Part One: Francis Galton: Inventor of Eugenics

0:00Calls of media. Welcome back to Behind the Basterd's, the only podcast where I started the introduction before recording, but then I started recording because I remembered and Dave gave me some shit on it. And our guest for this week, the great David Christopher Bell. How are you doing, Dave? I'm doing great. I'm living the dream. Living the dream. What is the dream? Living the dream. Having shirts with the faces of our pets on it. Oh, that is the dream, actually. Yeah. Is that kitten? Oh, kitten in the new one. Yeah. Yeah, Rue. And Anna and I got this. I like Rue. I like Rue. I like Rue. For my friend Beth Ann. Oh, wow. Beautiful. It's beautiful. I don't have my cat on a shirt, but I do have some old, go-four themed Simpson shirts that have Saddam Hussein on them. And my cat's name Saddam Hussein. So I feel like I have that. That's close enough. I count. Yeah, it counts. Yeah, it counts. We also have those shirts with each other's faces on them that we order that one live show. We should never talk about that in reference to pets and stuff. That would be weird. Wear it every episode, right?

1:00Yeah, every episode. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I just wear it to the grocery store, you know? Yeah. Oh, good. After the fight club, when I go to my local fight club, I always wear it. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad it's getting good use. I'm glad it's not just the grocery store. I do have a concern. Because you and I are both men of more or less a certain age, right? So we grew up the right way. We're proud of being towards the great. We are, we are, towards the great. But we were, you watched Mulan as a kid, right? Not as much as a lot of people might. I watched it a lot. I watched it. And I, you know, I think the lesson, whether you saw it once or a dozen times that Mulan did a really good job of imparting is that you always need to be ready for the hunts to attack, right? Oh, yeah. And there's some good lessons in there about how to kill a large number of hunts with the minimal amount of ammunition use, right? And my concern, because I was watching this with a kid's friend recently. I realized, because I've watched a lot of media with this kid, kids today aren't learning about how to defeat the hunts. No one's telling them about the danger of the hunts.

2:02What's going to happen to us? I know it's up to us. And we're not doing the job right now. You know, we were warned about the hunts, but they're not being warned. It worries me, Dave. Yeah, we have to go school to school, like a program. You know, when you haven't assembly and like someone would come in with puppets. Yeah. Just hunts. Here's a till. Yeah. Hunts from the movie not really accurate. Such a good movie though, guys. Such a good. Yeah, a bob. I mean, it is because I think based on historically, wouldn't it would have been set. This was roughly contemporaneous to like the height of the Roman empire when Mulanah set and the Huns really wouldn't have been certainly not in China. Like I don't know where. No, no, no, never. I think they didn't want to be Mongolian. Never count on Disney being historically accurate and not. Yeah, they picked a different kind of racist to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like always, always at minimum, a little racist all the way up. Yeah, it's got to be some kind and historically and accurate. 95% of the time as as an Italian, I'm okay with bigotry against the Huns because as far as I'm aware from history,

3:03we were doing great until the Huns came. No problems in the Roman Empire until the Tila showed up. How was what things went wrong? This isn't 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. We do a deep dive into the forensics, listen to body bags with Joseph Scott Morian on America's number one podcast network. I heart open your free I heart app and search body bags with Joseph Scott, more and start listening. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency that has not have body cameras. It's real black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping D.I. on anything. It's raw and I'm sitting here going. They are playing y'all for full.

4:05Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network and download Roland Martin unfiltered on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast. Oh, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Michael and Perry Oli. I want to tell you about my new podcast Underground zero. We're looking at the opportunity of a lifetime for us and the other families. It's about the aftermath of the 9 11 attacks. What's in the tunnels? Go boss of English. It'll be worth half a billion. Starring Steve Sheripa, Ray Abruzzo and me, Michael and Perry Oli. How far you prepared to go depends how far you are. Listen to Underground zero on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome aboard season six of the girlfriends flight or fight, which takes place 30,000 feet in the sky. A beautiful woman smiles and hands you a scotch, but you have no idea just how messed up her job actually is. It was the most sexist job I think you could have until

5:09one day, a group of stewardesses spark a revolution that reshaped America. Listen to the girlfriends flight or fight on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaking of racism, Dave, I never wondered who invented racism. Oh God. Was his name was it like like James T racism? Jonathan H racism. Yeah. Yes. Of the of the race is. And I mean, human beings have never needed like a scientific justification to be shitty to people who live far away and practice strange customs. Like if you're like the word barbarian literally exists because the ancient Greeks heard some people who lived like today we'd say like 40 minutes away from Greece. And they're like, there's people just sounds like they're going bar bar bar bar bar all the time. That's what it's literally where the term came from.

6:10Yeah. I imagine like the first caveman right where it's like a cave man fan. It's another guy from this other case over move. I don't know why I don't know. I don't know. I don't like their customs. Yeah. I think we should kill them all. It is funny how long some of these like if you heard of the burbers and like a lot of North Africa like a Morocco right. They're kind of the indigenous people of Morocco like their name comes from bar bar from the barbarian term. Right. Like it's still and that's not what the burbers prefer to be called because that's actually kind of a racial slur for them. They prefer to be called I think it's the Mazeek. And so I bring it this up to say that no one like had to invent prejudice and human beings had been doing slavery and colonialism for a long time prior to the enlightenment. But it's the enlightenment that gives us racism right in its modern term since you know like that's the racism where you're not just because it used to be back in the day all you needed to say is like well we're from Rome and those guys aren't so like fuck up. Yeah. Like people. Yeah. You're saying that like when we really leveled up our race.

7:12Yeah. Yeah. Because the upside of the ancient Roman era prejudice is that like if you're saying okay they're not Roman. Fuck them. When you conquer them they kind of become Roman and then you stop being addicted to them for the most part right. Right. That's not I'm smooth and over for some stuff but it was a lot less shitty than it was like with racism today where we're still dealing with the after effects of like slavery right at the bigotry and that's because of scientific racism and scientific racism is a product of the enlightenment and that kind of like early modern period where people are starting to put together science and they're doing it kind of the wrong way and the guy who's most responsible for creating modern racism I sort of marrying these early ideas of science to the prejudice that had always existed is a man named Francis Galton. Francis Galton is the subject of our episodes this week and one of the most influential people in all of human history. I cannot overstate this. In terms of the impact Galton has had he's absolutely on the level of a guy like Hitler but unlike Hitler he didn't like

8:13killing anybody he was a scientist he wrote books you know and he also right he didn't he there was no point in his life probably when he was like man I'm a real Hitler right now. Yeah I really got to do some Hitler no. Yeah he died probably thinking he let a good life. He absolutely did and where but Hitler also was like Francis Galton that guy had some shit locked out like I'm definitely gonna copy some Francis Galton stuff and it's the weird thing about Galton because he was a really brilliant scientist in a lot of ways he also did a lot of good stuff like he's he is the person who gets credit for being the first like mathematician I guess to observe and demonstrate the concept of regression to the mean and he gets credit for discovering correlation as a statistical concept so like most of a lot of I'm not I'm not maybe most is too much but a lot of modern statistics is based on shit Galton was the first guy to figure out right and there's he did a lot more stuff right and that's part of why he was such an influential racist because the guy who invented you he's the

9:14guy who invented eugenics like literally came up with the name eugenics that's where I feel like you're in the eugenics of it all yeah yeah talking about that idea of like racist trying to kind of count. Yeah like science yeah to and and it and that idea that it's gotten so found you know it's stuff like what BMI being a thing that's like a guy measured like a bunch of exact soldiers in Ireland or something was like everybody needs to be like this. This is the ideal body shape right it's the weird idea that starving Irishman yeah like I'm not saying throw out all science obviously but it's weird that like we have such dogma from time like this where it's filled with racist and weird you know yeah tactics and yeah. So let's talk about Francis and and how he became the king the the guy who invented racism I guess not the kid that's still probably Hitler so.

