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Speaker 1: Welcome back once again to Behind the Bastards, part four

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Speaker 1: of our series on Francis Galton, the inventor of racism,

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Speaker 1: by which I mean eugenics. Here with me to talk

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Speaker 1: about racism is David Bell, who is not racist as

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Speaker 1: far as I can prove.

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Speaker 2: I tell everybody that all the time.

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Speaker 1: A lot. Suspiciously often, actually. Yeah. Shouted out of cars

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Speaker 1: a lot.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I wanted to, sorry, we've covered my shirt with my cats.

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Speaker 2: I do want to describe my pants. Because I'm wearing

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Speaker 2: pajama pants with fish on them. And it says, asleep

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Speaker 2: at the reel. It's a fishing joke.

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Speaker 1: Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. Asleep at the reel. That's good.

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Speaker 1: That's a good.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I wanted people to know about that. And I'm not racist.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, that for that. And you know a

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Speaker 1: fishing joke. Well, you know who didn't know fishing jokes?

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Speaker 1: Francis Galton. I don't think he got his hands dirty

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Speaker 1: outside of. doing surgery as a young man all that

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Speaker 1: often so this is behind the bastards and i'm not

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Speaker 1: really interested in giving a complete history of all of

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Speaker 1: like the non-shitty things galton did but he didn't have

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Speaker 1: a lot of major achievements we've talked about some of

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Speaker 1: them the concept of like regression to the mean statistical

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Speaker 1: concept of correlation a bunch of different like math stuff

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Speaker 1: that galton did and like either invented or was like

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Speaker 1: the first guy to figure out or like helped to

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Speaker 1: to figure ideas a lot And just like the way

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Speaker 1: we do science and conduct scientific studies, particularly those that

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Speaker 1: involve like statistics, the way we survey populations, twin studies,

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Speaker 1: Galton had a lot to do with all of that.

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Speaker 1: You should also note that while he was becoming the

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Speaker 1: first racism nerd in the history of either racism or nerds,

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Speaker 1: he was also becoming the first weatherman or one of

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Speaker 1: the first weathermen. In April of 1875, he published what

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Speaker 1: is probably the first weather map ever published in the

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Speaker 1: Times of London. It did show the previous day's weather.

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Speaker 1: I'm not really sure what the purpose was. Like, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. Hey, you guys start somewhere, man. Yeah, historical documentation.

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Speaker 2: Now imagine that for like tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: But tomorrow. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I get it.

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Speaker 1: By the late 1880s, Francis was spending most of his

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Speaker 1: free time either in meetings with various eugenics groups that

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Speaker 1: had sprouted up all around Britain. Meetings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Meetings.

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Speaker 1: You got to have your racism meetings. Sounds fun. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The problem with our modern racists is that they don't

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Speaker 1: have enough bureaucracy around the bigotry. You know, Galton and

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Speaker 1: his boys were taking minutes, you know, from multiple different

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Speaker 1: groups as they wrote about why the poor should be sterilized.

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Speaker 1: They're not quite doing that yet. But he wants them

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Speaker 1: to be doing that. He's pushing them. to do that, right?

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Speaker 1: The other thing he's doing during this period of time

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Speaker 1: is helping to invent what we now call forensic science.

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Speaker 1: He's not the inventor of forensic science, but he's like,

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Speaker 1: any list of the founding fathers of forensic science has

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Speaker 1: got to have Galton on there somewhere, because he is

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Speaker 1: very influential. His interest in forensics seems to have been

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Speaker 1: spurred not just by his related eugenics work, obviously that

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Speaker 1: has a lot to do with it, but by the

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Speaker 1: fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock

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Speaker 1: Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887. Galton stated

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Speaker 1: in his autobiography that his interest in forensics was spurred by, quote,

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Speaker 1: a sort of Sherlock Holmes fascination. Now, the way that's

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Speaker 1: written in the text, he may have just been saying that, like,

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Speaker 1: I'm like Sherlock Holmes and not I was influenced to

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Speaker 1: want to get into this by Sherlock Holmes. I'm not 100%

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Speaker 1: sure there, but he was a massive fan of Doyle's novels.

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Speaker 1: And regardless of kind of how it timed out, Holmes

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Speaker 1: influenced him because he really wanted to see himself as

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Speaker 1: that kind of a figure, right? Like he clearly kind

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Speaker 1: of idolized Sherlock Holmes and took Doyle seriously as like

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Speaker 1: when he would write about like forensics and like science,

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Speaker 1: like the science of investigations, right? Like he, even though Doyle, again,

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Speaker 1: it's just kind of like writing books, right? He took

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Speaker 1: him seriously as like a scientific thinker on the subject.

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Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes was like the first joker. And what I

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Speaker 2: mean is that like the character in a vacuum is fine.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: It just created some of the worst fans. You know

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Speaker 2: what I mean? Like, I like Sherlock. I've read all

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Speaker 2: the Sherlock Holmes. It's very entertaining stuff. It's just, it's

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Speaker 2: once you start becoming like, I want to be like

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Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes that things get troublesome, right?

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's also like, I don't know, when you

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Speaker 1: make the TV show House and then later realize that, oh, wow,

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Speaker 1: I guess Bryan Singer really put a lot of gross

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Speaker 1: stuff into this series that I didn't catch the first

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Speaker 1: time I watched it 20 something years ago. But it

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Speaker 1: is weird. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Galton wants to

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Speaker 1: be the Gregory house of racism and in a way

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Speaker 1: he is right. Um, but he's also getting into forensics

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Speaker 1: at this point. Uh, so in 1888, he had a

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Speaker 1: forensic laboratory that would have made Sherlock Holmes himself drool.

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Speaker 1: And I found a description of this laboratory, uh, in

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Speaker 1: an article by Ava Kaufman in the public domain review quote,

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Speaker 1: In 1888, a reporter from the Pall Mall Gazette paid

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Speaker 1: a visit to Galton's Anthropometric Laboratory in London, where instruments

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Speaker 1: developed by Galton measured the physical and mental characteristics. from

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Speaker 1: keenness of hearing to breathing power, of over 10,000 people.

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Speaker 1: The resulting article, titled A Morning with Anthropometric Detectives, described

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Speaker 1: Galton's laboratory as a world of order and precision and

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Speaker 1: tests of the nicest accuracy. Dumb though they are, Galton

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Speaker 1: told the reporter, what splendid detectives our instruments might prove.

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Speaker 1: Splendid detectives, the reporter exclaimed. I am not, I hope,

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Speaker 1: in a department of the Criminal Investigation Department, unconsciously yielding

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Speaker 1: convincing proofs of personal identity with some scoundrel hitherto unhung. And...

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Speaker 1: You know, it's obviously an early example of like media

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Speaker 1: hype of like, wow, look at all these instruments. This

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Speaker 1: must be like a real, you know, detective's agency. You

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Speaker 1: sure could catch, you know, anything with like, has he

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Speaker 1: caught anybody? He never does. He gets actually consulted on

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Speaker 1: with the police a few times. His stuff doesn't like

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Speaker 1: catch criminals because he's marking up the wrong tree. No,

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Speaker 1: this is like junior detective shit. Constantly. This is like

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Speaker 1: club stuff. He's like inventing his own. detecting tools and

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Speaker 1: stuff they're like by measuring hearing and you know i

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Speaker 1: don't know it's it's there's some value in it it

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Speaker 1: just in that yeah it's useful that we started thinking

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Speaker 1: about how to like measure how well people could hear

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Speaker 1: and try to take some data on on people for

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Speaker 1: like health and there's all sorts of purposes where you

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Speaker 1: want this kind of data but he is really interested

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Speaker 1: on using it to like predict and solve crime.

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Speaker 2: It's sort of, we said at the very start of this,

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Speaker 2: we talked about it's some of this stuff is neat.

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Speaker 2: Like the cap is like neat for some of this stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And then he takes it to the next level. Right.

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Speaker 2: Where it's like, it becomes this dogma that he wants

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Speaker 2: people to like breed certain ways of stuff. That's at

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Speaker 2: best neat.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. Right. And one of the neat things that

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Speaker 1: he has in this anthropometric lab is fingerprinting equipment. He

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Speaker 1: started to get really interested in that by the 1880s.

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Speaker 1: And we actually do have an advertisement for Galton's anthropometric

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Speaker 1: lab because he's gathering. He has like thousands and thousands

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Speaker 1: of people volunteer to let him like measure them in

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Speaker 1: various ways for all of his different like studies and theories.

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Speaker 1: And this advertisement, the reason I find it interesting is

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Speaker 1: I think it has like the first privacy guarantee for

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Speaker 1: biometric data. Take a look, Dave. It notes... And Netflix viewers.

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Speaker 1: You can see it on here, but it notes in

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Speaker 1: one portion of the advertisement, for keeping a methodological register

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Speaker 1: of the principal measurements of each person, of which he

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Speaker 1: may at any future time obtain a copy under reasonable restrictions,

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Speaker 1: his initials and date of birth will be entered in

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Speaker 1: the register, but not his name. The names are indexed

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Speaker 1: in a separate book, right? I think that might be

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Speaker 1: the first... like that's amazing like the first like promise

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Speaker 1: that like will protect your biometric data in history i

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Speaker 1: don't know who else could have been earlier right they.

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Speaker 2: Didn't even know why they were protecting it.

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Speaker 1: But they knew people were gonna want to steal it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah and let me tell you like giving it to

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Speaker 2: a eugenicist.

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Speaker 1: Not a great start it's like well it's.

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Speaker 2: How bad can it get like it's just yeah yeah

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Speaker 2: you don't have to worry about other the wrong hands

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Speaker 2: you know like it's already.

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Speaker 1: There they're all the wrong hands yeah.

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Speaker 2: This is why I enjoy, like, the Forensic Files show today, right?

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Speaker 2: Is because of this asshole? Like, he helped?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a big part of that, right. Now,

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Speaker 1: the use of fingerprints to identify people had been advocated

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Speaker 1: as early as, like, 1858, which is when Sir William

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Speaker 1: Herschel of the Bengal Civil Service used fingerprinting to identify

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Speaker 1: individual Indians as part of a fraud investigation. In 1880,

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Speaker 1: a scientist named Henry Foulds published a groundbreaking study on fingerprints,

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Speaker 1: that ignited a vigorous debate among the scientists of the day.

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Speaker 1: Francis Galton has always been interested in trends, right? He's

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Speaker 1: always been either a trendsetter or a trend follower, and

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Speaker 1: as soon as fingerprinting becomes hip, he gets really interested

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Speaker 1: with it, right? And he becomes obsessed with proving that

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Speaker 1: they're a good way to identify individual people, right? There

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Speaker 1: was theories that these might be a good way to

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Speaker 1: identify individual people, but we didn't have much, like, today

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Speaker 1: we know that fingerprints are probably unique to each person

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Speaker 1: right yeah it's impossible to say a hundred percent like

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Speaker 1: that's that's a theory right oh yeah guarantee that but probably.

