Control
The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $13.71
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Greg Patmore
-
By:
-
Adam Rutherford
About this listen
How did an obscure academic idea pave the way to the Holocaust within just fifty years?
Control is a book about eugenics, what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for molding the British population, and quickly spread to America, where it was embraced by presidents, funded by Gilded Age monopolists, and enshrined into racist American laws that became the ideological cornerstone of the Third Reich. Despite this horrific legacy, eugenics looms large today as the advances in genetics in the last thirty years—from the sequencing of the human genome to modern gene editing techniques— have brought the idea of population purification back into the mainstream.
Eugenics has “a short history, but a long past,” Rutherford writes. The first half of Control is the history of an idea, from its roots in key philosophical texts of the classical world all the way into their genocidal enactment in the twentieth century. The second part of the audiobook explores how eugenics operates today, as part of our language and culture, as part of current political and racial discussions, and as an eternal temptation to powerful people who wish to sculpt society through reproductive control.
With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions—did eugenics work in Nazi Germany? And could it work today?—revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.
©2023 Adam Rutherford (P)2023 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
-
-
Humour and understandability.
- By Anonymous User on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
-
The Battle for Your Brain
- Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology
- By: Nita A. Farahany
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
-
-
John Stuart Mill for the Digital Age
- By Anonymous User on 06-05-23
By: Nita A. Farahany
-
How to Argue with a Racist
- What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Racist pseudoscience is on the rise - fueling hatred, feeding nationalism, and seeping into our discourse on everything from sports to intelligence. Even the well-intentioned repeat stereotypes based on "science", because cutting-edge genetics are hard to grasp - and all too easy to distort. Paradoxically, misconceptions are multiplying amid today's unprecedented surge of research on human genetics. We've never had a clearer picture of who we are and where we come from, and the science, when accurately understood, is a powerful and definitive ally against racism.
-
-
Terrible argument repeated ad-nauseum
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Adam Rutherford
-
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
- The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away - until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has completely upended what we thought we knew about ourselves. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story - from 100,000 years ago to the present.
-
-
I wish this book was in American high schools.
- By Anonymous User on 03-31-19
By: Adam Rutherford
-
Imbeciles
- The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
- By: Adam Cohen
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imbeciles is the shocking story of Buck v. Bell, a legal case that challenges our faith in American justice. A gripping courtroom drama, it pits a helpless young woman against powerful scientists, lawyers, and judges who believed that eugenic measures were necessary to save the nation from being “swamped with incompetence.”
-
-
Compelling Concept, Aggravating Execution
- By Anonymous User on 04-05-16
By: Adam Cohen
-
The Earth Transformed
- An Untold History
- By: Peter Frankopan
- Narrated by: Peter Frankopan
- Length: 29 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history.
-
-
A Thoughtful History of A Complex Phenomenon
- By Anonymous User on 04-21-23
By: Peter Frankopan
-
The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
-
-
Humour and understandability.
- By Anonymous User on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
-
The Battle for Your Brain
- Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology
- By: Nita A. Farahany
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
-
-
John Stuart Mill for the Digital Age
- By Anonymous User on 06-05-23
By: Nita A. Farahany
-
How to Argue with a Racist
- What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Racist pseudoscience is on the rise - fueling hatred, feeding nationalism, and seeping into our discourse on everything from sports to intelligence. Even the well-intentioned repeat stereotypes based on "science", because cutting-edge genetics are hard to grasp - and all too easy to distort. Paradoxically, misconceptions are multiplying amid today's unprecedented surge of research on human genetics. We've never had a clearer picture of who we are and where we come from, and the science, when accurately understood, is a powerful and definitive ally against racism.
-
-
Terrible argument repeated ad-nauseum
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Adam Rutherford
-
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
- The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away - until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has completely upended what we thought we knew about ourselves. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story - from 100,000 years ago to the present.
-
-
I wish this book was in American high schools.
- By Anonymous User on 03-31-19
By: Adam Rutherford
-
Imbeciles
- The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
- By: Adam Cohen
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imbeciles is the shocking story of Buck v. Bell, a legal case that challenges our faith in American justice. A gripping courtroom drama, it pits a helpless young woman against powerful scientists, lawyers, and judges who believed that eugenic measures were necessary to save the nation from being “swamped with incompetence.”
