s 8 chapters.’ You’re at :00 and there’s 3 minutes and 14 seconds long or whatever.

Fisher: Okay.

Tom: And what you’ll do is just make a track-sheet like a professional editor would make for a movie and you write ‘okay, I’m on file X, Y and Z, it’s a .MOV and I want it to start at 13 seconds and I want it to run to 2 minutes and 14 seconds.

Fisher: Okay.

Tom: And then we’ll say okay and I want this next one that’s an .MP4, and it’s A, B, C and I want it to start at 14 minutes and go to 32 minutes. Write down all this information in the order that you want it to be. A lot of people come in and they say “This is what I don’t want.” A computer doesn’t understand ‘I don’t want this or take everything else.”

Fisher: [Laughs] Right.

Tom: You need to tell the computer I want to start here and I want to go to here, and we’re the same way so we’re entering all these different edit points and then let the computer basically do all the work for you which will save you a lot of time and a lot of money that way.

Fisher: So what you’re going to do basically is, take these different things in different formats edit them to what they’re supposed to be and then standardize the format. I would assume to an MP4 yes?

Tom: Right. That’s what I would suggest. The neat thing about MP4s is they’re universal, they’re like QuickTime, they’ll play on about anything.  Most wide screen televisions will play MP4s.

Fisher: Apple and PC?

Tom: Yup. Windows Machines, MAC machines, OSX machines, anything pretty much that you have will play MP4s and QuickTimes, it’s a great standard, good quality video and it’s ultra compressed without losing quality. So what we’ll do as you mentioned is standardize all the things because like if you have MOV’s, AVI’s and these different kinds of things probably what we’ll do is edit them in their native format. So we’ll get out this piece, we’ll get out this piece before we combine them and change them.

Because there’s no reason to go change everything to an MP4 and then edit it, so we’ll edit in its native format because it’s going to be a lot cleaner edits and better quality.

Fisher: Right.

Tom: Then once we have some MOV’s, some AVI’s, some QuickTime’s or whatever then we can turn them all into the MP4 or the AVI or the QuickTime whatever you want, and some people bring us these same thing and say “Hey, I’ve got this old VHS, I want to turn it into BluRay.”

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: They think we have a magic wand that can take this poor quality VHS and make it better by burning it on a BluRay disk. We need to go back to what we talked about quite a while ago. You want to look at storage devices as boxes and after the break I’ll explain to you the difference between a data disk and a playable DVD for instance.

Fisher: Oh boy, it sounds complicated but you know, if you’re going to save your stuff you’ve got to learn how this works.

Tom: Take notes.

Fisher: Tom’s got more answers coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 126

Host Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: We’re back! Final segment of Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show, talking with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority, and Tom, I’ve got to tell you I can feel people’s heads swimming right now talking about converting formats and editing videos and assembling it all together. But you know at the end of the day this is what has to happen otherwise your stuff goes away.

Tom: Oh absolutely. In fact, at Roots Tech, we talked to more customers that came up to our booth about this exact subject. “I’ve got all this stuff I’m just overwhelmed.” Wait, wait, wait don’t be overwhelmed. Just take one box off the shelf and take one videotape and start there and just do one at a time, one at a time.

Fisher: Exactly.

Tom: But the biggest question we got at Roots Tech is, people get confused about “Hey, I have this DVD that says DVD on it but I put it in my DVD Player, why won’t it play?”

As in the first segment that we talked about, we have different kinds of boxes. Storage things whether it’s a DVD, a CD, a BluRay, a Flash-drive, an SD card. Whatever they are, they’re just storage devices. Different sizes of boxes, they’re all boxes of old stuff.

When you hear DVD people think video DVD, well there’s also data DVD.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: So the disk itself doesn’t care whether there’s a video on it, whether it’s data on it, it doesn’t matter it’s irrelevant.

Fisher: It’s a type of box basically.

Tom: Exactly!

Fisher: It’s a storage thing.

Tom: Right. Exactly and they think of CD’s as just audio especially in Africa, we get a lot of disks from Africa that are CD’s that have video on them.

Fisher: Really?

Tom: And they’re really major compressed in a kind of a weird format that’s really not very good quality. But I guess they have more access to CD’s than they do DVD’s or it’s just their culture. But we get these CD’s that have ultra compressed video on it. So that CD is still a box, it’s just a smaller box than the DVD.

Fisher: Sure.

Tom: Where the BluRay is a bigger box and when you get it in the Thumb-drives and SD cards they’re Terabytes or Gigabytes, all different kinds of sizes. So what you want to do is decide “Okay I’ve got all these files, this is what size they are this is going to fit on a DVD or it needs to go on a BluRay because it’s so big not because of the quality.” Now one thing we’ve talked about before when you’re transferring film or anything that’s optical it’s always best to go to BluRay because it’s going to look better because it gives us the opportunity to give you a bigger file that wouldn’t fit on a DVD, and again as a BluRay player plays a BluRay it makes it look better but it will also play DVD’s better than a DVD does because it has what is called an ‘up converter’ built right into it.

So that’s why when you get your new BluRay, you’re looking at our old DVD’s and saying “Wow these look so much better on this big screen!” well it’s probably not your TV that’s making them look better. It’s now you’re playing your old DVD’s on a BluRay machine and it’s ‘up converting’ them so that’s why it looks better.

So it doesn’t matter whether you’re using a CD, a DVD or a BluRay, if you want a disk it depends what size of information. For instance audio, we’ve had people that have this huge record collection that we transfer for them, there are so many we put them pm MP3’s but we have to put them on a data disk that’s a DVD or multiple CD’s and they go “No, no, no that’s fine put them on a DVD because I’m going to put them on my computer and load them on my hard-drive once you’re done compiling them for me.”

So it really doesn’t matter what kind of a device it’s on its again, what is your end product? Do you want to be able to play it in your car, do you want to be able to play it on your Mp3 player, or your iPhone, what do you want to do with this?  Let us know so when we convert it we’ll do it the right way. We had somebody a year ago that brought in a disk for us and said “I want 10 copies of this.” So we made him 10 copies. He called us a year later and said “This won’t play on my DVD player.”

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: So we searched and found out what it was, he brought us in a data disk and said copy it, so we copied it. So he got exactly what he had before but it wasn’t a video DVD it was a data DVD. So be really careful whenever you contact us or whoever you’re working through, let them know what you have, what you need and what your end use is going to be.

Fisher: And get to know what you’re storing it on.

Tom: Exactly! You have to know these things and please, if you have any questions just email me at [email protected] I’m happy to help you in any way I can.

Fisher: All right. We’ll talk to you next week Tom, thanks for coming by!

Tom: Yup. We’ll be ready with Roots Tech.

Fisher: Hey, that’s our show for this week! Thanks once again to Dr. Kasia Bryc from 23andMe.com, for coming on and talking about how DNA kind of effects how we come together as couples. Great stuff! If you missed it make sure you listen to the podcast at ExtremeGenes.com, iTunes, the iHeartRadio Talk Channel. Thanks also to David Allen Lambert, for helping me with the review of Roots Tech; we’ll have more on that coming next week.

Take care, we’ll talk to you again next week and remember as far as everyone knows, we’re a nice normal family!