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Are all US Presidents actually related? · Ridiculous History

0:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, breaking news, friends and neighbors. As we begin today's episode,
0:28
Speaker 1: recording on April two thousand and eighteen, there's seven point
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Speaker 1: five eight three one five eight, five hundred and twenty
0:38
Speaker 1: three people alive on the planet. That's a little over
0:41
Speaker 1: seven point five billion. Hi, I'm bet can you break
0:44
Speaker 1: that down to one of those fancy math numbers where
0:46
Speaker 1: it's like something to do something? I could? Yeah? I could?
0:50
Speaker 1: Are you good? Are you Matthew like that? Ben? You
0:53
Speaker 1: know I've been known to dabble. I don't have a
0:55
Speaker 1: personal passion for it. Yeah, what about you know where
0:58
Speaker 1: your s A T scores pretty balanced? But queen English
1:00
Speaker 1: and math higher in English? Mine or way higher in English,
1:04
Speaker 1: way out of whack with the maths, So I may
1:07
Speaker 1: have to lean on you for math support in this episode. Hi,
1:11
Speaker 1: my name is Noel. So out of seven point five
1:16
Speaker 1: billion people, you have chosen to tune into a podcast
1:21
Speaker 1: featuring three of those people? Just im easily three out
1:24
Speaker 1: of billions. We are so glad you're here. But wait, Ben,
1:30
Speaker 1: but wait, Noel, you might be saying, who is this
1:32
Speaker 1: mysterious third person you're talking about? Why it's our super producer,
1:37
Speaker 1: Casey Smooth, jazz pegrum oh man, I like that that
1:46
Speaker 1: new smooth jazz Casey sound effect. We did not run
1:51
Speaker 1: this by Casey before making a face? Is he making
1:54
Speaker 1: a face? Is it a pleasurable face? I'm into it?
1:58
Speaker 1: And that's been Casey on the case has been um. So,
2:02
Speaker 1: now that we've established that we're going to be talking
2:05
Speaker 1: about large numbers of of humans, why don't we take
2:10
Speaker 1: a step back and and what's kind of like couch
2:13
Speaker 1: that with with a historical topic? Right, yes, let's uh,
2:17
Speaker 1: let's dare I say, make the people what they want,
2:20
Speaker 1: a story about ridiculous history. So will come back to
2:25
Speaker 1: that number that is that is ticking as as we
2:28
Speaker 1: record from something called the world counts dot com, where
2:32
Speaker 1: you can find things like world population clocks. Is that
2:35
Speaker 1: the same as the doomsday clock? It's thankfully not. No,
2:39
Speaker 1: it's different. But for some people who consider our society
2:44
Speaker 1: at large on the verge of collapse, than yes, it's
2:47
Speaker 1: different doomsday clock. But we will return to that in
2:51
Speaker 1: a very important way. Today. We'd like to set the
2:54
Speaker 1: scene for everyone in the US and abroad by saying, uh,
2:59
Speaker 1: that there's there's something quirky about the United States. Despite
3:04
Speaker 1: the fact that it is a representative democracy. Several of
3:09
Speaker 1: our presidents are commanders in chief, and several other people
3:14
Speaker 1: in high positions of power like the Supreme Court, for instance,
3:17
Speaker 1: or senators and so on. They tend to be related,
3:21
Speaker 1: not all the time. And of course most of you
3:23
Speaker 1: are surely aware of the big name political dynasties like
3:27
Speaker 1: the Bushes or the Kennedy's. But how about the Roosevelts.
3:31
Speaker 1: M M, yeah, yeah, the Roosevelts. For many people, F
3:37
Speaker 1: D R. Franklin Delano Roosevelt remains an incredibly popular or
3:43
Speaker 1: controversial figure. Not everybody likes them even in the modern day.
