On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Bo Winegard and Noah Carl, the editors behind the online publication Aporia Magazine , founded in 2022. Winegard and Carl are both former academics. Winegard has a social psychology Ph.D. from Florida State University, and was an assistant professor at Marietta College. He was an editor at Quillette before moving to Aporia . Carl earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Oxford University. He was a research fellow at St. Edmund’s College, Cambrid...
May 30, 2025•1 hr 54 min•Season 1Ep. 247
Today Razib talks to Tim Lee , a previous guest on Unsupervised Learning . Lee hosts Understanding AI . Lee covered tech more generally for a decade for Washington Post , Ars Technica , and Vox.com . He has a master's degree in computer science from Princeton. Lee writes extensively about general AI issues, from Deep Research’s capabilities to the state of large language models . But one of the major areas he has focused on is self-driving cars . With expansion of Waymo to Austin , and this June...
May 24, 2025•56 min•Season 1Ep. 246
This podcast accompanies my post Germans are from Finland, Finns are from Yakutia . The two preprints at the heart of this post are, Postglacial genomes from foragers across Northern Eurasia reveal prehistoric mobility associated with the spread of the Uralic and Yeniseian languages and Steppe Ancestry in Western Eurasia and the Spread of the Germanic Languages ....
May 21, 2025•24 min•Season 1Ep. 245
Today Razib talks to Laura Spinney, Paris-based British author of the forthcoming Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global . A science journalist, translator and author of both fiction and non-fiction, she has written for Nature , National Geographic , The Economist , New Scientist , and The Guardian . Spinney is the author of two novels, Doctor and The Quick , and a collection of oral history in French from Lausanne entitled Rue Centrale . In 2017, she published Pale Rider , an account of th...
May 17, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 244
Today, Razib talks about a new paper, A structured coalescent model reveals deep ancestral structure shared by all modern humans : Understanding the history of admixture events and population size changes leading to modern humans is central to human evolutionary genetics. Here we introduce a coalescence-based hidden Markov model, cobraa, that explicitly represents an ancestral population split and rejoin, and demonstrate its application on simulated and real data across multiple species. Using c...
May 11, 2025•20 min•Season 1Ep. 243
On this episode of the podcast Razib talks to John Sailer. Sailer is currently the director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He covers issues of academic freedom, free speech, and ideological capture in higher education. Sailer has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Free Press and Tablet Magazine. Sailer holds a master’s degree in philosophy and education from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from ...
May 10, 2025•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 242
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Jacob Shell . Shell is a professor of geography at Temple University and author of Transportation and Revolt: Pigeons, Mules, Canals , and the Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants . Educated at Columbia and Syracuse universities, Shell is active on social media, where he comments extensively on the politicization of the academy. The conversation begins with Shell’s piece in Compact Magazine , To Save Academia, Hir...
May 02, 2025•1 hr 44 min•Season 1Ep. 241
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Matt Welch . He co-founded the Prague-based newspaper Prognosis in the early 1990’s and later worked as an opinion section editor for the Los Angeles Times. From 2008-2016, Welch served as editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, where he currently holds the position of editor-at-large. He co-authored The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America and wrote McCain: The Myth of a Maverick . Today, Welc...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 240
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib comments on a new paper in Nature , Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara reveals ancestral North African lineage . Here is the abstract: Although it is one of the most arid regions today, the Sahara Desert was a green savannah during the African Humid Period (AHP) between 14,500 and 5,000 years before present, with water bodies promoting human occupation and the spread of pastoralism in the middle Holocene epoch1. DNA rarely preserves well in this regi...
Apr 30, 2025•18 min•Season 1Ep. 239
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning , Razib talks to Andrew Song , co-founder of Make Sunsets . An NYU graduate with a degree in economics, Song was a member of the Y Combinator class of winter 2016. Before becoming a founder, Song worked at firms involved in data analytics and artificial intelligence. A repeat attendee at the Founders Fund “Hereticon” conference, Song’s company has been profiled IEEE Spectrum , The New York Times and NPR . Razib and Song first talk about the current state ...