10:15Francis Galton was born on February 16th 1822 at the largest near Sparkbrook Birmingham that's obviously in England right like I don't need to specify that the largest is a spark. Birmingham right we love it could be Alabama to I guess. Oh yeah so uh Galton's family had lived in that area around Birmingham for ages and they had made their obviously the founder of written modern racism his family were like arms merchants of course they were war profiteers. Yeah. That's the most obvious way for them to have gotten rich. Um his grandfather Samuel took up work at his father's so he uh Galton's great grandfather had had a grandfather had had a gun factory and Birmingham and I think previously it had just been making muskets for like people to hunt or whatever with right like it was not a it was not a military arms manufacturer and then the Napoleonic wars start going and he's like oh you know how what's a great way to make shit load of

11:16money right now is selling guns to the British army at the start of the Napoleonic wars. I think we're going to need a lot of guns for about 20 fucking years. Yeah. Is this Napoleon guy's going to be a problem. Um so this makes them quite rich right the family gets loaded off of selling guns to the British army but it also causes strife with their extended family because the Galtons were Quakers and they had been Quakers longer than anyone could remember and the Quakers I think are okay with hunting but you know what the Quakers aren't okay with selling guns to an army. That's not really it. No. Yeah. But once Samuel spun up production to start selling to the military the Quakers are like well you can't keep being a Quaker because that's like one of our main things is that you don't you're not a war profiteer. So he is formal and his branch of the family is formally disowned from the Quakers in 1795 for fabricating and selling instruments of war although he keeps attending Quaker's services I think they're too polite to kick him out. Um but he's no longer like they're like well but you're not one of

12:18us right. Thank you. Oh my God. But it's really weird now. Yeah you made it weird Samuel. Um in his own autobiography Francis Galton notes that his grandfather was also a scientific man and quote a statistical man of business. He was a fellow of the provincially famous lunar society whose members met at one another's houses on the day and the night and the and which the small and numbers was so select as to include and then he lists a number of famous scientists of the day including a guy named Dr. Erasmus Darwin who's the father of the famous Darwin and the famous Darwin is like the half cousin of Francis Galton they know each other most of their lives right. Um and they're very close like friends. Um so it's I sorry I petitioned to read to bring back the blank society. Yeah it's like for these I mean as something that isn't always filled whenever I hear the blank society I think that's a bunch of races. But you racist yeah but you gotta yeah you gotta bring it or it's

13:18something that Sherlock Holmes will bust up or something right right yeah they're doing some sort of scheme right but they they were right about the naming idea there like we should have the lunar society I would love to be a part of a lunar society that's so cool. Yeah exactly. Um so it's clear to me that Francis Galton came to recall regard his war profiteer grandfather is the ancestor he took most after that's why he emphasizes how statistical and scientific he is in the era in which that's not really as much of a thing like if you're if in 1800 you're a man who believes in statistics a lot of people will be like well that's nonsense math doesn't know things you fool right like it's not it there's controversy I'm a basic elements of science in this period of time. Um Samuel Mary's into the famous bar clay family you've heard of like Barclay Bank right Samuel Mary's into the barclays and he starts a bank after the war right that's how he gets rich after he stops being a war profiteer and he was described one thing that's interesting at the

14:19time he is described as a captain of industry and like one of his biographies that someone writes in like 18 fucking 12 or something he's called that and that's not a term a lot of people are using in it the early 1800s right that's more of like a later 1800s term so he's among the very first people to be described as like a captain of industry he is an early he's really an early founder of capitalism in a lot of ways capitalism is still getting formed as an ideology and this guy who's a war profiteer and a banker but also a man of statistics and science is a very early he's a lot of people seem as an early embodiment of like what a capitalist is supposed to be in the very first almost the first generation in which they exist not quite. Samuel's oldest son Samuel Tertius Galton partnered with him and that's Francis's father partnered with him to run the bank and married a woman named Violeta Darwin the daughter of his friend Erasmus right so the dark that's how the Darwin's become a member or become entwined with the Galton family is a Francis's dad marries the daughter of Erasmus so

15:24Francis is born into a family of four sisters and two brothers and was the youngest member of the family to survive to adulthood. Life was dangerous even then for the very wealthy his cousin Charles Darwin not the more famous Charles R Darwin this is the Charles Darwin nobody hears about because he dies at age 20 as a medical student from what is described as a dissection wound that means he's dissecting a cadaver or performing surgery and he cuts himself and then he dies of infection that happened to a lot of surgeons and doctors in this period of time. Yeah, this is the hour grave stones could just a stub toe stub toe got a little cut things went wrong. Yeah, and especially the case if you're like cutting up a corpse and you get corpse juice in your open wound bad to get corpse juice in an open wound generally want to avoid that phrase corpse juice not into it. Thank you so much. Avoid it avoid it as much as possible. So because he had a the Galton's were a large family and Francis's parents were rich most of the raising when he's a

16:24little boy is done by not his parents but by his third sister Adele she's 12 years older than him and severely disabled with a spinal curvature that left her bed ridden much of the time and unable to socialize or go out in public much at all. So instead she focused all of her attention on her younger brother as he would later recall. She hailed by arrival into the world as a fairy gift and begged hard to be allowed to consider me as her soul ward and in her simple way educated herself as best as she could in order to be able to teach me her idea of education at that time was to teach the Bible as a verbally inspired book to cultivate memory to make me learn the nearest rudiments of Latin and above all a great deal of English verse this she did effectively and the result was that she believed and succeeded in making others believe that I was a sort of infant prodigy. So what Galton is saying there is that she teaches him to memorize the Bible as a little kid and that convinces the people around them that he's a genius right he's always of the leaf that I was not really a childhood genius my sister convinced other people of that by helping me to like learn how to memorize the Bible because that's what she thought was

17:26made an educated man and other people believe this as well a visitor in their home to their home in 1828 when Francis was six described him as a prodigy recording that he read Shakespeare for fun and quote by reading a page over twice he repeats it by heart so he's he's got this very like I did a memory you know where he could just get something yeah, nothing against anybody was a good memory but this is real like dumb guy smart guy. Yeah, I think that's a shit. Right, I had a social studies teacher that made us all memorize the preamble to the Constitution. Oh, I still I can still yeah, yeah, I can still recite it. I don't know what any of it means really like I he never taught us like what it why it was important or maybe it did and I don't remember it was lost to me remember. Yeah, this is a preamble. It's a very old time. The 1800s way of like this boy can remember has memorized all the works of Shakespeare and it's like well that is impressive but does that mean he's like smart?