3:47
Speaker 1: Wasn't a populist, Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the
3:54
Speaker 1: mastermind in many ways behind what is known as the
3:57
Speaker 1: New Deal, which had a lot of shall we say,
4:01
Speaker 1: left leaning programs at the time. Sure, and and it
4:05
Speaker 1: also um provided a lot of people jobs when they
4:09
Speaker 1: were in desperate need of sad jobs in order to
4:12
Speaker 1: help build up our infrastructure, everything from roads and bridges
4:17
Speaker 1: to things like what else the t V A Tennessee
4:21
Speaker 1: Valley Authority, that's a huge one. There were full ways
4:26
Speaker 1: collection programs. There's any number of things a lot of
4:30
Speaker 1: infrastructure that was direly needed. He served as the thirty
4:34
Speaker 1: second President of the United States from nineteen thirty three
4:38
Speaker 1: until his death in nineteen five. However, you may be saying,
4:42
Speaker 1: what about that other Roosevelt, Yes, Theodore Roosevelt Ruxman Roosevelt. Yes, yep, yep,
4:50
Speaker 1: this is the twenty six president of the United States.
4:54
Speaker 1: And oddly enough, yes, the teddy Bear is named in
4:57
Speaker 1: his honor. Wasn't he the one who carried a big
5:00
Speaker 1: stick and spoke softly? Yes, that is that is the
5:04
Speaker 1: quote you'll hear about him. Yeah. He was president for
5:07
Speaker 1: eight years from nineteen o one to nineteen o nine. So,
5:11
Speaker 1: like many people, you would assume that he and Franklin
5:18
Speaker 1: were related pretty closely, right, you know. And it's funny, Yes,
5:23
Speaker 1: I would assume that Ben. In fact, I did assume that,
5:25
Speaker 1: because it's the kind of thing you just take a
5:27
Speaker 1: face value. You got your Kennedy's, you got your bushes,
5:30
Speaker 1: why can't you have your Roosevelt's. And you can, but
5:34
Speaker 1: not in the way you might think. No. No, it
5:36
Speaker 1: turns out so one of the assumptions would have been
5:40
Speaker 1: that perhaps Theodore we'll call him Roosevelt, the elder was
5:45
Speaker 1: the father of Franklin Roosevelt or maybe an uncle or
5:49
Speaker 1: something like that, because they was about to say ruled,
5:53
Speaker 1: they governed like thirty years apart. Yeah, decades. And it's
5:58
Speaker 1: not the case. Although the math might seem to roughly
6:00
Speaker 1: check out, it is not the case that they are
6:03
Speaker 1: father's son or uncle nephew at all. They are related,
6:07
Speaker 1: but in a much more distant way, in a much
6:10
Speaker 1: more distant way. That sort of shimmies us onto the
6:14
Speaker 1: next chapter that we're gonna get into. But it's interesting
6:16
Speaker 1: they related in two different ways. Um. In fact, they are.
6:21
Speaker 1: They shared a great great great great grandfather. So it's
6:26
Speaker 1: four grades, four grades, making them five cousins, right, right, right,
6:33
Speaker 1: I get that right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the
6:36
Speaker 1: question there is just to spend some time on this
6:38
Speaker 1: first relationship. The question there when we get to the
6:42
Speaker 1: fifth cousinry of this is a question for you, folks.
6:46
Speaker 1: Are you in regular contact? Be honest, now, are you
6:49
Speaker 1: in regular contact with your fifth cousins? Even one? Can
6:52
Speaker 1: you name one of your fifth cousins? May speak for
6:55
Speaker 1: the group, speak for yourself, please, I will speak for myself,
6:58
Speaker 1: but I choose to speak with the voice of the
7:01
Speaker 1: people and saying no, okay, yes, well, I myself am
7:07
Speaker 1: not super close with my fifth cousin. You got a
7:12
Speaker 1: fifty you know him though, you know I love them. Really,
7:15
Speaker 1: Tennessee is a weird place. Interesting, Yeah, but uh, but
7:18
Speaker 1: I think if we're hanging out, it would just be
7:20
Speaker 1: at the big events, you know, collapse of civilization, some
7:24
Speaker 1: somebody's birthday or death like that. I would have thought
7:27
Speaker 1: those would have been reversed. I thought collapse would have
7:29
Speaker 1: come more of a last resort. But that's the one
7:32
Speaker 1: where it's likely. Yeah, well, speaking of strange bedfellows, Okay,
7:40
Speaker 1: so I'll go with that. Um. The other way they
7:44
Speaker 1: were related is that FDR's wife Eleanor. And it's funny.
7:48
Speaker 1: I actually always used to think that Franklin's middle name
7:50
Speaker 1: was Delanor, and it was weird to me that his
7:53
Speaker 1: wife's name was Eleanor that, but now it's Delano and Eleanor. Um.
