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In 2005 the FDA approved a pill to treat high blood preassure only in African Americans. This so-called miracle drug was named BiDil, and it became the first race-specific drug in the United States. It might sound like a good a good thing, but it had the unintended consequence of perpetuating the myth that race is a biological construct.  Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.   Resource List Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century, by Dorothy Roberts Oprah’s Unhealthy Mistake, by Osagie K. Obasogie Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age, by Jonathan Kahn Saving Sam: Drugs, Race, and Discovering the Secrets of Heart Disease, by Jay Cohn The Slavery Hypertension Hypothesis: Dissemination and Appeal of a Modern Race Theory, by Jay S Kaufman, Susan A Hall Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini

The word “Tuskegee” has come to symbolize the Black community’s mistrust of the medical establishment. It has become American lore. However, most people don’t know what actually happened in Macon County, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972. This episode unravels the myths of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Syphilis Study (the correct name of the study) through conversations with descendants and historians. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. Resource List Black Journal; 301; The Tuskegee Study: A Human Experiment Descendants of men from horrifying Tuskegee study want to calm virus vaccine fears, by David Montgomery  Examining Tuskegee: The infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy  Nova: The Deadly Deception  Susceptible to Kindness: Miss Evers’ Boys and the Tuskegee Syphis Study  Tuskegee Legacy Stories Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care, by Vanessa Northington Gamble Voices For Our Fathers Legacy Foundation

In 1991, as crews broke ground on a new federal office building in lower Manhattan, they discovered human skeletons. It soon became clear that it was the oldest and largest African cemetery in the country. The federal government was ready to keep building, but people from all over the African diaspora were moved to treat this site with dignity, respect, and scientific excellence. When bioarchaeologist Michael Blakey took over, that's exactly what they got. But it wasn't easy. Credits Host: Alexis Pedrick  Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.   Resource List Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race, by Michael Blakey African Burial Ground Project: Paradigm for Cooperation? by Michael Blakey The African Burial Ground in New York City: Memory, Spirituality, and Space, by Andrea E. Frohne The African Burial Ground: An American Discovery, documentary film by David Kutz Reassessing the “Sankofa Symbol” in New York's African Burial Ground, by Erik R. Seeman The New York African Burial Ground Final Reports, by multiple authors

In 2019, Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, a community organizer and journalist, learned that the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology had a collection of skulls that belonged to enslaved people. As Muhammad demanded that the university return these skulls, they discovered that claiming ownership over bodies of marginalized people is not just a relic of the past—it continues to this day. Credits Host: Alexis Pedrick  Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. Resource List It’s past time for Penn Museum to repatriate the Morton skull collection, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad Penn Museum seeks to rebury stolen skulls of Black Philadelphians and ignites pushback, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad Penn Museum owes reparations for previously holding remains of a MOVE bombing victim, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad City of Philadelphia should thoroughly investigate the MOVE remains’ broken chain of custody, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad Black Philadelphians in the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection , by Paul Wolff Mitchell Some skulls in a Penn Museum collection may be the remains of enslaved people taken from a nearby burial ground, by Stephan Salisbury Remains of children killed in MOVE bombing sat in a box at Penn Museum for decades, by Maya Kassutto The fault in his seeds: Lost notes to the case of bias in Samuel George Morton's cranial race science, by Paul Wolff Mitchell She Was Killed by the Police. Why Were Her Bones in a Museum?, by Bronwen Dickey Corpse Selling and Stealing were Once Integral to Medical Training, by Christopher D.E. Willoughby Medicine, Racism, and the Legacies of the Morton Skull Collection, by Christopher D.E. Willoughby Final Report of the Independent Investigation into the City of Philadelphia’s Possession of Human Remains of Victims of the 1985 Bombing of the MOVE Organization, prepared by Dechert LLP and Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads LLP, for the city of Philadelphia The Odyssey of the MOVE remains, prepared by the Tucker Law Group for the University of Pennsylvania Move: Confrontation in Philadelphia, film by Jane Mancini and Karen Pomer Let the Fire Burn, film by Jason Osder Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (MOVE) Records, archival collection at Temple University's Urban Archives

In the 1990s a liberal population geneticist launched the Human Genome Diversity Project. The goal was to sequence the genomes of “isolated” and “disappearing” indigenous groups throughout the world. The project did not go as planned—indigenous groups protested it, and scientists and anthropologists criticized it. This episode examines what went wrong and asks the question: can anti-racist scientists create racist science?  About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race “The Vampire Project” is Episode 4 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

In the 1970s Barry Mehler started tracking race scientists and he noticed something funny: they all had the same funding source. One wealthy man was using his incredible resources to prop up any scientist he could find who would validate his white supremacist ideology—and make it seem like it was backed by a legitimate scientific consensus. About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race “Keepers of the Flame” is Episode 3 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.   Resource List ‘The American Breed’: Nazi eugenics and the origins of the Pioneer Fund, by Paul Lombardo  The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund, by William Tucker The New Eugenics: Academic Racism in the U.S. Today, by Barry Mehler  The Phil Donahue Show  Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini

In 1793 a yellow fever epidemic almost destroyed Philadelphia. The young city was saved by two Black preachers, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, who organized the free Black community in providing essential services and nursing the sick and dying. Allen and Jones were assured of two things: that stepping up would help them gain full equality and citizenship, and that they were immune to the disease. Neither promise turned out to be true.  About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race “Calamity in Philadelphia” is Episode 2 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer Richard Allen voiceover by Jason Carr “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. Resource List How the Politics of Race Played Out During the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic, by Alicia Ault A short account of the malignant fever, lately prevalent in Philadelphia: with a statement of the proceedings that took place on the subject in different parts of the United States, by Mathew Carey Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840, by Rana A. Hogarth A narrative of the proceedings of the black people, during the late awful calamity in Philadelphia, in the year 1793, by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers, by Richard Newman Observations upon the origin of the malignant bilious, or yellow fever in Philadelphia, and upon the means of preventing it: addressed to the citizens of Philadelphia, by Benjamin Rush Bishop Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom, produced by Dr. Mark Tyler Transcript

In 2018 ancient DNA researchers revealed their analysis of a 10,000 year old skeleton called Cheddar Man. He was the oldest complete skeleton ever discovered in England, and the revelation that he had dark skin challenged assumptions many people had about what the earliest people in Britain looked like. 

