Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics

GOLD WINNER - AAAS Kavli Award for Audio in Science Journalism
https://sjawards.aaas.org/awards/2023-audio-gold

This ambitious six-part documentary series, created with Adam Rutherford for BBC Radio 4, traces the dark trajectory of eugenic ideology from its origins to its modern manifestations. Beginning with Francis Galton's coining of the term, we follow the thread of these dangerous ideas culminating in their most horrific expression during the Nazi Holocaust. We also look at how genetic concepts are taught today and explore the eugenic risks of emerging technologies.

Each episode opens with a contemporary echo - from Donald Trump's rhetoric about "racehorse theory" and "good genes" to white nationalists chanting "They will not replace us" - creating a chilling resonance with the historical narratives that follow.

To bring this complex academic history to life, I developed semi-dramatized sequences depicting pivotal moments: the buzzing atmosphere of the First International Eugenics Congress of 1912 in South Kensington (attended by Winston Churchill and Charles Darwin's son), the jolly "Fitter Families" contests of the 1910s America where children were rated on their "eugenic promise."

The series also amplifies critical contemporary voices, including campaigner Elaine Riddick, who survived involuntary sterilization as a teenager in North Carolina in 1968, and Professor Tom Shakespeare, who shares his personal experience with achondroplasia and the attitudes he and his wife confronted during her pregnancy.

This project stands as the most challenging and intellectually demanding work of my career, weaving rigorous historical scholarship with compelling audio storytelling to confront one of science's darkest legacies.