8:00
Speaker 1: She in fact was uh Teddy's niece, direct niece. Right, Yes,
8:06
Speaker 1: that is correct. It's just confusing because her last name
8:10
Speaker 1: is Roosevelt without Franklin. Right, his last name was Roosevelt
8:16
Speaker 1: and they married. She didn't have to change your last name, right,
8:20
Speaker 1: Did they get that right? Yeah, that's weird. That's why.
8:22
Speaker 1: That's why this is all very flammixing. And this also
8:24
Speaker 1: means that f DR and Eleanor Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
8:29
Speaker 1: Eleanor Roosevelt were fifth cousins themselves once removed, both fifth
8:34
Speaker 1: cousins five by five and it wow, right, it's literally
8:39
Speaker 1: the same relationship. Right. It sounds strange And this may
8:42
Speaker 1: have some of us wondering, are we going to jump
8:45
Speaker 1: the shark here? Is this going to be an episode
8:48
Speaker 1: about unknown incest in the US presidency bordering on that
8:53
Speaker 1: of the Egyptian royalty? Jump the history shark. We we
8:57
Speaker 1: just might. But the factor means that this was not
9:01
Speaker 1: a strange, untoward, or in any way ethically questionable relationship. No, man,
9:08
Speaker 1: it's fifth, it's fifth. It's fifth. Is fine, It's fine
9:11
Speaker 1: if it's fifth. Yes, Okay, So that's it. That's the show, folks.
9:14
Speaker 1: They're just not as related as we thought. Yeah, we
9:17
Speaker 1: kind of thought that ourselves, where we were like, this
9:20
Speaker 1: is a show? Is this the whole show? But you
9:22
Speaker 1: know what, sometimes finding a little quirky fact like this
9:26
Speaker 1: can open up a whole field of rabbit holes full
9:30
Speaker 1: of quirky facts, right right, appanably if you will. We
9:34
Speaker 1: asked ourselves what others strange and genealogical secrets does the
9:41
Speaker 1: US Presidency hold as an office, right, and that's when
9:45
Speaker 1: we ran into a crazy question. Are all US presidents related?
9:51
Speaker 1: I think we both just assumed no. Yeah, it seems
9:54
Speaker 1: like a long walk to get to that question from
9:57
Speaker 1: our FDR, and uh, Teddy Roosevelt really added to our
10:00
Speaker 1: all presidents related. But as it turns out, this is
10:03
Speaker 1: we're not the only ones asking this question, Ben, You're
10:06
Speaker 1: not the only ones asking this question, right right? Uh?
10:09
Speaker 1: You know who else was asking this question? Yes? Twelve
10:11
Speaker 1: year olds yep, yep. Twelve year old Uh, specifically a
10:16
Speaker 1: budding genealogists by the name of bridge Anne d'avonnon amazing name,
10:21
Speaker 1: that's that's an amazing name. So she was twelve years
10:25
Speaker 1: old back in two thousand and twelve, and then she
10:28
Speaker 1: came out with a family tree that had some earth
10:33
Speaker 1: shaking implications. Right yeah, man, it seems like she's scooped
10:36
Speaker 1: like the genealogy community at large with this one um,
10:39
Speaker 1: twelve year old bridge An davignon um, who is a
10:43
Speaker 1: resident of Salinas, California. Uh for a school project. Get
10:48
Speaker 1: this created a family tree that connected forty two of
10:53
Speaker 1: the forty three at the time US presidents to a
10:57
Speaker 1: single common ancestor, a real jerkuad by the name of
11:01
Speaker 1: King John of England, or John Lackland as his pappy
11:06
Speaker 1: called him. Yes, uh, famously named that for signing the
11:10
Speaker 1: Magna Carta in twelve fifteen, which limited his power as
11:14
Speaker 1: a monarch and led to the formation of what we
11:17
Speaker 1: recognize as the modern British government. Yeah. In fact, John
11:21
Speaker 1: had such a horrible reputation for cruelty and incompetence that
11:27
Speaker 1: he was kind of strong armed into signing that fateful
11:30
Speaker 1: document um by these rebelling barons who had had enough
11:35
Speaker 1: of his shenanigans, and essentially it limited his power, It
11:40
Speaker 1: lost him a whole lot of land and basically kind
11:43
Speaker 1: of neutered the monarchy for all intents and purposes from
11:46
Speaker 1: that point on. What we're saying is that Lackland was
11:49
Speaker 1: not a compliment. It wasn't Uh. It wasn't ironic either, know,
11:54
Speaker 1: and he was famously um portrayed as the villain in
11:57
Speaker 1: the Robin Hood stories um be because of his you know,
12:01
Speaker 1: just notorious greed and cowardice. Robin Hood Princes of Thieves,
12:08
Speaker 1: by the way, that's what we're referring to. I assume
12:10
Speaker 1: in the nineties, I was thinking more of the Disney
12:12
Speaker 1: one where he's like a skinny um lion. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:17
Speaker 1: It was sort of a proto Scar. Yeah, we should
12:21
Speaker 1: do an entire show on Robin Hood in the future
12:23
Speaker 1: because the facts don't really resemble the fiction, which may
12:29
Speaker 1: surprise some people, maybe startle some people, but it's worth it. Well,
12:33
Speaker 1: we will say that he was a human being and
12:35
Speaker 1: not a u anthropomorphic fox no or a lion if
12:40
Speaker 1: I'm sucking lion. But now here's the thing. This U.
