I am sorry June was disappointed in the showing of the first US version of WDYTYA: > I was very disappoined in the first episode and felt it wast just someone telling SJP a story. We know that people in the background do all the work but at least in the UK versions it shows the clebs and going to archives, churches and graveyards. And you can see that they are genuinely affected by it all. > Lets hope the following episodes improve. Of course, it was telling SJP a story - isn't that what all these programmes are, whether UK or USA? The people who are highlighted are only chosen celebrities in order to get the TV audiences, but they are people like you and me who are looking precisely for the (his)story of their families. In this case, SJP did visit archives and, quite honestly, she didn't pretend to be doing the lookups herself - we saw her speaking to the researchers and the historians themselves who, in my opinion, were honestly given recognition for their work, as opposed to the nameless "helpers" in the UK version. As to whether SJP was "genuinely affected" by what she learnt - of course she was. This is just another example of the culture gap that separates both sides of the big pond. For a young woman brought up in the great Midwest, probably in a relatively small community (and there are no smaller communities than those that are formed around an ethnicity (in her case German) in a large city (Cincinnati, in her case), to find out that one ancestor was actually involved in the Gold Rush and that another, actually accused of witchcraft in Salem MA, is unbelievable. Both of these historical events loom very large in American history, both past and present, and feature greatly in the American imaginarium. This truly was the family (his)story of a young woman and, to me, much more interesting in the telling than the fact that she, coincidentally, was a celebrity. I was pleasantly surprised at the program and look forward to seeing the next ones. Magdalena AIIC.MAIL - A service of the International Association of Conference Interpreters to Members --- http://www.aiic.net