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Kissing Cousins: A History of Marrying Family · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and we're doing it today like we're brothers,
0:17
Speaker 1: because this is stuff you should know. Okay, but we don't.
0:23
Speaker 1: We don't make out. That's that was my point. I
0:26
Speaker 1: was tell letting everyone know that we don't make out. Yeah.
0:31
Speaker 1: I was hoping you were not going to ask me
0:33
Speaker 1: where this idea came from, because I honestly can't remember. Oh.
0:36
Speaker 1: I thought that's how you gonna say. You'd prefer not
0:39
Speaker 1: to say. Now. I remember Livia helped us with this one,
0:43
Speaker 1: and she did a great job of this is outstanding.
0:46
Speaker 1: But I remember sending the email, but I don't remember
0:50
Speaker 1: what happened just before I sent that email. Well, all
0:53
Speaker 1: I remember is that that email was frantic and it
0:55
Speaker 1: all caps with a lot of misspellings. I had gone
0:59
Speaker 1: to lunch with my super for hot cousin. I don't
1:01
Speaker 1: think that had anything to do with it. Oh, you
1:05
Speaker 1: know Rhonda. Everybody knows Rhonda. Uh, there is no cousin Ronda.
1:09
Speaker 1: Just so everyone knows, that was a Josh joke. I
1:12
Speaker 1: don't have many cousins, do you have a lot of cousins.
1:14
Speaker 1: I don't know perfect. I was just kind of thinking
1:22
Speaker 1: about this, and I just don't have many. My dad
1:25
Speaker 1: had one brother and he had three sons, one of
1:28
Speaker 1: whom passed away a few years ago. The other two
1:30
Speaker 1: I'm not close to or not even touch with. Actually, uh,
1:34
Speaker 1: my mom's sister never had kids. Her brother uh never
1:39
Speaker 1: had biological kids. But I'm actually closest to my cousin David,
1:43
Speaker 1: who you met in our show in Kansas. David was adopted,
1:48
Speaker 1: and I'm like tighter with him than anyone. And then
1:51
Speaker 1: my mom's other brother has two daughters and a son
1:54
Speaker 1: who seemed great. I just, you know, we're sort of
1:56
Speaker 1: in touch when I was on Facebook, but we kind
1:58
Speaker 1: of fell out of touch over years. But you know,
2:00
Speaker 1: they're good people. Is that Rhonda's family? That's that's Rhonda.
2:04
Speaker 1: But I'm not one of these families that has like,
2:06
Speaker 1: you know, twentysothing cousins. Yeah. I seem to remember as
2:10
Speaker 1: a child in Ohio having like a bunch of cousins,
2:13
Speaker 1: but it's not clear as an adult, like if they
2:15
Speaker 1: were like, you know, close friends of my mom's kids
2:17
Speaker 1: or that kind of thing. I know, I have one
2:19
Speaker 1: cousin who's like in the seventies. It's just all over
2:22
Speaker 1: the place. It's a big mess. Basically, I'm not going
2:25
Speaker 1: to marry any of them. I'm already married, and you
2:27
Speaker 1: mean I are verified not cousins. Correct, But as we'll see,
2:32
Speaker 1: it's not that big of a deal at least with cousins,
2:35
Speaker 1: depending on where you are. Absolutely, and again I don't
2:39
Speaker 1: remember what inspired this, but I looked into it a
2:41
Speaker 1: little bit before sending it off to Libya and found
2:44
Speaker 1: that generally speaking around the world through history and now,
2:49
Speaker 1: marrying cousins and most of the world is fine. Yeah,
2:53
Speaker 1: they're cool with it, they like it, and there's good
2:56
Speaker 1: reasons too. But if we're talking about so that is um,
3:00
Speaker 1: I actually saw a distinction here. So that is a
3:03
Speaker 1: what would be called a co sanguineous marriage, second cousin
3:07
Speaker 1: or closer. Yes, exactly, And that sanguine or um is
3:11
Speaker 1: like blood right, So you're saying like it's a related
3:15
Speaker 1: blood or blood relative marriage is essentially what that is. Um. Again,
3:20
Speaker 1: it depends on just how close you're going there. People
3:24
Speaker 1: can be cool with it, but there is a definite
3:26
Speaker 1: stopping point almost around the world, in every culture and
3:30
Speaker 1: not just the ones around today, but in throughout history
3:35
Speaker 1: there's basically been a general taboo on you having sexual
3:40
Speaker 1: relations with your nuclear family, that siblings, parents, um son's daughters,
3:49
Speaker 1: all that stuff, that when you're when you're that close,
3:52
Speaker 1: you just should not be touching improperly. As Hodgement would say,
3:57
Speaker 1: hugging and kissing. Sure that to his uh he that's
4:01
Speaker 1: his stand in for intercourse. I know it makes me
4:04
Speaker 1: more uncomfortable than if he just said that's the thing
4:07
Speaker 1: he says that is not his real life, you know,
4:10
Speaker 1: application which as far as he will go, no one's
4:13
Speaker 1: ever gotten past first base with Hodgem. Oh it's so
4:16
Speaker 1: sad um. So Olivia did a pretty smart thing, I
4:20
Speaker 1: think with this research and started out with animals, because
4:24
Speaker 1: you would, you know, if you want to look at
4:26
Speaker 1: our our primate friends and other mammals, it's kind of
4:29
Speaker 1: a fun place to start. And generally speaking, uh, animals
4:35
Speaker 1: also avoid interbreeding, and it depends on which species as
4:40
Speaker 1: to how uh kind of hard line they are about
4:44
Speaker 1: it and how much they try to avoid it, and
4:46
Speaker 1: how much they try to avoid it seems to be
4:48
Speaker 1: entirely based on because you know, they're not one to
4:51
Speaker 1: say like, oh, that's gross, that's creepy. Uh. Some animals might,
4:56
Speaker 1: but most don't. Um. But it's entirely based on what's
4:59
Speaker 1: called inbreeding to pression basically like will it be bad
5:02
Speaker 1: for our species if we do this? Yes? So um,
5:05
Speaker 1: you know, anthropologists said, well, you know, we're studying animals,
5:09
Speaker 1: and animals show um sexual aversion to siblings or parents.
5:13
Speaker 1: So if animals do it and humans are animals, Like,
5:16
Speaker 1: does that just mean that all of these cultural taboos
5:19
Speaker 1: around the world and throughout history are basically the human
5:22
Speaker 1: version of innate sexual a virgin version, tendencies that any
5:28
Speaker 1: animal would have. That it's just the kind of the
5:29
Speaker 1: natural evolution of a this biological imperative to not reproduce
5:34
Speaker 1: with our parents or siblings. But what have they found? Well,
5:39
Speaker 1: I mean that's one very widely believed theory that that's
5:43
Speaker 1: what it is. Um. Other people have said, well, I
5:47
Speaker 1: think instead that what it is is humans are smart
5:50
Speaker 1: enough to see that that there is a problem with
5:53
Speaker 1: you know, um inbreeding as well as we'll see later
5:55
Speaker 1: on um that the offspring can have you know problem
6:00
Speaker 1: him is that other offspring of non cosaguineus. Yeah, marriages
6:05
Speaker 1: wouldn't have, So we just observed this over time and
6:08
Speaker 1: made up these laws around it to make it taboo
6:11
Speaker 1: for that reason. That's another theory, right, which I mean
6:15
Speaker 1: one of the people that put this forth as a
6:17
Speaker 1: gentleman named William Durham, And it seems like he's saying like,
6:21
Speaker 1: otherwise we would be doing this, right, I guess, I
6:26
Speaker 1: guess so maybe yeah, Okay, I don't want to put
6:29
Speaker 1: words in his mouth, but it just seems like the
6:32
Speaker 1: theory is basically that like, no, when it comes to humans,
6:35
Speaker 1: there is no natural aversion, but we just uh sort
6:39
Speaker 1: of invented this thing for good reasons. But yeah, but
6:42
Speaker 1: based on observations of you know, we tried it at
6:45
Speaker 1: first and it didn't really work out. So now we're
6:47
Speaker 1: seeing like we need to make some sort of universal
6:49
Speaker 1: law that can extend through the ages, you know, because
6:51
Speaker 1: the taboo is a lot more than just a law.
