WEBVTT - Monogamy Shamogamy 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:14.159 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:16.400 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Suglas. Julie, 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:18.880 we were just talking before this podcast about the George 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:28.240 Michael video for Freedom. It's good stuff. Yeah, yeah, I don't, 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:30.960 I don't ever. I just remember seeing it on TV 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:33.599 back in the old days, when you know, I had 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.360 nothing better to do than to watch lots and lots 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:39.840 of MTV. I think it's vintage nineties, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:41.920 it was definitely vintage nineties. That would have been about 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:43.880 the right time frame. But it was, as I remember, 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.880 a pretty sexy video. And they're all sorts of sexy 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.959 things going on in it, and uh and and at 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:52.960 one point George Michael writes a word on the back 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:57.280 of his wife's or girlfriend's back, right, yeah, actually his 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:03.120 then girlfriend's back, and the message is monogamy. And it's 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:05.240 interesting because, as you say, it's a very sexy video, 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.039 there are a lot of people who are um seem 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.800 to be expressing their sexual liberation right, which which in 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:14.720 a sense George Michael would do later for real. And 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:20.679 it's different context yeah. Uh, not not a boudoir, but 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:23.120 at least to the American public, it would be in 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:25.800 a stall, which is fine. Whatever. The point is is 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.039 that the video is interesting because it seems to be 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:31.600 about sexual liberation and yet they bring up the point 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.959 of monogamy, right, Yeah, and what is the relationship actually 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.360 between these two things. Not that we're saying that George 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:40.039 Michael video from the early nineties has to really have 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:43.880 a compact, solid message about the way the world works, 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:46.240 but it's fascinating in a light of this podcast where 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.680 we were discussing the topic of monogamy, yeah, which we 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.400 actually decided that we would dedicate a whole podcast too, 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:57.080 because we recently recorded um a podcast about same sex 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:00.640 pairings in the animal world or a game animals if 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:03.320 you read animals, right, which again carries a lot of 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.040 uh you know, anthropomorphic package with it. Yeah. And it 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:09.519 was interesting because we we were talking about the las 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.800 and albatrosses in oah Who, Hawaii, andty three of that 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.960 population is actually same sex female female pairings. And some 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:23.000 of these albatrosses or these birds have been together since 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:27.160 they started studying them nineteen years previous to so it 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.359 could have been that these birds work together for much 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:32.760 longer than that. But the point is just that monogamy 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.560 seems to be in nature, it seems to be in 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:40.440 different species, and humans really try hard, I think to 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:44.320 be monogamous. I'm try harder than others. This is true, um, 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:46.200 but we're not always very successful. So we want to 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.040 talk about that today, right, so animals, let me just 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:53.680 run through a few favorite examples of monogamous creatures. You 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:57.760 have given apes. You have wolves, termites, couties, barnet owls, beavers, 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:04.280 bald eagles, golden eagles, condor swan, broga cranes, sandhill cranes, pigeons, 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.440 red tailed hawks, black vultures, and apparently three percent of 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:12.239 the four thousand metal species are monogamous. Of course, Homo 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.239 sapiens aren't on that list, but we'll discuss that a 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:17.440 little more as we go. Some of the examples that 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:21.120 I came across in the researcher were pretty pretty interesting. 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.320 The black vultures, for instance, discourage infidelity. All nearby vultures 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:28.880 attack any vulture caught philandering, and that was interesting. For 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:33.280 all their disgusting corpse seating there, they're they're strict moralists. 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:35.240 For me, one of the most amazing examples of the 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:38.480 mate for life species is easily the angler fish. To 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.320 refresh that, it's about the size of a teacup deep 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.560 sea animal, frightening horror show jaws with big teeth and 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.400 a lighted lure that hangs in front of its face. 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:50.000 It's one of those. It's like one of the favorite 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:52.600 deep sea fish of all like ten year old boys. 