Apr 23, 2025•55 min•Season 1Ep. 238
Today on Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Zineb Riboua , a research fellow and program manager of Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. She specializes in Chinese and Russian involvement in the Middle East, the Sahel, and North Africa, great power competition in the region, and Israeli-Arab relations. Riboua’s pieces and commentary have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy , the National Interest , the Jerusalem Post and Tablet among other outlet...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 237
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Mark Lutter. Lutter is an urban development expert known for his work on charter cities—new urban areas aimed at fostering economic growth and progress. He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Charter Cities Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to building the ecosystem for charter cities, as well as the CEO of Braavos Cities, a charter city development company. He holds a PhD in economics from George Mason University, and a BS in mathe...
Apr 06, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 236
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Graeme Wood. Wood is a staff writer at The Atlantic , where he usually covers geopolitics and international affairs. His work ranges from a profile of Richard Spencer , the American white nationalist public figure with whom he went to high school with, to the Islamic State . He is the author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State . Wood grew up in Dallas, Texas, and graduated from Harvard College. He also studied at...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 235
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib welcomes Leighton Akira Woodhouse back to the podcast for his third visit . Woodhouse is a journalist and documentarian based in Oakland, California. He grew up in Berkeley, and was a doctoral student in Sociology at UC Berkeley. After leaving academia he contributed to outlets like The Intercept, UnHerd and The Nation, before starting his own Substack, Social Studies . He hosts Le Pod with Lee Fang . Woodhouse was a major left-wing critic of the ex...
Mar 23, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 234
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Kevin Klatt , a metabolism researcher , dietitian and science communicator . Klatt holds a BA in biological anthropology from Temple University and a PhD in Molecular Nutrition from Cornell University. Before a current appointment as a research scientist at UC Berkeley, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine. Klatt’s primary platform to communicate about nutrition, health and molecular biology is his Substack . He is als...
Mar 15, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 233
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning , friend of the podcast, Charles Murray returns to chat with Razib again. Murray has been a public intellectual and scholar since the 1970’s. He is the author of Losing Ground , The Bell Curve , Human Accomplishment , Real Education , Coming Apart and What it means to be a libertarian and Human Diversity , among others. Born in 1943 in Newton, Iowa, Murray has a BA from Harvard, an MA and PhD from MIT, and did a 1960’s stint in the Peace Corps in Thailand...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 232
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning , Razib talks to Titus Techera , a Romanian living in Budapest, but commenting extensively on American and European culture. He is the Executive Director of the American Cinema Foundation, International Coordinator of the National Conservatism Conference and is a primary contributor to the Substack PostModernConservative . Techera also hosts a podcast for the American Cinema Foundation. Razib first talks to Techera about the 2024 Romanian presidential ele...
Mar 04, 2025•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 231
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Nathan Lents about his new book, The Sexual Evolution: A Provocative Look at Sexual Behavior Through the Lens of Evolution . A professor at John Jay College in New York City, Lents earned a Ph.D. in Pharmacological and Physiological Sciences in 2004 at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, and did his postdoctoral fellowship in cancer genomics at NYU Medical Center. Lents’ research ranges from the evolution of molecular mechanisms to b...
