Kissing Cousins: A History of Marrying Family

to say. Now. I remember Livia helped us with this one, and she did a great job of this is outstanding. But I remember sending the email, but I don't remember what happened just before I sent that email. Well, all I remember is that that email was frantic and it all caps with a lot of misspellings. I had gone to lunch with my super for hot cousin. I don't think that had anything to do with it. Oh, you know Rhonda. Everybody knows Rhonda. Uh, there is no cousin Ronda.

Just so everyone knows, that was a Josh joke. I don't have many cousins, do you have a lot of cousins. I don't know perfect. I was just kind of thinking about this, and I just don't have many. My dad had one brother and he had three sons, one of whom passed away a few years ago. The other two I'm not close to or not even touch with. Actually, uh, my mom's sister never had kids. Her brother uh never had biological kids. But I'm actually closest to my cousin David,

who you met in our show in Kansas. David was adopted, and I'm like tighter with him than anyone. And then my mom's other brother has two daughters and a son who seemed great. I just, you know, we're sort of in touch when I was on Facebook, but we kind of fell out of touch over years. But you know, they're good people. Is that Rhonda's family? That's that's Rhonda. But I'm not one of these families that has like,

you know, twentysothing cousins. Yeah. I seem to remember as a child in Ohio having like a bunch of cousins, but it's not clear as an adult, like if they were like, you know, close friends of my mom's kids or that kind of thing. I know, I have one cousin who's like in the seventies. It's just all over the place. It's a big mess. Basically, I'm not going to marry any of them. I'm already married, and you

mean I are verified not cousins. Correct, But as we'll see, it's not that big of a deal at least with cousins, depending on where you are. Absolutely, and again I don't remember what inspired this, but I looked into it a little bit before sending it off to Libya and found that generally speaking around the world through history and now, marrying cousins and most of the world is fine. Yeah, they're cool with it, they like it, and there's good reasons too. But if we're talking about so that is um,

I actually saw a distinction here. So that is a what would be called a co sanguineous marriage, second cousin or closer. Yes, exactly, And that sanguine or um is like blood right, So you're saying like it's a related blood or blood relative marriage is essentially what that is. Um. Again,

it depends on just how close you're going there. People can be cool with it, but there is a definite stopping point almost around the world, in every culture and not just the ones around today, but in throughout history there's basically been a general taboo on you having sexual relations with your nuclear family, that siblings, parents, um son's daughters, all that stuff, that when you're when you're that close, you just should not be touching improperly. As Hodgement would say,

hugging and kissing. Sure that to his uh he that's his stand in for intercourse. I know it makes me more uncomfortable than if he just said that's the thing he says that is not his real life, you know, application which as far as he will go, no one's ever gotten past first base with Hodgem. Oh it's so

sad um. So Olivia did a pretty smart thing, I think with this research and started out with animals, because you would, you know, if you want to look at our our primate friends and other mammals, it's kind of

a fun place to start. And generally speaking, uh, animals also avoid interbreeding, and it depends on which species as to how uh kind of hard line they are about it and how much they try to avoid it, and how much they try to avoid it seems to be entirely based on because you know, they're not one to say like, oh, that's gross, that's creepy. Uh. Some animals might, but most don't. Um. But it's entirely based on what's called inbreeding to pression basically like will it be bad

for our species if we do this? Yes? So um, you know, anthropologists said, well, you know, we're studying animals, and animals show um sexual aversion to siblings or parents. So if animals do it and humans are animals, Like, does that just mean that all of these cultural taboos around the world and throughout history are basically the human version of innate sexual a virgin version, tendencies that any

animal would have. That it's just the kind of the natural evolution of a this biological imperative to not reproduce with our parents or siblings. But what have they found? Well, I mean that's one very widely believed theory that that's what it is. Um. Other people have said, well, I think instead that what it is is humans are smart enough to see that that there is a problem with you know, um inbreeding as well as we'll see later on um that the offspring can have you know problem

him is that other offspring of non cosaguineus. Yeah, marriages wouldn't have, So we just observed this over time and made up these laws around it to make it taboo

for that reason. That's another theory, right, which I mean one of the people that put this forth as a gentleman named William Durham, And it seems like he's saying like, otherwise we would be doing this, right, I guess, I guess so maybe yeah, Okay, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but it just seems like the theory is basically that like, no, when it comes to humans, there is no natural aversion, but we just uh sort

