Part Two: Francis Galton: Inventor of Eugenics

And we're back. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about very worst people in all of history. And this week, we're starting our series on Francis Galton, the father of eugenics. And boy, what a wonderful day for an actual eugenicist, mellowianopolis, to have just gotten taken into custody by ice for overstaying his immigration visa. And look, listen folks, if someone, if you're one of the people who's been like we shouldn't laugh in mellowianopolis being taken into custody by ice, I want to read you a post mellow made a couple of years ago. What is the etiquette if you're going about your business and find yourself observing an ice raid? I want to show a little respect and decency. Are you allowed to masturbate where you stand in the street or should you find some kind of awning or motor vehicle? No, it's really funny and good that he that he got taken into custody by the exact people who we enabled and cheered on his entire life. And then we stuck an immigration jail looking like shit. You can see his fucking mug shot right now. We'll make sure we put that on the YouTube. Otherwise, just look it up. Fuck him. Yeah, it's just because you can laugh at leopards eating someone's face. It doesn't mean you like leopards eating everybody's faces. No, it's just I tried. We tried to stop the leopards from eating anybody's face mellow. You were on team leopard and now they're eating your face and I just feel nothing for you. Nothing but joy. Because again, you're also a eugenicist like Francis Galton, the subject of our episodes, but not like David Bell, the guest of our episodes. David, you're not a eugenicist, right? No, I'm very moist right now though. You are moist. That's good. That's good. Because in the last episode, my cat was on the desk and I got him off and he spilled my red bull everywhere. Oh, I didn't realize until later. So I'm I smell. Yeah, I smell awesome. I smell like radical. Yeah. I see that extreme. Again, this is why Francis Galton was a eugenicist. If we had just applied more eugenics, you could have had a cat that doesn't knock things over, probably. It has to exist. I actually don't think that does with the cats. I think they have to not have legs. I don't think you could breathe in the cats. Yeah. I don't think there's any amount of the cat genome. I think every individual like divisible chunk of the cat genome includes the nox shit off of a counter because it's fun gene. Like I just think that's integral to being a cat. I get it. Like if you don't know what gravity is, you why not still see it and you're like, that's awesome. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's like throwing things down. Yeah, exactly. This isn't I heart podcast guaranteed human didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency. It does not have body cameras. It's real. 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Listen to the Renee Stubbs tennis podcast on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And speaking of beings without a conscience who are just doing shit to watch what happens, Francis Galton is touring the Middle East and North Africa, committing every kind of cinematonable. He next visited Syria where Ali slash Bob, the little, the coffee boy that they were traveling with, takes ill. Oh yeah, no, he dies of what Francis describes as violent dysentery. Um, when you gave the kid a name, I was like, this can't end. He's got to die a horrible death. Now Galton pays for the tombstone, but writes that he doesn't attend the funeral because his presence as a Christian quote would have been seriously resented by the Muslims. And I know that it's common today. And first of all, I just need to say that's, that's not true, right? It's not true that there's some sort of like wider prejudice among Muslims as a group against Christians or members of other faith, attending funerals or other set like, like a birthday or something like that of the like, right? Um, wedding. Similarly, it's been very common for a very long time in a lot of areas, at least for those to be interfaith events. If it's a mixed community that the people live in, right? Sure. Um, that said, yeah. I do think Ali's family probably didn't want him. That's what happened. Right? Is he saying is like, Muslims just don't want Christians or I think it's that they don't want you. And I can see him being like, Oh, you're Muslim. You know what? Christian's there? I'm them going like, yeah, let's go with that. Yeah. Let's go. Let's say that. Let's say whatever keeps you away. And these are not his, all these family. These are just some random Muslims who know that a Muslim has died away from his home and that these white people are going to do anything to give him a proper burial. Right? That's what's happening here. Ma, I will say in terms of looking into this, I did look into like, was it permissible in the past for members of others? And like, as far as I can tell, yes, it certainly is today. Crescent funerals, a Muslim funeral provider in Lester, England says it's fine on their website. I found a bunch of like Muslim religious scholars saying stuff like, yeah, if like your mom isn't Muslim and she dies or like a friend, you can go to their funerals. Like, cool. Like God isn't angry about that. He judges people. It's not for us to do. That's the general attitude. Most religions has those things, right? Who gives a shit, man? You got to live your life. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what's going on. I think they didn't want him there because they knew he was a dick. And I think that that's I'm not being presumptive by saying, I don't think he was allowed at the funeral because he was too much of an asshole. In order to kind of make the case that he was probably being a gigantic asshole, I want to read you something. He wrote in 1885 about his travels during this time. This is him as an older man looking back on his travels through the Middle East. And this is what came to his mind. Such a difference between the burbers and the Egyptians, you cannot strike a burber, but may flog as many Egyptians and beat them with sticks as much as you like. They are thoroughly slavish. So what I say, I think he wasn't allowed at the funeral because he was, this is what he remembers about the time is the people you can and can't beat with a stick. That's what he remembers from his vacation. The burbers don't let you beat him. The Egyptians do. He would be at the funeral like using the boy as the chair for the, he'd need to fucking hit it. People with this. Yeah, he's slapping the boy's corpse just having a grand old time. Like that's what he took out of the whole country of Egypt is you can really flog the shit out of these people. They don't do anything. Huh. I think there's got to be a lot of like customs being used this way. It's like the drinking age in Canada. Right. It's like they're not going to bring it up unless you're an asshole. Right. You can see a lot of that, right? A lot. Yeah. Actually, it's our custom that you get the hell away from us. Yeah. Well, our custom is you leave immediately. That's our weird Muslim thing is get the fuck out of my house. Yeah. Um, so Galton claimed to have sent Ollie's property and do wages, the money that he'd earned so far to his wife and Cairo after he died, along with a little present for herself and thought his duty fulfilled. This is clearly all I need to do. Alas, he writes. He'd quote, roused a hornet's nest of greedy claimants demanding payment to various relatives. His banker advised him to get out of the reach of the law as soon as I conveniently could. And that's why he insists trip in 1845 is because he stiffs this dead kids family and they're trying to pursue him for justice. Right. He frames that like he's being attacked, but he's like, and then in order to remedy this, I had to get away from the law. I have to leave the country. Okay. Well, it sounds like a crime spree. It's like you committed a lot of crimes, frances. It's like maybe you killed this kid. I don't know. Yeah. If I was, man, if he was like, I'm sending you a little gift, I'd be like, no, I don't even want to know what you consider a gift. Husbands died. Here's a little present for yourself. I got you some perfume like what yeah, I would not put that perfume on me Yeah, I don't know what it would be. Yeah. I don't know if it's what killed my husband now He sales home with two living tokens of his travels. He takes open some home some like Living souvenirs a pair of monkeys and he's allowed to take them into England They're supposed to go into quarantine, but he's a rich white man So nobody makes him obey the law. However upon his return to England, quote, On a chilly November day, I failed to fight a comfortable night's lodging for my pets But an old friend who was living at apartments kindly undertook their charge He handed them with many instructions to his landlady who thought and perhaps said Drat the beasts and shut them up in the cold scullery where they were found the next morning dead and one and other's arms Jesus honestly Yeah, that's the leak. That's like yeah, they died titanic style. Yeah Hugging each other for war. Yeah, my God because you wouldn't put him in your room and you're blaming it on his landlady Like they're your monkeys That I expected that to go worse to be honest. Yeah, like I knew the monkeys were gonna die no matter what happened There's a sense of euphoria. I think you do get when freezing to death that I've read about so that of the ways A pair of monkeys could die in London in the mid 1800s. Yeah, probably one of the more merciful things. That's quick He's just so it's funny because like I guess this is true for many of your episodes But it's it feels very true here where it's like when you bring a bad person on a lot of the bad shit They do is often