WEBVTT - Special Episode: Angela Saini & Superior 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.319 Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is This Podcast Will 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:50.839 Kill You. Welcome back, everyone to the latest installment of 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:53.800 the tp w k Y Book Club. I hope you 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:56.800 all are having fun so far and are learning so 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:00.800 so much, because I certainly am serious. This is like 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:03.560 a dream come true, and I'd love to hear from 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:06.800 you all about these episodes or the books we're talking about. 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:09.720 What did you think? Did you enjoy these books as 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:12.520 much as I did? What questions do you wish I 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.440 had asked? Are there other books you'd love to add 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:18.119 to the book club list? Send your thoughts to our 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:20.800 contact us form on our website This Podcast will Kill 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:24.040 You dot Com, or our email This Podcast will Kill 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:27.000 You at gmail dot com. I hope you have more 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:30.400 room on your shelves or space on your eReader, because 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:34.760 this week's book is yet another must read. Superior The 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:38.200 Return of Race Science, by award winning science journalist and 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:42.720 author Angela Siiny, published in twenty nineteen, traces the origins 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.600 of race science and examines its disturbing persistence in medical 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:51.680 and scientific research today. Sayiny, whose other fantastic books examined 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:56.120 sexism and scientific research in her book Inferior and the 0:01:56.200 --> 0:02:00.280 complex roots of patriarchy in the Patriarchs, which is just 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.800 now out, joins me on this bonus episode to chat 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:07.800 about the topics she explores in Superior. Listeners of the 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.800 podcast are likely familiar with some of the story of 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:14.440 how eugenics rose to prominence, especially in the United States, 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:17.760 as the field of genetics provided a means through which 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:22.960 eugenesis could classify individuals or groups as quote unquote fit 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:28.200 or quote unquote unfit to reproduce. We've discussed eugenic laws 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:33.000 and policies in the context of Huntington's disease, diabetes, hemophilia, 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:37.400 and most recently, epilepsy, just to name a few. In 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.000 some cases, you are forbidden to get married if you 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:42.360 had been diagnosed with any one of a number of 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:46.000 conditions or diseases scored within a certain range of an 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.840 IQ test, were alleged to have committed a crime, or 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:54.400 had skin color that was deemed inferior. Eugenic policies didn't 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:58.639 stop at outlawing marriage to certain individuals. However, there was, also, 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:04.520 of course, the incredibly frequent practice of forced sterilization. The 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.640 appalling popularity and widespread acceptance of eugenics in the US 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:13.680 often gets downplayed or omitted entirely in some histories which 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:17.520 portray Nazi Germany as the originator of eugenics, when in 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:21.760 fact Adolf Hitler took inspiration from the eugenic policies of 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:25.920 the US. But while the origin of eugenics dates back 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:30.200 decades before the Third Reich, the racist ideas and prejudices 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:34.120 that gave rise to eugenics had existed for hundreds of 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:38.080 years in the form of race science, and race science 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:40.480 certainly did not die out with the fall of Nazi 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.320 Germany after World War II. You can find ample evidence 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.960 of race science in medical, genetic and biological research done today, 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:52.880 helped along by the burgeoning field of genomics, with some 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:57.080 scientists continuing to search for a genetic basis to race 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:01.960 despite never finding one because it doesn't exist, or looking 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:07.080 for population level genetic differences in intelligence, or promoting race 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:11.440 based medicine. While some of these researchers make no attempt 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:15.560 to hide their racist motivations for conducting this research, others 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.599 may be well meaning but still participate in the type 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:21.880 of research that supports the notion that racial groups can 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:26.919 be defined biologically and classified hierarchically. In her widely acclaimed 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:31.560 book Superior, Angela Siini explores the deep history of race science, 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:36.480 tracing how racial categories were constructed and examining what purposes 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:40.840 they served and continue to serve, particularly in the justification 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:45.400 of slavery and colonization. She charts the repackaging that race 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:49.600 science underwent as scientific knowledge about fields such as genetics 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:55.280 and genomics expanded. As Sione reveals, this insidious repackaging has 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.640 allowed for the continued presence of race science today in 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:03.279 many forms, some of which are overtly racist and others 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:07.960 that are unintentionally so, but harmful all the same. Superior 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:13.000 is a compelling, eye opening, an essential read that feels 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:19.159 increasingly relevant, chillingly so in the political and scientific landscape today. 