Host Scott Fisher opens the show with David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org. The guys begin by discussing an email from a listener who has discovered through DNA that she has a new cousin… one who was fathered by her uncle with his former girlfriend. The cousin thinks the results are a mistake. Then the story takes a real twist! Hear what it is. Then, in Family Histoire News, David talks about a recent gathering of descendants of United States Presidents, including one who is a GRANDSON of a president who was born in 1790! Hear which president he comes through. David’s Blogger Spotlight this week shines on the University of Portsmouth in the UK. It’s a website that can be reached at RailwayAccidents.port.ac.uk and they’re documenting all the railway accidents and the railway deaths of the 20th century there!  David then talks about his upcoming appearance at Family History Fanatics. He’ll be their guest on September 22nd 2018. Find out more at Humblegen.org.

Next, Relative Race returns to BYUtv for Season 4 on Sunday September 16th at 9pm ET, 6pm PT. Fisher visits with Relative Race host Dan Debenham about what we can expect this season from this geni favorite reality show.

DNA specialist Diahan Southard then joins Fisher to talk about ethnicity tests. People are often confused by their results and Diahan explains why they might not come out the way you think they would. She also reveals a recent update in ethnicity numbers with one of the major companies. Hear who it is and what to look for!

Then, Tom Perry, the Preservation Authority from TMCPlace.com, reveals some of his favorite apps as he prepares you for the best way to complete your holiday family history projects.

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

Transcript of Episode 252

Host: Scott Fisher with guest David Allen Lambert

Segment 1 Episode 252

Fisher: Welcome to America’s Family History Show, Extreme Genes and ExtremeGenes.com. I am Fisher, your Radio Roots Sleuth on the program where we shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out. And this episode is brought to you by BYUtv’s Relative Race. Glad to have you along. In fact, coming up in about nine minutes we are going to be talking to the host of Relative Race, Dan Debenham because the series starts again, Season 4, this weekend on BYUtv, so join us for that. And then a little bit later on in the show we’re going to be talking to DNA Specialist Diahan Southard and she is going to be talking about ethnicity reports and DNA. How much can you rely on them? How much more reliable will they get? There has been some news in the ethnicity department this past week you’re going to want to hear about as well. Right now, let’s head off to Boston and talk to my good friend the Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, David Allen Lambert. How are you David?

David: I’m good Fish. How about yourself?

Fisher: Awesome! I got this incredible email from a listener named Laura, and she’s given me permission to share this and I want to get your take on it and I’ll tell you what I told her about this. She said, “I have a mess to fix. Let me start.” And you might want to take notes as I share this story, but it’s a little complicated. [Laughs]

David: Okay, I’ll get a piece of paper out right now. Yeah.

Fisher: Get your flowchart, okay? “My mother was raised in a small West Virginia town where most everyone knows everyone. Mom’s closest brother was John. He dated two of mom’s girlfriends, Laurie and Lizzie. Word War II came, and like many, he enlisted. Lizzie was his closest girlfriend, but Laurie was his buddy. When he got home he discovered Lizzie had married a local boy named Will. He also found Laurie had married and divorced Bob during this time period. Well, John married Laurie and agreed to raise her son. They ended up with three more kids, a daughter and two sons. Lizzie and Will had five kids. Skip forward to 2018 and DNA. A few cousins and I have DNA test results out on several sites. It’s Ancestry, Family Tree, DNA23andMe and GEDMatch. We’ve come up with a new first cousin. It seems that Lizzie and Will’s second son is biologically Lizzie and John’s.”

David: Oh my.

Fisher: Yeah. “This new cousin just thinks the test is wrong. I don’t have the heart to tell them I know for a fact that John and Lizzie were deeply in love. So, I get the brilliant idea to pay to have my youngest cousin, John and Laurie’s son tested, thinking that this new cousin will see he has half siblings out there. Well, talk about a shock when the results came in that Laurie and John’s youngest son was not John’s son. What do I do? Should I continue to keep my mouth shut? Do I do a DNA test on another of Laurie and John’s kids? Laurie and John’s youngest son that I tested said that he has no interest in genealogy. To top it off, Laurie and John’s daughter dated what is now known by me to be Lizzie and John’s son’s half-sister and half-brother.”

David: Oh my.