around like a specific theme of of things they believed in this guy's just an asshole and that's the Like he's just a dumb asshole your ass if you like if you if you read the summaries of Galton's life It'll always be he invented and it'll list all these different mathematical innovations in science because he invented a lot of important stuff And then also eugenics like he was a really he was a racist But a scientific racist and the way again the summaries make it feel is that like well He was an educated man of a different time who came to believe something bad But there's people like that who are not I mean you can say they're a bad person because they do believe a terrible thing But they're not killing monkeys through they're not like Personally, vile every moment of his life as far as I can tell Francis Galton was an obscene human being every moment of his adult life Like just a thorough sinner like a vile man to his core Special kind of asshole where like yeah Everything he does is like adjacent to something awesome that somebody could do like I'm all for bringing some monkeys Sure takes a monkey's dangling. That doesn't like a good Rampage that's so be it sure like yeah, then the fate of the monkeys is it's so scummy May see the monkeys yeah, yeah, I was worried he would be like I would have to do a lot of like Arguing with him and proving the science wrong in order to make it clear what a bad man It was a no just his life makes that clear. He was a fucking monster. He was an abominable person And I I should note here because golden was a statistics nerd He might have found it interesting because I counted. He's been 70 words discussing the deaths of two monkeys and 17 discussing the death of Ali a human being not That's honestly not surprising at all Francis named the child he named he got a child a different name Yes, yeah, so Francis spins the net well I don't know if it was a child because he had a wife. I don't know what age he says coffee boy But they call a lot of adults who aren't white boy. I think that's what's the way meant, right? I don't know if that's worse than he was young, but he had a wife and he could have been 45 Given the way these people talk. Yeah, yeah Francis spent the next few years living the life of an English gentleman shooting and fishing from Wales to Scotland and learning the ABCs of life in the English countryside he writes that like I didn't know how to be an English gentleman because I never had to be before my dad died So he has to figure that out now and when he describes what he had to learn it's how to shoot things That's all there is aside from dressing right and being polite in public. It's just shooting. That's all being an English gentleman It's a shooting different things full wear rights of this time He was invited to shoot on a friend's grousemore in Scotland and spent a supper in the Shetland seal shooting and bird nesting Amazing, I should note here. I don't know it does look like the Scottish seals are endangered right now Although I don't know if they were in his time so that may not be on him But the black grouse nearly went extinct in Scotland during this period of time because of guys like because of Galton and guys like him Anyway, after several restless years of shooting animals and reading books Galton decided to undertake a proper expedition to Africa in 1850 and by this point He's evolved enough as a person. I think he's pushing 30 at this point. He know like her wants to be a tourist, right? He wants to be an explorer Schumacher notes this in her dissertation And this is what he wrote about his motivations in 1849 blank spaces in the map of the world were both large and numerous and the position of many towns Rivers and notable districts were untrustworthy the whole interior of South Africa and much of that of North Africa was quite unknown to civilized men, right? So there's just not maps of this area that people do have been living in for forever And that's what he wants to go over there is to make like maps of these these blank spaces Yeah, I just Don't Son of a bitch. I'm not anti obviously like it's good that scientific maps that are like universal around the world exists now That's a positive channel. It's need to be him. It didn't need to be him. It's like it's like you ever have like that scumbag friend Who's just like I'm gonna become a mall Santa and you're like no, please really? No, are you are you allowed your own kids again? I thought that was like a five-year okay So I talked recently that Percy Fawcett who's an explorer from like a generation or two after Galton's hey day and That he was doing the same thing he was another monster who went to go make maps of places that didn't have maps Francis was right at but not quite at the start of the quest to map the world and like most things in life in his life He secured his initial in to the Royal Geographic Society via Nepotism because his cousin was a prominent member He gets everything in his life through Nepotism very important part of the Francis Galton story He does not ever in his entire life or in a single thing just on his personal merit never He doesn't try once never once. He does try, but he tries with significant effort It's like trying to be nine foot tall when you have a ladder, right? right The society helps him plan his first expedition to map chunks of West South Africa over the next two years He had repeated contact with three different groups of native people the Nama were heavily employed as servants by the Dutch and thus were quite Westernized the Herrero and Avambo weren't in her dissertation for the University of Canterbury Susan Schumacher To summarize his impressions of these different peoples Galton was unimpressed with the Nama and felt superior to them as he outsmarted the current chief Junker Afro Connor and managed to secure both passage for himself and convince the chief to sign up to a Western style legal code Which prescribed Junker's behavior particularly against the Herrero whom they were murdering and stealing cattle from at the time Galton also disliked the Herrero while he considered them to be aesthetically pleasing Magnificent models for scopeders. He was critical of their moral and intellectual attributes Describing the Herrero or Demaras as he called them. He writes There is hardly a particle of romance or affection or poetry in their character or creed But they are a greedy heartless and silly set of savages the Domaras have a vast number of small superstitions But they are all stupid and often very gross and there's not much that is charismatic to there's characteristic in them So again, he hasn't speak their language. He doesn't really know anything about their art or culture He's meeting these people as part of a surveying mission and trying to like get them to sign treaties to help like the local colonials This is the same as if Someone had met Galton and his friends when they were murdering and hooring their way through North Africa and been like ah So this is this says everything with the Europeans don't make art all they do is just molest people and like well Kill monkeys occasionally. Yeah, there's more to the culture than just Francis Galton right? Yeah, he's lost all privileges here to judge anything Yeah, exactly given his fucking behavior Um, oh, yeah, the only local people's Galton liked were the Elvambo which again are the people who were like Commonly used as slaves and servants by white people in the area and so they're very westernized He referred to them and praising them as being very domestic and he applauded the lack of popperism In the country that means everyone's working for white people So there's not anyone unemployed because any black person who doesn't work for a white person is unemployed Right, that's his attitude and even though he likes the Elvambo He still talks at length about how ugly he finds them and he's slander He specifically he talks a lot negatively about their women in particular He really likes to comment negatively on how gross. He thinks specific women are he puts this in his like Scientific papers home about like his his investigations of this culture Galton returns home to Europe after this journey more racist than ever and a hero for his ground-blit breaking exploration of South Africa He receives a society gold medal and the year after he got back He wrote a book about his experiences that became a bestseller all across England Critics at the time did note that he really seemed to have some very strong and very specific opinions about the native people. His scientific recollections are replete with descriptions of, in the case of the Ovambo "ugly bony men." But he again saved specific graphic distaste for the Ovambo women, who he described as "decidedly nice looking, their faces were open and merry, but they had rather coarse features and shone all over with butter and red pigment." They have like cosmetics that they apply to themselves, that he gets like stains his nice linen clothing when he's trying to molest them, and that really upsets him. Galton also exhibited a fascination with measuring and quantifying the bodies of native peoples. He likes to measure them, to like determine how long their arms are, and this is pretty eugenics. He's doing this before that. He's just fascinated in measuring people. He would later justify this by his work in eugenics and his standing as a prominent race scientist. But his writing at the time before he comes up with those things proves that his initial interest in measuring people is not scientific. It's sexual. In his biography of Galton, Boer writes about the time Francis used his quote, "sextant for an unusual purpose." And a sextant is like a tool that you use generally when you're on a boat and stuff, but it's for like determining where you are. It's a navigational tool, but you can use it to determine like