The guest
Robert Proctor: Historian of science at Stanford specializing in 20th-century science, medicine and technology. He coined the term 'agnotology' (the study of culturally produced ignorance) and authored books on Nazi medicine and the tobacco industry.
What this episode covers
Robert Proctor argues that science is never value-free and was a full collaborator in Nazi atrocities, not merely suppressed by them. He explains how the Nazi regime simultaneously ran the world's most aggressive anti-cancer and anti-tobacco campaigns while pursuing racial 'purification,' and how scientists rationalized their participation. The conversation pivots to Big Tobacco, which Proctor calls history's deadliest object, detailing how the industry manufactured doubt and ignorance as a deliberate product. It ranges widely into censorship, Fauci, military-funded research, human origins, stone collecting, and the nature of ignorance itself.
The guest's own work
BookBy the guestISBN verified
The Nazi War on Cancer
Robert Proctor
“you uh also wrote the book titled the nazi war on cancer right what is the main storyline and thesis of this book”— Lex Fridman
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance
Robert Proctor
“you are edited a book titled agnetology this is an interesting term so you mentioned it earlier the making and unmaking of ignorance”— Lex Fridman
BookBy the guest
Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge
Robert Proctor
“30 years ago you wrote the value free science book purity and power and modern knowledge which is interesting that you kind of what you were describing then”— Lex Fridman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
BookReferencedISBN verified
How to Lie with Statistics
Darrell Huff
“they hire the guy daryl huff who wrote how to lie with statistics the best-selling statistics book in the history of the world”— guest
BookReferenced
How to Lie About Smoking with Statistics
Darrell Huff
“they paid him to write a book called how to lie about smoking with statistics now that was never published”— guest
BookReferencedISBN verified
Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
“i've been trying to get to minecomp and you know throughout his history has been taken down and up it actually was taken down from amazon”— Lex Fridman
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx
“two-thirds of the things that marx calls for in the communist manifesto are already just part of the liberal state”— guest
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Loves of the Plants
Erasmus Darwin
“the last original contribution to science written entirely in the form of a poem is buu bufol's loves of the plants”— guest
MediaReferenced
Peaky Blinders
BBC
“but i mean look at peaky blinders look at uh you know in any of the modern series now it's pretty much a one non-stop”— guest
MediaReferenced
Silicon Valley
HBO
“there's a whole i think silicon valley episode about something like that where the three three comma club you know asshole billionaire is trying to find his old uh laptop”— guest
Big reveals from this episode
- Proctor argues Nazi Germany's scientists, who had won huge numbers of Nobel Prizes, became full collaborators in genocide rather than a source of resistance.
- The Nazis looked enviously at US racial segregation, sterilization and the KKK, seeing themselves in competition to become the world's racial leader.
- He claims cigarettes are the deadliest object in human history, having killed hundreds of millions, far more than all wars and nuclear bombs combined.
- A Reynolds executive's direct quote: 'we don't smoke this stuff, we reserve that for the poor, the black and the stupid.'
- The Holocaust Museum invited Proctor to study how the Nazis ran the world's most aggressive anti-cancer campaign while planning the Holocaust.
- The leaked 'doubt is our product' memo: the tobacco industry sold two products, cigarettes and ignorance.
- Philip Morris funded a Center for Indoor Air Research and a Stanford research program to deflect blame from cigarettes onto genetics and diet.
- Proctor speculates an intelligent dinosaur civilization could have arisen and gone extinct in 100,000 years, leaving no trace.
Worth remembering
- The word 'science' comes from a proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to cut or divide,' cognate with scissors, schism and skin.
- Goebbels' office was officially the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, framed as a new era of enlightenment.
- After the 18th century there was a deliberate 'uglification' of science; beautiful writing was seen as hiding something.
- In salt water, fish are largely moved by currents, not their own swimming, illustrating America's myth of individual choice.
- A 1950s slogan held that if spinach caused one-tenth the harm of cigarettes it would be banned overnight.
- Every airplane is still required by law to have ashtrays in the bathrooms because people still secretly smoke on planes.
- The tobacco industry measured 'agnotometrics,' finding a propaganda video produced a 17 percent increase in doubt that cigarettes cause cancer.
- Humans are the only animal with whites of the eyes, which reveal intent and direction of gaze.
- Libyan glass, a meteorite-formed tektite, is the centerpiece of Tutankhamun's breastplate.
- Physicians joined the Nazi party and the SS in a higher proportion than any other profession.
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