October 12, 2024 • 32 mins
In 2012 a student in Salinas, California, startled genealogists when she claimed that all Presidents save one were actually related. Could it be true? Join Ben and Noel in today's classic episode as they dive into this strange claim, separating fact from fiction while tackling what it means, exactly, to be related to someone. (It's all relative.)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, folks, we have been on a bit of a
presidential kick of late say a tare dare we say
a taar? We do we dare? And this classic episode
is about a question that popped up in Man. It
must have been early twenty eighteen, maybe late twenty seventeen.
Are all US presidents actually related?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:24):
It comes from a student in Selena's, California, back in
twenty twelve. I guess this is before we instituted our
historical cutoff.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
But I guess it has to.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Do with history before nineteen ninety fourth, so we'll give
our past selves a past pass. But yeah, student in Selenas,
California shook the genealogy and presidential history world to its
core when she claimed that all US presidents except for one,
share an ancestor.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's all relative. Let's get into it. Ridiculous History is
a production of iHeartRadio Breaking News, Friends and Neighbors. As
(01:30):
we begin today's episode, recording on April thirtieth, twenty eighteen,
there are seven point five eight three one five eight
five hundred and twenty three people alive on the planet.
That's a little over seven point five billion.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Hi, I'm ben, can you break that down to one
of those fancy math numbers, or it's like something to
the something.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I could, Yeah, I could.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Are you good? Are you Mathew like that? Ben?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
You know I've been known to dabble. I don't have
a personal passion for it.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Now, yeah, what about you? No, we're your SAT scores
pretty balance between English and Math.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Higher in English.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Mine were way higher in English, way out of whack
with the maths. So I may have to lean on
you for math support in this episode. Hi, my name
is Nol.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
So out of seven point five billion people, you have
chosen to tune into a podcast featuring three of those people,
just a measly three out of billions. We are so
glad you're here. But wait, Ben, but wait Nol. You
might be saying, who is this mysterious third person you're
(02:38):
talking about. Why? It's our super producer Casey Smooth Jazz pegrom.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Oh man, I like that that new smooth Jazz Casey
sound effect.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
We did not run this by Casey.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Before making a face. Is he making a face?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Is it a pleasurable face?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I'm into it? Cool?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Oh all right, and that's been Casey on the case.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So now that we've established that we're going to be
talking about large numbers of humans. Why don't we take
a step back and let's kind of like couch that
with with a historical topic.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Right, Yes, let's let's dare I say, I may give
the people what they want, a story about ridiculous history.
So we'll come back to that number that is ticking
as as we record from something called the worldcounts dot com,
where you can find things like world population clocks.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Is that the same as the doomsday clock?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It's thankfully not. No, it's different. But for some people
who consider our society at large on the verge of collapse,
then yes, it's a different doomsday clock. But we will
return to that in a very important way. Today. We'd
like to set the scene for everyone in the US
and abroad by saying that there's something quirky about the
(04:06):
United States. Despite the fact that it is a representative democracy.
Several of our presidents are commanders in chief, and several
other people in high positions of power like the Supreme Court,
for instance, or senators and so on. They tend to
be related, not all the time.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
And of course most of you are surely aware of
the big name political dynasties like the Bushes or the Kennedys.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
But how about the Roosevelts. M yeah, yeah, the Roosevelts.
For many people, Fdr Franklin Delano Roosevelt remains an incredibly
popular or controversial figure. Not everybody likes him even in
the modern day. Wasn't a populist, Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
(04:56):
who was the mastermind, any ways behind what is known
as the New Deal, which had a lot of shall
we say, left leaning programs at the time.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Sure, and it also provided a lot of people jobs
when they were in desperate need of said jobs in
order to help build up our infrastructure, everything from roads
and bridges to things like what else.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
The DVA Tennessee Valley Authority, that's a huge one. There
were foul ways collection programs, there were any number of things,
a lot of infrastructure that was direly needed. He served
as the thirty second President of the United States from
nineteen thirty three until his death in nineteen forty five. However,
(05:46):
you may be saying, what about that other Roosevelt Teddybear, Yes,
Theodora Roosevelt.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Wendy Ruxbyin Roosevelt.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yes, yeah, yeah, this is the twenty sixth president of
the United States, And oddly enough, yes, the Teddy Bear
is named in his honor. Wasn't he the one who
carried a big stick and spoke softly? Yeah, yes, that
is the quote you'll hear about him.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
He was president for eight years from nineteen oh one
to nineteen oh nine. So, like many people, you would
assume that he and Franklin were related pretty closely, right.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
You know, And it's funny, Yes, I would assume that. Ben.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
In fact, I did assume that, because it's the kind
of thing you just take it face value. You got
your Kennedy's, you got your bushes. Why can't you have
your Roosevelts. Sure, and you can, but not in the
way you might think.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
No, No, it turns out so one of the assumptions
would have been that perhaps Theodore we'll call him Roosevelt
the elder, was the father of Franklin Roosevelt or maybe
an uncle or something like that.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Right, because they I was about to say, ruled, They
governed like thirty years apart.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, decades. And it's not the case. Although the math
might seem to roughly check out, it is not the
case that they are father son or uncle, nephew at all.
They are related, but in a much more.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Distant way, in a much more distant way. That sort
of shimmies us on to the next chapter that we're
going to get into. But it's interesting they related in
two different ways. In fact, they are they shared a
great great great great grandfather. So it's four great four greats,
making them fifth cousins.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Right, right, right, I get that right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And so the question there is just to spend some
time on this first relationship. The question there when we
get to the fifth cousinry of this is a question
for you, folks, are you in regular contact? Be honest, now,
are you in regular contact with your fifth cousins? Even one?
