Podcast appearances and mentions of Francis Galton

Send us a textThis program previously aired April 5, 2024.  The DVD mentioned is still available but would not ship until mid-July.GUEST: SETH GRUBER, Executive Producer, The 1916 ProjectIt's been said that “Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims.”Ideas are the causes of actions in the world, for better or for worse. And the Christian should know from God's Word that sinful ideas come from unregenerate minds. Romans 8 says, “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8).The depravity and death we see all around us in our culture, particularly millions of aborted babies, all manner of sexual and gender perversion, and suicide and euthanasia, are the direct result of ideas from minds that hate God and His truth and design.As shown in a new documentary film titled The 1916 Project by executive producer Seth Gruber, the wicked lineage of this God-forsaking worldview in America is built block by block upon well-known names like evolutionist Charles Darwin, abortionist Margaret Sanger, and pervert Alfred Kinsey and many other lesser known influencers like Thomas Malthus, Francis Galton, Havelock Ellis, and Emma Goldman.Gruber reveals how these men and women are the reason why abortion today is seen as “My body, my choice,” “love is love,” “gender is fluid,” and “children need to explore their sexuality at the youngest ages.”Seth Gruber joins us today on The Christian Worldview to discuss Margaret Sanger and the History of the Death and Depravity Revolution in light of The 1916 Project documentary film.-------------------Order The 1916 Project DVD

In this episode, I explore the fascinating phenomenon of aphantasia, the inability to imagine. I discuss the manifestations of the condition which primarily affects visual imagination, but which also affects the ability to imagine sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and even feelings. The podcast also illustrates how aphantasia influences recollection of memories, and how it impacts of education and career.I illustrate aphantasia with such fascinating memoirs as that of Charlotte Langlais, titled 'Aphantasia Club', and of Alan Kendle titled 'Discover the Fascinating World of Aphantasia'. These show the different ways by which people with aphantasia discover that they have the condition, and the emotions that accompany this knowledge.Importantly, the podcast also highlights how people with the condition adapt by using alternative strategies, and how they have found such advantages of aphantasia, from the better ability to remember facts and meditate to the lesser risk of reliving painful memories.The podcast also traces the history of our understanding of aphantasia, starting with Francis Galton who first described, to Adam Zeman who resuscitated its study. This theme also narrated how Zeman came to coin the name aphantasia. Also covered in the podcast is the epidemiology of the condition, its familial and acquired causes, and its associated features, from impaired facial recognition to difficulty recollecting dreams.

En este episodio de DÍAS EXTRAÑOS exploramos la fascinante y controvertida figura de Francis Galton, primo de Charles Darwin y uno de los científicos más excéntricos de la historia. Más allá de ser el padre de la eugenesia, descubrimos a un hombre obsesionado con medir absolutamente todo: desde el color que cambiaba en los rostros de los espectadores durante las carreras de caballos, hasta la eficacia de las oraciones por la realeza británica. Inventor del silbato para perros, los mapas meteorológicos en periódicos y un "detector de atracción" basado en la inclinación física de las personas, Galton representa la delgada línea entre el genio científico y la obsesión desmedida. Una historia sobre cómo la mente humana puede brillar y extraviarse al mismo tiempo. Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Send us a textGUEST: SETH GRUBER, Executive Producer, The 1916 ProjectIt's been said that “Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims.”Ideas are the causes of actions in the world, for better or for worse. And the Christian should know from God's Word that sinful ideas come from unregenerate minds. Romans 8 says, “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8).The depravity and death we see all around us in our culture, particularly millions of aborted babies, all manner of sexual and gender perversion, and suicide and euthanasia, are the direct result of ideas from minds that hate God and His truth and design.As shown in a new documentary film titled The 1916 Project by executive producer Seth Gruber, the wicked lineage of this God-forsaking worldview in America is built block by block upon well-known names like evolutionist Charles Darwin, abortionist Margaret Sanger, and pervert Alfred Kinsey and many other lesser known influencers like Thomas Malthus, Francis Galton, Havelock Ellis, and Emma Goldman.Gruber reveals how these men and women are the reason why abortion today is seen as “My body, my choice,” “love is love,” “gender is fluid,” and “children need to explore their sexuality at the youngest ages.”Seth Gruber joins us today on The Christian Worldview to discuss Margaret Sanger and the History of the Death and Depravity Revolution in light of The 1916 Project documentary film.-------------------------------The 1916 Project DVD

This week on Pagecast, Beverley Roos-Muller sits down with Gavin Evans to discuss his thought-provoking new book, White Supremacy: A Brief History of Hatred. Tune in for a deep dive into the complex and often disturbing history of white supremacy, and explore how its legacy continues to shape our world today. Don't miss this important conversation!

Anita Say Chan is the author of “Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future.” Here, she speaks about her book and the very important connection between eugenics and the current Big Tech data regimes that we all live under.  Topics include: Uncle is on vacation, Ochelli Radio Network, Skype going away, 666-HELL, Singularity Summit 2009, eugenics, transhumanism, Bookshop(dot)org, University of Illinois, history of information sciences, data economy, predictive methods, social media, STEM, Silicon Valley, archives, critical humanities, Francis Galton, colonization, against diversity, demise of the West, paranoia, racial demise, datafication of populations, natural hierarchy, numbers, disinformation, non-Nordic classes, immigration laws, criminality, policy lobbying, misuse of science, sterilization laws, patrician classes, California eugenic policies, Stanford, Elon Musk, funding far right political movements, global order, attack on democracy, racial hierarchy, US as model for Nazi Germany eugenics, techno eugenics, false empiricism, divest from public institutions, Thiel, Andreesen, radical elitism, MAGA, promoting procreation of the well born, super genius, biological predetermination, Silicon Valley, Modi, Hindu Nationalism, Facebook in India, social media posts leading to real world violence, mob violence, attacks on minority populations, regulation on AI, public safety, psychopathic cost benefit analysis, taking power back

The Age of Transitions 2-28-2025AoT #452Anita Say Chan is the author of “Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future.” Here, she speaks about her book and the very important connection between eugenics and the current Big Tech data regimes that we all live under. Topics include: Uncle is on vacation, Ochelli Radio Network, Skype going away, 666-HELL, Singularity Summit 2009, eugenics, transhumanism, Bookshop(dot)org, University of Illinois, history of information sciences, data economy, predictive methods, social media, STEM, Silicon Valley, archives, critical humanities, Francis Galton, colonization, against diversity, demise of the West, paranoia, racial demise, datafication of populations, natural hierarchy, numbers, disinformation, non-Nordic classes, immigration laws, criminality, policy lobbying, misuse of science, sterilization laws, patrician classes, California eugenic policies, Stanford, Elon Musk, funding far right political movements, global order, attack on democracy, racial hierarchy, US as model for Nazi Germany eugenics, techno eugenics, false empiricism, divest from public institutions, Thiel, Andreesen, radical elitism, MAGA, promoting procreation of the well born, super genius, biological predetermination, Silicon Valley, Modi, Hindu Nationalism, Facebook in India, social media posts leading to real world violence, mob violence, attacks on minority populations, regulation on AI, public safety, psychopathic cost benefit analysis, taking power backFRANZ MAIN HUB:https://theageoftransitions.com/PATREONhttps://www.patreon.com/aaronfranzUNCLEhttps://unclethepodcast.com/ORhttps://theageoftransitions.com/category/uncle-the-podcast/FRANZ and UNCLE Merchhttps://theageoftransitions.com/category/support-the-podcasts/KEEP OCHELLI GOING. You are the EFFECT if you support OCHELLI https://ochelli.com/donate/

A l'occasion de la Journée mondiale de Darwin, le 12 février, BSG rediffuse une série consacrée au père de la théorie de l'Évolution.En 1859, Darwin publie L'origine des espèces, qui fonde la théorie moderne de l'évolution et introduit l'idée de sélection naturelle. Certains de ses partisans, trop pressés d'appliquer ces notions à l'homme, se lancent dans des interprétations dangereuses… Le darwinisme social (terme inventé en 1880) désigne la doctrine de Herbert Spencer, en partie inspirée des idées Malthus (qui pourraient se résumer à "laissons crever les pauvres en surnombre"). Elle justifie en tous cas l'élimination des moins aptes. Cette doctrine recommande de ne prendre aucune mesure pour protéger socialement les faibles. Darwin a défendu publiquement le contraire. Darwin a par ailleurs combattu le racisme. Il constate que le contact culturel (pour ne pas dire la colonisation) se traduisait parfois par l'extinction des peuples dominés, à cause de la barbarie dite civilisatrice des colonisateurs. La notion d'eugénisme viendra de Francis Galton, à la suite des idées de Spencer. Il prétend que la "civilisation", protectrice des faibles, a anéanti le pouvoir améliorateur de la sélection naturelle . Seule la sélection artificielle peut s'opposer à la dégénérescence. En 1871, Darwin rejette cette interprétation, au nom même de la civilisation, qu'il définit en termes d'extension indéfinie de la "sympathie". Mais c'est trop tard… Dès 1905, les États-Unis sont les précurseurs de mesures eugéniques: stérilisation de malades et de pauvres, chasse aux épileptiques, euthanasies etc. L'un des laboratoires de l'eugénisme nazi (celui du psychiatre Ernst Rüdin) est subventionné par la Fondation Rockefeller. L'Europe connaît avec le nazisme un des plus monstrueux avatars de ce darwinisme social…_______Pour réécouter le premier épisode:https://bit.ly/darwin_1_BSG _______

Mark is joined by scientist, writer, and broadcaster Adam Rutherford in this special extended episode. Together, they discuss eugenics, Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, nature versus nurture, how right wing Americans influenced Hitler and many other fascinating topics.  If you enjoyed this interview then please buy a copy of Adam's book “Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics”, It would make an excellent Christmas gift and can be ordered on amazon right now using this link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Control-History-Troubling-Present-Eugenics-ebook/dp/B08WC6493L  Get ad-free extended episodes, early access and exclusive content on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtfisgoingonpod Follow What The F*** Is Going On? with Mark Steel on Bluesky/X @wtfisgoingonpod Follow Elliot Steel @elliotsteelcom Follow Adam @AdamRutherford Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

IQ is, to say the least, a fraught concept. Psychologists have studied IQ—or g for “general cognitive ability”—maybe more than any other psychological construct. And they've learned some interesting things about it. That it's remarkably stable over the lifespan. That it really is general: people who ace one test of intellectual ability tend to ace others. And that IQs have risen markedly over the last century. At the same time, IQ seems to be met with increasing squeamishness, if not outright disdain, in many circles. It's often seen as crude, misguided, reductive—maybe a whole lot worse. There's no question, after all, that IQ has been misused—that it still gets misused—for all kinds of racist, classist, colonialist purposes. As if this wasn't all thorny enough, the study of IQ is also intimately bound up with the study of genetics. It's right there in the roiling center of debates about how genes and environment make us who we are. So, yeah, what to make of all this? How should we be thinking about IQ? My guest today is Dr. Eric Turkheimer. Eric is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He has studied intelligence and many other complex human traits for decades, and he's a major figure in the field of “behavior genetics.” Eric also has a new book out this fall—which I highly recommend—titled Understanding the Nature-Nurture Debate. In a field that has sometimes been accused of rampant optimism, Eric is—as you'll hear—a bit more measured. In this conversation, Eric and I focus on intelligence and its putatively genetic basis. We talk about why Eric doubts that we are anywhere close to an account of the biology of IQ. We discuss what makes intelligence such a formidable construct in psychology and why essentialist understandings of it are so intuitive. We talk about Francis Galton and the long shadow he's cast on the study of human behavior. We discuss the classic era of Twin Studies—an era in which researchers started to derive quantitative estimates of the heritability of complex traits. We talk about how the main takeaway from that era was that genes are quite important indeed, and about how more genetic techniques suggest that takeaway may have been a bit simplistic. Along the way, Eric and I touch on spelling ability, child prodigies, the chemical composition of money, the shared quirks of twins reared apart, the Flynn Effect, the Reverse Flynn Effect, birth order, the genetics of height, the problem of missing heritability, whether we should still be using IQ scores, and the role of behavior genetics in the broader social sciences.  Alright folks, lots in here—let's just get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Eric Turkheimer. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 3:30 – The 1994 book The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein a Charles Murray, dealt largely with the putative social implications of IQ research. It was extremely controversial and widely discussed. For an overview of the book and controversy, see the Wikipedia article here. 6:00 – For discussion of the “all parents are environmentalists…” quip, see here. 12:00 – The notion of “multiple intelligences” was popularized by the psychologist Howard Gardner—see here for an overview. See here for an attempt to test the claims of the “multiple intelligences” framework using some of the methods of traditional IQ research. For work on EQ (or Emotional Intelligence) see here. 19:00 – Dr. Turkheimer has also laid out his spelling test analogy in a Substack post. 22:30 – Dr. Turkheimer's 1998 paper, “Heritability and Biological Explanation.” 24:30 – For an in-passing treatment of the processing efficiency idea, see p. 195 of Daniel Nettle's book Personality. See also Richard Haier's book, The Neuroscience of Intelligence. 26:00 – The original study on the relationship between pupil size and intelligence. A more recent study that fails to replicate those findings. 31:00 – For an argument that child prodigies constitute an argument for “nature,” see here. For a memorable narrative account of one child prodigy, see here. 32:00 – A meta-analysis of the Flynn effect. We have previously discussed the Flynn Effect in an episode with Michael Muthukrishna. 37:00 – James Flynn's book, What is Intelligence? On the reversal of the Flynn Effect, see here. 40:00 – The phrase “nature-nurture” originally comes from Shakespeare and was picked up by Francis Galton. In The Tempest, Prospero describes Caliban as “a born devil on whose nature/ Nurture can never stick.” 41:00 – For a biography of Galton, see here. For an article-length account of Galton's role in the birth of eugenics, see here. 50:00 – For an account of R.A. Fisher's 1918 paper and its continuing influence, see here. 55:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer's paper on the “nonshared environment”—E in the ACE model. 57:00 – A study coming out of the Minnesota Study of Twins reared apart. A New York Times article recounting some of the interesting anecdata in the Minnesota Study. 1:00:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer's 2000 paper on the “three laws of behavior genetics.” Note that this is not, in fact, Dr. Turkheimer's most cited paper (though it is very well cited). 1:03:00 – For another view of the state of behavior genetics in the postgenomic era, see here. 1:11:00 – For Dr. Turkheimer's work on poverty, heritability, and IQ, see here. 1:13:00 – A recent large-scale analysis of birth order effects on personality. 1:16:00 – For Dr. Turkheimer's take on the missing heritability problem, see here and here.    1:19:00 – A recent study on the missing heritability problem in the case of height. 1:30:00 – On the dark side of IQ, see Chapter 9 of Dr. Turkheimer's book. See also Radiolab's series on g. 1:31:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer's Substack, The Gloomy Prospect.   Recommendations The Genetic Lottery, Kathryn Paige Harden Intelligence, Stuart Ritchie Intelligence and How to Get It, Richard Nisbett ‘Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents'' (Ted talk), James Flynn   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

The weirdest chapter in Approaching Zion makes for a kinda' weird A segment about intelligence and genius. We talk about the history of ranking intelligence and its influence on eugenics before discussing more modern conceptions of intelligence and genius from a nature AND nurture perspective. Then we get into Hugh Nibley's eulogy of Donald Decker. It's a standalone chapter, very different from every other chapter in Approaching Zion, and provides a wealth of interesting discussion, including why it was even included in the book to begin with. Then we wrap with happy news of Sweden hitting carbon emission targets ahead of schedule while boosting their economy.   Are you registered to vote?! https://www.vote.org/   Utah Fungi Fest https://wholesunwellness.com/utah-fungi-fest/   John Whitmer Historical Association Conference https://www.jwha.info/   Show Notes:  https://www.etymonline.com/word/genius https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/10-child-prodigies.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton https://archive.org/details/inquiriesintohu00galt/page/316/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222974/page/n5/mode/2up https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181994/ https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/24831-grey-matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_of_Albert_Einstein   Hedy Lamarr: https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/snapshot/hedy-lamarr-golden-age-film-star-and-important-inventor Sword of Laban:  Approaching Zion, by Hugh Nibley  “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by William Shakespeare: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/a-midsummer-nights-dream/read/  “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/the-tempest/read/  Happy News: https://www.dailyclimate.org/sweden-shows-how-to-slash-emissions-while-boosting-the-economy-2668966746.html    GoFundMe for Shannon: https://www.gofundme.com/help-shannon-grover-with-medical-expenses    Email: glassboxpodcast@gmail.com  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GlassBoxPod  Patreon page for documentary: https://www.patreon.com/SeerStonedProductions Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/glassboxpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlassBoxPod  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glassboxpodcast/  Merch store: https://www.redbubble.com/people/exmoapparel/shop Or find the merch store by clicking on “Store” here: https://glassboxpodcast.com/index.html

24. History & lies (part 3): We'd Like A Word hosts Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan chat & laugh with Subhadra Das, writer, historian, broadcaster, comedian & curator, about her book, Uncivilised: Ten Lies That Made The West. Subhadra looks at the relationship between science & society. She specialises in the history & philosophy of science, particularly the history of scientific racism & eugenics, & what those histories mean for our lives today. For nine years, she was Curator of the Science Collections at University College London where she was also Researcher in Critical Eugenics at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisation. She's written & presented podcasts, curated museum exhibitions, done stand-up comedy & been on radio & tv. In this 3-part episode we talk about racist Gandhi, mispronouncing Bangla names, white supremacy baked into our idea of western civilisation, science not being neutral, comforting lies, Francis Galton, eugenics, the inventor of the questionnaire, spoiling things for white people, why female comics like Victoria Wood Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders avoided the QI TV show, the Defiance TV show on Channel 4, Hamza Yousef, Paul McCartney's song Blackbird & reply guy, "empty places" v "emptied" places, the presence of writing as a measure of civilisation, rich eejit Erich von Däniken, fake Tibetan monk Lobsang Rampa aka Cyril Henry Hoskin, cuddly Columbo, Golden Age detective fiction as "the mental equivalent of pottering", Magna Carta & Forest Charter, swan upping, US federal government & the Iroquois nation's Haudenosaunee, Abraham Maslow & his hierarchy of needs, which he learned from the Blackfoot Nation, Ryan Heavyhead, the UK citizenship test, & editor Harriet Poland. We'd Like A Word is a podcast & radio show from authors Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan. (And sometimes Jonathan Kennedy.) We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, & audiobook creators about books - fiction & non-fiction. We go out on various radio & podcast platforms. Our website is http://www.wedlikeaword.com for information on Paul, Steve & our guests. We're on Twitter @wedlikeaword & Facebook @wedlikeaword & our email is wedlikeaword@gmail.com Yes, we're embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you'd like to come on We'd Like A Word to chat, review or read out passages from books. Paul is writing a new cosy mystery series set in contemporary Delhi - more on that anon. And if you're still stuck for something to read now, may we recommend Blackwatertown, the thriller by Paul Waters or Cockerings, the comic classic by Stevyn Colgan.