12:42
Speaker 1: This young lady in California came up with this project
12:47
Speaker 1: UM from I think she was originally trying to trace
12:50
Speaker 1: her own ancestry, and then somewhere along the way kind
12:54
Speaker 1: of decided that she wanted to go way, way, way
12:59
Speaker 1: deeper UM in the form of scouring over five hundred
13:02
Speaker 1: thousand names to find what she termed the presidential Adam.
13:08
Speaker 1: And her grandfather was actually sort of an amateur genealogist himself,
13:12
Speaker 1: and he helped her out. Here's The thing though, what
13:15
Speaker 1: she did that everyone before her, all of the people
13:19
Speaker 1: in the professional genealogy community, had not done, was she
13:22
Speaker 1: looked at both male and female UH family lines to
13:26
Speaker 1: make this connection. And the only president that did not
13:30
Speaker 1: tie back to King John was Martin van Buren and
13:35
Speaker 1: that's because he hailed from Dutch roots, right. And this
13:40
Speaker 1: is again this is according to her findings with the
13:42
Speaker 1: help of her armchair genealogists grandfather. One thing, we can
13:47
Speaker 1: say heck of a science project, probably the best one
13:50
Speaker 1: of the year there at monte Vista Christian School in Watsonville.
13:54
Speaker 1: But she also found out that she is the eighteen
13:58
Speaker 1: cousin of President Barack Obama. She wrote to President Obama
14:04
Speaker 1: to share her findings, and as of she said, she
14:08
Speaker 1: received a form letter from the White House, but you know,
14:13
Speaker 1: maybe she got a handwritten one later because it's the
14:16
Speaker 1: pants and I. I have followed up and I haven't
14:19
Speaker 1: found any new information about this. She also apparently I
14:22
Speaker 1: was trying to raise money for the trip by selling
14:24
Speaker 1: signed copies of her massive sort of vision board esque
14:29
Speaker 1: family tree with Barack Obama's head center in the middle.
14:32
Speaker 1: US President Barack Obama World Leader, surrounded by his cousins
14:36
Speaker 1: with thousands of names. So this leads to a question
14:44
Speaker 1: that we all have to ask. We have to be skeptical.
14:48
Speaker 1: We can't be instantly taken in by a snappy headline.
14:52
Speaker 1: And you know, we were talking about this off air
14:54
Speaker 1: when I had brought up some of the stuff, and
14:57
Speaker 1: the question was, are we crushing the dreams of a
15:00
Speaker 1: child if we say that it isn't true. Luckily it
15:04
Speaker 1: turns out it is kind of true. This this idea
15:07
Speaker 1: of a web of relationships. But like the relationship between
15:11
Speaker 1: Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, it's not true in the
15:14
Speaker 1: way you might think. It's not particularly remarkable either. No, no,
15:19
Speaker 1: it is not. Yeah. John was just not friends with anybody.
15:22
Speaker 1: He was constantly feuding with the papacy quarrels over the
15:27
Speaker 1: election to the See of Canterbury after the death of
15:30
Speaker 1: Hubert Walter Um. Pope Innocent the Third decided that John's
15:37
Speaker 1: nominee was no good and instead elected Stephen Lankton, and
15:42
Speaker 1: this infuriated John and they just really were not. Um,
15:47
Speaker 1: we're not very close. Um. Here's the thing to King John.