6:54
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's just it's a law. Plus you
6:58
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. There's like a there's a like
7:01
Speaker 1: there's there's this guy named Jonathan Hate He he used
7:04
Speaker 1: to be with you University of Virginia. I don't know
7:06
Speaker 1: if he is still or not, but he was studying
7:09
Speaker 1: moral intuition, and one of the ways that he studied
7:12
Speaker 1: that is he would present um study participants with this
7:16
Speaker 1: little scenario where I think it was Julie and Jack
7:20
Speaker 1: maybe Um are brother and sister. They're traveling together in
7:25
Speaker 1: the south of France there in a cabin one day
7:28
Speaker 1: and they decided buckle up, buddy, Um. They decide just
7:35
Speaker 1: to just to have a new experience that neither one
7:37
Speaker 1: has ever had and probably never will have again, to
7:39
Speaker 1: have sex, even though their blood brother and sister. Okay,
7:45
Speaker 1: so he puts a spin on this. He says Julia
7:49
Speaker 1: was on the pill Jack war condom. They both decided
7:53
Speaker 1: that they wanted to see how interesting this would be
7:55
Speaker 1: and that it wasn't going to harm anybody. There was
7:57
Speaker 1: no chance of producing offspring. End, they kept this as
8:01
Speaker 1: a secret to themselves. That actually brought them closer together
8:05
Speaker 1: as brother and sister to have this shared secret they
8:07
Speaker 1: never did again. Is that okay? And to a person,
8:11
Speaker 1: people respond with no, that's not okay, And Jonathan Height
8:15
Speaker 1: would say or Hate would say why not? And people couldn't.
8:19
Speaker 1: I couldn't put their finger on it. They just knew
8:21
Speaker 1: it was because yeah, and There's been a lot of
8:24
Speaker 1: questions about that. It's like, you know, what study group
8:26
Speaker 1: are you talking about? What does that really show? But
8:28
Speaker 1: it's a really kind of an interesting demonstration that total
8:32
Speaker 1: we have this really distinct feeling basically across the board,
8:37
Speaker 1: at least, you know, in most cultures, in most societies,
8:41
Speaker 1: that that is wrong. There's something very wrong with it,
8:44
Speaker 1: even if we can't overtly say what's wrong with it,
8:47
Speaker 1: even if there are wine coolers involved. That's funny you
8:51
Speaker 1: say that because I just saw a Seinfeld episode where
8:53
Speaker 1: George tries to come on to his cousin, upset his parents,
8:58
Speaker 1: and his cousin his drinking wine coolers in the back
9:01
Speaker 1: of the band right before they're about to Wow. That's
9:04
Speaker 1: really funny, totally weird, and it very much dates Seinfeld
9:08
Speaker 1: and myself, I guess for sure. Uh, although all those
9:12
Speaker 1: like new fangled alcoholic beverages, those are all just sort
9:16
Speaker 1: of the new wine cooler, aren't they exactly? Yeah? All right,
9:19
Speaker 1: so we should talk about the Western Mark effect. This
9:22
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting, Um it is. There was a late
9:25
Speaker 1: nineteenth century sociologist from Finland name Edward uh Vester Mark.
9:31
Speaker 1: I guess I should have said the vest Mark effect,
9:34
Speaker 1: And there was a hypothesis that makes a lot of
9:36
Speaker 1: sense that basically said, two kids that are raised together
9:41
Speaker 1: UH won't be sexually attracted to each other as they
9:44
Speaker 1: you know, when they get older. And then that was
9:46
Speaker 1: expanded to that also includes like parents in the house
9:50
Speaker 1: and studies to back this up, and then later it
9:53
Speaker 1: was even expanded further to be like, you don't have
9:56
Speaker 1: to even be related. If you were raised together, then
10:00
Speaker 1: you're not going to be attracted to each other later, right,
10:03
Speaker 1: And so that really supports the idea that our cultural
10:06
Speaker 1: taboos against uh incest is a um, it's from a
10:11
Speaker 1: biological imperative that there's some part of growing up and
10:16
Speaker 1: reaching adolescents where some mechanism is triggered along the way
10:20
Speaker 1: where it's like I don't I'm not attracted to you,
10:22
Speaker 1: you're my sibling kind of thing. And there's plenty of
10:25
Speaker 1: studies that back this up. Actually, um, there's I think
10:30
Speaker 1: more often than not, the studies tend to back it up,
10:33
Speaker 1: although there have been studies that kind of showed the opposite,
10:35
Speaker 1: but there's so few and far between that it seems
10:38
Speaker 1: like the Western Mark effect is possibly a real thing,
10:41
Speaker 1: and it extends beyond blood relatives, so that um kids
10:46
Speaker 1: who are raised together that might not even be blood
10:49
Speaker 1: siblings but are raised in the same house or say
10:51
Speaker 1: like on a Kibbitts. They found that it's it's also
10:53
Speaker 1: apparent as well they will have that same Western mark
10:56
Speaker 1: effect too, right, But they also found that it only
11:00
Speaker 1: because I was going to make a joke about like
11:01
Speaker 1: Willis and Kimberly, but it wouldn't apply because it seems
11:07
Speaker 1: to only be a thing if they were cohabitating before
11:13
Speaker 1: they were six years old, which would not be the
11:15
Speaker 1: case with Willison Kimberly, and they could they can fall
11:21
Speaker 1: in love. Uh. There is also um this thing called well,
11:26
Speaker 1: I don't even think it has a name actually, uh,
11:29
Speaker 1: but just sort of like the backward version of the
11:31
Speaker 1: investor mark effect, which is and I've heard I feel
11:35
Speaker 1: like I've heard real life stories about this, unless it's
11:38
Speaker 1: just been in TV shows and movies. Is when kind
11:43
Speaker 1: of like separated at birth situations where they meet each
11:46
Speaker 1: other later and have a very strong physical attraction to
11:50
Speaker 1: one another, but then they find out their cousins and
11:54
Speaker 1: or or maybe even siblings or first cousins, and then
11:57
Speaker 1: it's like, ah, in the movie version. But then they
12:00
Speaker 1: eventually find out that of course it was just a
12:03
Speaker 1: big mistake and they are really in love and it's
12:05
Speaker 1: okay they can hug and kiss finally, which let's say
12:10
Speaker 1: the Royal Tannon bombs. But they were they were actually
12:12
Speaker 1: raised together, so that kind of flies in the face
12:14
Speaker 1: of best Mark. I think they were actually Oh no, uh,
12:17
Speaker 1: she was adopted. That's right. So there actually is a
12:19
Speaker 1: term for this. It's called genetic sexual attraction. And it's
12:23
Speaker 1: not just in movies, dude. There's this really interesting government handout. Uh,
12:29
Speaker 1: you can go search the Cumbria c U m b
12:32
Speaker 1: r I a city council genetic sexual Attraction. It'll bring
12:36
Speaker 1: up a PDF that they give to people who have
12:39
Speaker 1: been adopted who are going to reunite with family members
12:42
Speaker 1: that says, hey, we really want to tell you about
12:45
Speaker 1: this really strange experience that you might have where you
12:49
Speaker 1: find you are powerfully attracted to your biological mom who
12:54
Speaker 1: you're just meeting your biological sister or brother, and that, yes,
12:58
Speaker 1: is very weird and it's going to make you feel weird.