25. History & lies (part 2): We'd Like A Word hosts Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan chat & laugh with Subhadra Das, writer, historian, broadcaster, comedian & curator, about her book, Uncivilised: Ten Lies That Made The West. Subhadra looks at the relationship between science & society. She specialises in the history & philosophy of science, particularly the history of scientific racism & eugenics, & what those histories mean for our lives today. For nine years, she was Curator of the Science Collections at University College London where she was also Researcher in Critical Eugenics at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisation. She's written & presented podcasts, curated museum exhibitions, done stand-up comedy & been on radio & tv. In this 3-part episode we talk about racist Gandhi, mispronouncing Bangla names, white supremacy baked into our idea of western civilisation, science not being neutral, comforting lies, Francis Galton, eugenics, the inventor of the questionnaire, spoiling things for white people, why female comics like Victoria Wood Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders avoided the QI TV show, the Defiance TV show on Channel 4, Hamza Yousef, Paul McCartney's song Blackbird & reply guy, "empty places" v "emptied" places, the presence of writing as a measure of civilisation, rich eejit Erich von Däniken, fake Tibetan monk Lobsang Rampa aka Cyril Henry Hoskin, cuddly Columbo, Golden Age detective fiction as "the mental equivalent of pottering", Magna Carta & Forest Charter, swan upping, US federal government & the Iroquois nation's Haudenosaunee, Abraham Maslow & his hierarchy of needs, which he learned from the Blackfoot Nation, Ryan Heavyhead, the UK citizenship test, & editor Harriet Poland. We'd Like A Word is a podcast & radio show from authors Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan. (And sometimes Jonathan Kennedy.) We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, & audiobook creators about books - fiction & non-fiction. We go out on various radio & podcast platforms. Our website is http://www.wedlikeaword.com for information on Paul, Steve & our guests. We're on Twitter @wedlikeaword & Facebook @wedlikeaword & our email is wedlikeaword@gmail.com Yes, we're embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you'd like to come on We'd Like A Word to chat, review or read out passages from books. Paul is writing a new cosy mystery series set in contemporary Delhi - more on that anon. And if you're still stuck for something to read now, may we recommend Blackwatertown, the thriller by Paul Waters or Cockerings, the comic classic by Stevyn Colgan.

26. History & lies (part 1): We'd Like A Word hosts Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan chat & laugh with Subhadra Das, writer, historian, broadcaster, comedian & curator, about her book, Uncivilised: Ten Lies That Made The West. Subhadra looks at the relationship between science & society. She specialises in the history & philosophy of science, particularly the history of scientific racism & eugenics, & what those histories mean for our lives today. For nine years, she was Curator of the Science Collections at University College London where she was also Researcher in Critical Eugenics at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisation. She's written & presented podcasts, curated museum exhibitions, done stand-up comedy & been on radio & tv. In this 3-part episode we talk about racist Gandhi, mispronouncing Bangla names, white supremacy baked into our idea of western civilisation, science not being neutral, comforting lies, Francis Galton, eugenics, the inventor of the questionnaire, spoiling things for white people, why female comics like Victoria Wood Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders avoided the QI TV show, the Defiance TV show on Channel 4, Hamza Yousef, Paul McCartney's song Blackbird & reply guy, "empty places" v "emptied" places, the presence of writing as a measure of civilisation, rich eejit Erich von Däniken, fake Tibetan monk Lobsang Rampa aka Cyril Henry Hoskin, cuddly Columbo, Golden Age detective fiction as "the mental equivalent of pottering", Magna Carta & Forest Charter, swan upping, US federal government & the Iroquois nation's Haudenosaunee, Abraham Maslow & his hierarchy of needs, which he learned from the Blackfoot Nation, Ryan Heavyhead, the UK citizenship test, & editor Harriet Poland. We'd Like A Word is a podcast & radio show from authors Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan. (And sometimes Jonathan Kennedy.) We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, & audiobook creators about books - fiction & non-fiction. We go out on various radio & podcast platforms. Our website is http://www.wedlikeaword.com for information on Paul, Steve & our guests. We're on Twitter @wedlikeaword & Facebook @wedlikeaword & our email is wedlikeaword@gmail.com Yes, we're embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you'd like to come on We'd Like A Word to chat, review or read out passages from books. Paul is writing a new cosy mystery series set in contemporary Delhi - more on that anon. And if you're still stuck for something to read now, may we recommend Blackwatertown, the thriller by Paul Waters or Cockerings, the comic classic by Stevyn Colgan.

Wanna chat about the episode? Or just hang out? Come join us on discord!   --- POV: the Serenity Prayer, but with shoulds instead of cans.   Chris & Kayla attempt to tie the knot between Transhumanism and Eugenics. --- *Search Categories* Science / Pseudoscience; Anthropological; Destructive   --- *Topic Spoiler* Eugenics   --- Further Reading https://www.britannica.com/science/eugenics-genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_eugenics https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/bio_facpubs/article/1001/&path_info=Eugenics__Annals_of_Eugenics_.pdf The Deceptive Simplicity of Mendelian Genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton https://galton.org/essays/1900-1911/galton-1904-am-journ-soc-eugenics-scope-aims.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Pearson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Quetelet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Davenport The American Eugenics Records Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/cc/2e/cc2e84f2-126f-41a5-a24b-43e093c47b2c/210414-sanger-opposition-claims-p01.pdf https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2020/10/14/why-buck-v-bell-still-matters/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Darrow The Eugenics Cult, by Clarence Darrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_evolution_(transhumanism) https://www.seenandunseen.com/transhumanism-eugenics-digital-age https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/silicon-valley-transhumanism-eugenics-information.html https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2023/01/19/transhumanism-is-eugenics-for-educated-white-liberals/ Making Us New: From Eugenics to Transhumanism in Modernist Culture https://www.vice.com/en/article/prominent-ai-philosopher-and-father-of-longtermism-sent-very-racist-email-to-a-90s-philosophy-listserv/ https://www.truthdig.com/articles/longtermism-and-eugenics-a-primer/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/silicon-valley-transhumanism-eugenics-information.html https://www.seenandunseen.com/transhumanism-eugenics-digital-age https://www.vice.com/en/article/prominent-ai-philosopher-and-father-of-longtermism-sent-very-racist-email-to-a-90s-philosophy-listserv/ https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2023/01/19/transhumanism-is-eugenics-for-educated-white-liberals/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto https://journals.scholarsportal.info/details/23803312/v05i0001/1_ctm.xml https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/04/the-case-against-perfection/302927/   --- *Patreon Credits* Michaela Evans, Heather Aunspach, Alyssa Ottum, David Whiteside, Jade A, amy sarah marshall, Martina Dobson, Eillie Anzilotti, Lewis Brown, Kelly Smith Upton, Wild Hunt Alex, Niklas Brock, Jim Fingal Jenny Lamb, Matthew Walden, Rebecca Kirsch, Pam Westergard, Ryan Quinn, Paul Sweeney, Erin Bratu, Liz T, Lianne Cole, Samantha Bayliff, Katie Larimer, Fio H, Jessica Senk, Proper Gander, Nancy Carlson, Carly Westergard-Dobson, banana, Megan Blackburn, Instantly Joy, Athena of CaveSystem, John Grelish, Rose Kerchinske, Annika Ramen, Alicia Smith, Kevin, Velm, Dan Malmud, tiny, Dom, Tribe Label - Panda - Austin, Noelle Hoover, Tesa Hamilton, Nicole Carter, Paige, Brian Lancaster, tiny, GD

Wanna chat about the episode? Or just hang out? Come join us on discord!   --- No idiot knows that he is an idiot. As a rule, those of small intellectual equipment are so sure of themselves that they are eager to make the race over in their own image. -Clarence Darrow   Chris & Kayla enjoy dunking on one of history's worst ideas. --- *Search Categories* Science / Pseudoscience; Anthropological; Destructive   --- *Topic Spoiler* Eugenics   --- Further Reading https://www.britannica.com/science/eugenics-genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_eugenics https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/bio_facpubs/article/1001/&path_info=Eugenics__Annals_of_Eugenics_.pdf The Deceptive Simplicity of Mendelian Genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton https://galton.org/essays/1900-1911/galton-1904-am-journ-soc-eugenics-scope-aims.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Pearson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Quetelet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Davenport The American Eugenics Records Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/cc/2e/cc2e84f2-126f-41a5-a24b-43e093c47b2c/210414-sanger-opposition-claims-p01.pdf https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2020/10/14/why-buck-v-bell-still-matters/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Darrow The Eugenics Cult, by Clarence Darrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_evolution_(transhumanism) https://www.seenandunseen.com/transhumanism-eugenics-digital-age https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/silicon-valley-transhumanism-eugenics-information.html https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2023/01/19/transhumanism-is-eugenics-for-educated-white-liberals/ Making Us New: From Eugenics to Transhumanism in Modernist Culture https://www.vice.com/en/article/prominent-ai-philosopher-and-father-of-longtermism-sent-very-racist-email-to-a-90s-philosophy-listserv/ https://www.truthdig.com/articles/longtermism-and-eugenics-a-primer/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/04/the-case-against-perfection/302927/   --- *Patreon Credits* Michaela Evans, Heather Aunspach, Alyssa Ottum, David Whiteside, Jade A, amy sarah marshall, Martina Dobson, Eillie Anzilotti, Lewis Brown, Kelly Smith Upton, Wild Hunt Alex, Niklas Brock, Jim Fingal Jenny Lamb, Matthew Walden, Rebecca Kirsch, Pam Westergard, Ryan Quinn, Paul Sweeney, Erin Bratu, Liz T, Lianne Cole, Samantha Bayliff, Katie Larimer, Fio H, Jessica Senk, Proper Gander, Nancy Carlson, Carly Westergard-Dobson, banana, Megan Blackburn, Instantly Joy, Athena of CaveSystem, John Grelish, Rose Kerchinske, Annika Ramen, Alicia Smith, Kevin, Velm, Dan Malmud, tiny, Dom, Tribe Label - Panda - Austin, Noelle Hoover, Tesa Hamilton, Nicole Carter, Paige, Brian Lancaster, tiny, GD

Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube!   FULL TRANSCRIPT: Wilmer Leon (00:00): So here's a question. How does the false construct of race, and yes, it is a false construct or the real constructs of culture and cultural identity factor into our opposition to or support for a political candidate. Let's find out Announcer (00:26): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:33): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of connecting the dots, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions about the broader historic context in which most events occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events and the impact that these events have on the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is, as I stated, how does the false construct of race and it is a false construct and or the real issues of culture and cultural identity factor into our opposition to and support for candidates for insight. Let's turn to my guest, Dr. (01:35) Chantel Sherman is a historian and journalist whose work documents deconstructs and interprets eugenic themes in popular culture, identity formation among African-Americans and reproductive apartheid in carceral spaces and within marginalized communities. Publisher of Acumen Magazine, author of In Search of Purity, eugenics and Racial Uplift among New Negroes, 1915 and 1935, as well as popular eugenics in television and film. Also, she's a novelist of Fester and Spill. Dr. Chantel Sherman, welcome back. Good morning. Thank you for having me. And as always, thank you for joining me. And I got to add, she's a very, very dear friend as well, so I get to call her Chantel, before we get to the question posed in the open, A viewer of our last discussion reached out to me and wanted us to elaborate on the issues of eugenics in medicine because many of us know some things about the Tuskegee study as well as Ms. Henrietta Lacks, but there's an awful lot more to eugenics and medicine than just those two issues. So starting there, particularly with the Tuskegee experiment, I elaborate, clarify what you know to be some of the misunderstandings about that, a little bit about Henrietta Lacks and then where are we with eugenics in medicine? Shantella Sherman (03:10): Sure. It's a loaded question because it actually has, the response is almost a series of volumes, quite frankly, but to synthesize this understanding, eugenics means what you're trying to do is create better people. And in order to create better people, you have to know what they're made of, what makes good stock, what makes good genes. And so what we've tried to do in this country through eugenics is to create better people by restricting who can and who cannot have children incarcerating people performing sterilizations for sterilizations on folks who we deem as unfit. And so it's not just about the body, but it's the body politic. So if I determine that you're poor, for instance, it's believed that poverty is in your DNA diseases are automatically in your DNA. And so black people as a whole, were considered to be contaminated. We are still considered to be largely contaminated. (04:17) We are a bad gene pool, we are a subhuman group according to science and eugenics. So based on this, studying any type of disease means studying black people, and sometimes it means injecting them with certain things. So with Tuskegee, there's been a bit of a revisionist history about these are black people who had syphilis and we simply did not treat them in order to see the development of the disease or the course of the disease over years. The truth of the matter is many of these men were injected with syphilis, and that's the original documentation that we don't necessarily look at. We have to get to a point where we're looking at the entire scope of information and data. Alabama, Tuskegee was not the only place where these syphilis studies were taking place. The serological studies were taking place in six different states and they were all connected to sharecropping or farming communities, sharecropping communities where the black people there could not necessarily leave of their own free will. (05:23) And then based upon that, you had a population that you could study, you could inject with different things. I've seen studies where folks are literally looking at how pesticides work by spraying cotton fields and leaving the black people who are working in the cotton fields in the fields so that as they develop lung conditions, you now start to talk about how black people don't have the capacity to breathe in certain places or they have bad lungs or these other things as if they're genetic, when the truth of the matter is you are experimenting on them. And so we've been the Guinea pigs unwittingly in this country for a long time, but because the stroke and the core of the information is based upon black people being somehow contaminated anyway, being less human, then we become like the lab rats or the little white mice in the labs where constantly we're having things tested on us and we don't necessarily know this. Then the scope of that becomes black people are 10 times more likely to have this. They're 10 times more likely to do this or to die of these conditions, or their behaviors lend themselves to these particular things. Wilmer Leon (06:39): When you said make better people, it was inferred, but I want to state the obvious. When the Nazis were trying to make the superior race, they were not doing this for the betterment of mankind, even though in their warped racist minds, they thought, so this was not altruistic by any stretch of the imagination. They were trying to make better white people at the expense of people of color. Is that hyperbolic on my Shantella Sherman (07:22): No, it's on point. I mean, the fact of the matter is if you consider non-white people to be subhuman, there we go. Or a subspecies. Let's pull this into America. When you say American, you're not talking about black people, you're talking about white people. That's why you have to add these hyphens, African-American, because America is the culture. It is also the race. It is also the health. It is also the patriotism. It is also the citizenship. And so this language becomes loaded. So when you say American, I'm looking at things that are talking about the American birth rate. The American birth rate is not going down when we're talking about black people or Hispanic people. So where in America is the birth issue? It's an American issue. It's a white issue. Wilmer Leon (08:15): It's a very white issue. And I'm quickly trying to put my hands on a piece by Dr. Walters here. I think I have it that speaks to this in the political context where, well, I can't find the quote, but he basically talks about, it's very important to understand that, oh, here we go. This is from white nationalism, black interests, and so this is your eugenics. On the policy side, if a race is dominant to the extent that it controls the government of the state defined as the authoritative institutions of decision-making, it is able to utilize those institutions and the policy outcomes they produce as instruments through which it is also structures its racial interests. Given a condition where one race is dominant in all political institutions, most policy appears to take on an objective quality where policymakers argue they're acting on the basis of national interests rather than racial ones. So that's Dr. Walters telling us, if I can just cut to the chase, when white folks run the show and they speak in the national interest, they're talking about their interests, not ours, and that's absolutely okay. Alright, Shantella Sherman (09:55): That's it. Wilmer Leon (09:55): So two other points about Tuskegee that I think are very important for people to understand. I know there were black nurses involved and weren't there also black physicians involved? Shantella Sherman (10:08): Absolutely. Wilmer Leon (10:09): And there is some question about whether there was actual consent. How much of this did they actually know or were they dupes? Isn't that a question that gets posed? Shantella Sherman (10:24): It's a question that's posed often because the belief is that if there's a black person in the room that they're going to side for black people, they're going to defend, they're going to try and help. But the reality is when we're talking science, we're talking medicine and science on behalf of the nation, on behalf of American Americans, we want to make sure that we have a healthy pool of black people as well. So it benefited and it benefits currently many black leaders to hold onto these eugenic things and these eugenic tropes and these eugenic theories where even though we don't talk about sterilizing people in the same way we did, then you still hear people say, black people, even this person has too many kids, they don't need to have any more kids. They're on welfare already. So what do you do? You Wilmer Leon (11:18): Give them Ronald Reagan's welfare queen, Shantella Sherman (11:20): Right? Well, right. If a white person says this, it's racist. If a black person says she already has 10 kids, she doesn't need anymore. She can't afford 'em, now she's neglecting them. We start with this other thing and it becomes, so what do we do? Give her no plan or something. And if that doesn't work, go ahead and give her a hysterectomy. That's eugenics. Wilmer Leon (11:41): An example of that on the other side is Octo mom. Shantella Sherman (11:45): Exactly, Wilmer Leon (11:47): Exactly. She got a TV show or she was trying to get a, there were people who were saying, oh, this woman is out here tripping and something needs to be done. But there were also those that wanted to glorify her, put her on television in order to generate revenue, Shantella Sherman (12:11): Generate revenue, but also public opinion, where she was one, a single woman, she already had one child that she was having trouble supporting. Then it became who should have access to IVF and all these other things, and then who's going to pay for all of these eight now nine children that she has? And it was like, what is she going to do with them and dah, dah, dah, dah. But you give the duggars one, she's single. If it's the Duggars who are just full of all types of deficiencies over here, I'm using eugenic terms. I'm sorry. All of a sudden it was like, right, give them a TV show. Give them money, give them this, give them that. Because what you're doing with television is programming people to believe some people need this, some people don't. If this was a black female in Chicago, in the Robert Taylor homes years ago and she had 10 or 11 kids, you'd be running her up a flagpole at this point and talking about the degeneracy and her kids are going to be this and there's no father in the house and all of these other things. (13:09) So when you push this politically and you start talking policy, this is what you're concerned about. We should be concerned about on a local, national, and even an international scale. And so as you start to talk about candidates, we have to have a clear understanding of where our potential leaders fall, whether they're black or white, because black people are also Americans. And so we're living the American dream, and I don't want these people living next to me and I don't want a prison next to me and I don't want halfway house over here, and I don't want the school of kids over here and I don't want this, this, this and this. And that's an American thing, even if the person or the kids or the people I'm talking about happens to be brown just like me. Wilmer Leon (13:57): So to wrap up the Tuskegee, what are the two biggest misnomers about Tuskegee that you want this audience to have a better understanding of before we get to Henrietta Lacks? What do you want people to understand about Tuskegee? Shantella Sherman (14:13): The Tuskegee was not the only place, and I don't even like it being named, that it was the Eugenics records office. Serological studies. And you had five other places, five other places other than Tuskegee, where these serological tests were being done and they did not necessarily stop. Wilmer Leon (14:34): Oh, meaning that they're still ongoing. I know they were going well into the seventies at least. Shantella Sherman (14:43): And if Tuskegee is the only one that they're talking about, what makes you think that? The serological studies that were taking place in Mississippi and in Tennessee, in Georgia, just in North Carolina. In North Carolina, and again, there's a whole record of this, but we don't talk about that and we don't talk about the black people intrinsically involved in these studies and in this research, Wilmer Leon (15:08): Henrietta Lacks, if you would elaborate, Shantella Sherman (15:13): One thing that we don't discuss with Henrietta Lacks is that the fact of the matter is that she was at Crownsville, she was in Maryland. Once again, you must make the connection between eugenics and these carceral spaces, either asylums places where you need to have a mental rest. I don't like even calling them. It's a home for the mentally ill. This person may have been having menopausal symptoms. They have women in there, they were reading too much. There's a Howard University professor and his name Escape Smith, the moment high ranking Howard University professor. He was caught up in Crownsville at some point and died there. And Wilmer Leon (15:52): For those that don't know, what is Crownsville? Shantella Sherman (15:54): Crownsville was the Maryland, it's, we would say asylum now, but it was a place for people who were feeble minded or had mental health issues. And you could be put there for any of a number of reasons. But once you were there, this was the one specifically for black folks. So a whole black neighborhood was cleared in order to put this asylum there and to let you know what they thought of black people, they made the black people who were supposed to be the patients actually build the hospital itself. And it remained open for quite a while, but it was a place of torture. It was a place of experiments. And Henrietta Lacks ended up there. And so while people are, she's telling people, okay, I'm having fibroid issues. The potential cancer issue, once you're in these spaces, you don't have rights over your own body. (16:45) So the experiments and the biopsies and the whatever else are also taking place in these spaces. And so that's where she was when all of this transpired, grabbing her cells, studying her cells. If you knew the cells could give us the cancer treatments that we have today, were you actually trying to treat her or were you trying to advance science? And so we have to start looking at who were some of the black doctors that were there, who were the other universities? You have universities that are attached to these asylums. And so it's not just, even if you're talking to Tuskegee, it's not just Tuskegee as the area, it's Tuskegee, the university, it's Howard or it's me, Harry. It's black institutions as well. And you have to look at this. Some of this is a class issue, but it's always a consciousness issue. You all right? Wilmer Leon (17:40): And just so people know that Henrietta Lacks, she was the first African-American woman whose cancer cells are the of the hela cell line, which is the first immortalized human cell line, and one of the most important cell lines in medical research. And a lot of people made a lot of money, Shantella Sherman (18:05): Still are Wilmer Leon (18:06): Hundreds of millions of dollars off of her body. And up until recently, her family did not receive any type of compensation for the illegal use of her body. And I want to put it in the context of body because when you talk about cells and people go, oh, cells, what the hell? No, it was her body that they used to create an incredibly valuable, some would say invaluable. You really can't even put a value on it. And up until recently, her family, I can see you want to go ahead. Go ahead. Shantella Sherman (18:52): Well, when you start talking about the value of black bodies, we can go currently, as of last year, the children that were involved, there was a situation in Philadelphia, 1985 where it was a group of what they called militant resistant black folks, the Africa Family Wilmer Leon (19:12): Move Shantella Sherman (19:12): Movement community. They were in a lovely community. And so they had this move project that they were doing, this is their thing. And you had a black mayor at this point who said, Wilmer Leon (19:23): William, good, Shantella Sherman (19:24): There you go, mayor. Wilmer Leon (19:26): Good. Who was bad? Shantella Sherman (19:28): I'm sick of having to deal with this. And instead of charging the house which had children in his whole family communal type of space, he said, let's drop a bomb, get a helicopter to drop a bomb on the house. Which of course ended up spreading. It tears up the entire neighborhood. But here's the point with this, two of the children that died in the bombing, somehow their bodies were sold given over to the University of Pennsylvania for study for research. Because the idea is, is there a difference in the brain and the mentality of a resistant black family and their children, their progeny that we need to be aware of? So now you have a university studying the brains and the body parts of dead children. The family does not know. The family did not know until last year that the university didn't even know that the bodies were sitting on the shelf Now Wilmer Leon (20:30): Because some of the other children survived and are now in their thirties and forties. Absolutely. Shantella Sherman (20:36): Absolutely. Absolutely. So they had to give those but become, we're going to give you the bodies back so they can be interred. What were you doing with these children? You were studying them, you're studying them not just as cadavers. They were being used in the classroom for what purpose though? And so I think that we need to really grapple with the fact that there's a value to black bodies, even if there's not a value to black people. The culture is amazing and this and this, but there is a value to black bodies that we don't talk about. And so there are folks that are, you have dollar signs on you when they see you, they have dollar signs on your womb, they have dollar signs on you as you matriculate through life and you navigate different systems. And the goal is to extract as much as possible while we are just kind of not paying attention to any of it. Wilmer Leon (21:34): There is the adage, you are a product of your environment. And so people will look at me, look at you. And how did you all become PhDs? Well, they haven't met your mother. I've had the blessing. They haven't met your parents. They haven't met my parents. We are products of our environment. So when you look at the children in the Africa family from move in Philadelphia, those children, there was nothing biologically different that made them one way or another. They were products. They were raised a certain way just as they want to talk about black on black crime, ignoring the fact that crime occurs everywhere. You tend to commit crime in the space that's closest to you against those that are closest to you. And that poverty is one of the greatest contributors to a criminal element. Not psychosis, not phenotype. And final point as they talk about black crime, who did the mafia commit most of its crime against other Italians? Who did the Polish Mafia? Who did the Russian mob? Who does the Israeli mob commit crime against those that are closest to them, but we don't understand it in that context. Shantella Sherman (23:19): Wiler, I'm going to throw this in here real quick. The University of Pennsylvania has a long history of studying black folks, especially ones that they consider to be degenerate types. For years, I did a series for Acumen Magazine called the Crack Baby Turns 30. And it looked at a study, a longitudinal study that the University of Pennsylvania was doing where they actually studied the children, the newborn babies that were left at the hospital by women who were crack addicted at that point. And they had these terrible lines in their notes saying things like, these children don't look you in the face. They are born with a pathology. They will be criminals and they will be murderers. And they don't even cry like real babies. They're like animals, okay, 30 years on and they're studying these kids every month 30 years later, they come back and say, each one of those children provided they were given to an aunt, a grandparent or someone else, and they were loved on and taken care of. (24:21) They turned out just fine. None of them have been in prison. None of them have committed crimes. None of them have had out welock babies, most of them. I think they said 90% of them have been to college. Alright. So it automatically tells you that the nature versus nurture is really just a dream. It's a dream sequence in some madman's laboratory where you're going to try and make a case by creating an environment where you're defunding this and unhinging people and then saying, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy or this is all about the numbers and these are the stats and this is where this goes. And it is simply not true. Wilmer Leon (25:04): Some may have heard me tell this story before, but nature versus nurture, really quick example, I went to a private Catholic high school in Sacramento, Christian brothers high school and had to pay tuition to get there. So whether it was hook or by crook, I can obviously afford to be there. I'm there. So the guidance counselor at the time, Mr. Patrick O'Brien sees me wearing a Hampton sweatshirt and I'm walking down the hall and he says, Wilmer, what is that? And I said, oh, this is the sweatshirt from the college I'm going to go to. And he says, you're going to college? I said, yeah, Mr. O'Brien, I'm going to college. He said, Wilmer, have you ever thought about trade school? I said, no, I have never thought about trade school. He says, well, why not? I said, because honestly, Mr. O'Brien, I don't want to have to take the ass whooping that I'm going to take if I go home and tell my parents I'm not going to college. Now there's nothing against going to trade school, but in my house. Shantella Sherman (26:13): Exactly. Wilmer Leon (26:14): That was not an option, Shantella Sherman (26:16): Not one. So Wilmer Leon (26:21): It was all a matter of environment. And so people look at my son now who just graduated from Hampton, and the boy understands he has two options, conform or perish. So it's not a miracle, it's an environment. It's a level of expectation that is set. It's a matter of standards that must be maintained and understanding if you follow the path, life is great. If you deviate from the path, you might have a problem on your hands and you have to make a decision, do I want this problem or do I? That's all. Am I wrong? Shantella Sherman (27:12): No, I mean it's spot on. And I think that again, we understood this 50 years ago in a way that we are not passing that information down now. So the fact that someone can come to me now with eugenic thoughts and tell me if a black child hasn't learned to read by the time they're in the third grade, they have automatically lined themselves up to go to prison. Who came up with that foolishness? Wilmer Leon (27:38): Wait a minute, I'm one of those kids. I'm one kids. Shantella Sherman (27:45): Come on now. Wilmer Leon (27:46): I was reading well below grade level when I was in the third grade and they had shifted, and that was the time when they had shifted how they were teaching reading away from phonics to sight words. Fortunately for me, my parents, we had a very dear friend, Mrs. Bode, Mrs. Gloria Bode, who was a reading specialist, she would come to the house three times a week after dinner. She taught me phonics. And within Goy, it wasn't even a month, I went from reading below the third grade level in third grade to reading at the seventh grade level. All she did was teach me phonics. Shantella Sherman (28:40): Exactly, exactly. So the fact that you can add fake science over here with the eugenic themes, add it to policy, trickle it into the school system, add some funding issues with this, it's like I need you to understand that's what public libraries are for. I need you to understand that every child learns at a different rate. I need you to understand that if there's calamity all around this child outside in the neighborhood, they're not listening for concentration purposes and it may be hindering them. There are things that we knew and we knew how to meet those challenges to ensure that the children in this great space would be able to matriculate. We haven't gone bonkers. So why is it that we are feeding into this and actually accepting that it's true? And then getting on television and saying yes, as a black psychologist, it is true that if black kids don't start reading, you have black people who don't know how to read until they are adults, but they've never committed crimes and they didn't turn into degenerates. So why are we leaning this 10 toes down? It really is a fact. Wilmer Leon (29:47): I know some of those people who became very productive individuals and education became very, very important for them because they understood the value of what they didn't have. And they instilled in their children who went on to college and went on to get master's degrees and other advanced degrees, and many of those kids didn't even realize until after they got out of school that their parents couldn't even read. Shantella Sherman (30:13): Many people went to their graves as black people and white people who never learned to read period, but that was not a part of their character. If you can't read, you're automatically going to become a criminal. That's not the way this works. It's not the way it works. So the fact that we bought into this again tells me that we're moving back into these eugenic themes without, it's the popular social eugenics that the average everyday person is just like, yeah, that makes sense. It does not. Wilmer Leon (30:43): It only makes sense if you don't have any sense. So moving into these popular eugenics themes, getting to now the question that I opened the show with, how does the false construct of race and yes, race is a false construct or the real constructs of culture and cultural identity factor into our opposition to or support for a political candidate. And that all centers around, and I'll state the obvious here at right now, the presumed democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, whose father is Jamaican, whose mother is Indian, and she in some circles is considered to be an African-American woman. I've heard her referred to as such. I've also heard her in many current commercials referred to as an Indian-American woman. And I want to stress this is not a judgmental conversation. Shantella Sherman (31:54): No. Wilmer Leon (31:55): Let me throw it to you, Dr. Sherman. Shantella Sherman (31:59): The issue at hand warmer is that however many of those boxes she chooses to check that show diversity or Wilmer Leon (32:06): Check for her Shantella Sherman (32:08): Either way, either way, all of those lend themselves to the greater eugenic conversation, which is she is non-white. Okay, 1924, racial integrity, that act coming out of Virginia said there are only two races. Skip the Monga, Loy Caucusi. We're going to scratch all of that. There are only two races, white and non-white and the fact that she's also female, that's another thing that we have to deal with. Public perception, American public perception, sometimes global public section of what it means to be any of these things or an amalgamation of all of these things. And some people may be offended by the term amalgamation, a mixture. We're all a mixture of a bunch of other things. What does that mean? And so each one of these people who are definitive about whiteness and Americanism and patriotism, they're questioning as they did with Obama citizenship. They're questioning her womanhood at this point. They're questioning as Wilmer Leon (33:15): They did with Michelle Obama. Shantella Sherman (33:17): Exactly. They're questioning. But on this side, how many kids does Kamala have? And then the fact that, Wilmer Leon (33:26): Didn't JD Vance call her a cat woman because she doesn't have any biological children of her own? Shantella Sherman (33:31): What is that exactly? Wilmer Leon (33:34): Wait a minute. I got to mention when I mention his name, we always must say for those who don't know, JD Vance is now Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee. He's the same guy who about three years ago compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. So one has to ask the question, how does the guy who three years ago called another guy Adolf Hitler, wind up standing next to that guy as his vice presidential nominee. He didn't even call him Mussolini. He called him Hitler Shantella Sherman (34:07): And pay attention to the fact that when Kamala, Kamala was named as Joe Biden's running mate, once again, I heard the senator call say, okay, now we are going to have aunt your mama in the White House. This woman doesn't look like aunt your mama, no connections whatsoever. But all of a sudden this is what folks are thinking of you in these spaces all along. And so the nastiness of it starts to come out the thing. Wait Wilmer Leon (34:40): A minute, and that takes me to Tiger Woods when he first won the master's tournament and the year after the master's tournament, the winner gets to determine the menu for the player's dinner. And Fuzzy Zeller says, oh, we going to have fried chicken tonight. Shantella Sherman (34:58): Fried chicken and watermelon. Wilmer Leon (35:00): There you go. Shantella Sherman (35:01): Yeah. So again, my question is if we are that removed from the plantation at this point, why are you constantly trying to throw people back onto it? Or these are the only references that you're coming up with when you can clearly see in front of you that this isn't the case, it's the Fair State University, their whole thing, their memorabilia collection that they have of racist items that came up 1870 and moving forward. And it was like while we are saying they're racist, these are the things that keep peace in many white minds. I need an anama salt and pepper shaker. I need an anama cookie jump. I need to put her face on the pancake box. I need to have two little black kids as the icons or the folks that I'm using for gold dust soap powder and for this and for that and for the other. (36:00) And so in researching how labels and emblems and mascots were created, you start to find that when white people feel uncomfortable in this country, they tend to hold onto the things that they did love about black people. And so that hasn't changed. We're going to show Kamala dancing and we're going to show her doing all of these things, loving cats, the things that make white people feel good and feel comfortable and feel wholesome and feel whole. She is a part of our group. And at the same time you have black people who are going, but she's married to someone who's not black. Wilmer Leon (36:40): I was asked that question, I won't mention the woman's name who said to me, Wilmer, why do black men, Hey Kamala Harris. And I said, I don't know that black men do hate Kamala Harris. I haven't seen any data. I said, but let me pose this to you. Why does she hate black men? And it was what I said, well, she didn't marry her brother. And I said, so I'm not equating the fact that she didn't marry a brother to say that she hates black men. I am just posing that as a ridiculous premise to your ridiculous premise and riddle me that and I couldn't get an answer. Shantella Sherman (37:28): No, we are still stuck in an antebellum mindset. Many folks are just still stuck there. And so it doesn't make sense that I can walk into a room and someone is waiting for me to flip some pancakes or am I the cleaning lady? Am I here for any type of servant position? Nothing wrong with servants, but when you visually look at a person and you start to assess them, not my character, not any of these other things, but sight, you're seeing me for the first time. If your reaction is to put me into this particular position, you need to ask yourself why. This is something that as the commander in chief, potential commander in chief of this country, that she's going to have to face down in the same way that President Obama had to. But she's also going to have this added level of this is a female who does not have children and all of these other, she's suspicious to folks. She's suspicious to the nation. And that is simply unfair and it's unfounded, but it's how we do things here a lot of times. Wilmer Leon (38:40): So let's take the other side of this because when she first announced that she wanted to be president in this, after Joe Biden stepped down, the narrative was she's earned it. She deserves it. I think it was Simone Sanders Townsend who was saying, and some of her other surrogates who were saying, what does the Democratic, what problem does the Democratic party have with wanting a black woman at the top of the ticket? It was all about her being an AKA. She went to Howard and she can do the electric slide. We were falling into that same mindset in terms of rallying the troops around her instead of asking the questions, where does she stand on Gaza? What's she going to do about Ukraine? What's her policy on Cop city? Where is she on the George Floyd Act and policy issues? And when we started listing policy issues and wanting her to articulate where she stands on policy, then the question becomes, why are you hating on the sister? Why do you hate black women? No, I don't hate black women. I know that AKAs Howard University and I have two degrees from Howard, so I ain't hating on Howard and being able to do electric slide that ain't going to feed the bulldog. Shantella Sherman (40:16): Well, and the truth of the matter, I don't believe our percentage is 13% still because it's just not fathomable we've been producing. So I'm going to say the black population is country. Let's say it's at about 18% right now. Alright? You still have the whole rest of the country that to some extent mentally and emotionally, you're going to have to reunite in the same way Obama had to reunite them because they had blown apart with even the thought of having a black man in office. Okay, you're going to have to suture us back together. Wilmer Leon (40:54): Donald Trump was the reaction to Barack Obama. Shantella Sherman (40:58): Absolutely. And the belief that even at this point, I still have people saying, Barack Obama is running the White House behind Biden all this time. And I'm going, are you serious? So it doesn't matter the truth. The truth doesn't matter at this point. It's what you feel. And I'm telling people it's not about what you feel. Your feelings don't enter into the facts at this point. Thank you. I need you to start talking about the fact that the housing in this country is so deliberately greedy and ridiculous that working people are living in homeless shelters. All right? I need you to talk. College Wilmer Leon (41:33): Professors in California are living in their cars. Shantella Sherman (41:38): I need you. And this is across the country and quite frankly across the globe. So I need you to talk to me about investing and divesting in certain things. I need to know where Kamala stands on certain things. I haven't really heard. I don't know what her platform is on certain things. I would love to have someone talk to her rather than having Megan thee stallion up dancing with her. I don't care about that. I don't want to hear about that right now. You're telling me people are blowing me up about Project 2025, which by the way is nothing but the NATO group and some other folks from 1925 still trying so much conservative policy. This isn't new. Wilmer Leon (42:14): It's not new. It's called New Gingrich's Contract with America. Shantella Sherman (42:18): Thank you. Nothing on that list is new. Nothing on it is new. So it's like even if it were true, and I understand that a lot of it is not true. It wasn't in the 880 page document that most people haven't read. When I started sifting through it, it was like that didn't happen. That's not in the document. That's not there. These are proposals. And do you know how many think tanks put out proposals every time there's about to be a change of leadership? So it's like don't get up in arms. This is something that we always face. But in the meantime, can you tell me where if this were something that was about to take place, where are your local leaders positioned on this? Because we got Biden in office right now, but you still can't afford to get a bag of potato chips for less than $4 or $5 right now. What is going on with the cost of living and the American dream? Why are you having corporations buying up housing so that the average person can't afford 'em? Wilmer Leon (43:10): BlackRock, Shantella Sherman (43:12): Help me out. Wilmer Leon (43:14): People don't understand that As a result of the Covid crisis and the mortgage crisis and all of these homes that people were put out of BlackRock and other venture capitalist companies were buying up the housing stock and they weren't putting the housing stock back on the market for sale. They were putting the housing stock back on the market for rent. Absolutely Shantella Sherman (43:45): For rent. And if you're charging, there's nothing, I'm going to say it on the record, there's nothing inside Washington DC that's worth $5,000 a month as a two bedroom apartment. Nothing. Nowhere in this city is it worth it. But those are the going rates. And so we can look at this. Go ahead, I'm Wilmer Leon (44:02): Sorry. And as Vice President Harris is on the stump saying, Donald Trump is a convicted felon. And as a former prosecutor, I know how to deal with felons. I know that personality well, when you had Steve Mnuchin in your sights when he was the bankster in California and your staff brought you a thousand felonies committed by the man, you didn't pursue the case against Steve Mnuchin who wound up being our Secretary of Treasury under Donald Trump. So don't hate Malcolm said, when my telling you the truth makes you angry, don't get angry at me. Get angry at the truth. I don't do the electric slide. I'm not an A KAI am in the divine nine, but I don't do that. And so those things don't matter to me, Dr. Sherman, Shantella Sherman (45:00): It's going to have to matter to us what the policies and standpoints are that Kamala Harris brings to the table. I just want to know her positions on things. I have the lesser of two evils true as it appears, and I believe she would make a wonderful president, but I would love to know where she stands on all of these issues that are also international issues that are also, I've been trying to get someone from the state of California, a representative, and I don't have to call the person's name to talk to me about the sterilizations that are being forced on black and Spanish women inside California penitentiaries for the last eight years. And I can't get a callback. So I want you to understand that it's not about blackness. It's about I need you to make sure that my American dream isn't a nightmare, that you get to blame on Donald Trump or anybody else. We have black elected officials. We're not holding anyone accountable and we're not holding them accountable from the moment we elect them. You're not asking the proper questions, and so you Wilmer Leon (46:04): Won't get the right answer. Shantella Sherman (46:06): I want Kamala Harris to win. I put on the T-shirt, all of that. But in the meantime, I want to know where she stands on some things that impact my quality of life and the quality of life for the folks who are around me. I've crossed 50 years old at this point, so I'm trying to figure out if I had to go lay down and retire somewhere, is there a patch of dirt in the woods for me that you want going to then come through and arrest me for being homeless on and lock me up for it? That's a reality. They're locking up homeless people. It's their laws in certain states now. And these states have black representatives. No one's talking about this. We are talking about the suits that people are wearing and their connections and affiliations with other things that don't benefit us at the moment. Wilmer Leon (46:51): And rappers Shantella Sherman (46:52): Well, and just while you dancing, when it comes time to pick your kid up from the daycare center, are you going to find out that they've raised the rates? So you got to pay $3,500 a month for the kid to go to the daycare? Wilmer Leon (47:04): And two things. One is we keep hearing that we can't afford to provide quality daycare to people across the country, but we can send a trillion dollars to Ukraine. See, budgets are numeric representations of priority. Shantella Sherman (47:26): And also add to that, even if we didn't have the money, we had the consciousness, we had the heart to say that the grandmother in the neighborhood who was opening her home should still be able to do that without being licensed to a point where she has to pay $2,500 to the city and go to a class for eight. She raised 10 kids and 15 grandkids. She knows what she's doing. You've kept us from being able to have that communal space. Now that's not just, I want some money that's being vindictive. You're setting up the parameters, the variables that are going to lend to the things that you're talking about as black people and poor people. You're creating poverty. That's what you're doing right now. Wilmer Leon (48:11): Norway can do it, Finland can do it. Denmark can do it. They're doing it. Shantella Sherman (48:19): Anyone who is for their citizens can and will do it. The difference here is that we're not working together. We've always been fighting against each other. It's the infighting. I want my kids to be able to have it, but not your kids. I don't want immigrant kids. I don't want my kids around the Spanish kids. They're going to learn Spanish and it's too many of 'em and they're undocumented and they can have diseases, and I don't know what they're into. Well, the same thing was said about black people coming into white spaces. So if we're going to do America, we got to do America for everyone, and we got to make sure that these policies don't hurt this person in order to make me feel better. And in the long run, end up hurting me as well. Wilmer Leon (48:58): My current piece is you're with her, but is she with you? And the premise of the piece is, and I say this in the piece, it's not about her. It's about us. And what are we going to demand of her relative to us? Because that's what policy politics is all about. It's about policy output. It's not about the Divine nine and Howard University and the electric slide. It's about policy output. She went to the Cara comm meeting as vice president and try to convince the leaders of those Caribbean nations to be the minstrel face on American imperialism to invade Haiti. How does a black woman whose father is from Jamaica believe that our invading Haiti is a good idea? She didn't go alone. She went with Hakeem Jeffries and some other folks, Linda Thomas Greenfield. How do these black people, how do these black people buy into imperialist, neo-colonial policies like that? And so I make that to take us back to the eugenics question and the identity Shantella Sherman (50:26): Question, and I'll throw that to you because it's all about the fitness of the individual person or the group. And so Haiti has always been the bastard black child that even black folks don't want to claim a small minority of black folks always down for Haiti, always. I'm there with you. But there are all these people who are still, you want to glamorize Africa, but you won't set foot there. You want to go to Africa, but you don't want to stay there. You don't understand the politics, the culture, the language, the faith, none of it. But since it's been tagged onto you as African-American, you claim it. But again, when you get down to it, we still have eugenic thoughts as black people about who is fit and unfit, who is worthy, who is unworthy. And it's about nothing related to character. It is about nothing related to morality or how people handle you or them being good people. (51:27) It's all about the same things that white people use the litmus test to define you. And so we cannot get away from that as easily as we think and things like this. When we get into a space like this, it magnifies it and we start to see ourselves and it does not look good. It doesn't look good on us at all. Haiti, poor black people, folks living in the projects historically by colleges and universities, not the elite eight, the big eight, but the rest of 'em, the ones that we don't really want to talk about this in them other states that we don't want to deal with, alright? We don't want to deal with that. There are things that we need to discuss to make sure that HBCUs and the Divine Nine still exists. If the federal government starts pulling money back. We've had the heirs desegregation case. (52:20) We've had a similar case in Maryland where basically HBCUs are being said to be anti-white at this point. And in order to get the money that these HBCUs won for having been discriminated against with funding, it's being said, in order to get the money, you now have to have five to 10% of your student population be minority. That minority has to be white. So now you are giving free education to white students in order to get the money that's owed to you from having been discriminated against in the first place. You have to understand in street terms, we've been in a trick bag for a minute, right? And we need to stop playing games. It's late in the day. You need to heal your line. Alright, I'm going back to Hurston. Heal your line. You need to understand that you're about to get caught up in the very trap that you've been setting and you're not paying attention. You're simply not paying attention. We haven't been paying our alumni fees like we're supposed to. Our schools are still dependent on federal government funding and state funding. We are not standing alone. So we need to make sure that our leadership also understands that, that we need to have practical solutions and policies so that we're not reacting to things, but literally charting a course and setting it and staying on that course. Wilmer Leon (53:44): What are you demanding? And two things to your point about funding and HBCUs, the HBCUs in Maryland won a case against the Maryland government for not properly funding those HBCUs. As the state had funded, the predominantly white institutions went all the way to Maryland Supreme Court and the schools won. The Republican governor, Larry Hogan refused to give them the money that the court awarded and forced those institutions to negotiate a lower number. I don't remember what the numbers were off the top of my head, but Shantella Sherman (54:33): What? Yes, sir. What again? The exact same thing happened in Mississippi. And that's why I said that was the heirs desegregation case. And it was the exact same thing. The money that came down to fund the Mississippi schools, they gave the HBCUs less money when they disseminated. And it was like, okay, Mississippi won the HBCUs won the case, but the content, the little fine print said, we are going to give you the money, but now you are required at this point to add 10% of your population needs to be minority on a black campus that's not black students. And they said, we can pull in some Africans and some people that still fit. No, you need to have some white students on this campus now. So that was the quote. That's how they got around it. And it was like, wow, these are the nasty tricks that I'm talking about. And so if it happened in Mississippi and it's happened in Maryland, where else is this happening? Can I get leadership to understand this is how you tie black hands behind the backs of citizens that actually want to go to school. Wilmer Leon (55:45): Final thing, symbolism. And again, I'm getting back to ethnicity and cultural identity as it relates to Vice President Harris. And I'm not picking on her, she just is the poster child of this in the moment because there's an awful lot of symbolism that is being used here. And again, they rather be symbolic than talk about substantive policy output. Shantella Sherman (56:22): The symbolism goes to the heart of the nation. Whose nation is it? Whose America is it that's which one of the presidents? Wilmer Leon (56:39): Well, you mean we want, we want, oh Shantella Sherman (56:41): No, no, Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge. Okay, whose country is it anyway? And so you literally, you're having white Americans say, this is ours and we've allowed you to be here, Wilmer Leon (56:56): Tom Tancredo, and we want, and the Tea Party, which was the precursor to Donald Trump. We want our country back. Shantella Sherman (57:06): So again, but how have you lost it? Wilmer Leon (57:09): Who has it? Because I don't have it. Tom Tan credo. If you're listening, if you're watching, I don't have your country. Shantella Sherman (57:18): And again, so that's how you start again. You're going to see an explosion of language about women having babies and birth control and all this. And again, it's this. They're having natal conferences once or twice a year where people are talking about we need to get the country back. And getting the country back means we need white women to have babies and they're not having them. And so based on that alone, any white female who's out here supporting Donald Trump and all of these policies, they don't necessarily understand what you're about to do is send yourself back into the house because there's a good white man that needs the job that you're sitting in. You need to be producing babies bottom line. And if you're not, you serve no purpose. Now to the nation, that is a Hitler esque thing, but Hitler got it from us. So that is a Francis Galton thing. Wilmer Leon (58:11): In fact, thank you very much because you and I had talked about that Francis Galton father of modern eugenics, there's a book Control the Dark History and troubling present of Eugenics just by Adam Rutherford. Talk about Francis Galton and talk about Adam Rutherford's book. Shantella Sherman (58:32): Just the idea First Rutherford's book is an amazing examination. I think that it's something that pulls together a lot of the research from different spaces and different years and to synthesize it the way he has it makes it make sense to the average person, which is critical at this point. It's not talking above folks head. So you get to the critical analysis of we need these birthing numbers. Statisticians started coming in and Galton is right here in the middle of this. And you have the eugenics record office who are literally charting birth rates and they're trying to figure out with immigration, emancipated black people. And then you end up with Chinese people and all these other folks that are coming in. And then you start having women who decide they're not going to stay at home. These rates matter and they have mattered for the last 150 years because whoever has the birth numbers, when we start talking politics, these are voting blocks. (59:32) And if I can put you under duress, if I can incarcerate you and then tell you based on the fact that you're in prison, you are no longer a citizen, so you are not able to vote because you have a felony charge. That is a reality for those black men who are huddled in prisons. But the other part of that reality is that because during the reproductive height of their lives, they're in prison, it means that they're not reproducing children. And so there's a duality to having black men and Spanish men and locked into these prisons and degenerate white men. We don't want babies from them anyway. Wilmer Leon (01:00:08): And the fastest growing cohort in prisons are women. Shantella Sherman (01:00:13): And when the women go into the prisons, they are automatically taken before what used to be the sterilization board. They're given a physical examination. If you're a black woman, a Spanish woman, and you have fibroids, they're going to tell you, we're not going to manage your fibroids while you're here. We're just going to recommend that you have a hysterectomy. Or they may not even tell you. So great documentary Belly of the Beast looks at the California state Penitentiary system and they're just ad hoc deciding to sterilize black and Spanish women without their consent and without their knowledge because they said, once we open you up, it's easier just to go ahead and snip you than to worry about having to pay for your children, either ending up in prison, being slow and retarded mentally having to go to special schools or having to pay through the welfare system because they're not normal. Because you're not normal. You're breeding criminals. And so we have to look at these things. I think Rutherford did a great job, but Galton has been talking about, he started talking about this when he coined the phrase, we were already talking about this and the black bodies on plantations started this whole, let's check the women's bodies and see what they can manage and hold as far as their fecundity, as far as they're being able to breed the next crop of Americans. Wilmer Leon (01:01:28): Are those eugenic practices relative to women of color in California? Prisons still going on as you and I are speaking right now. Shantella Sherman (01:01:38): Absolutely. Wilmer Leon (01:01:40): So our vice president, Kamala Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee is from Berkeley, was the DA in San Francisco, was the attorney general in the state of California, was the senator from California. I haven't heard anybody ask her this question. Shantella Sherman (01:02:05): I have not heard anyone ask Wilmer Leon (01:02:10): Anybody Shantella Sherman (01:02:10): Elected official. You've only had the Congressman Ell from North Carolina who got reparations for folks who had been sterilized, many of them black in North Carolina. He's since passed away. Virginia asked that people come forward if they had been sterilized, but people couldn't come forward because they didn't know they'd been sterilized. You took them in and told them that they had an appendicitis. So they didn't know that the reason why they didn't produce children is because when they went into the hospital, you decided to do a hook and crook on 'em. They didn't know. So based on just that information, you have very few people in the state of Virginia to come forward and to receive the money. California is now offering some reparations to folks. But if you're in those penal systems, it's still going on. You don't have control over your body. Wilmer Leon (01:03:08): And I want to be very clear to say, I'm not for those that just heard me ask that question and Wilmer, why are you blaming her for this? I'm not. I'm saying I haven't heard anyone ask her this question again because it's not about her. It's about us. And what are we as a political constituency? What are we going to do? What are we going to demand? What are we going to get if we are responsible for putting her in office, which everybody says Democrats can't win without black people. Speaker 4 (01:03:55): Okay, Wilmer Leon (01:03:56): All right. Speaker 4 (01:04:00): Again, I think that she would make an amazing president again. I simply want to know what her policies are. I want to know how she's going to fight against and how she's sizing up her time in office. And that's what I want to hear from her. That's it. Wilmer Leon (01:04:19): Dr. Chantel Sherman, I am so appreciative of you joining me today, as always, dear. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Speaker 4 (01:04:27): Thank you. Anytime, Wilmer Leon (01:04:29): Folks, thank you all so much for listening and watching the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon, and my brilliant, brilliant friend and guest, Dr. Chantel Sherman. Stay tuned for new episodes each week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Follow me on social media. You can find all the links below to the show there. And remember, folks, that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter. And you can tell by this, we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you all again next time. Until then, I am Dr. Wier Leon. Have a great one. Peace.

Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube!   FULL TRANSCRIPT: Wilmer Leon (00:00): Let's play a word association game. When I say eugenics, what comes to mind? What does it mean? Is the opposition to critical race theory? A eugenics construct is eugenics alive and well and still impacting our culture? Does eugenics influence the character portrayals in movies that you see in commercials? And what are your children being taught in school and why? Announcer (00:35): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:43): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historic context in which most events take place. During each episode of this podcast, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that are impacting the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is eugenics. Is it a warped pseudoscience of the past or is it still impacting how people view each other? My guest is a historian and journalist whose work documents deconstructs and interprets eugenics themes in popular culture, identify formation among African-Americans and reproductive apartheid in carceral spaces and within marginalized communities. She's the author of In Search of Purity, popular Eugenics and Racial Uplift Among New Negroes, 1915 to 1935, and Pop U, popular Eugenics in television and film. She is Dr. Chantel Sherman. Chantel, welcome to the show. Dr Shantella Sherman (02:19): Thank you. I appreciate you having me. Always. Wilmer Leon (02:23): Before we get to your work as a researcher and historian, let's talk about your work as a researcher, historian, and journalist. You're the founder of the Acumen Group and you're also the Acumen Group, publishes Acumen Magazine. What is the Acumen Group? Dr Shantella Sherman (02:43): The Acumen Group is basically an institution where we are training, it's a nonprofit where we're training folks to deconstruct the things around them, specifically related to eugenics, but also related to race to the world around them, how we construct identities not only racially, but within our families, within our nation, and how we view and observe the worlds around us. So the goal with the Acumen Group was to take what it is that we have in institutions and do a trickle down, or I like to say like a sprinkler system, so that every person has the ability to actually see what it is that we're studying, know what folks are saying when they create policy, understand the dynamics that go into creating policy and the power that they have to change it. But since most people aren't comfortable being in school anymore, or they figure once they reach the 12th grade, then that's it. They stop reading, they stop, I'm having conversations. They stop really engaging with the process of life. And so the goal is to tool people up, first of all, by making them comfortable with being in classrooms again, being armchair historians and armchair politicians so that they understand the world around them and then giving them the tools to actually go out and change the things that they need to change. Wilmer Leon (04:06): And Acumen Magazine, how often is it published? Where do people get it? What's in Acumen Magazine? Dr Shantella Sherman (04:14): Acumen Magazine came about because we have students, a lot of students who once they got the information, they were on fire. They really wanted to be able to tell this information and represented it and reproduce it. And so we created the magazine as a quarterly. It is student led, it is student produced with me at the helm doing much of the graphic design and the editing. But it is students from around the globe at this point that showcase their research. It is dialed down in a way that it's journal quality, but in a rather popular and inviting way of reading it. So it's more like a magazine, even though it feeds like a journal. Wilmer Leon (05:00): One of the things that has stood out to me, as you and I talk about all the work that you're doing, all the research that you're doing, all the presentations, it seems as though, and if I'm wrong, please correct me. It seems as though there's a lot more interest in your work abroad as in Europe than there is here in the United States. Dr Shantella Sherman (05:24): Yes, it's the quick answer. I think that there's a real passion across the globe, but specifically in these European spaces, because even though eugenics took off here in America, and I think it was the perfect laboratory for the pseudoscience, it in fact originated in Europe. And so the concept of how to create better people, the concept of how to nation build it comes from them as part of the colonial mainframe. And so it's that colonizing empire with its tentacles. But how do you manage people that you consider to be less than, to be inferior, to be the world's workers, to be low on the totem pole? How do you manage them? And so Europeans are still looking at this in other ways. They never stopped the eugenic mainframe. They never stopped the cogs and the wheels from spinning. And so when we look at things today, and I know we'll get to this artificial intelligence or people talking about genomes and helping with medicine, creating the medicine that you need based upon gene pools and gene sets, these are all tentacles and legs of the original eugenics movement. (06:45) And so if we don't understand what that is, then the folks in Europe understand it. And so they're courses, they're college courses are designed to fit around this, whether it's law, whether it is political science, whether it's journalism, they understand that eugenics is still a part of the conversation. So for instance, Francis Go, who's considered to be the father of Eugenics, his original laboratory, the Eugenics Records lab, those societies are still very much in existence under different names. So the original Eugenics Institute under Francis Galton has now been renamed, and it's called the Adelphi Forum. And they're still having meetings early or as late as 20 23, 20 24. So part of, again, what the Acumen Group does is we send researchers, or I will attend myself, and we go in and we listen to how eugenics is now being talked about, or genetic research is now being talked about in a rather deconstructed way, so that folks are studying what happened, for instance, with Covid trying to determine through blood types or through environment who was more prone to having contagions. (08:07) And that way it's no longer about the survival of the fittest, about who can survive different catastrophes and disasters based upon the help of science. Because if it's survival of the fittest, when the smoke cleared according to data, 63.7% globally of the folks who died from covid or complications from Covid were white people. So it makes sense that you then want to try and figure out if survival of the fit is about white people dominating people of color, but you have a pandemic come through, and the majority of the folks who passed away from this epidemic pandemic were white people. How do you explain that in a scientific way? So you'd start to study them all over again. So again, that's that eugenic tentacle still reaching out the way it does. Wilmer Leon (09:00): So let's take a step back and start with a definition of this pseudoscience known as genetics, known as eugenics. And after you define it, explain why it's a pseudoscience. Dr Shantella Sherman (09:16): Perfect. The term itself came about roughly 1840, though folks have believed that you could create or build better people or better societies through reproduction probably since the beginning of time. So the idea was that you can, in the same way you manufacture or manipulate the DNA, we weren't using the term DNA then, but germ plasm of plants and animals. You want to breed in certain things and breed out certain things. We believe that some point in this country and across the globe that you could actually do the same thing with people. And Francis goin took this science to a different level. And at the time it was considered a science. It was a bonafide science. The theories were that in the same way that you reproduce height and weight and hair color and eye color and things like that and pass them on to your children, that you could also pass along your characteristics. (10:15) So they were stuck. There was a gene for lying, there was a chromosome for stealing. It is the belief that if you mix this type of person with this type of person, you'll end up with these type of children. And the belief eugenically was that these genes sat for generation after generation after generation. So if you had a great, great grandfather who was a criminal, that criminality was in your genes and the genes of your children, and that it was just one thing that would potentially push it on out, or in other instances it just manifested itself. So we know it to be a pseudoscience. All of the theories were fallible because if that was the case that meant that we just have a world full of criminals, we would have a world full of liars. And it's not to say that this, to some extent we don't, but these are things that can't be set aside. (11:13) One of the things that is really defining about eugenics as well is that poverty is considered to be in your DNA. So this is the reason why, again, when we start talking about social sciences and reform work, the belief is that if you are born poor, you're going to stay poor. If your parents were burden on society, you will be a burden on society. If you had a child born out of wedlock somewhere along this family tree, that that immorality is in you and therefore you have to be watched, monitored, segregated, kept from doing things that other Americans do or other British do or other whomever do, because there is a discogenic taint, if you will, a contamination to your gene pool. And so that's where we get the marriage laws that are restricting folks. So we get segregation to restrict people from coming together. Wilmer Leon (12:12): So as a part of this, and I say this all the time, and usually people look at me, the whole construct of race is an artificial construct. Race does not exist. Racism exists because that is a thought process based upon the artificial construct of skin color, hair type, nose type, all of these types of elements that we attribute to race. That's an artificial construct grown out of the whole eugenics. Pseudoscience. Dr Shantella Sherman (12:56): Absolutely. And the reason why America became such a tremendous laboratory for the quote science at the time, is that Africans came over looking like traditional stereotypical Africans, very, very dark in complexion, very broad noses, very thick lips. And by the time you get to emancipation, you need eugenics to go through and measure noses and measure the thickness of lips because skin color is no longer attributed necessarily to white or black. You have enough black people who are, their skin tone is light enough that you cannot tell them from a white person, Wilmer Leon (13:37): Hence passing. Dr Shantella Sherman (13:39): Exactly. And there were enough at this point that you end up with your Dred Scott Case with your Plessy versus Ferguson with people saying, how can I identify this person as black when I can't by the naked eye see that they're black? And so we start to attribute within the eugenics mainframe things like 60 or 70 different measurements that every American at some point has to go through, whether it's through the school system, the public health system, which is just being birthed all around the same time. And so you have these folks like Frederick Hoffman who was a statistician who worked for Prudential Life Insurance, which is still around, who literally came up with a 330 page manifesto. He called it an article, I called it several volumes, but it was about who the Negro was and his health deficiencies and why black people as a whole did not deserve life insurance or health insurance because they were naturally predisposed genetically to cancers, to calamity, to disease, through filth, and just we were immoral, and it was our behaviors that created the discogenic bodies, the unfit bodies. So eugenics is the science of the fit over the unfit. And when you understand it that way, you also understand that there were as many, at some point as many white people who had to deal with this concept that they were not white enough. And so understand that any white person, when we start getting into things like the Racial Integrity Act, any white person who is not white enough is automatically classified in the black column. All right? Anyone who's not white, 100% white is now considered to be black. Wilmer Leon (15:34): So this takes us to the whole discussion about the one drop rule, and if there's one drop of black blood in your body, you are black. And in the south, particularly, I want to say Louisiana, but it might've been other places you had designations such as quadron, which meant you were one quarter black terone, you were one eighth black. That's where a lot of these designations came from. And I think it's important, I think for people to understand that if you're trying to construct a society that has in it a racial hierarchy, that white people are at the top of the pecking order, and black people are at the bottom of the pecking order, that white people are the dominant black people are the servant, then if you're trying to construct and maintain this type of social order or what you and I'll call disorder disorder, then you need this type of pseudoscience as the mechanism of proving or validating these warped racist theories. Dr Shantella Sherman (16:44): Absolutely. And within that same mainframe, Wilma, also understand that because you have so many people who at this time could be classified as mixed race, I could be classified as mixed race at this point based on the fact that I'm not dark enough. But then there were qualifiers that were put into place according to skin tone, even within darkness. So I think that you see the film cast, it touches on eugenics so briefly that I went, but that wasn't their purpose. That's okay. But the reality is you also had these qualifiers attached to different skin tones. So the closer a person was to whiteness, it was also debilitating to that black person. Wilmer Leon (17:32): Why do you say, wait a minute, why do you say whiteness and not just white? Are you being grammatically correct or is Oh, Dr Shantella Sherman (17:38): Yeah, I'm Wilmer Leon (17:39): No, no, no, but or is there a differentiator between, because when you say whiteness as opposed to just saying white, what distinction are you drawing? Dr Shantella Sherman (17:54): When I say whiteness, I'm taking on the character. I'm taking on the tone. Thank you. Not just the physicality of it. Thank you. I'm also taking into consideration the mentality of it. So sometimes I use film so that you'll get this, the Birth of a nation, the fear was not about the dark-skinned person that you could know and identify. It was all of a sudden about this mixed race, black person who gets into the White House, who gets into, I want you to pay attention to where I'm going with this. Who gets into Congress, who gets into these places where he does not belong? And so all of a sudden there's a different level of fear that says, if this person who I can't necessarily identify as black, black, see, we started out as docile and lazy and these characteristics, but all of a sudden you mix the parents, white man, black woman. (18:48) Then they're ledgers that I read that say things like the lighter the person is, they take on the sinister qualities of the white master who produced this person. So all of a sudden he's crafty, he's diabolical, he's a rapist because he's taking on his daddy's quality. So in the birth of a nation, what did the woman say? This is a fate worse than death to have a black man touch me and rape me the way his father, this white man has done previously. This is a part of that white character, eugenically showing itself in this now mixed race, black child, the virtue of white women basically is code. You're putting a mirror to those genes. And basically the fear was these are not just enslaved people or newly emancipated people. These are the sons and daughters. In many instances of the whiteness, the power structure that has been there. (19:49) So if you're telling me that eugenically within the DNA, all of those things that have been experienced and lived experiences and in the DNA and in the germ plasm of the oppressors are now in their offspring who are free to do whatever it is that they wish to do on the face of the earth, and they have the mobility to move about, all of a sudden this fear is driven into the average white male that says, now I have to be concerned not just with my children, my black children having sexual contact with the white children that I don't want them to have contact with. But I also have a fear that my children will have the type of sinister character that would allow them to elevate themselves in a way that corrupts genetically, socially, medically in every possible way, these children that I'm looking to protect in the first place. (20:51) And so you end up with, I sometimes call it a schizophrenic nature of racism, which is I must protect, there's a fear of me dying or being annihilated. And so you end up with folks like Starter who's talking about the rising tide of blackness. You're talking about fear of losing genetic power, but if this is survival of the fittest and you are superior, there's nothing in my black jeans that could possibly contaminate you. That's just not possible. So it's not logical, it's not scientific in any way, but it has become the social and medical mainframe for what we do under racism. Wilmer Leon (21:39): In your work, you have the ABCs of eugenics, and we don't have time to go through all of them. So folks, go to the acumen group.org, dot com Dr Shantella Sherman (21:57): Org. Wilmer Leon (21:58): Go to the acumen group and.dot org. So for example, you have the American Breeders Association, the first national membership based organization promoting Eugenics. Talk about just quickly, the American Breeders Association and breeding out and cultural lag, these kinds of constructs and ideas that this whole thing was built around. Dr Shantella Sherman (22:28): Well, I mean the American Breeders Association, it was about breeding cattle. It was about breeding animals, farm animals. But the belief was, again, if I can breed out certain things in my animals, why can't I breed them out of my children or the community around me? And so the American Breeders Association understand that they were the first informal university, I would say, because most people were farmers. We were in an agrarian society. Everyone was still building and growing. And so what comes out of that are your beauty contests. So when you had your state fair, you would have the American Breeders Association sponsoring it, and they would have the section for the fattest calf and the biggest cow and the nicest squash and the best tasting cherry pie. And then on the other end, they would have the baby contest, the fitter families contest. And the idea was, if you're going to have this much control over everything else in your environment, why wouldn't you also have that same level of control over your household and over the people around you? (23:35) And also Wiler, it sets up this thing where we do this all the time without thinking about it, you can go down the street and look at a person and them based on how they look. And I'm not saying, oh, his shoes are run over. You look at the face and you say, oh, his eyes are too close together. There's something wrong with that brother. Or Look at the slope on his head, or his lips are just way too big. Or We do this unconscious, we don't think about it. But these are all those eugenic theories and thoughts that were brought down to a playground level, if you will. And we went through this thing called the ugly laws, where anything that didn't satisfy our eyes, we could then conscript to being unfit. And so people who wear glasses, people who weren't wearing braces at this point, so if your teeth were not quite the way they could be, if your ears were bigger than folks thought they should be, you were nicknamed, you were bullied, you were pushed aside. Usually your teachers or nurse or doctor would say there was something wrong with you when really there wasn't, and you were then segregated from the rest of the children because you were an eyesore. Wilmer Leon (24:49): That takes me to, in your ABCs, there's language, and I'm glad you put it at the playground level, because there's language that became adopted into our dialogue that had to do with, I think the word is infirm, putting people in institutions, institutionalizing people. So words such as feeble-minded words such as retarded hearted. There were classifications that were associated or ascribed to people. And again, a lot of that language has become common parlance, but there was eugenic constructs tied to this language. Dr Shantella Sherman (25:37): Eugenics birthed that language, and I keep saying it did not exist in that way beforehand. You may have said this person a little slow or we're going to put the dunks cap on 'em, that type of thing. But you still saw that there was value in the person. You wouldn't segregate them from the rest of society or from the village or from the town. This was just the person who was a little slow. They still, for the most part, went to the same school. When eugenics enters into the frame though, what it says is that if other children see this, they will believe that this is normal, and we need to determine not what is natural, but what is normal, what we will and what we will not accept. And so you get terms like moron, idiot, buil, and within those high grade buil, low grade buil, medium grade buil, and each one of these was based upon iq. (26:27) And so you have early IQ tests. At the time, there was the term test, you had the Goddard test, you had different social scientists and psychiatrists who were coming in and basically saying, if I give this child this test, it shows that they have the aptitude of a two to 3-year-old. If they're in that range, then we're going to say that there are moron. If they have an aptitude of four to a 5-year-old, we're going to say they're an idiot. And you keep going up this way. The problem is not everyone's going to school. Not everyone is in the same region. So I mean, as of Wilmer Leon (27:05): 20 agrarian cultures did not see the need for advanced mathematics and science and reading. You don't need that to bale hay. You don't need that to chop cotton Dr Shantella Sherman (27:18): Wilmer. When I do the research, I find that organizations like the four H Club was originally a eugenic organization. Wilmer Leon (27:27): Wow. Did not know that Dr Shantella Sherman (27:29): The goal was to keep all of the people who were migrating. See, black people weren't the only ones migrating from the south because this became an economic imperative. You also had white people migrating from the Midwest into these other areas. But when they did, they lost the character of the Midwest and they started doing things. They started doing way too much drinking, way too much partying. The girls went wild. They lost their biblical way, they lost their American way. And so the goal was to give them something that would make them stay in the Midwest. They'll make them shun all of the other stuff that's out there. So you started saying, the folks out there are unfit and you are fit, and you live from the land. And so the goal was to make sure you had four H folks who understood you are America. And so when we look at the IQ test and your SATs and your acts today, all of these eugenic tests were originally designed for the Midwest. And that's why folks outside of the Midwest do the worst on the test because Wilmer Leon (28:32): No, wait a minute, I didn't know. Now I've taken the LSAT, I've taken a lot of these tests. I did not realize that there was a geographic basis or higher that I did not know people from the Midwest do better. Why do people from Iowa do better on the exam than people from California Dr Shantella Sherman (29:01): Easily? Because the person who designed the test was in Iowa, creating it with the folks in Iowa so that they set the rubric. This is his name is escaped. VP Franklin, the historian who did this great piece about the test is designed for the dog. He said, A cat and the dog kept tapping each other and whatever. The dog wouldn't move. The cat is popping him in the head and running around. The dog is just sitting there. And it's like someone would say that that dog is lazy. No, the test is designed for the dog. The cat is the one with the problem, but you focused on the dog ignoring him. The cat is the one over here losing his mind. The goal is to change how you frame things. How are you looking at things? And so again, Wiler, you have to take a step back from everything that you're looking at and just kind of deconstructing and pull it back up. As a black man, if you go somewhere and you're defending your wife, they say, oh, he's brave. Depending on where you are. If you're a black man in the Midwest and you're defending your wife, I don't care from what it becomes. If it's a squirrel that runs out across her, then he's an animal abuser. Okay? It's all in. Wilmer Leon (30:18): He's a squirrel hater. Dr Shantella Sherman (30:20): He's a squirrel hater. Get him. It's all in the examination. Masculinity and manhood are defined by patriotism, Americanism fighting the rugged cowboy. It's all of that. When you see a black man stand up, he goes to save the day. They say, why is he looking like that? Wilmer Leon (30:39): Why is he so aggressive? Dr Shantella Sherman (30:41): Why is he so aggressive? He could have shot one bullet instead of 20. But you don't say that to Arnold Schwarzenegger, come on. How many times can you kill him? It is that. And so you start to pull back from all of that. Why are your children being suspended more than others? All children. It used to be you had psychiatrists, psychologists that would say all children begin to rebel between the ages of eight and maybe 12. And then again, when they hit a growth spurt of 14, 15, 16-year-old child, teenager is one of the worst animals to have to encounter because nothing is logical. Everything is either too much or too little. We used to understand that they're teenagers and they're doing teenagery things. All of a sudden they become criminals depending on who they are. And as the nation and the world becomes majority minority, many of the things that were once considered just to be the trappings of life, this is how people grow. This is a part of what children and teenagers do. They rebel a little bit. This is Jimmy Dean and all of this, all of a sudden that's out the water. It becomes, they're a menace to society. They are dangerous. They are aggressive. They're taking the funds of the nation. It's a waste because the people are a waste. Wilmer Leon (32:09): So let's go to, because you mentioned Jimmy Dean. I think rebel without a cause was the film. And I remember when my son was in high school, I had to say to him more than once, look, you can't do what your white friends do. You can't get away with the same things they're going to get away with. The police will come and take them home. They will come and take you away. So you need to be sure that you can't fall for that Okie-doke and the banana and the tailpipe trick. Dr Shantella Sherman (32:46): Exactly. Wilmer Leon (32:47): Right. Exactly. So you have a book called Pop You EU popular eugenics in television and film. And again, you mentioned Rebel Without a Cause, and Minister Society was the other term that you used, which is a very popular film. So how does this whole eugenics dynamic play itself out in the commercials? In fact, let me just, this is a very long-winded way, but to show my age, I remember when I started seeing interracial couples in commercials. That is a relatively new phenomenon. Folks younger than me, my son, he sees it as normal. When I first saw that, it might've been the Cheerios commercial with the biracial child, the father, the African-American father is on the couch. The biracial child comes and pours Cheerios on him while he is laying on the couch. And that child was obviously biracial. I lost my mind. What am I seeing on television? Because before that, there was no way in the world that you were going to see, particularly an African-American man with a biracial child. That had to mean the mother in terms of this dynamic was white. Oh my God, no. So that's a very long-winded way of me, Dr Shantella Sherman (34:34): Wil. No, but you're very right. It's a quick turn. It is been a very, very quick turn. And it's not even as if it's being presented the way it would stereotypically be presented. Again, you have to understand, this man is in the house. He's not, I don't want to mess with him because oj, this isn't something that's volatile. This is something that's very relaxed, and it normalized. It kind of evened it out. Those who had problems with it were ostracized. And Wilmer Leon (35:03): Of course, but a lot of people had serious, oh, a lot of folks, they took that commercial off. Dr Shantella Sherman (35:13): But what you do is you keep pushing against the breaker. You keep pushing against