15:52
Speaker 1: In addition to being cruel, he was known for starving
15:55
Speaker 1: his enemies to death. In fact, in an article from
15:58
Speaker 1: the BBC entitled The Lost Rules of Bad King John,
16:01
Speaker 1: historian Mark Morris, who wrote a biography on the King, Um,
16:07
Speaker 1: was asked if he was really as bad in reality
16:11
Speaker 1: as he was made out to be in songs and
16:13
Speaker 1: stories and you know Robin Hood for example, UM, to
16:16
Speaker 1: which he replied, no, much worse in legend. He doesn't
16:19
Speaker 1: starve people to death in reality he does on mass
16:23
Speaker 1: So a bad guy and also incompetent. Apparently he was traveling, um,
16:28
Speaker 1: his what do you call like a litter like what
16:29
Speaker 1: when you're in those uh a palatequinn Yeah, sure, like
16:33
Speaker 1: you know, is there where somebody's carrying them more of
16:38
Speaker 1: a carriage kind of situation. Yeah. And they had all
16:41
Speaker 1: of these boxes of various supplies and treasure and they
16:47
Speaker 1: sunk into a marsh um known as the wash It's
16:52
Speaker 1: a very treacherous muddy bank um under the cross Key
16:57
Speaker 1: Bridge in Lincolnshire, England, um, and it was all lost.
17:01
Speaker 1: He apparently lost the Crown jewels because of this foolish
17:05
Speaker 1: route when he was actually running away from his enemies
17:08
Speaker 1: at the time. So all around pretty bad guy. Or
17:12
Speaker 1: is Mark Morris would say, an absolute rotter. He also
17:16
Speaker 1: Morris himself wrote an article for the Telegraph where he
17:19
Speaker 1: says this is the most evil monarch in British history
17:22
Speaker 1: and calls him a lecterers trader, a depraved tyrant and
17:26
Speaker 1: a hopeless leader. He was also a serial rapist, yeah,
17:29
Speaker 1: just putting that in there. His enemies were not necessarily
17:33
Speaker 1: some sort of spoiled tyrant's yearning for more power. They
17:37
Speaker 1: were saying, we've gotta we gotta get rid of this
17:40
Speaker 1: guy because he is such a pill. Yeah, big time.
17:43
Speaker 1: And I believe he had a brother, Um who was
17:45
Speaker 1: known as Richard the lion Heart. Um that actually comes
17:48
Speaker 1: into play in the Robin Hood story where he King
17:51
Speaker 1: Good King Richard comes back to depose you know, King John.
17:55
Speaker 1: But anyway, the thing with the lost treasure is interesting
17:58
Speaker 1: because it's actually become kind of this lay Dan Brown
18:01
Speaker 1: esque sort of mystery of the secret Treasure of Prince John,
18:05
Speaker 1: where in um that area in England there are several
18:10
Speaker 1: um folks who have been trying to find it over
18:12
Speaker 1: the years with no success. One guy in fact claims
18:16
Speaker 1: that he can see the outline of it on a
18:18
Speaker 1: Google Earth image. So not exactly the most flattering guy
18:22
Speaker 1: for all of these presidents to be connected to. The
18:25
Speaker 1: young lady did the project. Her comment to a local
18:28
Speaker 1: news organization was the they all have the common trait
18:31
Speaker 1: of wanting power. So there's that. So, folks here, we
18:36
Speaker 1: have a question for you, since we're all learning a
18:40
Speaker 1: lot about each other's families today, how many ancestors do
18:45
Speaker 1: you have? Well, if we're not if we're saying living
18:48
Speaker 1: your dad, just any ancestors, doesn't matter if you talk
18:51
Speaker 1: to them or not. It doesn't matter how long ago
18:52
Speaker 1: they lived. We would see some pretty easy math. At first,
18:57
Speaker 1: you have two parents. They each have two parents, right,
19:00
Speaker 1: so you have two parents, four grandparents they each have
19:04
Speaker 1: each of your grandparents have two parents. So then you
19:07
Speaker 1: have eight great grandparents, four grandparents, two parents, and then
19:12
Speaker 1: you and so when we realize that this exponential growth
19:16
Speaker 1: as you go back in time through the generations applies
19:19
Speaker 1: to every single one of the seven point five billion
19:22
Speaker 1: plus people living on the planet, you start to run
19:26
Speaker 1: into something weird and the math. Uh, the math doesn't
19:31
Speaker 1: check out after a certain amount of time. That's right,
19:34
Speaker 1: because when you look back and trace your theoretical ancestors
19:38
Speaker 1: in the way you're talking about, you start to actually
19:40
Speaker 1: outpace the population um. In an article for Abroad in
19:44
Speaker 1: the Yard called the U S Presidents who descend from
19:46
Speaker 1: King John of England and Why You probably do too,
19:49
Speaker 1: Lee Renner writes that if you go back thirty generations
19:52
Speaker 1: to the Middle Ages, you would theoretically have over one
19:55
Speaker 1: billion ancestors in that line of your family tree yea.
