Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Francis Galton: Inventor of Eugenics

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

In part 2, we follow Galton during his youthful rampage through the middle east and then Africa, and how his 'gap years' created the racism we all live with today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coalzo Media. And we're back. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the 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, Milo Yianopoulos, 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 being like we shouldn't in Milo Yianoplas being taken to custody by ice. I want to read you a post Milo 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 got taken into custody by the exact people who he enabled and cheered on his entire life. And now he's stuck in immigration jail looking like shit. You can see his fucking mugshot right now. We'll make sure we put that on the YouTube. Otherwise, just look it up.

Fuck him. Yeah. It just because, like, you can laugh at leopards eating someone's face. That doesn't mean you like leopards eating everybody's faces, right? It's just. I tried, we tried to stop the leopards from eating anybody's face, Milo. 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. It's 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 smell, yeah, I smell awesome. I smell radical. Yeah. See, Dave. 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. That 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 that into 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 knock 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 can still see it and you're like, that's awesome.

That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. It's like throwing things down. Yeah, exactly. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news, body bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff.

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We've got you covered. Yeah, there's a lot of news happening these days. And some of it's breaking. We are on top of it every single day. There's a bunch of true crime going on out there as well, and so much of it dominating on social media. We have our eye on it all. Listen to the Amy and T.J.

podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information

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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 time, I just do to say, 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 like, like a birthday or something like that of the like. Right. 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.

That said, yeah. I do think Ali's family probably didn't want him. That's what happened, right? Okay. He's saying is like, Muslims just don't want Christians or I think it's that they don't want you. And it wasn't his family. I can see him being like, oh, you're Muslim.

You don't want Christians. Them going like, yeah, let's go with that. Yeah, let's go with that. Let's say that. Yeah, let's say whatever keeps you away. And these are not his, Ali's family. These are just some random Muslims who know that a Muslim has died away from his home and that these white people aren't going to do anything to give him a

proper burial, right? That's what's happening here. I will say, in terms of looking into this, I did look into, like, was it permissible in the past for members of other? 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. It's like, cool. Like, God isn't angry about that. He judges people. It's not for us to do. That's the general attitude. It seems like most religions has those things, right?

Right. Who gives a shit, man? Who gives a shit, man? You got to live your life. Like, 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'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 berber but may flog as many Egyptians and beat them with sticks as much as you like they are thoroughly savage so when I say I think he wasn't allowed at the funeral because he 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 Berbers don't let you beat him. The Egyptians do. He would be at the funeral, like, using the boy as the chair for the people. Yeah, he'd need to fucking hitting people with this kid's corpse. Yeah, you're 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 feel like 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. I can see a lot of that, right?

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. Yeah. So Galton claimed to have sent Ali's property and due wages, the money that he'd earned so far to

his wife in Cairo after he died, along with a little present for herself and thought his duty fulfilled. This is clearly all I'll 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 ends his trip in 1845. It's because he stiffs this dead kid's family and they're trying to pursue him for justice. Right. He's, 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 had to flee the country. So it's like, okay, well, it sounds like a crime sprees. Sounds like you committed a lot of crimes, Francis. It's just like maybe you killed this kid. I don't know.

Yeah. I wouldn't put it past him. 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. Your husband's died. Here's a little present for yourself. I got you some perfume. Like what? Yeah. I would not put that perfume. on me. I don't know what it would be. Yeah. I don't know if it's what killed my husband. Now, he sails home with two living tokens of his travels. He takes open 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 find a comfortable night's

lodging for my pets, but an old friend who was living at a departments 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 in one another's arms. Jesus. Honestly, that's the leak. That's like, they died Titanic style.

Yeah, hugging each other for warmth. My God. Because you wouldn't put them 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 I knew the monkeys were going to die no matter what happened but I thought maybe a few children we're going to go to 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 probably one of the more merciful things that's quick yeah he's just so it's funny because like I guess this is true for many of your episodes, but 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 things they believed in. This guy's just an asshole. And that's, I was worried. Like, he's just a dumb asshole, right?