-
-
Compelling Concept, Aggravating Execution
- By Anonymous User on 04-05-16
By: Adam Cohen
-
The Earth Transformed
- An Untold History
- By: Peter Frankopan
- Narrated by: Peter Frankopan
- Length: 29 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history.
-
-
A Thoughtful History of A Complex Phenomenon
- By Anonymous User on 04-21-23
By: Peter Frankopan
-
Superior
- The Return of Race Science
- By: Angela Saini
- Narrated by: Hannah Melbourn
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science. If the vast majority of scientists and scholars disavowed these ideas and considered race a social construct, it was an idea that still managed to somehow survive in the way scientists thought about human variation and genetics. Dissecting the statements and work of contemporary scientists studying human biodiversity, Angela Saini shows us how, again and again, even mainstream scientists cling to the idea that race is biologically real.
-
-
Lots of great info, underwhelming narrative
- By Anonymous User on 04-08-21
By: Angela Saini
-
The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
-
-
I'm just not feeling this one....
- By Anonymous User on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
-
Human Errors
- A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes
- By: Nathan H. Lents
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often - 200 times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake. As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last.
-
-
From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes to...Aliens?
- By Anonymous User on 12-04-18
By: Nathan H. Lents
-
Jewish Space Lasers
- The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories
- By: Mike Rothschild
- Narrated by: Jon Vertullo
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2018 Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took to social media to share her suspicions that the California wildfires were started by 'space solar generators' which were funded by powerful, mysterious backers. Instantly, thousands of people rallied around her, blaming the fires on "Jewish space lasers" and, ultimately, the Rothschild family. For more than 200 years, the name "Rothschild" has been synonymous with two things: great wealth, and conspiracy theories about what they're "really doing" with it.
-
-
An Instant Relic
- By Anonymous User on 07-17-24
By: Mike Rothschild
-
Poisoner in Chief
- Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: James Linkin
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer - the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace - including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs. His experiments spread LSD across the United States.
-
-
Narration not great
- By Anonymous User on 09-20-19
By: Stephen Kinzer
-
Poverty, by America
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
-
-
A testimonial based on facts and witness
- By Anonymous User on 03-27-23
By: Matthew Desmond
-
The Wages of Destruction
- The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
- By: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Adam Tooze, Simon Vance
- Length: 30 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze's controversial book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period.
-
-
Ties the story together in an amazing way
- By Anonymous User on 08-23-21
By: Adam Tooze
-
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
- A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We humans are the inheritors of a dynasty that has reigned over the planet for nearly 66 million years, through fiery cataclysm and ice ages: the mammals. Our lineage includes saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, cave bears three times the weight of a grizzly, clever scurriers that outlasted Tyrannosaurus rex, and even other types of humans, like Neanderthals.
-
-
Fantastic Book
- By Anonymous User on 09-08-22
By: Steve Brusatte
-
Unmask Alice
- LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries
- By: Rick Emerson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.
-
-
I’m from Pleasant Grove where rumors of Jay’s Journal are alive and well
- By Anonymous User on 10-06-22
By: Rick Emerson
-
Homegrown
- Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
- By: Jeffrey Toobin
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Toobin
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement. Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, “I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.” But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001.
-
-
Not a great book I’m sorry to say
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-23
By: Jeffrey Toobin
-
Enlightenment Now
- The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
-
-
We live in the best of all times
- By Anonymous User on 02-25-18
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Alignment Problem
- Machine Learning and Human Values
- By: Brian Christian
- Narrated by: Brian Christian
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us - and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole - and appear to assess black and white defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And autonomous vehicles on our streets can injure or kill.
-
-
Required reading for any AI course
- By Anonymous User on 11-16-20
By: Brian Christian
Related to this topic
-
The Genetic Lottery
- Why DNA Matters for Social Equality
- By: Kathryn Paige Harden
- Narrated by: Katherine Fenton
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces listeners to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.
-
-
Mix of Genetic Science and Ideology
- By Anonymous User on 10-12-21
-
The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
-
-
Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
- By Anonymous User on 03-31-10
By: Steven Pinker
-
A Troublesome Inheritance
- Genes, Race, and Human History
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years - to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes.