distance and stuff, so you could use it to like figure out measurements. I don't understand the math, right? But what happens is that while he's visiting the Herrero, Galton meets the wife of his interpreter, and this lady is really hot. He describes her as a venus among the hotend tots, right? The hotend tots are the Herrero, and a venus is a European, like venus is the European god of like beauty, or not European, but the Greek god of beauty and love. And for, by this point in time, because they're not pagans, but the term a venus is a term anyone in Europe would recognize as a hot lady, right? That's what he's saying, if she was hot, right? So there's this hot lady who's the wife of his interpreter, and he, as soon as he looks at this woman, he describes himself as being perfectly aghast at her development. He's talking about like her measurements, right? She's got a large breasts, right? That's what he's talking about, right? So he inquires of his white friends, and he told him that she was quote, the lady who ranks second among her people for the beautiful outline that her back affords. In other words, her, really, she's got the second best ass in the tribe is what the white people say of this woman, which gives you an idea of how common it is to sexualize these people among the whites. Is it, yeah, here's, I guess, the question. Yeah, this does. Oh, it's getting weird. It's like fortune in cell speak, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's all the year at baby. Yeah, and I know it's like probably how they talked back then. This is the equivalent of him saying like she's got some sweet milkers or whatever, but like it's, it's feels grosser. It feels grosser. Yeah, it's what he's doing to is like, there's certain industries, right? Where like, like the, you know, you ever hear, you always hear those stories about like a fertility doctor in predating a bunch of women, right? Those occupations where I feel like when someone was like, I want to be a fertility doctor. The first question you have to ask them is why? Why? Yeah, I don't, like, I mean, we, our episodes on fertility doctors are literally all fertility doctors are bastards because it keeps happening not to all of them, but a lot. Right. It's one of those industries where it's like, listen, there are people who are like, I believe in this and I want to help families, but you're going to get some freaks. I feel like the medical industry has done a better job over the years of weeding out, you know, serial killers and wearing work on it. Yeah. But this is the era where there's a lot of that one's trying where it's like no one's screening. So if someone's like, I want to be a serial killer. Oh, you know what I could just do? I could just go to medical school. Just be a doctor and kind of a doctor. As much as I want. Right. Using this like the, the, or be this kind of scientist. Yeah. Front of science where it's like, it's not, it doesn't mean they can't contribute, but it does mean that it's like sadist getting an opportunity to be sadist. Yes. And or in his case, perverts getting an opportunity to be a pervert because that's what this is about for him. Yes. So these white people about this hot lady and they're like, oh, the only person with a better ass is the chief's wife, her mother. And then they say the latter, the chief's wife, however, was slightly passé. Well, as the former was in full ambon po, right? Which I think I'm pronouncing that sort of right. It's like a French term for in good shape, right? So they're saying that, well, her mom has a better ass, but she's getting kind of old. And so this lady is, like, she's really at the prime age, right? Now, I'm going to continue with Goulton's writing about what he does because he sees this hot woman, right? I profess to be a scientific man and was exceedingly anxious to obtain accurate measurements of her shape. But there was a difficulty in doing this. I did not know a word of hot and taught and could never therefore have explained to the lady what the object of my foot rule could be of his measure, what why he's trying to measure her. And I really dare not ask for my right. And I really dared not ask my worthy missionary host to interpret for me because it's like his wife, basically. I therefore felt in a dilemma as I gazed at her form. The object of my admiration stood under a tree and was turning herself about to all points of the compass as ladies who wish to be admired usually do. She couldn't like see me and she was just like walking around, but she was like turning around so I could see her ass. I could tell that. She didn't say it. I knew she knew, right? She liked it. Of a sudden, my eye fell upon my sextant, the bright thoughts struck me. And I took a series of observations upon her figure in every direction up and down, crossways, diagonally and so forth. And I registered them carefully upon an outline drawing for fear of any mistake this being done. I brought, I boldly pulled out by measuring tape and measured the distance from where I was to the place she stood. And having thus obtained both base and angles, I worked out the results by trigonometry and logarithms. So in order, because he wants to measure this lady's ass and tits and stuff, but he can't like ask her, he uses a sextant and like his knowledge of geometry to get her measurements without her knowing. Get really cell energy. I will also real metaglasses energy. This guy would have been the first in line to fucking by metaglasses if they'd been around in his time. Oh, yeah. Oh, these days, you just take a picture on the subway, I guess. Yeah, this is advanced. Yeah, very advanced pervert. He is. Yeah, you got to give him that. Yeah, he's a pioneer of perfect. It took a lot more effort to be that kind of pervert in the Victorian. Yeah. Yeah. It is amazing. It is. It is. And also I had not realized, I had always assumed, because I've known for a long time, we've talked about the show about scientific racism and that all comes out of galt and science. He's the father of all of that and to realize that the origin of all of that, of all of you, Jinx of all this skull measuring is him trying because he thinks this black lady's hot, but he can't say anything about it. So he's like secretly trying to get her measurements. That's, it's always been prudent. It's always been pornographic for these people up to today. The racist today are no different. You know, oh, yeah. Yeah. I get I'll argue most people are perverts in some way in its world. You don't have to be unethical about it. Right. The judgment, the test of your perversion is how you deal with the fact that you're a pervert. Exactly. You got to contend with being a pervert. Yeah. The right, the ethical thing to do is find someone who either shares your perversions or is okay indulging yours consensually, right? Right. He's not. He doesn't care. None of them care about that, especially the 1800s. That's right. Pervert plus consent is generally going to be all right. It is important, you understand, though, that all of what comes later, all of you, Jinx, is based in a prudent and often sexual obsessive interest in the bodies of non-white people, right? Yeah. That they have to justify because you're not supposed to, right? Because it's like to race mix so you have to find an excuse, you know? And again, he's having sex with a lot of non-white people, rape usually. I can't tell. I mean, I assume sometimes there were people who had chosen to like work in a, that said, it's the 1800s. I don't know how relevant things like consent are when we're talking about a brothel in 1840. Anyway, to say Galton's writing was popular would be a massive understatement. He is, in fact, one of the writers who invents the grammar of Victorian era exploration and conquest, you know? Like, whenever you read basically any writing, justifying colonialism, it owes something to Galton. He creates the language with which we talk about colonialism. His first book was such a hit that he got to write a second to 1855. And the art of travel became a bestseller and in modified form, a textbook for the Royal Geographic Society. This is the book that teaches you how to run an expedition and how to meet native peoples and interact with them. Oh, good. I'm glad he wrote a book about this. 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I'm Jack Weiss-Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lit Podcast, we're outside asking some of the custodians of our stories, teachers, and our modern day writers, why? - They don't want a whole bunch of little elevators, Malcolm X's and Martin Luther King's on their own. - They want to build children who have no empathy. That's really the ultimate goal. We want books that don't make white kids feel bad. - So is the war on literacy and affirmation or our ability to connect? - Well, people with a know how sexy reading is and how fun they could be and not always associated with education. They could be in a state, they could be entertainment. And that is the beauty of reading. They can be all of those things. And considering this is Black Reading Month, the only real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. - And we're back. And by the way, we do not stand with that statement. I mean, quite frankly, I think that people from Michigan are the same as the rest of us, you know? Whatever our advertiser said about them, that's not our stance on Michiganders. So, we apologize, but obviously, you know, - All jazz to my parents, I'm sure I'm not thinking of these. - Yeah, look, a bucky's needs to apologize to your parents because those ads, which may have been deleted. Maybe you guys didn't hear the bucky's ads that are really racist against Michiganders, but they've been airing them on our podcast. - Oh, there's funny ads. - So, they're funny out to buckies, ask where they hate people for Michigan, you