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Speaker 2: Are the stupidest thing that is correct You know what

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Speaker 2: I mean?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really dumb that they work. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: it's really silly that they work.

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Speaker 2: Everybody has unique fingerprints and then we match them.

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Speaker 1: How do we match them?

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Speaker 2: Just everybody gives their fingerprints.

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Speaker 1: Everybody gives them up. Yeah, we just have them on files.

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Speaker 1: I don't like all of the implications of this, but

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Speaker 1: it's frustrating that it actually does work that way, right?

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Speaker 2: Right, it sounds like all the other shit he's been

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Speaker 2: talking about, you know?

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Speaker 1: And Galton is the first guy to show that fingerprints

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Speaker 1: work that way. Because we didn't have a big... No

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Speaker 1: one had ever taken a bunch of fingerprints from a

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Speaker 1: wide subset of the population to see if any of

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Speaker 1: them were the same. And Galton gathers 8,000 fingerprint samples...

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Speaker 1: and for the first time is able to say none

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Speaker 1: of these 8,000 are copies, which suggests heavily that every

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Speaker 1: fingerprint is unique, right? And that's still the conclusion to

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Speaker 1: this day, right? But he is the guy to establish that,

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Speaker 1: to go from this might be a good way of

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Speaker 1: identifying people to confirming, no, these are, these are unique individual,

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Speaker 1: like identifying characteristics. Right.

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Speaker 2: Like the moment someone finds a pair that's identical, it

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Speaker 2: all kind of falls. Oh yeah.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah. That'll fuck some shit up if that ever

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Speaker 1: does happen. Yeah. Right.

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Speaker 2: Um, it's like minority report pre-crime is like the moment

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Speaker 2: you find one pre-crime that wasn't true, the whole system,

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Speaker 2: everybody gets free.

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Speaker 1: But it hasn't happened yet.

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Speaker 2: I'm surprised there isn't a Dan Brown novel, Da Vinci

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Speaker 2: Code style, someone learning about fingerprints that match.

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Speaker 1: To be honest, as I've talked about in the, we

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Speaker 1: did a series of episodes on how forensic science is

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Speaker 1: largely nonsense. Because a lot of stuff like bullet matching

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Speaker 1: to guns is nearly complete bullshit. Fucking gate analysis is

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Speaker 1: heavily flawed and fingerprints are real, like and definitely the

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Speaker 1: most real of all the different like forensic science things,

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Speaker 1: but also very flawed in like the way in which

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Speaker 1: fingerprinting is used by law enforcement. And a lot of

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Speaker 1: like so it's not perfect. Right. And it's not as

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Speaker 1: it's not as reliable a method for actually because of

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Speaker 1: flaws and like gathering or whatnot. As law enforcement often

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Speaker 1: wants to portray it, that is true. But Galton's correct

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Speaker 1: here in general in that it is a good way

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Speaker 1: to identify individual people, and he does more than that.

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Speaker 1: He lays out the eight characteristics of fingerprints, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of his original science is still the standard today.

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Speaker 1: He's the guy who comes up with the classification of, like,

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Speaker 1: arches and loops and whorls in fingerprints. Like, he's the

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Speaker 1: dude who lays all that out for the first time.

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Speaker 1: So this is like legitimately groundbreaking, right? In 1899, and

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Speaker 1: so far, pretty good science. In 1899, he was approached

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Speaker 1: by police in a country that he never named to

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Speaker 1: help with the kidnapping of the heir to a rich family.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to know if fingerprints from a healthy baby would–

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Speaker 1: from a baby would change over time. Galton had already

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Speaker 1: shown previously he documented fingerprints from people from as young

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Speaker 1: as 30 months and as they like went– like grew

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Speaker 1: up in age up to like 80– Not the same person, obviously,

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Speaker 1: but he had like he had measured people over a

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Speaker 1: course of years and shown that like, yeah, their fingerprints

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Speaker 1: don't change over time.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: But he had never like gotten data on infants to

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Speaker 1: prove that like a baby's fingerprints don't change over time.

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Speaker 1: And so he does that now. There's an American mother

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Speaker 1: who volunteers to document her daughter. And so he's able

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Speaker 1: to show that like, no, baby's fingerprints. It's like the

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Speaker 1: same thing there. And. By the way, that whole like

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Speaker 1: missing kid, that was probably a lie because he never

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Speaker 1: explained if he helped them find her or not or

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Speaker 1: mentioned it for the most part. And his biographer, Bulwer,

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Speaker 1: suspects he just like made that story up when he

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Speaker 1: was giving a speech about his fingerprint research to kind

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Speaker 1: of judge things up a little bit and maybe make

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Speaker 1: himself seem a little bit more like Sherlock Holmes. I

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Speaker 1: don't know. That said, while this initial research into fingerprinting

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Speaker 1: is pretty good science, especially for the day. Being Francis Galton,

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Speaker 1: the instant he starts looking into a new field of

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Speaker 1: scientific endeavor, he has to find a racial angle, right?

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Speaker 1: This has to be a way to– there have to be–

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Speaker 1: basically his immediate belief is, well, there's no way black

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Speaker 1: people and white people and like Indian people all have

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Speaker 1: the same fingerprints, right? White fingerprints have to be better

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Speaker 1: in some way and non-white people's fingerprints have to be

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Speaker 1: in some way inferior. And not just inferior, they have

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Speaker 1: to be identifiable as not white based.

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Speaker 2: On their fingerprints. Yeah, more whorls or something. Or less whorls.

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Speaker 2: Whatever's the bad amount of whorls versus the good amount.

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Speaker 1: Right, right. Something different that he can declare as like

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Speaker 1: a flaw. Because if everyone's fingerprints are completely identical, then

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Speaker 1: maybe we're all just human beings. Right. Like maybe all

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Speaker 1: of my whole life is a lie. We can't have that, right? So-

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Speaker 1: Galton starts looking into like ways in which he can

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Speaker 1: both predict criminal behavior by like, are there criminal fingerprints?

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Speaker 1: Are there signs and fingerprints that someone's going to be

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Speaker 1: a criminal? And also, can we tell people of different

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Speaker 1: races based on their fingerprints? Now, he's not the only

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Speaker 1: guy who thinks that this sort of thing should be possible.

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Speaker 1: He's specifically not the only guy who thinks that like

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Speaker 1: the characteristics of someone, like of someone's personality and like

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Speaker 1: the things they've done in their life might be reflected here.

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Speaker 1: in their fingerprints and other immutable biological characteristics. As Ava

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Speaker 1: Kaufman notes in their article, the late 19th century was

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Speaker 1: a time in which increasing numbers of scientific-minded people started

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Speaker 1: looking for, quote, clues unnoticed by others. That's a common, like,

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Speaker 1: way to describe it, right? They're starting to, once we

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Speaker 1: realize fingerprints are a thing, that, like, forever, people have

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Speaker 1: been leaving fingerprints behind, not just on the scene of

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Speaker 1: a crime, but everywhere, and we didn't know what they

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Speaker 1: were or that we could look for them. That starts

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Speaker 1: a bunch of people upset. Well, there's got to be

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Speaker 1: other stuff we're missing, right? And obviously there is. There's

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Speaker 1: a ton of stuff we're missing, right, that is very

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Speaker 1: important for helping to, like, explain human beings and how

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Speaker 1: we work. This fascination is what's called– this is called

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Speaker 1: the semiotic model, right, in human sciences. And this fascination

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Speaker 1: with the semiotic model is noted by historian Carlo Ginsberg

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Speaker 1: as having risen to prominence alongside, quote, an increasingly clear

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Speaker 1: tendency for state power to impose a closed-mesh net of

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Speaker 1: control on society. which involved attributing identity through characteristics which

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Speaker 1: were trivial and beyond conscious control. So again, you have

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Speaker 1: this good motivation, which is we've been missing fingerprints for

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Speaker 1: however many fucking thousand years, and those are pretty important.

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Speaker 1: What else might we be missing to how can we

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Speaker 1: categorize people and control them by having an understanding of

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Speaker 1: the things? How can we categorize and judge them based

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Speaker 1: on these things they cannot control? right it's really funny

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Speaker 1: parts of their character right it's really funny to go

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Speaker 1: like we have determined that every.

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Speaker 2: Human is different and unique in this one specific way

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Speaker 2: i wonder if there's ways we can put them into categories.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah another way to categorize i.

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Speaker 2: Feel like you're learning the opposite lesson here it's also

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Speaker 2: like it feels like it always gets mixed up when

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Speaker 2: they're like we want to be able to predict what

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Speaker 2: a person will be And it's like it's so clear

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Speaker 2: that that's just not how people work.

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Speaker 1: That's just not– and what they've done and like can

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Speaker 1: we determine like the dangerous people by– and lock them

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Speaker 1: away from society by figuring out these characteristics that are–

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Speaker 1: they can't argue. There's no way to hide it. The

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Speaker 1: fingerprint gave you up or whatever, right? In Fingerprints, Galton's

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Speaker 1: 1892 book that is– I mean this kind of gives

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Speaker 1: birth to Fingerprints as like a forensic science, this book.

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Speaker 1: It's very important. Galton is forced to conclude against his

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Speaker 1: hopes that, quote, no peculiar pattern seems to characterize the

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Speaker 1: fingers of any one race above the other. In other words,

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Speaker 1: he has to admit in this book, I have not

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Speaker 1: found any racial differences between fingerprint types. Now, he refuses

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Speaker 1: to see this as evidence that he had been wrong

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Speaker 1: about everything. And as Kaufman writes, quote, despite his admission

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Speaker 1: that hard fact had made hope no longer justifiable, a

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Speaker 1: closer look at Galton's writings reveals that racial typologies were

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Speaker 1: never far from his thoughts. The conflicted speculation, conjecture, and

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Speaker 1: hesitation in Galton's racial rhetoric and fingerprints can be understood

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Speaker 1: as a deliberate strategy, one which allowed him to perpetuate

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Speaker 1: a strong racial and imperial research program, even when his

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Speaker 1: scientific data undermined it.

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 1: So he is still, even though he has not found

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Speaker 1: evidence for this, he finds a bunch of ways to

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Speaker 1: point out, like, well... But there's might be this difference

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Speaker 1: or there's this like one thing he notes is that

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Speaker 1: when he's analyzing fingerprints of Indian people because the ink

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Speaker 1: and the paper is of lower quality in India because

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Speaker 1: the British don't like. send the good stuff over there,

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Speaker 1: I guess. The fingerprints are of lower quality. And he's like, well,

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Speaker 1: this is evidence of a difference. And he describes it

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Speaker 1: as like, because the fingerprints are just kind of like blurrier,

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Speaker 1: but like, oh, Indian people are less formed. Their hands

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Speaker 1: are like less finished, basically. Like that's kind of what

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Speaker 1: he's saying.