the breaker. And so one of the chapters that's coming up in the second volume of Pop U, which would be out later this year, it looks at the interracial dynamic and how you can now popularize this to a point where not only is it accept it, but it's lauded. So the series 9 1 1, you get a character like Angela Bassett leading the show who has a black husband starting out who comes to her after 20 years and says, I've been hiding the fact that I'm gay and I don't want to be with you anymore. And then enter this wonderful fire chief who's tall and blonde, and he's given all of the John Wayne in a modern context, and he's overwhelmingly in love with her, and he falls right into place. And everyone was like, oh, it's such a brilliant dynamic. And all I keep saying is, I actually love the show. I love the content, but could you have saved her husband? Could you have left an actual black family intact? Wilmer Leon (36:28): And why do you have to be gay? But this interracial, the introduction and the acceptance of the interracial then brought us into the LB two dynamic. Dr Shantella Sherman (36:48): You get to the first episode, this happens in the first episode, Angela Bass and this, and I can't, Athena and her husband. This is episode one, Athena. So if you're going to watch this, you're going to grow into this, and you're going to love the characters so much, it breaks that eugenic mainframe open. And I can understand why you have these old traditionalists who are literally watching television saying, it's garbage. It's the left. It's these people that don't, you're feeding us this garbage. They're going deep. But you're right, everything becomes, you have a lesbian couple there who's adopting biracial kids from a white drug addict. They threw in everything except the eugenic asylum. They put it all right there and then made each and every last one of them heroes. So every week you, yay. And they then the fight. So now it becomes normalized, not that it wasn't already happening around you in the first place. So is life imitating art? Is art imitating life? Who's fueling what? And so my thing is, so long as you can find a way of making sure that all sides are represented positively, you may be okay, but that's not necessarily what's been happening. So back to your original question with this, you can go back as far Sidney porter and the blackboard Wilmer Leon (38:13): Junk. Oh, I would say that who was coming to dinner to Dr Shantella Sherman (38:17): Be a waste? (38:21) Well, in the heat of the night. So again, I think that he was the original testing ground. All of the isms in our society went through City 48 because he was beautiful and dark and upstanding, and they put him in a good looking suit. And he went in and he did the work. So you can do in the heat of the night when you're talking about whiteness and you have a black man standing in a room where there's a white girl having sex on the top of graveyards in the cemetery with indiscriminate men. And the fight is, why did you let my little sister say that? She's basically a whore in the presence of that black man. How dare you? We all know she's not right, but you made her say it in the front of him. You can't do that. So we're going to skip all of these other reasons why her whiteness is in question. And now the fault is on the white police chief for allowing a black man to understand she ain't really white. All of these are built into that Hollywood mainframe, and when you pull 'em apart, you kind of go, wow. Wilmer Leon (39:31): It's interesting that you, well, two things. One, blackboard jungle wasn't that set in London? Dr Shantella Sherman (39:37): No, no, no. That was the other one to start with. Love. Wilmer Leon (39:41): Oh, to start with love. Okay. Right. Dr Shantella Sherman (39:44): I'm sorry. Go ahead. Wilmer Leon (39:45): Well, Sidney Poitier, not African-American. Does the fact that particularly at that time is one of the reasons or one of the factors that enabled him to have those roles was because he was an African-American. Because we know at that time that foreign blacks were given much more latitude than African-Americans. That's why, for example, there were many African-American musicians that changed their names to foreign sounding names. I can't remember the brother, but there was one musician that used to wear this turban. The brother was from Cleveland, I think, and he used to wear a turban so that the promoters of the shows would think he wasn't from here, and then he would have more latitude. But you're saying that had nothing to do with Sidney Poitier. Dr Shantella Sherman (40:55): I think with him, he may have been slightly different. One, visually he fit the optics. And again, I think that you had a whole series of directors and producers at this point that were really trying to push the envelope. So I think originally in the first book, I deal with the fact that you have Sidney Poitier doing three different films that are dealing with discogenic children, the bad children, the teenager thing. So you get the blackboard jungle first, and then 10 years later you get to serve with love where he's in England dealing with British kids. And the first one, he is one of the students like Gordon General, he is one of the throwaways and they're calling them waste. Now, the concept of human waste, that's eugenic. There's certain people that should not be born. There's certain people who are burdened on society, and what you do is you put them in a garbage can and you have the school system sit on the lid all day so that people, you're babysitting, but you're not to teach them anything because they don't have the capacity to learn. (41:53) The second one, you get British students, but it's Sidney Poitier teaching young white girls that you don't do the things that they were doing in the film. He's teaching manhood to British white kids. So once again, you're like, but it's him. And then the third film is a piece of the action where you have him back in America in an inner city, and you'll see the difference in how the children are viewed and what happens when you put Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby in front of these discogenic black kids in the middle of Chicago. How do you place them at that point? And so all of these things optically, what are you saying? Where are you trying to go with this? And so what are you saying about these kids? Are they still throwaways? And as they talk Wilmer Leon (42:44): About the objects, I want to be sure if you could spend just a couple minutes on, because I think a lot of times folks will look at these films and they don't realize what they're looking at. They don't understand the optics. Dr Shantella Sherman (43:01): Anytime you find a particularly dark-skinned man, see the darker person is the closer they are to their primitive ancestry. So anytime you get a beautifully dark black man and you put him in front of a screen, what the average person is looking for in this country is someone who's scratching their head and Yael Boston and scared and running, and whose eyes get big Manan Morton and someone who has the capacity of a child, he will have to be saved by whoever is the white hero because he doesn't have the capacity to think, to learn to do anything, but still scream and run. But you put Sidney Poitier in there, again, being beautifully black and eloquent and having integrity. Notice in each one of these films, Sidney Poitier is coming in unquote whiter than the white person that's in the film. He's coming in, they're more educated than the white people in the film. (44:08) He's coming in as a sex object in many of the instances that you start to see. And that was not just taboo. It was literally turning the eugenic theories upside down. It literally cut out the bias. It slid it. And so it made you have to think, am I judging the elevator operator because he's doing something else? He actually has a brain. Am I conscripting people to places where they actually have a capacity beyond what it is that I'm seeing? If he's this dark and he's this brilliant, he has this type of mind and he has this type of integrity, and he has a wife and children back, and he's making money and all of these other things. And he attended college understanding everything that we're seeing in television and film was going against the reality of what was in front of people. That's the other thing. (45:07) It's fantasy. It was fantasy. So all of a sudden, if folks don't have the capacity to know the difference between what is real and what is imagined through Hollywood, and all of a sudden I start giving you beautiful dark men who are brilliant and bright, I start giving you black women who have integrity and who are business women and who are matriarchs of their household and don't curse and beat their kids. And I'm walking around with the on welfare and this, this, and this, and all of a sudden you start to look at the people around you and realize you've been in fantasy land for a long time. The people around you really are wonderful and brilliant and American and all of these other great things. Wilmer Leon (45:50): Guess who's coming to dinner 1967. So this is a year before Dr. King is assassinated. Sidney Poitier. Talk about that dynamic in, and I think Spencer Tracy plays the father of the woman, the white woman that Sidney Poitier falls in love with. Dr Shantella Sherman (46:12): Well, and the whole thing, women becomes hokey after a while because it's almost as if they're preaching to you. Spencer Tracy is like, and as we go through the annals of history and just like, right. I love the fact though, in this film that you have the older black characters. You have the maid saying, you know, ain't got no business up in here with this girl coming into a house like this. Years ago, it wasn't even that you would've gone into the back door. You'd have been swinging from a tree. You ought to know better. And because you can't separate that, Wilmer Leon (46:45): You have to know your place. Dr Shantella Sherman (46:47): And I really did not like the fact that you had his parents, Sidney Poitier's parents are trying to warn him off like, listen, I didn't like that. Because it's like, in reality, those warnings are real today. Oh, absolutely. Hey, you watch where you step, right? Again, you don't do what they do Wilmer Leon (47:06): Well, so take us with that, because I wanted to try and show some type of lineage here. So where are we with this today? Because a lot of people would think that eugenics and how it manifests itself, that was then, we're not really seeing that. Now. You touched on it with 9 1 1 and all, but give us some examples of, because you spend an awful lot of time researching in terms of what we're seeing today. How is it manifesting itself today Dr Shantella Sherman (47:43): At the pendulum, wil, we quite frankly, you can swing too far in one direction and then it flips over. The reality is that many of the eugenic theories that we started with, we still have, we call them by different names. We don't say that a person is an idiot buil all of that anymore. What we say is their sub normal. We say that they need an emotional assistance program within the school. We say that we don't want to segregate them out, but we're going to find a way of pulling these things together. So even I Wilmer Leon (48:18): Think it's called a EP and alternative educational plan. Dr Shantella Sherman (48:21): Absolutely. But you keep everyone in the same space. And even the rubric is not really, it's still a eugenic rubric. Do you have both parents in your house? What is the income of the household? It's all of these other things that go back to what we call the three Ds. Delinquent dependent. What's the other one? Delinquent dependent. I always get to that last one. Wilmer Leon (48:48): It'll come to you. Dr Shantella Sherman (48:50): Yeah. All right. But it's the three Ds that most school systems, most medical systems use that determine how the child will fare in the school. But they start using this rubric when the three or four, and this is the reason why you have three year olds being suspended and expelled from school. They don't listen. They're aggressive. They're throwing tantrums. That's what three year olds do. But now there's a pathology that's attached to it. And so when you look at, yes, if I look at things like the cloning, because we moved into transhumanism and people go, oh, this AI and all of this other stuff, these are just fancy terms so that you don't understand that that original theory, survival of the fittest and white gene power and all of this, covid showed you something. So you're getting television shows where you're talking about cloning people, you're talking about orphan black, you're talking about AI integrated into things. You're talking about, we need to build better humans externally, because internally, white women are not having babies, and when they do, they're having non white men. Okay, the Wilmer Leon (50:02): Browning of America, Dr Shantella Sherman (50:03): Right? The browning of the world, right? Say there's a reason why they're calling London Stan now, because everybody, these aren't immigrants coming in. These are births in the nation. And so all of a sudden the culture of the nation is beginning to shift. So what we want to do is start having the people who would normally clean the streets or do other things. We have machines that do this now. And so what you're doing is creating a poverty class where folks won't be able to do anything except what you want them to do. And so we are getting back, you can't put 'em in asylums, but you can't put 'em in ghettos. You can't put'em in counsel housing. And so you start to understand that the television is starting to help you do this. You're getting different films about when we create better people that can assist us with being more human, you have more time to be human and go to yoga and do this other stuff. If someone else is doing the thinking for you. That becomes problematic in a number of ways. But what it does supposedly is secure your cells, your good cells, that fitness, because you're now being outnumbered. Wilmer Leon (51:19): I'm not even sure how to frame this question, but in listening to what you've just said, it ties to a conversation I was having yesterday in that we seem to be moving away from the collective to the individual with the iPhone and the iPad. It is a whole lot more about me as the individual and what satisfies me as the individual. I remember seeing these dance parties where kids will go with their iPods, listen to music in their own ears, in a group of people. Everybody's listening to different music. Everybody's dancing the same rhythm. Everybody's dancing to different rhythms because they're listening to different things. And this is supposed to be a party. I don't even know if that ties it, but that just came into my Dr Shantella Sherman (52:21): Head. No, but it does, because again, when I'm speaking of the term outnumbered, when we talk about transhumanism, the belief is that society, the world is going to basically at this point, because the good, the fit have been outnumbered by the unfit. Those who have the least ability and capacity to raise children are having the most children. Years ago, you would sterilize these folks, you would strike 'em as an idiot, em basil, you put 'em in an asylum or at the public health center for a couple days, you would sterilize them, do full hysterectomies or surgeries for the men, and then you let 'em back out on the street and say, okay, you can do all the damage you can do in your lifetime, which won't be long based upon your behavior, but you will not reproduce this foolishness into another generation. We're going to stop this. They're still doing this in prisons, by the way, today. Alright, so that's first and foremost. But what starts to happen is it's not that you want to be individual in and of yourself, you also want to be a celebrity. So everywhere you go Wilmer Leon (53:26): Likes taking Dr Shantella Sherman (53:27): Pictures of yourself, Wilmer Leon (53:29): I have to be liked. Dr Shantella Sherman (53:30): And then you can't function when enough people don't like it. But I've seen people sitting at a table and everyone's taking pictures of the food they're eating, the food they're drinking, they may look over at each other a little bit, but you all are family and you came together, but you're not even having conversations. So you're in a bubble by yourself and your own self. It's all Wilmer Leon (53:50): About this, Dr Shantella Sherman (53:51): Right? You're in a bubble by your own self and you can't relate. The mainframe is also speeding up so that I'm feeding you so much information at one time that you can't focus. And since you can't focus, it means it's doing something internally to you as well. At some point, Wilma, we may talk about the Rosetta Effect. Alright, go Wilmer Leon (54:13): Ahead. Dr Shantella Sherman (54:16): And this is one of my champion causes because it's about size and it's about weight and it's about happiness. Back in the 1950s, sixties, the country was trying to figure out where the healthiest spaces in America were, and they found that it was a little community upstate New York called Rosetta. And when they got there, they were like, this doesn't make sense. It was mostly a Italian spot, and everyone over there was just gargantuan. These are some big people. Wilmer Leon (54:42): This sounds like a Twilight Zone episode. No, Dr Shantella Sherman (54:44): No, no. And I don't mean I shouldn't say it like that, but it was the men had bellies out in front of them. The women were B, and people were short and styled. Some of 'em were tall, but based upon the eugenic theories, these should be the most unhealthy people with hypertension, diabetes, heart conditions, just heart attacks waiting around the corner. Their BMIs were just ridiculous. They got there, they started testing them, and they realized, yeah, they just eating crap. They eating prosciutto and ham and cheese and melon walking down the street. One guy says, I want to die with a meatball in my mouth. And they did that right? And they just, Kiki can and laughing and drinking a lot of wine. What they concluded in the study was that the people felt safe, they felt loved, they felt nurtured. They felt respected. The old people lived into their nineties and hundreds because they had people looking out for them. (55:42) The children felt free to walk around in their neighborhoods and they had other people looking after them. And the middle aged, the birthing folks realized we have a community that will look after our children to keep them safe. We used to have that in the south, even under the duress of the lynching tree and other things. And that's why the lifespan was as long as it was, even though we were eating chitlins and hog malls and whatever else, it wasn't until the duress of society comes in and starts telling you, you're too this. You're too that. You're not enough of this. This is what causes this. This is how you get to that. You're not enough. They're giving you too much of this. And that is what we are dealing with. Now, within three years of the study coming out, we came in, America came in and told them, you don't want to live up underneath your grandparents all your lives. Sell the house and put them in a home. Send the kids to daycare. They'll get behind in school. They started feeding information to them about being more American. As soon as they became more American, guess what? They Wilmer Leon (56:44): Started dying faster. Dr Shantella Sherman (56:46): Hypertension showed up. And so the eugenic mainframe right now with transhumanism is going back to this and basically saying, you need yoga and water and to rest and music therapy and chelation and all of this. And the truth of the matter is, let the robot do the heavy lifting and you just live. Let the machine carry the baby. Wilmer Leon (57:10): Let me give you what I think is somewhat of a parallel here. The first time I went to Iran, I'm sitting in the lobby of my hotel. When we weren't in meetings and lectures and whatnot, we would sit in the lobby of the hotel and drink coffee and interact. I saw all these women with surgical tape on their faces, Muslim women with surgical tape, and it was just odd. So after about the second or third day, I turned to my interpreter, I said, Ali, why am I seeing all of these women with all this surgical tape on their faces? And he tells me that Tehran is the nose job center of the Middle East. And that fairly wealthy Muslim women come to Tehran to get their eyes done and get their noses done. And I said, Ali, that's insane. These women are beautiful. And he says, yeah, but they're reading Western glamor magazines and they want to look like women from the west. (58:41) So I'm in this interview, I'm on this television show on press tv, and the host asks me my thoughts about, I was there the first time I was there for 10 days, and he asked me my thoughts and I says, well, let me tell you something. I says, you guys, you don't have to worry about General Schwartzkoff. You got to worry about Colonel Sanders. And he says, excuse me? I said, based on what I see your adopting of the Western aesthetic is for your women. When that three piece in a biscuit hits, you guys are done. Hypertension, obesity, diabetes. I said, once you get a taste of those additives in American food and that salt hits you, I said, America will take you over in a minute. Dr Shantella Sherman (59:45): It's a wrap. It's literally a wrap. I mean, when we have folks right now, if you go the next time interview are out in the streets, go into the nearest target of Walmart, go down the aisle, not for cosmetics, but for things like deodorant and lotion, they're now putting additives in that specifically for melanated skin. And the goal is to bleach your underarm. Pitts. The goal is to lighten your skin as you're putting on your lotion. So it's not listed as a skin bleacher, but the combination and compounds that you would actually lighten your skin with are now in soaps, deodorant, lotions, anything that you can think of. And it's for every part of your body. Understand what I'm saying? And so I'm thinking, who really needs this? Wilmer Leon (01:00:42): Is that where this whole, because I've noticed these new commercials with the total body deodorant. Is that where that's coming from? Dr Shantella Sherman (01:00:50): That's also a part of it. Yes. Come on, come had baby soda since you've had life. So come on. Say that again. Wilmer Leon (01:00:58): You've had Dr Shantella Sherman (01:00:58): What? Baking soda. Oh, Wilmer Leon (01:01:00): Right. Dr Shantella Sherman (01:01:00): Everybody said if you were worried about sweat, I mean, come on, sweat and odor. We know how to deal with this. Again, country folks, you've been Virginian and lower. You got it. So the fact that you're now creating through Suave and Dove and shame motion, every brand now has something that, and they call it melanated. They're letting you know this is for people who are brown, who don't want to be brown anymore. This is for folks who don't want to be to appear unfit. They're now girdles for your feet. They're now, you want a smaller size foot. We got some tape and stuff that we can wrap your feet in so that you get a smaller size shoe. It's bizarro, but fit over unfit. Wilmer Leon (01:01:51): The Acumen Group is we could talk, well, you and I, we go through this for hours. The Acumen Group, you're holding your first annual eugenics conference in the United Kingdom in October. Talk about that. Give us a little bit of that, please. Dr Shantella Sherman (01:02:07): Well, we're still pulling all the logistics together at this point when we're, but I'm grateful to God that we're celebrating our 10th anniversary as of this year. 2024 is also for us, the 100 year anniversary of a lot of the eugenic legislation that came about in 1924. And it's still occupying spaces in the parameters of our policymaking today. So we are partnering with a number of universities in, Wilmer Leon (01:02:35): Well, wait a minute, A minute, just So in 24, you had the Eugenic Sterilization Act, you had the Racial Integrity Act, and you had And Immigration Go ahead. Dr Shantella Sherman (01:02:45): And the Immigration Act. Wilmer Leon (01:02:47): Okay, Dr Shantella Sherman (01:02:47): So those three and two of the three came out of Virginia right up here where we are. So one just basically limited the number of immigrants that can come into the country. The second one said that anyone within a state that's considered to be socially inept and or mentally inept through those IQ tests and measurements can be sterilized for the better of the country. And then the third, the Race Purity, race Integrity Act basically said, once again, there are only two races. We aren't going to do Mongolo and Caucasoid and all of that. There are only two races, white and non-white. So even that praxis understanding that today when someone says black people are 20 times more likely to have X, Y, and Z, they aren't necessarily talking about black this way. They're talking about non-white. And so you really have to get to a point where you learn how to read these studies if you're going to repeat the information in them. (01:03:44) Alright, so the goal, the universities, the goal is to get all of these wonderful students from around the globe into one space, along with working scholars and the public to sit down and talk about the tentacles of eugenics and how it's become a sprinkler system. And it's still very much alive. It's still very healthy, it's robust, and it's right in front of us, but we don't necessarily recognize it. So we want to give a platform to scholars, to students, and to the public, the general public to come in, learn a little bit, share information, and go away with workable tools to combat this when and where we see it. Wilmer Leon (01:04:23): And for those who want to get more information, where do they go Dr Shantella Sherman (01:04:28): To the website? www.theacumengroup.org. You can visit us on all of the social medias, either as Dr. Chantel or as the Acumen Group. Wilmer Leon (01:04:40): An Acumen is A-C-U-M-N-E-N? Dr Shantella Sherman (01:04:45): Yes. Wilmer Leon (01:04:46): E-N-H-C-U-M. Hey, don't say I'm feeble-minded, please. I just can't spell. Don't do it. I went to Catholic school so I can do math. Dr Shantella Sherman (01:04:57): Don't do it. Wilmer Leon (01:04:59): Oh wow. Doctor Cantella Sherman, as always, you bring it. You brought it as you always do. Dr. Chantel Sherman, I have to thank you so much for joining me today. Dr Shantella Sherman (01:05:12): Thank you. Always a pleasure. Anytime Wilmer Leon (01:05:15): Folks. Thank you all. So much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe, review, share the show. You can follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. Please go to that Patreon link and make a contribution so all the assistance that you can provide will be greatly, greatly appreciated. If you have any questions or you would like to suggest show topics, please make those suggestions as you communicate with us through the links below with your comments to the show. Remember folks, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you allall next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out Announcer (01:06:22): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao   ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Dr. Gregory Radick is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds. He has held fellowships from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, and served as President of the British Society for the History of Science (2014‒16) and the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (2019‒21). He writes and lectures frequently for general audiences, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time and in the PBS/National Geographic television series Genius with Stephen Hawking. In 2022 he was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Science Museum Group. He is the author of several books, including Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology.   In this episode, we focus on Disputed Inheritance. We start by talking about the work of Mendel, how it relates to Darwin's, and also the work of Francis Galton on heredity. We then talk about how people first took Mendel's work seriously, and the work and debate between William Bateson and Walter Weldon. We also discuss the aftermath of Weldon's death in 1906. We talk about a Weldonian course that ran at the University of Leeds in 2013. Finally, we discuss whether Weldon's approach to genetics connects in any way to the idea of the extended evolutionary synthesis. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, OLAF ALEX, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, ADANER USMANI, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, DANIEL FRIEDMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ANTON ERIKSSON, CHARLES MOREY, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, NIKLAS CARLSSON, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, KATE VON GOELER, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, ERIK ENGMAN, LUCY, AND YHONATAN SHEMESH! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, AND NICK GOLDEN! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

