We are family: You’re invited to the biggest family reunion in the world

How far back can you trace your family tree? Does yours have long, sturdy branches studded with great, great, great, great, great uncles and aunts? Or does it look more like mine – a few stubby limbs that can’t reach farther than a couple generations back? Regardless, AJ Jacobs, author and editor-at-large of Esquire Magazine, probably has us all beat.

“I’m on a family tree now that is literally 270 million people, all connected by blood or marriage, including Rachel Belle.”

AJ created Global Family Reunion to see how many people in the world he is related to, like a giant Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, and it turns out we are related.

“We are cousins! You are my aunt’s husband’s third cousin, four times removed, husband’s nephew’s wife’s great niece’s husband’s great nephew’s wife’s niece’s husband’s first cousin once removed. And that’s just one of about 400 ways we’re related. I am Jewish and, as you mentioned earlier, you are Jewish so that is probably a very close blood connection.”

But you don’t have to share a religion or race to be in the same family tree. AJ says everyone is related to everyone, if you go back far enough.

“If you send me your grandparents names and birth dates, I have a team of amazing volunteer researchers who comb the Internet, and these huge, mega, monster family trees, to see how you’re connected to me,” says AJ. “You can figure out how almost any two people in the world are connected. How the Pope is connected to Jay Z. They’re not first cousins, mind you, but they are related.”

AJ likes learning which celebrities and politicians he’s connected with.

“I am a distant cousin of Albert Einstein, Gwyneth Paltrow, Abraham Lincoln and Beyonce. Barack Obama, he’s my fifth great aunt’s husband’s brother’s wife’s seventh great nephew.”

But he thinks that the experiment can benefit humanity on a deeper level.

“If we are all cousins, then maybe we’ll treat each other with a little more kindness. I’ll give you a very trivial example: Judge Judy. I always found her incredibly abrasive and just nails on the chalkboard. Turns out she’s my eighth cousin three times removed,” says AJ. “When I found that out I changed my perspective. I was like, you know what, she’s just being ‘Cousin Judy.’ She’s just doing her Cousin Judy thing, she’s probably a sweetheart.”

That’s the thing about Global Family Reunion; sometimes you’re related to someone that you’d rather not be. For example, AJ and his wife. They did 23andMe, a DNA ancestry test.

“The results came back and guess what? We’re cousins! We are not third or fourth cousins, it says distant cousins. But my wife was a little taken aback. I actually thought it was interesting, I thought it added a little spice to the marriage. My argument to her was, everyone’s cousins. So it’s not like we’re freaks! Everyone is married to their cousin if you go back far enough,” he says. “That made her feel a little bit better, I think.”

On June 6, Global Family Reunions will be held around the world, including a huge, star-studded event in New York City, hosted by AJ. Literally everyone on the planet is invited.

If you’d like to know if you’re related to AJ, or go to the reunion, click here.