-
-
This is NOT Racism!...
- By Anonymous User on 06-01-14
By: Nicholas Wade
-
Fatal Invention
- How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Dorothy Roberts
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An incisive, groundbreaking book that examines how a biological concept of race is a myth that promotes inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era. Though the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category written in our genes.
-
-
everyone should read this book to understand
- By Anonymous User on 07-29-21
By: Dorothy Roberts
-
Native American DNA
- Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science
- By: Kim TallBear
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Native American DNA, Kim TallBear shows how DNA testing is a powerful - and problematic - scientific process that is useful in determining close biological relatives. But tribal membership is a legal category that has developed in dependence on certain social understandings and historical contexts, a set of concepts that entangles genetic information in a web of family relations, reservation histories, tribal rules, and government regulations.
-
-
A good title to return to
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-24
By: Kim TallBear
-
Our Political Nature
- The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us
- By: Avi Tuschman
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our Political Nature is the first book to reveal the hidden roots of our most deeply held moral values. It shows how political orientations across space and time arise from three clusters of measurable personality traits. These clusters entail opposing attitudes toward tribalism, inequality, and differing perceptions of human nature. Together, these traits are by far the most powerful cause of left-right voting, even leading people to regularly vote against their economic interests.
-
-
A Trivial Version of Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"
- By Anonymous User on 10-29-13
By: Avi Tuschman
-
The Genetic Lottery
- Why DNA Matters for Social Equality
- By: Kathryn Paige Harden
- Narrated by: Katherine Fenton
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces listeners to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.
-
-
Mix of Genetic Science and Ideology
- By Anonymous User on 10-12-21
-
The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
-
-
Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
- By Anonymous User on 03-31-10
By: Steven Pinker
-
A Troublesome Inheritance
- Genes, Race, and Human History
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years - to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes.
-
-
This is NOT Racism!...
- By Anonymous User on 06-01-14
By: Nicholas Wade
-
Fatal Invention
- How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Dorothy Roberts
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An incisive, groundbreaking book that examines how a biological concept of race is a myth that promotes inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era. Though the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category written in our genes.
-
-
everyone should read this book to understand
- By Anonymous User on 07-29-21
By: Dorothy Roberts
-
Native American DNA
- Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science
- By: Kim TallBear
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Native American DNA, Kim TallBear shows how DNA testing is a powerful - and problematic - scientific process that is useful in determining close biological relatives. But tribal membership is a legal category that has developed in dependence on certain social understandings and historical contexts, a set of concepts that entangles genetic information in a web of family relations, reservation histories, tribal rules, and government regulations.
-
-
A good title to return to
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-24
By: Kim TallBear
-
Our Political Nature
- The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us
- By: Avi Tuschman
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our Political Nature is the first book to reveal the hidden roots of our most deeply held moral values. It shows how political orientations across space and time arise from three clusters of measurable personality traits. These clusters entail opposing attitudes toward tribalism, inequality, and differing perceptions of human nature. Together, these traits are by far the most powerful cause of left-right voting, even leading people to regularly vote against their economic interests.
-
-
A Trivial Version of Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"
- By Anonymous User on 10-29-13
By: Avi Tuschman
-
Giving the Devil His Due
- Reflections of a Scientific Humanist
- By: Michael Shermer
- Narrated by: Michael Shermer
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who is the "Devil"? And what is he due? The devil is anyone who disagrees with you. And what he is due is the right to speak his mind. He must have this for your own safety's sake, because his freedom is inextricably tied to your own. If he can be censored, why shouldn't you be censored? If we put barriers up to silence "unpleasant" ideas, what's to stop the silencing of any discussion? This book is a full-throated defense of free speech and open inquiry in politics, science, and culture by the New York Times best-selling author and skeptic Michael Shermer.
-
-
Flawed Audio
- By Anonymous User on 04-10-20
By: Michael Shermer
-
Evolution
- The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
- By: Edward J. Larson
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edward J. Larson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and eminent science historian. This marvelously readable, yet sumptuously erudite work traces the development of the scientific theory of evolution. From Darwin's essential trip to the Galápagos, to the most contemporary studies in sociobiology, this work takes listeners both into the field and laboratories of the world's greatest evolutionary scientists, and shows how the theory of evolution has itself evolved.