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Speaker 2: Like a microcosm for everything he does.

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Speaker 1: They're not as evolved, basically. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: It's his entire scientific method right there is taking a systemic,

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Speaker 2: Taking a problem with the data that reflects society at

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Speaker 2: the time and concluding something that must be in the

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Speaker 2: nature of that person.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. What a perfect asshole. It really is beautiful. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In a later chapter about race and class, he concluded

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Speaker 1: with disappointment that everyone seemed to have an identical character fingerprint.

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Speaker 1: He included a table that showed this lack of difference,

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Speaker 1: that there's no real pattern between the differences. There's nothing

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Speaker 1: that you can really tell based on race about fingerprints.

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Speaker 1: But after saying all this and putting up this table...

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Speaker 1: He wrote, their patterns are not, so far as I

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Speaker 1: can tell, different from those of others. They are not simpler. Still,

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Speaker 1: whether it be from pure fancy on my part, or

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Speaker 1: from the way in which they were printed, or from

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Speaker 1: some real peculiarity, the general aspect of the Negro print

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Speaker 1: strikes me as characteristic. The width of the ridges seems

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Speaker 1: more uniform, their intervals more regular, and their courses more

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Speaker 1: parallel than with us. In short, they give an idea

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Speaker 1: of greater simplicity due to causes that I have not

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Speaker 1: yet succeeded in submitting to the test of measurement. So like,

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Speaker 1: I can't measure this and there's no evidence for it,

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Speaker 1: but I feel like their fingerprints are simpler in a

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Speaker 1: way that's literally impossible to prove or measure.

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Speaker 2: He's like, maybe it's me, but I don't know. I

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Speaker 2: just don't like him. I just don't like him as much.

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Speaker 1: And he did that with his study of like Jewish

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Speaker 1: people in London too, where he's like, maybe it's me,

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Speaker 1: but I thought they were all just looking to see

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Speaker 1: if I had money. You know, like he does this again.

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Speaker 1: This is always the underpinning of his science, no matter

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Speaker 1: how much data and statistics he throws in.– and that's

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Speaker 1: the reason why despite his undeniable achievements in mathematics and

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Speaker 1: statistics and his contributions to the scientific method in that way,

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Speaker 1: I can't respect him much as a scientist because when

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Speaker 1: push came to shove and he had good data– He always–

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Speaker 1: he didn't discard it. He would print it and then

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Speaker 1: argue that it was wrong basically because of something he

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Speaker 1: felt and had no evidence of. And that's just bad sciencing.

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Speaker 1: That's really bad being a scientist. In the end of

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Speaker 1: the book, he also concludes that like, well, the fingerprints

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Speaker 1: don't let us identify like white people from black people

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Speaker 1: from Indian people. But I feel like the shapes of

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Speaker 1: hands of non-white people are different from white people. And

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Speaker 1: that might help us identify, specifically part of what he

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Speaker 1: wants to do here is identify people who have non-white

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Speaker 1: ancestry but look white and live in a European society

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Speaker 1: because he wants those people to stop, to not be

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Speaker 1: able to breed with full white people.

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Speaker 2: Sneaky ones, yeah.

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Speaker 1: So he's looking for if there's something different in the

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Speaker 1: fingerprints that would have been really helpful, but there's not.

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Speaker 1: So maybe the hand shape will do it, right? Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In 1903, Arthur Conan Doyle published The Adventure of Norwood Builder.

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Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little bit about this and more

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Speaker 1: about Francis Galton, but you know who... didn't write any

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Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes novels.

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Speaker 2: Who?

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Speaker 1: Sponsors of our podcast, I assume. It'd be weird if

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Speaker 1: they had. And we're back. So in 1903, Arthur Conan

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Speaker 1: Doyle published The Adventure of the Norwood Builder, which is

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Speaker 1: a Holmes mystery that hinged around like the big point,

427
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Speaker 1: like the big like twist in this. Is that, like,

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Speaker 1: they find evidence that a guy did a murder based on, like,

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Speaker 1: a fingerprint, and then Holmes is able to prove that

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Speaker 1: the fingerprint was forged in order to, like, frame an

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Speaker 1: innocent man, right? That his fingers– that his fingerprints were

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Speaker 1: artificially added to the scene of a murder in order to, like,

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00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:42,660
Speaker 1: frame him, right?

434
00:21:43,359 --> 00:21:43,500
Speaker 3: Right.

435
00:21:43,800 --> 00:21:46,119
Speaker 1: Which is, like, a really– in 1903, that was, like,

436
00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:49,870
Speaker 1: the year before or after Scotland Yard had started– like

437
00:21:49,970 --> 00:21:53,290
Speaker 1: actually widely using fingerprint. So like law enforcement had, had

438
00:21:53,430 --> 00:21:56,090
Speaker 1: started massively using it. It was like the, it was

439
00:21:56,109 --> 00:21:57,560
Speaker 1: a big hype at the time. There was a lot

440
00:21:57,580 --> 00:21:59,320
Speaker 1: of like news articles about it. Right.

441
00:21:59,740 --> 00:22:00,780
Speaker 2: This is sci-fi.

442
00:22:01,100 --> 00:22:02,659
Speaker 1: Basically. This is sci-fi almost. Yeah.

443
00:22:02,680 --> 00:22:06,060
Speaker 2: This is like doing a killer robot movie now where

444
00:22:06,100 --> 00:22:08,780
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, AI and, and chunk like that.

445
00:22:09,140 --> 00:22:11,900
Speaker 2: It's weird because like, Is there any sources on like

446
00:22:11,980 --> 00:22:15,340
Speaker 2: what we thought fingerprints were before? Because it's not like

447
00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:18,070
Speaker 2: fingerprints didn't exist before we realized that.

448
00:22:18,770 --> 00:22:22,330
Speaker 1: And the very first like English guy certainly doing that

449
00:22:22,350 --> 00:22:24,770
Speaker 1: I've read about doing fingerprint research, like what brought him

450
00:22:24,830 --> 00:22:26,970
Speaker 1: into it is he was in Japan. He was like working,

451
00:22:27,030 --> 00:22:29,189
Speaker 1: I think, in Tokyo as a doctor. And he was

452
00:22:29,230 --> 00:22:32,100
Speaker 1: looking at he noticed fingerprints on like pottery, old pottery.

453
00:22:32,119 --> 00:22:34,419
Speaker 1: You can see people's fingerprints. That's got him interested in

454
00:22:34,460 --> 00:22:37,469
Speaker 1: the subject. I don't know what they, I guess they

455
00:22:37,670 --> 00:22:40,100
Speaker 1: just didn't think about them much. Like we've always known,

456
00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:42,720
Speaker 1: because it's obvious that people have them.

457
00:22:42,940 --> 00:22:45,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, in fairness, I don't think about them much either.

458
00:22:45,260 --> 00:22:46,700
Speaker 2: You just look at them and go like, hey, neat.

459
00:22:47,060 --> 00:22:48,460
Speaker 1: All mine look like little anuses.

460
00:22:48,580 --> 00:22:49,100
Speaker 2: That's cool.

461
00:22:49,140 --> 00:22:50,859
Speaker 1: Weird. I wonder why we got these.

462
00:22:51,060 --> 00:22:52,660
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

463
00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:55,950
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Conan Doyle has come up with this

464
00:22:56,150 --> 00:22:59,369
Speaker 1: plot that hinges on like a fingerprint being faked and

465
00:22:59,710 --> 00:23:01,830
Speaker 1: like a real fingerprint being like put in at the

466
00:23:01,850 --> 00:23:04,840
Speaker 1: sign of a crime. using like a wax mold. And

467
00:23:04,980 --> 00:23:08,040
Speaker 1: the way in which he envisions this fake fingerprint being transferred,

468
00:23:08,140 --> 00:23:10,400
Speaker 1: it probably wouldn't have been possible, right? Because it's not

469
00:23:10,460 --> 00:23:13,670
Speaker 1: based on reality. It's a novel. And Conan Doyle, like

470
00:23:13,730 --> 00:23:15,790
Speaker 1: every author, is like, that seems realistic enough. People will

471
00:23:15,810 --> 00:23:18,530
Speaker 1: buy that, right? And stuck it in there and never

472
00:23:18,590 --> 00:23:20,610
Speaker 1: checked to make sure that it would work because that's

473
00:23:20,730 --> 00:23:23,310
Speaker 1: just not really a thing you do usually when you're writing.

474
00:23:23,330 --> 00:23:26,780
Speaker 1: Like if it's good enough, that's fine. You're a liar, right?

475
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:31,540
Speaker 1: All fiction authors are and it's okay. But Galton doesn't

476
00:23:31,580 --> 00:23:35,119
Speaker 1: think about it that way. Remember, he idolizes Sherlock Holmes

477
00:23:35,160 --> 00:23:37,920
Speaker 1: and kind of feels like he's the real Sherlock Holmes.

478
00:23:38,220 --> 00:23:40,919
Speaker 1: I get the feeling. And so after reading this story,

479
00:23:40,980 --> 00:23:43,330
Speaker 1: he writes a letter to Arthur Conan Doyle and starts

480
00:23:43,450 --> 00:23:46,750
Speaker 1: asking serious technical questions about, well, how would a wax

481
00:23:46,850 --> 00:23:49,570
Speaker 1: mold of a seal be used to leave a legible

482
00:23:49,590 --> 00:23:52,760
Speaker 1: bloody fingerprint on Because based on my experience, I don't

483
00:23:52,780 --> 00:23:55,239
Speaker 1: see how this would be possible. But obviously, I know

484
00:23:55,260 --> 00:23:57,080
Speaker 1: you've done your own research. Could you give me the

485
00:23:57,119 --> 00:23:59,919
Speaker 1: details of your own experiments with fingerprints? Because I think

486
00:23:59,940 --> 00:24:02,700
Speaker 1: this is really useful scientific data. And Arthur Conan Doyle

487
00:24:02,740 --> 00:24:06,199
Speaker 1: never responds because obviously he wasn't doing experiments. He just

488
00:24:06,220 --> 00:24:06,700
Speaker 1: wrote a book.

489
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:09,270
Speaker 2: This is like the first nerd writing.

490
00:24:09,310 --> 00:24:12,790
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. How does the warp drive really work? I

491
00:24:12,890 --> 00:24:18,199
Speaker 1: don't know, man. It's a TV show. Right. And I

492
00:24:18,260 --> 00:24:21,199
Speaker 1: find this very funny, but also very telling of his character,

493
00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:24,850
Speaker 1: because Francis Galton cannot imagine in a world in which

494
00:24:25,010 --> 00:24:29,030
Speaker 1: multiple black men who were like either born or raised

495
00:24:29,090 --> 00:24:33,170
Speaker 1: as slaves have written bestselling novels. Right. That were obviously

496
00:24:33,250 --> 00:24:36,210
Speaker 1: written by a man of deep intelligence. Right. He lives

497
00:24:36,300 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: in that world and he cannot imagine an educated black man,

498
00:24:40,320 --> 00:24:43,860
Speaker 1: but he trusts implicitly that a fiction novelist did research

499
00:24:43,940 --> 00:24:48,239
Speaker 1: before putting something in his book. Right. Right. That's really interesting.