13:01
Speaker 1: But don't follow it through to its you know, seemingly
13:04
Speaker 1: logical conclusion of having sex with him because you're going
13:06
Speaker 1: to ruin your lives, You're gonna put a strain on
13:09
Speaker 1: this new relationship. And it's not really you're not really
13:11
Speaker 1: sexually attracted. We think, we think that it's just such
13:14
Speaker 1: a powerful um like connection that you're sending that as
13:18
Speaker 1: an adult, you accidentally mistranslated into a sexual attraction, because
13:23
Speaker 1: that's the only thing it could possibly explain. It just
13:25
Speaker 1: does not compute. But it's really really interesting and it
13:30
Speaker 1: does seem to be a real thing that you have
13:32
Speaker 1: to like taken into account when you reunite with a
13:34
Speaker 1: biological family member. Where's Cumbria and why Cumbria? I'm just
13:41
Speaker 1: killing that um it is in the UK. Okay, I'm
13:45
Speaker 1: pretty sure doesn't matter. They've got a great hand out. No.
13:49
Speaker 1: I just wondered if it was an especially problem, like
13:53
Speaker 1: a problem there especially or doesn't it seem like, oh,
13:57
Speaker 1: I see, yeah, definitely, maybe it is just a cumber
14:00
Speaker 1: you a problem. I don't know. I got the impression
14:01
Speaker 1: that it was, you know, genetic or biological. Well no,
14:04
Speaker 1: I mean that it happened there a lot. So they're like,
14:06
Speaker 1: I guess we need a pamphlet now, right, it's a
14:08
Speaker 1: it's a well done pamphlet too, or maybe they have
14:11
Speaker 1: a I'll never mind. Um, I'm just gonna drop that one.
14:15
Speaker 1: I think that's best. In fact, maybe we should just
14:17
Speaker 1: take a break. I think that's best as what And
14:19
Speaker 1: I'm gonna think about what I almost did. I don't know,
14:46
Speaker 1: all right, So I guess if we want to that
14:48
Speaker 1: was a pretty good setup. I think. I think if
14:51
Speaker 1: we want to go back in time, it gets pretty
14:53
Speaker 1: interesting because depending on where you are in the history
14:56
Speaker 1: of humans and where you are on planet Earth, it's
15:00
Speaker 1: sort of gone from people didn't really do it, some
15:04
Speaker 1: people did, some people frowned upon it, or generally nobody
15:08
Speaker 1: really frowned upon it for a little while. I guess
15:10
Speaker 1: you could even almost classified as a fad in some cases.
15:15
Speaker 1: But if you look at religion, certainly throughout time, they
15:19
Speaker 1: are all kinds of um inter family sexual unions from
15:24
Speaker 1: Zeus and Hera who were siblings all over Muslim and
15:29
Speaker 1: Jewish and Christian traditions. Uh. You know, there's an explanation
15:33
Speaker 1: do when Adam and Eve have cane and able and
15:38
Speaker 1: then sort of look around at each other, go, well,
15:41
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we're supposed to populate the earth, so Uh,
15:45
Speaker 1: various religions have explained that away as there were also
15:49
Speaker 1: twin daughters born and uh, that's how the earth was
15:54
Speaker 1: originally populated. And maybe Cane even slew able because I
15:59
Speaker 1: guess he got he got the hot one, right, I
16:03
Speaker 1: want mith mithy. Yeah, it sounds like a money python
16:07
Speaker 1: sketch or something like. It really does. There's this classic
16:09
Speaker 1: princess beauty and then like and in fact, I think
16:12
Speaker 1: that was a money python sketch. Probably I don't know
16:16
Speaker 1: the one, but I'm guessing. Yeah. So, Um. The thing
16:19
Speaker 1: is is that they they have found most historians tend
16:23
Speaker 1: to agree that um, even though like deities or you know, um,
16:29
Speaker 1: ancient figures in in religious texts were involved in incest,
16:33
Speaker 1: that among common everyday people, they were not. It was
16:37
Speaker 1: not a widespread phenomenon. It was almost relegated to the elite. Um.
16:43
Speaker 1: And by almost, I mean it absolutely was. It's not
16:46
Speaker 1: like if you were an elite family, you were definitely
16:48
Speaker 1: engaged in incests no matter what culture or what historical
16:51
Speaker 1: period you're in. But you are far more likely in
16:55
Speaker 1: in history, um too, if you were an elite to
16:59
Speaker 1: have an incestor's relationship than if you were just an
17:01
Speaker 1: everyday schmo cutting stones to build a pyramid. Yeah, and
17:06
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the same as what we'll you know,
17:08
Speaker 1: we'll talk about royals later on. It was a way
17:10
Speaker 1: to keep it all in the family and then keep
17:12
Speaker 1: that power consolidated. Uh. And we'll see evidence of economic
17:18
Speaker 1: reasons for doing that as well as just sort of
17:21
Speaker 1: being the elite ruling class. Uh. And in fact, in
17:25
Speaker 1: some cases with the elite ruling class, they touted it
17:28
Speaker 1: as like sort of like we're this special that we
17:32
Speaker 1: are almost required to do this, I mean not just
17:36
Speaker 1: above the law, above the taboos like that. Is. Yes,
17:40
Speaker 1: they are definitely creating an elite status for themselves. And
17:42
Speaker 1: it does like it's definitely been shown scientifically documented now
17:47
Speaker 1: that all all of these kind of um folklore and
17:50
Speaker 1: histories and religious texts are being proven, like two tongue
17:54
Speaker 1: commons parents have been shown to have been brother and
17:56
Speaker 1: sister um. Based on history, We're pretty sure Cleopatra married
18:01
Speaker 1: both of her brothers at different times and that her
18:04
Speaker 1: parents were probably brother and sister. So it definitely did happen. UM.
18:08
Speaker 1: Just to what extent is is unclear, that's right. Uh,
18:13
Speaker 1: And I think there was one exception as far as
18:16
Speaker 1: the commoners go, and that was during the Roman Egyptian
18:19
Speaker 1: period first the third century CE, where I guess that
18:24
Speaker 1: might have been a fad thing because the census shows
18:28
Speaker 1: that there were a lot of common people that were
18:30
Speaker 1: in you know, sibling marriages basically, Yeah, but we don't
18:34
Speaker 1: know what everybody thought of that. But if it was
18:36
Speaker 1: that widespread, I guess people weren't that down on it,
18:39
Speaker 1: you know, right. And then uh, in Iran or Persia
18:42
Speaker 1: at the time Zoroastrian Persia from the fifth century b C.