18:26It doesn't mean it's a lot of Shakespeare memories. I would classify it underneath the neat. It's neat. Yeah, it's potentially impressive. Yeah, yeah. And this is he would also he develops an early habit of performances in which he'd recite some work of literature or poetry to his family. I've run into this in five or six biographies from this time at least it seems to have been a common method of entertainment for families with bright children usually wealthy families where they're like oh yeah, the smart kid recite things for us. You know, it's fucking sucked back then. I was watching so bad. I think brotherhood of the wolf I was watching there's seen in that where the guy is like they're having dinner and he's like I would like to recite a poem for everybody. It's like oh my god. Get a TV now. Yeah, fucking and then that's like shit dipshits. Yeah, yeah, you're out of Hulu assholes. My god. Yeah. It didn't even know it a torrent. Yeah, bullshit. So Francis recalled performing Milton's paradise loss and Pope's translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey for his

19:29family in his autobiography perhaps sensing that bragging about his tendency for spouting versus a child made him seem arrogant. Francis included this passage in middle life. I feared I had been an intolerable prig and cross question many old family friends about it. What was invariably assured that I was not at all a prig but it seemed to spout for pure enjoyment and without any affectation that I often quoted very aptly on the spur of the moment and that I was a nice little child. It says a lot that he's like as an adult I worried I was an asshole as a kid but I was a sure no I was no no I wasn't I was very smart and good. It's literally that skater me and I had a touch. No, it's the children. I'm a insufferable prig. No, yeah. It's my memory that's wrong. Yeah. For my part I kind of suspect he was an intolerable prig as a kid but maybe that's unfair. It is true that he grew into one as an adult. One thing I find interesting about his prig status is that after he invented eugenics he came to believe that disabled people should be prevented from breeding.

20:30Even so he wrote this of his big sister and this is after his official take is that we need to sterilize people who are born with any sort of genetic disability within he sort of like inherited disability right. He writes this of his big sister. Though she was compelled to pass the greater part of her life lying on her back she was so energetic in other ways and so capable of endurance that she overcame difficulties that would have been insurmountable to most women who were equally handicapped. She was active in setting up schools and teaching the poor. She had a considerable correspondence and exerted a wide influence among all classes during many years. Her natural capacity was it of an unusually high order and many who knew her well and whose opinions deserve respect but that a slight betterment of opportunity and circumstances might have caused her name to be as widely loved and known as those of any of our English saints or heroines. He's saying is she was really smart. She wasn't educated because she was a disabled girl in 1800. He's like this person really contributed to society. Yeah. Too bad they were disabled. They obviously can't contribute to society.

21:31Yeah, it should be should be stopped from breeding. I really owe everything to her. My entire career is a scientist in a researcher to her educating me as a child but clearly disabled people have nothing of value to contribute to society. Like the way he squares that is being like well she was my sister so she must have been like a special kind of disabled. Right. She has my special blood. Yeah, exactly. So from an early age Francis steered his, Francis's parents steered him toward the sciences. Unfortunately this is the early 1800s. Well mid 1800s by the time he's like a teenager which means he spent a good deal of time being exposed to absolute cranks and I fear they rubbed off on him. Here's one recollection and this is from when he would have been like five or six years old. Father discovered a needy foreign chemist who agreed to take me in hand at a rather high charge. All I clearly recollect of him now was that he seemed obsessed with the idea of making some wonderful compound out of Susinnic acid which is derived from amber and that he spent all his spare shillings and buying bits of amber and burning them. I learned nothing from his tuition.

22:33He's just like this mad man. He thinks he's going to make some compound out of amber that's got probably an alchemy sort of deal where it's going to be an immortality elixir and make gold or some shit. This is what I envy about people back then. The right is you can look at the moon and say it's made of ghosts. Yeah. And like they'll get enough people to go like yeah that's probably right. That seems right. Well it's a writer too. Just the, if you're just the first guy to figure out I don't know what if a dude was dead but not and then you invent fucking Dracula right. It was a lot easier back then. Like a groundbreaking writer. I mean all the way into the freaking 70s that would have you like all this I love Spielberg but it doesn't take a genius to go like what if a shark attack you know what if a shark was scary. Yeah. Yeah. So by age five or so Francis is already out of the house attending boarding schools which started for him when he was like five and over the next several years he bounced around several

23:34including a boarding school in France which he hated because of the strict and abusive discipline. Kids were punished there by receiving a little metal mark they had to carry around with them whenever they spoke English and they could transfer these marks to other kids who screwed up right sorry I'm not boarding school in France it's a French boarding school in England right and when you speak English because you're supposed to be learning French they give you this little metal token that's like a token of shame and you lose privileges when you have it but you can get rid of this mark of shame by transferring it to another kid who screws up so it becomes common for children who have a mark and when they get rid of it to trick gullible kids into speaking English in Francis is the most gullible kid in the school so he gets he gets tricked a lot amazing it sounds like they're like actually created this weird economy in the school where like shame economy yeah. Yeah yeah where and it's teaching the kids to like abuse the their fellow kids and and trick them in order to like transfer the punishments onto them.

24:35Francis never gets over this he's pissed about this for the rest of his life and he lives a long ass life he writes decades later in like 1900 something is an elderly man I rebuild with my whole heart against the treachery encouraged by this system and I get it that probably I was about to say yes this is something I would take to my great. Yeah I would probably take this to my grave. Yes I would be finding the people. Yeah. School and I was an adult. Yes. Those are who I'd be sterilizing as an adult where I a sterilizer you know. He had similar complaints when he was sent to Kings Edward School in Birmingham as a teenager this is kind of his high school quote I learned nothing nothing and shaved at my limitations he hates school anytime he's like has to learn around other kids and part because he says that he craved topics that were denied to him at this fan because this rich kid school just focuses on the classics right it's the kind of school a lot of conservatives won all of education to be where you just learn like the idiot and shit right and got a call

25:37and like no I wanted to learn I first off they would they wouldn't let me do any good English reading you're doing everything and fucking Latin and I didn't want to read and Latin I wanted to read in English and also I wanted to learn math and science and they didn't care about math and science because it had barely existed at that point in time and I didn't want to fucking memorize the goddamn and need and Latin which bro I had to translate the Indian from Latin and it sucked ass so I get it Francis like I hear you man. He provided an anecdote from his time in grade school that I do feel honor bound to share with you. One of our school fellows a gaunt, deceptic looking boy performed the following feat to our terror and admiration as we crowded around him to see it. He took a frog by its hind feet opened his wide mouth and dropped the frogs four feet on his tongue. The frog struggled to get free and at the critical moment his hind legs were let go down went the frog head foremost into his gullet. He was our hero for the time. None other dared to attempt the same feat. He said that he felt the frog all the way as it went down

