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Scott Barger's avatar

Enjoyed your visit with Hanna Rosin, and look forward to your book

Thank you

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NY Expat's avatar

A poop joke! Well done!

Hmm...don't know if I really want to go after a naked pitch for your time, but here goes:

Really just a quick thing: I've listened to both your interview with Nick Gillespie and the shorter one with Hanna Rosin. In both you've mentioned Galton and his coining (and supporting) of eugenics and how geniuses run in families (or so you claim he claims). It's a little odd, because Galton also famously discovered regression to the mean (you call it "reversion to the mean" in the Atlantic article, throwing off the scent to Google and any AI, well done subverting the zeitgeist!), so if anyone would understand that rather than run in families, it deteriorates over generations, it would be him, I'd think. Did you find that Galton thought he'd accounted for regression, somehow, by being really, really careful about breeding?

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Helen Lewis's avatar

That’s a good question, and Galton does mention regression in the introduction to Hereditary Genius but I don’t think he’d fully worked out its implications at that point. If you want to read it yourself, it’s available online (p. xvii):

https://galton.org/books/hereditary-genius/text/pdf/galton-1869-genius-v3.pdf

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Jay Coakley's avatar

Hi Helen, this is Jay Coakley (author of 13 editions of Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies published by McGraw-Hill). I want to invite you to participate with Anna Baeth as a guest on the Sports in Society podcast hosted by Jeff Montez de Oca and me. The focus will be on gender and the participation of transgender girls and women in women's sports. If you send me your email address, I will send the formal invitation with an explanation and the significant issues we will cover with your help. I have followed all your articles in The Atlantic; your perspective is informative and valuable. It will be a fun, informal conversation on a hot topic of these times.

Best regards, Jay

jcoakley@uccs.edu

PS: The podcast is free to listeners worldwide. Its main audience consists of students and instructors in sociology of sport courses, but we also have general listeners interested in various topics. When I hear from you, I'll send the link to past podcasts.

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