Why It Matters That Star Trek Is Confronting Eugenics

For Decades the Dangerous Pseudoscience Was Heavily Censored on Screen—While Offscreen It Continued Influencing Policy

In a meme that’s been floating around online recently, William Shatner asks, “When did Star Trek get all political?”

The joke is on Shatner, or rather on an old tweet from the actor, who is best known for playing Captain James Tiberius Kirk in the original series. Considering that Star Trek has never not been political, responses to the meme have predictably flooded social media. (The best being “1966”—the year Star Trek debuted.)

Today, there is more Star Trek on air than ever before, courtesy of streaming service Paramount+. Amid this renaissance, …

by Jackie Mansky | August 12, 2022

Modern Ideas About Genes Were Conceived in 18th Century Asylums

Long Before Mendel Bred His Peas, Doctors Claimed Heredity Explained Madness

by Theodore M. Porter | January 29, 2019

Sitting at my desk, reading the archived pages of an old British anthropological journal, an entry from 1899 caught my eye. The police at New Scotland Yard had a “Central …

Do Genes Really Determine Your Hobbies, Relationships, and Voting Habits?

Science and Pop Culture Make DNA Seem All-Important, But Nurture Still Matters as Much as Nature

by Catherine Bliss | September 25, 2018

Over the past 25 years, we’ve become surprisingly comfortable with the idea that genes play a large role in our lives. When DNA is in the mix, people assume that …

When California Sterilized 20,000 of Its Citizens

The Golden State Was the Most Aggressive in the Country in Deeming the ‘Feebleminded’ and ‘Deviant’ Unfit to Reproduce

By Alexandra Minna Stern | January 6, 2016

Not too long ago, more than 60,000 people were sterilized in the United States based on eugenic laws. Most of these operations were performed before the 1960s in institutions for …

eugenics