You're listening to the LRB podcast. I'm me and Christ, and welcome to the second episode in a special

four-part series exploring the intersection of climate chaos and reproductive justice.

In our first episode, I spoke with activist and scholar Loretta Ross, one of the co-creators of the

reproductive justice framework, about the intersections of race, reproduction, environmentalism, and the politics of white nationalism.

Today, I'll be exploring the intersections of science, culture, and feminist thought, as well as the dangers of biological determinism,

with evolutionary biologist and feminist scholar Banu Subramaniam. Trained as an evolutionary biologist

and plant scientist, she helped establish the field of feminist science

studies, and today is professor of women, gender, sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts

Amherst. Her work explores the philosophy, history, and culture of the natural sciences and medicine

as they relate to gender, race, ethnicity, and cast. And her books include ghost stories for Darwin,

the science of variation and the politics of diversity, and holy science, the biopolitics

of Hindu nationalism, as well as the co-edited volume, Feminist Science Studies, A New Generation.

It's a pleasure and an honor to have her as our guest today. Banu, welcome to the LRB podcast.

Thank you, Mian. I'm honored as well to be invited here.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Let's get started with talking a little bit about your own history.

So you grew up in post-colonial India and originally trained as an evolutionary biologist and plant scientist.

I think you got a PhD in genetics. And then you turned your scholarly attention to feminist theory.

And this is not, shall we say, a typical intellectual trajectory. So could you tell us a bit about

what led you into science and then what led you into feminist science and technology

studies? I would like to think I have not left biology or evolutionary biology and that I work at

...