Emily Klancher Merchant, PhD, author of "Breeding for IQ" in the Los Angeles Review of Books, talks about how "intelligence—not race—has always been at the center of American eugenics." She cautions that "eugenics does not work by breeding smarter humans;" no technology has been shown to do this but the widespread, American belief that intelligence is primarily genetic is allowing governments to shirk responsibility for ameliorating social inequality and promote projects that favor those who are already priviliged.

Full episode transcript at: https://www.geneticfrontiers.org/transcript-ep-15

GUEST BIO

Emily Klancher Merchant, PhD, is a historian of science, technology, and medicine, focusing on the human sciences in the United States since World War I. She is Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California at Davis.

RESOURCES

• https://www.emilyklancher.com/

• Emily Klancher Merchant. Building the Population Bomb. Oxford University Press. 2021.

• Emily R. Klancher Merchant. "Breeding for IQ." Los Angeles Review of Books. August 22, 2024.

• Elizabeth Catte. Pure America. Arcadia Publishing. 2021.

• Molly Ladd-Taylor. Fixing the Poor. John Hopkins University Press. 2020.

Nathaniel Comfort, PhD, author of The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine and a forthcoming biography on James Watson, talks about medical genetics and eugenics as "two sides of the same coin," and cautions that there is no simple, bright line between the two pursuits.

KEY TOPICS

• Reading from The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine by Nathaniel Comfort, PhD
• How should clinicians and prospective parents think about the argument that there is no bright line between genetic interventions to relieve suffering v. human engineering or population improvement?
• What are the contingent problems created between distinguishing between genetic interventions for a fatal disease v. a non-fatal disease?
• How did the end of World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs rejuvenate Americans' interest in science and genetic disease?
• How do we talk about genetics today in a way that embraces the actual complexity of the science?
• In the current moment of sea change, what is the cultural authority of science in the United States?
• Discussion of Dr. Comfort's new biography of James Watson, his enormous contributions to the field of human genetics and also his downfall.

Check out this episode & all Genetic Frontiers episodes.

Have a story about how genetic information has changed your life? We invite you to talk about it through The TellMe Project.

In this open and vulnerable conversation, host Susanna Smith talks with Tiffany Graham Charkosky, author of Living Proof: How Love Defied Genetic Legacy, about their shared experiences of living with genetic risks, in Tiffany's case Lynch syndrome and in Susanna's case CADASIL. They chat about the unique psychological state of living for decades as a healthy person who is also at risk of a serious disease, their feelings of guilt, responsibility, and shame, and the spaciousness that can be found in contemplating your own death.

Resources

Tiffany Graham Charkosky. Living Proof: How Love Defied Genetic Legacy. Little A Publishing. 2025.

Tiffany Graham Charkosky. Why I'm Participating in a Cancer Vaccine Trial. Oprahdaily.com. Sept. 29, 2025.

https://tiffanygrahamcharkosky.com

Brought to you by The Tell Me Project.

Summary

Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD, author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate talks about how the American far right views genetics, genetic technologies, eugenics, and science and the emerging political threat of 21st century eugenics ideology and policies.

Episode Transcript available at: https://www.geneticfrontiers.org/transcript-ep-12

Key Topics

• How does the American far right view genetics and genetic technologies?

• What is the history of the American pursuit of choosing smarter children?

• What has science shown us about the relationship of heredity and intelligence?

• How does the idea of eugenics influence the current administration?

• How does the American far right use the concept of time?

• What is the metapolitic? How does it influence our political future?

Resources

• Alexandra Minna Stern. Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination. Beacon Press. 2019.

• The Natal Conference 2025

• Southern Poverty Law Center. Profile: Charles Murray. Accessed July 18, 2025.

• Feb. 18, 2025. Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Expands Access to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Available at: whitehouse.gov. Accessed July 18, 2025.

• C-span clip from Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy News Conference on Autism Rates. Accessed July 18, 2025

• Autism Society. Statement on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Comments Regarding the Cause of Autism and Misleading Deadline. Accessed July 18, 2025

• Lisa Ko. Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States. Independent Lens blog on PBS.org. January 29, 2016

• Buck v. Bell | 274 U.S. 200 (1927)

• Sterilization and Social Justice Lab

• Genetic Frontiers. Episode 6: The Eugenesis of Genetic Counseling with guest, Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD.

• Alexandra Minna Stern. Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America. John Hopkins University Press: 2012.