18:47
Speaker 1: To the eleventh century c E, they had something called
18:50
Speaker 1: ex wadoda Um, which basically said, this is a really spiritual,
18:55
Speaker 1: powerful ritual you can you can engage in on a
18:59
Speaker 1: Friday and with your brother or sister and that they
19:02
Speaker 1: said that you get a lot of power spiritually from
19:05
Speaker 1: this act. And they think possibly it's because you you
19:08
Speaker 1: were having to overcome you know, your aversion to incest
19:12
Speaker 1: and supposedly gained some power from that. That's right. And
19:17
Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily like a marriage, right, No, it was
19:19
Speaker 1: like ritual sex sure, like Alistair Crowley style exactly in
19:25
Speaker 1: the desert. Uh So that's generally like what we've kind
19:30
Speaker 1: of been talking about is sibling stuff and how that's
19:33
Speaker 1: gone through history. When it comes, like we said at
19:35
Speaker 1: the beginning, when it comes to cousins, that's really a
19:38
Speaker 1: different story even today in many parts of the world. Uh, cousins,
19:44
Speaker 1: I mean not from the beginning of time. Because it
19:46
Speaker 1: is interesting that they did studies of ancient people and
19:49
Speaker 1: found d n A evidence And this is just last year. Uh,
19:54
Speaker 1: from almost eighteen hundred ancient humans going back about forty
19:58
Speaker 1: five thousand years or at least as far back is
20:00
Speaker 1: that only three percent. It looked like we're even cousin marriage.
20:06
Speaker 1: So it's something that gotten more popular after ancient humans,
20:10
Speaker 1: which I think is really interesting. Yeah, they think it
20:12
Speaker 1: started around the time that history did, which is usually
20:15
Speaker 1: where we place, you know, a thousand or two years
20:18
Speaker 1: after agriculture, and they think that it was a result
20:21
Speaker 1: of agriculture of settling down. Um, that you would have
20:24
Speaker 1: a much greater aversion to marrying your cousin in hunter
20:27
Speaker 1: gatherer societies because there would be much less genetic diversity.
20:32
Speaker 1: But when you take a bunch of different people and
20:34
Speaker 1: pull them into the same place, yeah, they might be
20:36
Speaker 1: related by marriage or you know, their cousins a couple
20:39
Speaker 1: of times removed, but because of the increased genetic diversity,
20:42
Speaker 1: there would be far less chance of there being some
20:45
Speaker 1: sort of um, genetic mishap from the mating of those cousins. Yeah,
20:50
Speaker 1: and I guess one thing we didn't point out is
20:52
Speaker 1: that previous to this, when people were engaging in like
20:57
Speaker 1: the elites and sibling marriage and things like that, they
21:00
Speaker 1: generally avoided uh, genetic mishaps. Because as you'll see, it's
21:05
Speaker 1: still pretty rare. We'll get to that later, but they
21:08
Speaker 1: did things to discourage that kind of stuff. Uh, Like
21:12
Speaker 1: some of the marriages were celibate and stuff like that,
21:14
Speaker 1: and it was really all about consolidation of power and
21:17
Speaker 1: not like all right, now we'll have twelve kids right
21:19
Speaker 1: exactly with eight heads. Uh. This one step kind of
21:24
Speaker 1: alarm me though, And this is of course just one
21:27
Speaker 1: person's opinion. But there's an anthropologist at Rutger's named Robin
21:31
Speaker 1: Fox who estimated that of all marriages in history may
21:36
Speaker 1: have been second cousin or closer, which that seems really high. Yes,
21:40
Speaker 1: but they make a really good case, and they say
21:43
Speaker 1: that until we had segways and trains and stuff like that, you.
21:48
Speaker 1: When you went courting, you probably didn't court much more
21:51
Speaker 1: than about five miles away from home because you had
21:55
Speaker 1: to walk there and back, usually in a day. Um,
21:58
Speaker 1: So within that five mile d s you were much
22:01
Speaker 1: more likely to encounter cousins. And so as a result,
22:05
Speaker 1: the cousin marriage probably was like taking place at a
22:09
Speaker 1: really high rate. I don't know where they came up with,
22:12
Speaker 1: but it is a it's a pretty interesting hypothesis at least. Yeah. Absolutely, Uh.
22:18
Speaker 1: And we're gonna jump around sort of all over the
22:20
Speaker 1: world too to see what has happened in other cultures.
22:23
Speaker 1: And China's one this pretty noteworthy. Uh, and that for
22:27
Speaker 1: a lot of China's in fact, most of their history. Um,
22:31
Speaker 1: if you were first cousins and you wanted to get married,
22:33
Speaker 1: it was generally okay, unless they were they were the
22:37
Speaker 1: kids of two male siblings, and they just reckoned because
22:40
Speaker 1: you had the same family name. It was a little
22:42
Speaker 1: too weird. Uh. They think they thought that, um, like
22:47
Speaker 1: brothers with the same family name were kind of considered
22:51
Speaker 1: more relatives than say a brother and a sister with
22:54
Speaker 1: two different last names because this sister has been married off,
22:58
Speaker 1: which is just not true. No, it's not, but I
23:00
Speaker 1: mean it's a cultural thing, you know. Yeah, But this
23:02
Speaker 1: also came about in the early eighties with the PRC
23:07
Speaker 1: marriage law banning first cousin marriage, and it was about
23:12
Speaker 1: birth defects, and it was it was the same time
23:14
Speaker 1: as sort of there, I don't know what I mean,
23:18
Speaker 1: do we call it eugenics. They said that they wanted
23:23
Speaker 1: to improve quote the quality of the population. So yeah,
23:26
Speaker 1: I'd say that's eugenics, okay, But it was in lockstep
23:29
Speaker 1: with the one child policy, and that's basically when China
23:32
Speaker 1: started getting like super in everyone's business as far as
23:35
Speaker 1: the child rearing goes. But what's interesting is that's about
23:38
Speaker 1: a hundred years after America started passing laws on that
23:41
Speaker 1: kind of thing too. Yeah, that's true. So there's another Um.
23:45
Speaker 1: There's a really cool hypothesis by a guy named Joseph
23:48
Speaker 1: Heinrich who's an evolutionary biologist, and he traces UM a
23:53
Speaker 1: really big change back to five five oh six CE
23:57
Speaker 1: when the Catholic Church, UM, the people leading the church
24:01
Speaker 1: basically said hey, you cannot marry anyone closer than your
24:05
Speaker 1: third cousin from now on, which is interesting because we
24:08
Speaker 1: we consider a co sanguineous relationship. Second cousins are closer, right,
24:12
Speaker 1: So maybe that's where that comes from. But they are
24:15
Speaker 1: not entirely certain where why they said that. But they
24:18
Speaker 1: said that, and it was a big time rule, and
24:20
Speaker 1: the Catholics started running the show around that time all
24:24
Speaker 1: over Europe. So this applied to a lot of people.