20:00
Speaker 1: And furthermore, if you continue down the line with this
20:05
Speaker 1: sort of growth, then it will double every step, and
20:08
Speaker 1: that means that just forty generations ago, we would find
20:12
Speaker 1: that every person alive now has a trillion ancestors, all
20:17
Speaker 1: living at the same time, which is impossible because Earth
20:21
Speaker 1: has never had that many people living on it. So
20:24
Speaker 1: how does this work out? Van help us out with
20:26
Speaker 1: the with the birthday math here, that's what that's what
20:28
Speaker 1: I like to call this kind of math. So this
20:31
Speaker 1: leads us to the concept of pedigree collapse or is
20:33
Speaker 1: it's known in German ahin schwindt. What does that translate
20:37
Speaker 1: to loss of lineage? Roughly coined by a guy named
20:41
Speaker 1: Robert C. Gunderson. Here's the gist. Without pedigree collapse, the
20:46
Speaker 1: family trees we just described for you, for Casey for
20:50
Speaker 1: myself Renal. They all work the same way their binary
20:53
Speaker 1: We've got you the protagonists of the family tree, of course,
20:57
Speaker 1: your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and so on. Because this
21:02
Speaker 1: grows eventually to exceed the total world population at the time.
21:06
Speaker 1: If not ever, we know that the family tree at
21:10
Speaker 1: some point has to be incorrect. This binary tree model,
21:13
Speaker 1: and this apparent paradox is explained by a couple of things,
21:17
Speaker 1: mainly shared ancestors. Because a binary tree would assume that
21:22
Speaker 1: all of the people in all these trees are unique
21:25
Speaker 1: in some way. Instead of a tree consisting of all
21:28
Speaker 1: different individuals, a tree can have multiple places occupied by
21:32
Speaker 1: a single individual. Parents of an ancestor might be related
21:36
Speaker 1: to each other, not knowing that's a fact. Uh, the
21:40
Speaker 1: offspring of two first cousins has at most, for example,
21:45
Speaker 1: only six great grandparents instead of eight. And then this
21:49
Speaker 1: means that the family tree you have, the binary tree
21:53
Speaker 1: looks a lot like an upside down pyramid, but the
21:56
Speaker 1: real shape of it is more like a diamond. And
22:00
Speaker 1: everyone we know has some sort of common ancestor. It's true,
22:05
Speaker 1: and apparently we only take about two thousand to three
22:08
Speaker 1: thousand years going back to find a period where that
22:11
Speaker 1: was the case, or we all shared this common ancestor
22:14
Speaker 1: and we have no idea who it is, of course
22:15
Speaker 1: not yeah. And the thing too is when you start
22:17
Speaker 1: getting into royal lineages, that really muddies the water, doesn't it,
22:22
Speaker 1: Because there is uh, you know, intentional inbreeding that happens
22:26
Speaker 1: in order to maintain the family bloodline or maintain uh,
22:31
Speaker 1: you know, transfer of ownership of property within you know,
22:35
Speaker 1: a particular um house I guess h And also just
22:40
Speaker 1: the lack of mating options within that echelon of society,
22:44
Speaker 1: right right, And we also have an added benefit here
22:48
Speaker 1: in the case of many aristocratic royal bloodlines or genealogies,
22:54
Speaker 1: we have much more robust documentation of what happened when
22:58
Speaker 1: and who was born to whom you know, other than
23:02
Speaker 1: like the commoners. So another interesting aside here is not
23:11
Speaker 1: only do we have a shared common ancestor two to
23:14
Speaker 1: three thousand years ago, but at various points in early
23:18
Speaker 1: human history we experienced an evolutionary bottleneck where there was
23:23
Speaker 1: a very small amount of human beings in general alive.
