Weird Little Guys

In 1937, the heir to a textile manufacturing fortune established a charitable foundation to funnel money into disseminating propaganda produced in Nazi Germany. Since then, that fund has subsidized the overwhelming majority of research in the pseudoscientific field of 'race science.'

Sources & Further Reading:

Tucker, William (2002). The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and The Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press.

Saini, Angela (2019). Superior: The Return of Race Science. Beacon Press.

Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The Mismeasure of a Man. Penguin Books.

Lusane, Clarence (2003). Hitler’s Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi Era. Routledge.

Kühl, Stefan (1994). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press.

Barry Mehler, “The New Eugenics,” Science for the People (May/June 1983)

Lorimer, Frank, et al. “The Role of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.” The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 4, 1971, pp. 86–105. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3349466.

“Current Topics.” The Economic Journal, vol. 45, no. 178, 1935, pp. 406–09. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2224670.

“116. International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems.” Man, vol. 35, 1935, pp. 109–109. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2790721.

“Medical News.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3890, 1935, pp. 192–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25344986.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/12/01/the-tainted-sources-of-the-bell-curve/

1994 publication of excerpt from The Bell Curve:
https://newrepublic.com/article/120887/race-genes-and-iq-new-republics-bell-curve-excerpt

Rebuttals published in the same issue:
https://newrepublic.com/article/120890/responses-new-republics-bell-curve-excerpt

Andrew Sullivan’s 2022 article
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/denying-genetics-isnt-shutting-down-racism-its-fueling-it.html

https://investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/race-science-inc/

https://x.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/business/media/im-still-reading-andrew-sullivan-but-i-cant-defend-him.html

https://www.ub.edu/personal/docencia/infocomp/bell.htm

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,748954-1,00.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1956/06/17/archives/dr-cg-campbell-88-expert-on-eugenic.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/136100c0

https://www.nytimes.com/1935/08/31/archives/berlin-congress-ends-in-dispute-international-and-scientific-nature.html

https://newrepublic.com/article/147960/charles-murray-marketing-genius

Herrnstein 1971 article in the atlantic
https://gwern.net/doc/iq/1971-herrnstein.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/16/obituaries/richard-herrnstein-64-dies-backed-nature-over-nurture.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20170324145730/http://www.intelligence.martinsewell.com/Gottfredson1997.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20200608195813/http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/eugenics2.html

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-bell-curve/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2757926/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Natural Causes is a podcast about the politics and practicalities of going outside in a world on fire, hosted by Dr. James Stout. It approaches the outdoors, conservation, agriculture, food sovereignty, and Indigenous land rights as interconnected issues. We want to combine unflinching journalism with unabashed advocacy for the land we all share, and welcome everyone into the outdoors and the fight for our public lands. Our shared wild spaces are under threat like never before, from climate change, the Trump administration, and extractive capitalism. Now, more than ever, we need serious journalism and serious solidarity that engages people with the struggle to protect these spaces for generations to come. New episodes weekly.

Listen here and subscribe to Natural Causes on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1904, men who believed in 'race science' put hundreds of people in a human zoo at the St. Louis world's fair. Today, those same racist, pseudoscientific views persist, and the men who hold them demand to be taken seriously in the name of academic freedom.

Sources & Further Reading:

Newkirk, Pamela (2015). Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga. Amistad.

Saini, Angela (2019). Superior: The Return of Race Science. Beacon Press.

McCray, Carrie Allen (2012). Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof. University of South Carolina Press.

Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The Mismeasure of a Man. Penguin Books.

Nathan Cofnas’ Doctoral Thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bd78170f-1131-47ef-af8d-7a3bb2ef41d0

https://jannalangholz.wordpress.com/2022/12/26/17-worlds-fair-deaths/

https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/specimen-days-human-zoos-at-the-1904-worlds-fair/

https://web.archive.org/web/20070610034510/http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Bontoc.html

https://ashp.cuny.edu/documentaries-list/savage-acts-wars-fairs-and-empire-1898-1904/#

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/how-i-became-the-scapegoat-in-the-jason-arday-affair-dc134088

https://investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/race-science-inc/

https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/2007046/ghent-university-under-fire-for-appointing-us-philosopher-with-ties-to-scientific-racism

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial-science/article/abs/reptiles-with-a-conscience-the-coevolution-of-religious-and-moral-doctrine-by-nathan-cofnas-pp-523-ulster-institute-for-social-research-press-london-2012-3000-isbn-9780956881151-paperback/4005A8AD3C5B21AC0A82A38D5D97BBF8

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/03/the-man-who-was-caged-in-a-zoo

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/thecity/the-scandal-at-the-zoo.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevmrjd9lj1o

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/06/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/largest-human-zoo-world-history
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was finally convicted of murder for killing Medgar Evers in 1963. He died in prison, his story is over. But history repeats itself.

Sources & Further Reading:

Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.

DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.

Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.

Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.

Newton, Michael (2010). The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. McFarland & Company, Inc.

Dittmer, John (1994). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. University of Illinois Press.

Ball, Howard (2004). Murder in Mississippi. University Press of Kansas.

Snipe, Tracy (2021). The 5th Little Girl: Soul Survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, The Sarah Collins Rudolph Story. Africa World Press.

Doyle, William (2001). An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi 1962. Doubleday.

Nossiter, Adam (1994). Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/719/1345/1438234/

https://shadowproof.com/2018/03/07/documents-reveal-police-targeting-anti-racists-charlottesville/
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/4404359-DHS-Bulletin-Aug-9/

https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2007/may/30/dredging-up-the-past-why-mississippians-must-tell/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-government-spied-anti-ice-protesters

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/us/politics/dhs-inquiry-immigration-protests-minnesota.html

https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-minneapolis-news-agents-claim-alberto-castaeda-mondragn-hit-wall-shattered-skull-triggers-tension-hospital/18514566/

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72504545/ge-v-immigration-and-customs-enforcement/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

James talks with Molly Conger about the javelina and their installable appetite for golf courses.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65x0RvhJNa8
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/nov/05/conservation.sciencenews
https://zoologicalbulletin.de/BzB_Volumes/Volume_56_1_2/049_054_BzB56_1_2_Moraves_Jiri_and_B%C3%B6hme_Wolfgang.pdf
https://www.azgfd.com/wildlife-conservation/living-with-wildlife/living-with-javelina/
https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/8e8abbf4-6775-4575-9a10-fedacb7cb2c1
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.