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.720 I'm very excited to get to the interview itself, so 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:25.200 we'll take a quick break here and when we get back, 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:52.680 we'll dive right in. Angela, thank you so so very 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.200 much for being here today. I loved your book, Superior, 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.960 for how brilliantly you trace the problematic history of eugenic 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:04.200 and race science and its disturbing persistence in medicine and 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:08.800 scientific research today. So tell me what is race science 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.000 and what made you decide to write a book about it. 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:17.279 Race science is number one, the belief that there are 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.560 biological races that exist, that we are not necessarily one 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:24.960 human species, that we can be divided to some degree 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.800 into separate breeds or types of person. But more fundamentally, 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:31.719 I think throughout the history of race science, it was 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:34.480 a belief that there was also a hierarchy between these races, 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:40.160 that there were some populations that were genetically or through evolution, 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:41.720 more superior to others. 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:44.719 At what point did you say, hey, I want to 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:46.679 write a book about this, Like, how did you first 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:48.839 learn about it? And then how did that turn into 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:50.520 writing a whole book? 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:56.680 What does some degree this book has been in the 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.880 back of my mind since I was a child. So 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:03.359 I grew up in a part of London, Southeast London, 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.800 in which the far right was very active in the 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:11.120 nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. There were a number of 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:14.760 racist murders in the area broader area where I lived 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.320 and the town where me and my sisters lived. We 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.640 were one of few at that time, one of few, 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.640 very very few ethnic minorities. It's very different now. My 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:28.120 parents still live there and it's completely different. Demographically, but 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:31.560 when we were growing up, racism really was the backdrop 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:35.240 to my teenage years in ways that sometimes I think 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.160 it's difficult for people to understand about Britain now. For 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.880 younger people living there now, it was just, you know, 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:45.160 all the time, this was a fact of life that 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:48.400 you were confronted with, and that was part of the 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:50.680 reason I went into journalism in the first place. One 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:54.240 of the first things I remember writing for other people 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:59.840 was about this violent racist incident that me and my 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:03.360 sister was subjected to when we had some visitors from 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:07.880 visiting our home and we were out with them, and 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:10.400 I read that out in class when I think I 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:15.560 was around eight or nine, and very quickly realized the 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:20.040 power that the cathartic power for myself in being able 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.960 to write things down and process them, but also the 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.240 power that could have in helping other people understand. When 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:29.600 I got to university many years later, I got involved 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:34.000 in anti racism activism. I became one of the coachairs 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:38.280 of the Anti Racism committee at Oxford, and I started 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:42.280 writing for the student press about race and racism. And 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:45.319 when I left university, rather than becoming an engineer, which 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:47.960 I think I would have done otherwise if my life 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:51.240 had been different. I went into journalism. I worked at 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:54.920 ITN and the BBC as a news reporter TV news 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.360 reporter for years, and then when I went freelance to 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:04.920 write science books, my writing and my reporting was driven 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:09.800 by this idea that science is a system of power, 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:14.320 just like any other. Is an establishment that consists of 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:18.000 people who are worried about things like their own personal 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:23.760 status funding. It's informed by the politics of the world 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:27.560 around it. So my books really look at that and 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:31.920 try to understand what part does science play in helping 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.640 us understand ourselves, but also how is science affected by 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.480 the wider world around it. And when it came to 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:42.559 writing Superior, you have to remember it was commissioned at 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:47.960 a time when people still thought that we were getting 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:54.720 past race. This is an issue for you know, previous generations, 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:57.600 not for future generations, which is very naive of course, 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:00.800 and it was actually quite a hard sell in that sense. 