23:28
Speaker 1: A lot of our regional populations across the planet now
23:33
Speaker 1: are still descended from just a few people relatively we
23:37
Speaker 1: can find a common link, and in the case of
23:41
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom or what we call the United Kingdom today,
23:44
Speaker 1: those common links are surprisingly easy to find. It's true.
23:48
Speaker 1: Andrew Miller of the University of Durham in England UM
23:52
Speaker 1: figured out that most anybody with Anglo Saxon ancestry is
23:57
Speaker 1: likely to descended from King Edward the Third, who ruled
24:00
Speaker 1: from twelve to thirteen seventy seven. And when I say
24:03
Speaker 1: most anybody, I mean that probability is close to nine
24:08
Speaker 1: point nine nine seven UM and that Edward the Third
24:13
Speaker 1: has around one hundred million descendants in the British Isles, Europe,
24:19
Speaker 1: UH the former British colonies, which of course includes the
24:21
Speaker 1: United States and Canada, and also Australia. So we see
24:26
Speaker 1: that more people have more ancestors in common that we
24:31
Speaker 1: might have thought. Are we all playing some weird family
24:35
Speaker 1: themed version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? The answer
24:38
Speaker 1: is kind of yes, but it's it's more with everyone
24:42
Speaker 1: you know. Writing in Family Tree Magazine with the article
24:47
Speaker 1: what is pedigree Collapse, author Diane Haddad and I think
24:50
Speaker 1: that's a cool last name says that a Rutgers University
24:54
Speaker 1: professor estimates eighty percent of historical marriages took place between
24:59
Speaker 1: second or first cousins. Two knowls earlier point, the idea
25:04
Speaker 1: of preserving not just a bloodline, but resources, property, inheritable
25:09
Speaker 1: goods applied to the common folk as well as the aristocrats,
25:16
Speaker 1: and it may just have been a matter of people
25:19
Speaker 1: available people. You know, folks didn't travel as widely as
25:22
Speaker 1: they do now totally, And so this leads us to
25:26
Speaker 1: a This leads us to another question. If it does
25:29
Speaker 1: indeed turn out that all human beings are in some
25:33
Speaker 1: way related, then does that mean that Ms Davignon was correct.
25:37
Speaker 1: Are all US presidents related? Well? Yeah, sort of kind of,
25:42
Speaker 1: but we do we do have one fun fact about
25:46
Speaker 1: I believe it was Franklin Roosevelt. Isn't that right now? Yeah?
25:49
Speaker 1: So while that fifth degree connection between f DR and
25:52
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt, it's probably the most obvious surfacing wine with
25:56
Speaker 1: them sharing that pretty memorable last name, um, you know,
25:59
Speaker 1: with the assum and of some sort of political dynasty
26:02
Speaker 1: that spoiler alert night can it's not really spoiler at
26:04
Speaker 1: this point, is not a thing. Um. FDR was actually
26:08
Speaker 1: related to quite a few other presidents, including our odd
26:11
Speaker 1: man out of the whole King John debacle, President Martin
26:15
Speaker 1: van Buren, third cousins twice removed to Teddy Roosevelt. How
26:19
Speaker 1: does that even work? I don't understand, Like, if Van
26:21
Speaker 1: Buren wasn't connected to King John, then how could he
26:24
Speaker 1: be third cousins to FDR who? It makes my head spin, Ben, right, Yeah,
26:31
Speaker 1: it's surprising. In addition that list, the other presidents would
26:34
Speaker 1: include John Adams, James Madison, John Quincy Adams Buren as
26:39
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, Noel William, Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, the
26:44
Speaker 1: guy with the arsenic conspiracy theory about his death, uh,
26:48
Speaker 1: Andrew Johnson, Lucy's s Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Willie Taft, and
26:53
Speaker 1: of course, last, but certainly not least, Teddy himself, Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah,
27:00
Speaker 1: it's a total of eleven US presidents, either by blood
27:03
Speaker 1: or by marriage. And now this leads to a question
27:07
Speaker 1: that we would love to close on with you. The
27:12
Speaker 1: question you may have is, well, how many how many
27:15
Speaker 1: people am I related to? Am I really related to everyone? Guys?