500
00:24:49,350 --> 00:24:52,350
Speaker 2: I guess it speaks to like, you know, there's writers today.

501
00:24:52,450 --> 00:24:54,070
Speaker 2: There's people like, you know, you sit down with a

502
00:24:54,109 --> 00:24:57,130
Speaker 2: Michael Crichton book and you're like, this feels like it's real.

503
00:24:57,230 --> 00:24:58,530
Speaker 1: Some of this has to be real.

504
00:24:58,650 --> 00:25:01,850
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like I could clone dinosaurs if I

505
00:25:01,890 --> 00:25:04,790
Speaker 2: just follow the instructions in this book. Like there are

506
00:25:04,810 --> 00:25:07,530
Speaker 2: writers who are very good at making dumb ideas sound

507
00:25:07,570 --> 00:25:08,770
Speaker 2: plausible and smart.

508
00:25:09,230 --> 00:25:12,149
Speaker 1: By the early 1900s, Francis Galton's ideas on eugenics had

509
00:25:12,190 --> 00:25:15,500
Speaker 1: moved well beyond him and beyond a topic of intellectual discussion.

510
00:25:15,910 --> 00:25:19,130
Speaker 1: they'd started to become law, partly because so many men

511
00:25:19,170 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: accepted everything Galton wrote as the truth and increasingly took

512
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:25,439
Speaker 1: it further even than he'd been willing to dare. But

513
00:25:25,460 --> 00:25:28,070
Speaker 1: a quote now from an article in Science AQ. Quote,

514
00:25:28,619 --> 00:25:31,429
Speaker 1: When Galton gave a lecture on eugenics in 1904, prominent

515
00:25:31,490 --> 00:25:34,450
Speaker 1: thinkers were invited to respond. The author H.G. Wells sounded

516
00:25:34,490 --> 00:25:37,670
Speaker 1: skeptical at first, arguing that the relative genetic superiority of

517
00:25:37,710 --> 00:25:40,790
Speaker 1: individuals was too hard to quantify. But then he concluded

518
00:25:40,830 --> 00:25:43,450
Speaker 1: with this shocker. the way of nature has always been

519
00:25:43,490 --> 00:25:46,220
Speaker 1: to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way.

520
00:25:46,500 --> 00:25:48,700
Speaker 1: Unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost

521
00:25:48,780 --> 00:25:52,139
Speaker 1: being born, it is in the sterilization of failures, and

522
00:25:52,180 --> 00:25:54,560
Speaker 1: not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the

523
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:58,189
Speaker 1: possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies. So

524
00:25:58,230 --> 00:26:01,210
Speaker 1: he's actually not just taking– he's taking the Galton starting

525
00:26:01,250 --> 00:26:03,890
Speaker 1: point but arguing, no, you don't need to encourage smart

526
00:26:03,910 --> 00:26:06,130
Speaker 1: people to breed. That won't get you anywhere. You have

527
00:26:06,170 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: to sterilize the poor and the stupid, right?

528
00:26:08,500 --> 00:26:09,080
Speaker 2: That's H.G.

529
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:09,260
Speaker 1: Wells.

530
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 2: They finally got to it.

531
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:13,900
Speaker 1: We figured it out. We figured it out. It's unclear

532
00:26:13,940 --> 00:26:17,199
Speaker 1: to me because Galton in his autobiography says that I

533
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:21,350
Speaker 1: wasn't initially in favor of sterilizing or like criminally– like

534
00:26:21,490 --> 00:26:24,230
Speaker 1: using the law legal system to make it illegal for

535
00:26:24,530 --> 00:26:27,230
Speaker 1: undesirable people to breed. I didn't think that was necessary

536
00:26:27,270 --> 00:26:29,449
Speaker 1: at first. But I came to realize it was the

537
00:26:29,590 --> 00:26:32,130
Speaker 1: only way to do things over time, right? I think

538
00:26:32,170 --> 00:26:35,820
Speaker 1: he's probably lying because he admitted also that– because he

539
00:26:35,859 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: admitted like in his autobiography that in 1865 when he

540
00:26:39,900 --> 00:26:42,820
Speaker 1: first started writing about eugenics but hadn't named it eugenics,

541
00:26:43,380 --> 00:26:45,859
Speaker 1: he didn't want to talk fully. He didn't want to

542
00:26:46,060 --> 00:26:48,680
Speaker 1: like reveal everything he believed yet because he didn't think

543
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:50,700
Speaker 1: people were ready. And so I think that.

544
00:26:50,619 --> 00:26:54,420
Speaker 2: That came to realize, yeah, like you, we forced my hand.

545
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 2: I have, I have to conclude this horrible thing. I

546
00:26:57,340 --> 00:26:57,919
Speaker 2: always believe.

547
00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:02,020
Speaker 1: Exactly. I suspect HG Wells kind of going like, no,

548
00:27:02,060 --> 00:27:04,380
Speaker 1: we actually have to sterilize and otherwise stop the poor

549
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:07,330
Speaker 1: from breeding. I think Galton was like, oh, finally. Okay, good.

550
00:27:07,609 --> 00:27:10,710
Speaker 1: They've caught on to the thing I've been pushing subtly

551
00:27:10,869 --> 00:27:12,710
Speaker 1: for a while. And now I can start to be

552
00:27:12,750 --> 00:27:16,189
Speaker 1: more open about it. Right. Because he had been pushing

553
00:27:16,250 --> 00:27:18,460
Speaker 1: people in this direction. I just don't think he wanted

554
00:27:18,500 --> 00:27:20,260
Speaker 1: to go out on a limb alone because he's fundamentally

555
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:23,270
Speaker 1: a little bit of a coward. In 1907, he wrote

556
00:27:23,310 --> 00:27:27,210
Speaker 1: to his successor and his mentee, Carl Pearson, quote, Except

557
00:27:27,250 --> 00:27:30,369
Speaker 1: by sterilization, I cannot yet see any way of checking

558
00:27:30,410 --> 00:27:32,770
Speaker 1: the produce of the unfit who are allowed their liberty

559
00:27:32,869 --> 00:27:36,420
Speaker 1: and are below the reach of moral control. That same year,

560
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: an agent Galton stepped down from the eugenics record office,

561
00:27:39,980 --> 00:27:43,340
Speaker 1: which he'd helped found at University College London. Carl Pearson

562
00:27:43,380 --> 00:27:45,720
Speaker 1: took over at his request and named it the Galton

563
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:49,350
Speaker 1: Laboratory for National Eugenics. It still exists under a different name,

564
00:27:49,369 --> 00:27:52,850
Speaker 1: and it's in the Darwin Center. But yeah, they just

565
00:27:52,890 --> 00:27:55,540
Speaker 1: took Galton off of it because eugenics got a bad rap.

566
00:27:56,810 --> 00:28:01,010
Speaker 1: By 1908, Galton was openly on Team Sterilize the Poor

567
00:28:01,150 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 1: and announced this in his autobiography, writing... that are consistent

568
00:28:21,780 --> 00:28:25,540
Speaker 1: with a humane and well-informed public opinion. Obviously, we've got

569
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:29,590
Speaker 1: to humanely sterilize people, right? We don't want to do

570
00:28:29,609 --> 00:28:32,710
Speaker 1: it the mean way. At the end of his autobiography,

571
00:28:32,770 --> 00:28:36,570
Speaker 1: he states his opinion that Time had only proven the

572
00:28:36,609 --> 00:28:40,790
Speaker 1: claims he made in Hereditary Genius 45 years earlier even

573
00:28:40,850 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 1: more correct. He reprinted a segment of that book, a

574
00:28:43,820 --> 00:28:47,140
Speaker 1: lot of his autobiography. It's him quoting segments of his

575
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:49,220
Speaker 1: earlier books and being like, yeah, see how right I was?

576
00:28:49,580 --> 00:28:53,210
Speaker 1: I'm pretty smart, huh? So he reprinted a segment of

577
00:28:53,230 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 1: that book in which he complained that no one had

578
00:28:55,340 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: ever tried to breed dogs for high general intellect and

579
00:28:58,540 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 1: then suggest someone try and see how well it worked.

580
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:03,740
Speaker 1: Immediately after this, he went on to identify himself as

581
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:07,460
Speaker 1: a true philanthropist and stated, charity refers to the individual,

582
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: statesmanship to the nation. Eugenics cares for both. He then

583
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,260
Speaker 1: went on to argue that all married couples can be

584
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:19,910
Speaker 1: divided between desirables, passables, and undesirables. And given the limitations

585
00:29:19,930 --> 00:29:23,700
Speaker 1: of available funds, Future charity should only go to the desirables,

586
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:27,590
Speaker 1: whereas the undesirables should be stopped from breeding. The passables,

587
00:29:27,650 --> 00:29:30,030
Speaker 1: I guess we let breed, but we shouldn't be happy

588
00:29:30,070 --> 00:29:32,260
Speaker 1: about it, right? You don't want to encourage it.

589
00:29:32,330 --> 00:29:32,730
Speaker 2: Right.

590
00:29:32,770 --> 00:29:35,410
Speaker 1: We probably can't stop the middle class from having right

591
00:29:35,510 --> 00:29:38,130
Speaker 1: right yeah we need someone to work in the restaurants

592
00:29:38,260 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: right right uh he wrote quote individual and this is

593
00:29:41,940 --> 00:29:44,460
Speaker 1: him this is kind of his fucking took six tabs

594
00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:46,860
Speaker 1: of acid period too because he starts writing a little

595
00:29:46,900 --> 00:29:50,980
Speaker 1: bit more philosophically here now it's because he's ancient.

596
00:29:50,740 --> 00:29:53,140
Speaker 2: He's ancient 1908 yeah yeah he's becoming.

597
00:29:52,700 --> 00:29:59,489
Speaker 1: An edgelord Individuals appear to me as partial detachments from

598
00:29:59,530 --> 00:30:01,930
Speaker 1: the infinite ocean of being, and this world is a

599
00:30:02,020 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 1: stage on which evolution takes place, principally hitherto by means

600
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:07,860
Speaker 1: of natural selection, which achieves the good of the whole

601
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:10,900
Speaker 1: with scant regard to that of the individual. Man is

602
00:30:10,940 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: gifted with pity and other kindly feelings. He has also

603
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:16,580
Speaker 1: the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive

604
00:30:16,620 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 1: it to fall well within his province to replace natural

605
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:22,770
Speaker 1: selection by other processes that are more merciful and not

606
00:30:22,810 --> 00:30:26,350
Speaker 1: less effective. This is precisely the aim of eugenics. Its

607
00:30:26,410 --> 00:30:28,990
Speaker 1: first object is to check the birth rate of the unfit,

608
00:30:29,370 --> 00:30:31,690
Speaker 1: instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed

609
00:30:31,750 --> 00:30:35,450
Speaker 1: in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is

610
00:30:35,470 --> 00:30:38,050
Speaker 1: the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of

611
00:30:38,090 --> 00:30:41,450
Speaker 1: the fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children.