(07:56):
Can you name one of your fifth cousins? May speak
for the group, speak for yourself, please, I.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Will speak for myself, but I choose to speak with
the voice of the people in saying no.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Okay, yes, well, I myself am not super close with
my fifth cousin.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
You know him, you know what?
Speaker 1 (08:18):
I know? Love them really at Tennessee is a weird place, interesting, yeah,
but but I think if we're hanging out, it would
just be at the big events, you know, collapse of civilization,
some somebody's birthday or death like that.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
I would have thought those would have been reversed. I
thought collapse would have come more of a last resort.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
But that's the one where like, yeah, I'm telling you man.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, speaking of strange bedfellows now that okay, sure, I'll
go with that.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The other way they were related is that FDR's wife Eleanor.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
And it's funny.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I actually always used to think that Franklin's middle name
was Eleanor, and it was weird to me that his
wife's name was Eleanor. That was Eleanor, but now it's
Delano and Eleanor. Yes, she in fact was Teddy's niece,
direct niece, right, Yes, that is correct. It's just confusing
(09:13):
because her last name is Roosevelt without Franklin right right. Yes,
his last name was Roosevelt, and they married. She didn't
have to change your last name, right, so they get that, right. Yeah,
that's weird.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's why. That's why this is all very flo mixing.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And this also means that FDR and Eleanor, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were fifth cousins themselves once.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Removed both fifth cousins five by.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Five in it.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Wow, that's literally the same relationship. Right.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It sounds strange, and this may have some of us wondering,
are we going to jump the shark here? Is this
going to be an episode about unknown incests in the
US presidency bordering on that of the Egyptian royalty?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Jump the history show?
Speaker 1 (10:00):
We we just might, but the fact remains that this was
not a strange, untoward, or in any way ethically questionable relationship.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Now, man, it's fifth, it's fifth, it's fine. Fifth is fine.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
It's fine if it's fifth. Yes, okay, so that's it.
That's the show, folks. They're just not as related as
we thought.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, we kind of thought that ourselves, where we were like,
this is a show?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Is this the whole show?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
But you know what, sometimes finding a little quirky fact
like this can open up a whole field of rabbit
holes full of quirky facts, right right, a penibly if
you will.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
We asked ourselves what other strange and genealogical secrets does
the US presidency hold as in office? Right? And that's
when we ran into a crazy question. Are all us
presidents related. Oh, I think we both just assumed no.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yet seems like a long walk to get to that
question from our FDR and Teddy Roosevelt related to are
all presidents related? But as it turns out, this is
we're not the only ones asking this question, Ben, You're
not the only ones asking this question, right right?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
You know who else was asking this question?
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Twelve year olds?
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yep, yep, twelve year olds, specifically a budding genealogist by
the name of bridge Anne d'a avignon.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Amazing name.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
That's that's an amazing name. So she was twelve years
old back in twenty twelve, and then she came out
with a family tree that had some earth shaking implications.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Right yeah, man, it seems like she scooped like the
genealogy community at large with this one. Twelve year old
Bridge Anne Davignon, who is a resident of Salinas, California,
for a school project, Get this, created a family tree
that connected forty two of the forty three at the
(11:58):
time US presidents to a single common ancestor, a real
jerkwad by the name of King John of England or
John Lackland as his pappy called him.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yes, famously named that for signing the Magnet Carta in
twelve fifteen, which limited his power as a monarch and
led to the formation of what we recognize as the
modern British government. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
In fact, John had such a horrible reputation for cruelty
and incompetence that he was kind of strong armed into
signing that fateful document by these rebelling barons who had
had enough of his shenanigans, and essentially it limited his power,
(12:44):
It lost him a whole lot of land and basically
kind of neutered the monarchy for all intents and purposes.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
From that point on.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
What we're saying is that Lachland was not a compliment.
It wasn't It wasn't ironic either.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
No, And he was famously trade as the villain in
the robin.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Hood stories because of his you know, just notorious greed
and cowardice.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Robinhood Prince of Thieves, by the way, that's what we're
referring to.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I assume in the nineties, I was thinking more of
the Disney one where he's like a skinny lion.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It sucking his thumb.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
He's sort of a proto scar. Yeah, we should do
an entire show on Robin Hood in the future because
the facts don't really resemble the fiction, which may surprise
some people, maybe startle some people, but it's worth that
we will say that he was a human being and
not a anthropomorphic fox.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
No no, or a lion thumb sucking lion.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
But no.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
This young lady in California came up with this project
from I think she was originally trying to trace her
own ancestry and then somewhere along the way kind of
decided that she wanted to go way, way, way deeper
in the form of scouring over five hundred thousand names
(14:09):
to find what she termed the presidential adam. And her
grandfather was actually sort of an amateur genealogist himself, and
he helped her out. Here's the thing, though, what she
did that everyone before her, all of the people in
the professional genealogy community, had not done, was she looked
at both male and female family lines to make this connection.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
And the only president that did.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Not tie back to King John was Martin Van Buren
and that's because he hailed from.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Dutch roots, right. And this is again, this is according
to her findings with the help of her armchair genealogists grandfather.
One thing, we can say, heck of a science project,
probably the best one of the year there at Monte
Vista Christian School in Watsonville. But she also found out
that she is the eighteenth cousin of President Barack Obama.
(15:06):
She wrote to President Obama to share her findings, and
as of twenty twelve, she said she received a form
letter from the White House, but you know, maybe she
got a handwritten when later, because it's twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
That's a kick in the pants.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Then I have followed up and I haven't found any
new information about this. She also apparently was trying to
raise money for the trip by selling signed copies of
her massive sort of vision board esque family tree with
Barack Obama's head center in the middle, US President Barack
Obama world Leader, surrounded by his cousins with thousands of names.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So this leads to a question that we all have
to ask. We have to be skeptical. We can't be
instantly taken in by a snappy headline. And you know,
we were talking about this off air when I had
brought up some of the stuff and the question was,
are we crushing the dreams of a child if we
say that it isn't true. Luckily, it turns out it
(16:09):
is kind of true, this idea of a web of relationships.