of invented this thing for good reasons. But yeah, but based on observations of you know, we tried it at first and it didn't really work out. So now we're seeing like we need to make some sort of universal law that can extend through the ages, you know, because the taboo is a lot more than just a law. It's like it's it's just it's a law. Plus you know what I'm saying. There's like a there's a like there's there's this guy named Jonathan Hate He he used

to be with you University of Virginia. I don't know if he is still or not, but he was studying moral intuition, and one of the ways that he studied that is he would present um study participants with this little scenario where I think it was Julie and Jack maybe Um are brother and sister. They're traveling together in the south of France there in a cabin one day

and they decided buckle up, buddy, Um. They decide just to just to have a new experience that neither one has ever had and probably never will have again, to have sex, even though their blood brother and sister. Okay, so he puts a spin on this. He says Julia was on the pill Jack war condom. They both decided that they wanted to see how interesting this would be and that it wasn't going to harm anybody. There was no chance of producing offspring. End, they kept this as

a secret to themselves. That actually brought them closer together as brother and sister to have this shared secret they never did again. Is that okay? And to a person, people respond with no, that's not okay, And Jonathan Height would say or Hate would say why not? And people couldn't. I couldn't put their finger on it. They just knew it was because yeah, and There's been a lot of questions about that. It's like, you know, what study group

are you talking about? What does that really show? But it's a really kind of an interesting demonstration that total we have this really distinct feeling basically across the board, at least, you know, in most cultures, in most societies, that that is wrong. There's something very wrong with it, even if we can't overtly say what's wrong with it,

even if there are wine coolers involved. That's funny you say that because I just saw a Seinfeld episode where George tries to come on to his cousin, upset his parents, and his cousin his drinking wine coolers in the back of the band right before they're about to Wow. That's really funny, totally weird, and it very much dates Seinfeld and myself, I guess for sure. Uh, although all those like new fangled alcoholic beverages, those are all just sort

of the new wine cooler, aren't they exactly? Yeah? All right, so we should talk about the Western Mark effect. This is pretty interesting, Um it is. There was a late nineteenth century sociologist from Finland name Edward uh Vester Mark. I guess I should have said the vest Mark effect, And there was a hypothesis that makes a lot of sense that basically said, two kids that are raised together UH won't be sexually attracted to each other as they

you know, when they get older. And then that was expanded to that also includes like parents in the house and studies to back this up, and then later it was even expanded further to be like, you don't have

to even be related. If you were raised together, then you're not going to be attracted to each other later, right, And so that really supports the idea that our cultural taboos against uh incest is a um, it's from a biological imperative that there's some part of growing up and reaching adolescents where some mechanism is triggered along the way where it's like I don't I'm not attracted to you, you're my sibling kind of thing. And there's plenty of

studies that back this up. Actually, um, there's I think more often than not, the studies tend to back it up, although there have been studies that kind of showed the opposite, but there's so few and far between that it seems like the Western Mark effect is possibly a real thing, and it extends beyond blood relatives, so that um kids who are raised together that might not even be blood siblings but are raised in the same house or say

like on a Kibbitts. They found that it's it's also apparent as well they will have that same Western mark effect too, right, But they also found that it only because I was going to make a joke about like Willis and Kimberly, but it wouldn't apply because it seems to only be a thing if they were cohabitating before they were six years old, which would not be the case with Willison Kimberly, and they could they can fall

in love. Uh. There is also um this thing called well, I don't even think it has a name actually, uh, but just sort of like the backward version of the investor mark effect, which is and I've heard I feel like I've heard real life stories about this, unless it's

just been in TV shows and movies. Is when kind of like separated at birth situations where they meet each other later and have a very strong physical attraction to one another, but then they find out their cousins and or or maybe even siblings or first cousins, and then it's like, ah, in the movie version. But then they eventually find out that of course it was just a big mistake and they are really in love and it's okay they can hug and kiss finally, which let's say

the Royal Tannon bombs. But they were they were actually raised together, so that kind of flies in the face of best Mark. I think they were actually Oh no, uh, she was adopted. That's right. So there actually is a term for this. It's called genetic sexual attraction. And it's not just in movies, dude. There's this really interesting government handout. Uh, you can go search the Cumbria c U m b

r I a city council genetic sexual Attraction. It'll bring up a PDF that they give to people who have been adopted who are going to reunite with family members that says, hey, we really want to tell you about this really strange experience that you might have where you find you are powerfully attracted to your biological mom who you're just meeting your biological sister or brother, and that, yes, is very weird and it's going to make you feel weird.