-
-
An Excellent History!
- By Anonymous User on 08-13-07
By: Edward J. Larson
-
The Science of Good and Evil
- Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule
- By: Michael Shermer
- Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Science of Good and Evil, psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates into moral primates, how and why morality motivates the human animal, and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the implications of scientific findings for fate and free will, the existence of pure good and pure evil, and the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans.
-
-
Read by author
- By Anonymous User on 04-16-23
By: Michael Shermer
-
On Human Nature: Revised Edition
- By: Edward O. Wilson
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This revised edition of Human Nature begins a new phase in the most important intellectual controversy of this generation: Is human behavior controlled by the species' biological heritage? Does this heritage limit human destiny?
With characteristic pungency and simplicity of style, the author of Sociobiology challenges old prejudices and current misconceptions about the nature-nurture debate.
-
-
A Heralding Voice...
- By Anonymous User on 07-22-14
By: Edward O. Wilson
-
Why Trust Science?
- The University Center for Human Values, Book 1
- By: Naomi Oreskes
- Narrated by: John Chancer, Kelly Burke, Kerry Shale, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Do doctors really know what they are talking about when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when our own politicians don't? In this landmark book, Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength - and the greatest reason we can trust it.
-
-
Perfect Production of an Excellent Work
- By Anonymous User on 01-15-20
By: Naomi Oreskes
-
Civilized to Death
- The Price of Progress
- By: Christopher Ryan
- Narrated by: Christopher Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending - balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the "progress" defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease.
-
-
Congintive Dissonance
- By Anonymous User on 12-06-19
By: Christopher Ryan
-
The Invisible History of the Human Race
- How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures
- By: Christine Kenneally
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. While some books explore our genetic inheritance and some popular television shows celebrate ancestry, this is the first book to explore how everything from DNA to emotions to names and the stories that form our lives are all part of our human legacy.
-
-
Who are you really. Who am I?
- By Anonymous User on 10-28-14
-
Know This
- Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments
- By: John Brockman
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Dan John Miller
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scientific developments radically alter our understanding of the world. Whether it's technology, climate change, health research, or the latest revelations of neuroscience, physics, or psychology, science has, as Edge editor John Brockman says, "become a big story, if not the big story". In that spirit this new addition to Edge.org's fascinating series asks a powerful and provocative question: What do you consider the most interesting and important recent scientific news?
-
-
Pete and Repeat and Re-repeat
- By Anonymous User on 02-25-18
By: John Brockman
-
Breaking the Spell
- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why - and how - it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma.
-
-
Great Reader Actually Enhances A Great Book!
- By Anonymous User on 07-14-14
-
Evolving Ourselves
- How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation are Changing Life on Earth
- By: Juan Enriquez, Steve Gullans
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why are conditions like autism, asthma, obesity, and allergies exploding at unprecedented rates? Why are we living longer, getting smarter, having far fewer kids? If Darwin were alive today, how would he explain this new world?
-
-
fascinating ideas and science
- By Anonymous User on 07-04-15
By: Juan Enriquez, and others
-
Before the Dawn
- Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just in the last three years a flood of new scientific findings, driven by revelations discovered in the human genome, has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors, the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization.
-
-
Amazing information
- By Anonymous User on 06-15-07
By: Nicholas Wade
-
The Age of American Unreason
- By: Susan Jacoby
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon - one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, Jacoby surveys an antirationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought".
-
-
Interesting, but explanation by redescription
- By Anonymous User on 07-15-08
By: Susan Jacoby
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
How to Argue with a Racist
- What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Racist pseudoscience is on the rise - fueling hatred, feeding nationalism, and seeping into our discourse on everything from sports to intelligence. Even the well-intentioned repeat stereotypes based on "science", because cutting-edge genetics are hard to grasp - and all too easy to distort. Paradoxically, misconceptions are multiplying amid today's unprecedented surge of research on human genetics. We've never had a clearer picture of who we are and where we come from, and the science, when accurately understood, is a powerful and definitive ally against racism.
-
-
Terrible argument repeated ad-nauseum
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Adam Rutherford