But like the relationship between Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt,
it's not true in the way you might think.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
It's not particularly remarkable either.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
No, no, it is not.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
John was just not friends with anybody. He was constantly
feuding with the papacy quarrels over the election to the
See of Canterbury after the death of Hubert Walter. Pope
Innocent the third decided that John's nominee was no good
and instead elected Stephen Langton. And this infuriated John, and
(16:49):
they just really were not We're not very close. Here's
the thing too, King John, in addition to being cruel,
he was known for starving his enemies to death. In fact,
in an article from the BBC entitled the Lost Jewels
of Bad King John, historian Mark Morris, who wrote a
biography on the king, was asked if he was really
(17:13):
as bad in reality as he was made out to
be in songs and stories. And you know Robin Hood,
for example, to which he replied, no, much worse.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
In legend, he doesn't starve people to death. In reality
he does. En Mass so a bad guy and also incompetent.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Apparently he was traveling his what do you call it,
like a litter like what when you're in those a palquin?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Sure, like you know, is it where somebody's carrying them.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
More of a carriage kind of situation?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Okay, Yeah, And they had all of these boxes of
various supplies and treasure and they sunk into a marsh
known as the Wash. It's a very treacherous muddy bank
under the cross Key Bridge in Lincolnshire, England, and it
(18:05):
was all lost. He apparently lost the Crown jewels because
of this foolish route when he was actually running away
from his enemies at the time.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
So all around pretty bad guy.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Or, as Mark Morris would say, an absolute rotter. He
also Morris himself wrote an article for The Telegraph where
he says this is the most evil monarch in British
history and calls him a lecherous trader, a depraved tyrant
and a hopeless leader. He was also a serial rapist, yeah,
just putting that in there. His enemies were not necessarily
(18:37):
some sort of spoiled tyrants yearning for more power. They
were saying, we've got to we gotta get rid of
this guy because he is such a pill.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, big time.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
And I believe he had a brother who was known
as Richard the Lionheart. That actually comes into play in
the Robin Hood story where good King Richard comes back
to depose you know, King John. Anyway, the thing with
the lost treasure is interesting because it's actually become kind
of this like Dan Brown esque sort of mystery of
(19:07):
the secret Treasure of Prince John, where in that area
in England there are several folks who have been trying
to find.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It over the years with no success.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
One guy, in fact, claims that he can see the
outline of it on a Google Earth image. So not
exactly the most flattering guy for all of these presidents
to be connected to.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
The young lady did the project.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Her comment to a local news organization was they all
have the common trait of wanting power.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So there's that.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
So, folks here, we have a question for you, since
we're all learning a lot about each other's families today,
how many ancestors do you have? Well, if we're saying
living your dead, just any ancestors, doesn't matter if you
talk to them or not. It doesn't matter how long
ago they lived. We would see some pretty easy math.
(20:01):
At first, you have two parents, they each have two parents, right,
so you have two parents, four grandparents, they each have
each of your grandparents have two parents. So then you
have eight great grandparents, four grandparents, two parents, and then you.
And so when we realize that this exponential growth as
you go back in time through the generations applies to
(20:23):
every single one of the seven point five billion plus
people living on the planet, you start to run into
something weird and the math. The math doesn't check out
after a certain amount of time.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
That's right, because when you look back and trace your
theoretical ancestors in the way that you're talking about, you
start to actually outpace the population. In an article for
Abroad in the Yard called the US Presidents who descend
from King John of England and Why you probably do two,
Lee Renner writes that if you go back thirty generations
to the Middle Ages, you would theoretically have over one
(21:00):
billion ancestors in that line of your family tree.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, and furthermore, if you continue down the line. With
this sort of growth, then it will double every step,
and that means that just forty generations ago, we would
find that every person alive now has a trillion ancestors,
all living at the same time, which is impossible because
(21:25):
Earth has never had that many people living on it.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
So how does this work out?
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Ben help us out with the with the birthday math here,
that's that's what I like to call this kind of math.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
So this leads us to the concept of pedigree collapse
or as it's known in German auhen shrewnd. What does
that translate to loss of lineage? Roughly coined by a
guy named Robert C. Gunderson. Here's the gist without pedigree collapse.
The family trees we just described for you, for Casey,
for myself, renewal, they all work the same way. They're binary.
(21:58):
We've got you the protagon and the family tree of
course your parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on. Because
this grows eventually to exceed the total world population at
the time, if not ever, we know that the family
tree at some point has to be incorrect. This binary
tree model, and this apparent paradox is explained by a
(22:21):
couple of things. Mainly shared ancestors, because a binary tree
would assume that all of the people in all these
trees are unique in some way. Instead of a tree
consisting of all different individuals, a tree can have multiple
places occupied by a single individual. Parents of an ancestor
might be related to each other, not knowing that's a fact.
(22:44):
The offspring of two first cousins has at most, for example,
only six great grandparents instead of eight. And then this
means that the family tree you have, the binary tree
looks a lot like an upside down pyramid, but the
real shape of it is more like a diamond. Oh cool,
And everyone we know has some sort of common ancestor, it's.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
True, and apparently wed only take about two thousand to
three thousand years going back to find a period where
that was the case. Or we all share this common ancestor.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And we have no idea who it is, of course not.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And the thing too is when you start getting into
royal lineages, that really muddies the water, doesn't it, Because
there is you know, intentional inbreeding that happens in order
to maintain the family bloodline or maintain you know, transfer
of ownership of property within you know, a particular house,
(23:42):
I guess, and also just the lack of mating options
within that echelon of society right right.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And we also have an added benefit here in the
case of many aristocratic royal bloodlines or genealogies, we have
much more robust documentation of what happened when and who
was born to whom you know, other than the commoners.
