The

Sky here with another episode of the Histrian Plug podcast, one of the defining ideas of

the 20th century was eugenics.

The theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations.

Now the idea isn't a new one, it goes at least as far back as Plato, who argued in the

Republic that there should be a state-run program of mating to strengthen the Guardian

class.

But the modern version came about the 19th century, when Francis Gulton, the cousin of Charles

Darwin, bundled up the theory of evolution into a set of social policies which claimed

that health and disease could be reduced based on promoting the procreation of certain

people, reducing the procreation of others.

So-called experts determine individuals and groups of people to be superior or inferior.

These ideas spread throughout Victorian England as a proposal for improving the British

population, and quickly spread to America where it was embraced by presidents and enshrined

into a number of race laws, such as the one draper rule, outlawed, and racial marriage.

And from here the ideas took a darker and darker turn.

State laws were written to prohibit marriage and forced sterilization of the mentally ill

as an attempt to prevent the pation of their mental illness in the next generation, the

most well-known application of eugenics occurred in Nazi Germany.

At least 70,000 adults and 5,200 children were euthanized, and another 400,000 victims

were forced sterilized.

Today's guest, Adam Ruthford, is the author of Control, the dark history and troubling

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