But don't follow it through to its you know, seemingly logical conclusion of having sex with him because you're going to ruin your lives, You're gonna put a strain on this new relationship. And it's not really you're not really sexually attracted. We think, we think that it's just such a powerful um like connection that you're sending that as an adult, you accidentally mistranslated into a sexual attraction, because that's the only thing it could possibly explain. It just

does not compute. But it's really really interesting and it does seem to be a real thing that you have to like taken into account when you reunite with a biological family member. Where's Cumbria and why Cumbria? I'm just killing that um it is in the UK. Okay, I'm pretty sure doesn't matter. They've got a great hand out. No. I just wondered if it was an especially problem, like a problem there especially or doesn't it seem like, oh, I see, yeah, definitely, maybe it is just a cumber

you a problem. I don't know. I got the impression that it was, you know, genetic or biological. Well no, I mean that it happened there a lot. So they're like, I guess we need a pamphlet now, right, it's a it's a well done pamphlet too, or maybe they have a I'll never mind. Um, I'm just gonna drop that one. I think that's best. In fact, maybe we should just take a break. I think that's best as what And I'm gonna think about what I almost did. I don't know, all right, So I guess if we want to that

was a pretty good setup. I think. I think if we want to go back in time, it gets pretty interesting because depending on where you are in the history of humans and where you are on planet Earth, it's sort of gone from people didn't really do it, some people did, some people frowned upon it, or generally nobody really frowned upon it for a little while. I guess you could even almost classified as a fad in some cases.

But if you look at religion, certainly throughout time, they are all kinds of um inter family sexual unions from Zeus and Hera who were siblings all over Muslim and

Jewish and Christian traditions. Uh. You know, there's an explanation do when Adam and Eve have cane and able and then sort of look around at each other, go, well, wait a minute, we're supposed to populate the earth, so Uh, various religions have explained that away as there were also twin daughters born and uh, that's how the earth was originally populated. And maybe Cane even slew able because I guess he got he got the hot one, right, I want mith mithy. Yeah, it sounds like a money python

sketch or something like. It really does. There's this classic princess beauty and then like and in fact, I think that was a money python sketch. Probably I don't know the one, but I'm guessing. Yeah. So, Um. The thing is is that they they have found most historians tend to agree that um, even though like deities or you know, um, ancient figures in in religious texts were involved in incest, that among common everyday people, they were not. It was

not a widespread phenomenon. It was almost relegated to the elite. Um. And by almost, I mean it absolutely was. It's not like if you were an elite family, you were definitely engaged in incests no matter what culture or what historical period you're in. But you are far more likely in in history, um too, if you were an elite to have an incestor's relationship than if you were just an everyday schmo cutting stones to build a pyramid. Yeah, and you know, it's it's the same as what we'll you know,

we'll talk about royals later on. It was a way to keep it all in the family and then keep that power consolidated. Uh. And we'll see evidence of economic reasons for doing that as well as just sort of being the elite ruling class. Uh. And in fact, in some cases with the elite ruling class, they touted it as like sort of like we're this special that we are almost required to do this, I mean not just above the law, above the taboos like that. Is. Yes,

they are definitely creating an elite status for themselves. And it does like it's definitely been shown scientifically documented now that all all of these kind of um folklore and histories and religious texts are being proven, like two tongue commons parents have been shown to have been brother and sister um. Based on history, We're pretty sure Cleopatra married both of her brothers at different times and that her parents were probably brother and sister. So it definitely did happen. UM.