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:54.520 So that kind of has like a lantern. Yeah, it 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:55.840 has like a little lantern in front of it, and 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:58.120 then idea is it attracts fish and then it eats 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.720 it with its frightening jaws. So you have the female, right, 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:03.320 and then you have the male who's kind of a 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:05.880 little guy. And what he'll do is he'll come up 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.720 and he'll he will latch on to the back of 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.200 the female, but it's with his sharp teeth, all right, 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:18.279 and then he just keeps hanging on. Gradually he grows 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.159 into the female, like physically his skin grows into hers. 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:24.600 The fuse together. He ends up getting his food through 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:29.760 a common blood supply, His eyeballs atrophy, his his organs 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:35.039 waste away, and he eventually becomes a sperm producing organ. 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:37.480 Like the only thing that really stays intact or the testes, 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:40.680 so he mates for life, but it's it's really hard 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.279 to imagine. Yeah, it's because he's fused to her physically 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:48.359 and they become a single organism basically, and so you know, 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:50.599 it's up in the air whether that is a life 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:55.000 worth living. Yeah, I mean talk about loss of identity 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:58.240 and a committed relationship. In a sense, it's like like 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:01.200 two reactions to it. To really anthrom Morphies, It's like, 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:03.719 on one hand, the male Engler fish is kind of 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:08.400 like the ultimate do nothing husband. You know, we're always 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:10.359 he's there. It's just his He's just a pair of 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:13.200 testes that's feeding off of her. But then on the 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:15.160 other hand, it's like a he's kind of put in 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:17.640 his place, like all right, like he's he may not 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:22.000 have any other purpose, so he's just reduced to his 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:25.240 his one thing and just becomes basically an organ. I 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:27.840 was to say, it doesn't even he can't even get away, 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:32.600 he can't even have some me time. Um, yeah, that's amazing. Well, 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.440 this isn't quite as traumatic that I wanted to talk about. 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:41.280 Prairie voles, Okay, because these guys of North American prairie 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:45.039 vowlts spend their entire adult life with one partner, and 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.480 researchers thought that was pretty interesting. He wanted to get 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:49.440 in the mind, so to speak, of these prai volts 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:52.120 and try to figure out what made them so monogamous. 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.640 And it turns out that the monogamous males have high 0:05:55.760 --> 0:06:00.080 levels of the hormone vassa prison in their brains, and 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:04.080 promiscuous male bowls have a low level of vasa prison 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:08.400 in theirs. And so what they began to think is that, well, 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.520 perhaps this is a good explanation, this high level of 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:16.280 basic person in males. What about humans? And it can't 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:18.400 It's not really an apples to apples things some people 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.039 like to extrapolate and say, well, maybe that's the same 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:24.920 thing with with humans. Um uh. And while voles are 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:28.440 social creatures like humans, they do have a very different 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:32.600 brain from ours. That's pretty obvious. And in particular, periy 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:37.360 vols brains are studied with receptors for vasa prison and oxytocin, 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:40.880 and that's really what results in that high pair bonding instance. 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.640 Um So, I think it's interesting. Again, I feel like 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.480 people extrapolate those results sometimes and try to say that 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:50.000 humans have the same situation going on since we also 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:54.880 have basic person in oxytocin. But you know, it's hard 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:56.760 to say at least the jury is out. But the 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.360 idea is, especially with the voles, is it's this bonding 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:02.400 that's taking place and it's resulting favorable chemicals in the brain. 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:05.360 It's almost like a drug to them exactly. That's the 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.560 they're part of. The reward center is going nuts every 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:11.360 time they get a little oxytose in the based person. So, yeah, 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:13.640 that makes sense that they would want to stay in 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:16.400 a you know, for lack of other terms, a committed 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.240 relationship because they're getting something out of it. And in fact, 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:23.640 if you look at number of the North American Poles 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:28.480 are monogamous, then that bears out this whole idea that 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.160 they're getting something out of it. But according to the 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.120 Population Reference Bureau, the probability of an adult a human 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.760 getting married um and and presumably being monogamous at some 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:43.320 point during their life is still nearly But the problem 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:48.320 here is the of these marriages and then divorce, which 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.720 points to this this whole idea that we really do 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:54.960 want to be monogamous. Maybe there are benefits for us 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:58.080 which will discuss, but again we're still not great at it. 