(24:12):
So another interesting aside here is not only do we
have a shared common ancestor two to three thousand years ago,
but at various points in early human history we experienced
an evolutionary bottleneck where there was a very small amount
of human beings in general alive. A lot of our
(24:34):
regional populations across the planet now are still descended from
just a few people relatively we can find a common link,
and in the case of the United Kingdom or what
we call the United Kingdom today, those common links are
surprisingly easy to find.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Andrew Miller of the University of Durham in England figured
out that most anybody Anglo Saxon ancestry is likely to
descended from King Edward the Third, who ruled from thirteen
twelve to thirteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And when I say most anybody.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I mean that probability is close to one hundred percent
ninety nine point nine nine seven, and that Edward the
third has around one hundred million descendants in the British Isles, Europe,
the former British colonies, which of course includes the United
States and Canada, and also Australia.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So we see that more people have more ancestors in
common than we might have thought. Are we all playing
some weird family themed version of six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?
The answer is kind of yes, but it's it's more
with everyone you know. Writing in Family Tree Magazine with
(25:51):
the article what is pedigree Collapse, author Diane Haddad and
I think that's a cool last name says that a
Rutgers University professor estimates eighty percent of historical marriages took
place between second or first cousins. To Knowle's earlier point,
the idea of preserving not just a bloodline, but resources, property,
(26:13):
inheritable goods applied to the common folk as well as
the aristocrats. And it may just have been a matter
of people available people. You know, Folks didn't travel as
widely as they do now. Oh totally, And so this
leads us to a This leads us to another question.
(26:33):
If it does indeed turn out that all human beings
are in some way related, then does that mean that
miss Davignon was correct. Are all us presidents related? Well? Yeah,
sort of kind of, But we do have one fun
fact about I believe it was Franklin Roosevelt. Isn't that right? Nol?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Yeah, So while that fifth degree connection between FDR and
Teddy Roosevelt, it's probably the most obvious surface you want
with them sharing that pretty memorable last name, you know,
with the assumption of some sort of political dynasty that
spoiler alert and he can's not really spoiler at.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
This point is not a thing.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
FDR was actually related to quite a few other presidents,
including are odd man out of the whole King John Debacle,
President Martin van Buren third cousins twice removed to Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
How does that even work?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I don't understand, Like, if Van Buren wasn't connected to
King John, then how could he be third cousins to FDR?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Who? It makes my head spin? Ben, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
It's surprising. In addition that list the other presidents would
include John Adams, James Madison, John Quincy Adams Buren as
you mentioned earlier, Noel William, Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, the
guy with the arsenic conspiracy theory about his death, Andrew Johnson,
Lyssys S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Willie Taft, and of course,
(27:59):
last but not least, Teddy himself, Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I think it's a total of eleven US presidents, either
by blood or by marriage.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
And now this leads to a question that we would
love to close on with you. The question you may
have is, well, how many how many people am I
related to? Am I really related to everyone?
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Guys?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Am I related to you? Casey, Ben and Nole? The
answer is yes, distantly distantly. Some geneticists estimate that we
are all all seven point five billion plus of us
are at least fiftieth cousins.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Well, we're all made of star stuff, Ben.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
That's true. That's true. And is this bad for us genetically, No,
not really. It's it's surprising, and I think it's a
little bit inspiring because there's so many people in the
world that I can feel like a disconnected, lonely place
at times, but everywhere you go in some way you're
hanging out with your family.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Man, A fifth is fine, fiftieth is definitely fine.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Right, that's true. And as we close today, the number
for the world's population to show how much it has
increased is seven five eight three one sixty five eight
nine nine billion people. By twenty twenty five, our global
family will be over eight billion people. And who knows
(29:27):
where our Ridiculous History family will be. But we want
to thank you so much for checking out the show.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Thanks for bearing with us on this one. This was
a fun one, but it was a little circuitous. But
I enjoyed it very much, Ben, how about you?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah. Likewise, likewise, we can only hope that Casey enjoyed
it or at least tolerated us.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
He's making a.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Face he's making, he's making, hopefully, the face of a state.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
It's a face of love.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
It's literally looking into the face of goodness and love.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
And in addition, think in Casey, we'd of course like
to thank you. We'd like to thank Alex Williams, who
composed our track.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
We would like to thank Mark Zuckerberg for inventing Facebook,
where you can find us at Ridiculous History. We also
have a pretty cool little Facebook group called the Ridiculous Historians.
If you want to be a member, you can do that,
and there's some really fun conversations and we're looking to
mind some of the suggestions there for future episodes.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
And you can.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
See Ben Little Ben dressed up as a cowboy at
Opryland as a child, and you can see me doing
a karaoke song. That's just the kind of fun shenanigans
we get up to with the Ridiculous Historians. Also do
us a solid leave us a review on iTunes where
you gush, just gush if you don't mind, that would
really be cool and help us out a whole lot.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Also check us out on Instagram. You can check us
out on Twitter where we are Ridiculous History or some
variation thereof. And be sure to join us for our
next episodisode when we explore the capture of Womb, which
was relatively bloodless, cartoonishly fast, and all due to a
(31:11):
wild misunderstanding. So tune in in the meantime. Of course,
if social media is not your thing, we want to
hear from you. I mean, we're practically family now. You
can write to us directly. We are Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com. Hey, no, it's the end of this. Do
you want to just go out on a sing a long?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Okay, we are family and body and.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
We family fifty family. God? Oh, is it over? It's over.