Depuis au moins la fin du XIXe siècle, les sociologues, à commencer par le Français Gustave Le Bon, ont constaté que le comportement d'individus regroupés dans une foule avait tendance à se modifier.Un changement d'attitude souvent perçu de manière négative. On remarque en effet que des hommes perdus dans une foule peuvent se laisser aller à des sentiments, de haine ou d'exaltation, qu'ils n'auraient pas forcément éprouvés en tant qu'individus.Mais une théorie inverse, popularisée notamment par le journaliste américain James Surowiecki plaide en faveur de la "sagesse des foules", titre d'un livre qu'il a fait paraître en 2004. Elle a aussi inspiré une pratique éducative initiée par le philosophe et pédagogue américain Matthew Lipman, qui cherche à développer la réflexion des enfants par des discussions collectives.D'après ce postulat, une foule serait mieux à même de résoudre un problème que tout individu pris isolément. Cette supposée meilleure capacité de prédiction de la foule est déjà connue des experts des marchés prédictifs ainsi que des milieux hippiques.Dans certaines conditions, en effet, les pronostics réalisés par l'ensemble des parieurs s'avéreraient assez exacts. De même, le classement des pages web par les moteurs de recherche se fonde sur le succès rencontré par chacune d'entre elles. Autrement dit, ces moteurs de recherche font confiance au jugement collectif des internautes, qui s'avèrerait le plus souvent pertinent.Par ailleurs, James Surowiecki cite certaines observations faites, au début du XXe siècle, par le statisticien anglais Francis Galton. Il avait notamment remarqué qu'une foule avait été capable de deviner, avec une plus grande précision qu'un expert, le poids d'un bœuf.Mais cette "sagesse des foules" ne pourrait se manifester, selon cet auteur, que si certaines conditions sont réunies. En effet, une foule ne sera plus perspicace qu'un individu que si elle est composée de personnes venant de milieux sociaux divers.Par ailleurs, les avis exprimés doivent l'être en toute indépendance. Enfin, le résultat final doit émerger par simple agrégation, et non au moyen d'un vote ou par l'intervention d'une quelconque autorité. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Depuis au moins la fin du XIXe siècle, les sociologues, à commencer par le Français Gustave Le Bon, ont constaté que le comportement d'individus regroupés dans une foule avait tendance à se modifier. Un changement d'attitude souvent perçu de manière négative. On remarque en effet que des hommes perdus dans une foule peuvent se laisser aller à des sentiments, de haine ou d'exaltation, qu'ils n'auraient pas forcément éprouvés en tant qu'individus. Mais une théorie inverse, popularisée notamment par le journaliste américain James Surowiecki plaide en faveur de la "sagesse des foules", titre d'un livre qu'il a fait paraître en 2004. Elle a aussi inspiré une pratique éducative initiée par le philosophe et pédagogue américain Matthew Lipman, qui cherche à développer la réflexion des enfants par des discussions collectives. D'après ce postulat, une foule serait mieux à même de résoudre un problème que tout individu pris isolément. Cette supposée meilleure capacité de prédiction de la foule est déjà connue des experts des marchés prédictifs ainsi que des milieux hippiques. Dans certaines conditions, en effet, les pronostics réalisés par l'ensemble des parieurs s'avéreraient assez exacts. De même, le classement des pages web par les moteurs de recherche se fonde sur le succès rencontré par chacune d'entre elles. Autrement dit, ces moteurs de recherche font confiance au jugement collectif des internautes, qui s'avèrerait le plus souvent pertinent. Par ailleurs, James Surowiecki cite certaines observations faites, au début du XXe siècle, par le statisticien anglais Francis Galton. Il avait notamment remarqué qu'une foule avait été capable de deviner, avec une plus grande précision qu'un expert, le poids d'un bœuf. Mais cette "sagesse des foules" ne pourrait se manifester, selon cet auteur, que si certaines conditions sont réunies. En effet, une foule ne sera plus perspicace qu'un individu que si elle est composée de personnes venant de milieux sociaux divers. Par ailleurs, les avis exprimés doivent l'être en toute indépendance. Enfin, le résultat final doit émerger par simple agrégation, et non au moyen d'un vote ou par l'intervention d'une quelconque autorité. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's our annual end of year parade of all the extra good stuff this year's podguests talked about. In order of appearance: Translator and author Caetano Galindo on how the countril Brazil got its name, and about a mythical disappearing island Lexicographer and Countdown's Dictionary Corner-er Susie Dent on geese Academic and collector of dictionaries Lindsay Rose Russell on the terms 'walking dictionary' and 'sleeping dictionary' Writer and Maintenance Phase cohost Aubrey Gordon on the origins and misuse of the Body Mass Index and body positivity movement Historian Dean Vuletic on why we say "Nul points!" about Eurovision losers Council funeral officer Evie King on alternatives to cremation Griefcast's Cariad Lloyd on Victorian Brits' rules for grief, and the misuse of the concept of five stages of grief. Plus! Renaming updates, movie-named knitwear, and my portmanteaus and portmantNOs of the year. Content notes: this episode contains discussions of death, grief, anti-fat bias, eugenics and racism; I've included warnings in the audio before each section where relevant, so you know which specific parts to skip if you need to. Get the transcript of this episode, and find links to the guests and more information about the topics therein, at theallusionist.org/bonus2023 This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Martin Austwick of Neutrino Watch and Song By Song podcasts provides the Allusionist music. Thanks to Ashra for the inwhiches, Amanda and Carly for the ad sales, and Tort, Lilly and Chris for their community modding. And thank you for listening to the show, and recommending it to others! Become a member of the Allusioverse at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you get regular livestreams, insight into the making of this show, and watchalong parties - AND to hang out with your fellow Allusionauts in our delightful Discord community, where I am posting all my best/worst portmanteaus and portmantNOs. The Allusionist's online home is theallusionist.org. Stay in touch via facebook.com/allusionistshow, instagram.com/allusionistshow, youtube.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow etc. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you want me to talk lovingly and winningly about your product or thing on the show in 2024, sponsor an episode: contact Multitude at multitude.productions/ads. This episode is sponsored by: • Ravensburger, who make all sorts of jigsaw puzzles, including light-up 3D puzzles and puzzles you can use as pen holders afterwards. Buy Ravensburger puzzles in your preferred puzzle emporium and from Ravensburger's official websites. • Kitsch, fun and useful skincare, haircare and accessories and styling tools. Get 30% off your entire order at MyKitsch.com/allusionist.• Bombas, whose mission is to make the comfiest clothes ever, and match every item sold with an equal item donated. Go to bombas.com/allusionist to get 20% off your first purchase. • Squarespace, your one-stop shop for building and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/allusionist for a free 2-week trial, and get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain with the code allusionist. • Canva, great design at your fingertips to level up your videos/presentations/websites etc. And you can collaborate: get a FREE 45-day extended trial when you go to Canva.me/allusionist.  Support the show: http://patreon.com/allusionistSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/94887548 Beatrice and Abby speak with Robert Chapman about their new book, Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism, and discuss the close relationship between the fields of statistics and eugenics through five thinkers—Adolphe Quetelet, Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, Ronald Fisher, and Thomas Szasz—whose ideas continue to influence how the state manages neurodiversity and disability. Get Health Communism here: www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-communism Runtime 1:38:47, 18 December 2023