612
00:30:41,910 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: Natural selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction. Eugenics

613
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:48,840
Speaker 1: on bringing no more individuals into the world that can

614
00:30:48,860 --> 00:30:53,820
Speaker 1: be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock. So,

615
00:30:54,820 --> 00:30:58,540
Speaker 1: That's his kind of, like, conclusion about, like, why eugenics

616
00:30:58,620 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: is good and necessary. We're all part of this infinite

617
00:31:01,020 --> 00:31:04,420
Speaker 1: ocean of being. But also pity is sort of a mistake. Like,

618
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:06,930
Speaker 1: it's nice that we feel it, but if we don't

619
00:31:06,970 --> 00:31:09,790
Speaker 1: check the birth rate of the unfit, they're doomed. They'll die.

620
00:31:09,810 --> 00:31:12,950
Speaker 1: There's no way to take care of them, right? Alfred

621
00:31:12,990 --> 00:31:16,540
Speaker 1: Wallace continued to oppose Galt in his entire life. At 18,

622
00:31:16,540 --> 00:31:19,960
Speaker 1: that's the guy who co-invented the theory of evolution, or co-discovered,

623
00:31:19,980 --> 00:31:24,250
Speaker 1: or whatever, the theory of natural selection. Like, Wallace... goes

624
00:31:24,490 --> 00:31:29,660
Speaker 1: after him repeatedly. He continues attacking eugenics and eugenicists. In 1890,

625
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: he writes, those who succeed in the race for wealth

626
00:31:32,380 --> 00:31:34,719
Speaker 1: are by no means the best or the most intelligent.

627
00:31:35,180 --> 00:31:38,180
Speaker 1: And in a later article, he added, leave heredity alone

628
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:40,700
Speaker 1: until we have made the environment of every child from

629
00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:43,500
Speaker 1: conception to death the best possible for its full and

630
00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:46,270
Speaker 1: free development. And then we can begin to think about

631
00:31:46,310 --> 00:31:50,460
Speaker 1: the influences of heredity, which may be small, right? Just,

632
00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:53,200
Speaker 1: it's important that you know, as this is not a

633
00:31:53,340 --> 00:31:56,260
Speaker 1: everyone felt this way. There were no countervailing. This guy

634
00:31:56,360 --> 00:32:00,230
Speaker 1: is the co-discoverer of natural selection. And he's like, no,

635
00:32:00,250 --> 00:32:02,870
Speaker 1: we should give kids better schools and like food. Right.

636
00:32:03,030 --> 00:32:04,750
Speaker 2: Let's not go freaking out.

637
00:32:04,870 --> 00:32:05,630
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.

638
00:32:05,970 --> 00:32:06,190
Speaker 3: Yeah.

639
00:32:06,270 --> 00:32:10,710
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe we start there. Francis Galton died in 1911

640
00:32:10,710 --> 00:32:14,020
Speaker 1: of being an old piece of shit. Yeah. Finally fucking dead.

641
00:32:14,060 --> 00:32:16,940
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. My God. Sir.

642
00:32:17,630 --> 00:32:19,250
Speaker 2: I was waiting for you to be like, he now

643
00:32:19,330 --> 00:32:20,450
Speaker 2: lives in Southern California.

644
00:32:20,490 --> 00:32:22,250
Speaker 1: He's still alive. Yeah, no, he works at the White

645
00:32:22,290 --> 00:32:27,690
Speaker 1: House right now. He just seemed immortal, unfortunately. His ideological enemy,

646
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:30,700
Speaker 1: Alfred Russell Wallace, lived two more years, which is at

647
00:32:30,740 --> 00:32:32,740
Speaker 1: least a nice little moral victory that Wallace lasted a

648
00:32:32,780 --> 00:32:36,700
Speaker 1: couple years longer. Before he died in 1913, he published

649
00:32:36,860 --> 00:32:39,650
Speaker 1: one last article insisting that over the course of his career,

650
00:32:39,690 --> 00:32:43,070
Speaker 1: he had found, quote, no marked superiority in any race

651
00:32:43,130 --> 00:32:47,630
Speaker 1: or country. Furthermore, he argued that even if Galton's ideas

652
00:32:47,690 --> 00:32:51,010
Speaker 1: had something to them, society was far too corrupt and

653
00:32:51,090 --> 00:32:54,350
Speaker 1: fucked up to allow anyone to decide who was fit

654
00:32:54,470 --> 00:32:57,930
Speaker 1: or unfit to breed. Even if you had a point,

655
00:32:58,070 --> 00:33:00,350
Speaker 1: nobody who might be in a position to do that

656
00:33:00,430 --> 00:33:01,890
Speaker 1: should be able to do that. Right.

657
00:33:01,930 --> 00:33:04,850
Speaker 2: This guy is so right. He's super right. There are

658
00:33:04,910 --> 00:33:08,690
Speaker 2: hereditary things. There are people more prone to certain diseases

659
00:33:08,730 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 2: than others. And it is linked to race. That's why, again,

660
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 2: it always goes back to neat where it's like, yeah,

661
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 2: there are things to know that's worth knowing. But it

662
00:33:20,270 --> 00:33:22,290
Speaker 2: shouldn't dictate who you breed with.

663
00:33:22,350 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 1: How you treat people. What the laws necessarily is. It's

664
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 1: also like, again, what some of these EA people would say, like, well,

665
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:33,260
Speaker 1: everyone's a little into eugenics, which I agree. Eugenics is

666
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:35,900
Speaker 1: about improving, like trying to direct the growth of a race.

667
00:33:35,940 --> 00:33:42,230
Speaker 1: That's different. Anyway, we've gotten off topic. But yeah, it's messy,

668
00:33:42,270 --> 00:33:45,270
Speaker 1: but I just fundamentally don't agree that that's all eugenics, right?

669
00:33:46,490 --> 00:33:49,190
Speaker 1: So the year after he died, 1912, the first eugenics

670
00:33:49,230 --> 00:33:52,150
Speaker 1: congress was held in London and dedicated to Francis Galton,

671
00:33:52,170 --> 00:33:54,969
Speaker 1: who had passed away the year before. Leonard Darwin, the

672
00:33:55,010 --> 00:33:57,910
Speaker 1: son of his cousin Charles, was the chair. The welcome

673
00:33:57,990 --> 00:34:01,460
Speaker 1: address was given by Arthur Balfour of the Balfour Declaration.

674
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: One prominent delegate was Sir Winston Churchill, who had come

675
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:08,580
Speaker 1: to agree with Galton that feeble-minded people were breeding too

676
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:12,739
Speaker 1: much and causing cultural degeneration. As Gavin Evans wrote in

677
00:34:12,780 --> 00:34:16,180
Speaker 1: a piece for Unseen Histories about Churchill, As Home Secretary,

678
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:20,549
Speaker 1: Churchill promoted a plan to forcibly sterilize 100,000 mental degenerates.

679
00:34:20,890 --> 00:34:24,020
Speaker 1: When this was blocked, he backed the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act,

680
00:34:24,060 --> 00:34:27,279
Speaker 1: which established that those defined as idiots or imbeciles could

681
00:34:27,300 --> 00:34:29,440
Speaker 1: be placed in an institution against their will at the

682
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,720
Speaker 1: prompting of parents or guardians. This became law for 46

683
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:34,860
Speaker 1: years and led to the enforced confinement of tens of

684
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:37,940
Speaker 1: thousands of people. Churchill's views on race were no less

685
00:34:38,020 --> 00:34:41,360
Speaker 1: rabid than Galton's. In 1902, he called for further colonial

686
00:34:41,420 --> 00:34:45,150
Speaker 1: conquests because the Aryan stock is bound to cut to triumph.

687
00:34:45,710 --> 00:34:47,790
Speaker 1: After the First World War, he wrote in favor of

688
00:34:47,870 --> 00:34:52,450
Speaker 1: using poison gas on uncivilized tribes to spread a lively terror.

689
00:34:53,140 --> 00:34:57,160
Speaker 1: Kenyans were brutish children, Palestinians barbaric hordes who ate little

690
00:34:57,180 --> 00:35:00,390
Speaker 1: but camel dung, and Indians a beastly people with a

691
00:35:00,550 --> 00:35:05,350
Speaker 1: beastly religion. He added, I hate Indians. On red Indians

692
00:35:05,469 --> 00:35:07,610
Speaker 1: and black people in the United States and Australia, he

693
00:35:07,650 --> 00:35:10,290
Speaker 1: said in 1927, I do not admit that a wrong

694
00:35:10,310 --> 00:35:11,969
Speaker 1: has been done to those people by the fact that

695
00:35:12,010 --> 00:35:15,130
Speaker 1: a stronger race, a higher grade race, has come in

696
00:35:15,170 --> 00:35:18,750
Speaker 1: and taken their place. In 1954, he said, I hate

697
00:35:18,790 --> 00:35:21,230
Speaker 1: people with slit eyes and pigtails. I don't like the

698
00:35:21,270 --> 00:35:22,569
Speaker 1: look of them or the smell of them.

699
00:35:23,350 --> 00:35:27,029
Speaker 3: I don't like the look of them or the smell

700
00:35:27,110 --> 00:35:27,430
Speaker 3: of them.

701
00:35:27,450 --> 00:35:30,870
Speaker 1: Galton has a lot to do with Winston Churchill's beliefs

702
00:35:31,050 --> 00:35:34,569
Speaker 1: about the world. He certainly has an influence on the man. Now,

703
00:35:34,610 --> 00:35:36,230
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to give a comprehensive

704
00:35:36,270 --> 00:35:38,730
Speaker 1: list here of every figure in every law that was

705
00:35:38,770 --> 00:35:42,470
Speaker 1: influenced by eugenic thought. Not all of these guys agreed

706
00:35:42,530 --> 00:35:45,359
Speaker 1: with Galton's conclusions, though. And not all of the people

707
00:35:45,380 --> 00:35:48,669
Speaker 1: who started, who became eugenicists, agreed with his fundamental conclusions.