know, email buckies and talk to them about why they hate everyone in Michigan. I don't know why, that's not my choice, you know? That's buckies. Anyway, fucking circle-k, I'll take over. Goddamn, buckies, buckies. So, he's a leading man. He's a leading man in this field now, and in Victoria and England. So, he's also just like one of the most prominent men of his day, 'cause he's rich and he is now famous, right? So, he is a celebrity after this point, and very influential. Galton, the skits to join in on the great debates of the day, and the great intellectual debates of his day are increasingly centered on race. As Schumacher notes in her paper, there are a number of different theories as to where human beings came from in this era, and most people are either monogynists, and thus believe that all humans share a single common ancestral pair because the Bible said so. There's people who believe basically that now, but for not Bible reasons, for reasons of maybe genetically, that's what happened, right? We're not, we don't 100% know, right? And the upside of this belief, though, if you do believe that all human beings descend from the same ancestral pair, it can make other people take it different directions, but it can make a powerful argument for the quality of all peoples. The Christians who are abolitionists in the early and mid-1800s, in part are abolitionists because they believe that we're all, like God made us all, right? Like, you know, we're all sitting from Adam and Eve. We probably should know each other, right? Again, monogynists were still often very racist. They came up with different explanations for why some people are less equal than the rest, but also there were always among the monogynists some white-eyed maniacs who would like, read the Bible and go, well, how does this not mean we're all equal? And if you take that too far, pretty soon you got John Brown on your hands, right? Which is good, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Polygenism was the other big theory, and this anticipated that the different races of the world were different species with divergent and separate histories. And people found biblical justifications for this too, but it was much more popular among men who had discarded their faith. And Galton is in the process of discarding his faith in this period. He doesn't, he's not religious. He's not really an atheist yet, but he's not religious. That said, he hasn't discarded his prejudice. And so if you're the kind of person who doesn't really believe that much in Christianity, but you're still a bigot, you can see this as a justification for like why people who don't look like you aren't human. Now, right, in the modern era, I think the, by far the most supported stance is that like all human being share common ancestors, there is debate as to when did we fully become like what we would call modern day humans? And is it possible that like people left Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens separately from other, there is some debate about that. I don't, and I'm not qualified to weigh in on it. Obviously, there's people on that side. I think most people who are like, well, but that doesn't mean they're less human. It just means that we took people to different, you know, and as we come to understand more about because there are, all of us have non-human DNA pretty much to some extent, whether it's Neanderthals or Denisovians or what they call like ghost DNA, which is DNA from a similar to human, enough to interbreed, but non-human species that we've. - Oh, that's less ribbated, right? To us. - Not as cool as what I thought the road goes, I'm sorry. - No, Robert, we all come from, didn't you know, we come from lobsters? - We come from, have you heard of George and Peterson? - We do inherit much from the lobsters. We have lobsters, serotonin is why hierarchies are good. - I've always said that. - Yeah. - So anyway, there's debate about this to this day that, and I don't think that debate means that anyone's less human than the other. Also, the fucking Denisovians are like Neanderthals were around a day. I would support them having rights 'cause they were clearly intelligent sapien beings. - All right, like I understand a bunch of people who stand around and thinking like, why the fuck are we all here? What do we do here? - Yeah, what do we hear? - I can't look different. It's a thing to figure out at a point, right? - It's a thing to figure out, and it might inform, like learning about like basic human nature, might inform some things about it today. - It's an medicine, right? - Much like religion for some people. This is all going back to finding ways to justify your current behavior with these people. - Yeah. - Right. - Is it like, I just want a way to justify feeling, like I'm the main character in some way. - It's the difference between, I need to understand the genetics of these people because like sickle cell anemia is more common among folks who are inherited or who descended from this line, and we want to cure that. So we need to understand certain things about genetics in order to try to treat sickle cell anemia, to being like, oh, well, because those people have this, that means they're less human than me, right? - Right. - People can take kind of the same starting point, and if you're an asshole, you wind up with bigots, and if you're not an asshole, you wind up trying to solve illnesses, right? - It's why, like, I know the alpha male thing is-- - Yeah. - The stuff of wolf prison rules or whatever. - Right. - But it's that same principle, right? Or it's Jordan Beuser with the lobster, where it's that I'm going to use this like pseudoscience, or even real science to justify why unfair systems exist today. - Yeah. - And therefore, it's natural, you know? - Yeah, exactly. So the question is not, who was like right? 'Cause today we don't call this monogetist, or whatever we call it, like the out of Africa hypothesis, I forget what the other one is called, but there are still, there's still debate. The debate just shouldn't be about like, who's a person? (laughing) - The answer is ultimately it's like, who gives a shit, right? Like, yeah, let's not-- - You should give a shit out, but it shouldn't change how you treat people. It's just like, interesting as to like, like, for example, carrying about like, I don't know, which ancient peoples did which genocides to whom, doesn't mean that like, you support punishing people because their ancestors, the Assyrians, did this thing-- - Right, exactly. - But of course the further we get from all of that, it like, not that it matters, but it's like, you know, again, the further we get from all that, the more people are gonna have to sit around and go like, what the fuck are we doing this, the podcast? What is this, how did this all start? Who's to blame for all of this? But it like, it really shouldn't inform the way we treat anybody and for all of us. - That's the problem, that's the problem. Yeah, so you've got your monogetists and you've got your polygenists, right? And Galton is kind of, he's a polygenist, right? He believes that these other races are not really human beings and that's part of kind of involved in his like growing atheism in this period of time. Now these are not universal views. As I said, there's a lot of debate and there's debate about how you should treat people and how you should see these different native peoples. One of the first really popular explorers to counter the attitudes of men like Galton was David Livingston. If you've heard like Professor Livingston, I presume, right? Like the guy who like, yeah, yeah. That's David Livingston. - I know what the fuck that's from. - He was a scientist and he was a missionary, right? Who winds up in like the middle of fucking Africa and he gets awarded a medal in 1856 for African exploration. Here's how Schumacher's paper describes his views. He reported being kindly treated by the natives and that they were remarkably civil and generous. Livingston had faith in the edge of ability and the industry of the native races. Richard Burton, also a contemporary of Galton's, held vastly different views. Describing an African tribe, the Juan Yika, as a feudal race of barbarians, drunken and immoral, cowardly and destructive, indolent, greedy and thriftless. So if the views on race can be thought of as a continuum then, while not an outlier, Galton's views of African natives were generally at the negative end and he had little concern about being outspoken and his writings about his beliefs. So guys like Livingston are like, well no, these are like people and they're actually like really great. You get to know them if you like learn their language, they're pretty chill. - Right, it's the idea of like describing Native Americans is like they're so stoic and serious and angry. It's like no, they're angry at you. - They're person of service. - You fucked some shit up for the man. - Like you're describing how they felt about you as if it's what makes up their people. It turns out if you're not a dickhead, they might actually be quite nice to you. - Yeah, it'd be like, I came back from Iraq and was like, there's something in a racquet culture that makes them really like bottled water and it's like, no, just because of a wide variety of political things, the water's not fucking trustworthy. Like, a lot of the time in war street areas so they need to use bottled water. Like they don't prefer it. It's just that the only option they have but you're not, like people like him aren't thinking about shit that way. For instance, people like Livingston are though. So again, you should condemn Galton and Burton and the like for not thinking of shit like this 'cause guys like Livingston are perfectly capable of it, right? This is a choice people are making to be bigots. Francis returned home to England and time to