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.240 It wasn't an easy one to convince people of that 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:06.840 a book like this needed to be written. But of course, 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:09.880 in hindsight things have only got worse. I mean, the 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:15.120 rise of ethnic nationalism populism all around the world and 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:19.959 the horrific ways in which scientific racism or pseudo scientific 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:23.480 racism has been co opted by the far right, and 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:25.560 it has entered the main stream to some degree. If 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:28.120 you think look at things like the Great Replacement theory, 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:33.240 which is hugely informed by these pseudoscientific ideas. It has 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.160 turned out to be prescient, but it didn't feel that 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:37.440 way when I started writing it. 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:42.000 Before we get into the insidious ways that race science 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:44.680 is still done today, I want to start at the beginning. 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:49.040 How and when did the concept of race originate and 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:53.240 how did the growth of science, especially disciplines like systematics 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.120 or anthropology deepen racial categories. 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:00.000 Well, we have to understand that the development of modern 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.720 Western science happened at a particular point in time. And 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:07.000 that's not to say that science didn't exist before that. 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:10.800 It did. I mean, it may have been called different things, 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.280 and it may have looked different. It may have not 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.280 involved the empirical method or you know, the kind of 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:21.920 rigor or establishment that evolved later. But science was practiced 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.400 all over the world in lots of different ways. But 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:28.959 during the development of modern Western science in the sixteen 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:33.800 seventeen eighteenth centuries in Europe and later in North America, 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:41.000 The political reality was one of a growing imperialism, imperial force, 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:45.480 and then later the development of slavery, the Transatlantic slave trade. 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:47.920 Now slavery, of course, also has been practiced all over 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.280 the world for as long as we can we have records. 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:57.560 But the nature of that political reality necessarily informed the 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:02.199 way that science developed, because as European Enlightenment naturalists were 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.679 looking at the natural world and saying, can we codify it? 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:11.480 Can we start placing boundaries and develop a taxonomy around nature? 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:16.080 You know, different plants and animals, different types of creature, 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:19.240 and how they're related to each other. Can we do 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.520 the same for humans? Which sounds like a perfectly logical 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:25.360 thing to do. But of course, as they were doing this, 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:29.040 they didn't have a very thorough understanding of how human 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:32.080 variation worked all over the world, and they certainly weren't 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.960 fully convinced at that point that we were just one 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.560 species as we know we are now, or that we 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.040 are very homogeneous species as we know we are now, 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:44.319 And so a lot of this understanding came from sometimes 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:49.560 just myth and legend or travelers' reports, folk ideas that 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:53.600 they had about how human difference played out. Very superficial things, 0:12:54.120 --> 0:13:00.720 but particularly the political hierarchies of that time. So for example, 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:04.320 Europeans would have looked at the Transatlantic slave trade. They 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:09.840 would have encountered people in states of subservience and other 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:13.200 people who had power over them, and then started to 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:15.960 equate that in their imaginations with some idea of a 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.079 racial hierarchy or some idea of you know, that there 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.120 are groups that are better than others, which, as I 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:25.920 said before, societies have always done. The powerful have always 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:28.880 done that to the less powerful in different ways. You know, 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:31.880 men have done it to women, the free have done 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.319 it to slaves, citizens have done it to non citizens. 