This week, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey get started on the history of eugenics, the idea of finding biological solutions to social problems. Say the word now and it calls to mind skull-measuring cranks or Nazi death camps but for decades it was a mainstream project in many parts of the world, attracting not just white supremacists and elitist snobs but liberals, socialists and feminists. Winston Churchill, HG Wells, Nikola Tesla and John Maynard Keynes all expressed an interest. How did bad science and dangerous politics become so popular? Dorian and Ian explore how Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer's fascination with inherited characteristics was supercharged by Victorian science, from Darwin's theory of evolution to early breakthroughs in genetics. They talk about how Galton's voluntary “positive eugenics” led to the authoritarian “negative eugenics” of compulsory sterilisation, and how hardcore American eugenicists drew up a blueprint for Hitler. Also: the birth of scientific racism, the sinister history of IQ tests, how GK Chesterton helped save Britain from eugenics laws, and, yes, the people who thought you could identify criminals by the shape of their skulls. It's a disturbing and complicated story which mangles your political preconceptions. Support Origin Story on Patreon for exclusive benefits. Reading list Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds) - The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2010) Edwin Black — War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (2003) Elof Axel Carlson — The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (2001) GK Chesterton — Eugenics and Other Evils (1922) Charles Darwin — The Descent of Man (1871) Lyndsay Andrew Farrall — The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement 1865-1925 (1969) Francis Galton – Hereditary Genius (1869) Henry H Goddard – The Kallikak Family (1912) Stephen Jay Gould — The Mismeasure of Man (1981/1996) Madison Grant – The Passing of the Great Race (1916) Philippa Levine — Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction (2017) Gina Maranto — Quest for Perfection: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings (1996) Adam Rutherford — Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics (2022) Lothrop Stoddard – The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy (1920) HG Wells – Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901)  Online: Quinn Slobodian — ‘The rise of the new tech right', The New Statesman (2023) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production. Follow Origin Story on X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan & Paul are joined by Matt Finch, to talk about ways it can be more efficient in your D&D game setup to get random results with dice. Consider cards, chits, spinners, toppling block towers, or Matt's new app for the Fantasy Adventure Builder, now on Kickstarter? Dice were just the start! Physical devices were used to generate random numbers for thousands of years, primarily for gambling. Dice in particular are known for more than 5000 years (found on locations in modern Iraq and Iran), flipping coin (thus producing a random bit) dates at least to the times of ancient Rome. First documented use of physical random number generator for a scientific purpose was by Francis Galton (1890). He devised a way to sample a probability distribution using a common gambling dice. In addition to the top digit, Galton also looked at the face of a dice closest to him, thus creating 6 * 4 = 24 outcomes (about 4.6 bits of randomness). Kendall and Babington-Smith (1938) used a fast-rotating 10-sector disk that was illuminated by the periodic bursts of light. The sampling was done by a human who wrote the number under the light beam onto a pad. The device was utilized to produce a 100,000-digit random number table (at the time such tables were used for statistical experiments, like PRNG nowadays). Back Matt's Kickstarter for the Fantasy Adventure Builder app here And join Paul's Kickstarter for Fearful Ends here This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hardware random number generator", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data.  Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age. Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data.  Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age. Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data.  Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age. Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data.  Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age. Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/mathematics

