Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Public Policy
Episode: Robert Chernomas, Gregory Chernomas, and Ian Hudson, "The American Gene: Unnatural Selection Along Class, Race, and Gender Lines" (Routledge, 2025)
Description: Biological justification for all forms of inequality has a long history, with the claim that particular groups suffer disproportionately from inherited flaws of ability and character used to explain a remarkably wide variety of inequalities. Providing an important critique of that biodeterminist history and how the Human Genome Project has inspired some contemporary scientists and economists to follow a similar path of ascribing socioeconomic outcomes to genetic inheritance, The American Gene: Unnatural Selection Along Class, Race, and Gender Lines (Routledge, 2025) details new research that suggests that the social and economic environment can affect how genes express themselves in specific hum...