Part Two: Francis Galton: Inventor of Eugenics

Robert Evans (0:03)

And we're back! Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. And this week, we're starting our series on Francis Galton, the father of eugenics.

And boy, what a wonderful day for an actual eugenicist, Milo Yiannopoulos, to have just gotten taken into custody by ICE for overstaying his immigration visa.

And look, listen, folks, if you're one of the people who's been like, we shouldn't laugh, and Milo Yiannopoulos being taken into custody by ICE, I want to read you a post Milo made a couple of years ago. What is the etiquette if you're going about your business and find yourself observing an ICE raid? I want to show a little respect and decency. Are you allowed to masturbate where you stand in the street or should you find some kind of awning or motor vehicle? No, it's really funny and good that he got taken into custody by the exact people who he enabled and cheered on his entire life. And then we stuck in immigration jail looking like shit. You can see his fucking mugshot right now. We'll make sure we put that on the YouTube. Otherwise, just look it up. Fuck him.

David Bell (1:05)

Yeah, it's just like you can laugh at leopards eating someone's face. That doesn't mean you like leopards eating everybody's faces. No, it's just I tried.

Robert Evans (1:16)

We tried to stop the leopards from eating anybody's face. Milo, you were on Team Leopard and now they're eating your face. I just feel nothing for you, nothing but joy. Because again, you're also a eugenicist, like Francis Galton, the subject of our episodes, but not like David Bell, the guest of our episodes. David, you're not a eugenicist, right?

David Bell (1:34)

No, I'm very moist right now though.

Sophie (1:37)

You are moist, that's good. That's good.

David Bell (1:38)

It's because in the last episode, my cat was on the desk and I got him off and he spilled my Red Bull everywhere. I didn't realize until later.

So I smell awesome. I smell radical.

Sophie (1:55)

Yeah.

David Bell (1:56)

I smell extreme.

Robert Evans (1:57)

Again, this is why Francis Galton was a eugenicist.

If we had just applied more eugenics, you could have had a cat that doesn't knock things over, probably. It has to exist. I actually don't think that does with the cats.

David Bell (2:09)

I think they have to not have legs.

Robert Evans (2:11)

I don't think you can breed that in the cats. I don't think there's any amount of the cat genome. I think every divisible chunk of the cat genome includes the knock shit off of a counter because it's fun gene. I just think that's integral to being a cat.

David Bell (2:28)

I get it. If you don't know what gravity is, you can still see it, and you're like, that's awesome. That's pretty cool.

Sophie (2:34)

That's pretty cool.

David Bell (2:36)

It's like throwing things down.

Sophie (2:38)

Yeah, exactly.

Robert Evans (2:42)

And speaking of beings without a conscience, who are just doing shit to watch what happens, Francis Galton is touring the Middle East and North Africa, committing every kind of sin imaginable. He next visited Syria, where Ali slash Bob, the little coffee boy that they were traveling with, takes ill.

Oh, yeah, no. He dies of what Francis describes as violent dysentery.

David Bell (3:09)

When you gave the kid a name, I was like, this can't end.

Robert Evans (3:13)

He's gotta die a horrible death. Now, Galton pays for the tombstone, but writes that he doesn't attend the funeral because his presence as a Christian, quote, would have been seriously resented by the Muslims. And I know that it's common today. And first of all, I just need to say, that's not true, right? It's not true that there's some sort of like wider prejudice among Muslims as a group against Christians or members of other faiths attending funerals or other, like a birthday or something like that of the like, right?

Weddings, similarly, it's been very common for a very long time, in a lot of areas at least for those to be interfaith events if it's a mixed community that the people live in, right? Sure.

David Bell (3:56)

That said, I do think Ali's family probably didn't want him.

Robert Evans (4:02)

That's what happened, right? He's saying Muslims just don't want Christians, or I think it's that they don't want you.

David Bell (4:09)

I can see him being like, oh, you're Muslim, you know what? Christians there and them going like, yeah, let's go with that.

Sophie (4:14)

Yeah, let's go with that. Let's say that.