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
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning , Razib talks to Yasha Mounk . The founder of Persuasion , a contributor to The Atlantic and a professor at Johns Hopkins , Mounk now has his own Substack , where he hosts his weekly column and podcast . He is the author of The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure , The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It and The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time . Razib and Moun...
Jan 11, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 217
Today Razib talks to Russian commentator and transhumanist Anatoly Karlin . Karlin has a BA in political economy from U C Berkeley. For most of the 21st century he had positioned himself as part of the right wing of the transhumanist movement. He returned to Russia after living in California’s Bay Area for several years, and from there he promoted a nationalistic vision in opposition to American military and cultural power. With the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he joined a chorus of Russia...
Jan 08, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 216
During the Ice Age our ancestors often painted the horse in caves On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib covers the archaeology, genetics and history of the horse. Dogs may be man’s best friend, but for thousands of years horses were humanity’s most valuable domesticate. While pigs, cattle and goat were essential elements of the world’s subsistence economies, the horse in its military roles was a luxury good, with Chinese emperors sending delegations to Central Asia in search of “...
Jan 05, 2025•39 min•Season 1Ep. 215
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to returning guest Wilfred Reilly about his new book, Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me: Debunking the False Narratives Defining America's School Curricula . Reilly holds a Ph.D. in political science from Southern Illinois and a J.D. from the University of Illinois. Raised in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, he worked in the private sector before his career in academia, including stints as a political canvasser, real estate ...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 214
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib welcomes Leighton Akira Woodhouse back to the podcast. Woodhouse is a freelance journalist and a documentary filmmaker, currently 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 and The Nation , before starting his own Substack, Social Studies , as well as working with Michael Shellenberger. He also has a new podcast with...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 213
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Lyman Stone , a soon to be PhD in sociology from McGill University specializing in population dynamics. Stone runs the Pro-natalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies , and has had appointments at AEI, and has written for The Atlantic and The New York Times . Well known for his social media presence, Stone is a published academic who has explored COVID policies, religion and divorce rates. Stone has previously been on Unsupervis...
Dec 27, 2024•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 212