708
00:35:48,690 --> 00:35:51,930
Speaker 1: There are like left-wing eugenicists who are still pretty problematic,

709
00:35:51,969 --> 00:35:54,670
Speaker 1: but in a very different way. One of these guys

710
00:35:54,690 --> 00:35:58,710
Speaker 1: was a British politician, a labor politician named Ramsey MacDonald,

711
00:35:58,750 --> 00:36:02,150
Speaker 1: who in 1909 complained that natural selection by death has

712
00:36:02,170 --> 00:36:05,670
Speaker 1: been set aside, but the state can set sexual selection

713
00:36:05,710 --> 00:36:09,330
Speaker 1: in operation again by an education in good taste. And

714
00:36:09,350 --> 00:36:11,149
Speaker 1: he argued that the way to do this, because that's

715
00:36:11,250 --> 00:36:14,850
Speaker 1: pretty problematic sounding, right? But his argument was that if

716
00:36:14,910 --> 00:36:19,629
Speaker 1: we push environmental reform and we can eliminate poverty, that

717
00:36:19,670 --> 00:36:22,850
Speaker 1: will create a, quote, healthy and comely race of people

718
00:36:23,150 --> 00:36:26,290
Speaker 1: without the need to segregate or punish the unfit, right?

719
00:36:26,650 --> 00:36:29,850
Speaker 1: He is making– with a different set of beliefs because

720
00:36:30,570 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 1: Wallace doesn't believe in eugenics at all. But he is

721
00:36:34,020 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 1: making a similar argument that we're like, well, all we

722
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 1: need to do– we do need to improve the quality

723
00:36:37,780 --> 00:36:39,740
Speaker 1: of the race. But we'll do that as like feeding

724
00:36:39,780 --> 00:36:42,660
Speaker 1: people and giving them better schools and cleaner neighborhoods, right?

725
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:45,399
Speaker 2: So again, he still believes some great stuff that's bad,

726
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:46,640
Speaker 2: but like, okay.

727
00:36:47,500 --> 00:36:47,739
Speaker 3: Yeah.

728
00:36:48,340 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

729
00:36:49,020 --> 00:36:51,750
Speaker 2: It's like trying to, it's like, hey kids, Superman eats

730
00:36:51,790 --> 00:36:53,230
Speaker 2: his vegetables. You know, like.

731
00:36:53,290 --> 00:36:53,570
Speaker 1: Right.

732
00:36:53,610 --> 00:36:57,580
Speaker 2: You're just trying to like. make it sound more appealing.

733
00:36:57,140 --> 00:36:59,660
Speaker 1: Yeah or it's you know honestly it's like those it's

734
00:36:59,700 --> 00:37:01,540
Speaker 1: like there are a bunch of abolitionists who are still

735
00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:04,100
Speaker 1: racist against black people they just knew slavery was evil

736
00:37:04,140 --> 00:37:07,410
Speaker 1: and it's like yeah you know it's it's 1860 whatever

737
00:37:07,510 --> 00:37:10,690
Speaker 1: whatever it gets you there right right exactly if you're

738
00:37:10,910 --> 00:37:13,610
Speaker 1: if you're shooting at confederates i guess we can forgive

739
00:37:13,670 --> 00:37:15,830
Speaker 1: the fact that like you didn't quite get all the

740
00:37:15,870 --> 00:37:17,090
Speaker 1: way to the right answer.

741
00:37:16,830 --> 00:37:18,989
Speaker 2: Right they're like i still like them but i don't

742
00:37:19,010 --> 00:37:20,549
Speaker 2: want to be your slaves and it's.

743
00:37:20,590 --> 00:37:25,210
Speaker 1: Like okay for right now that's probably that's probably okay

744
00:37:26,810 --> 00:37:30,650
Speaker 1: In 1912, the Mental Deficiency Bill was introduced to Parliament

745
00:37:30,670 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 1: to prevent feeble-minded people from having kids, despite opposition from

746
00:37:34,260 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, among others. And one thing you got

747
00:37:36,700 --> 00:37:41,990
Speaker 1: to say is that the Catholics, particularly, are really always

748
00:37:42,050 --> 00:37:44,450
Speaker 1: against this stuff. For the same reason they don't think

749
00:37:44,489 --> 00:37:48,250
Speaker 1: condoms are good, or abortions, unfortunately. But they do oppose

750
00:37:48,290 --> 00:37:51,910
Speaker 1: this stuff, you know? The bill becomes law in 1913.

751
00:37:51,910 --> 00:37:55,830
Speaker 1: Per the website English Heritage, the law, quote, established the

752
00:37:55,870 --> 00:38:00,140
Speaker 1: means to segregate mental defectives in asylums, but rejected sterilization

753
00:38:00,180 --> 00:38:02,919
Speaker 1: as a result of the backlash. And the protests against

754
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:05,980
Speaker 1: this bill, they had to take out sterilization. In fact,

755
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:11,350
Speaker 1: English eugenicists seemed to be heading away from sterilization until 1931.

756
00:38:11,350 --> 00:38:14,410
Speaker 1: when a new sterilization bill was introduced to Parliament to

757
00:38:14,469 --> 00:38:18,859
Speaker 1: legalize voluntary sterilization of mental defectives. This failed as well,

758
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:22,460
Speaker 1: and the introduction of sterilization policies by the Nazis, policies

759
00:38:22,500 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 1: Galton would have supported, curtailed progress in his homeland, right?

760
00:38:26,020 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 1: So Great Britain never sterilizes people for eugenic purposes en masse.

761
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:35,580
Speaker 1: I'm sure some happened, but they don't succeed. The eugenicists

762
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:38,900
Speaker 1: pushing for laws to formalize that do not succeed in

763
00:38:38,989 --> 00:38:42,850
Speaker 1: Great Britain, right? They do succeed in the United States.

764
00:38:43,670 --> 00:38:46,089
Speaker 1: Eugenics first came to this country courtesy of a guy

765
00:38:46,110 --> 00:38:49,629
Speaker 1: named Charles Davenport. Davenport was a trained mathematician who read

766
00:38:49,690 --> 00:38:54,010
Speaker 1: Carl Pearson, that's Galton's mentee, read his papers on evolution

767
00:38:54,050 --> 00:38:57,890
Speaker 1: in the 1890s, and was selected by Pearson and by

768
00:38:57,930 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 1: Galton himself to be the American editor of the Eugenics

769
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:04,899
Speaker 1: journal Biometrica. Davenport, once he gets selected for this job,

770
00:39:04,940 --> 00:39:06,819
Speaker 1: he goes to England and he meets with Galton and

771
00:39:06,860 --> 00:39:10,500
Speaker 1: Pearson in person in 1902. And he reports returning home, quote,

772
00:39:10,620 --> 00:39:13,640
Speaker 1: full of renewed courage for the fight for qualitative study

773
00:39:13,660 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 1: of evolution. He received a Carnegie grant in 1904. And

774
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:20,569
Speaker 1: in 1910, a huge donation allowed him to establish the

775
00:39:20,630 --> 00:39:24,810
Speaker 1: Eugenics Record Office, patterned after the British version that had

776
00:39:24,830 --> 00:39:27,509
Speaker 1: been founded by Galton. There's a Eugenics Record Office in

777
00:39:27,550 --> 00:39:29,719
Speaker 1: the UK that Galton founds and heads for a while.

778
00:39:29,820 --> 00:39:32,700
Speaker 1: Davenport wrote back to Francis Galton during this period of time,

779
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:37,860
Speaker 1: we have established very cordial relations with institutions for imbeciles, epileptics, insane,

780
00:39:37,900 --> 00:39:40,839
Speaker 1: and criminals. So he's starting to do the same stuff

781
00:39:40,860 --> 00:39:43,460
Speaker 1: Galton has. He's making connections with these insane asylums and

782
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 1: prisons and starting to document people as a way to

783
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:50,760
Speaker 1: like further this eugenic research. The Eugenics Records Office becomes

784
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:54,220
Speaker 1: the most influential organization of the American eugenics movement for

785
00:39:54,340 --> 00:39:57,290
Speaker 1: decades until like the end of the 1930s. And the

786
00:39:57,330 --> 00:40:00,089
Speaker 1: work of Davenport and his followers, and like the first

787
00:40:00,130 --> 00:40:03,650
Speaker 1: time it really bore fruit is when Indiana passed the U.S.

788
00:40:03,650 --> 00:40:07,930
Speaker 1: 's first compulsory sterilization law in 1907. So Indiana is

789
00:40:07,969 --> 00:40:10,170
Speaker 1: the first state to have a law that allows the

790
00:40:10,230 --> 00:40:14,310
Speaker 1: government to forcibly sterilize people who are unfit. The preamble

791
00:40:14,330 --> 00:40:17,630
Speaker 1: to this law claimed, heredity plays a most important role

792
00:40:17,670 --> 00:40:21,859
Speaker 1: in the transmission of crime. A decade later, 15 states

793
00:40:21,910 --> 00:40:28,140
Speaker 1: had similar laws allowing compulsory sterilization. Now, that's, yeah, very quick.

794
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:31,060
Speaker 2: We didn't let the Nazis spoil it for us, huh? No, no.

795
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: The Nazis copy us to an extent.

796
00:40:33,140 --> 00:40:36,120
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, yeah.

797
00:40:36,820 --> 00:40:38,650
Speaker 1: Right. Some of the Nazis' racial laws are based on

798
00:40:38,670 --> 00:40:42,109
Speaker 1: the U.S. laws, which are directly based, like, the U.S.

799
00:40:42,170 --> 00:40:46,489
Speaker 1: laws were authorized partly written and heavily lobbied for by

800
00:40:46,550 --> 00:40:51,230
Speaker 1: Charles Davenport, who was a direct disciple of Francis Galton, right?

801
00:40:51,310 --> 00:40:54,250
Speaker 1: And the Nazis copy a lot of those eugenic laws

802
00:40:54,710 --> 00:40:57,430
Speaker 1: to make their own eugenic laws. You know, Galton has

803
00:40:57,469 --> 00:41:00,340
Speaker 1: a very direct influence on the Third Reich and the Holocaust.

804
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,299
Speaker 1: The Holocaust would not, could not have happened the way

805
00:41:03,340 --> 00:41:06,700
Speaker 1: that it happened without Galton. I'm not saying Nazis, because

806
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:11,969
Speaker 1: they're anti-semitism but so much so much of the holocaust

807
00:41:12,010 --> 00:41:13,910
Speaker 1: was not just the death camps it was you know

808
00:41:13,950 --> 00:41:17,190
Speaker 1: the teeth for euthanasia program of disabled people it was

809
00:41:17,310 --> 00:41:20,410
Speaker 1: sterilization programs and stuff like that all of that stuff

810
00:41:20,450 --> 00:41:22,370
Speaker 1: at least like would not have happened the same way

811
00:41:22,750 --> 00:41:29,030
Speaker 1: without eugenics and galton created eugenics right um actual sterilizations

812
00:41:29,070 --> 00:41:32,950
Speaker 1: were uncommon in the u.s until after 1924 when virginia

813
00:41:33,030 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: passed the first eugenics law that was actually like well-written

814
00:41:36,500 --> 00:41:39,820
Speaker 1: enough to pass legal muster. Most of these early laws,

815
00:41:40,219 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 1: they kind of use them sparingly and only on people

816
00:41:42,460 --> 00:41:45,900
Speaker 1: who don't have anybody or any resources, because they know

817
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:48,140
Speaker 1: that if it's challenged and it goes to the Supreme Court,

818
00:41:48,180 --> 00:41:51,650
Speaker 1: the laws are not very well-written for that. This Virginia

819
00:41:51,690 --> 00:41:54,109
Speaker 1: law is the first one that... I'm not a law guy,

820
00:41:54,150 --> 00:41:55,650
Speaker 1: but this is the first one that they feel could

821
00:41:55,730 --> 00:42:00,109
Speaker 1: pass constitutional muster, and it does. There's a Supreme Court

822
00:42:00,150 --> 00:42:04,580
Speaker 1: case in 1927 over this Virginia eugenics law, because... they're

823
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:06,759
Speaker 1: sterilizing someone who doesn't want to be sterilized.

824
00:42:06,969 --> 00:42:07,180
Speaker 3: Right.

825
00:42:07,219 --> 00:42:09,910
Speaker 2: This feels like it really feels like a girl, like

826
00:42:10,190 --> 00:42:13,230
Speaker 2: sterilizing people in this country, trying to pretend like we're

827
00:42:13,250 --> 00:42:17,030
Speaker 2: the land of the free means that like the, something

828
00:42:17,070 --> 00:42:19,180
Speaker 2: like this feels like it could be easily countered by

829
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 2: someone going, no, you can't like, you know, that's.

830
00:42:22,100 --> 00:42:23,240
Speaker 1: What should have happened.

831
00:42:23,739 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 2: Instead, the Supreme court upheld the law. Stand up for them.

832
00:42:27,700 --> 00:42:31,529
Speaker 1: Yep. Then, you know, well, in this case, you know,

833
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:37,200
Speaker 1: There is a challenge, but the Supreme Court overwhelmingly decides

834
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:41,259
Speaker 1: that eugenics is perfectly constitutional. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the

835
00:42:41,300 --> 00:42:44,049
Speaker 1: majority opinion, and I'm going to read a selection from

836
00:42:44,090 --> 00:42:47,109
Speaker 1: that majority opinion here. We have seen more than once

837
00:42:47,150 --> 00:42:49,510
Speaker 1: that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens

838
00:42:49,570 --> 00:42:51,969
Speaker 1: for their lives. It would be strange if it could

839
00:42:52,030 --> 00:42:54,469
Speaker 1: not call upon those who already sapped the strength of

840
00:42:54,510 --> 00:42:57,500
Speaker 1: the state for these lesser sacrifices in order to prevent

841
00:42:57,540 --> 00:43:00,069
Speaker 1: our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for the

842
00:43:00,130 --> 00:43:03,210
Speaker 1: world if instead of waiting to execute a degenerate offspring

843
00:43:03,230 --> 00:43:05,950
Speaker 1: for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility,

844
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:09,680
Speaker 1: society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing

845
00:43:09,719 --> 00:43:13,760
Speaker 1: their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad

846
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 1: enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. Three generations of

847
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:20,900
Speaker 1: imbeciles are enough. You know what else is a crazy argument?

848
00:43:21,739 --> 00:43:24,759
Speaker 1: Anyone who argues you shouldn't buy these products advertised on

849
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:34,440
Speaker 1: our podcast. They're crazy. And we're back. So by 1927,

850
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:38,380
Speaker 1: you know, when this hits the Supreme Court, about 3,000

851
00:43:38,380 --> 00:43:43,780
Speaker 1: Americans had been sterilized under various eugenic laws. After this

852
00:43:43,780 --> 00:43:47,710
Speaker 1: 1927 case, Buck v. Bell rules in favor of eugenics.

853
00:43:48,530 --> 00:43:51,770
Speaker 1: People like the speed at which people are being sterilized

854
00:43:51,810 --> 00:43:55,110
Speaker 1: increases massively. And this mostly occurs over a period of

855
00:43:55,130 --> 00:43:57,469
Speaker 1: a couple of decades. But in the years to come,

856
00:43:57,530 --> 00:44:02,230
Speaker 1: more than 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized in multiple U.S. states.

857
00:44:02,690 --> 00:44:04,670
Speaker 1: You want to guess when the last of these procedures

858
00:44:04,690 --> 00:44:07,710
Speaker 1: was carried out, the last forcible sterilization as a result

859
00:44:07,730 --> 00:44:08,390
Speaker 1: of eugenics law.

860
00:44:08,310 --> 00:44:10,069
Speaker 2: In the U.S.? I mean, because it's America, I'm going

861
00:44:10,090 --> 00:44:10,279
Speaker 2: to say 2024.

862
00:44:10,260 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 1: Not that bad.

863
00:44:10,530 --> 00:44:10,950
Speaker 2: It was 1981.

864
00:44:10,930 --> 00:44:18,710
Speaker 1: And one guess as to the city. Just think racism.

865
00:44:18,730 --> 00:44:21,770
Speaker 1: It's Portland, Oregon. It's Portland, Oregon.

866
00:44:21,870 --> 00:44:28,350
Speaker 2: I mean, we still have microplastics. We're still all getting sterilized.

867
00:44:28,510 --> 00:44:32,589
Speaker 1: Yeah, we sure are. We sure are. It just shows

868
00:44:32,670 --> 00:44:36,920
Speaker 1: up all over Portland, the history of eugenics. Portland's so weird.

869
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 2: I've never been there.

870
00:44:38,260 --> 00:44:39,460
Speaker 1: All I know is- That's what they say.

871
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:40,180
Speaker 2: Portland's weird.

872
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:41,060
Speaker 1: It's associated with.

873
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:43,420
Speaker 2: Hippie stuff and then Nazi stuff.

874
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:50,049
Speaker 1: Yeah, hippies, anarchists, Nazis, eugenics. Trees. Free preschool.

875
00:44:50,310 --> 00:44:50,710
Speaker 2: I don't know.

876
00:44:50,969 --> 00:44:55,950
Speaker 1: Yeah. We're a real grab bag of stuff here in Portland.

877
00:44:56,030 --> 00:44:56,730
Speaker 1: Great trees, though.

878
00:44:57,090 --> 00:44:57,380
Speaker 3: Trees.

879
00:44:57,390 --> 00:45:03,620
Speaker 1: Trees. Before we finish, I should say something about the Nazis, right?

880
00:45:03,739 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 1: Because obviously that's the greatest death toll that you can

881
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 1: associate with Francis Baldwin. The phrasing of that sentence was

882
00:45:11,780 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 1: just incredible, Robert. Before we go, though, a little bit

883
00:45:16,100 --> 00:45:19,620
Speaker 1: more about the Nazis. We gotta talk Nazis. I would

884
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:22,710
Speaker 1: say of all of the people who did not live

885
00:45:22,989 --> 00:45:26,630
Speaker 1: to see the rise of fascism in the Third Reich

886
00:45:26,730 --> 00:45:29,359
Speaker 1: and who were not German... he might be the one

887
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:34,980
Speaker 1: most responsible for Nazism, right? Maybe. There's some other guys

888
00:45:35,020 --> 00:45:39,450
Speaker 1: in that, but he's a lot of, a meaningful percentage

889
00:45:39,469 --> 00:45:42,310
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust is due to his ideas or heavily

890
00:45:42,350 --> 00:45:45,009
Speaker 1: influenced by his ideas, right? A meaningful chunk of it.

891
00:45:46,250 --> 00:45:49,410
Speaker 1: So the German eugenics movement was, like all other eugenics movements,

892
00:45:49,550 --> 00:45:53,180
Speaker 1: inspired by Francis Galton. The concept first came to Germany

893
00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:56,330
Speaker 1: in the form of a guy named Alfred Plotz. who

894
00:45:56,450 --> 00:45:59,070
Speaker 1: early in life was a, he like is a German guy,

895
00:45:59,530 --> 00:46:01,370
Speaker 1: Alfred Plotz, who like moves to the U.S. as a

896
00:46:01,469 --> 00:46:04,049
Speaker 1: utopian socialist. And he moves to the U.S. because there's

897
00:46:04,070 --> 00:46:06,130
Speaker 1: all these communes that have started up in like the

898
00:46:06,210 --> 00:46:08,989
Speaker 1: late 1800s, early 1900s, where people are doing like free

899
00:46:09,030 --> 00:46:13,109
Speaker 1: love and like practicing like communism, like actual, like literal

900
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,020
Speaker 1: communism in a commune. And so he moves to one

901
00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:18,540
Speaker 1: of these communes in Iowa and he spent six months there.

902
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:21,440
Speaker 1: And he concludes, like most people who live in communes,

903
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:25,980
Speaker 1: that communes are a bad idea, right? Specifically because people,

904
00:46:26,020 --> 00:46:28,140
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually, he doesn't include communes are a bad idea.

905
00:46:28,180 --> 00:46:31,739
Speaker 1: He concludes that people suck too much for communes to work, right?

906
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:36,350
Speaker 1: You know, very common conclusion. As a commune guy myself,

907
00:46:37,370 --> 00:46:40,670
Speaker 1: happens every time pretty much. Unlike most people who have

908
00:46:40,710 --> 00:46:42,710
Speaker 1: this realization and decide like, I don't know, maybe we

909
00:46:42,750 --> 00:46:45,189
Speaker 1: all need private bathrooms and kitchens. You know, maybe we can't,

910
00:46:45,230 --> 00:46:47,730
Speaker 1: maybe we need to dial back the communal level a

911
00:46:47,750 --> 00:46:52,190
Speaker 1: little bit, right? Instead of, doing that, he decides that

912
00:46:52,290 --> 00:46:58,569
Speaker 1: eugenics is the answer, that that will make commune living realistic. Quote,

913
00:46:58,969 --> 00:47:01,859
Speaker 1: he concluded that the plans we wish to execute would

914
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: be destroyed as a result of the low quality of

915
00:47:04,180 --> 00:47:06,900
Speaker 1: human beings. For this reason, I must direct my efforts

916
00:47:06,940 --> 00:47:09,970
Speaker 1: not merely toward preserving the race, but also toward improving it.

917
00:47:10,300 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 1: My views immediately led me to the field of medicine,

918
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 1: which appeared to be relevant to the biological transformation of

919
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:21,100
Speaker 1: human beings. So, He gets into eugenics because people are

920
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:22,260
Speaker 1: too mean in his commune.

921
00:47:22,660 --> 00:47:25,460
Speaker 2: Must have been a shitty commune to come out of

922
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:26,880
Speaker 2: it going, like, we need eugenics.

923
00:47:27,380 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 1: So he concludes that because people are too selfish and, like,

924
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:33,340
Speaker 1: dicks in the commune he visited, that, like, yeah, we

925
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:36,950
Speaker 1: need eugenics to get rid of inferior human beings. Hmm.

