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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871)
Description: Matthew Sweet is joined by Xine Yao, Joe Cain, and Ruth Mace, who've been re-reading Charles Darwin's 1871 book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. The book offered a radical reinterpretation of what it means to be human by situating us completely within the natural world as a product of natural selection. But it is also a book of its times, as reflected in the language Darwin uses to talk about race and gender. University College, London where our speakers are based - holds the papers of Francis Galton, the Victorian polymath and eugenicist who was...