As the sun set upon the bellipoc, the men and women of the time went about their business.

Bakers baked, housekeepers kept house, carpenters pounded nails.

The remarkable ferment of the period also continued.

New art, new science, new industry, blooming in the shadow of the coming

night that none could see. Welcome to the history of the Bellapok.

I want to spend today's episode talking about a few final glimmers of light in science,

the arts, and culture before the darkness arrives.

I have a few stories I'd like to tell, odds and ends, as it were, that didn't fit into any

of the other episodes, but which touch on topics I think are important and I want to cover

before the approaching war closes the door in this era.

We've already seen many examples of how breathtakingly racist Western cultures were at the

beginning of the century.

Among the peoples we might call white or Caucasian, especially in Europe and North America,

it was taken as a given that white or Caucasian peoples of Europe and North America

were physically, intellectually, and morally superior to other peoples from other parts of the planet.

Now, racism itself is as old as human culture,

but what we today call science and scientific research

only developed in the latter part of the 18th century and into the

19th century. Scientific principles, I should say pseudo-scientific principles, were employed to demonstrate

the superiority of Europeans. After the publication and acceptance of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution,

a focus developed on the presumed evolutionary distance between different kinds of humans versus other primates.

Measurements were made of features like facial angle to demonstrate that flatter-faced Europeans

...