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:00.160 We'll just leave this to another animal, that being them 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:04.320 the gray lag goose. Yes, yeah, also another highly social creature. 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.880 Researchers that Austria's Conrad Lorenz Research Station found that while 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.559 some birds, some of these birds remained calm and flight, 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.960 others were extremely stressed. And they wanted to find out, 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.880 and they implanted heart rate monitors in twenty five of 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.440 the geese, and they found that the geese who were 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:25.160 in monogamous relationships I guess you could say, had heart 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.880 rates about ten percent lower during flights than the heart 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:31.880 rates of single birds here right, And again again it's 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:35.040 not apple staffles with humans. You can't say it works 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.520 with these geese. So this must be what's going on 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.000 in humans. But it is interesting to look at that 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.280 there they are less stressed out there and they're not 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:44.920 you know, I mean they know what they're doing that 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:49.960 evening right, Yeah, exactly pizza in a movie. But also 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.760 this is interesting. While resting, the female heart rates rose 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:54.880 when their mates were more than a few feet away, 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:59.080 but stressed them was lowered when their mates returned. And 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:02.920 this is from Claudio posture. She's an ethologist at Austria's 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.840 research station, the Austria Konrad Lawrence. She said, an increase 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.880 in heart rate is an investment. You'll have more energy available. 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.120 But if you don't do that, if you're in safe mode, 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:15.360 you'll save more energy which could have a long term 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.520 advantage for you. So in the animal world this makes sense. 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.959 If you're pairing up, you're probably you know, uh, safer right, 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.880 safer in numbers, and you don't have to expend a 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.600 lot of energy looking behind your back right. Well, you know, 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:30.760 even on a you know, on a human level, it's 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.680 like people who are paired up, they can sort of 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:37.040 double team problems. Um, you know that, and you can 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:38.560 let your guard down a little know on the other 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.560 person's looking out. I guess, I guess we don't. We 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:45.240 don't we tend not to sleep in shifts in human relationships. 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:48.840 You don't know? Oh yeah, I don't either. It would 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:51.520 be weird. Um, but yeah, I mean, there's there's a 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:54.000 lot of data out there that says that people are 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:56.200 on couples. Men and women who are married tend to 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.920 live longer, especially men. And some of this though, they'll 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.440 eat to the social network, social support system that's in 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:07.760 place that helps to reduce stress and helps to bulster 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.200 up your immune system. Actually, so in humans, there are 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:13.040 definitely reasons where you can see what this would be 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.800 an advantage to become part of a monogamous pair. Huh, 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:19.240 But then why I stop there? Why marry one person? 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.400 Why not marry several and then just read the benefits? 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:29.120 Oh well, we'll talk about this right after your break. 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:33.640 All right, we're back, and uh, we've been talking about 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:36.360 I mean, the podcast is about monogamy, but in attempt 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.800 to understand monogamy, we have to discuss its opposite number. 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:46.360 That's right, and more specifically polygyny, which is different from 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:49.800 polygamy in the sense that polygony is based on one 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:55.120 male with several females, right, Polyamory is a whole another 0:10:55.679 --> 0:11:00.480 thing here. Polyamory is many different people participating in different 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:05.160 configurations of relationships. There are actually usually monogamous. But just 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:07.240 wanted to point that out that we're talking more about 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:11.960 polygyny here. In a paper called The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage, 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:16.840 authors Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, and Peter J. Richardson said 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:18.800 that they wanted to try to get to the bottom 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:24.360 of why we are not exclusively a polygynous society, you know, 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:28.360 in all cultures across the world. And they say that 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:33.440 the anthropological record indicates that historically, approximately eight of human 