27:18
Speaker 1: Am I related to you? Casey, Ben and Nol? The
27:23
Speaker 1: answer is yes, distantly distantly. Some geneticists estimate that we
27:29
Speaker 1: are all all seven point five billion plus of us
27:33
Speaker 1: are at least fiftieth cousins. Well, we're all made of
27:37
Speaker 1: star stuff, Ben, That's true. That's true. And and uh
27:41
Speaker 1: is this bad for us genetically? No, not really. It's
27:46
Speaker 1: it's surprising, and I think it's a little bit inspiring
27:49
Speaker 1: because there's so many people in the world that I
27:51
Speaker 1: can feel like a disconnected, lonely place at times. But
27:54
Speaker 1: everywhere you go in some way, you're hanging out with
27:58
Speaker 1: your family. Man, A fifth is fine. It's definitely fine. Right,
28:02
Speaker 1: that's true. Uh. And as we close today, the number
28:06
Speaker 1: for the world's population to show how much it has increased,
28:10
Speaker 1: is seven five eight three one, six five eight nine
28:14
Speaker 1: nine billion people. By five our global family will be
28:20
Speaker 1: over eight billion people. And who knows where our ridiculous
28:24
Speaker 1: history family will be. But we want to thank you
28:27
Speaker 1: so much for checking out the show. Thanks for bearing
28:30
Speaker 1: with us on this one. This was a fun one,
28:32
Speaker 1: but it's it was a little uh circuitous, But I
28:34
Speaker 1: enjoyed it very much, man, how about you? Yeah. Likewise, likewise,
28:38
Speaker 1: we can only hope that Casey enjoyed it, or at
28:41
Speaker 1: least tolerated us. He's making a face, and he's making
28:44
Speaker 1: he's making, hopefully the face of a state any face,
28:48
Speaker 1: it's the face of love. It's literally looking into the
28:51
Speaker 1: face of goodness and love. Yes. Uh. And in addition
28:55
Speaker 1: to thanking Casey, we'd of course like to thank you,
28:58
Speaker 1: we'd like to thank Alex Williams, who composed our track
29:01
Speaker 1: That's true. We would like to thank Mark Zuckerberg for
29:04
Speaker 1: inventing Facebook, where you can find us at Ridiculous History.
29:07
Speaker 1: We also have a pretty cool little Facebook group called
29:10
Speaker 1: the Ridiculous Historians. If you want to be a member,
29:13
Speaker 1: you can do that and there's some really fun conversations
29:15
Speaker 1: and we're looking to mind some of the suggestions there
29:19
Speaker 1: for future episodes. And you can see Ben Little Ben
29:23
Speaker 1: dressed up as a cowboy, opry Land as a child,
29:26
Speaker 1: and you can see me doing a karaoke song. That's
29:29
Speaker 1: just the kind of fun shenanigans we get up to
29:31
Speaker 1: with the Ridiculous Historians. Um also do us a solid
29:34
Speaker 1: leave us a review on iTunes where you you gush,
29:37
Speaker 1: just gush if you don't mind, that would really be
29:39
Speaker 1: cool and help us out a whole lot. Also check
29:42
Speaker 1: us out on Instagram. You can check us out on
29:46
Speaker 1: Twitter where we are ridiculous history or some variation thereof,
29:52
Speaker 1: and be sure to join us for our next episode
29:56
Speaker 1: when we explore the capture of Bomb, which was relatively bloodless,
30:03
Speaker 1: cartoonishly fast, and all due to a wild misunderstanding. So
30:10
Speaker 1: tune in in in the meantime. Of course, if social
30:13
Speaker 1: media is not your thing, we want to hear from you.
30:16
Speaker 1: I mean, we're practically family. Now you can write to
30:19
Speaker 1: us directly. We are ridiculous at how stuff works dot com. Uh,
30:23
Speaker 1: you know it's it's the end of this. Do you
30:26
Speaker 1: want to just go out on a single long let's
30:28
Speaker 1: do it? Okay, we are family and body and see
30:38
Speaker 1: we uh family, fifty family. Man. Is it over? It's over.
30:46
Speaker 1: Let's make it over. It's over.