spend the Christmas of 1852 with his mother and sister. He met a girl during this visit, Luis Abutler and the two were engaged to Mary by April of 1853. They traveled some and rented a few places while he kept writing books and doing his research on the increasing obsession of his life, race. In 1857, he purchased a home in South Kensington and would spend the rest of his life there working as a scientist. He transitioned then from the life of an active explorer to that of a rich man sitting at a high level at the RGS helping to plan out expeditions and then critiquing the failures and successes of the men who actually went out to explore. He wrote one to one younger explorer after, so there's this debate over the origins of the Nile and there's this legendary explorer, John Hanning Speck who turns out to be right about where the Nile is but he winds up in a disagreement with everyone else in the RGS, including, well, a lot of other people in the RGS, including Galton. And Galton, eventually this guy Speck dies, right? He accidentally shoots himself while he's doing one of these hunting chips that these guys are always doing. And afterwards, Galton writes like a friend of this dude who is dead. What he could have done and what you can do is to state accurately what you saw, leaving the stay-at-home minute science to co-alate the data. And other is like, well, where Speck went wrong, is he tried to have ideas of his own. You should leave that to the smart rich guys who don't go out and explore anymore. Like, leave the smart stuff to us. Don't think about things, just report, you know? He didn't treat act that way when he was in the field, but that's what he wants other people to do, right? And so Galton's life went on. Periodically, he took the time to publish articles with his growing theories on race. In the 1859 publication of the origin of species by his older cousin Charles Darwin electrified and inspired him. And this is what seems to have made him into fully and atheist, right? He reads this book by Darwin, and he was like, "Okay, if that explains it, there's no God." And like a lot of people have that attitude, right, to be fair. Yeah, I have killed God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Darwin got him. Fucking spirit is ass. Darwin had opened his book by discussing the breeding of livestock for specific traits, because that's relevant when you're talking about natural selection. Galton was struck with an idea, though, when he read that portion. An idea that hadn't occurred to Darwin, which is like, "What if we do that to people?" All right, well, if we can do that to livestock, why can't we breed people to have more traits that we want, right? What's wrong with that? Yeah, that is dark. This isn't like that dark. This isn't gonna go anywhere bad. Yeah, so he publishes his first writing on what would come to be called eugenics in 1865. This two-part article published in McMillan's magazine was titled "Hereditary Talent and Character." And it introduced practical elements of early race science to the educated public. He writes, "The power of man over animal life "and producing whatever varieties of form he pleases "is enormously great. "It would seem as though the physical structure "of future generations was almost as plastic as clay "under the control of the breeder's will. "It is my desire to show more pointedly than "so far as I am aware has been attempted before "that mental qualities are equally under control." Now, I'll point something out here, which is that they're actually already was, going on in this period of time and experiment, into what if you breed people together who have only the best traits? As far as what we rich Europeans consider the best traits, what if you only let those people breed with each other? And what happens is you get the Habsburg monarchy, like the Habsburg family who are horribly interbred to the point that like you've got people on the throne not far from this period who are like unable to like function because they're horribly in bread, right? Right, like it's not good. It's the thing, they're not, people aren't fucking Pokemon. You can't like, I don't know, it just works. He doesn't understand recessive traits, so he thinks that you've got a smart man, it'll make another smart kit, right? Right, exactly. The problem is, he doesn't understand. I mean, there's a lot of problems. But one of the problems is like, what is a better person? Is it an impossible question? And the idea of like someone's decision of what makes a better person is all wrapped up in culture and prejudice and all sorts of terrible things and not understanding what it means. And like, you know, capitalism in the system in place and like how a person functions within that, none of that means anything. No, ultimately. If you let the people who have like the most influence over like what gets written and what rich people think is credible, the term and who gets to breed based on the characteristics, the most value, you'll get a bunch of people, you'll get a country full of nothing, but people with sub stacks, right? And you won't have anyone who knows how to like make or do anything, 'cause these people don't know how to make or do anything, right? - Right, it's the idea. - It's the idea that they did anything really on his own, like, it's, no, it's just why diversity is actually strength. That's not just a saying, is that like, no, the more, yeah, the more diverse group of people you have, putting their heads together and putting their cultures together and putting their experiences together means that they're better equipped for anything that might happen. - It's why, for example, if you look at like the mathematicians who are going to come about like 100 years after this, like Albert Einstein, not a guy who was bread, a guy who came from what he would have considered, what Galton would consider inferior gene stock, right? And when I said Galton never did anything, yeah, he does have a lot, he makes a lot of advancements and statistics and like math because he's a rich guy, everyone listens to. He's not the only guy who could have thought of those things. He was just the guy that wasn't starving to death with that kind of a mind because he was born rich, right? That's what I mean, like, I don't have that much respect for even the good things he did because it was all on fucking easy mode because he was born rich and in charge of the British fucking empire, right? So the core of this piece that Galton has put together, this 1865 article that's like a precursor, he hasn't invented the term genetics yet or a eugenics yet, he's starting to think about it. And the core of his argument was that men of good breeding, right? Like he kind of collects a bunch of stories of men of good breeding to see how many times these like men who are like significant have kids who go on to be also significant, right? So he's trying to prove that great men are likelier to have children who are great men, sons. He's not really concerned with the daughters, but great men are more likely to have sons who are imminent men. And that's right. And then they have better genes, you know? What is great? It's, it's that idea like we're going to talk about all this. Yeah, it's like if someone's like a successful lawyer, right? And it's like, well, he must be a great man. And it's like, no, he's just good at the fake rules that money is way about this thing. And he happens to have a lot of money. And he can afford nice things. A big part of Galton's calculus is going to be like, wow, a lot of great lawyers have sons who are great lawyers. It must be because genetic are more inclined to be great lawyers. And it's like, is it that or is his dad owned a law firm? And so he got a really huge leg up, right? It would be like being like, wow, there's something in the quaid genetics that makes for great actors. And that's why Jack Quaid has been a success. It was like, no, as Jack Quaid would say, he had a real leg up for a great, good actor. I like Jack Quaid, but like, he's Meg Ryan's son, his last name's Quaid, it helped. The irony here. And like this thing, listen, if you're rich, that doesn't mean your useless piece of shit. No. No. However, this line of thinking creates a situation right where like you're actually doing the opposite and by like encouraging like, oh, these rich people need to have tons of kids because they're a better stock. It's like, if anything, you're putting in more people who don't have to like learn or fight their whole lives, who live here, actually doing the opposite, by this line of thinking. Jared Tolkien who writes the Lord of the Rings and is like, fucking has to fight in World War I. He's not a guy who gets like being a great author handed to him on a platter versus Christopher Peilini, the arrogant kid who's parents own like a publishing house and so like when he's a kid and he's probably not really ready. He gets like a book published and they're able to like really push it to be very popular. It's just less impressive than what Tolkien did because it was handed to this kid. Right. And again, it doesn't mean that someone can't be talented. It just, it actually worsens their odds. It's like when it, it's like, it's like later directors where it's like no one's pushing back on the directors so they can make whatever they want. Yeah. Why are we as impressed by fucking Spielberg anymore, you know? Right. Why does Megalopolis exist? Probably because no one was like, Coppola, no, you can't. Sorry, man. It's because you hit a certain point of wealth and fame in which you have no more adversity and like art comes from adversity and so does like achievement as a rule. It's just less impressive when there's no friction, right? Right. And there's never any friction in gold's life. And he is, as he's trying to prove that like good breeding is what really