It might seem as though the way we think about race now is how we’ve always thought about it—but it isn’t. Race was born out of the Enlightenment in Europe, along with the invention of modern western science. And it was tied to the politics of the age—imperialism and later slavery. This episode traces the origins of race science to the Enlightenment, examines how the Bible influenced racial theories, and considers how we still have a hard time letting go of the idea of race. About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race “Origin Stories” is Episode 1 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer "Innate Theme" composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to our colleagues, Jacqueline Boytim and James Voelkel, for their help with this episode. Resource List Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race, by Michael Blakey  Breathing Race into the Machine: the Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics, by Lundy Braun  Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science, by Terence Keel  Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century, by Dorothy Roberts "Jesus Loves the little Children," song by Cedarmont Kids  Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Differences in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840, by Rana Hogarth The Nuremberg Chronicle, by Hartmann Schedel Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini Find the full transcript here.

Our new season, Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, drops on February 7th.

What comes to mind when you think of a chemistry lab? Maybe it’s smoke billowing out of glassware, or colorful test tubes, or vats of toxic substances. Chemistry and hazardous solvents just seem to go hand in hand. But chemists like James Mack think there’s a greener way: It’s called mechanochemistry, a kind of chemistry that uses physical force to grind materials instead of solvents. And it’s getting the attention of such huge corporations as Exxon Mobil. Still, some chemists are not ready to give up their traditional techniques. “I thought they were married to the molecules,” says Mack, who is pictured above placing vials into a machine that uses fast-spinning ball bearings to pulverize molecules. “Little did I know they were actually married to the flask.”   Credits Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago Reporter, Producer, and Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath

The Disappearing Spoon, a podcast collaboration between the Science History Institute and New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean, returns for its third season on March 8, 2022. To celebrate, our producer, Padmini Parthasarathy, sat down with Kean to talk about his book The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code. This interview is a great companion piece for the new season of The Disappearing Spoon, which tackles all sorts of strange and interesting stories about the geniuses we know well—from Einstein and his great scientific blunder that turned out to be correct, to Monet and the cataracts that almost made him put down his brush forever. Listen as Kean talks about violin protégé Niccolo Paganini, whose genes were both a blessing and a curse, the scientific arms race that led to the mapping of the human genome, and the sometimes-murky lines between human and non-human. Credits Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Parthasarathy Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about Alessandro Moreschi, the so-called Angel of Rome. His voice earned him fame and money. So what's the secret behind the voice? What was his trick? It turns out that his trick can also make you taller and prevent baldness. The only catch: it requires castration. Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about the strange origin story of the American Medical Association. The creation of this powerful medical society can be traced back to a duel between two doctors at Transylvania University in Kentucky. Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about Hermann Muller, a geneticist who in the 1920s discovered that radiation causes genetic mutations. This discovery happened around the same time that other geneticists were starting to link cancer with genetic mutations. Had both of these parties communicated they would have gotten a 50-year head start in cancer research. So why didn't scientists make this realization sooner? It turns out that Muller was a real jerk. Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

On this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about a murder mystery that rocked Boston in 1849. Harvard University alum and physician George Parkman had gone missing. The last place he was seen alive was at the Harvard medical building, which had plenty of bodies, but police couldn't find Parkman’s there. That is until a janitor intervened and implicated a medical school professor. The ensuing murder trial was a media circus equivalent to the O. J. Simpson trial. And just like that trial, it also familiarized the layperson with forensic and anatomical sciences. Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer Photo: Wellcome Collection

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean breaks down the history of nitrocellulose. This thick, transparent liquid was the world’s first plastic and could be shaped into anything, including billiard balls and photography film. With nitrocellulose film, you could run reels of pictures together quickly, which gave birth to the first movies. The only fatal flaw with this plastic is that it’s also extremely combustible—so much so that it can burn underwater once it gets going. This led to notable tragedies in movie theaters, as well as in hospitals that used nitrocellulose X-rays such as the Cleveland Clinic Hospital, where 122 people died in a fire in 1929. Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about Mary Ward, a budding naturalist and astronomer from Ireland. She spent a lot of time observing plants and animals through a microscope and published a book of detailed sketches that dazzled readers and colleagues in the 1800s. However, her career was cut short by a strange curiosity of that time period: the automobile. They weren’t the same cars that are around today, but her death was the first car death recorded in history, and it foreshadowed the carnage the automobile continues to leave behind. Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about memory fugues, a psychological disorder that wipes out biographical information from people’s brains. It is estimated that roughly 1 in 100,000 people seeking help for mental disorders have them. This disorder happens worldwide and it usually afflicts people in their 20s. Scientists have only recently started to piece together what is going on in the brains of those impaired by it. Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

On this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean delves deep into the science behind the evolution of animal and human bodies. Like animals, human bodies have also evolved to adhere to the demands of ever-changing climates. This raises a question: how will human bodies respond to climate change? Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer