The Washington Post Exposes the Smithsonian’s Racist Brain Collection

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Science, Philosophy, Astronomy, Society & Culture, Life Sciences

4 • 993 Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2023

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On today’s ID the Future, host Michael Medved talks with Human Zoos film director John West about a recent Washington Post series exposing how the Smithsonian Institution collected hundreds of brains from indigenous peoples as part of an early-20th century effort to promote Darwinian racism. The motivation for the brain collection was to document how some people were supposedly lower on the evolutionary ladder than others. As West notes, many of these brains are still stored in steel vats at a non-public Smithsonian facility in Maryland. Tune in as West and Medved explore this disturbing topic and how it all ties into Darwin’s theory of evolution. And to watch the segment from the Human Zoos documentary detailing this gruesome collection and the man behind it, Aleš Hrdlička, click here.

Source

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I d the future a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:12.4	Where does evolutionary thinking lead?
0:15.0	Greetings, I'm Tom Gilson.
0:17.0	Today on ID the future, we're sharing some disturbing answers to that question.
0:22.0	Michael Medved interviews Discovery Institute Vice President
0:26.7	and filmmaker John West about the 20th century's human zoos and more. It's one thing that can come from thinking that
0:35.4	we're all animals but some of us are more than others. A pleasure to welcome
0:40.9	back to the show. My friend John West who is the senior fellow
0:46.1	managing director and vice president of the Discovery Institute.
0:52.6	Dr. West is in fact Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute
0:58.8	and managing director of the Institute Center for Science and Culture.
1:03.7	He was formerly the chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle
1:08.7	Pacific University.
1:10.6	He's an award-winning author and a documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 different books.
1:20.0	His documentary film, which was fascinating and alarming, was called Human Zoos.
1:30.0	And when you use that term, John, just using the term human zoos, doesn't it sound like
1:38.0	some awful science fiction film about aliens capturing human beings and then putting on them on display
1:46.9	if they were animals. But this is not aliens, this is us, right?
1:52.4	Yeah, no, it is. aliens this is us right?
1:53.0	Yeah no it is and in fact you're right it does sort of sound like a science fiction movie
1:57.8	or going back to the very first the iconic Planet of the Apes where the humans were to put on sort of displays.
2:05.0	But yes, it involved us, and where we put particularly indigenous peoples on displays
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.