Let's make it over. It's over.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
pod casts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Well, folks, we have been on a bit of a
presidential kick of late say a tare dare we say
a taar? We do we dare? And this classic episode
is about a question that popped up in Man. It
must have been early twenty eighteen, maybe late twenty seventeen.
Are all US presidents actually related?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:24):
It comes from a student in Selena's, California, back in
twenty twelve. I guess this is before we instituted our
historical cutoff.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
But I guess it has to.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Do with history before nineteen ninety fourth, so we'll give
our past selves a past pass. But yeah, student in Selenas,
California shook the genealogy and presidential history world to its
core when she claimed that all US presidents except for one,
share an ancestor.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's all relative. Let's get into it. Ridiculous History is
a production of iHeartRadio Breaking News, Friends and Neighbors. As
(01:30):
we begin today's episode, recording on April thirtieth, twenty eighteen,
there are seven point five eight three one five eight
five hundred and twenty three people alive on the planet.
That's a little over seven point five billion.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Hi, I'm ben, can you break that down to one
of those fancy math numbers, or it's like something to
the something.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I could, Yeah, I could.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Are you good? Are you Mathew like that? Ben?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
You know I've been known to dabble. I don't have
a personal passion for it.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Now, yeah, what about you? No, we're your SAT scores
pretty balance between English and Math.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Higher in English.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Mine were way higher in English, way out of whack
with the maths. So I may have to lean on
you for math support in this episode. Hi, my name
is Nol.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
So out of seven point five billion people, you have
chosen to tune into a podcast featuring three of those people,
just a measly three out of billions. We are so
glad you're here. But wait, Ben, but wait Nol. You
might be saying, who is this mysterious third person you're
(02:38):
talking about. Why? It's our super producer Casey Smooth Jazz pegrom.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Oh man, I like that that new smooth Jazz Casey
sound effect.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
We did not run this by Casey.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Before making a face. Is he making a face?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Is it a pleasurable face?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I'm into it? Cool?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Oh all right, and that's been Casey on the case.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So now that we've established that we're going to be
talking about large numbers of humans. Why don't we take
a step back and let's kind of like couch that
with with a historical topic.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Right, Yes, let's let's dare I say, I may give
the people what they want, a story about ridiculous history.
So we'll come back to that number that is ticking
as as we record from something called the worldcounts dot com,
where you can find things like world population clocks.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Is that the same as the doomsday clock?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It's thankfully not. No, it's different. But for some people
who consider our society at large on the verge of collapse,
then yes, it's a different doomsday clock. But we will
return to that in a very important way. Today. We'd
like to set the scene for everyone in the US
and abroad by saying that there's something quirky about the
(04:06):
United States. Despite the fact that it is a representative democracy.
Several of our presidents are commanders in chief, and several
other people in high positions of power like the Supreme Court,
for instance, or senators and so on. They tend to
be related, not all the time.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
And of course most of you are surely aware of
the big name political dynasties like the Bushes or the Kennedys.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
But how about the Roosevelts. M yeah, yeah, the Roosevelts.
For many people, Fdr Franklin Delano Roosevelt remains an incredibly
popular or controversial figure. Not everybody likes him even in
the modern day. Wasn't a populist, Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
(04:56):
who was the mastermind, any ways behind what is known
as the New Deal, which had a lot of shall
we say, left leaning programs at the time.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Sure, and it also provided a lot of people jobs
when they were in desperate need of said jobs in
order to help build up our infrastructure, everything from roads
and bridges to things like what else.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
The DVA Tennessee Valley Authority, that's a huge one. There
were foul ways collection programs, there were any number of things,
a lot of infrastructure that was direly needed. He served
as the thirty second President of the United States from
nineteen thirty three until his death in nineteen forty five. However,
(05:46):
you may be saying, what about that other Roosevelt Teddybear, Yes,
Theodora Roosevelt.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Wendy Ruxbyin Roosevelt.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yes, yeah, yeah, this is the twenty sixth president of
the United States, And oddly enough, yes, the Teddy Bear
is named in his honor. Wasn't he the one who
carried a big stick and spoke softly? Yeah, yes, that
is the quote you'll hear about him.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
He was president for eight years from nineteen oh one
to nineteen oh nine. So, like many people, you would
assume that he and Franklin were related pretty closely, right.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
You know, And it's funny, Yes, I would assume that. Ben.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
In fact, I did assume that, because it's the kind
of thing you just take it face value. You got
your Kennedy's, you got your bushes. Why can't you have
your Roosevelts. Sure, and you can, but not in the
way you might think.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
No, No, it turns out so one of the assumptions
would have been that perhaps Theodore we'll call him Roosevelt
the elder, was the father of Franklin Roosevelt or maybe
an uncle or something like that.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Right, because they I was about to say, ruled, They
governed like thirty years apart.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, decades. And it's not the case. Although the math
might seem to roughly check out, it is not the
case that they are father son or uncle, nephew at all.
They are related, but in a much more.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Distant way, in a much more distant way. That sort
of shimmies us on to the next chapter that we're
going to get into. But it's interesting they related in
two different ways. In fact, they are they shared a
great great great great grandfather. So it's four great four greats,
making them fifth cousins.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Right, right, right, I get that right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And so the question there is just to spend some
time on this first relationship. The question there when we
get to the fifth cousinry of this is a question
for you, folks, are you in regular contact? Be honest, now,
are you in regular contact with your fifth cousins? Even one?
(07:56):
Can you name one of your fifth cousins? May speak
for the group, speak for yourself, please, I.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Will speak for myself, but I choose to speak with
the voice of the people in saying no.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Okay, yes, well, I myself am not super close with
my fifth cousin.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
You know him, you know what?