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:38.880 Natives have done it to foreigners. This is, you know, 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:42.800 part of how humans operate when it comes to think 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:47.000 about their own status and the status of others. But science, 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.679 which we imagine to be this subjective project, was affected 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:53.559 by this too. So for example, last year, I remember 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:57.080 I was in the New Orleans on holiday and there's 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.960 a beautiful little historical museum there, and in that museum 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:03.320 you can see a book from around the middle of 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:07.320 the eighteenth century called the Black Code. This is a 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.480 very thick book produced by the French authorities there, which 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:15.120 was a guide for how the black residents of the 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:19.400 city should behave with respect to the white systens of 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:22.120 the city, and vice versa. Now, why was it called 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:24.480 the Black Code? Earlier that book would have been termed 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:28.160 the Slave Code. But because of the Transatlantic slave trade 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:33.960 and the demographics around that, blackness began in the eighteenth 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:38.720 century to be associated with subservience and slavery. And so 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.360 when you read these early taxonomies of race where they 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.120 divide people up by color, and that's not just one 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:48.120 you know, that's just one arbitrary way of dividing people. 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:50.280 There is no natural way of doing it. But that's 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:53.600 just one way you can see. You know, blackness is 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:57.480 associated with slavery, that brownness is associated with something else, 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:00.480 yellowness is associated with something else. And love and behold, 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:04.880 you know, whiteness is always elevated. Is this perfect special 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:10.680 category of human that is just superior to everyone. So 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:14.880 it's very self serving, it is very political. And this 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:17.200 is something I like to remind people of is that, 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:20.440 you know, during the Black Lives Matter resurgence after the 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:23.400 murder of George Floyd, there were some scientists that came 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.200 out and said, you know, stop politicizing science, Why are 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:30.160 you bringing anti racism into science? Well, if we did 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:33.440 not have anti racism in science, trust me, we would 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:38.320 be perpetuating the pseudoscientific myths. It started off political, and 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.960 that's why it's so important to continually think about these 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:45.280 things and how we might interrogate them and challenge them 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:48.280 and correct them in order to have a better science 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:52.040 of human difference going forward. But that original sin, if 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.400 you like, or those original mistakes around race, the development 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:59.280 of this idea of race came to form the bedrock 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:01.520 of the science of human difference for hundreds of years. 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.240 So by the time you get to the nineteenth century, 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:09.840 by which time these pseudoscientific beliefs are deeply rooted in 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:16.400 the Western scientific establishment, you have serious physicians and biologists 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:21.320 claiming that black people have thicker skin than white people, 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:23.640 that their bones are denser, that they don't feel pain. 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:29.200 In the same way legitimizing slavery and colonialism on the 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:33.240 basis that races are just different and that some races 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.960 have a right to control others or to civilize others. 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:41.000 Ideas about the primitive or the modern what it meant 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.760 to be civilized became kind of fed into all of this, 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:47.840 and we still live with the legacy of it to 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:49.600 this day. 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:53.920 We often still talk about other kinds of early humans 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:57.480 or harmonyms in a way that places us humans at 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:01.200 the very top, using words like faster, or smarter or stronger. 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.240 And one of my favorite parts of your book is 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:10.200 when you discuss how this hierarchical language recently disappeared, specifically 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:13.959 for Neanderthals. Can you take us through this public image 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:15.920 makeover that Neanderthals underwent. 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:21.159 It was fascinating for me. I spent a portion of 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.959 my research time when I was writing Superior in Australia, 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:27.679 which is one of the most fascinating countries in the 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:32.399 world culturally because of the depth and length of different 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:37.199 Aboriginal communities and their kind of cultural ideas about the 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:42.480 world and time and space. And it's just incredibly mind blowing. 