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Angela Saini is an award-winning science journalist who is one of my favorite guides through topics that are sticky—and sometimes icky—and also defining, like the origins of highly problematic race science, and the way the scientific field has come to understand and codify what it is to be a woman. In her first appearance on Pulling the Thread, she talked about science as fact—and then “science” that becomes ripe with human bias and interpretation. As humans, we can really mess things up.
Angela has written two books interrogating the divisive politics embedded in the science of human difference, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story and Superior: The Return of Race Science. I’m most excited about her latest book, though: It’s called The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality and it’s about the origins of inequality. As she explains, patriarchy was not our predetermined fate. It’s not biological, or natural, or inevitable. And women have been resisting our oppression ever since. Her book is loaded with fascinating insights, many of which we explore.
MORE FROM ANGELA SAINI:
Watch her 2019 BBC Documentary: Eugenics: Science's Greatest Scandal
Follow Angela on Instagram
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
ELISE LOEHNEN: You're one of my favorite guides through research and you really find that, for one, I don't know how you covered so many forms of patriarchy in different parts of the world in not very many pages, but you do it in a way that checks an academic box, but feels really accessible for a lay reader like me. So thank you.