926
00:47:37,330 --> 00:47:40,870
Speaker 1: He coins the term Rassenhygiene, or race hygiene. And he

927
00:47:41,350 --> 00:47:43,969
Speaker 1: creates this as a synonym for eugenics, right? And race

928
00:47:44,010 --> 00:47:45,989
Speaker 1: hygiene is the term the Nazis are going to use

929
00:47:46,030 --> 00:47:49,890
Speaker 1: as well. He argues that, like Francis, that protecting the

930
00:47:49,930 --> 00:47:52,550
Speaker 1: weak and the poor would degenerate the German race unless

931
00:47:52,570 --> 00:47:55,590
Speaker 1: they also use selective breeding. Now, one thing that Ploetz

932
00:47:55,670 --> 00:48:00,009
Speaker 1: does get correct, where he diverges from Galton, is he

933
00:48:00,050 --> 00:48:02,770
Speaker 1: realizes Galton is an elitist, right? And he doesn't believe

934
00:48:02,790 --> 00:48:06,549
Speaker 1: that only rich people deserve to breed. He thinks that

935
00:48:06,630 --> 00:48:09,790
Speaker 1: only like Aryan people deserve to breed, right? So he

936
00:48:09,850 --> 00:48:13,730
Speaker 1: does advise more egalitarian methods to allow the best to breed.

937
00:48:13,790 --> 00:48:15,850
Speaker 1: So he's not based on like who your dad was

938
00:48:16,410 --> 00:48:19,839
Speaker 1: in that like, he is based on who your dad was,

939
00:48:19,860 --> 00:48:21,360
Speaker 1: but not because your dad had a good job. It's

940
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: because of your dad's race and your mom's race, right?

941
00:48:23,820 --> 00:48:26,000
Speaker 1: As opposed to he doesn't care so much about like, well,

942
00:48:26,020 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 1: what is your family line done, right? All he cares

943
00:48:29,180 --> 00:48:31,560
Speaker 1: about is your blood. And that is a real difference

944
00:48:31,620 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: between kind of the Nazi and eugenics attitudes and what

945
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:36,839
Speaker 1: galton had proposed when you.

946
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:39,979
Speaker 2: Say you got it correct you mean like he really

947
00:48:40,020 --> 00:48:42,220
Speaker 2: honed in where he's like if we're gonna be fucking

948
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:44,180
Speaker 2: racist let's be racist folks he.

949
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: Was correct that galton was an elitist right obviously yes

950
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:49,500
Speaker 1: the eugenics stuff is very wrong but he correctly was

951
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:51,549
Speaker 1: like well galton just thinks that rich people deserve to

952
00:48:51,590 --> 00:48:54,670
Speaker 1: breathe and that's silly i think that only aryan should

953
00:48:54,710 --> 00:48:58,430
Speaker 1: be able to breathe right yeah Alfred founded the first

954
00:48:58,469 --> 00:49:02,630
Speaker 1: German eugenics journal in 1904 and the Racial Hygiene Society

955
00:49:02,969 --> 00:49:07,279
Speaker 1: in 1905. Michael Bulwer describes the Racial Hygiene Society as, quote,

956
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: the world's first professional eugenics organization. And he restricted its

957
00:49:12,100 --> 00:49:15,790
Speaker 1: membership to the most eugenically fit people from the middle class, right?

958
00:49:15,810 --> 00:49:18,969
Speaker 1: So he's restricting it to the most eugenically fit, but

959
00:49:19,030 --> 00:49:21,189
Speaker 1: not basing it on like wealth or anything like that.

960
00:49:21,610 --> 00:49:23,450
Speaker 1: And as soon as he founds the society, he makes

961
00:49:23,530 --> 00:49:27,180
Speaker 1: Francis Galton the honorary vice president of the world's first

962
00:49:27,239 --> 00:49:31,200
Speaker 1: professional eugenics organization. For years, there was a conflict in

963
00:49:31,219 --> 00:49:33,640
Speaker 1: the German eugenics movement between what we might call race

964
00:49:33,700 --> 00:49:37,020
Speaker 1: and class-based eugenicists. You've got these left-wing eugenicists who are

965
00:49:37,040 --> 00:49:39,240
Speaker 1: kind of more like the British guy we talked about earlier.

966
00:49:39,710 --> 00:49:43,650
Speaker 1: And obviously the less racist side loses. And while the

967
00:49:43,690 --> 00:49:46,589
Speaker 1: German eugenics movement fails at pushing through any laws to

968
00:49:46,610 --> 00:49:49,330
Speaker 1: allow them to sterilize people during the Weimar years, they

969
00:49:49,350 --> 00:49:53,129
Speaker 1: become suddenly much more influential after 1933. And you all

970
00:49:53,170 --> 00:49:58,230
Speaker 1: broadly know the rest, right? The T4 euthanasia program, all

971
00:49:58,250 --> 00:50:01,850
Speaker 1: of these different fucking restrictions on who can marry and

972
00:50:01,910 --> 00:50:04,670
Speaker 1: what constitutes as a Jew and obviously the eventual Holocaust.

973
00:50:05,140 --> 00:50:08,680
Speaker 1: All that's downstream from old Francis Galton. But now you

974
00:50:08,719 --> 00:50:12,239
Speaker 1: understand where he came from and what his life was like.

975
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:14,259
Speaker 1: So how do you feel, Dave, at the end of this?

976
00:50:16,620 --> 00:50:17,340
Speaker 1: I know, like.

977
00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:22,700
Speaker 2: There's worse things to be bugged about, but the monkeys, man.

978
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:23,939
Speaker 1: The monkeys that he killed.

979
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:27,779
Speaker 2: It's just that it's it's how poetic it is that

980
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:30,640
Speaker 2: he also just sounds like a real asshole.

981
00:50:31,070 --> 00:50:31,230
Speaker 1: Yeah.

982
00:50:31,250 --> 00:50:33,489
Speaker 2: Like he sounds like one of those guys that like,

983
00:50:33,510 --> 00:50:35,910
Speaker 2: you wouldn't let him borrow your car these days, you know,

984
00:50:35,969 --> 00:50:38,700
Speaker 2: like he doesn't, he just seems like a rich dirt

985
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:44,180
Speaker 2: bag who used like his weird little rich dirt bag

986
00:50:44,260 --> 00:50:49,839
Speaker 2: pass to, to conclude like so much bad science. Oh yeah.

987
00:50:50,739 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 2: And he got lucky and fell into some good science

988
00:50:53,580 --> 00:50:54,720
Speaker 2: along the way, I guess.

989
00:50:54,820 --> 00:51:01,319
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Luck. It's more that his, his, Particular fascinations

990
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:06,560
Speaker 1: occasionally led him to discover useful things, generally while doing

991
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:11,500
Speaker 1: something non-useful, right? Like his fingerprinting, he makes a lot

992
00:51:11,540 --> 00:51:15,950
Speaker 1: of massive gains to the science of fingerprinting while he's

993
00:51:15,969 --> 00:51:18,370
Speaker 1: trying to prove there are like racial differences in fingerprints.

994
00:51:18,390 --> 00:51:18,770
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

995
00:51:26,420 --> 00:51:29,219
Speaker 1: To try to prove stuff that his own data shows

996
00:51:29,300 --> 00:51:31,160
Speaker 1: is untrue. And he just kind of has to lie

997
00:51:31,219 --> 00:51:32,719
Speaker 1: about to himself and everyone else.

998
00:51:32,739 --> 00:51:33,799
Speaker 2: Yeah.

999
00:51:34,300 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1000
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:36,739
Speaker 2: I don't like the guy. I don't like him.

1001
00:51:36,780 --> 00:51:37,840
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's weird.

1002
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,680
Speaker 2: Like every episode I've been a guest on, I never

1003
00:51:40,739 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 2: liked the guy at the end. I have a big

1004
00:51:42,500 --> 00:51:45,219
Speaker 2: old thumbs down. Maybe one of these days I'll like him,

1005
00:51:45,500 --> 00:51:46,720
Speaker 2: but yeah.

1006
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:48,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll introduce you to that.

1007
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:50,759
Speaker 3: The guy as maybe a bastard. Is that, is that

1008
00:51:50,780 --> 00:51:53,020
Speaker 3: why you would like, I don't know.

1009
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:57,210
Speaker 1: I don't like that guy. Well, I sure got behind him. Wow.

1010
00:51:57,230 --> 00:51:59,390
Speaker 1: It's like that scene in the movie when they say

1011
00:51:59,430 --> 00:52:00,330
Speaker 1: the title of the movie.

1012
00:52:01,270 --> 00:52:01,650
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1013
00:52:01,670 --> 00:52:06,710
Speaker 1: Usually doesn't work well. This probably didn't either. Anyway, Dave, Bluggables? Bluggables!

1014
00:52:08,350 --> 00:52:11,790
Speaker 2: Gamefully Unemployed. That's my podcast network with Tom Ryman where

1015
00:52:11,810 --> 00:52:16,359
Speaker 2: we talk about movies and TV and that is it.

1016
00:52:16,450 --> 00:52:19,460
Speaker 2: Those are the two things we talk about. I think

1017
00:52:19,480 --> 00:52:22,259
Speaker 2: sometimes comics, I don't know, man. You have to go

1018
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:26,110
Speaker 2: listen to find out. Yeah, listen. Yeah, listen. You want

1019
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:32,540
Speaker 2: some light podcasting? We got it, baby. We got it.

1020
00:52:32,660 --> 00:52:37,380
Speaker 2: And we're good. It's good. You know? It's a good network.

1021
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:42,580
Speaker 1: It's not just a good network. It's like the most... No,

1022
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:45,080
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make a racial purity joke. That's

1023
00:52:45,140 --> 00:52:49,640
Speaker 1: probably a bad taste. Anyway, Dave, Gamefully Unemployed. Good. Good stuff.

1024
00:52:49,780 --> 00:52:51,070
Speaker 1: Good stuff. Listen to it.

1025
00:52:51,130 --> 00:52:52,210
Speaker 2: Dave, good. Yeah.

1026
00:52:52,410 --> 00:52:53,150
Speaker 1: Dave, good.

1027
00:52:53,170 --> 00:52:53,569
Speaker 3: Racism, bad.

1028
00:52:53,670 --> 00:52:53,910
Speaker 1: You like.

1029
00:52:55,230 --> 00:52:55,590
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1030
00:52:56,110 --> 00:52:58,629
Speaker 1: Good night and good luck. Bye.

1031
00:53:02,469 --> 00:53:05,160
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

1032
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:09,980
Speaker 3: For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com.

1033
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,100
Speaker 3: Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1034
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:14,520
Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts.

1035
00:53:15,070 --> 00:53:17,230
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube.

1036
00:53:17,630 --> 00:53:21,550
Speaker 3: New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel,

1037
00:53:21,770 --> 00:53:24,810
Speaker 3: youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.