Speaker 1 (08:18):
I know? Love them really at Tennessee is a weird place, interesting, yeah,
but but I think if we're hanging out, it would
just be at the big events, you know, collapse of civilization,
some somebody's birthday or death like that.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
I would have thought those would have been reversed. I
thought collapse would have come more of a last resort.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
But that's the one where like, yeah, I'm telling you man.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, speaking of strange bedfellows now that okay, sure, I'll
go with that.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The other way they were related is that FDR's wife Eleanor.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
And it's funny.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I actually always used to think that Franklin's middle name
was Eleanor, and it was weird to me that his
wife's name was Eleanor. That was Eleanor, but now it's
Delano and Eleanor. Yes, she in fact was Teddy's niece,
direct niece, right, Yes, that is correct. It's just confusing
(09:13):
because her last name is Roosevelt without Franklin right right. Yes,
his last name was Roosevelt, and they married. She didn't
have to change your last name, right, so they get that, right. Yeah,
that's weird.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's why. That's why this is all very flo mixing.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And this also means that FDR and Eleanor, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were fifth cousins themselves once.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Removed both fifth cousins five by.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Five in it.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Wow, that's literally the same relationship. Right.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It sounds strange, and this may have some of us wondering,
are we going to jump the shark here? Is this
going to be an episode about unknown incests in the
US presidency bordering on that of the Egyptian royalty?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Jump the history show?
Speaker 1 (10:00):
We we just might, but the fact remains that this was
not a strange, untoward, or in any way ethically questionable relationship.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Now, man, it's fifth, it's fifth, it's fine. Fifth is fine.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
It's fine if it's fifth. Yes, okay, so that's it.
That's the show, folks. They're just not as related as
we thought.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, we kind of thought that ourselves, where we were like,
this is a show?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Is this the whole show?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
But you know what, sometimes finding a little quirky fact
like this can open up a whole field of rabbit
holes full of quirky facts, right right, a penibly if
you will.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
We asked ourselves what other strange and genealogical secrets does
the US presidency hold as in office? Right? And that's
when we ran into a crazy question. Are all us
presidents related. Oh, I think we both just assumed no.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yet seems like a long walk to get to that
question from our FDR and Teddy Roosevelt related to are
all presidents related? But as it turns out, this is
we're not the only ones asking this question, Ben, You're
not the only ones asking this question, right right?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
You know who else was asking this question?
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Twelve year olds?
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yep, yep, twelve year olds, specifically a budding genealogist by
the name of bridge Anne d'a avignon.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Amazing name.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
That's that's an amazing name. So she was twelve years
old back in twenty twelve, and then she came out
with a family tree that had some earth shaking implications.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Right yeah, man, it seems like she scooped like the
genealogy community at large with this one. Twelve year old
Bridge Anne Davignon, who is a resident of Salinas, California,
for a school project, Get this, created a family tree
that connected forty two of the forty three at the
(11:58):
time US presidents to a single common ancestor, a real
jerkwad by the name of King John of England or
John Lackland as his pappy called him.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yes, famously named that for signing the Magnet Carta in
twelve fifteen, which limited his power as a monarch and
led to the formation of what we recognize as the
modern British government. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
In fact, John had such a horrible reputation for cruelty
and incompetence that he was kind of strong armed into
signing that fateful document by these rebelling barons who had
had enough of his shenanigans, and essentially it limited his power,
(12:44):
It lost him a whole lot of land and basically
kind of neutered the monarchy for all intents and purposes.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
From that point on.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
What we're saying is that Lachland was not a compliment.
It wasn't It wasn't ironic either.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
No, And he was famously trade as the villain in
the robin.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Hood stories because of his you know, just notorious greed
and cowardice.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Robinhood Prince of Thieves, by the way, that's what we're
referring to.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I assume in the nineties, I was thinking more of
the Disney one where he's like a skinny lion.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It sucking his thumb.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
He's sort of a proto scar. Yeah, we should do
an entire show on Robin Hood in the future because
the facts don't really resemble the fiction, which may surprise
some people, maybe startle some people, but it's worth that
we will say that he was a human being and
not a anthropomorphic fox.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
No no, or a lion thumb sucking lion.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
But no.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
This young lady in California came up with this project
from I think she was originally trying to trace her
own ancestry and then somewhere along the way kind of
decided that she wanted to go way, way, way deeper
in the form of scouring over five hundred thousand names
(14:09):
to find what she termed the presidential adam. And her
grandfather was actually sort of an amateur genealogist himself, and
he helped her out. Here's the thing, though, what she
did that everyone before her, all of the people in
the professional genealogy community, had not done, was she looked
at both male and female family lines to make this connection.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
And the only president that did.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Not tie back to King John was Martin Van Buren
and that's because he hailed from.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Dutch roots, right. And this is again, this is according
to her findings with the help of her armchair genealogists grandfather.
One thing, we can say, heck of a science project,
probably the best one of the year there at Monte
Vista Christian School in Watsonville. But she also found out
that she is the eighteenth cousin of President Barack Obama.
(15:06):
She wrote to President Obama to share her findings, and
as of twenty twelve, she said she received a form
letter from the White House, but you know, maybe she
got a handwritten when later, because it's twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
That's a kick in the pants.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Then I have followed up and I haven't found any
new information about this. She also apparently was trying to
raise money for the trip by selling signed copies of
her massive sort of vision board esque family tree with
Barack Obama's head center in the middle, US President Barack
Obama world Leader, surrounded by his cousins with thousands of names.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So this leads to a question that we all have
to ask. We have to be skeptical. We can't be
instantly taken in by a snappy headline. And you know,
we were talking about this off air when I had
brought up some of the stuff and the question was,
are we crushing the dreams of a child if we
say that it isn't true. Luckily, it turns out it
(16:09):
is kind of true, this idea of a web of relationships.