Fisher: “Any advice would be greatly appreciated.” [Laughs] Woo!

David: It sounds like Genetic Counseling 101. [Laughs] That is definitely an interesting one, yet, we all have these stories that happen in our family. And as you well know, last fall I got the surprise and delight that I have a half-sister. And now I’m delighted to have Donna in my family and her son Matt, but I also have it in my Dad’s side. And I said to him one time, “You know, you don’t look a lot like your brothers.” And he said, “Well, they’re not my full brothers.” I said, “What?” And I found out that my grandmother in fact had four children with another man after my grandfather was out of the scene. They were never married. However, the DNA has proven it. They definitely are not my “full” uncles, but the better part is they have a Mayflower line. [Laughs]

Fisher: Ah, very nice. Well, you know the thing is DNA now is revealing the secrets from even a century or longer ago, and that’s the amazing thing. What I told Laura was, my feeling was with Socrates who’s basically taught all the medical world “First, do no harm.” If the one doesn’t want to know and the other doesn’t want, you know… I don’t know, it’s not her job necessarily to lead them to water just because it’s the truth. Because having gone through this myself, having helped somebody discover that their father wasn’t their father... it’s painful and I’m not really going to be anxious to do that again. [Laughs] I think they’ll eventually figure it out because more DNA tests will come out that will cause questions to arise, and they’ll figure it out from there. But, wow, what a mess, huh?

David: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing what you can find with DNA. The surprises await all of us.

Fisher: All right, let’s get on to some Family Histoire News real quick David. What do you have?

David: Well, this one is a presidential type of thing, but it has nothing to do with what’s going on in the White House. It’s what went on in the White House years ago. There were actually a small group of people, part of the presidential descendents, who had their first ever summits so, from people, including the grandchild of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the grandson of Grover Cleveland to great grandson of Teddy Roosevelt. But how about the grandson of President John Tyler? Yeah, he has a living grandson. Our president was born in the 18^th century (1790!), has a living grandson.

Fisher: That’s crazy.

David: They all got together. They have shared stories. Some of them have memories of being in the White House as children. It’s a great way of connecting this small unique group of people. My blogger spotlight this week shines on someone out in the UK. It’s actually not a person, but it is the University of Portsmouth that actually has a program where they’re researching the railway accidents of Ireland in the UK. This is a website that can be reached at RailwayAccidents.port.ac.uk and they’re documenting all the railway accidents and the railway deaths so, check out that blog across the pond.

Fisher: And that is fascinating to me because I’m actually the survivor of a fatal train crash back in 1973. Crazy!

David: I think you need to start an American version of it in your free time.

Fisher: [Laughs] No, I don’t have time. I don’t have time.

David: Hey, I just want to give a shout out to my good friends, Family History Fanatics. I’ll be their guest on September 22^nd 2018 at Humblegen.org. I’ll be part of a conference with Tammy Tipler-Priolo, Melanie McComb and Tessa Keough where we do Back 2 Research eConference. Delighted to be a guest of Devon and Andy. Again, find out on Humblegen.org, it’s September 22^nd. Well, that’s all I have from NEHGS this week. If you want to join NEHGS, don’t forget you can use the checkout code “Extreme” to save $20 on our membership. Catch you next week my friend.

Fisher: All right, thank you David. And coming up next, it’s a brand new season of Relative Race on BYUtv and we’re going to talk to the host Dan Debenham in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 2 Episode 252

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Dan Debenham

Fisher: You know, I first met my next guest over twenty years ago, and he has not aged during that time. He sold his soul to the devil and he’s on television still.

Dan: I paid a price of two dollars and ninety-five cents to the devil back in the day!

Fisher: [Laughs]

Dan: So that tells you what I actually truly look like. Not real good.

Fisher: Hey it’s Fisher here. It’s Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com and Dan Debenham, he’s the host of Relative Race. They are coming up on a brand new season on BYUtv. One of the top rated shows on the network, if not the number one show, right Dan?

Dan: That’s what I hear. That’s what they tell me. We’re just excited that we can now bring this not only... we originally had this programmed for once per calendar year. And it seems to be doing so well we are now creating and producing and delivering two seasons per year. And the season coming up, which is season four, actually starts on Sunday night 9:00 pm EST every Sunday starting September 16^th.

