Polygamy (from πολύς γάμος polys gamos, translated literally in Late Greek as "often married") is a marriage which includes more than two partners. When a man is married to more than one wife at a time, the relationship is called polygyny, and there is no marriage bond between the wives; and when a woman is married to more than one husband at a time, it is called polyandry, and there is no marriage bond between the husbands. If a marriage includes multiple husbands and wives, it can be called group marriage. The term is used in related ways in social anthropology, sociobiology, sociology, as well as in popular speech. In social anthropology, polygamy is the practice of a person's making him/herself available for two or more spouses to mate with. In contrast, monogamy is a marriage consisting of only two parties. Like monogamy, the term is often used in a de facto sense, applying regardless of whether the relationships are recognized by the state (see marriage for a discussion on the extent to which states can and do recognize potentially and actually polygamous forms as valid). In sociobiology and zoology, polygamy is used in a broad sense to mean any form of multiple mating.

Lisa J. Ling (Chinese: 凌志慧; pinyin: Líng Zhìhuì; born August 30, 1973) is an American journalist, best known for her role as a co-host of ABC's The View (from 1999–2002), host of National Geographic Explorer, reporter on Channel One News, and special correspondent for the Oprah Winfrey Show and CNN. She is the older sister of journalist Laura Ling.

Ling was born in Sacramento, California. Her parents divorced when she was 7 years old, and her younger sister Laura was 4. Ling's father Doug is a Chinese immigrant, born in the 1920s; her mother Mary Mei-yan (née Wang) hails from Tainan, Taiwan, and formerly served as the head of the Los Angeles office of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs. Following the divorce, she and her sister, Laura, were raised in the city of Sacramento, California by their father. She graduated from Del Campo High School in 1991.

Ling started in television when she was chosen as one of the four hosts of Scratch, a nationally-syndicated teen magazine show based in Sacramento. At 18, she joined Channel One News as one of their youngest reporters and anchors. Among her roles was war correspondent, including assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has won several awards for her reporting and documentaries. She attended the University of Southern California. Lisa Ling is fluent in Spanish.

Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, claiming to be raped at age nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik (Urdu: ذاکر عبدالکریم نائیک; born 18 October 1965) is an Indian public speaker on the subject of Islam and comparative religion. He is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), a non-profit organisation that owns the Peace TV channel based in Dubai, UAE. He is sometimes referred to as a televangelist. Before becoming a public speaker, he trained as a doctor. He has written two booklets on Islam and comparative religion. He is regarded as an exponent of the Salafi ideology; he places a strong emphasis on individual scholarship and the rejection of "blind Taqlid", which has led him to repudiate the relevance of sectarian or Madh'hab designations, all the while reaffirming their importance.

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik was born on 18 October 1965 in Mumbai, India. He attended St. Peter's High School in Mumbai. Later he enrolled at Kishinchand Chellaram College, before studying medicine at Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital and later the University of Mumbai, where he obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS). His wife, Farhat Naik, works for the women's section of the IRF.

Irene Spencer is an American author and a widow of Verlan LeBaron, brother of former prophet Joel LeBaron of the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times, a fundamentalist Mormon offshoot.

Born Irene Kunz in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1937. She secretly wed Verlan LeBaron on July 3, 1953, becoming his second wife. His first wife had been her older half-sister Charlotte. Irene would eventually bear thirteen of Verlan's 58 children.

Following her marriage to Verlan, she moved to a farm called "Colonia LeBaron" in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Northern Mexico. Colonia LeBaron had been settled by Verlan's father Alma Dayer LeBaron after the Manifesto of 1890 when the mainstream LDS Church abandoned polygamy. When Alma died in 1951, he passed leadership of the polygamist community down to his son Joel, who formally organized the Church of the Firstborn in the Fulness of Times in Salt Lake City, Utah.

A power struggle ensued between the sons of Alma Dayer LeBaron. A younger son, Ervil, founded his own church, the Church of the Lamb of God, in 1972 in San Diego, California. The same year, Ervil ordered the murder of his brother Joel, claiming justification based on the doctrine of blood atonement. Ervil's hitlist would eventually reach the hundreds and include John F. Kennedy and the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He would succeed in murdering, among others, his brother Joel, his daughter Rebecca and Rulon C. Allred, the President of the Apostolic United Brethren, another key polygamist group. Rulon Allred was the Uncle of Irene (her mothers brother) and one of the reasons why Ervil had him killed was to kill Verlin at Rulons funeral.