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data.  Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age. Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data.  Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age. Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data.  Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age. Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data.  Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of how such data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and the arguments and conflicts between social classes. Numbers were collected in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this 'data revolution'. They became a regular aspect of governmental procedure thereafter, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera; Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics - statistics as we use them today - became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians emphasised the unity of mankind, some later practitioners, following Francis Galton, studied variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, and different Victorian statisticians, Victorians and Numbers traces the impact of numbers on the era and the intriguing relationship of Victorian statistics with 'Big Data' in our own age. Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

On les appelle plus communément les empreintes digitales. Les sillons qui se trouvent au bout de nos doigts font partie des caractéristiques intrigantes de la biologie humaine. Ces dermatoglyphes ont pourtant démontré leur utilité au grès de l'évolution, et ont même conduit à des avancées technologiques remarquables telles que l'identification biométrique.Comment se forment les empreintes digitales ?C'est pendant la gestation, entre la 10ème et la 24ème semaine de développement embryonnaire, que se forment nos empreintes digitales. Les crêtes des sillons des doigts sont produites grâce à l'épiderme. Celui-ci pousse vers l'intérieur du doigt et interagit avec le derme sous-jacent, ce qui produit des motifs uniques.Francis Galton, un cousin du célèbre Darwin, a calculé en 1892 que la probabilité d'avoir les mêmes empreintes digitales qu'un autre être vivant était de 1 sur 64 milliards, y compris pour des vrais jumeaux. Ces caractéristiques uniques dépendent à la fois de facteurs génétiques et environnementaux, et ne changent pas pendant toute notre vie, sauf si la couche profonde de la peau est détruite à cet endroit lors d'une grave brûlure ou d'une chirurgie.Les fonctions des sillons sur les doigtsLes empreintes digitales s'avèrent très utiles pour la sensibilité tactile de l'humain. Elles augmentent la surface de contact avec les objets et aident à discriminer les textures grâce aux vibrations transmises par les crêtes des sillons lors d'un contact avec une surface. C'est donc grâce à nos empreintes digitales que nous pouvons manipuler et tenir les objets de notre quotidien.Les sillons des doigts agissent aussi comme des canaux qui évacuent l'eau et améliorent la friction entre les doigts et la surface de l'objet, permettant aux humains de saisir des choses glissantes ou humides. Les crêtes réduisent la pression de contact : notre peau s'adapte ainsi mieux aux surfaces irrégulières et saisit plus efficacement les objets non lisses.De l'usage des empreintes digitales dans la société moderneEn raison de leur caractère parfaitement unique, les empreintes digitales sont désormais largement utilisées comme méthode d'identification biométrique. Différents systèmes de reconnaissance des dermatoglyphes existent pour les accès sécurisés, les passeports, les appareils électroniques ou les identifications au sein des forces de l'ordre. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

On les appelle plus communément les empreintes digitales. Les sillons qui se trouvent au bout de nos doigts font partie des caractéristiques intrigantes de la biologie humaine. Ces dermatoglyphes ont pourtant démontré leur utilité au grès de l'évolution, et ont même conduit à des avancées technologiques remarquables telles que l'identification biométrique. Comment se forment les empreintes digitales ? C'est pendant la gestation, entre la 10ème et la 24ème semaine de développement embryonnaire, que se forment nos empreintes digitales. Les crêtes des sillons des doigts sont produites grâce à l'épiderme. Celui-ci pousse vers l'intérieur du doigt et interagit avec le derme sous-jacent, ce qui produit des motifs uniques. Francis Galton, un cousin du célèbre Darwin, a calculé en 1892 que la probabilité d'avoir les mêmes empreintes digitales qu'un autre être vivant était de 1 sur 64 milliards, y compris pour des vrais jumeaux. Ces caractéristiques uniques dépendent à la fois de facteurs génétiques et environnementaux, et ne changent pas pendant toute notre vie, sauf si la couche profonde de la peau est détruite à cet endroit lors d'une grave brûlure ou d'une chirurgie. Les fonctions des sillons sur les doigts Les empreintes digitales s'avèrent très utiles pour la sensibilité tactile de l'humain. Elles augmentent la surface de contact avec les objets et aident à discriminer les textures grâce aux vibrations transmises par les crêtes des sillons lors d'un contact avec une surface. C'est donc grâce à nos empreintes digitales que nous pouvons manipuler et tenir les objets de notre quotidien. Les sillons des doigts agissent aussi comme des canaux qui évacuent l'eau et améliorent la friction entre les doigts et la surface de l'objet, permettant aux humains de saisir des choses glissantes ou humides. Les crêtes réduisent la pression de contact : notre peau s'adapte ainsi mieux aux surfaces irrégulières et saisit plus efficacement les objets non lisses. De l'usage des empreintes digitales dans la société moderne En raison de leur caractère parfaitement unique, les empreintes digitales sont désormais largement utilisées comme méthode d'identification biométrique. Différents systèmes de reconnaissance des dermatoglyphes existent pour les accès sécurisés, les passeports, les appareils électroniques ou les identifications au sein des forces de l'ordre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam Mastroianni has a great review of Memories Of My Life, the autobiography of Francis Galton. Mastroianni centers his piece around the question: how could a brilliant scientist like Galton be so devoted to an evil idea like eugenics? This sparked the usual eugenics discussion. In case you haven't heard it before: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/galton-ehrlich-buck

"It's a fundamental human question, how do we become individuals? It's a basic thing about being alive and thinking. Nature versus nurture is a phrase that was popularized by Francis Galton in the late 19th century. and the idea behind it is that if you were to look at a particular trait, say, shyness or height, you could say, well, to what degree can we attribute height to nature? In this case, meaning the gene variants that you inherit from your parents versus nurture in this case, meaning how you were raised by your parents and by your community. And I have many problems with this expression. Part of it is that the nature part shouldn't just mean genetics. In other words, there's all kinds of biological things that are not genetic things. If your mother fought off a viral infection while you were developing in utero, then you have a much higher chance of developing schizophrenia or autism when you grow up. Now that's biological, but it's not hereditary. That's not something that you would then acquire and then pass on to your own children. It only happens in the one generation. The other problem is when we hear the word nurture, we really focus on the family, how your parents raised you or failed to raise you, how your community was involved. And those things are very important, but they're far from everything that impinges upon you in your life. I take experience as the thing to substitute for nurture because it is much more inclusive and it includes not just social experience from your family and your peers and your community, but also experience in the more general sense."David J. Linden is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, and Touch: The Science of the Hand, Heart, and Mind. His laboratory has worked for many years on the cellular substrates of memory storage, recovery of function following brain injury and a few other topics.www.davidlinden.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

David J. Linden is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, and Touch: The Science of the Hand, Heart, and Mind. His laboratory has worked for many years on the cellular substrates of memory storage, recovery of function following brain injury and a few other topics."It's a fundamental human question, how do we become individuals? It's a basic thing about being alive and thinking. Nature versus nurture is a phrase that was popularized by Francis Galton in the late 19th century. and the idea behind it is that if you were to look at a particular trait, say, shyness or height, you could say, well, to what degree can we attribute height to nature? In this case, meaning the gene variants that you inherit from your parents versus nurture in this case, meaning how you were raised by your parents and by your community. And I have many problems with this expression. Part of it is that the nature part shouldn't just mean genetics. In other words, there's all kinds of biological things that are not genetic things. If your mother fought off a viral infection while you were developing in utero, then you have a much higher chance of developing schizophrenia or autism when you grow up. Now that's biological, but it's not hereditary. That's not something that you would then acquire and then pass on to your own children. It only happens in the one generation. The other problem is when we hear the word nurture, we really focus on the family, how your parents raised you or failed to raise you, how your community was involved. And those things are very important, but they're far from everything that impinges upon you in your life. I take experience as the thing to substitute for nurture because it is much more inclusive and it includes not just social experience from your family and your peers and your community, but also experience in the more general sense."www.davidlinden.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

David J. Linden is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, and Touch: The Science of the Hand, Heart, and Mind. His laboratory has worked for many years on the cellular substrates of memory storage, recovery of function following brain injury and a few other topics."It's a fundamental human question, how do we become individuals? It's a basic thing about being alive and thinking. Nature versus nurture is a phrase that was popularized by Francis Galton in the late 19th century. and the idea behind it is that if you were to look at a particular trait, say, shyness or height, you could say, well, to what degree can we attribute height to nature? In this case, meaning the gene variants that you inherit from your parents versus nurture in this case, meaning how you were raised by your parents and by your community. And I have many problems with this expression. Part of it is that the nature part shouldn't just mean genetics. In other words, there's all kinds of biological things that are not genetic things. If your mother fought off a viral infection while you were developing in utero, then you have a much higher chance of developing schizophrenia or autism when you grow up. Now that's biological, but it's not hereditary. That's not something that you would then acquire and then pass on to your own children. It only happens in the one generation. The other problem is when we hear the word nurture, we really focus on the family, how your parents raised you or failed to raise you, how your community was involved. And those things are very important, but they're far from everything that impinges upon you in your life. I take experience as the thing to substitute for nurture because it is much more inclusive and it includes not just social experience from your family and your peers and your community, but also experience in the more general sense."www.davidlinden.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"It's a fundamental human question, how do we become individuals? It's a basic thing about being alive and thinking. Nature versus nurture is a phrase that was popularized by Francis Galton in the late 19th century. and the idea behind it is that if you were to look at a particular trait, say, shyness or height, you could say, well, to what degree can we attribute height to nature? In this case, meaning the gene variants that you inherit from your parents versus nurture in this case, meaning how you were raised by your parents and by your community. And I have many problems with this expression. Part of it is that the nature part shouldn't just mean genetics. In other words, there's all kinds of biological things that are not genetic things. If your mother fought off a viral infection while you were developing in utero, then you have a much higher chance of developing schizophrenia or autism when you grow up. Now that's biological, but it's not hereditary. That's not something that you would then acquire and then pass on to your own children. It only happens in the one generation. The other problem is when we hear the word nurture, we really focus on the family, how your parents raised you or failed to raise you, how your community was involved. And those things are very important, but they're far from everything that impinges upon you in your life. I take experience as the thing to substitute for nurture because it is much more inclusive and it includes not just social experience from your family and your peers and your community, but also experience in the more general sense."David J. Linden is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, and Touch: The Science of the Hand, Heart, and Mind. His laboratory has worked for many years on the cellular substrates of memory storage, recovery of function following brain injury and a few other topics.www.davidlinden.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Erwin Schrödinger is one of the "fathers of quantum mechanics". He also sexually abused children. Trinity College Dublin recently denamed a lecture theatre that had been named after him - but his name is still on an equation that won the Nobel Prize for physics. And a cat. Writer and historian Subhadra Das recounts how and why you rename a university building, and retired physicist Martin Austwick considers that renaming an eponymous equation or theory might be more difficult than unscrewing a sign from a wall. This is an instalment of the Telling Other Stories series, about renaming. Content note: this episode contains references to  racism and eugenics, and to the sexual abuse of children. There is also a Category B swear. Find out more about this episode and get extra information about the topics therein at theallusionist.org/box, where there's also a transcript. Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes glimpses of the show, fortnightly livestreams, special perks at live shows, and best of all the Allusioverse Discord community. Over the next few weeks, we're watching Great Pottery Throwdown together. The Allusionist's online home is theallusionist.org. Stay in touch at facebook.com/allusionistshow, instagram.com/allusionistshow, youtube.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/allusionistshow, while it still stands. The Allusionist is produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Martin Austwick provides the original music. Hear Martin's own songs via palebirdmusic.com. Our ad partner is Multitude. To sponsor the show in 2023, contact them at multitude.productions/ads. This episode is sponsored by: • Bombas, whose mission is to make the comfiest clothes ever, and match every item sold with an equal item donated. Go to bombas.com/allusionist to get 20% off your first purchase. • Squarespace, your one-stop shop for building and running a sleek website. Go to squarespace.com/allusionist for a free 2-week trial, and get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain with the code allusionist. • NordVPN is offering exclusivelusionist big discounts: grab the deal on this trusty VPN at nordvpn.com/allusionist, and try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee.Support the show: http://patreon.com/allusionistSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By Dr. Wayne Dyer.... "If you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you will rarely disappoint yourself. He said, stop complaining… differentiate yourself from your competition. Don't be a duck! Be an eagle! Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd." The wise cousin of the famous Darwin, Francis Galton (1822 - 1911) one day made an experiment that later went down in history as 'Francis Galton's Famous Walk'. He firmly imagined himself as the most hated person in England. With this attitude he started his morning walk. It wasn't long before some passers-by were shouting at him and others bumped into him. Eventually he was even kicked by a horse and he fell to the ground. Instead of helping him up, the people standing around sided with the horse. Two lessons can now be drawn from this story: Man is what he thinks. This means that any change in behavior must be preceded by a change in thinking, but this does not work without emotional involvement. The emotional level is crucial. Thanks for listening do share it with someone who you feels could use today's message, my name is Heiko. God bless you and remember, take it easy. SHOWNOTES: What does this mean for your running? Here some useful links. Your “how to do it” run streak Run 365 Days: Your 365 Day Run Streak Brain Training For Runners': Your Mental Guide To Better Running. Improve your discipline Accountability Coach. Add swimming to your run Become a better swimmer. Follow us on INSTAGRAM. Follow us on TWITTER. Follow us on YouTube. More about your HOST. Train your BRAIN become a better runner. Get in touch: makeeverystep@gmail.com

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.The last lecture of the day was given by Michele Goodwin - Chancellor's Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California Irvine, and also a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School. Her talk focused on how the long shadow of eugenics and white supremacy persists into the present day and remain embedded in contemporary political frameworks, and why this pernicious ideology is taking so long to die. So, how does she start thinking about such a complex and challenging topic?You can find out more about the Adelphi Genetics Forum, including their grants, awards and publications, at adelphigenetics.org You can check out the rest of this series on the Genetics Unzipped podcast feed – just search for Genetics Unzipped on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This series was produced by the team at First Create The Media – that's Kat Arney, Sally Le Page and Emma Werner, with help from Ed Prosser and Frankie Pike. Our music is Drops of H2O by J. Lang, licensed under Creative Commons.

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.Much of Francis Galton's academic life is associated with University College London, or UCL, and he bequeathed not only his archive but also an endowment for the UK's first professorial chair in Eugenics. The University's Galton Laboratory was finally folded into a larger department of genetics, evolution and environment in 2013, and the Galton Lecture theatre was only renamed in 2020. So why did Galton's name persist for so long? And, looking back, why was he even supported by the University in the first place? These are exactly the kinds of questions that Joe Cain, Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology at UCL, has been trying to answer.You can find out more about the Adelphi Genetics Forum, including their grants, awards and publications, at adelphigenetics.org You can check out the rest of this series on the Genetics Unzipped podcast feed – just search for Genetics Unzipped on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This series was produced by the team at First Create The Media – that's Kat Arney, Sally Le Page and Emma Werner, with help from Ed Prosser and Frankie Pike. Our music is Drops of H2O by J. Lang, licensed under Creative Commons.

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.Anneke Lucassen is Professor of Genomic Medicine & Director of the Centre for Personalised Medicine at the University of Oxford and Professor of Clinical Genetics at the University of Southampton. Her talk, titled “Genomic Medicine, Diverse Data and the Language of Race, Ancestry and Ethnicity” explored the issues caused by a lack of diversity in genomic databases, and the challenges of addressing this in a way that doesn't cause additional injustice and harm. Kat Arney started by asking why it's so necessary to do this work.You can find out more about the Adelphi Genetics Forum, including their grants, awards and publications, at adelphigenetics.org You can check out the rest of this series on the Genetics Unzipped podcast feed – just search for Genetics Unzipped on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This series was produced by the team at First Create The Media – that's Kat Arney, Sally Le Page and Emma Werner, with help from Ed Prosser and Frankie Pike. Our music is Drops of H2O by J. Lang, licensed under Creative Commons.

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.Dr Brian Donovan is a senior research scientist at BSCS Science learning – the oldest science education non-profit organisation in the United States. They have a long history in teaching biology, having been developing biology curricula for over 50 years, and were responsible for reintroducing evolution into American high school biology textbooks. His talk explored how better understanding of genetics and genomics in schools can help to dismantle white supremacist culture. Kat Arney started by asking Brian how his interest in biology education intersects with the topic of eugenics.You can find out more about the Adelphi Genetics Forum, including their grants, awards and publications, at adelphigenetics.org You can check out the rest of this series on the Genetics Unzipped podcast feed – just search for Genetics Unzipped on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This series was produced by the team at First Create The Media – that's Kat Arney, Sally Le Page and Emma Werner, with help from Ed Prosser and Frankie Pike. Our music is Drops of H2O by J. Lang, licensed under Creative Commons.

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.Dr Adam Rutherford is a writer and broadcaster, and is an honorary senior research associate at University College London, where he first trained as a geneticist in what was then known as the Galton laboratory. He's the author of the recent book Control, which explores the dark past and troubling present of eugenics, and gave this year's Adelphi Lecture on ‘Eugenics and the misuse of Mendel'. To begin our conversation, I asked him where Galton's ideas originally came from.You can find out more about the Adelphi Genetics Forum, including their grants, awards and publications, at adelphigenetics.org You can check out the rest of this series on the Genetics Unzipped podcast feed – just search for Genetics Unzipped on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This series was produced by the team at First Create The Media – that's Kat Arney, Sally Le Page and Emma Werner, with help from Ed Prosser and Frankie Pike. Our music is Drops of H2O by J. Lang, licensed under Creative Commons.

CONTENT NOTE: This interview includes discussion of rape, forced sterilisation and first-hand experience of state-sanctioned eugenic policies.This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.Elaine Riddick – a Black woman who grew up in North Carolina - was kidnapped and raped and became pregnant at the age of just 13. Nine months later, in 1968, she was forcibly sterilised by the state without her knowledge during the process of having her son Tony, now a successful businessman. She was not the only one. Tens of thousands of people were sterilised in the US as a result of eugenic policies in the decades following the second world war. Today, Elaine is a steadfast campaigner for women's rights, and is the Executive Director of the Rebecca Project for Justice, dedicated to protecting life, dignity and freedom for people in the US and Africa. Kat Arney asked her to share her story.You can find out more about the Adelphi Genetics Forum, including their grants, awards and publications, at adelphigenetics.org You can check out the rest of this series on the Genetics Unzipped podcast feed – just search for Genetics Unzipped on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This series was produced by the team at First Create The Media – that's Kat Arney, Sally Le Page and Emma Werner, with help from Ed Prosser and Frankie Pike. Our music is Drops of H2O by J. Lang, licensed under Creative Commons.

This podcast is part of a miniseries of interviews with speakers from the 2022 annual conference of the Adelphi Genetics Forum - a learned society that aims to promote research and discussion concerning the scientific understanding of human heredity. Formerly known as the Galton Institute, and before that, the Eugenics Education Society, the society has changed its name to the Adelphi Genetics Forum to firmly reject and distance itself from the discredited and damaging ideas of its namesake, Francis Galton – widely viewed as the founder of eugenics.In this first episode, I spoke to Turi King, the President of the Adelphi Genetics Forum and Professor of Public Engagement and Genetics in the Department of Genetics and Genome Biology at the University of Leicester, to discover the story of the society and why it was finally time to change its name. You can find out more about the Adelphi Genetics Forum, including their grants, awards and publications, at adelphigenetics.org You can check out the rest of this series on the Genetics Unzipped podcast feed – just search for Genetics Unzipped on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This series was produced by the team at First Create The Media – that's Kat Arney, Sally Le Page and Emma Werner, with help from Ed Prosser and Frankie Pike. Our music is Drops of H2O by J. Lang, licensed under Creative Commons.

Episode: 2244 The Gentleman traveler: Victorian polymath, Francis Galton.  Today, we travel the wilds with the highborn.