Fisher: Sweet! You know, I remember being at Roots Tech and you had a booth there for Relative Race and you had members of the teams from your previous season, and I wanted to go over and just say hey, how you doing? I couldn’t get a word in because so many people were flocked around you and your teams because this show is so big within family history enthusiasts. 

Dan: You know it was really exciting. We’ve been a part of Roots Tech for the past two years but I had just been asked to be a speaker here and there. This past year that you’re alluding to, to your point, we were surprised. We were actually surprised with the overwhelming support and reaction to that.

Fisher: The fandom!

Dan: It was incredible.

Fisher: These are not people who followed you in your ESPN days.

Dan: No. I don’t think so. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs]

Dan: In fact, it’s kind of funny now to be bouncing around the country and doing different things. And when somebody says, “I know you.” I immediately think, “Wow, that’s a good memory that they remember me from when I was on ESPN.” But then they quickly say, “We love Relative Race!” And I just…again, it’s exciting to see that people are really connecting to this show which connects families. This is a show about discovery, and when we capture that in real time, you know this is not scripted. It is truly unscripted. But I believe it is the best of what unscripted can do. And it is capturing those magical moments when somebody discovers for the first time that they have this relative that they have raced throughout the day or throughout the course of the week to discover him. And when they knock on the door and the door opens up and they say, “Are you my relative?” And the answer is, “I am.” And then they say, “How are we related?” And often now more than ever those answers are, “I am your mother.” “I am your father.” “I am your brother.” “I am your sister.” “I am your aunt.” “I am your uncle.”

Fisher: Wow.

Dan: It is overwhelming what that moment is like, and it’s just, it’s kind of humbling. I know that’s a…

Fisher: Sure. No I think you’re right.

Dan: It’s kind of humbling to be a part of that.

Fisher: It is because you’re connecting. I mean, this is the most important thing in the world as family.

Dan: Agreed.

Fisher: It’s putting people together. So, for people who are not familiar with the Relative Race format, let’s just map that out a little bit.

Dan: Sure absolutely. Relative Race takes four teams. It originally was couples. They were all married couples now they’re teams. So it can be a father-son, or a mother-daughter, or two siblings.

Fisher: You haven’t had Omarosa on this, right?

Dan: We have not. Not yet.

Fisher: I’m just checking.

Dan: Not yet. Yeah.

Fisher: Okay. [Laughs]

Dan: So we take four teams, then we fly them to an undisclosed location somewhere in the United States. We take away all their technology and we provide them with identical flip phones. Old fashioned flip phones that have no GPS or internet access. They do have texting capabilities only. Then we provide them with identical cars. And then, throughout the course of ten days every day we send them a series of text messages that provide clues for them to race to a different city every day.

Fisher: Now racing, that doesn’t mean breaking speed limits or you know the fastest.

Dan: That will get you off the show. It may sound a little corny but safety is everything. The last thing in the world we need is for somebody to hurt themselves or someone else while filming this show.

Fisher: Sure.

Dan: And so we actually have monitors on their cars and we have production vehicles that are following them in front and behind and they’re not allowed to break any speed limits or traffic laws. But as they race to that city, they then are given a challenge in that city. And these are challenges that we create purely for entertainment value.

Fisher: Sure.

Dan: That they can be getting to a park and finding a drone, and then flying the drone through a drone course, or it can be some kind of obstacle course, or this season which you’re going to see on September 16^th I think our day 2 challenge that they had was the most fun that we’ve ever had. So you’ll have to watch that. But once they overcome that challenge in that city, they’re given the final clue on where to find their relative. When they knock on that door, their clock stops, because this is all times from the moment they start the journey in the morning to the moment that they find their relative at night. And when they stop that clock, then everything just stops for them and they can enjoy this family, this new part of their family that they just discovered. When they find the family member, they also have to spend the night with the family, which is interesting.

Fisher: Wow! In their home?

Dan: That’s right.

Fisher: Wow!

Dan: Now the relatives who we contacted in advance, we’ve told them very clearly that when we say that you have to provide a place for them to sleep, it can be in the back yard.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Dan: And so we have had people sleeping in tents. It’s really been fun to see that.

Fisher: I’ve enjoyed the show but I don’t recall anybody in the back yard. I must admit something.