26:38into his stomach and in it. That's nuts. I do nothing to do. I mean I love how that is a story. Yeah, that could be from any era. Yeah, that a dude. Like you could tell me that's for life. It's crazy. Yeah, George Bush and college. Same. I believe it. Right. If some kid had done that when I was in middle school, I would remember that the rest of my life. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He'd be a king. He'd be a king. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not like a king. You respect your follow but a king. Like a king nonetheless. The fact that he's like, yeah, he was the hero for the day. I'm like, yeah, no, you would be like he'd absolutely would be. Francis's mother seems to have decided at some point during his adolescence that her genius son was destined for a career in medicine and his father seems to have done the same. One presumed that his mom was influenced by the fact that her dad was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, a prominent physician and scientist. Now, Dr. Erasmus Darwin was an early and major proponent of the idea of biological evolution that all life descended from a single

27:38microscopic ancestor that had existed as a theory before Charles Darryl. He's not the fact that Darwin writes out the origin of species. Doesn't mean no one was thinking about ideas that are related to evolution. And like we shouldn't take from this that Dr. Erasmus Darwin had the whole idea of like natural selection down because he certainly didn't. But he is one of a number of scientists that's like, well, there's probably a common origin to all life rather than God have just making a bunch of different animals and people and stuff. And this is very controversial at the time. Erasmus is attacked as a radical, godless atheist as much as he's praised for being an icon of the Enlightenment. And you know who else is a godless atheist who seeks to destroy all of religion and faith, you know, by force if necessary. Oh, the sponsors of this podcast. Yeah, that's right. We don't support that. They're radical, you know, but they are advertising on our podcast. So please buy their, buy their pot product and support their destruction of all faith.

28:40When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived. And I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart. And these are the survivor files. You just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up. Don't play anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their story is about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your

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30:41Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed and the argument is do you want to win if you don't win you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests 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. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. 12 seats. 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 or wherever you get your podcasts.

31:43If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science network behind these cases that we hear about in the news, body bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network. I heart open your free I heart app and search body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. And we're back. Wow. That was I mean again I don't stand by what our advertisers said. That was dark stream. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly upsetting. But what can you do with advertisements? You know, you just take their money and let's say whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Cash the check. That's right. That's right. So at age 16, Francis was pulled out of King Edward school. His high school his his his formal education in when he's 16 because his dad's like it's time for you to learn to be a doctor.

32:43And the way learning to be a doctor went you don't like good a met I mean they had medical schools, but it was not the same as medical school is now you pretty much get tossed directly into an internship by working as a doctor assistant under under another doctor. So he gets pulled out of school at 16 and immediately starts interning at Birmingham General Hospital. There were so many fewer rules at that point in time. That's horrifying. Imagine going to the hospital. Oh my god. I'm 16. There's a fucking 16 year old. You've got like a fucking knife in your belly or something. Oh man. That would suck. Oh man. After he'd left high school, but before he started work at the hospital, his dad decided reasonably enough that Francis should get an example of what to expect at the hospital first. That like he's going to pay him to like follow a different doctor around first so that he can at least get prepared for like being in an ER. And here's the description of that. This is his first ex like experience with medicine. My father asked our medical attendant, Mr. P, to show me an

33:43example of the medical work I should be engaged in before I was plunged wholly into it. A servant brought a note from Mr. P. awaiting an answer. It was to the effect that a housemate had suddenly died at Lord Blanks house and that he Mr. P was about to make a post mortem examination. What I liked to come, oh the mixture of revulsion, wonder in interest and excitement. I changed clothes and went entering the house by a back door is directed and treading softly up the back staircase to the cold Garrett where the poor girl lay. She was the first dead person I had seen handsome and feature, but greatly swollen. She had been apparently in perfect health a few hours before then she was suddenly seized with intense pain in the stomach, followed rapidly by perientitis. And that's inflammation, often infection of the outer lining of the inner abdomen caused usually by a puncture wound, right? So you've got your guts are bleeding into your other guts, right? So what he describes here and then she dies as a result of massive infection. Mr. P. pricked his finger while sewing up the abdomen, a dissection wound when death has followed perientitis

34:44is proverbially dangerous. It was so in this case for Mr. P. nearly died of it. So his first experience with medicine is he takes this doctor takes him to see the bloated corpse of this girl around his age and pricks his finger, sewing her body up and nearly dies himself of infection. That's his first experience with medicine. There's a lot there's a lot to take away from a lot to take away from that. Number one, I don't need to know how good looking the corpses. Yeah, I don't know where to tell you to be a note. I don't need to know. Also, he's making up names. I don't know, Mr. Blank. Mr. P. Mr. Blank. Come on, man. It's just death is such a constant in this period that you're going to cut your finger at any time, kid. That's it. That's it. Normal day at the office, cut your finger. It's over. So days later, Galton would consider this the moment that ended his childhood. And like, yeah, that would pretty much be it. He's not really a kid after you go through that. You're done. You're done. You're an adult man now.

35:47Still, he took to work at the hospital, gamely enough and was soon sewing up wounds and risking his own young life to do so. This is where he first encountered the mentally ill. In his autobiography, he describes a company in a researcher named William Bowman to an asylum in Vienna. So during like a break in like the hospital work calendar or whatever, he accompanies these two other doctors to Europe. This is his first time over to Europe and they go to an insane asylum. And this is he's they're doing some work and he's just sort of following them to get like experience in the broader medical field. And he writes this of the insane asylum. In those days, I was particularly shy and sensitive and a consciousness of even the least unconventional unconventionality may be blushed to an absurd degree. And one of the female wards, a young bucsum and uncommonly good looking female lunatic dashed forward with a joyful scream. She clasped me tightly to her bosom with both hands calling me her long lost fritz. A teblow, amusement of the others, myself, pink to the ears. So this is like really embarrassing to him because this good looking girl who's mentally ill hugs

36:50him and is like putting her breasts up to him. And this is like one of them life moments he remembers both most from his childhood. God be honest, great, great statement. Uncommonly good looking female woman. Uncommonly good looking female lunatic. I know. How old was he? He could have 17 maybe. This is why teenager. This is why they should be just fucking going to the promenchant, right? Exactly. Like he's like 1617 and he just can't help but to talk about how hot the the corpses and the insane asylum patients he met on this in a better world. He would have met this uncommonly good looking female lunatic at a party and eventually she would have given him a mixtape and then he would have given her like a really shitty mixtape that he made like these days we call the manic pixie dream girl. Turn back then is what what is it? Uncommonly good looking female lunatic. Yeah, that's the first manic pixie dream girl. I have a great time. He meets his

37:52and an asylum. I know it should. It should. I tell you what, there's a good road trip movie in this. So the trip to the continent is Francis's first experience abroad. He writes his older sister best during the visit. I have duly kept your precepts in mind about the a measurable superiority of Englishmen. So he's a bigot in his family are bigoted. But this is like a prescientive agresist. They're just like, but we're better than everyone else that you meet because we're English. Never forget that we're better. Like as you travel the world, we're the best that everyone else is worse than us. Remember that Francis. This is how you may I am surprised this didn't make a Hitler. Because like it kind of did. I know it kind of did, but I'm more overt like a guy. I'm going like, yeah, I'm Hitler because there's like, it's science is more primitive. Yeah, telling like a teenager, you're better than everybody else. And then come with me to go see people at their worst and most very worse. Yeah. Well, reminding you that you're better than all these people. Yeah.

