July 8, 2026 — Eugenics: Our Interview with Anita Chan Revisited

In 2025, Anita Say Chan’s book, Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future, was published by the University of California Press. This led to a review here, and we became immediate fans of her insights and research trajectory. We also conducted an email interview with Chan back in June 2025, before we were any good at podcasting. That interview is absolutely riveting, with dozens of insights that will give you pause. Then, in September 2025, we had the chance to do a podcast interview with Chan, where we discussed: the path from Big Data to eugenics to the surveillance economy the role academia has played in enabling much of this our lurch toward tech-led authoritarianism our confusion of metrics with merit Big Tech’s monoculture and paranoia It’s a great interview. Given renewed attention on both “soft eugenics” and eugenics in scientific publications — preprints and otherwise — we thought it would be a good idea to revisit this. We’d also like to mention a recent paper by Helen Burn about Galton and the history of eugenics in statistics and at University College London (UCL). Chan references the history, as well. Discoveries of the Week (also revisited) Sniffing out the platypus [video] Subscribe today Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible Subscribe on YouTube Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/