matters and what makes people great or not. He's just looking at other rich people who have lived frictionless existence and be like, well, look at how many of their sons wound up rich and famous too. And that's really like most of what's going on with his actual like science in this book. And it shouldn't be surprising that the inventor of eugenics was a rich kid who inherited his fortune and that he concluded that great men tend to have great children. Um, he came to understand as a result of this research that breeding or nature was the main and most dominant factor in deciding men's mental capability. It's almost the only thing that matters. But therefore, it makes sense for the state to lavish resources and breeding support not on the poor who are struggling, but on the rich and the already successful in order to ensure that they have more kids because that's what'll make society better in the long run. Galton expressed fear that financial constraints and that desire to have a career often kept men of genius celibate during their prime breeding years, right? They're too busy trying to establish themselves as a, in a career and they don't have as many kids as they otherwise would. And so he suggests that society should take a role in encouraging and funding breeding between exceptional people. What an extraordinary effect might be produced on our race if its object was to unite in marriage, those who possess the finest and most suitable natures, mental, moral, and physical. At one point, he tried to calculate the frequency that men of ability are born in the general population and he concluded only one in 3,000 people were naturally exceptional, which means that if you've got three or four exceptional men in the same family, just a couple generations, that's proof that there are thousands of times genetically superior than the common man, right? Completely ignoring wealth, completely ignoring influence, nepotism, all of that stuff, right? He calculated this and the way he gets this number that one in 3,000 people are exceptional is also complete bullshit because he calculates this by using the number of college students educated in Europe over the last 400 years and comparing that to estimates of the general population, right? Because only all of the exceptional people naturally made it to college. There's no exceptional people who didn't get to go to college. And for again, it's just like self-fulfilling, it's, you know, it's an echo change, right? It's just like every other thing that's dipping down. Yeah, it's fucking a, in the second part of that article, he suggested selective breeding for positive qualities in some groups and discouraged breeding entirely for other groups. And these other groups are nearly all non-white people that he had zero experience with, he never meets any of these people, he doesn't know them, he doesn't even talk to most of them. As Susan Schumacher writes, "Unlike his work with European populations, he makes no attempt to provide any evidence for his comments. He expounds at length about the American Indian, a race he has not interacted with personally, and he makes no effort to indicate the source of his information. He maintains, however, that they are cold, melancholic, patient, and taciturn. But also patriotic have strong local attachments and a sense of personal dignity. As Michael Billing comments, the prejudices of the, of the Victorian explorer were raised to the level of immutable biological facts, right, like, and this is, he's not even seeing these people. He just heard a description of them and are like, ah, the red man, cold and melancholic. And he's like, that's their characteristics. This has to be everything you need to know about them, can't be anything else to learn, right? They've removed from people that he's standing in front of often, often, now like removing himself even more from people and trying to make people his equations in his head. And it is, it's one of those things where it's like the idea that any of this thinking would be passed on in a relational setting is not good. It is upsetting. His scientific method is, of course, flawed across the board. But while he received some criticism at the time, it was usually less dire than modern scientist Ruth Schwarz Cohen's conclusion that quote, rarely in history, in the history of science has such an important generalization been made on the basis of so little concrete evidence. So badly put and so naively conceived. I do like that's her discussing his, his work here this 1865 article and a lot of his other stuff is that like, yeah, this is about the most ignorant bullshit that's ever been put turned into science. As, baby shit, yep. Now one positive thing, you can say about Galton in this era is that he was not as bad as he would come to be because he doesn't yet think that interracial marriage should be banned categorically. And in general, he muted his real opinions on race for a while out of fear of public backlash. As he later acknowledged in his autobiography, popular feeling was not then ripe to accept even the elementary truths of hereditary talent and character upon which the possibility of race improvement depends. Real lesson was it prepared to consider dispassionately and he proposals for practical action. So I laid the subject wholly to one side for many years, right? I hid my power level so that people wouldn't know how is the fucking brodo Nazi, bro little wild. I can't believe you're like, he's not as bad as he will be and it's like he's already ordered several monkeys, he's killed monkeys, he's a sex criminal, great, yeah, he's a sex criminal. He, he, he made a person his pet. Yeah. In 1869, he published a book, Hereditary Genius, that took his initial list of successful men and their offspring and expanded it to collect data on many different kinds of successful people. This reinforced his belief that some people are inherently special and he wrote that if the imminent men of any period had been changelings when babies, a fair proportion of those who survived and retained their health would have equally risen to prominence. You'll see this today, this attitude, like well, if you were to take any billionaire and like start them with nothing again at the bottom of society, they'd wind up being rich and powerful again because they're just inherently better, right? I used to be those. Yes. You know, you saw the interview of Elon Musk being asked like, if you start over with $1,000 and he couldn't even understand the question. No, no, he was like, he can't conceive. Yeah, yeah. He was like, well, I wouldn't have that and it's like, yes, you idiot, we're trying to just fucking dip shit, yeah, yeah. And this is, these are comforting things to believe that like, oh, even if I was made to live as a poor person, I'd wind up successful again because I'm so inherently good. That's comforting if you're one of the most imminent men in your era, right? Right. Because I get it is like, if you become stupid rich, you got to tell yourself like, it's because I'm so cool. I deserve it. Right. And he went on to argue in his book, in this book, that just as men like him were superior to others in their society, his race, the white race existed on top of a pyramidal hierarchy. And he wouldn't have said the white race, right? He would have said Anglo-Saxons because he doesn't believe, for example, like people in the Balkans, maybe even Italians, aren't really white to him, right? Oh, yeah. This is advanced racism. Yeah. This is advanced racism, right? But as people like him, as he is at the top of his own cultural hierarchy, people his race is at the top of the global hierarchy of races and at the bottom of course are black people and lowest of all, native Australians. Again, it's very funny for a guy to be like, hey, everybody, I did the science. I did. I spent a lot of time on the science. I determined that I'm the best of as good as it gets you. Yeah. His arguments here are filled with flawed and faulty logic because quote, no man, and this is how he argues that like people who are at the top now would always have been at the top, quote, no man can achieve a very high reputation without being gifted in very high abilities. And thus few who possess these very capabilities can fail, right? Because anyone who succeeds must have be talented. Anyone who's talented will always be a success, right? Now he does make occasional allowances to the fact that being born especially richer to powerful parents might tip the scales a little, but these are never more than cursory gestures and his actual research is universally dog shit. His favored kind of imminent man when he's talking about like men of eminence, the top kind is a judge because no mediocre man could ever become a judge, right? It's impossible. Sure. And you aren't impressive to be judges. All good judges. All the judges are good. Ajag. So he'd saw the fact that many prominent families had multiple eminent members. proof of their inherent genetic superiority. Per Bower, his biographer, he rejected the view that this was due to their having more opportunities of thrusting their relatives into eminence. He also stepped in to explain points where the facts deviated from his beliefs. Great military commanders, he found rarely had sons who were equally successful. Now, this might be because that's not really a heritable. It's based on your experiences, on how you grow up, and if you become an emperor, your kid probably doesn't have to fight his whole life to build an empire. And he's just not going to be as good at it as you, right? Probably you get some exceptions like Alexander, right? But usually most great military leaders in history are not the sons of equally great military leaders. It actually happens fairly rarely. And he blames this on the fact that if married at all, they are mostly away from their wives on