Just to what extent is is unclear, that's right. Uh, And I think there was one exception as far as the commoners go, and that was during the Roman Egyptian period first the third century CE, where I guess that might have been a fad thing because the census shows that there were a lot of common people that were in you know, sibling marriages basically, Yeah, but we don't know what everybody thought of that. But if it was that widespread, I guess people weren't that down on it,

you know, right. And then uh, in Iran or Persia at the time Zoroastrian Persia from the fifth century b C. To the eleventh century c E, they had something called ex wadoda Um, which basically said, this is a really spiritual, powerful ritual you can you can engage in on a Friday and with your brother or sister and that they said that you get a lot of power spiritually from this act. And they think possibly it's because you you were having to overcome you know, your aversion to incest

and supposedly gained some power from that. That's right. And it wasn't necessarily like a marriage, right, No, it was like ritual sex sure, like Alistair Crowley style exactly in the desert. Uh So that's generally like what we've kind of been talking about is sibling stuff and how that's gone through history. When it comes, like we said at the beginning, when it comes to cousins, that's really a different story even today in many parts of the world. Uh, cousins,

I mean not from the beginning of time. Because it is interesting that they did studies of ancient people and found d n A evidence And this is just last year. Uh, from almost eighteen hundred ancient humans going back about forty five thousand years or at least as far back is that only three percent. It looked like we're even cousin marriage. So it's something that gotten more popular after ancient humans,

which I think is really interesting. Yeah, they think it started around the time that history did, which is usually where we place, you know, a thousand or two years after agriculture, and they think that it was a result of agriculture of settling down. Um, that you would have a much greater aversion to marrying your cousin in hunter gatherer societies because there would be much less genetic diversity.

But when you take a bunch of different people and pull them into the same place, yeah, they might be related by marriage or you know, their cousins a couple of times removed, but because of the increased genetic diversity, there would be far less chance of there being some

sort of um, genetic mishap from the mating of those cousins. Yeah, and I guess one thing we didn't point out is that previous to this, when people were engaging in like the elites and sibling marriage and things like that, they generally avoided uh, genetic mishaps. Because as you'll see, it's still pretty rare. We'll get to that later, but they

did things to discourage that kind of stuff. Uh, Like some of the marriages were celibate and stuff like that, and it was really all about consolidation of power and not like all right, now we'll have twelve kids right exactly with eight heads. Uh. This one step kind of alarm me though, And this is of course just one person's opinion. But there's an anthropologist at Rutger's named Robin Fox who estimated that of all marriages in history may

have been second cousin or closer, which that seems really high. Yes, but they make a really good case, and they say that until we had segways and trains and stuff like that, you. When you went courting, you probably didn't court much more than about five miles away from home because you had to walk there and back, usually in a day. Um, So within that five mile d s you were much more likely to encounter cousins. And so as a result, the cousin marriage probably was like taking place at a

really high rate. I don't know where they came up with, but it is a it's a pretty interesting hypothesis at least. Yeah. Absolutely, Uh. And we're gonna jump around sort of all over the world too to see what has happened in other cultures. And China's one this pretty noteworthy. Uh, and that for

a lot of China's in fact, most of their history. Um, if you were first cousins and you wanted to get married, it was generally okay, unless they were they were the kids of two male siblings, and they just reckoned because you had the same family name. It was a little too weird. Uh. They think they thought that, um, like brothers with the same family name were kind of considered more relatives than say a brother and a sister with two different last names because this sister has been married off,

which is just not true. No, it's not, but I mean it's a cultural thing, you know. Yeah, But this also came about in the early eighties with the PRC marriage law banning first cousin marriage, and it was about birth defects, and it was it was the same time as sort of there, I don't know what I mean, do we call it eugenics. They said that they wanted

to improve quote the quality of the population. So yeah, I'd say that's eugenics, okay, But it was in lockstep with the one child policy, and that's basically when China started getting like super in everyone's business as far as the child rearing goes. But what's interesting is that's about a hundred years after America started passing laws on that kind of thing too. Yeah, that's true. So there's another Um.

There's a really cool hypothesis by a guy named Joseph Heinrich who's an evolutionary biologist, and he traces UM a really big change back to five five oh six CE when the Catholic Church, UM, the people leading the church basically said hey, you cannot marry anyone closer than your third cousin from now on, which is interesting because we we consider a co sanguineous relationship. Second cousins are closer, right, So maybe that's where that comes from. But they are

not entirely certain where why they said that. But they said that, and it was a big time rule, and the Catholics started running the show around that time all over Europe. So this applied to a lot of people. And heinrich hypothesis is that that change that changed things so much that it led to the modern world. Basically right with the idea that, um, I guess the family bonds took a hit. People were encouraged to be a

little more individual uh listic. I don't know why, I put a big pause in the middle of that, and basically trust other people, such that societies were able to form because it wasn't like, well I only trust my family, you know, they started. It really came down to human trust as far as branching out and and larger groups