If you read the summaries of Galton's life, it'll always be he invented and it'll list all these different mathematical innovations and science, because he invented a lot of important stuff. And then also eugenics. Like, 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 negligence. 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. as bad as it could be. Special kind of asshole where like everything he does is like adjacent

to something awesome that somebody could do like I'm all for bringing some monkeys sure. Take some monkeys to England that does sound like a good time. Yeah, and listen if the monkeys get rid of a light rampage

then so be it. Sure, sure. But like then the fate of the monkeys is it's so scummy. It's so evil and amazing. The monkeys and they died. 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 he was. No, just his life makes that clear. He was a fucking monster. He was an abominable person. And I should note here, because Galton was a statistics nerd, he might have found it interesting because I counted. He spends 70 words discussing the deaths of two monkeys and 17 discussing the death of Ali,

a human being. Not surprising. Not surprising. Not surprising at all. Yeah. He named the child. He named, he got a child and he named it. Yes.

Yeah. So Francis spins the neck, 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 the boy meant, right? I don't know if that's worse. I mean, I guess he was young, but he had a wife. He could have been 45 for all you know.

Who knows, 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 is shooting different things. Bull were rights of this time. He was invited to shoot on a friend's grousemore in Scotland and spent a suburb 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 understand. undertake a proper expedition to Africa in 1850. And by this point, he's evolved enough as a person. He thinks he's pushing 30 at this point. He no longer 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. Could he not? Could he not? I just not. Everything like, now I'm off to Africa. And it's like, don't, man, 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 change. It didn't 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 going to become a mall Santa. And you're like, no, oh, please. Really? No. Are you, are you allowed to be around kids again?

I thought that was like a five year. Okay. Yeah. So I talked recently about Percy Fawcett, who was an explorer from like a generation or two after Galton's heyday. 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 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 earn a single thing just on his personal merit. Never once. He doesn't try once. He doesn't try, but he tries with significant effort. It's like trying to be nine foot tall when you have a ladder, right?

Right. Yeah. 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 Ovombo weren't. In her dissertation for the University of Canterbury, Susan Schumacher just summarizes his impressions of these different peoples. Galton was unimpressed with the Nama.

felt superior to them as he outsmarted the current chief, Junker Afrikaner, and managed to secure both passage for himself and convince the chief to sign up to a Western-style legal code, which prescribed Yonker's behavior, particularly against the Herrero, whom they were murdering and stealing cattle from at the time. Galtin also disliked the Herrero, while he considered them to be aesthetically pleasing, magnificent models for scopters, he was critical of their moral and intellectual attributes. Describing the Herrero, or Damaris, 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 Damaras have a vast number of small superstitions, but they are all stupid and often very gross, and there's not much that is charismatic, that is characteristic in them. So again, he doesn'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 hoaring their way through North Africa and been like, ah, so this is this says everything. The Europeans don't make art.

All they do is just molest people. And like, well. Kill monkeys occasionally. Yeah. No, 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.

Oh, yeah. The only local people's Galton liked were the Ovombo, which again are the people who are like commonly used as slaves and servants by white people in the area. And so they're very westernized. He referred to them in praising them as being very domestic. And he applauded the lack of pauperism 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 Ovalbard. 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 investigations of this culture. Galton returns home to Europe after this journey, more racist than ever, and a hero for his groundbreaking exploration of South Africa. He receives a society gold medal, and the year after he goes, he goes to, he gets a

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 Ovombo ugly, bony men. But he again saved specific graphic distaste for the Ovombo women, who he described as decidedly nice looking, their faces were open and Mary, 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 their, he's, this is pre-ugenics. 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, Bulwer 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 like where you are, right? 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, I'm not, 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 hottentots, right?

The hottentots are the Herrero and a Venus is a European, like Venus is the European god of like beauty and, 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, she was hot, right? So there's this hot lady who's the wife of his interpreter. And 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 they 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, 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 the question.

Yeah. This does feel like 4chan 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 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 pregnant a bunch of women. Right. It's 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. Yeah. I mean, 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. And I feel like the medical industry has done a better job over the years of weeding out you know, serial killers and rapists. They're really working on it.

Yeah. But this is the era where there's a lot of that. No one's trying to. 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.