Dan: We’ve had somebody sleeping in the back yard on season 1 and season 2.

Fisher: Okay. [Laughs]

Dan: People were sleeping in the backyard and so they discovered the relative. Time melts away literally. Time stops for them.

Fisher: Yeah.

Dan: And then at the end of every day we have a video conference call and that video conference call conferences all four teams in and myself as the host from our Relative Race headquarters and these four teams at various locations around the United States. And we talk about how the day went. We talk about their relative, and who they met and it’s often in tears that these video conference calls take place. But, unfortunately it is a race, and there is $50 000 on the line. And so, if you are the one that is in essence, the last one that takes the most amount of time to find your relative, then you receive a strike. Three strikes and you’re off of the race. If you continue through the process and you make it to Day 10, and you are the best on that final day, Day 10, then you also win $50 000. So, it is this race to discover family. It is a race to understand each other and survive ten days in a car with no GPS, so you only have paper maps to guide you everywhere. And then it’s this race to also earn $50 000, and it’s just a wonderful show.

Fisher: Well, it is a wonderful show, and you know, I think everybody in the genealogy space has been talking about it for a long time. And they really enjoy it because it really speaks to what we all do in research, in DNA and all the things that involved in that. I know you use DNA too in the process.

Dan: We do, and had a wonderful relationship with Ancestry DNA, but now that’s expanded out and many of the various companies help us in the search to find living relatives.

Fisher: You need them all. You need all four.

Dan: We bring them all in. We have professional genealogists that work on the staff with us and this talented group of individuals again, not only do we find the families but we find the stories behind the families.

Fisher: Yep.

Dan: And again, as those stories unfold, as we tell those stories on the show every episode, you really become connected, not only with the team that’s competing but in their quest. Who they’re looking for and when they find those family members each and every day, it’s just overwhelming. It’s just really cool.

Fisher: All right, we’ve got a few minutes left here.

Dan: Okay.

Fisher: So, give us what you can give us before the season begins. We need to know about the teams.

Dan: You know, we call this a tease in our industry.

Fisher: Yes! Yes.

Dan: Yeah, okay. Well, I can tell you this. Four new teams and we do have something that happens on this season that has never happened before, and quite frankly we hope never happens again.

Fisher: Oh?

Dan: But, that’s a tease. Now, you’ve got to watch for that.

Fisher: [Laughs]

 Dan: Because it’s kind of dramatic. Let’s put it that way.

Fisher: Really?

Dan: I can tell you that there are several adoption stories this season where people were adopted and are looking for biological parents and biological family

Fisher: Sure.

Dan: I can tell you that we become better at what we do in the pre-production process of this show, and so we are better at finding those family members. And I can tell you again that this is absolutely true. This is not a tease. And that is that we have more families, closer family ties and more family ties that will be revealed on this show than ever before, on this season, I should say.

Fisher: Wow!

Dan: And again this is Season 4.

Fisher: Yeah.

Dan: And it starts Sunday, September 16^th so, I hope you and everybody else will watch

Fisher: Oh, I’m going to be all over this.

Dan: Because it truly is worth that 55 minutes that you put into watching.

Fisher: You had the cars right there at Roots Tech which I thought was kind of fun.

Dan: That was fun. And when you attended Roots Tech, not only were you able to get in the cars, and they were rigged with all of our cameras and you could take pictures of yourselves in the cars with the cameras.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Dan: But then we also had one of the challenges from the show that you could try to accomplish in the booth. And if you did that, then of course we had all kinds of…

Fisher: Great stuff!

Dan: Great stuff to give away.

Fisher: Sure.

Dan: What do they call that?

Fisher: Swag.

Dan: Schwag! That’s it.

Fisher: Yeah.

Dan: Shows you how unhip I am.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Dan: I didn’t even know the term schwag.

Fisher: Swag! Swag! [Laughs]

Dan: You being the big star that you are, you know schwag!

Fisher: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know nothing. So, are you going to be there again this year at Roots Tech?

Dan: Yes we are, and we’re going to have the same kind of fun and I’ve been asked to be a break out speaker.

Fisher: Great.

Dan: So, if you are headed to Roots Tech, please come by and say hello because it is exciting  to hear from those that value the show, that watch the show. And by the way, we get a lot of valuable feedback. We get a lot of suggestions on what fans want to see in the show.