of nonrelated people kind of getting along and trusting each other. Yeah, because if you only trust and care for and take care of your kin, you know, a kin network can only be so large, so your society can only be so large. But if you remove that kind of kin network stuff, like by saying you need to marry outside of your kin network, then you can't support a larger

and larger society too. And then they think also that led to things like free market competition, that we might not have had that or such an emphasis on that kind of thing. But like you said, individualism that it basically whatever we think of as the West today traces its roots back to that, and all had to do with not being able to marry members of your king group, which is the opposite of the Josh Clark motto, which

is never trust family exactly. Another little sidebar here that I thought was interesting was the um Some people think that the tradition at a wedding of saying if anyone has any object should to the marriage is sort of a evolution of the question does anybody know if these two are related? Yeah? I thought that was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, So Heinrich wrote a book if if you're like I need to know more about this, it's called How the

West Became Weird? Weird as in Western educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, right, not Austin weird, No, But I think he also says like kind of Austin weird too, you know. Okay, so we talked about um. You know, when people think of like like incests and royalties or even you know, an intra family marriage. Um, like you, you tend to think of things like the Habsburg jaw. And I know we've talked about that before, but I don't remember. Do we do like a short stuff on it or something. No,

I tried to think of it. I think I'm pretty sure it was a video, one of our videos that we did, because I remember flashing images of these humongous underbytes. Chuck. I swear to you we've talked about last year. Really, yes, I swear. And either that or my sense of time has been so messed up in the last couple of years that well, I'm just kidding. I'm just done, basically right. So, the Habsburgs were royals who in bread so much that they had, like you said, what was known as the

Habsburg jaw. Uh. And what I said, which was a big time underbyte and like I have a bit of a even bite, not quite an underbyte, uh. And I have always been a little self conscious about it. But when I saw the Habsburg jaws, I was not like, nothing to worry about. Yeah, Charles. The Second of Spain was described as quote swallowing all he eats whole for his another jaw stands out so much that his two rows of teeth cannot meet. Yeah, that's the Habsburg jaw

for you. I'm pretty sure you can chew your food right. No, no, no, I'm fine. I'm a little more Bruce Springsteen, not quite Habsburg. So. Um. The much bigger problem that the Habsburg faces that their children had to infant mortality rate of about eighteen percent, which was high even at the time, But it was specific for that family and what they were doing I think you touched on it earlier was they were consolidating power.

They were making sure that some other family from some other country didn't worm its way into the Habsburgs and take over Germany or Saxony or Austria wherever the Habsburgs were ruling, and they they just kept it in the family. And so there were some problems genetically, but they were far from the only family to to try this, and some of the greatest economic dynasties that the world has ever seen did the same thing for the same reasons too. Yeah.

The DuPont's Uh, Pierre Samuel DuPont Uh said in eighteen ten quote the marriages that I should prefer for our colony would be between the cousins, and that way we should be sure of honesty of soul and purity of blood, uh end quote. And that was you know, it's not only about uh power, but I think keeping the money in the family, being wary of strangers coming in because

they're rich, uh, that kind of thing. So I think it was, at least how I read, it was a little less like a eugenics pure bloodline thing and a little more like we gotta keep our own. Yes, it was the same thing for the Roth's Child, the Jewish banking family um basically the exact same thing. And so the du Ponts, which were founded I believe in France. DuPont's first name was Pierre Samuel. Back in the Rothschild,

I know where. I believe in France. I know, I believe they were from France, and the Habsburg's basically ruled Europe for you know, quite a while centuries, I believe, And so in Europe the idea of intra family marriages and in breeding between close relations was kind of looked at is like, if you were well to do, you

kind of did that thing. So there wasn't nearly in as much an aversion to it as there was in the United States, which is why the United States was one of the first countries to really start passing laws against marrying um close relations. Actually, yeah, eighteen seventy five is when things started to kind of I think people just started to not do it as much culturally in the US. And then as far as laws on the books, Uh, they even started a little bit before that. And what

was the very first state, Josh Kansas. Yeah, the Jayhawks leading the way in incest laws don't do it in eighteen fifty eight, and by the mid nineteen twenties, most