military service. Now first off, this ignores all the rapes that these guys commit as they conquer cities around the world, but also even in this period, I'm reading a book right now called Uncomparable, which is about Napoleon Bonaparte's the most elite regimen in his entire army, the 9th Infantry. And there's tons of stories about guys who've been in the French army for decades and have kids and stuff, right? It's actually really common, even if you're constantly on deployment to have kids and just be away, right? It's actually certainly more normal for officers and stuff than not. Even though he felt clearly had some direct impact on their sons, but he was never able to give them as much credit as the men, men and women have to be misresponsible. That's so crazy to hear, is this the sort of real deal, bro? Oh man, the racist guy also hates women. Oh man. Also then like women. Wow. That hates them. It's just that whenever he has an imminent man whose like sons don't do anything cool, he's like, well, they're mom, most of why. Oh yeah. It's great, man. Genetics. Yeah. It's also so scientific to be like. But surely the women had something to do. Yeah. He is also incurious. Yeah. Golden as far as I can tell is the first man, I mean, these belief exists, it means the first man to try to argue scientifically that women are less suited for science and math. And he does this by citing the fact that great scientists credited their fathers and their biographies three times as often as they credited their mothers. So obviously science genes can't be passed on by women, right? Wow. What a guy. What a guy. Were there were there moms allowed to be site were they allowed to read like he said, fuck women. Yeah. He said that the great scientist who credits it all, the great scientist who credits his early education to his sister. Hmm. Did they? Did you really have nothing to do with your inquiring mind Francis? Like, I don't know, man. Well, this is the thing about him is like this whole thing is about a guy who you've already brought me through the history of him being like the biggest jackass of his time. Just the shittiest dick. Whoever sucked. Yeah. This, this perfect storm of mediocre and like evil. Yeah. And then him growing up to be like, I think some people are naturally better than others. Yeah. I'm naturally better. And it's like your life is roof that that's not you in fact are not right. Now Darwin sent a letter congratulating his cousin on the book, Redditary Genius. Dalton responded to his cousin with falling prey saying, I used to be wretched under the weight of the old fashioned arguments from design of which I felt though I was unable to prove myself the worthlessness, right? He's saying like, I used to believe in like God had made all and you freed me from that Darwin. So I'm just so glad that you you find something valuable in my arguments that like we're better than everybody else. You know who else is better than everybody else? Dave Bell. Me. Yeah. And the advertisers of this podcast, who might be Dave, I don't know, it seems unlikely though. It does seem like everyone. It's the Jonas Brothers with the hey Jonas podcast. We've been catching up with some great friends Paul Rod, Michael Bubley, Seth Meyers, Nile Horan, Jake Shane, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex National. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone okay, well control is a harsh word. I would say that's a harsh word. I am more outspoken, growing up a lot of the times because she was so quiet. Now I'm working on like thinking a mom is really known and I'm thinking before I speak. And Joey King. You know if your like mom is yelling at your sibling and even if you're annoyed with your sibling, you just like won't let that slide. It's like you only can yell at your sibling. That is not what I'm talking about her like that. Right. I just want to talk about her. You've been taking your calls listening to your voicemails and giving advice or at least trying to. So if you've got catching up to do now is the perfect time. Listen to Hey Jonas on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. There's no fluff. Didn't catch the latest rolling Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed and the argument is do you want to win? It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interest and they complained about the very thing to receive. It's wrong. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all go scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same bag. That's Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. 12 C's, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 23, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts. Is there an epidemic against literature? I'm Jacquie's Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lit podcast, we're outside asking some of the custodians of our stories, teachers, and our modern day writers why. They don't want a whole bunch of little elevators, Malcolm X's, and Martin with the Kings on the round. They want to build children who have no empathy. So is the war on literacy and affirmation or our ability to connect? What people to know how sexy reading is and how fun they could be and not always associated with education. It can be all of those things. Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Galton's book became influential across a broad swath of an English intellectual life. Darwin pronounced that the book had convinced him that education and environment could have only a small effect on the mind of anyone, as most of our qualities are innate. Galton had his critics, though, particularly in the religious press. One of his more scientifically minded reviewers, Herman Mererville, published a cogent critique of some of his methodology, as Bullwear describes. To illustrate his argument, Mererville pointed out that of the 250 clever relations of judges in Galton's list, more than a hundred had been lawyers themselves, which seemed strange unless we are to assume not only that talent is hereditary, but that the special breed of the lawyer is hereditary also. He drew attention to the family of Atkins in Galton's list of judges. There have been four judges of the name, and let us note in passing, nobody except a law student or a painstaking county antiquary has ever heard more than the name of any of them. These Atkins's are credited with seven or eight remarkable relatives, but of these there was only one who was not a lawyer, and he was a reader of Lincoln's in. This whole list has the unmistakable character of a snug little family of jobbers, rather than a galaxy of genius. In other words, no one's heard of these judges, no one's heard of these lawyers, there's no evidence they're good at what they were doing. There's just evidence that because some of them were lawyers, they made others lawyers. It's nepotism. There's just evidence of nepotism, that's jobbers lawyers. It's been invented our own little language, and now we are the best at it. Now we're the smartest, the smartest, yeah. The intellectual monument to self-congratulation is the foundation of eugenic science. This is what it's all based on, baby. Galton expanded on his established habit of throwing as many numbers at the reader as he could gather. This is a big part of even today, like the modern race side, well, look at this statistic about IQ, where does IQ really tell you that much? Are the IQ tests good and consistent? Where are you getting your, anyway, it doesn't matter if there was any numbers that I'm saying. I think you're smart, you know? Then Shapiro Sentens. No, takes a paragraph. It just hits me up. You have to break up. Honestly. Yes. You have to hit some people, and Galton should have been hit more. Anyway, before this had been a, before this had been a mix of it, like before this book, his, the numbers he threw out because statistics wasn't really all that figured out, they'd in a mix of his own primitive attempts at statistical analysis and measurements of people's bodies. But between 1865, in the publication of hereditary genius in 1869, Galton learned about gossip and law, and started applying modern statistical analysis to his findings. Often badly, but someone else's events like figures out and starts writing about this way of doing statistics better, and that's what Galton is starting to add to his science in 1869. For example, he read about a demonstration by another scientist that showed that height, weight, and other measurements for a population fell in a bell-shaped distribution. He extrapolated from these results and observations about grades at Cambridge, and he developed an A to G classification of all men on earth according to their natural gifts. Naturally, only white men were capable of reaching the highest categories like F, and those were no black people, or reach that. Of course, no black people who were that level, right? That just doesn't happen. Science, science. It's just science that I invented and figured out. This is cocaine science. This is mess science. As Schumacher writes, as with previous articles, these assessments appear to be based solely on his own experiences in Southern Africa, and he makes no attempt to produce a scientific or statistical explanations for his comments. One representative example of his logic would be his belief that the least impressive white travelers would automatically hold their own and mentally outfox any African chief, even in his home, and this is based solely on the fact that Galton was pretty sure he'd once outsmarted an African chief. So any white guy could do it. This is turning his random inklings into science. He's like, I think I could take that guy. Therefore, it's in the textbook now. Did he outsmart this guy? I'm making him sign a shitty treaty? Or did the guy just know this guy is the representative of people with more guns