I can cut whoever I want as much as I want. Right. Using this like the, or be this kind of scientist. 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, or in his case, perverts getting an opportunity to be a pervert, because that's what this is about for him. 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 passe, while as the former was in full en bon poise, right, which I think I'm pronouncing that sort of right. It's like a French term 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's really, she's really at the prime age, right? Now, I'm going to continue with Galton's writing about what he does because he sees this hot woman, right? I professed 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 hottentot and could never, therefore, have explained to the lady what the object of my foot rule could be of his measure, like why he's trying to measure her. And I really dared not ask 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 have to say it.

She knew. She knew. She knew, right? She liked it. Of a sudden, my eye fell upon my sextant. The bright thought 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 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 real in-cell energy. I will say- Also real metaglasses energy. This guy would have been the first in line to fucking buy metaglasses if they'd been around in his time. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I just think he'd like, oh, these days you just take a picture on the subway, I guess. Yeah, this is advanced. Yeah, this is advanced pervert. He is, you've got to give him that. Yeah, he's a pioneer of perfor. It took a lot more effort to be that kind of pervert in the Victorian era. Yeah. Yeah.

That's amazing. It is. And also, I had not realized, I had always assumed, because I've known for a long time, we've talked about on the show about scientific racism. And that all comes out of Galton's science. He's the father of all of that. And to realize that the origin of all of that, of all of eugenics, of all of 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. It's always been prurient.

It's always been pornographic for these people. Up to today, the racist today are no different, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Again, I would argue most people are perverts in some way in this 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. Right. Like you've got to contend with being a pervert. Yeah, 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 in the 1800s, right? It's just consent, 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 eugenics is based in a prurient 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 bad 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 bra. That said it's the 1800s. I don't know how relevant things like consent are. 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 in 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. I'm glad the guy who never learned any of the local languages, really, and was never interested in any of the cultures he came to, wrote the book on how to, like, be an archaeologist slash, you know, anthropologist in this period of time. That's good. Yeah, that's helpful. Here's ads anyway.

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Whatever our advertisers said about them, that's not our stance on Michiganers. So we apologize, but obviously, you know, the people of Buckees have strong opinions. Yeah. Look, Buckees 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 Michiganers, but they've been airing them on our podcast. So they're funny ads. Just reach out to Buckees, ask where they hate people for Michigan, you know, email Buckees.

and talk to them about why they hate everyone in Michigan. I don't know why. That's not my choice, you know? Right. That's Buckees. Anyway, fucking Circle K. I'll take over a goddamn bucky's fucking Buckees. So he's a leading man.

He's a leading man in his field now and in Victorian England. So he's also just like one of the most prominent men of his day because he's rich and he is now famous, right? So he is a celebrity after this point and very influential. Galton thus gets 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 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 equality of all peoples. The Christians who are abolitionists in the early in the mid-1800s, in part are abolitionists because they believe that like we're all,

like God made us all, right? Like, you know, we're all this is from Adam and Eve. We probably should known 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'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, in the modern era, I think by far the most supported stance is that like all human beings 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 took 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 would have contributed, right? Not as cool as one. I'm sorry. No, Robert, we all come from, didn't you know, we come from lobsters.

We come from, have you heard of Jordan Peterson? Yes, we do inherit much from the lobsters. We have lobster serotonin is why hierarchies are good. I've always said that. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, there's debate about this to this day that I, and I don't think that debate means that anyone's less human than the other.

Also, if fucking Denisovians are like Neanderthals, we're around a day, I would support them having rights. because they were clearly intelligent sapient beings. Right. Like, I understand a bunch of people stand around and thinking like, why the fuck were we all here? What do we do here? What do we hear?

What do I 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 us today. But much like religion for some people, this is all going back to finding ways to justify your current behavior with these people, right? is it's 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 salenemia 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 bigot. 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 stuff of wolf prison rules or whatever.

Right. But it's that same principle, right? Or it's Jordan Beasner 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? Exactly. So the question is not who was like right because today we don't call this monogynist 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. Right. The answer is ultimately it's like who gives a shit right? Like yeah. I mean 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 witch genocides to whom doesn't mean that like you support punishing people because their ancestors, the Assyrians did this thing. Right, exactly. And of course, the further we get from all of that, like, not that it matters, but it's like, you know, again, the further we get from all that, the more people are going to have to sit around and go like, what the fucker, why are we doing this? Yeah. Podcast, what is this?