Mar 03, 2025•2 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 230
Today Razib talks to Antonio Regalado , reporter at MIT Technology Review . Regalado covers how technology is changing medicine and biomedical research. Before joining MIT Technology Review in 2011, he lived in São Paulo, Brazil, where he wrote about science, technology, and politics in Latin America for Science and other publications. From 2000 to 2009, he was a science reporter and foreign correspondent at the Wall Street Journal . Among the many stories Regalado has broken was the prenatal se...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 229
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Daniel McCarthy, editor-in-chief of Modern Age . Former editor-in-chief of The American Conservative , his writing has also appeared in the New York Times , USA Today , The Spectator , The National Interest and Reason . McCarthy also helped run communications for the 2008 Ron Paul campaign and was a senior editor at ISI Books. He earned a Ph.D. in classics from Washington University in St. Louis. First, Razib and McCarthy discuss the outcom...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 228
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Tade Souaiaia , a statistical geneticist at SUNY Downstate about his new preprint, Striking Departures from Polygenic Architecture in the Tails of Complex Traits . Souaiaia trained as a computational biologist at USC, but also has a background as a division I track and field athlete. Razib and Souaiaia discuss what “genetic architecture” means, and consider what we're finding when we look at extreme trait values in characteristics along a n...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 227
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks with Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid. A native Pennsylvanian of Egyptian ethnic background, and Islamic faith, Hamid completed his Ph.D. in politics at Oxford University. He is an assistant professor at Fuller Seminary , co-host of the Wisdom of Crowds podcast and website, and now the author of his own Substack and a recent book, The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea . Hamid is also the auth...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 226
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Conn Carroll , the author of Sex and the Citizen: How the Assault on Marriage Is Destroying Democracy . Caroll is currently an editor for the Washington Examiner , but previously he was the communications director for Senator Mike Lee of Utah, an assistant director at the Heritage Foundation, White House correspondent for Townhall.com and a reporter at National Journal . Carroll wrote Sex and the Citizen in response to what he felt was misl...
Feb 07, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 225
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib has a wide-ranging conversation with Dan Hess, the man behind the More Births account on social media. An engineer with a large family in the DC area, Hess’ essays on topics like Israelis’ high birth rate have gained the attention of X, with an account that has come from a few hundred followers to more than 30,000 in 2 years. Razib and Hess first review the birth-rate collapse seen worldwide in the past two decades. They discuss the relatively abrup...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Season 1Ep. 224
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Brian Chau , who writes at the From the New World Substack. A graduate of the University of Waterloo and former software engineer with a background in pure mathematics, today Chau is executive director of the Alliance for the Future , a think tank that believes artificial intelligence will transform our world for the better. Chau addresses the great “doomer vs. anti-doomer” debate, and argues for an anti-catastrosophist position. He also ma...
Jan 29, 2025•52 min•Season 1Ep. 223
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, third-time guest John Hawks returns after two years to discuss what we’ve learned in paleoanthropology since he and Razib last talked. Hawks obtained his PhD under Milford H. Wolpoff , and is currently a professor in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. Hawks has also co-authored Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story and Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origi...
Jan 26, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 222
Three years ago David Mittelman came on Unsupervised Learning to talk about emerging possibilities on the frontiers of genomics, and his new startup at the time, Othram . Since then, Othram’s work has been featured widely in the media, including in a Law & Order episode, and the firm has solved thousands of unsolved cases, with nearly 500 public. For over a decade, Mittelman has been at the forefront of private-sector genomics research. He trained at Baylor College of Medicine and was previously...
Jan 23, 2025•57 min•Season 1Ep. 221
On this episode of Unsuperivsed Learning reviews what we know about Indo-Europeans as 2024 comes to a close. This is prompted by a new preprint Ancient genomics support deep divergence between Eastern and Western Mediterranean Indo-European languages , which finally establishes that populations in Northern and Southwestern Europe derived from a different steppe-origin population than the Greeks and Ilyrians of the Balkans, as well as Armenians. Razib talks about how ancient DNA is resolving long...
Jan 20, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 220
This week on Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Megan McArdle , author of The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success and Washington Post columnist and op-ed board member. McArdle was raised in New York City and attended Riverdale Country School. She obtained an undergraduate degree in English from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of Chicago. A pioneering blogger based out of New York City and covering the site of the WTC in the wake of 9/11, McArdle we...
Jan 17, 2025•1 hr 34 min•Season 1Ep. 219
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning , Razib catches up with Nikolai Yakovenko about the state of AI at the end of 2024. Yakovenko is a former professional poker player ,and research scientist at Google, Twitter and Nvidia. With a decade in computer science , Yakovenko has been at the forefront of the large-language-model revolution that has given rise to multi-billion dollar companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity and hundreds of smaller startups. Currently, he is the CEO of DeepNew...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 218
