Special Episode: Ayah Nuriddin and Nathaniel Comfort

09/22/22 • 92 min

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

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

Previous Episode

Preview: Nathaniel Comfort and Ayah Nuriddin

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

Next Episode

Special Episode: Stephen Metcalf

Steve Metcalf seems to shed urbanity and passion like I shed dandruff. His off-the-cuff manner of speech is as trenchant as his writing, and he is able to say wise things about any subject.

Here he discusses with me the topic that launched an episode of this podcast and my three-part essay “Best Behavior” (part three coming soon): the weird fact that we all changed our entire outlook on Woody Allen’s film Manhattan to fit our changing moral priorities—how we cannot just bracket out the lechery on display and heap praise on an indisputably brilliant and entertaining movie, even though that’s exactly what we did for decades! Steve and I chew over this terribly troubled—and terribly interesting—question before digging deeper into where our moral judgements hail from.

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