Fisher: And also, people can check out past seasons online.

Dan: Oh yeah, they can go to RelativeRace.com. RelativeRace.com and then that will redirect you to a number of places where you can watch. So, go to RelativeRace.com, or you can go to BYUtv.org because it airs nationally on the BYUtv network and I think they are in about 75 million homes.

Fisher: Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s a lot of places, so check it out.

Dan: It’s a lot of places.

Fisher: Relative Race. He’s the host, Dan Debenham!

Dan: And he’s the man, Scott Fisher.

Fisher: [Laughs] Good to see you Dan. Thanks for coming by.

Dan: Thanks for having me.

Fisher: Can’t wait to see the new season. It’s going to be fun. And coming up next, what’s with those ethnicity reports? Are they reliable? Could they become more reliable, and what was the big change that happened this week? I’ll talk to DNA Specialist Diahan Southard, coming up next in five minutes on Extreme Genes.

Segment 3 Episode 252

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Diahan Southard

Fisher: Hey, we’re back at it, talking DNA on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth, and very excited to have my good friend Diahan Southard on the line from Corral Springs, Florida. She is the lady behind YourDNAGuide.com and she really makes it simple. Diahan, it’s really great to have you back on Extreme Genes.

Diahan: Scott, thank you so much for inviting me.

Fisher: You know, the ethnicity tests now, I think this seems to be where everybody is going. I mean, when you look at the total number of people on there without a tree, on the DNA tests and all the different companies. It seems obvious that people are doing it mostly for ethnicity more than anything else. And obviously many of them convert over to full subscriptions and start sharing trees, but I think just the absence of the trees really speaks to the fact, people want to know their ethnicity. How much accuracy would you say are in these things? As we hear that question all the time. What’s your take on that?

Diahan: Well, that’s the thing about the word “accuracy” when we think of accuracy, we’re thinking of a bow and arrow and hitting that bulls eye every time.

Fisher: Yeah.

Diahan: And you really can’t think of these results like that because... nooo.... it depends on who you’re talking to, right?

Fisher: [Laughs] I hear this all the time. I had a friend of mine whose grandfather was one hundred percent Italian. He’s been over there. He’s been into the cemetery. He’s seen the ancestors of this guy, they’re all Italian and then it comes back like eight percent Italian and thirty percent Greek or something like that. He says, “I don’t know about anything Greek.” I say, the family must have been in Greece before they went to Italy or something like that but I guess it really has to do with the place and the time that the match comes from, right?

Diahan: Well exactly. And you’ve hit on one of the big components of this testing. There’s really three components you have to think about. The first, like you said is time. When are we talking about, when you were you in this place? And our ethnicity results right now from all of our companies are pinpointing the 500 years to 2000 years ago time frame. So, most of us, I know I certainly don’t have our ancestors all the way back to a thousand years ago.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Diahan: So, who knows where they were right?

Fisher: Right, yeah.

Diahan: The second component is reference populations. For example, if they’ve only tested Italians from southern Italy and your Italians are all from northern Italy, well, they’re probably not going to be able to pin you as Italian because your particular brand of Italian hasn’t been profiled.

Fisher: Sure.

Diahan: So, reference populations are a huge part of what we get out of these tests. And the last one is what I call fancy math and that really comes down to the fact that it’s not as simple as saying, okay, this is what Italian, your name looks like, boom, boom, boom,  you have those markers? You do? You’re Italian. You’d think that’s the way that it should work but it’s so much more complicated than that. They’re using very advanced statistical algorithms to figure this out. So, the math could also improve and that would improve our results.

Fisher: Well, and you look at what just happened this past week, Ancestry has made the most recent adjustment on their ethnicity tests. What kind of changes did you see on yours?

Diahan: Well, right. So they added sixteen thousand more people to that reference population group. So they’re boosting their ability to be able to tell where you’re from by making their references better. So, for me, I was able to see, I had this huge Scandinavian category, right? Like I know a lot of people do.

Fisher: Yes.

Diahan: They were able to refine that so much better and pull out my seven percent Swedish which is almost exactly the percentage that I should see. So that was really great. On the flip side, I used to have a nice percentage of Europe West and that’s where a lot of people would see their German ancestors in that Europe West category.

