Part One: Francis Galton: Inventor of Eugenics

Robert Evans (0:01)

Cool Zone Media.

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, 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. Our guest for this week, the great David Christopher Bell. How are you doing, Dave?

David Christopher Bell (0:17)

I'm doing great, I'm living the dream.

Robert Evans (0:20)

Living the dream, what is the dream?

David Christopher Bell (0:21)

Living the dream. Having shirts with the faces of our pets on it.

Robert Evans (0:27)

Oh, that is the dream, actually, yeah. Is that Kitten? Oh, Kitten and the new one, yeah.

David Christopher Bell (0:32)

Yeah, Rue. And I got this Anderson shirt from my friend Beth Ann.

Robert Evans (0:36)

Oh, wow.

David Christopher Bell (0:36)

It's beautiful.

Robert Evans (0:38)

I don't have my cat on a shirt, but I do have some old Go4-themed Simpson shirts that have Saddam Hussein on them, and my cat's named Saddam Hussein. That's close enough.

It counts. We also have those shirts with each other's faces on them that we- We do, Sophie. Order that one live show and never address it. We should talk about that in reference to pets and stuff, though. That would be weird.

David Christopher Bell (0:59)

Wear it every episode, right?

Robert Evans (1:00)

Wear it every episode. Yeah, that's right. Every episode. I just wear it to the grocery store, you know? Yeah.

David Christopher Bell (1:06)

Oh, good.

Robert Evans (1:06)

To the fight club. When I go to my local fight club, I always wear it. Yeah.

David Christopher Bell (1:09)

Oh, I'm glad it's getting good use. I'm glad it's not just the grocery store.

Robert Evans (1:15)

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, obviously.

David Christopher Bell (1:22)

We're hurtling towards the grave.

Robert Evans (1:24)

We are hurtling towards the grave. But we were- You watched Mulan as a kid, right?

David Christopher Bell (1:29)

Not as much as a lot of people my age.

Robert Evans (1:32)

I watched it a lot. I watched it and 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 Huns to attack, right? There's some good lessons in there about how to kill a large number of Huns with the minimal amount of ammunition use, right?

My concern, because I was watching this with a kid's friend recently, and I realized, because I've watched a lot of media with this kid, kids today aren't learning about how to defeat the Huns. No one's telling them about the danger of the Huns. What's going to happen? Well, it's up to us. I know. It's up to us, and we're not doing the job right now. We were warned about the Huns, but they're not being warned. It worries me, Dave.

David Christopher Bell (2:12)

Yeah. We have to go school to school like a program. You know when you have an assembly and someone would come in with puppets?

Robert Evans (2:20)

Yeah.

Here's Attila. Yeah.

David Christopher Bell (2:23)

Yeah.

Robert Evans (2:23)

Huns are moving not really accurate. Such a good movie though, guys.

David Christopher Bell (2:27)

Such a good movie. Abab.

Robert Evans (2:29)

I mean, it is because I think based on historically when it would have been set, this was roughly contemporaneous to like the height of the Roman Empire when Mulana set, and the Huns really wouldn't have been, certainly not in China. I don't know where. No. 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. They're like always at minimum a little racist all the way up to a lot of races. It's got to be some kind.

David Christopher Bell (2:54)

Historically inaccurate 95 percent of the time.

Robert Evans (2:58)

As an Italian, I'm okay with bigotry against the Huns, because as far as I'm aware from history, we were doing great until the Huns came. No problems in the Roman Empire until Attila showed up. That was when things went wrong.

Speaking of racism, Dave, have you ever wondered who invented racism?

David Christopher Bell (3:18)

Oh, God, was it like James T. Racism?

Robert Evans (3:23)

Jonathan H. Racism? Yeah.

Yes.

David Christopher Bell (3:29)

Of the Portland Racists.

Robert Evans (3:29)

Of the racist empire? Yeah.

David Christopher Bell (3:31)

Yeah.

Robert Evans (3:32)

I mean, human beings have never needed a scientific justification to be shitty to people who live far away and practice strange customs.