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CLASSIC: Are All US Presidents Actually Related? · Ridiculous History

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