Preview: Nathaniel Comfort and Ayah Nuriddin

09/06/22 • 12 min

To coincide with the three-part essay “The Razor Blade in the Apple” (Part 3 hits inboxes Thursday), here is an excerpt of our interview with two scholars who have much to say about the formation of the scientific consensus on race:

Nathaniel Comfort, historian of genetics and the relationship between modern genomics and 19th-century eugenics

Ayah Nuriddin, historian of the lived experience of black Americans over the past 100 years and how they’ve navigated questions of racial science, eugenics, and hereditarianism

If you‘d like to hear the entire interview, become a paid subscriber to get access to that and much more material!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amillionlittlethoughts.substack.com

Nathaniel Comfort, historian of genetics and the relationship between modern genomics and 19th-century eugenics

Ayah Nuriddin, historian of the lived experience of black Americans over the past 100 years and how they’ve navigated questions of racial science, eugenics, and hereditarianism

If you‘d like to hear the entire interview, become a paid subscriber to get access to that and much more material!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amillionlittlethoughts.substack.com

Previous Episode

Book 2 Episode 11: "Don't Call It Race"

We've reached the heart of the part of our series "Race: Is That a Thing?" devoted to statistics and data. Having laid the groundwork for understanding Bayesian techniques and machine learning—as well as the limits and discontents of those tools—in episodes nine and ten, we turn to how they've been used to understand the history and diversity of the human population.

Carl Zimmer, New York Times science journalist and author, and Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Professor of the Philosophy of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, help us unpack just how difficult it is to justify using our cultural inheritance of "race" to talk about our genetic inheritance.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amillionlittlethoughts.substack.com

Next Episode

Special Episode: Ayah Nuriddin and Nathaniel Comfort

In order to entice more people to become subscribers, here is our full interview (complimenting my three-part essay “The Razor Blade in the Apple,” which I released last month and you can read here) with two scholars who have much to say about the formation of the scientific consensus on race:

Nathaniel Comfort, historian of genetics and the relationship between modern genomics and 19th-century eugenics

Ayah Nuriddin, historian of the lived experience of black Americans over the past 100 years and how they’ve navigated questions of racial science, eugenics, and hereditarianism

Part II of the essay “Best Behavior” will appear in inboxes next Thursday! Meanwhile, enjoy the interview.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amillionlittlethoughts.substack.com