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Why Cousin & Interracial Marriages Have Better Genetic Outcomes
Join Simone and Malcolm Collins as they dive into the history, science, and controversy of cousin marriage and mixed-race marriage. From Darwin’s pro/con list to modern genetic research, this episode explores the cultural, biological, and personal sides of who we choose to marry. Stay tuned for surprising facts, actionable advice, and a few laughs along the way!
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I'm so excited to be with you today because we're gonna get spicy and extol the virtues of cousin marriage and mixed race marriage
Speaker 4: Mirror universe, encounter mirror, universe. This is easy. Yeah, I can pretend to be evil.
Deal.
Simone Collins: just so you know, wait, hold on,
Malcolm Collins (2): stop. Before you go further. Are we talking about mixed race or just cousin marriage?
Simone Collins: Mixed race and cousin marriage. Oh, really? Yeah. We're going, we're going in for both dude.
Malcolm Collins (2): Continue
Simone Collins: because ultimately I'm gonna argue that you should basically go for one or the other. But
Malcolm Collins (2): Okay.
Either, either marry your cousin or someone of a different race. Yeah, dude.
Speaker: Athens's log star, date unknown. My landing party is beamed back to the enterprise and found it and the personnel aboard chain. The ship is subtly altered physically. [00:01:00] Behavior and disciplines become brutal. Savage.
Speaker 3: Did how
this.
Simone Collins: We're gonna go,
Malcolm Collins (2): okay. So go into the genetics of this. Go. Go.
Simone Collins: Let me. Can I, Mr. Tired man. Just let, let me drive, let me cook. All right. Anthropologists estimate that over 80% of marriages in history have been between second cousins or closer.
So basically the default for the vast majority of human history has been people marrying their relatives. And I remember we were walking in, in the Alps in Switzerland, when you really opened my eyes to this, you were like, listen, like look at these hills. Do you think that the people who've lived here for thousands of years were like.
Going far away to marry someone. Like it was really hard. They weren't doing that. They were like marrying their siblings. But, so even today, cousin, marriage rates are pretty high, like especially in parts of the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia. They can meet up to 20 to 50% of marriages to date in countries like Pakistan or Kuwait or [00:02:00] Saudi Arabia.
But like, even if you're a, a weird, you know, European urban monoculture person, you should probably be cool with cousin marriage. It, it gave us Charles Darwin, who also in turn was a product of a well he was the product of his second cousin marriage, but he married his first cousin. Yeah. And he's, he's the evolution dude.
I mean he's the evolution dude. Yeah. Yeah. HG Wells. He was, he had first cousin parents. Tons of European royals, obviously. But even Albert Einstein married his first cousin, you know, like the, the smart people are doing it. And then if we go to mixed race, which mixed race, so, so
Malcolm Collins (2): you're a smart guy like Albert Einstein or Darwin, you're marrying your cousin,
Simone Collins: I mean.
And I, do you know about Darwin's list of like benefits and drawbacks of marriage? This man was very thoughtful about it.
Malcolm Collins (2): Oh, he did? He did a list, yeah. Oh my
Simone Collins: God. Oh, okay. Hold on. Sorry. Diversion. You don't know this list. Okay. Charles Darwin, marriage pro and con list. This is too good to. [00:03:00] Yeah. So pros of marriage.
So yeah, b
Published on 3 months, 2 weeks ago