24:28
Speaker 1: And heinrich hypothesis is that that change that changed things
24:32
Speaker 1: so much that it led to the modern world. Basically
24:37
Speaker 1: right with the idea that, um, I guess the family
24:42
Speaker 1: bonds took a hit. People were encouraged to be a
24:45
Speaker 1: little more individual uh listic. I don't know why, I
24:49
Speaker 1: put a big pause in the middle of that, and
24:51
Speaker 1: basically trust other people, such that societies were able to
24:56
Speaker 1: form because it wasn't like, well I only trust my family,
24:59
Speaker 1: you know, they started. It really came down to human
25:02
Speaker 1: trust as far as branching out and and larger groups
25:06
Speaker 1: of nonrelated people kind of getting along and trusting each other. Yeah,
25:09
Speaker 1: because if you only trust and care for and take
25:12
Speaker 1: care of your kin, you know, a kin network can
25:15
Speaker 1: only be so large, so your society can only be
25:18
Speaker 1: so large. But if you remove that kind of kin
25:20
Speaker 1: network stuff, like by saying you need to marry outside
25:23
Speaker 1: of your kin network, then you can't support a larger
25:26
Speaker 1: and larger society too. And then they think also that
25:29
Speaker 1: led to things like free market competition, that we might
25:32
Speaker 1: not have had that or such an emphasis on that
25:34
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But like you said, individualism that it
25:37
Speaker 1: basically whatever we think of as the West today traces
25:40
Speaker 1: its roots back to that, and all had to do
25:42
Speaker 1: with not being able to marry members of your king group,
25:45
Speaker 1: which is the opposite of the Josh Clark motto, which
25:48
Speaker 1: is never trust family exactly. Another little sidebar here that
25:53
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting was the um Some people think
25:56
Speaker 1: that the tradition at a wedding of saying if anyone
25:59
Speaker 1: has any object should to the marriage is sort of
26:03
Speaker 1: a evolution of the question does anybody know if these
26:07
Speaker 1: two are related? Yeah? I thought that was amazing. Yeah. Yeah,
26:11
Speaker 1: So Heinrich wrote a book if if you're like I
26:13
Speaker 1: need to know more about this, it's called How the
26:14
Speaker 1: West Became Weird? Weird as in Western educated, industrialized, rich,
26:20
Speaker 1: and democratic, right, not Austin weird, No, But I think
26:24
Speaker 1: he also says like kind of Austin weird too, you know. Okay,
26:27
Speaker 1: so we talked about um. You know, when people think
26:30
Speaker 1: of like like incests and royalties or even you know,
26:35
Speaker 1: an intra family marriage. Um, like you, you tend to
26:39
Speaker 1: think of things like the Habsburg jaw. And I know
26:42
Speaker 1: we've talked about that before, but I don't remember. Do
26:44
Speaker 1: we do like a short stuff on it or something. No,
26:46
Speaker 1: I tried to think of it. I think I'm pretty
26:48
Speaker 1: sure it was a video, one of our videos that
26:51
Speaker 1: we did, because I remember flashing images of these humongous underbytes. Chuck.
26:58
Speaker 1: I swear to you we've talked about last year. Really, yes,
27:02
Speaker 1: I swear. And either that or my sense of time
27:04
Speaker 1: has been so messed up in the last couple of
27:07
Speaker 1: years that well, I'm just kidding. I'm just done, basically right. So,
27:11
Speaker 1: the Habsburgs were royals who in bread so much that
27:16
Speaker 1: they had, like you said, what was known as the
27:19
Speaker 1: Habsburg jaw. Uh. And what I said, which was a
27:24
Speaker 1: big time underbyte and like I have a bit of
27:27
Speaker 1: a even bite, not quite an underbyte, uh. And I
27:31
Speaker 1: have always been a little self conscious about it. But
27:34
Speaker 1: when I saw the Habsburg jaws, I was not like,
27:37
Speaker 1: nothing to worry about. Yeah, Charles. The Second of Spain
27:41
Speaker 1: was described as quote swallowing all he eats whole for
27:45
Speaker 1: his another jaw stands out so much that his two
27:49
Speaker 1: rows of teeth cannot meet. Yeah, that's the Habsburg jaw
27:53
Speaker 1: for you. I'm pretty sure you can chew your food right. No, no, no,
27:56
Speaker 1: I'm fine. I'm a little more Bruce Springsteen, not quite Habsburg. So. Um.
28:01
Speaker 1: The much bigger problem that the Habsburg faces that their
28:06
Speaker 1: children had to infant mortality rate of about eighteen percent,
28:10
Speaker 1: which was high even at the time, But it was
28:11
Speaker 1: specific for that family and what they were doing I
28:15
Speaker 1: think you touched on it earlier was they were consolidating power.
28:18
Speaker 1: They were making sure that some other family from some
28:20
Speaker 1: other country didn't worm its way into the Habsburgs and
28:23
Speaker 1: take over Germany or Saxony or Austria wherever the Habsburgs
28:29
Speaker 1: were ruling, and they they just kept it in the family.
28:32
Speaker 1: And so there were some problems genetically, but they were
28:35
Speaker 1: far from the only family to to try this, and
28:39
Speaker 1: some of the greatest economic dynasties that the world has
28:42
Speaker 1: ever seen did the same thing for the same reasons too. Yeah.
28:45
Speaker 1: The DuPont's Uh, Pierre Samuel DuPont Uh said in eighteen
28:50
Speaker 1: ten quote the marriages that I should prefer for our
28:53
Speaker 1: colony would be between the cousins, and that way we
28:56
Speaker 1: should be sure of honesty of soul and purity of blood,
29:00
Speaker 1: uh end quote. And that was you know, it's not
29:03
Speaker 1: only about uh power, but I think keeping the money
29:07
Speaker 1: in the family, being wary of strangers coming in because
29:11
Speaker 1: they're rich, uh, that kind of thing. So I think
29:14
Speaker 1: it was, at least how I read, it was a
29:17
Speaker 1: little less like a eugenics pure bloodline thing and a
29:21
Speaker 1: little more like we gotta keep our own. Yes, it
29:25
Speaker 1: was the same thing for the Roth's Child, the Jewish
29:27
Speaker 1: banking family um basically the exact same thing. And so
29:31
Speaker 1: the du Ponts, which were founded I believe in France.