38:52Of course that made him into the man who invented eugenics. Yeah. Hitler's too. That's the reason for the Hitler's too. Yeah. That's all the all the pieces of a tasty Hitler stew, right? They're all together. I'm going to guess a lot of human in a Hitler's stew. I'm not sure why. Anyway, during the same trip, you wrote this on a letter back home to his whole family. Well, that motherfucker's not seasoning his food. Yeah, you're probably right. Sophie. You guys have a you've covered this Hitler fellow on this show. We have. We've talked a little bit about Hitler. Like your family. Bum. Yeah. That's our fans. During the same trip, you wrote this in a letter back home, it was entire family. There is nothing more useful than traveling. The more you see, the more you are convinced of the superiority of England. However, nothing could be so honorable as a German or Frenchman who loves this country. It must be a great and genuine patriotism to be able, but to prefer it. But like, wow, these must really be admirable patriots if they love their shitty ass fucking countries that suck so much worse than England. Oh my god. This is funny, big. It's first country in an unhinged

39:55way. I've already quoted from two major sources in these episodes, Polmers by or boomers biography of Francis Galton and Galton's own auto biography. But I found these quotes, the ones that I just read about him talking about how much better England is than everywhere. In a dissertation, Susan Schumacher wrote a Schumacher wrote for the University of Canterbury and Susan analyzed the growth and development of Galton's chauvinistic views during his world travel. So we'll be hearing from her several more times in these episodes. Most of the scientific training Galton received as a doctor was in boiling various natural compounds to make tinctures and extracts. There's a lot of boiling, there's a lot of simmering, there's a lot of reducing things to vapors and then turning them into liquids again. That's most of medical science. And there's a lot of making pills. You're mashing up different compounds to like make pills. It's all we could do, right? It's like a pit. It's like a pit. You have fire in a pot. What do we do? What do we do? We have a rock and we got some like, maybe this plant does something. Maybe it's medical. Maybe just poisons people in a way we think is beneficial.

40:56There's no way to know. We're still very new with this science thing. To give you an idea of how primitive shit was. This is something that Galton wrote later about his medical schooling. The stethoscope was considered generally to be new fangled. The older and naturally somewhat deaf practitioners poop-bood and never used it. So like the most respected doctors like a stethoscope. Everyone's deaf. Why would that be useful? It would probably scream at a lot louder. Yeah. It's really funny to feel like why would we need to listen more or observe closer? That's not doctoring. These people are poor. You don't need to listen to them. Again, not long after this, a man is going to be how to do his death in the United States for being like surgeon should wash their hands. And the reason why he's how to do his death is that surgeons are like, but doctors can't give poor people illnesses. We're rich. Right? That's literally the justification. We're a better class of person. Why would we have to wash our hands?

41:56That means we're the same kind of thing as a poor person. If we could get them sick. It's very funny. Except for all the deaths. So working in their equivalent is day's equivalent of an ER, which is what his early medical school is in. He's like basically working in an emergency room. Galton got a feeling for the common search of injuries of the day. Most nighttime emergencies were caused by burns because everyone's heating everything with like fire and oil. So if you get injured at night, it's probably because you like poured a fucking burning lamp on yourself or something, right? It was a horrible time to be alive. Oh, yeah. I do this nightly to myself. Yeah. Oh, it would be awful. The next common most common injuries were broken heads from brawls. That's what he how he described them at nighttime, right? Because people are drunk at a bar and they get into a fight, which he had to clean and stitch up. As a wealthy child of a wealthy family in the Victorian era, he had grown up extremely conservative. And this colored his interpretations of all he saw. His biographer Michael Burr, Bulmer, describes him as having little sympathy for liberal causes like chartism.

42:56The chartist movement was a working class attempt to reform UK politics that was active from 1838 to the late 1840s. It was a kind of proto-socialist E, right? It's not perfectly accurate to view it that way, but it's certainly on the progressive side of things. And they supported some radical policies, like a vote for every free man of sound mind over the age of 21. They also supported an end-to-property qualifications for ministers of parliament. You didn't have to own land to be in parliament, and annual parliamentary elections, so that rich people couldn't just buy offices as easily because you'd have to do it more often, right? So, woke shit. Woke shit, the chartists. Britain would ultimately adopt nearly every chartist reform. The only one they still haven't adopted to the present day is annual elections to parliament, because again, it would make rich people less powerful. But only after the movement died, right? The chartists don't get anything until after they've been bashed into like fucking prison and stuff, right?

43:56And there are a lot of brutal riots in mob, like police riots and stuff, where these chartists are bashed half to death or to death in order to stop them from advocating for slightly better conditions. The height of the movement was in 1839, which is like one of the first years that Francis is working as a doctor. There were mass protests that the police cracked down on with standard brutality. All Francis noted at the time was, many people were hurt. It was curious to observe the apparent cleanness of the cuts that were made through the scout by the blow of a policeman's round trungeon. They're like, wow, when police beat people have to death, it's really clean. I love police violence. It's so much better than bar violence. It's like they're blessing them somehow. Yeah. What a clean, nice wound of the police left this dying man. Orderly. Now brain damage forever. Yeah. I love how orderly police caused wounds are. That's Francis's conclusion. Bulmer analyzed this statement in his biography of Francis Gaulten and concluded,

44:56this comment reveals a detached intellectual interest, a tendency to see people as cases to be studied, or examples to be counted, rather than as fellow humans to be sympathized with, which remained part of his character. And that is very important. He does not see people as people. He sees people as data points on a graph. Right? He would have been an effective altruism guy if he came out today, like where he's like, well, this would, this means that I have to, we have to support 1000 millions of people dying and starving, but it will be better for people who don't exist yet, maybe, in the future based on these things I've decided in my own head that don't necessarily correspond to reality. That would have been him today. In 1840, Francis traveled overseas on his own for the first time. His father had agreed to pay for him to study medicine in Germany over the summer, showing what it seems to be, how it has been rare defiance. He instead decided to quote, make a dash and go as far as his dad's money would take him.

45:57So he's like, I'm not got to study in Germany. I'm fucking bouncing. I'm going to take my dad's money. I'm going to go to the Balkans. I'm going to go to Constantinople. And honestly, if I was a rich kid, I would definitely prefer rolling around the Balkans in Constantinople to go to the PR. Yeah, DJ for a while. Yeah, he took into residency of an Ibiza. Yeah. Yeah. This means that for the first time, young Francis was confronted with large numbers of non-white people, once he winds up in Turkey, right? Schumacher's dissertation provides Francis' reaction to being in this environment. In a letter to his father, he begins, here I am at Constantinople among Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and Franks. And further on in the same letter, then there are the Greeks. I never saw such black eyes in all my life. I should like to put one of them in a rage. They must look splendid then. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean this is crazy statement. This is going, this is going as good as you assume it would, right?