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:38.000 societies have permitted men to more than one wife, and 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:42.920 both empirical and evolutionary considerations suggests that large absolute differences 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:48.440 in wealth should favor more poligionious marriages. Yet monogamous marriages 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:52.079 have spread across Europe and more recently across the globe, 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:56.360 even as absolute wealth differences have expanded. They wanted to 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:58.600 know why because it seems on paper like, why wouldn't 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:02.080 you just have a poligonous societ? Right? Those were the stakes. Yeah, 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:04.280 And why why doesn't someone like Donald Trump have just 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:07.199 multiple multiple wives? Right, I mean at one time as 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:10.439 opposed to serious right, right? Yeah? And that's particularly the 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:15.000 case with powerful men, right because the more wives, more 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:19.079 wealth uh u mss, the more stature. And some people 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:22.800 would say that women would be attracted to that powerful 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.520 man and would want to align in that configuration of 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.439 polignous marriage because you would reap the benefits of that. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.960 It's just from slate dot COM's is polygamy really so awful? 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.400 Women are usually thought of as the primary victims of 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:41.000 polignous marriages, but as cultural anthropologist Joe Henrich the guy 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.480 we started talking about documents, the institution also causes problems 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.920 for the young, low status males, denied wives by older 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:51.160 wealthy men who have hoarded off women, and those young 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.720 men create problems for everybody. Yeah, so we're getting to 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:56.319 the meat of it right here. Well I can I 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.000 can't help, but I'm sure a lot of people have 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.240 already are already thinking of the HBO series Big Love, 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:05.800 which dealt with this kind of situation among an offshoot 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:10.000 of mainstream Mormons, a fictional group in this particular TV series. 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:12.400 But you see that even in this the show, which 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.720 I found the first few seasons rather enjoyable of character 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.440 development standpoint, But you would have like one individual, like 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:23.000 the villain of the show, has multiple lives of varying ages, 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:25.720 and then at times the younger men are not I mean, 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:27.840 they end up having to leave because they don't have 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.240 the opportunity to claim a wife. So you end up 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:35.240 having like wife monopolization by the older members of a society. 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:39.240 Exactly right there, there's a dearth of women available, and 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:43.240 hen Rich and Boyd and Richardson say that when you 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:47.240 have unmarried men and you have a scarcity of women, um, 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:50.680 that is correlated with increased rates of rape, fact murder, 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:53.160 and substance abuse. Right because on one lover, you're gonna 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.400 you're level to uh partake of more risky behavior because 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:58.520 you don't have as much at stake. You know, you 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:00.679 don't have this, you don't have an vestment in family, 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:03.760 an investment in family, you don't have investment in children. 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.000 You probably don't have like a well decorated house or anything. 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.959 You know, uh, you know it's the toilet is probably disgusting. 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:14.600 All these things. And and then I suppose you are 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:18.400 really focused on climbing up the ladder, you're going to 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:20.880 be more willing to take those risks to get the 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:23.680 kind of financial footing that you would be required to 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:26.280 claim one of these lovely ladies. That's right, you may 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:29.760 steal right to try to accumulate wealth. Um. Also, they 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:33.960 said that these guys would engage in crimes to not 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:36.600 only just a math enough wealth to attract women, but 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:40.600 also kidnap other men's wives, which saying that here in 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:42.880 the United States seems kind of crazy to say that 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:46.720 out loud unless you're talking about bora. But um, you 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:50.480 know this is is another instance why this doesn't really 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:55.280 work across the scales, although there are some instances where 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.240 a plug in as society could work. We know that 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.880 of the most community in China, um, and that is 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:05.800 a matriarchal society. And that's one where I don't know 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:08.040 if you would call it we actually wouldn't even call 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:11.960 it polygionist, very polygamous. But in that society, women have 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:16.400 decided that they won't pair with men. They will have 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:19.320 sex with men or even