of the states had laws on the books. Uh. Olivia points out that if you were a Western state, you were a little more likely to be ahead of the curve because they were newer states and they were just writing their laws for the first time, so they kind of you know, had to go through everything, and this was a time when they everyone in the country it's just started looking at the laws around marriage is basically in a health and safety manner and not so much

like we just want to be in your business thing, right, And it's strange to think of today and especially as an American. But apparently America has long had an outlier preoccupation with um like close relatives marrying. Like elsewhere in the world, as we'll see, it's not a thing, but even in parts of Europe it's a it's a much more modern aversion than it has been in America. Like, I guess around the world, we're known as like we've got a real problem with cousin marrying, like almost like

methinks they doth protest too much, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I know what you mean. Uh twenty five states in the US today have banned first cousin marriage. Only half uh seven more have some restrictions. And I think Arizona's is fairly adorable because they allow it if you're at least sixty five years old or older, or if you can't reproduce. So I guess they're like, you know, I guess you really couldn't find anyone else, or you really

really loved each other, just don't make any babies. That's the that's the Arizona law. Yeah, absolutely so. And again we're talking co sanguineous marriages. In most laws, that means second cousins are closer. Um. And again around the world this is not considered a problem that cousin marriages. Apparently as much as ten percent of the global population practice marriages a second cousins are closer, and then in some

Middle Eastern provinces it's as high as eighty percent. Yeah, and it's interesting when you look at this, uh I guess it was a study. It was they were interviews in uh Pakistan around this, and the reasons that these women gave were they make a lot of sense. They they said that a few different things, that they were more compatible, not compatible, compatible with family than strangers, which

makes sense. Uh, that their in laws were kinder to the brides if they were from the same family, and that uh within if you had a guess a co sanguineous marriage, you were less focused on physical appearance and looks yeah, that's that was the um the Pakistani surveys respondents like take on the whole thing that they just didn't consider it like that. And then the other thing is they were suspicious of people who wanted to marry outside their family because in a society like that where

there was a lot of intra marriage or intra family marriages. UM, it was a real red flag when somebody outside of your family was like, hey, you want to marry me, because it would say that their family found them unfit to be married. So they've got real problems, right, So so yeah, it would, it would you would just not want to marry something like that and that in that sense.

Shall we take a break. Yeah, let's all right. We'll talk about some more famous examples and then get to the bottom of the health risks right after this, So Chuck, before we get started again, I want to say something because I came across UM the kind of a working definition of incest is way different than the kind of

the general um way that we're using it. I've tried to pepper this with you know, intra marriage or cos anguineous marriage, but incess specifically, which most people just think of as like sexual relations between very close family members, is is supposedly defined as um like it's a dominant version of that. It's it's an abusive version of that where somebody in a position of power like an older brother or an older sister or a father mother, um

basically molests like one of their family members. That it's a very specific kind of sexual relations among family members and probably the darkest of all the kinds. So that's the true definition. That's what I saw. Oh interesting, Yeah, I always thought that it could also mean consensual. Yeah, I think that's what most people think. That's why I wanted to share that, because that's what I thought too, until you know, yesterday when I was running across it.

All right, thanks for clearing that up. You're welcome. Uh. So let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is the health risks. Uh. That's sort of the the unspoken thing people always think about in the back of their head when they hear of like, oh, I have family members that married each other and their third cousins, And the very first thing probably pops into someone's head is is like, is this going to be problematic when they go to have kids? And as we will see,

that doesn't necessarily mean that it will. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, my entire view of this thing has been completely upended in the last two days because it depends on well we'll get into it in a second. But when most people think of like close relations marrying, you just think of children born with abnormalities, birth effects, um possibly genetic disorders and all that can happen. But the reason it happens isn't because brother and sister, you know, head sex

and automatically God punished them. You know, that's not that's not how it works. What it is is that brother and the sister are much more likely to be carriers of a certain recessive gene. And so when you put those two together together and produce an offspring, that offspring is almost certainly going to have that genetic disorder or abnormality or whatever, and so that that that's just likelier to happen. But even among um intra marriages or intra

family marriages, UM, that's a really rare outcome, to be honest. Yeah, I mean these genetic disorders that we're talking about, which are everything from sickle cell anemia too, cerebral palsy uh, I guess, cystic fibrosis. Some of these things they're rare to begin with. So even if you're doubling up your chances, it's it's not like it makes it likely. It's still