29:35
Speaker 1: DuPont's first name was Pierre Samuel. Back in the Rothschild,
29:39
Speaker 1: I know where. I believe in France. I know, I
29:43
Speaker 1: believe they were from France, and the Habsburg's basically ruled
29:47
Speaker 1: Europe for you know, quite a while centuries, I believe,
29:50
Speaker 1: And so in Europe the idea of intra family marriages
29:56
Speaker 1: and in breeding between close relations was kind of looked
30:00
Speaker 1: at is like, if you were well to do, you
30:02
Speaker 1: kind of did that thing. So there wasn't nearly in
30:05
Speaker 1: as much an aversion to it as there was in
30:08
Speaker 1: the United States, which is why the United States was
30:11
Speaker 1: one of the first countries to really start passing laws
30:14
Speaker 1: against marrying um close relations. Actually, yeah, eighteen seventy five
30:21
Speaker 1: is when things started to kind of I think people
30:23
Speaker 1: just started to not do it as much culturally in
30:27
Speaker 1: the US. And then as far as laws on the books, Uh,
30:31
Speaker 1: they even started a little bit before that. And what
30:34
Speaker 1: was the very first state, Josh Kansas. Yeah, the Jayhawks
30:39
Speaker 1: leading the way in incest laws don't do it in
30:42
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty eight, and by the mid nineteen twenties, most
30:46
Speaker 1: of the states had laws on the books. Uh. Olivia
30:50
Speaker 1: points out that if you were a Western state, you
30:53
Speaker 1: were a little more likely to be ahead of the
30:55
Speaker 1: curve because they were newer states and they were just
30:57
Speaker 1: writing their laws for the first time, so they kind
30:59
Speaker 1: of you know, had to go through everything, and this
31:02
Speaker 1: was a time when they everyone in the country it's
31:05
Speaker 1: just started looking at the laws around marriage is basically
31:09
Speaker 1: in a health and safety manner and not so much
31:12
Speaker 1: like we just want to be in your business thing, right,
31:14
Speaker 1: And it's strange to think of today and especially as
31:16
Speaker 1: an American. But apparently America has long had an outlier
31:20
Speaker 1: preoccupation with um like close relatives marrying. Like elsewhere in
31:26
Speaker 1: the world, as we'll see, it's not a thing, but
31:28
Speaker 1: even in parts of Europe it's a it's a much
31:31
Speaker 1: more modern aversion than it has been in America. Like,
31:33
Speaker 1: I guess around the world, we're known as like we've
31:35
Speaker 1: got a real problem with cousin marrying, like almost like
31:39
Speaker 1: methinks they doth protest too much, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
31:43
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Uh twenty five states in
31:46
Speaker 1: the US today have banned first cousin marriage. Only half
31:51
Speaker 1: uh seven more have some restrictions. And I think Arizona's
31:54
Speaker 1: is fairly adorable because they allow it if you're at
32:00
Speaker 1: least sixty five years old or older, or if you
32:03
Speaker 1: can't reproduce. So I guess they're like, you know, I
32:07
Speaker 1: guess you really couldn't find anyone else, or you really
32:11
Speaker 1: really loved each other, just don't make any babies. That's
32:14
Speaker 1: the that's the Arizona law. Yeah, absolutely so. And again
32:18
Speaker 1: we're talking co sanguineous marriages. In most laws, that means
32:22
Speaker 1: second cousins are closer. Um. And again around the world
32:26
Speaker 1: this is not considered a problem that cousin marriages. Apparently
32:32
Speaker 1: as much as ten percent of the global population practice
32:36
Speaker 1: marriages a second cousins are closer, and then in some
32:39
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern provinces it's as high as eighty percent. Yeah,
32:43
Speaker 1: and it's interesting when you look at this, uh I
32:47
Speaker 1: guess it was a study. It was they were interviews
32:49
Speaker 1: in uh Pakistan around this, and the reasons that these
32:56
Speaker 1: women gave were they make a lot of sense. They
32:59
Speaker 1: they said that a few different things, that they were
33:02
Speaker 1: more compatible, not compatible, compatible with family than strangers, which
33:08
Speaker 1: makes sense. Uh, that their in laws were kinder to
33:12
Speaker 1: the brides if they were from the same family, and
33:16
Speaker 1: that uh within if you had a guess a co
33:19
Speaker 1: sanguineous marriage, you were less focused on physical appearance and
33:24
Speaker 1: looks yeah, that's that was the um the Pakistani surveys
33:28
Speaker 1: respondents like take on the whole thing that they just
33:31
Speaker 1: didn't consider it like that. And then the other thing
33:33
Speaker 1: is they were suspicious of people who wanted to marry
33:37
Speaker 1: outside their family because in a society like that where
33:41
Speaker 1: there was a lot of intra marriage or intra family marriages. UM,
33:45
Speaker 1: it was a real red flag when somebody outside of
33:48
Speaker 1: your family was like, hey, you want to marry me,
33:50
Speaker 1: because it would say that their family found them unfit
33:53
Speaker 1: to be married. So they've got real problems, right, So
33:56
Speaker 1: so yeah, it would, it would you would just not
33:58
Speaker 1: want to marry something like that and that in that sense.
34:02
Speaker 1: Shall we take a break. Yeah, let's all right. We'll
34:05
Speaker 1: talk about some more famous examples and then get to
34:08
Speaker 1: the bottom of the health risks right after this, So Chuck,
34:35
Speaker 1: before we get started again, I want to say something
34:37
Speaker 1: because I came across UM the kind of a working
34:41
Speaker 1: definition of incest is way different than the kind of
34:45
Speaker 1: the general um way that we're using it. I've tried
34:48
Speaker 1: to pepper this with you know, intra marriage or cos
34:50
Speaker 1: anguineous marriage, but incess specifically, which most people just think
34:54
Speaker 1: of as like sexual relations between very close family members,
34:58
Speaker 1: is is supposedly defined as um like it's a dominant
35:03
Speaker 1: version of that. It's it's an abusive version of that
35:05
Speaker 1: where somebody in a position of power like an older
35:08
Speaker 1: brother or an older sister or a father mother, um
35:12
Speaker 1: basically molests like one of their family members. That it's
35:14
Speaker 1: a very specific kind of sexual relations among family members
35:19
Speaker 1: and probably the darkest of all the kinds. So that's
35:23
Speaker 1: the true definition. That's what I saw. Oh interesting, Yeah,
35:26
Speaker 1: I always thought that it could also mean consensual. Yeah,
35:30
Speaker 1: I think that's what most people think. That's why I
35:32
Speaker 1: wanted to share that, because that's what I thought too,
35:33
Speaker 1: until you know, yesterday when I was running across it.
35:36
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for clearing that up. You're welcome. Uh.
35:41
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the elephant in the room, which
35:44
Speaker 1: is the health risks. Uh. That's sort of the the
35:49
Speaker 1: unspoken thing people always think about in the back of
35:51
Speaker 1: their head when they hear of like, oh, I have
35:55
Speaker 1: family members that married each other and their third cousins,
35:59
Speaker 1: And the very first thing probably pops into someone's head
36:01
Speaker 1: is is like, is this going to be problematic when
36:04
Speaker 1: they go to have kids? And as we will see,
36:07
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that it will. Yeah, it's crazy. Like,
36:14
Speaker 1: my entire view of this thing has been completely upended
36:17
Speaker 1: in the last two days because it depends on well
36:22
Speaker 1: we'll get into it in a second. But when most
36:23
Speaker 1: people think of like close relations marrying, you just think
36:28
Speaker 1: of children born with abnormalities, birth effects, um possibly genetic
36:33
Speaker 1: disorders and all that can happen. But the reason it
36:36
Speaker 1: happens isn't because brother and sister, you know, head sex
36:39
Speaker 1: and automatically God punished them. You know, that's not that's
36:42
Speaker 1: not how it works. What it is is that brother
36:44
Speaker 1: and the sister are much more likely to be carriers
36:47
Speaker 1: of a certain recessive gene. And so when you put
36:50
Speaker 1: those two together together and produce an offspring, that offspring
36:54
Speaker 1: is almost certainly going to have that genetic disorder or
36:58
Speaker 1: abnormality or whatever, and so that that that's just likelier
37:02
Speaker 1: to happen. But even among um intra marriages or intra
37:07
Speaker 1: family marriages, UM, that's a really rare outcome, to be honest. Yeah,
37:12
Speaker 1: I mean these genetic disorders that we're talking about, which
37:15
Speaker 1: are everything from sickle cell anemia too, cerebral palsy uh,
37:22
Speaker 1: I guess, cystic fibrosis. Some of these things they're rare
37:24
Speaker 1: to begin with. So even if you're doubling up your chances,
37:28
Speaker 1: it's it's not like it makes it likely. It's still
37:30
Speaker 1: gonna be rare. And it's the case where like this
37:34
Speaker 1: is the thing that reveals that recessive gene, you know,
37:37
Speaker 1: because the brother and the sister don't have this disease.