46:58This guy around anybody who isn't white, he's going to be like, I don't like this that much. I don't know why. And he's around a bunch of Greeks for the first time after just like reading the Iliad as a kid. And he's like, I wonder what it, I bet they look great angry. I wish I could really piss off this Greek so I could see them in their natural condition. Which I assume the Iliad describes. What a weirdo. He continues in that letter and here's where things get really dark. I saw the woman's slave market today. If I had 50 pounds in currency and my disposal, I could have invested in an excessively beautiful one, a Georgian. Some of the slaves had their nails dyed in Hina. Most of the black ones were fettered, but they seemed very happy dancing and singing and looking on complacently whilst a couple of the Turks were wrangling about their prices. So there's Okay. This guy everything he writes, it makes me want to put him in a cage. Yeah, I want to contain him. Yeah, he should have been locked up. Yeah, interacting with society.

47:58No, no. A cave would have been the right thing. Play does the cave is a great example of what we should have done to people like a like this fucking kid. You know, lock him in a cave, let him look at some fucking projections and a fire on the wall. And just let him let him live and die there. You know, that or I want to give him access to Twitter. It's one or the other because he'd be like a real shit hang. He'd be Richard Hennanio fucking like like Jesus. Like, so it is kind of noteworthy too. His casual willingness to discuss buying a sex slave, right? Because Britain ended slavery in its possessions in 1833. Slavery's been over for like almost a decade in Britain when he's staying. So that means, among other things, he doesn't care about that. He doesn't think that it's immoral to own a person as long as they're not a white person, right? Especially if you want to have sex with them. That's a perfectly good reason to want to own somebody. You know, if he'd had more currency, he would have bought a sex slave. Later during his vacation in 1841, he wrote to his father about a very entertaining fellow traveler.

49:01He had a hooked nose, gold spectacles, and was a member of the Reform Club. And a NA plus ultra radical. We had a red hot argument on politics, which I firmly believe neither of us knew anything about. Based on how he describes Jewish people, elsewise, I'm guessing that this was like a Jewish socialist that he meets. Right? That's why he yeah. Yeah. Anyway, great. Also the assumption that like, well, this guy's talking about politics. I don't believe in. We must neither of us must know anything about politics. Maybe it was just you, Francis. That sounds like he lost the debate. He says like he lost the argument. Sounds like this guy says some reasonable stuff. Maybe we shouldn't own people. Yeah. What do we know? Yeah. Galton attended college in Cambridge as a break from his medical education to study mathematics. His half-cous and Charles Darwin helped convince his father. This was a good idea. Boomer calls his academic record here undistinguished. Despite his later success in statistics, Francis was a mediocre math student. By his own account, he's like, I wish I was better at maths.

50:03And he suffered a mental breakdown in his third year. This caused him to settle for a past degree rather than attempting to earn an honors distinction. So he gives up on being like a great student and just is focusing on just doing well enough to pass. Because he can't really do much better. His weakness is always going to be analytical mathematics. That's what math people's. I'm not fit to judge him as a mathematician or anybody. I'm no math learner. I'm no math learner. I'm no performance arts charter school. I really know how to do math. I dropped out a fucking call. I certainly don't know how to do math. But math people are like, he wasn't very good at the analytical side of mathematics. That was his big weakness. Right. He chose to take a past degree during his final year at Cambridge too. Because he'd been drawn to extracurriculars and didn't want to take away from them. And these extracurriculars are the humanities. Right. Gollum helps find found the historical society, which is a debating group formed to oppose a different debating group the Cambridge Union. Right.

51:03So he gets really into like arguing with kids about history other than as opposed to like learning how to be a better mathematician. Oh, good. He likes to bait. He likes to bait. He gets into having Shapiro sciences. Everybody cool loves to bait. Everybody cool loves as a kid who loved to bait. I was not cool in school. But you know who it is cool in school. That's right, Sophie. Dave and the sponsors of this podcast. Yeah. You're going to argue with you. Honestly, don't listen to the things they want to argue about. It's not great. Probably raises. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived. And I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart. And these are the survivor files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up. Don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

52:05I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinierro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility.

53:05Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complained about the very thing they were seeing. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men.

54:06Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You're going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same van. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. 12 seats. 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. Hello, Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHot Radio app Apple Podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts. 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. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morian on America's number one podcast network. I Heart open your free I Heart app and search body bags with Joseph Scott Morian and start listening.

55:07And we're back. So talking Francis Galton. He was a, you know, he seems to have been a pretty popular guy at school. He makes a lot of friends. He's very social. He's going to make a lot of influential contacts during this period with other wealthy kids, which is really what college is all about. Right? Like that's the actual benefit of college even today. There's not as much of a benefit if you're not making connections and friends with other rich people. Like that's definitely why a lot of kids go to, you know, Harvard or Cambridge today. Several of his friends were budding historians. And this is where we can document him first experiencing his earliest feelings of race science. The subject of prehistoric civilization was novel, even so late as the early 50s, and was discussed independently from two different sides. The line of approach that made one of his friends followed was to investigate the customs of the so-called Aryan races. The other of his friends, the other line was by studying, was by the study of living savage races.

56:11And of such inferences regarding the past as might be drawn from implements and bones preserved in prehistoric graves and caverns. So one of the issues with this, and this is an issue that persists the modern day. They're looking at so-called savage people, which are in reality the indigenous people of the places they're colonizing. And these are the indigenous people of places they're colonizing after they've generally been through apocalyptic changes. Right? Especially the Americas. Everything they're noting about the behavior of indigenous people is usually after like 90% of them die to disease and a bunch of the rest get enslaved. And they're like, the natural habitats of this group of people, it would be like if the nukes go off and then some aliens came down here like four years after all electricity is gone and were reduced to starving tribes. And like in their natural society, human beings seem to huddle and search for cans fighting each other for like, depos of cans. And that's their natural human nature really. It's a real traumatized and terrified of us. Yeah, not quite. Actually, maybe maybe that's not a fair way to document and try and to try to draw inferences of the past.

57:16Right? This is partly where the idea that like life was nasty, brutus, and short, and ancient peoples had no technology and no knowledge of anything and no art. That's a lot of like prehistory gets written about like people didn't know how to do war in the ancient era because they weren't really sophisticated enough. I mean, we do the shit like land of Americans too, which is like, yeah, you go in, you brutalize and devastate a group of people and then you conclude based off the brutalization and devastation you did. Oh, they were pretty primitive actually. Yeah. I'm looking at them all with these burning huts like they couldn't even keep a hut not burning. Yeah, yeah. All we did was light them on fire and look, the natural, the natural state of their homes is burning down. Yeah. I mean, it is what people, some people do about like the Middle East today, right? Where they're like, wow, we've been at war with this place forever and they're naturally pissed at us for reasons that we have nothing to do with. Yeah. Cool stuff. I love how common an inference that is. He goes on to explain that at the time most historians believe that the entire history of the ancient world was contained in the pentatouche or the first five books of the Old Testament.