gonna be rare. And it's the case where like this is the thing that reveals that recessive gene, you know, because the brother and the sister don't have this disease. That's why it's recessive. So they don't know this going in, and then all of a sudden they have a kid that has this birth defect and they you know, they maybe do genetic testing and it's unraveled. Right. So the thing is that can happen to two nonrelated people too, because there's so many obsessive genes out there in the

general population. But because there's so many and there's so many people that the chances of two unrelated people is much less. Like you said, it might be double for people who are related, but still in absolute terms, it's not that that much of a risk numbers wise. But what you're saying is when you get to to non like if you're not marrying a family member, you're actually engaging in more of a genetic crap shoot then you are, as a marrying a family member, because you could know

probably what's likelier to happen. Unless you've done, like you said, genetic counseling, you have no idea how your genes are going to match with somebody else's. Again, we have so many genes, there's so many different possible mutations, and there's so many people in the in the reproductive pool, that the chances are just very low that it's going to

produce some sort of genetic disorder, abnormality or something like that. Yeah, and I think historically it's been a lot more common in uh, very small rural communities where the gene period is just a lot smaller. Uh. And you know it's just math. Basically, you're just going to be more at risk. Okay, So I read this UM this study. I read the abstract.

I have to fess up, I didn't read the whole study, but it was from the University of Natural Sciences, Lahore in Pakistan, and they basically said, which, whether consanguineous or non consanguineous marriage, which one is preferable, depends on which level you're looking on on the individual level or on

the population level. And then on a population level. And this is stone cold eugenic speak, right, So I just want to preface it with that, But on a population level, you're actually better off having your population mary relatives because UM, there will be a huge upsurge initially in children who are born with UM, you know, genetic disorders, who might not survive infancy and who won't go on to reproduce the ones who do survive and go on to reproduce

will actually be potentially genetically fitter because they're good alleles, they're good genes mixed with their sisters good genes, and they're producing offsprings with like super genes. Basically, so on a population level, it's great. On an individual level, it's not so great. Interesting, And so they concluded overall, on for populations, until we learned to treat genetic disorders, like through gene therapy or something like that, we should really

just keep out lawing co sanguineous marriages. Right, Wow, when was that it was a recent paper? I'm not executive. It was in the last ten years for sure. Uh well, should we finish up with just some bulleted points and factoids? That's how we do well. I guess we could talk about some famous people who very famously married very close relatives. Edgar Edgar Allan Poe did so in eighteen thirty five.

He married I believe a first cousin named Virginia Eliza Klem and apparently the outrage there was the fact that

she was thirteen and he was twenty seven. So even the eighteen thirty five that was a pretty uh a pretty big age gap, and I guess people were creeped out, and I guess pose walking around super creepy anyway, he was like that people out further, Yeah, exactly, Jesse James married his first cousin in eighteen seventy four, which again it's right on the precipice of when when America started to be like, we're not cool with cousin marrying anymore. Oh yeah, that's right there, and H G. Wells, Yeah,

and then Einstein. I didn't know he married his cousin, did you. I did not know that married his cousin, Elsa uh in nineteen nineteen, and I think both of them it was their second time around marriage wise, and uh, you know, I don't think it went went so well. I think he wasn't a great husband apparently. Yeah, so

Olivia found it all. That's an interesting article. That's really depressing and disturbing because I had no idea, but Einstein seems to have been a really terrible husband, like cruel even you could say, yeah, yeah, so if you really want to just keep liking Einstein and only think of him like that poster with his tongue sticking out, not read that all that is interesting article on or a lovable shaggy Tim Robbins. Yeah, what was that from? Oh

he was in the movie Meg Ryan played his daughter. No, that was Walter math Out that played Einstein. She got together. She got together with Tim Robbins. That's right. Robins got another good twenty years before he starts playing Einstein. Yeah, or Meg Ryan's dad. And I was way confused. Bath Ow he was a great See the Couch Trip with Dan Ackroyd. I'm sure I have a big Walter Bathou fan. That was a wonderful movie. And I think that might

be one of his better performances too. Yeah, he was amazing. What what can we go over here? Some other sort of taboos are in the world. These are interesting, I think. Yeah, I agree. So, um, different cultures have kind of come up with like taboo plus like really complex stuff to basically say, Okay, you can marry this person, you can't marry that that person. It goes beyond just you can't