Fisher: Sure.

Diahan: And I was right on, I thought in my percentage of west, as far as my German ancestors go yeah. I’m now left with only three percent German and it should be a lot higher.

Fisher: [Laughs] Yeah.

Diahan: So, I think most people will see the same kind of thing I saw, improvements in some areas and maybe a couple of backward steps in others.

Fisher: I think you’ve nailed it right on the head and this is really the reason why so many people are seeing so many differences from one company to the next. And it has to do with the original group they’re testing against is, right?

Diahan: Absolutely. And that’s why it’s so great that we have second opinions, right? You get tested at Ancestry then you can flip over to MyHeritage, or FamilyTreeDNA. You can take your results even to LivingDNA and get a more granular breakdown of the UK. So, there’s so many options now and I think people will find if you do that, if you kind of ask around, your real, or true, or if you want to use the word “accurate” results are kind of somewhere in the middle.

Fisher: Do you think there’s any point in taking all your results maybe from all the different companies you may share your DNA results with and averaging them, would there be any benefit to that?

Diahan: Yes! And I think what you’ll see too is that every company has different categories so it’s actually kind of hard to average because you’re not really sure which category goes with which other category.

Fisher: Right.

Diahan: And so then you’ll also begin to see why you’re seeing differences between the companies because they don’t talk about the world in the same way. So they can’t be the same.

Fisher: Interesting. Interesting. Well, you’ve got a great event coming up here in just a little bit, coming up in Sandy, Utah at the Sandy Event Center. It’s the Genealogical Roots Conference, October 4^th and 5^th. Fill us in on what that’s all about.

Diahan: Right. So we are really excited. I’m doing this in combination with Lisa Louise Cooke of Genealogy Gems, as well as Sunny Morton whose an author and a writer and she also works with Lisa a little bit. But we’ve kind of put together what we feel like is the ideal two day conference experience. So regular conferences you go to class, and get up move all your stuff, go to the next class and you’re constantly moving and changing. And you’re getting different speakers and different styles, everything is changing and it’s kind of hard for you to put it all together. Well, we’ve changed all that. You sit in one spot, we’re up in front of you with a nice big screen and we are taking you through a case study from beginning to end and kind of pulling on each of our strengths. Of course I’m doing the DNA side. Lisa Louise Cooke is doing all the tech side, and Sunny Morton is bringing in that traditional record components, church records and writing your own personal history and those types of topics. So, the three of us very similar presentation styles, we’re very upbeat, very fu. We’ve coordinated our presentation so everybody’s is the same. We’re working on the same topics as far as the same case study so we can explain how to use each of the tools we know best, to help you solve your questions.

Fisher: So, if you’ve got a case within your own family tree where you’re saying, okay, I want to break through. I want to get to the other side of this brick wall. I’ve been stuck on it for fifteen- twenty years. This is the kind of thing that would help them figure this out?

Diahan: Absolutely yes. One reason I’m excited about this conference is that not only do you not have to go anywhere and that all the content will be delivered directly to you. But, I feel like the atmosphere of the whole program will be so upbeat which means a lot of games. We’ve printed a workbook for each participant. So you won’t just be sitting there but we’ll ask you, okay, now turn to your workbook and do this exercise. So you’re learning and applying immediately. So that you’re not left wondering now what exactly did I learn and what am I supposed to do next? Because as you go home you’re going to have that workbook in your hand and it will give you all of the next steps.

Fisher: Sweet. That’s awesome. So how do people sign up for this thing?

Diahan: All right, best thing to do is go to my website YourDNAGuide.com and there’s a big banner on that homepage, click on that banner and sign yourself up.

Fisher: All right. And it’s coming up once again in Sandy, Utah at the Sandy Event Center, October 4^th and 5^th. It’s a Genealogy Roots Conference with my guest Diahan Southard, Lisa Louise Cooke from Genealogy Gems, the podcast, and Sunny Morton another great researcher and another great asset as you go about figuring out how to navigate your way through the DNA maze and whatever else may be there. Thanks so much for coming on Diahan, and look forward to hearing from you again in the future.

Diahan: Great. Thanks again so much Scott.

