William Costello

But men can really benefit from multiple wives.

So they really go to town.

And you see whenever a man has this power, so Genghis Khan is the ultimate example.

So the most amount of offspring born to one woman is 69 to this Russian peasant.

Startling that that's true.

startling that that's true seems impossible but seems nothing compared to someone like Genghis Khan where it's estimated that one in twelve people are related to Genghis Khan because he sired so many offspring yeah you have a similar effect in Ireland with King Niall of the nine hostages he apparently had so many concubines that all of us in Ireland are related to him some way apparently he's a very very handsome dude we're all kind of related to him in some way

But yeah, so there's very few polyandrous societies in the world.

That would be multiple males, single wife.

And where you find those are predictable areas too of really, really harsh environments.

So in the high mountains in Nepal.

And the way that works is a family might say that they have two or three brothers.

And instead of each brother finding a wife of their own and dividing up the farmland, which is quite limited...

Disaster, yeah.

Well, polygyny is no picnic either.

So I'll tell a funny story about the anthropologist Helen Fisher.

She was walking along, and I always forget which tribe it was, with the Himba maybe, but with this polygynous farmer.

And he had currently had three wives.

And she was walking with him and she said, in an ideal world, how many wives would you want?

And he stopped and he thought and he leaned in and said, none.

He would like none, because apparently in these polygynous marriages, the sister wives poison each other's children.