58:25It's also practically supposed that nothing more of importance could be learned from the origins of civilization during classical times and was to be found definitely stated in classical authors. So we say that like at his time, the idea of prehistory is that like, there's nothing really to learn. It's all in the Bible. So the fact that his friends are talking about prehistory in any way are trying to glean anything more than is in these classical works is actually part of like a revolution in historiography. The even as bad and as as incomplete as it is to like look at these people in tribes that you've been fucking with for years and tried to determine ancient civilization that's still an improvement over just being like, well, whatever is in the Bible and the Iliot is probably all we need to know about ancient peoples. And they actually know. It's an incredible time when you're talking about like that hit new thing called mass and science and prehistory. Yeah, trying to barely understand the world. Yeah. So through his young adulthood, Galton is going to see Western antiquarians and archaeologists trying to grapple with the disconnect between evidence of ancient great civilizations of non white people and their beliefs about white supremacy.

59:36This is like a major thing that early history is dealing with giving his waning interest in math education and his clear disinterest in practicing medicine. I don't know what Francis Galton would have done after graduation if he'd been a normal kid, but he wasn't. And the period of time which he has to think about doing something for a living is about to end because his dad dies in 1844 and his dad is fucking loaded. He's so loaded that even though there's a bunch of brothers and sisters, the resulting inheritance that Francis gets makes him instantly so wealthy that he never has to work again. Right? As long as he doesn't develop like a fashionable gambling problem, he's never going to have to do anything. And so as soon as he gets his inheritance, Francis is like, well, I'm not going to do anything practical anymore. Like that part of my life is over. It's time to fuck off and party for a while. Um, Bulmer writes that Galton quote, immediately abandoned the idea of practicing medicine. And in 1845, he set up for the Near East to satisfy his desire to travel and sow his wild oats.

1:00:36Now there's a, actually, I like to think back to a very good, uh, Rudyard Kipling line from a, the poem Mandalay, uh, or Mandalay Bay, I think it's the name of the poem. And he's talking about like the British colonial possessions in a period of time a little bit after Galton's youth. And he's talking about like what psychologically goes on in the men who travel over to the far east into Asia as part of the empire. Take me somewhere east of Suez where the best is like the worst where there ain't no tin commandments and a man can raise a thirst. Galton is going over to the Middle East and North Africa to raise a thirst. He's not just going to fulfill his intellectual interest. He is going there to have sex with a lot of enslaved people. He's going to become a colloquial. Yeah, he's going to do a lot of horrible sins. That's why he's going. How old is he? He's like 18 or 19. Yeah, when I was 22, my left arm horrible things.

1:01:36I was hair about snorting drugs in a squat house. Yeah, exactly. And then immediately to nose drugs in a foreign country. Yeah, I was looking black tar hero and off of a guy's finger in rural India. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a miracle where lies. If it had been around, we might not be. Right. It's honestly, it's an injustice that we're alive. It's like it's like, yeah, that's enough front to nature. Oh, God. So this first meant that Galton goes on what Bullwer describes as a shooting trip up the Nile and shooting trips are popular gatherings for the upper class and their stocked the states. They would sometimes go on vacation for the same purpose. A bunch of wealthy armed white guys are going to like roam around on a boat and shoot every living creature we see on the Nile for a couple of weeks. I should have blasted. Yeah, it's a shooting trip. We're gonna blast everything we can. It's one of those things like nowadays, if I told someone I was going on a shooting trip, you know, they call the cops.

1:02:36Yeah, go on a shooting trip to where? Yeah. The Nile. Unfortunately, Francis was unable to convince any of his friends to go with him. Perhaps because they had to finish school or work and he didn't have to do that anymore. But on the steamer over, he meets two of his rich former classmates who are all in the same condition as he is. They're traveling with a butler and a cook to the Nile, right? And so they decide to all hang out together and Galton finds the group an Arab translator and an Arab boy to be their coffee bearer. His name was Ali, but they nicknamed him Bob because again, they're not going to call this boy by his fucking name, right? Ali or Bob, it's the same amount of letter. It's just the same amount of letters. What does he care? Yeah. Come by his name. Come by his fucking name. Isn't that a hard one to pronounce, guys? No. Early in the trip, they met a man that they first mistook for a poor Arab traveling in a small and dirty boat. Upon meeting, Galton describes how, quote, like arrogant Britishers, he and his friends,

1:03:38discussed loudly in English together, whether we should not pitch him into the river. So they start like, Jokey, he doesn't speak English. Let's talk about throwing this strange Arab man that we just meet on the Nile into the river for no reason. But before they could, quote, he shortly astonished us by speaking perfect French. And after a while, we discovered he was a much more interesting person than we had dreamed of. Now, first off, he's interesting because he's white. They find out he's a French guy. This person, this is another one of Galton's early connections to like a leftist, right? This French person who they realize is actually really smart and interesting is an exiled Saint-Simonian. And the Saint-Simonians are a kind of proto-socialist sect in France. And they get sort of cracked down on and made a legal and he flees the country and he winds up working for a local Arab leader. And this French guy, our Monde, explains to Galton that, quote, though he spoke English badly, he quite understood we had said among ourselves and we first met him and made me

1:04:38feel very small indeed. The fact that he says that like, oh, I felt like such an asshole for like assuming something about this foreign man that turned out to be wrong based on his appearance. And for some people, this would have led to introspection and even change, right? Galton keeps going to confront it with these these opportunities to be a better person. He will never take them. Absolutely not. He's telling the story like someone like getting a waiter's name wrong. Like, oh, can you believe it? He was going to throw a man in the Nile. Yeah, he's going to throw him in the Nile for looking different. He's such a prick. And in no point this, he become a better person. He never grows because he's rich. He doesn't have to. I think that's a big part of it. Like, he never has to be afraid of anyone really. He should, but he never has to because of his money. Galton spent years in North Africa in the Middle East sowing his wild oats in his own words. But he's got the evidence that during this period he did things that later ashamed him.

