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Stories That Live In Us: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Crista Cowan | The Barefoot Genealogist
What if the most powerful way to strengthen your family’s future is to look to the past? I’m Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I created this podcast to inspire you to form deeper connections with your family - past, present, and future. All families are messy and life is constantly changing but we don’t have to allow that to disconnect us. I’ve spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. Tune in to receive inspiration and guidance that will help you use family stories to craft a powerful family narrative, contributing to your family’s identity and creating a legacy of resilience, healing, and connection.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 2 weeks ago50 min
All the Beautiful Things: What Really Brings People Back to Faith (with Shelley Graham) | Episode 134
How many times have you sat across the table from a child or sibling who sees faith completely differently than you do, and felt an aching gulf between you? In those moments, our first instinct is usually to defend what we believe, but my guest today is here to help us flip the script. Playwright and BYU theatre professor Shelley Graham joins me to share the incredible stories behind her verbatim stage production, All the Beautiful Things, revealing what actually brings people back to faith a...
- 3 weeks ago37 min
The Countess of Cons: Uncovering Scandalous Ancestors (with Deborah Holman) | Episode 133
"When I noticed a yellowed piece of paper physically taped over a portrait in an old family book, I knew there was a secret waiting to be found." My guest today, author Deborah Holman, set out to uncover that hidden identity and ended up spending two years untangling the unbelievable life of her husband’s great-grandmother. We’re talking about a 19th-century woman living under dozens of aliases, pulling off high-stakes cons, breaking into 50 homes in a single weekend at age 60, and keeping h...
- Oct 8, 202643 min
Black-Market Adoptions to Broadway Stars (with Lisa Elzey) | Episode 132
What if the secret to breaking through your own genealogy brick walls is stepping away from your family tree entirely? In this episode, my dear friend, colleague, and podcast producer Lisa Elzey joins me to explore how researching strangers' family trees—from solving the dark mysteries around the 1950s Georgia "Hicks babies" black-market adoptions to uncovering the immigrant roots of the cast of the Broadway show Anastasia—completely transformed the way we do family history and genetic geneal...
- Oct 1, 202624 min
Why You Probably Have Cousins Everywhere (And How to Find Them) | Episode 131
What if the person sitting next to you right now (at work, in church, or at a wedding) isn't a stranger at all? When I started doing descendancy research and checking my DNA matches, I realized we are constantly crossing paths with living cousins in the most unexpected places. From college roommates to the groomsmen out on the dance floor, our ancestral threads weave us together in ways that completely change how we see the world. Join me for the start of National Family History Month as we e...
- Sep 24, 202636 min
Breaking a 150-Year German Brick Wall (with Jenny Ashcraft) | Episode 130
When a 150-year-old German brick wall kept my friend Jenny Ashcraft stuck for nearly two decades, she decided to stop pushing straight backward and try a completely different research strategy. By fanning out to document all ten of her ancestor's children, the floodgates opened—leading to an unbelievable library encounter with the author of the exact emigration index she needed, a mysterious phone call revealing an unmarked grave, and a renewed connection with living cousins. If you've been s...
- Sep 17, 202634 min
The Heirloom Portrait & The Danish Flood: Verifying Family Lore (with Rhonda Budge) | Episode 129
Growing up, my guest Rhonda Budge spent hours sitting beside her grandmother, staring at a massive framed portrait of her great-great-grandfather, Johann Christian Hansen. Family lore claimed he heroically rescued neighbors from their rooftops during an 1872 Danish flood, lost his ship, and gave away his reward money. It’s a story that sounded almost too extraordinary to be completely true. But when Rhonda set a clear research goal and wrote to an archive in Denmark, a 1908 newspaper obituary...
- Sep 10, 202630 min
From Utah to Iceland: Passing Living Heritage to the Next Generation with Eric Allen | Episode 128
How do you take dry facts on a family tree and turn them into something your kids can actually feel? In this episode, Eric Allen joins me to share how a trip from a pioneer monument in Spanish Fork, Utah, to the volcanic coast of Iceland transformed his family's connection to their roots. From discovering heritage food traditions in the kitchen to an unbelievable workplace coincidence involving ancestors who lived in the exact same house 140 years ago, we explore how family stories build resi...
- Sep 3, 202642 min
From Belarus to the Boston Meat Wars: Uncovering a Rebel Ancestor (with Suzanne Hoffman) | Episode 127
When Suzanne Hoffman sat down to help her daughter with a middle-school history project, she never expected to uncover a radical rebel in her own family tree. In this episode, Suzanne shares the remarkable story of her great-grandmother Eva, a 15-year-old Jewish immigrant who spoke six languages, led street marches for working mothers, and spearheaded the famous Boston Meat Wars boycott when food prices spiked. From Belarusian photo studios to secret passenger manifests, we explore how histor...
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About Stories That Live In Us
What if the most powerful way to strengthen your family’s future is to look to the past? I’m Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I created this podcast to inspire you to form deeper connections with your family - past, present, and future. All families are messy and life is constantly changing but we don’t have to allow that to disconnect us. I’ve spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. Tune in to receive inspiration and guidance that will help you use family stories to craft a powerful family narrative, contributing to your family’s identity and creating a legacy of resilience, healing, and connection.
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