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:44.720 I mean, it's difficult for me to put into wards 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:50.080 how revolutionary it is for someone raised in the West 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:54.160 to be witnessed to a system of thought that is 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:58.879 so diametrically different from what you're used to. And we 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:02.240 have to remember the racial history of Australia was one 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:06.200 in which these entire cultures were you know there was 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.000 an attempt to wipe them out. One of the very 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:12.080 first pieces of legislation to pass in Australia in the 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.440 nineteenth century was the White Australia Act, which essentially tried 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.880 to breed out the color from Australia. It forcibly took 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.520 children away from their parents raised them in boarding schools, 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:24.880 something that in North America. Of course, the story we're 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:28.400 also familiar with because of the story of Indigenous Americans, 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:30.480 to whom this was also done. And it's only relatively 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:34.159 recently we're starting to understand the scale of the horrors 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.040 of what went on in these institutions. But it does 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:43.800 mean that while not destroyed, cultures were undermined, all in 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:46.479 the name of this idea of white supremacy, that the 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:50.400 white settlers in Australia had a right to that territory, 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:54.800 that the communities that had lived there for tens of 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:57.640 thousands of years did not, this idea that they were 0:18:57.680 --> 0:19:02.840 primitive and doomed to die out. Now, in the nineteenth centuries, 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:07.359 also when the first bones of Neanderthals were discovered and 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.480 identified in the Neandervalley in Germany. Let's remember one of 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:15.760 the first things archaeologists and scientists did when they discovered 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:18.959 those bones was to go and compare them to the 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:23.480 bones of living Aboriginal Australians. Why did they do that 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.320 to people living on the other side of the world. 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:29.760 And the reason, of course, is that here was this 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:32.920 form of human or species of humans it was conceived 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.720 of then, that had gone extinct. And in the racial 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:40.000 hierarchy or taxonomy of that time, there was a belief 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:43.159 that other races were also doomed to go extinct, among 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:46.560 them the indigenous Australian communities of Australia and New Zealand. 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.720 And so if anyone was going to share some resemblance 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:56.120 to Neanderthals, scientists, you know, in this ridiculous pseudoscientific myth 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:59.199 that they had created, thought it must be them. This 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:01.359 comparison was made, and even to this day, if you 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.720 look up the dictionary definition of Neanderthals, of course it's 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:08.640 not just this extinct form of human, but also kind 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:12.760 of a brutish, oafish, stupid man. He's a Neandertal. So 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:18.000 for years this association had been made. What's fascinating for me, 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:20.840 as a journalist who writes on this topic is that 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.040 in the last few decades, as it became clear that 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:27.760 perhaps there was some mixing between the Antertals and humans, 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:31.560 to the extent that we share some Neandertal ancestry. Many 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:34.240 of us on the planet share some Neandertalle ancestry, but 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:37.560 particularly in Europe, of course, because Neanderthals lived in Europe, 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:42.960 that those of European heritage share, particularly this Neanderthal ancestry. 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:49.400 The language around Neanderthals began to shift, and it's palpable 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:52.879 in the scientific literature, but also in the popular press. 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:57.640 You know, people started saying that Neanderthals were smarter than 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.280 they then perhaps we thought they were, that they were 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:06.280 more human, just like us, and that I find particularly 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:10.280 galling this idea that here is this extinct form of 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:14.000 human of whom we know very little about, you know 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:19.639 very little, and the rehabilitation that Neanderthals have gone through 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:25.320 drawing them into the circle of humanity, when one hundred 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:32.280 years ago or more, living people, living modern humans were 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:36.000 driven out of the circle of humanity by virtue of 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.280 this idea that they were closer to in Neanderthals. No 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:45.480 scientist or geneticist or archaeologist will now paleontologists will ever 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:49.439 admit that there is anything you know, racialized about this, 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:51.520 that there is anything racist going on in the way 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:54.680 that they frame these things. But I think it's impossible 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:57.680 to look at that the kind of speculation that went 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:00.679 has gone on over the last hundred years and not 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:04.359 see that of course there is how can there not be? 