1:05:41His biographers will note that almost none of his letters survived from the years right before, right after his dad died. His first biographer, Carl Pearson calls this period of his life the fallow years of his life because there's, we don't have anything to know about them, right? Cause he, you're kind of let to believe he destroyed the letters. He sent home. Yeah, he did some stuff. But he was like, oh, I don't really. I don't want history to know about this. This was his live journal years. Yeah, you know, we're all kind of thankful live journal isn't around anymore. Yeah, they got they took that down. Yeah Now I am not I've had some fellow years of my own So I'm not surprised that his great niece and future housekeeper told his biographer Pearson that she thought it quote best Not to take any notice of those blank years. I expect his mother tore up any letters of that date Pearson merely notes that the letters perished Right Yeah, now that isn't teasing his more recent biographer bullworth sites one rare surviving letter from this period

1:06:42That's a letter to Galton from his friend Montague Bolton and Montague is one of the guys He's exploring Egypt in the North and North Africa in the Middle East with during this time right Montague's a traveling buddy and later Sins a letter to Galton referencing their adventures together and writes What an unfortunate fellow you are to get laid up in such a serious manner for as you say a few moments enjoyment That means he caught VD right yeah and based on other things he wrote We know that this is maybe this is from a prostitute who was technically free It's probably from an enslaved person and so it's probably right by any just like yeah, it's It's horrifying right One reason for us to guess this is that at a later point in the same letter Galton's friend Montague describes negotiating for a pretty in slay pretty enslaved girl from Abacinia or Ethiopia he told Galton the Hanhuris are looking a lot of the other than ever the divorced one has been critically examined and pronounced a virgin

1:07:44I don't know what the Hanhuris are but the Huries are the infamous heavenly virgins in the Islamic afterlife Now there's a lot of debate as to what that actually means. I don't know why he would put Han there But I my guess is that that was a term he and Montague came up with for some local enslaved women who were worked at a brothel That they both knew and this guy saying we one of them got Inspec did and pronounced right a virgin right there. He's friend is talking about the prostitutes that they hung out with Yeah, they've with right the page. I'm picturing putting him in keeps getting smaller Yeah smaller and smaller and yes and spikes in there now. Yeah We can kind of infer from this information that Francis Galton spent a fair amount of his recreational time during this period having Non-consensual sex with enslaved people there were hints of this reprobate period even in Galton's autobiography in a chapter about his visit to Cartoon Egypt he writes this the saying was that when a man was such a reprobate that he could not live in Europe

1:08:44He went to Constantinople if too bad to be tolerated in Constantinople He went to Cairo and then's forward under similar compulsion to Cartoon Now he's saying like when someone was so shitty they couldn't exist in Europe they go from Constantinople and then to Cairo and then the cartoon That's the exact route he route he took he's talking about himself, right? booted out of cut space He's he's he's he's fucking doing all the drugs and having sex with all the crimes He's on a crime spree, but he's rich so he doesn't get arrested. He just gets kicked off to the next city Um, and it's also worth noting that the pretty much the only thing he writes about doing in Cartoon is meeting a bunch of slave traders He's introduced to these slave traders by another Englishman a Cambridge scholar another Cambridge scholar All of these guys is holering their way through the Middle East or Cambridge Cambridge scholars and this dude introduces This is what he writes about the guy who introduces them to the slave traders He easily held his own under difficulties one hearts by his sympathy and could touch any amount of pitch without himself being defiled

1:09:49He was consequently an admirable guide and then that sync of iniquity Cartoon Right, he never got defiled by the fact that he was hanging out with the absolute worst people on the planet Right the most degenerate and vile slavers, but he never got colored by it just like me You know don't think too much about what I did in my free time as a kid He had this to say about the people he met through these slave traders a party of Inward girls who had been captured on the borders of Abacinia These girls were delighted to talk to us of places known to them as well as ourselves They seem Mary as possible the prospect of being sold and soon finding each of them a master in a home He writes a lot about how happy specifically black enslaved people are at the idea of being enslaved Whenever he writes about black people it's to say they wanted to be enslaved That's like the only time they come up in his biography is autobiography. I should note that too I mean fucking people still try to say that today. Yeah, it's like this real Incredible coping right? Yeah, it's like they loved it otherwise

1:10:52I mean I would be like when history is getting greatest monsters and I can't be that right yeah I must have loved that had been that bad otherwise. I'm completely damned. Yeah, yeah I am I am a sinner beyond the ability to forgive yeah What you were Francis and you know who else is beyond forgiveness? All of us all of us yes, that's right unless we accept Jesus Christ into our hearts Yeah, you're going with this right but I was but but not like the religious Jesus But like the Jesus you say when like something fucked up that happens and you're like Jesus Christ Right except that that like sense of resignation into your heart. I gotta say that'll save you I really admire that Jesus Christ is you is a is a person and like an explodive Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you what David Bell God David Christopher Bell Yeah, that that actually that's worth a little bit. Yeah, yeah, the next time you stub your toes listeners save David's name, you know, please

1:11:59Dave you got anything to plug Is it is there ever a good time to mention that my ancestors Alexander Graham Bell a famous eugenicist? Yeah, it's a good time to mention I was wondering You know me cameo in this I should do the the Alexander Graham Bell episodes with you David Yeah, I'll plug So I I have a podcast network you do gamefully unemployed. I do with Tom Rieman We don't talk about eugenics mostly we were mostly about like movies like movies like best of the best with Eric Roberts It's right the best two with Eric Roberts Which I've been thinking about often I have the box set coming. I want to plug the best of the best box set But also yeah, go to patreon or just google gameplay unemployed G&E checking out why unemployed and I'm the head writer at some more news and that's right At movie hula again. I'm blue sky. Why not? Yeah check them out check them out there

1:13:02Check out david tom's podcast fox molder is a maniac too If you yes, if you're missing the ex files and you want to think a lot about Molder's behavior right. It's our own behind the bastards basically for fox molder to be honest If fox molder had written a not a biography there would be a period in the zine early 20s where he's bumping around the Middle East and North Africa Conviting crimes against humanity easily easily no question We also oh we also have a new podcast about supernatural. It's our secret of that It's about those beautiful Winchester boys. It's called him booze Yeah, and it's a spiritual sequel to fox molders of maniac it turns out because they are also maniacs Yeah, beautiful stuff all right everybody Well, that's gonna be it for us From behind the bastards and it should be it for all of you, you know all of you Listening to this podcast go and listen to the next podcast which will happen at some point Bye oh

1:14:02Behind the bastards is a production of cool zone media from more from cool zone 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 slash at behind the bastards 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 we do a deep dive into the forensics Listen to body bags with Joseph Scott Morian on america's number one podcast network iHeart Open your free iHeart app and search body bags with Joseph Scott Morian and start listening Didn't catch the latest rolling Martin unfiltered podcast here's what you missed

1:15:03There should not be a single law enforcement agency and it's not have body cameras. It's real black farmers have been under attack This is just the latest example of them just slapping dei on anything It's raw and i'm sitting here going They are playing y'all for fools catch roll and martin's daily commentary on the black information network and download roll and martin unfiltered on the iHeart radio app apple podcast Oh, wherever you get your podcasts Welcome aboard season six of the girlfriends flight or fight which takes place 30,000 feet in the sky A beautiful woman smiles and hands you a scotch But you have no idea just how messed up her job actually is It was the most sexist job i think you could have Until one day the group of stewardesses spark a revolution that reshapes america Listen to the girlfriends flight or fight on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

1:16:09Hi, i'm michael imperioly. I want to tell you about my new podcast underground zero We're looking at the opportunity of a lifetime for us and the other families It's about the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. What's in the tunnels? Go barge over ingeg it can be worth half a billion Starring Steve Sharipa, Reya Brutson and me Michael imperioly How far you prepared to go? Depends how far you are Listen to underground zero on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts This is an iHeart podcast Guaranteed human You You