than me? This is it's cold thinking, right? Like this is if I started a cult, a lot of the stuff I'd write down would just be shit that I think that I believe right? Yeah, like about like, oh, I think my neighbors are murder. Okay, that's a new commandment. Like that's just, yeah. Yeah, if I was always doing my version of this scientist based on my own success, I'd be like, well, look, obviously, if you want to be a success as a writer, you've got to lick heroin off of a guy's fingers in Russia. Like it's the only way as far as I'm based on my sample group of one. Right? Yeah. Exactly. It works for you. It works for everybody. They should teach it in like fifth grade. It should be mandatory. Yeah. The book Hereditary Genius was a hit, but it didn't inspire as I've stated more than a few detractors. Galton responded to some of the most prominent criticisms of Hereditary Genius, specifically the idea embodied in a review published by the Times of London, universal knowledge of reading, writing, and ciphering, and the absence of popperism would raise the national grade or ability far greater than any, and higher than any system of selected marriage. Right? So the, again, the Times of London is like, look, if we just educate kids and make sure that they're not like starving, that will do more than making rich people easier for rich people to breed, which is objectively true. And I have to note here that as I wrote this part of the episode, I was listening to music and the song Flagpole Sit Up by Harvey Danger, Shuffled On, and as I typed the words selected marriage, I heard these lyrics that in retrospect describe Francis Galton's intellectual journey and thousands fewer words than I've used. Been around the world and found that only stupid people they're breeding. The Cretan's cloning and feeding, and I don't even own a TV, right? That's gotten, that's gotten, baby. Yeah, that's how he believes about the world. So I have to also note hereditary genius. Terrible. That is, it's a, it's a, it's a manifesto title. Or it's like, it is, it is. This is the time when a kid who goes up and shoots up a fucking school. Yeah. That are like a pixie's album. Yeah. Or pixie's album. Yeah. It's man. What, like the moment someone hands you a book that says, I wrote this. It's called hereditary genius. You don't read that. You burn, you burn that. You might burn it. Yeah. You might, you throw it right in the fireplace. Yep. In 1873, Galton wrote an article for Frazier's Magazine that the website ScienceAQ summarized as describing a future in which the genetic elite were incentivized by the state to procreate, while the genetically unfit would be barred from reproducing at all. In a contemporary letter to the Times of London, Galton suggested giving Africa to the Chinese, theorizing immense gain if Chinese people could outbreed and finally displace Africans, which is at least a unique kind of racial ethnic cleansing. I haven't heard that specific idea before. Wait. What did he say? He wants to replace Africans with Chinese people in Africa because it'll, because they're more industrious. Right. It's such a weirdly specific Chinese too. Yeah. What he says, that year, Galton also first started to speculate about the categories his fellow Britons might fit into. Analyzing and describing them with the same tools he developed to categorize native races. He disliked what he found. Too many sickly children were born to narrow-chested men and fragile, delicate women. Galton first came up with a bigger. Narrow-chested men. I love that. Yes, yes. Get it, folks. Too many so-and-boys, Evan Babies. Galton first came up with the infamous term Eugenics in the early 1880s. We don't know exactly when, but it's first published when he's working on a book called Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development. As Angela Sinie writes in the book "Superior," Galton coined the term in 1883, from the Greek prefix "you" for "well" or "good" to describe the idea of using social control to improve the health and intelligence of future generations. Tucker gives a somewhat differing account of the origins of the word Eugenics in her paper. She says, "He adapted the Greek word Eugenics, which translated to mean "good in stock" and "herediterally endowed with noble qualities." Meanwhile, Analy, a lecturer in History of Science and Medicine and Director of the MA program for Medical Humanities at Birkbeck, the University of London, gives a thorough explanation. He coined the term Eugenics from the Greek meaning "well-born" to describe the betterment of the race through scientific interventions and social controls. So, there's a little bit of disagreement, you know, on the specifics here, but whatever one agrees is that he coins this term to define the bettering of the race through scientific and social interventions, right? Hanley notes that one of his direct inspirations was his cousin Darwin's documentation of breeding pigeons for specific characteristics. She adds, "To facilitate his studies of human difference, Galton created the anthropometric laboratory, the archives of which are held in the University College London. He collected enormous quantities of data to prove that humans were subject to Darwinian natural selection in the same way as plants and animals. Indeed, according to Galton and his followers, including Carl Pearson, who became the first chair of Eugenics at University College London, the British race was degenerating, right? As he starts to turn these techniques, he's initially developed to analyze these people he's either seen or read about, and he turns them on to his own people. He starts to realize, "Oh my God, these poor people are outbreeding, the rich people, and that means the British race is going to get weak." It's the etiocracy argument, right? Yeah. Yeah. In the 1870s, he had formalized the often perverted inclination he felt to measure the anatomies of people to determine their abilities and fitness for breeding. And his findings, he argued, prove that the streets of London were being flooded with subpar people, particularly Irish famine refugees who, having survived near extinction, took on what he described as a "needroid look," right? Well, once these people starved death, they look like the other starving people I've seen, that must mean that they're all genetically inferior, as opposed to, again, malnourished, because they haven't had a malnourished because of people like you. He's such a simple guy. Yeah. He's such a simple guy, right? He wasn't just worried that these people are going to outbreed higher quality men and women. He's scared that they're going to destroy society. His work measuring human bodies led him to be the first scientist to discover and elucidate the principle of statistic correlation. And he'd noticed that the people who seemed to be breeding the most, the poor, also did the most gambling and committing fighting, and they didn't. Actually, it was incredibly common at the point of time that he was alive for like rich children of rich families to waste their entire fortune gambling. That's incredible. That's how like all of the rich families of his era are going to lose their money. It's like their son's gambling it away, right? But he's like, he just sees the poor people gambling. That's different from rich people gambling, right? It's worse. And that's probably heritable. So we should probably do something about that. Maybe by stopping certain people from breeding, right? That's where Galton's going to land. And we'll talk more about that in part three. But we're done for now, Dave. How are you feeling? I feel invigorated. Good. You know, by all this talk of just a terrible, just an awful man. An awful man. I want to, I'm going to build a cage and I'm going to find his bones. I'm going to dig him up. I'm just going to say I'm going to dig him up. Dig him up. Yeah. Dig him up. And look, folks, go out and find some bones of your own. Find someone else's bones. Someone you think is bad. Dig him up. That's not useful. I just don't need their bones. Are you guys both narrow-chested men? What's happening here? Because I'm an uncommonly good looking female lunatic. And I just want to know, are you narrow-chested men? There's only one way to find out, Sophie. And that's we've got to dig up as many bones as we can. Uh-huh. And we've got to measure the shit out of him. We've got to measure the bones. Oh, that's true. Get your sextence out and start measuring motherfuckers. You know? We got a plan. We got a plan. Okay, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye. (upbeat music) Behind the bastards is a production of CoolZone Media. For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes, every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com/at/behindthebastards. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news. Bodybags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. Listen to Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. What up, this Jay Valentine co-host of the R&B Money Podcast alongside my brother, R&B legend, tank. Together we've built a space for artists, executives and fans of R&B music to reminisce and tell the real stories behind the music. I have no money. I was hood famous. Blige, B2K to Jill Scott. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan, this is where you belong. Listen to R&B money from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Join me, R&B stubs on the R&B Stubbs tennis podcast as I break it all down. No cliches, no sugarcoding, just host analysts from someone who's actually been there. Coco, looking real good, her surf looks so much smoother than it has in the past. I was really happy to see you go back to what she looked like a couple years ago and she was winning dominantly. Listen to the R&B Stubbs tennis podcast on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.