Fisher: And on the way in moments it’s our Preservation Authority Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. The holidays are coming up. Your special projects for the holidays are on the way and Tom’s got some app suggestions for you. That’s all coming up in three minutes for you on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show.

Segment 4 Episode 252

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: Hey, we're back at it. It’s Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. This segment is brought to you by Legacy Tree Genealogists, LegacyTree.com. It is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth, time to talk preservation with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. Tom, really excited, Relative Race getting underway for another season here this very weekend and you can watch it of course for free on BYUtv or on BYUtv.org or by downloading the BYUtv app. Very good stuff. So, as we get ready for the holidays Tommy, we have to be thinking about this stuff right now, because it takes time to gather photographs and documents and maybe even audio of interviews with your senior family members to put together in something. And there are a lot of apps out there that can really help people at this time of year, don't you think?

Tom: Oh absolutely! Talking about Relative Race and their apps, there's apps that we can use, like there's Google Photos, there's Family Tree History if you want to do like a coat of arms.

Fisher: How does that one work?

Tom: Well, it’s really neat. You go in and type in your name in one of like five different languages and then it will come up and say, "Okay, this is the origin of your name." And sometimes there's a coat of arms that you can download too, which is really cool in you know, making a CD cover or something.

Fisher: I think it would be actually fun to make your own coat of arms, because I think a lot of those things that are out there aren't necessarily your family version of it, you know, maybe it’s some other branch of another family of the same name. But wouldn't that be fun, to make your own coat?

Tom: Oh yeah! In fact, that's a good idea. Go and download like some generic ones and pick out what you like. "Oh, you know, hey, my farmer dad raised pigs. Let's put a pig in the coat of arms!"

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: Let's put a couple of chickens. Let's put a lightning rod. Whatever, and just have really a lot of fun with it.

Fisher: I would have to figure out which fish I would put on the coat of arms, because I don't have one right now. We've got to make sure that they're happy looking fish, too. We can't have really nasty looking fish. We don't want any sharks. We don't want any predators, nothing like that.

Tom: Yeah, you just want the friendly ones.

Fisher: Yeah, exactly. All right, what else do you have there on the app list? This sounds fun.

Tom: There's one that's called Photo Booth, which is really a lot of fun, where you can get your own photos and you can warp them like going through the fun house, you can add them to other photos, and they're just hysterical. And when you're going on a small trip, they're cool to do on your iPad when you're, you know, out of range of using your wifi.

Fisher: Yeah and I think the kids would have a lot of fun with that as well, right?

Tom: Oh absolutely! This stuff is so much fun. And another thing too that you can do is, download all your photos onto your iPad, and they're not that big of files, and then you can have the kids go and say, "Hey, look at these pictures and tell us what you think about grandma and great grandma and what's going on." And they're sitting there writing their family history while you're driving down the road.

Fisher: You know, it’s funny, you're right, once people get exposed, kids get exposed to who their ancestors are and they start to know them, you know, they can actually start to try to figure out what they were about, you know, maybe write a story around those people based on stories they already know about them and feel like they know them even a little bit better. So, aren't there some audio apps that are available as well?

Tom: Yeah, there are audio apps. In fact, some of them they talk about on BHPhoto.com, they talk about some of the good audio apps that will do things that tell you, "Hey, for this kind of thing, this is what you want to do with your microphone." And there are apps you can actually put on your phone and you can say, "Okay, we're doing this kind of an interview, so I want this mic phone to ask like a dynamic microphone. I want this to be, you know, more centralized microphone." And you can have options where you can go in and do editing, you can do sound refinishing on it, you can swing things up.

Fisher: Wait, wait, wait a minute! Wait a minute, wait a minute! Are you saying that there's actually an app that will give you the affect of a different type of microphone, there's settings to do it?

Tom: Oh yeah! There's all kinds of things where you can go in and say, "Hey, I wanted this to be a lower bass." or "I want this to be something that's a little bit more over easy." It’s pretty much like your computer, it’s got the different effects you can go in and add. And you can do some funny things, maybe do some voice changes.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: And I mean, the kids will be laughing hysterically and having a good time at the same time.

Fisher: Wow that would be great if I could be made to sound like Gilbert Gottfried! I think that would be a fantastic effect, absolutely. All right, great, I love this idea. Let's explore more of the apps that we can use as we put our projects together and for preservation, when we return in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show.