Yeah. 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 ever. That's the problem. Yeah. Yeah.

So you've got your monogynists 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 a debate about how you should treat people and how you should see these different native peoples.

of the first really popular explorers to counter the attitudes of men like Galton was David Livingston. If you ever heard like Professor Livingston, I presume, right? Like the guy who like, yeah, yeah, that's David Livingston. I don't know what the fuck that's from. He was a, 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 educability and the industry of the native races.

Richard Burton, also a contemporary of Galton's, held vastly different views, describing an African tribe, the Wanjika, 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 on 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 in his writings about his beliefs. So guys like Livingston are like, well, no, these are like people and they're actually like really great. Like if 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 as like they're so stoic and serious and angry. And it's like no, they're angry at you. They're person observing you. You fuck some shit up for them, man. Right. 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 if I came back from Iraq, and it's like, there's something in Iraqi 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-strewn area, so they need to use bottled water.

Like, they don't prefer it. It's just the only option they have. But you're not, like, people like him aren't thinking about shit that way. Francis, people like Livingston are, though. So again, you should condemn Galton and Burton and the like for not thinking of shit like this, because 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, Louisa Butler, and the two were engaged to marry 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 trips 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-olate the data. In other words, 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. 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 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 an 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. Darwin got him.

Fucking spirit his 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? Right? 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? Right? Yeah, not a dark. This isn't like a dark. This isn't going to go anywhere bad? Yeah. So he, yeah, 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, quote, 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 breeders' will. It is my desire to show, more pointedly then, 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 there actually already was going on in this period of time an experiment into what if you breed people together who have only the best true? rates, 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 inbred, right? Right. Like it's not good. It's the thing, like, they're not, people aren't fucking Pokemon. You can't like, I don't know. It's not intelligence works. He doesn't understand recessive traits. So he thinks if you've got a smart man,

it'll make another smart kit, right? Right, exactly. The problem is... He doesn't understand nurture. I mean, there's a lot of problems. But one of the problems is, like, what is a better person is 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 how they're raised. And all sorts of terrible things. And not understanding. what it means and like, you know, capitalism and 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, determine who gets to breed based on the characteristics they most value, you'll get a bunch of people, you'll get a country full of nothing but people with substacks, right? Right. And you won't have anyone who knows that I'll like make or do anything.

because these people don't know how to make or do anything, right? Gulton never did anything really on his own. 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, are going to come about like a hundred years after this, like Albert Einstein, not a guy who was bred,

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 mind because he was born rich, right? That's what I mean. Like, yeah. 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 eugenics yet, but 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 proof that they have better genes, you know?

What is great. It's that idea. Yes, we're going to talk about all this day. 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. making money in this way. Yeah.

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 genetically they're more inclined to be great lawyers. And it's like, is it that or 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 quade genetics that makes for great actors. And that's why Jack Quaid has been a sick. No, as Jack Quaid would say, he had a real leg up. He's a great, good actor. I like Jack Quaid. But he's Meg Ryan's son, his last name's Quaid. It helped.

The irony here, and like, this is the thing. Listen, if you're rich, that doesn't mean you're useless piece of shit necessarily. 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. 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.

You're actually doing the opposite by this line of thinking. J. Jairor Tolkien who writes the Lord of the Rings and is like, he fucking has to fight in World War 1. He's not a guy who gets like being a great author handed to him on a platter versus Christopher Paolini, the arrogant kid whose parents own like a publishing house. And so like when he's a kid, 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'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. Why aren't we as impressed by fucking Spielberg anymore? You know? Right. Why does Megalopoulix exist? Probably because no one was like, Coppola, no, you can't do this. 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 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 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. 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. And 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 will make society better in the long run. Galton expressed fear that financial constraints and the 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 in a career and they don't have as many kids as the 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 possessed 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 three thousand people were naturally exceptional, which means that if you've got three or four exceptional men in this, same family in 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 three thousand 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. 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 in 400 years. Again, it's just like

self-fulfilling. It's, you know, it's an echo change. It's like everything just compounds. 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. 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 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, yeah, that's their characteristics. This has to be everything you need to know about them. Can't be anything else to learn, right?