37:41
Speaker 1: That's why it's recessive. So they don't know this going in,
37:44
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden they have a kid
37:46
Speaker 1: that has this birth defect and they you know, they
37:50
Speaker 1: maybe do genetic testing and it's unraveled. Right. So the
37:54
Speaker 1: thing is that can happen to two nonrelated people too,
37:58
Speaker 1: because there's so many obsessive genes out there in the
38:01
Speaker 1: general population. But because there's so many and there's so
38:04
Speaker 1: many people that the chances of two unrelated people is
38:08
Speaker 1: much less. Like you said, it might be double for
38:10
Speaker 1: people who are related, but still in absolute terms, it's
38:14
Speaker 1: not that that much of a risk numbers wise. But
38:17
Speaker 1: what you're saying is when you get to to non
38:20
Speaker 1: like if you're not marrying a family member, you're actually
38:22
Speaker 1: engaging in more of a genetic crap shoot then you are,
38:25
Speaker 1: as a marrying a family member, because you could know
38:28
Speaker 1: probably what's likelier to happen. Unless you've done, like you said,
38:32
Speaker 1: genetic counseling, you have no idea how your genes are
38:34
Speaker 1: going to match with somebody else's. Again, we have so
38:37
Speaker 1: many genes, there's so many different possible mutations, and there's
38:40
Speaker 1: so many people in the in the reproductive pool, that
38:44
Speaker 1: the chances are just very low that it's going to
38:46
Speaker 1: produce some sort of genetic disorder, abnormality or something like that. Yeah,
38:51
Speaker 1: and I think historically it's been a lot more common
38:54
Speaker 1: in uh, very small rural communities where the gene period
39:00
Speaker 1: is just a lot smaller. Uh. And you know it's
39:03
Speaker 1: just math. Basically, you're just going to be more at risk. Okay,
39:06
Speaker 1: So I read this UM this study. I read the abstract.
39:10
Speaker 1: I have to fess up, I didn't read the whole study,
39:12
Speaker 1: but it was from the University of Natural Sciences, Lahore
39:15
Speaker 1: in Pakistan, and they basically said, which, whether consanguineous or
39:21
Speaker 1: non consanguineous marriage, which one is preferable, depends on which
39:25
Speaker 1: level you're looking on on the individual level or on
39:28
Speaker 1: the population level. And then on a population level. And
39:32
Speaker 1: this is stone cold eugenic speak, right, So I just
39:34
Speaker 1: want to preface it with that, But on a population level,
39:38
Speaker 1: you're actually better off having your population mary relatives because UM,
39:45
Speaker 1: there will be a huge upsurge initially in children who
39:49
Speaker 1: are born with UM, you know, genetic disorders, who might
39:54
Speaker 1: not survive infancy and who won't go on to reproduce
39:59
Speaker 1: the ones who do survive and go on to reproduce
40:02
Speaker 1: will actually be potentially genetically fitter because they're good alleles,
40:06
Speaker 1: they're good genes mixed with their sisters good genes, and
40:11
Speaker 1: they're producing offsprings with like super genes. Basically, so on
40:14
Speaker 1: a population level, it's great. On an individual level, it's
40:18
Speaker 1: not so great. Interesting, And so they concluded overall, on
40:21
Speaker 1: for populations, until we learned to treat genetic disorders, like
40:25
Speaker 1: through gene therapy or something like that, we should really
40:27
Speaker 1: just keep out lawing co sanguineous marriages. Right, Wow, when
40:31
Speaker 1: was that it was a recent paper? I'm not executive.
40:34
Speaker 1: It was in the last ten years for sure. Uh well,
40:37
Speaker 1: should we finish up with just some bulleted points and factoids?
40:43
Speaker 1: That's how we do well. I guess we could talk
40:46
Speaker 1: about some famous people who very famously married very close relatives.
40:53
Speaker 1: Edgar Edgar Allan Poe did so in eighteen thirty five.
40:57
Speaker 1: He married I believe a first cousin named Virginia Eliza
41:01
Speaker 1: Klem and apparently the outrage there was the fact that
41:06
Speaker 1: she was thirteen and he was twenty seven. So even
41:09
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirty five that was a pretty uh a
41:12
Speaker 1: pretty big age gap, and I guess people were creeped out,
41:15
Speaker 1: and I guess pose walking around super creepy anyway, he
41:19
Speaker 1: was like that people out further, Yeah, exactly, Jesse James
41:24
Speaker 1: married his first cousin in eighteen seventy four, which again
41:28
Speaker 1: it's right on the precipice of when when America started
41:31
Speaker 1: to be like, we're not cool with cousin marrying anymore.
41:34
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right there, and H G. Wells, Yeah,
41:39
Speaker 1: and then Einstein. I didn't know he married his cousin,
41:41
Speaker 1: did you. I did not know that married his cousin,
41:45
Speaker 1: Elsa uh in nineteen nineteen, and I think both of
41:50
Speaker 1: them it was their second time around marriage wise, and uh,
41:56
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think it went went so well.
41:57
Speaker 1: I think he wasn't a great husband apparently. Yeah, so
42:00
Speaker 1: Olivia found it all. That's an interesting article. That's really
42:03
Speaker 1: depressing and disturbing because I had no idea, but Einstein
42:07
Speaker 1: seems to have been a really terrible husband, like cruel
42:10
Speaker 1: even you could say, yeah, yeah, so if you really
42:13
Speaker 1: want to just keep liking Einstein and only think of
42:15
Speaker 1: him like that poster with his tongue sticking out, not
42:18
Speaker 1: read that all that is interesting article on or a
42:21
Speaker 1: lovable shaggy Tim Robbins. Yeah, what was that from? Oh
42:26
Speaker 1: he was in the movie Meg Ryan played his daughter. No,
42:29
Speaker 1: that was Walter math Out that played Einstein. She got together.
42:33
Speaker 1: She got together with Tim Robbins. That's right. Robins got
42:36
Speaker 1: another good twenty years before he starts playing Einstein. Yeah,
42:39
Speaker 1: or Meg Ryan's dad. And I was way confused. Bath
42:42
Speaker 1: Ow he was a great See the Couch Trip with
42:47
Speaker 1: Dan Ackroyd. I'm sure I have a big Walter Bathou fan.
42:50
Speaker 1: That was a wonderful movie. And I think that might
42:52
Speaker 1: be one of his better performances too. Yeah, he was amazing.