marry your second cousin or closer and um. One of the one of the ways that the Muslim religion has done this is to come up with something called a milk kinship, where if you breastfeed a child who's unrelated

to you at least three to five times. Then you and that child are considered mah ram, which means you are you cannot marry right, even though you're not a blood relative, you might not have any blood shared between you because you breastfed, you can't marry that that person, right, which seems like duh, because you're raising this you know, kid from a baby. But I don't think we mentioned

at the beginning. There have been cultures through history where it was a common practice to a opped and raise a baby and also marry them, like you marry the baby and then raise them up to adulthood. Baby bride, baby bride. It's it's it's very hard to wrap your head around or baby groom. I saw in in at least one culture. Yeah. Um again, it's it's hard to wrap your head around here in two. But that's something

that happened. So this was a big deal in the Muslim culture because you don't have to wear uh he job if you are mah ram. So it's sort of a work around when you raise this adopted baby. Uh all of a sudden, when they get old enough, you don't have to wear that he job around them anymore, right because you're maram, which is kind of fun to say. It is um. And then there's something called the lever

marriage I had. I think it has to do with Levi from the Bible, Old Testament stuff, but basically it's a law that is found in a bunch of different disparate cultures that says if you you are married to a man and that and your husband dies, your brother in law has to marry you. And it was it seems to have been away um not to you know, marry off an unmarriable brother, a brother in law, I should say, um, but instead to take care of women.

From what I can tell, Yeah, I feel like I've seen this not as a requirement, but it's just a plot line in like Old West movies, like the husband dies and so the widow marries is you know, the brother comes into town for the funeral and then they fall in love or something. Tim Robbins, I don't think so he had really shaggy hair. I know I've seen

that before. But as far as the required the Old Testament version, uh, there was a stipulation where if the brother in law said no thanks, uh, then the widow. I guess an offense takes off his sandals and then spits in his face, and then his bloodline is forever known as the family of the Unsandaled, which I guess you would not want to be known as that. I

also saw. So there's a um culture called the chuck Chi from eastern Siberia and they practice leverette marriage UM, where you know, if your if your husband dies, you marry his brother. And this is a way of taking care of women in a place that's like really unforgiving climate wise. UM. And they actually have a backup to that.

They have wife swapping, where very close friends will create a pact and they will share their wives and then all of the children born are all that groups you know, responsibility. There's not like a delineation, and that supports women whose husbands don't have a brother. So if their husband dies, they're still taking care of by this other husband and his wife and their family. Interesting. Yeah, it's pretty smart. I always think of raising Arizona whenever hear the two

words wife swap. It's impossible not to. You know, me and Dottie are swingers. You got anything else? I got an nothing else? I don't either, which means this is the end of our marrying cousin episode. Since I talked about marrying cousins one last time, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this adoption language. And this is something that UH made me feel bad in

a good way, if that makes sense. It's something I'm never considered as a as a dad who has an adopted kid, and I'm really glad that Frank opened my eyes to this. Hey, guys, my wife Katie and I were listening to the Roe v. Waight episode and we have a minor tangential note. We notice that you used the phrase gave up when referencing adoption a few times. I gave up their baby for adoption, which is U. You know, it's a very common thing people say, like

I say it all the time too. My wife is a social worker for an adoption agency in the Chicago area, and I learned from her that the phrase is really frowned upon in the adoption community as it can have a negative connotation of quitting on a child when that is not the case, and they encourage people to say instead that the mother made an adoption plan for the baby. UH. In fact our agency at a campaign a few years

ago called to give up giving Up. Uh. I never thought twice about it until I learned about it from my wife, And I think it'd be great for your listeners to know. And that is from Frank and Frank. I'm very glad you let me know this because this is something that we've even said in our house, and we have tidied that up because when I think about it,

that is not the right thing to say. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you could see reflecting on the child, especially when they get old enough to start thinking in those terms, but also on the the parents who who adopted off their child, you know, like like they did something shameful or something like that. Yeah, absolutely, Frank. So I think it's one of the situations where it's just sort of the way it's always been said. And I love it when people

point out like, no, there's a better way forward. Yeah, like when that dude told us to stop using dark Ages, that's same thing. Yeah, if you want to get in touch with us, like Frank or the Dark Ages dude, you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, unless it's a second cousin or closer and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production

of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.