It's this guy removed from people that he's standing in front of often, often. Now, like, removing himself even more from people. trying to make people, these equations in his head. And it's one of those things where it's like, the idea that any of this thinking would be passed on in an educational 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 Schwartz-Cohen's conclusion that, quote, rarely 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 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. Still less was it prepared to consider dispassionately any 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 I was a fucking proto-Nazi for a little while.

I can't believe you're like he's not as bad as he will be. And it's like he's already murdered several monkeys. He's killed monkeys. He's a sex criminal. Great. Yeah, he's a sex criminal. He made a person his pet. Yeah.

It's, 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 kinds of successful people. This reinforced his belief that some people are inherently special, and he wrote that if the eminent 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 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 assume you saw the, yes. No, you saw the interview of Elon Musk being asked, like, if you had to start over with $1,000 and he couldn't even understand the question. No, no, he had to know why. He can't conceive it. Yeah. He was like, well, I wouldn't have that.

And it's like, yes, you idiot. We're trying to. No, you fucking dip shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And 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 eminent 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. 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 spent a lot of time on the science. I determined that I'm the best of all of 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 with 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 imminence, the top kind is a judge because no mediocre man could ever become a judge, right? It's impossible for many who aren't impressive to be judges. All good judges are good. Ajag. So he'd saw the fact that many prominent families had multiple eminent members as proof of their inherent genetic superiority. Per Bulwer, 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 like your experiences, on like what you're at, how you grow up and right. Like if you, if you become an emperor, your kid probably doesn't have to fight his whole life to build an empire. And she'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 of time, I'm reading a book right now called Incomparable, which is about, like, Napoleon Bonaparte's the most elite, like, regiment in his entire army, the 9th infantry. And, like, there's tons of stories about guys who've been in the French army for, like, decades and have, like, kids and stuff, right?

It's actually, like, really common, even if you're constantly on deployment to have kids and just be away, right? That's actually certainly more normal for, like, officers and stuff than not. Um, women though, he felt clearly had some direct impact on their sons, but he, he was never able to give them as much credit as the men. Men, women had to be less responsible. That's so crazy to hear. It's so, it's a real idea, bro. Oh, man. The racist guy also hates women.

Oh, man. Wow. That's so crazy. It's just that whenever he has an eminent man who's like sons don't do anything cool, he's like, well, their mom must have. Oh, yeah. It's great man genetics. It's also so scientific. be like, and surely the women had something to do.

Yeah. He is like, so incurious. Galton, as far as I can tell, is the first man, I'm sure, I mean, these belief exists. He's 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 in 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.

Were their moms allowed to be sight? Were they allowed to read? He said, fuck women. He said the great scientist who credits it all, the great scientist who credits his early education to his sister. Hmm. Did she really have nothing to do with your inquiring mine, 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 who, whoever sucked. Yeah, 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.

I'm naturally better. And it's like your life is roof that that's not true. You in fact are not. Right. Now, Darwin sent a letter congratulating his cousin on the book, hereditary genius. Galton responded to his cousin with fawning praise, 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 find something valuable in my arguments that, like, were better than everybody else. You know who else is better than everybody else? Dave Bell. Me. Yeah, Dave. And the advertisers of this podcast. Who might be Dave? I don't know.

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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 Merivale, published a cogent critique of some of his methodology, as Bulwer describes.

To illustrate his argument, Merrillwell pointed out that of the 250 clever relations of judges in Galton's list, more than a hundred had been lawyers themselves, which seems strange, unless we are to assume not only that talent is hereditary, but that the special breed of the lawyer is hereditary also. Okay, yeah. 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 Atkinses are credited with seven or eight remarkable relatives, but of these there is only one who was not a lawyer, and he was a reader of Lincoln's Zen.

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. It's jobbers. It's, we invented our own little language and now we are the best at interpreting. Now we're the smartest.