relationships or or have a 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.240 mate in a man, but that man does not live 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:24.560 with them. Um, if they have children with that man, 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.760 he does not raise them. In that society, men are 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.840 more useful as uncles. So the uncle's actually helped to 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.840 raise the children and not that the actual um father 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:39.000 of those children. And it's a very peaceful society. And 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:41.880 um it's become a bit of a something for for 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:47.000 tourists to to sort of ugle. But's but speaking of 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:49.680 the of the children's interesting, some of these studies we're 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:51.960 looking at the dealt with the the effect on the 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:56.240 children in these situations like that. More related to the 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:58.640 amount of attention they can get and how much how 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.160 much time has spent on the children in a poligonius 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:06.000 family versus a monogamous family. Yeah, yeah, children definitely suffer 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:08.840 in this scenario. Henrich cites a study of nineteenth century 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.840 Mormon households and forty five of them are headed by 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:15.920 wealthy men, generally with multiple wives, and forty five are 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:19.120 headed by poor men, generally with one wife. And what 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:21.320 they found is that the children of the poor men 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:24.120 with one wife actually feared a lot better than the 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:29.080 wealthy polgynous fathers. And the reason is that they think 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.200 that those even though they are wealthy and they had resources, 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:36.480 they were still spread thin the the pollagonius fathers, and 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:39.520 they weren't able to invest that much time in their children. Right. 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:41.840 I mean, if there's just the one, it's easy to say, yeah, 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.600 I'll be at your karate practice. But if they're like 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:49.200 fourteen of them, you might not make a single karate practice, right. 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:52.960 And and this is so important in children's development, but 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:55.560 even with their language skills, is to have that one 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:58.800 on one time with their parents in order to get 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:02.240 a hold on, you know, the building blocks of the world. 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.080 So if you don't have that attachment to your parents, 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:09.600 then it's possible that you would have some um issues 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:12.199 and actually developing. And what they found is that the 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:14.760 pork is actually live longer than the wealthy kids. And 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:16.879 then the other part of this too is that you 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:20.600 have women kind of getting the short stick and poligonous marriages. Um, 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:23.479 that would seem obvious right right, because there they end 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:25.760 up they're sort of traded off at a very young 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:29.600 age two older men. They're they're treated like a commodity 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:34.000 as opposed to an individual in these cases. And and 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:35.879 I mean you can just easily imagine like it's going 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:38.439 to be a rare sixteen or even like eighteen year 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:40.639 old it's going to really have the like, the the 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:44.439 assurance to really stand up a to uh an older 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:46.960 older man in one of these societies. But then and 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:49.760 then be two other women that are already a part 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:53.399 of that family. That's true that one of the studies 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:55.879 we were looking at actually pointing out the like in 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:58.680 a In the particular study, there were there were no 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:02.000 examples of sister wives the lack of a better word, 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.840 the TLC show that you're referring to, Yeah, well, I 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.960 mean I think sister wife was the term, the term 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:10.840 but um, but there were no examples of the sister 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:14.280 wives all getting along well, like like the situation tended 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:18.879 to breed a certain amount of contempt among the ladies, 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.719 that's right, they said. Henrich said that an ethnographic surveys 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:27.119 of sixty nine polygamous cultures, they reveal no case or 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:30.720 no cases where cowife relations could be described as harmonious, 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:33.520 which again would makes sense because everybody's trying to uy 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:37.919 for resources and time. So you know, I don't think 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:42.920 everybody's sitting around come each other's hair, um and and 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:45.560 singing come buy. I yeah, but then again, I mean 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:47.680 I also can't help but you know, I mean, having 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:51.879 not analyzed that study in enormous detail, but you know 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:56.080 what relationship is could be described as when everything her harmonious, 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.359 you know. So it's like, are they applying a separate 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.639 standard to these, uh, these these families, and they that 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:03.840 they wouldn't be applying to a study of the monogamous. 