42:57
Speaker 1: What what can we go over here? Some other sort
42:59
Speaker 1: of taboos are in the world. These are interesting, I think. Yeah,
43:01
Speaker 1: I agree. So, um, different cultures have kind of come
43:06
Speaker 1: up with like taboo plus like really complex stuff to
43:09
Speaker 1: basically say, Okay, you can marry this person, you can't
43:12
Speaker 1: marry that that person. It goes beyond just you can't
43:15
Speaker 1: marry your second cousin or closer and um. One of
43:18
Speaker 1: the one of the ways that the Muslim religion has
43:21
Speaker 1: done this is to come up with something called a
43:24
Speaker 1: milk kinship, where if you breastfeed a child who's unrelated
43:29
Speaker 1: to you at least three to five times. Then you
43:32
Speaker 1: and that child are considered mah ram, which means you
43:35
Speaker 1: are you cannot marry right, even though you're not a
43:38
Speaker 1: blood relative, you might not have any blood shared between
43:41
Speaker 1: you because you breastfed, you can't marry that that person, right,
43:46
Speaker 1: which seems like duh, because you're raising this you know,
43:50
Speaker 1: kid from a baby. But I don't think we mentioned
43:53
Speaker 1: at the beginning. There have been cultures through history where
43:56
Speaker 1: it was a common practice to a opped and raise
44:01
Speaker 1: a baby and also marry them, like you marry the
44:05
Speaker 1: baby and then raise them up to adulthood. Baby bride,
44:09
Speaker 1: baby bride. It's it's it's very hard to wrap your
44:12
Speaker 1: head around or baby groom. I saw in in at
44:14
Speaker 1: least one culture. Yeah. Um again, it's it's hard to
44:18
Speaker 1: wrap your head around here in two. But that's something
44:21
Speaker 1: that happened. So this was a big deal in the
44:24
Speaker 1: Muslim culture because you don't have to wear uh he
44:28
Speaker 1: job if you are mah ram. So it's sort of
44:33
Speaker 1: a work around when you raise this adopted baby. Uh
44:37
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, when they get old enough, you
44:39
Speaker 1: don't have to wear that he job around them anymore,
44:41
Speaker 1: right because you're maram, which is kind of fun to say.
44:45
Speaker 1: It is um. And then there's something called the lever
44:48
Speaker 1: marriage I had. I think it has to do with
44:50
Speaker 1: Levi from the Bible, Old Testament stuff, but basically it's
44:54
Speaker 1: a law that is found in a bunch of different
44:57
Speaker 1: disparate cultures that says if you you are married to
45:01
Speaker 1: a man and that and your husband dies, your brother
45:05
Speaker 1: in law has to marry you. And it was it
45:09
Speaker 1: seems to have been away um not to you know,
45:12
Speaker 1: marry off an unmarriable brother, a brother in law, I
45:14
Speaker 1: should say, um, but instead to take care of women.
45:17
Speaker 1: From what I can tell, Yeah, I feel like I've
45:21
Speaker 1: seen this not as a requirement, but it's just a
45:24
Speaker 1: plot line in like Old West movies, like the husband
45:27
Speaker 1: dies and so the widow marries is you know, the
45:30
Speaker 1: brother comes into town for the funeral and then they
45:32
Speaker 1: fall in love or something. Tim Robbins, I don't think
45:36
Speaker 1: so he had really shaggy hair. I know I've seen
45:39
Speaker 1: that before. But as far as the required the Old
45:41
Speaker 1: Testament version, uh, there was a stipulation where if the
45:46
Speaker 1: brother in law said no thanks, uh, then the widow.
45:50
Speaker 1: I guess an offense takes off his sandals and then
45:54
Speaker 1: spits in his face, and then his bloodline is forever
45:57
Speaker 1: known as the family of the Unsandaled, which I guess
46:01
Speaker 1: you would not want to be known as that. I
46:04
Speaker 1: also saw. So there's a um culture called the chuck
46:07
Speaker 1: Chi from eastern Siberia and they practice leverette marriage UM,
46:13
Speaker 1: where you know, if your if your husband dies, you
46:15
Speaker 1: marry his brother. And this is a way of taking
46:17
Speaker 1: care of women in a place that's like really unforgiving
46:20
Speaker 1: climate wise. UM. And they actually have a backup to that.
46:24
Speaker 1: They have wife swapping, where very close friends will create
46:27
Speaker 1: a pact and they will share their wives and then
46:30
Speaker 1: all of the children born are all that groups you know, responsibility.
46:34
Speaker 1: There's not like a delineation, and that supports women whose
46:38
Speaker 1: husbands don't have a brother. So if their husband dies,
46:41
Speaker 1: they're still taking care of by this other husband and
46:44
Speaker 1: his wife and their family. Interesting. Yeah, it's pretty smart.
46:48
Speaker 1: I always think of raising Arizona whenever hear the two
46:50
Speaker 1: words wife swap. It's impossible not to. You know, me
46:56
Speaker 1: and Dottie are swingers. You got anything else? I got
46:59
Speaker 1: an nothing else? I don't either, which means this is
47:02
Speaker 1: the end of our marrying cousin episode. Since I talked
47:07
Speaker 1: about marrying cousins one last time, that means it's time
47:10
Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm gonna call this adoption language. And
47:15
Speaker 1: this is something that UH made me feel bad in
47:19
Speaker 1: a good way, if that makes sense. It's something I'm
47:22
Speaker 1: never considered as a as a dad who has an
47:25
Speaker 1: adopted kid, and I'm really glad that Frank opened my
47:28
Speaker 1: eyes to this. Hey, guys, my wife Katie and I
47:30
Speaker 1: were listening to the Roe v. Waight episode and we
47:33
Speaker 1: have a minor tangential note. We notice that you used
47:36
Speaker 1: the phrase gave up when referencing adoption a few times.
47:40
Speaker 1: I gave up their baby for adoption, which is U.
47:44
Speaker 1: You know, it's a very common thing people say, like
47:46
Speaker 1: I say it all the time too. My wife is
47:48
Speaker 1: a social worker for an adoption agency in the Chicago area,
47:51
Speaker 1: and I learned from her that the phrase is really
47:54
Speaker 1: frowned upon in the adoption community as it can have
47:57
Speaker 1: a negative connotation of quitting on a child when that
48:00
Speaker 1: is not the case, and they encourage people to say
48:02
Speaker 1: instead that the mother made an adoption plan for the baby. UH.
48:06
Speaker 1: In fact our agency at a campaign a few years
48:08
Speaker 1: ago called to give up giving Up. Uh. I never
48:11
Speaker 1: thought twice about it until I learned about it from
48:13
Speaker 1: my wife, And I think it'd be great for your
48:14
Speaker 1: listeners to know. And that is from Frank and Frank.
48:18
Speaker 1: I'm very glad you let me know this because this
48:22
Speaker 1: is something that we've even said in our house, and
48:25
Speaker 1: we have tidied that up because when I think about it,
48:29
Speaker 1: that is not the right thing to say. Yeah, I mean, yeah,
48:32
Speaker 1: you could see reflecting on the child, especially when they
48:35
Speaker 1: get old enough to start thinking in those terms, but
48:37
Speaker 1: also on the the parents who who adopted off their child,
48:42
Speaker 1: you know, like like they did something shameful or something
48:45
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, absolutely, Frank. So I think it's one
48:49
Speaker 1: of the situations where it's just sort of the way
48:51
Speaker 1: it's always been said. And I love it when people
48:53
Speaker 1: point out like, no, there's a better way forward. Yeah,
48:56
Speaker 1: like when that dude told us to stop using dark Ages,
48:59
Speaker 1: that's same thing. Yeah, if you want to get in
49:03
Speaker 1: touch with us, like Frank or the Dark Ages dude,
49:05
Speaker 1: you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
49:08
Speaker 1: it on the bottom, unless it's a second cousin or
49:10
Speaker 1: closer and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart
49:14
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
49:19
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
49:22
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
49:26
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.