The Mendel Inheritance

The Mendel Inheritance

Author: The London Review of Books November 6, 2024 Duration: 54:19
The LRB Podcast
SocietySociety & CultureCulture
When Gregor Mendel published the results of his experiments on pea plants in 1866 he initiated a fierce debate about the nature of heredity and genetic determinism that continues today. The battle lines were drawn in England in the late 19th century by William Bateson, who believed in fixed genetic inheritance, and W.F.R. Weldon, who argued that Mendel’s experiments revealed far more variation than Bateson and his supporters acknowledged. In this episode Lorraine Daston joins Tom to chart the development of these arguments, described in a new book by Gregory Radick, through scientific and cultural discourse over the past 150 years, and consider why the history of science has a tendency to track such controversies in antagonistic terms, often to the detriment of the science itself. Read Lorraine's piece: https://lrb.me/dastonpod Sponsored links: Use the code ’LRB’ to get £100 off Serious Readers lights here: https://www.seriousreaders.com/lrb Close Readings Sing up to the LRB's Close Readings podcast: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/crpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Each week, The LRB Podcast extends the long-form, inquisitive spirit of the London Review of Books into a conversational format. Hosts Thomas Jones and Malin Hay guide discussions that delve into the essays and ideas animating Europe’s leading magazine of culture and ideas, creating a space where complex thoughts on society, art, history, and literature are explored with depth and clarity. The rhythm of the podcast includes a dedicated fortnightly episode, ‘On Politics,’ hosted by James Butler, which sharpens the focus on the political forces and theories shaping our current moment. Listening feels like joining a nuanced, ongoing conversation where arguments are carefully constructed and perspectives are challenged. It’s a natural companion for anyone who believes that understanding the world requires patience, critical thinking, and engaging dialogue. The podcast doesn’t offer quick takes but rather thoughtful excavations of the week’s most compelling cultural and intellectual questions, mirroring the publication’s commitment to serious and elegant prose. This is where written criticism finds its voice, allowing listeners to immerse themselves in the debates that define our time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Official website RSS
instagramyoutubeapple_music
The LRB Podcast
Podcast Episodes
Close Readings: Mikhail Bulgakov and James Hogg [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:01
James Hogg’s ghoulish metaphysical crime novel 'The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' (1824) was presented as a found documented dating from the 17th century, describing in different voices the path…
The Best-Paid Woman in NYC [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:30
As J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, entrusted with building his collection, Belle da Costa Greene could ‘spend more money in an afternoon than any other young woman of 26’, as the New York Times put it in 1912. In the l…
Silicon Valley Warriors [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:46
Donald Trump recently announced a defence budget of more than one trillion dollars, much of which will be funnelled to private companies – and increasingly to tech firms such as Space X and Palantir. Laleh Khalili joins…
The Best French Novel of the 20th Century [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:06
Marguerite Yourcenar entered the Académie Française in 1981, the first woman to be admitted. Her novel Memoirs of Hadrian, published thirty years earlier, is ‘often considered the best French novel of the 20th century’,…
Is this fascism? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:01
‘How useful is it,’ Daniel Trilling asked recently in the LRB, ‘to compare the current global resurgence of right-wing nationalism to fascism?’ In this episode of the podcast Daniel joins TJ to explore the question in li…
Close Readings: Nietzsche's 'Schopenhauer as Educator' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:14
In this extended extract from their series 'Conversations in Philosophy', part of the LRB's Close Readings podcast, Jonathan Rée and James Wood look at one of Friedrich Nietzsche's early essays, 'Schopenhauer as Educator…
Old Pope, New Pope [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:45
‘The Church​ needs to change; the Church cannot afford to change,’ Colm Tóibín wrote recently in the LRB. In this episode of the podcast, he joins Tom to discuss how the new pope will have to navigate this paradox. He al…
In the Soviet Archives: a conversation with Sheila Fitzpatrick [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:26
When Sheila Fitzpatrick first went to Moscow in the 1960s as a young academic, the prevailing understanding of the Soviet Union in the West was governed by the ‘totalitarian hypothesis’, of a system ruled entirely from t…
How They Built the Pyramids [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:14
In 2013, a group of French and Egyptian archaeologists discovered of cache of papyri as old as the Great Pyramid of Giza. Some of the texts were written by people who had worked on the pyramids: a tally of their daily la…
Cold War Pen-Pals [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:36
The Soviet Women’s Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in 1941 to foster connections with Allied countries and encourage British and US women to ‘invest personally’ in the war effort. Two years later, the National Council…

«12345678910»