Segment 5 Episode 252

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It’s our final segment with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com, our Preservation Authority. And we're talking about special apps that you can get for all kinds of things for preservation as you get ready for maybe holiday projects where you're going to try to preserve stories and photographs, maybe some audio, and we're finding there are apps really for all of those different things. What else do you have there, Tom?

Tom: There's actually an app called Photoshop Express, which is done by Adobe, where you can actually edit things on the fly. So you can take some photos in the graveyard or in the house that you used to live in, you can use this app to do all kinds of cool things, you can design boarders on it. If it’s taken during the bright sunlight and you want it to look a little more like its afternoon, you can do all kinds of filters and effects on it. We have a lot of people that email us and come into the store and talk to us about, "Hey, I've got all these photos and there's stuff written on the back. Is there any way to put things on the front?" Well, yes, there's actually a photo app called Pronto Text on Photos. And what you can do is, go and take all your photos and add words to them saying who they are and whatever. And this is a fun thing for kids to do, because you give them the photos and say, "Hey, write a little blurb on what you remember about grandma." and it'll give you some real cool opportunities as a family.

Fisher: Yeah, that's a good point here you know, the more you involve the kids in the projects, the more meaningful they're going to be as they're given to people. This is the time to be working on it. So we've covered, let's see, audio, right? You were saying there are certain apps that will actually recreate the sound of a certain type of microphone, that's kind of fun, especially when you consider, you know, sometimes you're going to interview groups of people, sometimes it’s just going to be one on one. And you need a different effect for all of those.

Tom: Exactly. Like there's one called Awesome Voice Recorder, which is really a great program. It has like five stars, so, you know, a lot of people have really liked it. All kinds of editors. There's all kinds of things. All you need to do is go to the App Store or the Google App Store and type in what you're looking for, just a general search, like "audio" or "video" or "film" or "photos" or whatever. Just look for stuff that has a lot of high ratings and you'll get some really good apps.

Fisher: Yeah, no questions about it. You know, the thing is, at this time of year, it’s really important to kind of map out exactly what you want to try to accomplish. And what we're trying to do is share with you what are the possibilities, what can you put together. Can you create a book? Can you create a video? Are you capable of editing? Well, you can certainly learn. There's a lot of material out there available, also on YouTube to help you learn how to do these projects. So, we're just trying to fill you head with thoughts about some things that you might be able to do that are going to be special and lasting. And this is the time to get those projects underway.

Tom: In fact, the neat thing about the voice editors is, in the old days, when we used to have to cut tape with a razor blade, it was hard. Nowadays, it’s so much easier, because everything's visual. You can see you're recording something and a car drives by or something, you can go and physically see the spike and erase it and it’s gone and you're rocking and rolling to the next one. And you can come off like you really know what you're doing when obviously we don't sometimes.

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] You know, I run into a lot of seniors periodically, Tom, and then they say, "Well, I can't do that! I can't do this. Who needs a cellphone?" And I was like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute! Are you telling me you stopped learning!? Really? I mean, that's the end of it!?" So, you know, really, there's so many things that you can do right now. And I think a great thing as you mentioned earlier would be to involve the kids as much as possible, because they do understand these things. So if you could put together even the vision of what you'd like to accomplish as a Christmas gift for the family, involve them and they can technically make it happen. And there's the real magic, right?

Tom: In fact, one of the greatest apps that kids love using is called "Add Music to Video Editor", so it has a video and the music all right together. It’s easy to use. There's over 15,000 people that are using it now that love it. And it’s one of those programs that's easy to use. I don't care how old you are, this is easy to use.

Fisher: Sweet! All right, Tom, great to talk with you again. We'll talk to you again next week.

Tom: My pleasure.

Fisher: Hey, that's it for this week. Next week, we're going to talk to the members of Team Red from Relative Race, find out their takes on the first episode of season 4, which of course gets underway this weekend, Sunday night, 9 o’clock Eastern, 6 o’clock Pacific on BYUtv. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to sign up for our Weekly Genie Newsletter at ExtremeGenes.com and on our Facebook page. You can also signup to support the show on Patron Club with all kinds of special benefits in those places. Talk to you next week. Good luck in your genealogical journey. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we're a nice, normal family!