Part of Genetic Frontiers Season 2: Genetics in American Politics & Culture, Sue Currell, PhD, discusses the disturbing echoes of eugenic thinking in American politics today. She calls eugenics "the backbone of political control and a progressive meritocracy," and argues that "grip of eugenic ideas on American politics today is a political failure to imagine a world where value is not profit."

Visit geneticfrontiers.org to hear more episodes on the promise, power, and perils of genetic information.

KEY TOPICS

• Reading of excerpts from "This May Be the Most Dangerous Thing Donald Trump Believes": Eugenic Populism and the American Body Politic.

• How should we understand the administration's agenda to "forge a society that is colorblind, merit-based, and only has two genders" in light of the eugenic history of the United States?

• How are you making sense of this focus on the gender binary, and whether it has a relationship to eugenic ideologies?

• From what you know about the history of efficiency in the United States, how are you thinking about the new Department of Government Efficiency?

• What is the story we're being fed by politicians? And what is the real story?

• How would you describe Trump's relationship to disability rights?

• Can you talk about the complicated histories of eugenics and abortion rights and how you think this is influencing America today?

• How do you think clinicians and scientists should be thinking about the role of science, in particular genetics, in America today?

Read full transcript of this episode here.

Timnit Gebru, PhD, AI expert, advocate, and founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and Émile P. Torres, PhD, a philosopher, discuss how eugenic ideologies are influencing Silicon Valley and driving the push for artificial general intelligence. They talk about how eugenic thinking pervades American culture, including Big Tech and medicine, and is foundational to the worldviews of some of the powerful people in the United States today.

KEY TOPICS

• Introduction to main idea of TESCREAL paper: the cultural push to develop artificial general intelligence is undergirded by eugenic thinking

• Dr. Timnit Gebru discusses her intellectual journey of tackling bias and discrimination in technology and becoming a vocal critic of Big Tech

• Review of the core ideas of the philosophies in the TESCREAL bundle (Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism)

• Concrete examples of how TESCREALism is playing out in the United States today

• Why is it important to interrogate "the why" in our efforts to build artificial general intelligence?

• How does the TESCREAL framework serve as a jumping off point for taking a critical eye towards genetics and genomics research?

• Dr. Timnit Gebru & Dr. Émile P. Torres discuss their greatest fears about the future of eugenic thinking in American culture

• Thought experiment: how could knowing our likely date of death and cause of death from birth change our relationship to mortality?
  

A conversation with an award-winning science journalist and author, Angela Saini, about the alluring but dangerous pursuit of "improving" the human species through genetics and how it's driving American politics and policy today.

TOPICS

• The ideology of eugenics is fundamentally driven by a pursuit that can seem deceptively desirable: the "improvement of the human species." What does it really mean to "improve" people?

• How does the pursuit of perfection drive eugenic thinking?

• How are you thinking about efforts today to scrub scientific research of engagement with gender and race?

• Across human history how have people thought about biological sex gender and social roles?

• What did DNA testing bring to the conversation about how patriarchy spread?

• What do you think medical and genetics professionals should really be paying attention to in terms of how science, in particular genetics, is being discussed today culturally and politically?

• How does taking a long view of human history inform how you're thinking about the political moment we're living through right now?

• Do you think the left / progressives have a cohesive story that people want to hear?

For episode show notes and resources go to: https://www.geneticfrontiers.org/episode9-angela-saini

In this episode, Chelsey Carter, PhD, and Brett Maricque, PhD, founders of the Black Genome Project (https://www.blackgenomeproject.org/) talk about their work to understand how Black communities value their genomes and genetic data, how genetic research is impacting Black communities in St. Louis, and whether genomic sequencing is valuable for everyone.

TOPICS

• Introduction to the Chelsey Carter, PhD; Brett Marique, PhD, and the Black Genome Project

• Discussion of how the Black Genome Project is collaborating with the Black community in St. Louis, its local nature, and how the team is collecting data

• Discussion of how the Black Genome Project is using storytelling, focus groups, structured surveys and why they chose this approach

• What has been the most powerful part of what have you heard from the Black community in St. Louis?

• How do you approach people as an expert in their own lived experience within healthcare and genetics?

• How can the Black community exercise agency over their genetic information?

• Discussion about understandings about nature v. nature and genetic literacy

• How do you talk about ideas like rejecting race as biology, race as a social construct, racism underlying health disparities and the need to diversify genomic data sets?

• Where the Black Genome Project is headed in the future