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:10.840 Yeah, And since this rehabilitation of the Neanderthal image, there 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:14.760 have been many scientific studies trying to link bits of 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:19.600 Neanderthal DNA to functional rules like immune function or sleeping 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:23.359 patterns or brain shape. What are some of the problems 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:25.000 with these types of studies. 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:28.040 They don't have a problem with people doing whatever research 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:32.240 they want. What I don't understand is why anyone would 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:37.400 imagine that these tiny portions of that genetic legacy will 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:41.159 somehow reinforce the idea of race, which is what some 0:22:41.280 --> 0:22:43.639 on the far right are hoping that it will. That 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:47.840 it will somehow show that Europeans are fundamentally different at 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:50.760 a genetic level because of this association with the Andanderthals. 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:55.760 That is impossible. As I said before, we are genetically 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:58.760 more homogeneous than chimpanzees. 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:01.080 We are very very. 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:04.959 Genetically homogeneous species. There are no black genes, there are 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:07.760 no white genes. There is no gene that exists in 0:23:07.800 --> 0:23:10.399 all the members of one population and not another. But 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:14.840 there is an undercurrent here in this research that perhaps 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:18.199 we can isolate something that makes some people different from others. 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:21.080 And of course that's what a lot of population genetics 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:25.200 is about, is about finding differences, genetic differences between populations. 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:30.360 And while I don't have kind of a theoretical problem 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:32.800 with that, a lot of my work is about asking 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:36.679 scientists what are they trying to achieve here, what is 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:38.920 the end goal of all of this, And is it 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:44.480 really about improving health or improving our understanding of humanity? 0:23:45.119 --> 0:23:49.240 Or is there something else going on that it may 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:52.360 be subconscious, I don't know, but something else going on here. 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:56.720 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the introduction 0:23:56.880 --> 0:23:59.520 of the theory of evolution and then the rise of 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:05.800 genetics paved the way for eugenics to be widely accepted. First, 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:08.919 what is eugenics? And second why do you think it 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:12.119 gained so much traction, especially in the US. 0:24:13.119 --> 0:24:16.360 Well, in some sense, the groundwork had been laid for 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:19.800 the ideology of eugenics for a very long time, because, 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:22.440 as I said, if you start with the premise that 0:24:22.960 --> 0:24:27.160 the human species can be divided into breeds, that some 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:32.159 people are better than others by nature. Eugenics is the 0:24:32.680 --> 0:24:35.840 belief that some people should be allowed to have children 0:24:35.880 --> 0:24:38.080 and some people shouldn't, or some people should be allowed 0:24:38.080 --> 0:24:41.960 to have more children than others based on their genetic fitness, 0:24:42.200 --> 0:24:46.800 that the child of beautiful, clever parents is more likely 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:48.919 to be beautiful and clever, which, of course, as we know, 0:24:49.240 --> 0:24:52.680 is not true. But leaving aside the fact that eugenics 0:24:52.720 --> 0:24:56.280 as itself is flawed in that heredity doesn't work that way, 0:24:56.960 --> 0:24:59.919 it was popular because it spoke to that kind of 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:04.800 scientistic belief that society could be improved if we just 0:25:04.880 --> 0:25:08.080 managed reproduction, which is an idea to some degree that 0:25:08.080 --> 0:25:11.080 we still live with. It's an idea that is woven 0:25:11.160 --> 0:25:15.920 through popular culture. Even now that you know, why are 0:25:16.720 --> 0:25:19.120 some people having loads of kids and the clever people 0:25:19.160 --> 0:25:21.320 are not having loads of kids? And what will that 0:25:21.400 --> 0:25:24.040 mean for the future. Well, necessarily it won't mean anything. 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:27.040 But we have at the back of our minds this 0:25:27.400 --> 0:25:31.879 eugenically informed idea that we want everyone in the world 0:25:31.920 --> 0:25:34.760 to be the best that they can possibly be. We 0:25:34.880 --> 0:25:38.960 want them to be the smartest, the fittest, the strongest, 0:25:39.040 --> 0:25:42.840 the tallest, and that we can somehow engineer a society 0:25:42.920 --> 0:25:48.080 like that through selective breeding or by encouraging reproduction in 0:25:48.119 --> 0:25:50.760 some than others. And it was very popular on the 0:25:50.800 --> 0:25:52.760 left and the right. I have to add. It wasn't 0:25:52.880 --> 0:25:55.320 just we associate it now with the Nazis in Germany 0:25:55.359 --> 0:25:58.560 in their program of racial hygiene, which of course led 0:25:58.600 --> 0:26:01.879 to the Holocaust. But it was very popular among progressives 0:26:01.880 --> 0:26:06.360 social progressives who believed very much that this was a scientific, 0:26:06.440 --> 0:26:11.400 a technological solution to society's problems. If people who were 0:26:11.800 --> 0:26:17.800 criminally indigent over generations or intellectually deficient over generations, if 0:26:17.800 --> 0:26:21.879 they could just be wiped out somehow, then society's problems 0:26:21.920 --> 0:26:23.480 will be fixed. But of course, as I said, it 0:26:23.480 --> 0:26:24.359 doesn't work that way. 0:26:25.280 --> 0:26:30.160