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.960 Well see, And now to go back to monoga's relationships, 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:13.199 particularly in the United States where the divorce rate is 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:15.280 so high, there are a lot of psychologists that will 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:18.359 point to this and say, uh, the reason why we 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:21.520 can't stay monogamous is because we have these ideals of 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:25.399 what a relationship should be, and we can't necessarily suss 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:29.639 out the reality versus the fantasy. Um. And that's of 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.360 course not part and parcel of every divorce that happens. 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:35.960 But they say a lot of that is involved in 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.679 why we decide part ways. The society says that we 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:43.440 should be able to achieve this, but then our brains 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:46.440 and our behavior patterns they all end up pointing in this, uh, 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:48.840 this rather different direction. Yeah. So, I mean, part of 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:51.879 it is, you know, just genetic, right in terms of 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.920 what sort of directs our behavior on an individual basis, 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:58.560 I'm not saying wholesale males and females. And then part 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:00.879 of it is cultural, what we've leave we need for 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:03.760 ourselves out of a relationship and what a relationship means 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:05.879 to us. Yeah, I guess, I guess. The thing is 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:07.240 it just seems like it does seem like a no 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:11.639 brainer that while like a relationship between two individuals is 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:13.560 going to have a certain amount of complexity to it, 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:16.000 a certain you know, a certain amount of ins and 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:20.800 outs for every additional person added to that relationship, even 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:22.920 if they're you know, in the status they have the 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:25.000 status of a sister wife as opposed to like a 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.640 full pledge, you know, equal part of this uh, this 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:31.040 this unit. Uh, it's just going to breed more and 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:35.960 more complexity and more and more feelings of distrust or 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:40.040 you know, etcetera. Which is probably why if you if 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.960 you look back, um, of the human species, why we 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:46.480 have been primarily monogamistic. It used to be that we 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:51.040 thought that because we were trying to uh spread our genes, 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:55.200 and that men were certainly you know, going after more 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:58.680 women to procreate with them in order to do that, UM, 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:03.480 that we really run from more of a polygenous society. 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:05.479 But if you look at the stats, and this is 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:08.720 really interesting, this is from a Life science article, it 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:12.360 says that we've pretty much always skewed monogamous. Dr Damian 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:16.120 the Buddha, an investor investigator at the Saint Justine University 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:20.400 Hospital Research Center, headed team that analyzed genomic data from 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:26.760 three population samples Africa, Asia and Europe and um completely 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:32.240 monogamy would yield a one to one breeding ratio right um. 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:34.960 The study found that the breeding ratio varied between one 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:38.639 point one and one point four according to population. So 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:40.679 one point one in Asia, one point three in Europe, 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:44.560 and one point four in Africa. And those stats really 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:50.720 don't point to an overtly polygamous um society overall for 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:54.520 the human species. So to your point less complex than 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:58.640 he is probably better, right at the end of the day. Yeah, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:01.280 that doesn't you know, necessarily for the question about why 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.960 we can't always, uh stay monogamous or why some people 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:08.920 can um. But it's certainly a field that is ripe 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:11.800 for more investigation. Well, let's look forward into the future. 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:15.920 What does the future hold for monogamy? Okay, we've talked 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:20.680 about in our Birthday Candles podcast about the very real 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:25.680 possibility that we might live to five hundred years, the 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:28.159 ripe old age of five hundred years, maybe even a 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:32.399 thousand years, depending on how well we can maintain ourselves 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:35.159 right with the current technology, and then the technology in 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:37.520 the next fifty years a hundred years, right, And if 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:40.240 and if two individuals can grow apart over the course 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:42.960 of say a decade, then they're definitely there's definitely a 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:45.720 higher risk they're going to grow apart over the course 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:49.680