But like the relationship between Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt,
it's not true in the way you might think.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
It's not particularly remarkable either.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
No, no, it is not.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
John was just not friends with anybody. He was constantly
feuding with the papacy quarrels over the election to the
See of Canterbury after the death of Hubert Walter. Pope
Innocent the third decided that John's nominee was no good
and instead elected Stephen Langton. And this infuriated John, and
(16:49):
they just really were not We're not very close. Here's
the thing too, King John, in addition to being cruel,
he was known for starving his enemies to death. In fact,
in an article from the BBC entitled the Lost Jewels
of Bad King John, historian Mark Morris, who wrote a
biography on the king, was asked if he was really
(17:13):
as bad in reality as he was made out to
be in songs and stories. And you know Robin Hood,
for example, to which he replied, no, much worse.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
In legend, he doesn't starve people to death. In reality
he does. En Mass so a bad guy and also incompetent.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Apparently he was traveling his what do you call it,
like a litter like what when you're in those a palquin?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Sure, like you know, is it where somebody's carrying them.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
More of a carriage kind of situation?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Okay, Yeah, And they had all of these boxes of
various supplies and treasure and they sunk into a marsh
known as the Wash. It's a very treacherous muddy bank
under the cross Key Bridge in Lincolnshire, England, and it
(18:05):
was all lost. He apparently lost the Crown jewels because
of this foolish route when he was actually running away
from his enemies at the time.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
So all around pretty bad guy.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Or, as Mark Morris would say, an absolute rotter. He
also Morris himself wrote an article for The Telegraph where
he says this is the most evil monarch in British
history and calls him a lecherous trader, a depraved tyrant
and a hopeless leader. He was also a serial rapist, yeah,
just putting that in there. His enemies were not necessarily
(18:37):
some sort of spoiled tyrants yearning for more power. They
were saying, we've got to we gotta get rid of
this guy because he is such a pill.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, big time.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
And I believe he had a brother who was known
as Richard the Lionheart. That actually comes into play in
the Robin Hood story where good King Richard comes back
to depose you know, King John. Anyway, the thing with
the lost treasure is interesting because it's actually become kind
of this like Dan Brown esque sort of mystery of
(19:07):
the secret Treasure of Prince John, where in that area
in England there are several folks who have been trying
to find.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It over the years with no success.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
One guy, in fact, claims that he can see the
outline of it on a Google Earth image. So not
exactly the most flattering guy for all of these presidents
to be connected to.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
The young lady did the project.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Her comment to a local news organization was they all
have the common trait of wanting power.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So there's that.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
So, folks here, we have a question for you, since
we're all learning a lot about each other's families today,
how many ancestors do you have? Well, if we're saying
living your dead, just any ancestors, doesn't matter if you
talk to them or not. It doesn't matter how long
ago they lived. We would see some pretty easy math.
(20:01):
At first, you have two parents, they each have two parents, right,
so you have two parents, four grandparents, they each have
each of your grandparents have two parents. So then you
have eight great grandparents, four grandparents, two parents, and then you.
And so when we realize that this exponential growth as
you go back in time through the generations applies to
(20:23):
every single one of the seven point five billion plus
people living on the planet, you start to run into
something weird and the math. The math doesn't check out
after a certain amount of time.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
That's right, because when you look back and trace your
theoretical ancestors in the way that you're talking about, you
start to actually outpace the population. In an article for
Abroad in the Yard called the US Presidents who descend
from King John of England and Why you probably do two,
Lee Renner writes that if you go back thirty generations
to the Middle Ages, you would theoretically have over one
(21:00):
billion ancestors in that line of your family tree.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah, and furthermore, if you continue down the line. With
this sort of growth, then it will double every step,
and that means that just forty generations ago, we would
find that every person alive now has a trillion ancestors,
all living at the same time, which is impossible because
(21:25):
Earth has never had that many people living on it.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
So how does this work out?
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Ben help us out with the with the birthday math here,
that's that's what I like to call this kind of math.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
So this leads us to the concept of pedigree collapse
or as it's known in German auhen shrewnd. What does
that translate to loss of lineage? Roughly coined by a
guy named Robert C. Gunderson. Here's the gist without pedigree collapse.
The family trees we just described for you, for Casey,
for myself, renewal, they all work the same way. They're binary.
(21:58):
We've got you the protagon and the family tree of
course your parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on. Because
this grows eventually to exceed the total world population at
the time, if not ever, we know that the family
tree at some point has to be incorrect. This binary
tree model, and this apparent paradox is explained by a
(22:21):
couple of things. Mainly shared ancestors, because a binary tree
would assume that all of the people in all these
trees are unique in some way. Instead of a tree
consisting of all different individuals, a tree can have multiple
places occupied by a single individual. Parents of an ancestor
might be related to each other, not knowing that's a fact.
(22:44):
The offspring of two first cousins has at most, for example,
only six great grandparents instead of eight. And then this
means that the family tree you have, the binary tree
looks a lot like an upside down pyramid, but the
real shape of it is more like a diamond. Oh cool,
And everyone we know has some sort of common ancestor, it's.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
True, and apparently wed only take about two thousand to
three thousand years going back to find a period where
that was the case. Or we all share this common ancestor.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And we have no idea who it is, of course not.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And the thing too is when you start getting into
royal lineages, that really muddies the water, doesn't it, Because
there is you know, intentional inbreeding that happens in order
to maintain the family bloodline or maintain you know, transfer
of ownership of property within you know, a particular house,
(23:42):
I guess, and also just the lack of mating options
within that echelon of society right right.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And we also have an added benefit here in the
case of many aristocratic royal bloodlines or genealogies, we have
much more robust documentation of what happened when and who
was born to whom you know, other than the commoners.