Yeah. Yeah. The intellect, this intellectual monument to self-congratulation is the foundation of eugenics 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 science, well, look at this statistic about IQ. Does IQ really tell you that much? Are the IQ tests good and consistent? Where are you getting your, anyway, it doesn't matter. Throw as many numbers at them, so I think you're

smart. You know. Ben Shapiro's sentence takes a paragraph 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 If it, like, before this book, his, the numbers he threw out because statistics wasn't really all that figured out. They'd been a mix of his own primitive attempts at statistical analysis and measurements of people's bodies. But between 1865 and the publication of Hereditary Genius in 1869, uh, Galton learned about gossian law and started applying modern statistical analysis to his findings, often badly, but someone else at Vince, 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 reached that. Of course. There's no black people who are that level, right? That just doesn't happen. This is, yeah. Science. It's science. It's just science that I

invented and figured out. This is cocaine science. Yeah, this is cocaine science. Yes, this is meth science. Yeah. 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, right? So any white guy could do it, right? Yeah. He's just turning his like 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 by making him sign a shitty treaty? Or did the guy just know, like, well, this guy's the representative of people with more guns than me? This is, it's cult thinking, right? Like, if I started a cult, a lot of the stuff I'd write down would just be shit that I think. That I believe already. Yeah, like about like, oh, I think my neighbor is a murderer.

Okay, that's a new commandment. Like, that's just, yeah. Yeah, if I was 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's stuff. Right. Like it's the only way as far as I'm there based on my sample group of one. Right. Yeah, exactly. It works for you. Therefore it works for everybody. They should teach it in like fifth grade. It should be mandatory. Yeah. Yeah. The book Hereditary Genius was a hit, but it did 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 that universal knowledge of reading, writing, and ciphering, the absence of popperism would raise the national grade or ability far greater and higher than any system of selected marriage, right?

So, 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 word 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 cretons cloning and feeding, and I don't even own a TV, right? That's golden. That's gotten, baby. Yeah, that's what he believes about the world. Oh, man. So I have to also note, hereditary genius. Terrible title.

Like, that is, it's a, it's a, it's a man-a-fellees. Festo title. Or it's like a... It is, it is. This is the title the kid who goes up and shoots up a fucking school. Yeah.

That or like a Pixies album. Yeah. Or a Pixies album. Yeah. It's man, what, like the moment someone hands you a book that says, I wrote this, it's called Hereditary Genius.

Mm-hmm. You don't read that. 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 Fraser's magazine that the website, Science AQ, 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. That's such a weirdly specific race to the Chinese too. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. 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 the Narrow-chested men. I like that. Yes. Scymy. Scymy fox.

Too many soy boys having 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 Siney writes in the book's

Superior, Galton coined the term in 1883 from the Greek prefix you for well or good to described the idea of using social control to improve the health and intelligence of future generations. Schumacher gives a somewhat differing account of the origins of the word eugenics in her paper, she says, he adapted the Greek word eugenies, which translated to mean good in stock and hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. Meanwhile, Anne Hanley, 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 third 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 what everyone agrees is that he coins this term to define the bettering of the race through scientific and social interventions, right? Handley 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 it's the idiocacy 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 proved 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 negroid look, right? Wow, 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, no, they're all malnourished because of people like you. He's such a simple guy.

Yeah, he's such a simple guy, right? And he starts, he's not, 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 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 increasing. That's how, like, all.

all of the rich families of his heir are going to lose their money. It's like their sons gambling it away. Right? But he's like, he just sees the poor people gambling. That's different from rich people gambling, right? Right. 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. 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 going to dig him up. I'm just going to say, I'm going to dig him up. Yeah, dig them up.

And look, folks, go out and find some bones of your own. Find someone else's bones. Someone do you think is bad and dig them up. They're not using them. I just want to know. I just want to know. 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 narrowed? Rural tested 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 them. We've got to measure the bones.

Get your sextants out and start measuring motherfuckers. You know? We got a plan. We got a plan. Okay, everybody. Bye. Bye. Behind the bastards is a production of Coolzone Media.

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sitting here going, they are playing y'all for fools. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, everybody, Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here from the Amy and T.J. podcast. We are your one-stop shop for the biggest newsmaking headlines of the day. We've got you covered. Yeah, there's a lot of news happening these days. And some of it's breaking. We are on top of it every single day. There's a bunch of true.

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