(24:12):
So another interesting aside here is not only do we
have a shared common ancestor two to three thousand years ago,
but at various points in early human history we experienced
an evolutionary bottleneck where there was a very small amount
of human beings in general alive. A lot of our
(24:34):
regional populations across the planet now are still descended from
just a few people relatively we can find a common link,
and in the case of the United Kingdom or what
we call the United Kingdom today, those common links are
surprisingly easy to find.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Andrew Miller of the University of Durham in England figured
out that most anybody Anglo Saxon ancestry is likely to
descended from King Edward the Third, who ruled from thirteen
twelve to thirteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And when I say most anybody.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I mean that probability is close to one hundred percent
ninety nine point nine nine seven, and that Edward the
third has around one hundred million descendants in the British Isles, Europe,
the former British colonies, which of course includes the United
States and Canada, and also Australia.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So we see that more people have more ancestors in
common than we might have thought. Are we all playing
some weird family themed version of six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?
The answer is kind of yes, but it's it's more
with everyone you know. Writing in Family Tree Magazine with
(25:51):
the article what is pedigree Collapse, author Diane Haddad and
I think that's a cool last name says that a
Rutgers University professor estimates eighty percent of historical marriages took
place between second or first cousins. To Knowle's earlier point,
the idea of preserving not just a bloodline, but resources, property,
(26:13):
inheritable goods applied to the common folk as well as
the aristocrats. And it may just have been a matter
of people available people. You know, Folks didn't travel as
widely as they do now. Oh totally, And so this
leads us to a This leads us to another question.
(26:33):
If it does indeed turn out that all human beings
are in some way related, then does that mean that
miss Davignon was correct. Are all us presidents related? Well? Yeah,
sort of kind of, But we do have one fun
fact about I believe it was Franklin Roosevelt. Isn't that right? Nol?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Yeah, So while that fifth degree connection between FDR and
Teddy Roosevelt, it's probably the most obvious surface you want
with them sharing that pretty memorable last name, you know,
with the assumption of some sort of political dynasty that
spoiler alert and he can's not really spoiler at.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
This point is not a thing.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
FDR was actually related to quite a few other presidents,
including are odd man out of the whole King John Debacle,
President Martin van Buren third cousins twice removed to Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
How does that even work?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I don't understand, Like, if Van Buren wasn't connected to
King John, then how could he be third cousins to FDR?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Who? It makes my head spin? Ben, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
It's surprising. In addition that list the other presidents would
include John Adams, James Madison, John Quincy Adams Buren as
you mentioned earlier, Noel William, Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, the
guy with the arsenic conspiracy theory about his death, Andrew Johnson,
Lyssys S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Willie Taft, and of course,
(27:59):
last but not least, Teddy himself, Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I think it's a total of eleven US presidents, either
by blood or by marriage.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
And now this leads to a question that we would
love to close on with you. The question you may
have is, well, how many how many people am I
related to? Am I really related to everyone?
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Guys?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Am I related to you? Casey, Ben and Nole? The
answer is yes, distantly distantly. Some geneticists estimate that we
are all all seven point five billion plus of us
are at least fiftieth cousins.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Well, we're all made of star stuff, Ben.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
That's true. That's true. And is this bad for us genetically, No,
not really. It's it's surprising, and I think it's a
little bit inspiring because there's so many people in the
world that I can feel like a disconnected, lonely place
at times, but everywhere you go in some way you're
hanging out with your family.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Man, A fifth is fine, fiftieth is definitely fine.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Right, that's true. And as we close today, the number
for the world's population to show how much it has
increased is seven five eight three one sixty five eight
nine nine billion people. By twenty twenty five, our global
family will be over eight billion people. And who knows
(29:27):
where our Ridiculous History family will be. But we want
to thank you so much for checking out the show.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Thanks for bearing with us on this one. This was
a fun one, but it was a little circuitous. But
I enjoyed it very much, Ben, how about you?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah. Likewise, likewise, we can only hope that Casey enjoyed
it or at least tolerated us.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
He's making a.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Face he's making, he's making, hopefully, the face of a state.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
It's a face of love.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
It's literally looking into the face of goodness and love.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
And in addition, think in Casey, we'd of course like
to thank you. We'd like to thank Alex Williams, who
composed our track.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
We would like to thank Mark Zuckerberg for inventing Facebook,
where you can find us at Ridiculous History. We also
have a pretty cool little Facebook group called the Ridiculous Historians.
If you want to be a member, you can do that,
and there's some really fun conversations and we're looking to
mind some of the suggestions there for future episodes.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
And you can.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
See Ben Little Ben dressed up as a cowboy at
Opryland as a child, and you can see me doing
a karaoke song. That's just the kind of fun shenanigans
we get up to with the Ridiculous Historians. Also do
us a solid leave us a review on iTunes where
you gush, just gush if you don't mind, that would
really be cool and help us out a whole lot.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Also check us out on Instagram. You can check us
out on Twitter where we are Ridiculous History or some
variation thereof. And be sure to join us for our
next episodisode when we explore the capture of Womb, which
was relatively bloodless, cartoonishly fast, and all due to a
(31:11):
wild misunderstanding. So tune in in the meantime. Of course,
if social media is not your thing, we want to
hear from you. I mean, we're practically family now. You
can write to us directly. We are Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com. Hey, no, it's the end of this. Do
you want to just go out on a sing a long?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Okay, we are family and body and.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
We family fifty family. God? Oh, is it over? It's over.
Let's make it over. It's over.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
pod casts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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