On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Penn State astrophysicist, Steinn Sigurdsson . Sigurdsson was a one-time colleague at the ScienceBlogs website in the twenty-aughts with Razib, where he ran the astrophysics-themed Dynamic of the Cats blog. At its peak, ScienceBlogs had nearly 100 writers who commented on topics as diverse as agriculture, Creationism and cosmology. Originally from Iceland, Sigurdsson’s professional accomplishments have been wide-ranging, from serving as sci...
Nov 06, 2023•59 min•Season 1Ep. 158
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib welcomes back Gregory Clark , a past guest on this podcast. When he last talked to him, Clark had just been disinvited from giving a talk whose results he has now turned into a paper, The inheritance of social status: England, 1600 to 2022 . Until recently an economics professor at the University of California, Davis, Clark is now teaching at the University of Southern Denmark. His previous books include The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History ...
Oct 29, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 157
We’re about a generation into the “age of genomics,” or as it’s sometimes termed the “post-genomic era.” Today Razib talks to John Logsdon , a professor of biology at the University of Iowa, about what genomics has wrought in relation to our understanding of evolution, and what evolution has taught us about the structure and nature of the genome. In 2014, Logdson and Sarah J Hanson contributed a chapter entitled “ Genome Evolution ” to the Princeton Guide to Evolution . Razib uses this mid-2010s...
Oct 19, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 156
Yesterday , Razib discussed Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics with the author. Today, Unsupervised Learning hosts a wide-ranging discussion with Christopher Rufo on his book, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything . While Hanania’s focus is law and politics, Rufo looks at intellectual history and culture. If you follow his prolific output on social media or in City Journal , you know ...
Oct 15, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 155
On the third episode of the Intellectual Brown Web (IBW) Razib , Sarah Haider of A Special Place in Hell (and her own Substack ), Shadi Hamid of The Washingon Post (plus Wisdom of the Crowds and his own Substack ) and Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept (and his own Substack ) discuss the effects of the Hamas atrocities and the now impending Israeli invasion of Gaza on both geopolitics and American culture. Haider and Khan address why they are finally discussing the Israeli-Palestine conflict, whic...
Oct 14, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 154
In September 2023, Harper Collins published Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics , two months after Christopher Rufo’s America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything . Both these books tackle the same issue: the US’s Leftist cultural direction, especially since 2015, and what Matthew Yglesias termed the “ Great Awokening ” in 2019. Razib recently interviewed both authors, and today we release th...
Oct 08, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 153
https://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content... For the first time ever, parents going through IVF can use whole genome sequencing to screen their embryos for hundreds of conditions. Harness the power of genetics to keep your family safe, with Orchid . Check them out at orchidhealth.com . Related: The Indian caste system: origin, impact and future , The character of caste and Passing the civilizational purity test: ...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 152
In the US, roughly 1 in 33 infants are born with a congenital disability, about 25 % of which have an identified genetic cause. For the first time ,, parents can use Orchid’s whole genome sequencing to screen their embryos for these genetic variants and mitigate their baby’s disease risk. Check out orchidhealth.com , and use code RAZIB when signing up to skip the waitlist. What is caste? This is a question many Americans have been asking since the publication of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Ori...
Oct 01, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 151
Today, Razib revisits The Horse, the Wheel, and Language with David Anthony , emeritus professor at Hartwick College and collaborator with David Reich’s ancient DNA research group at Harvard University. Anthony and Razib survey the last two years in terms of questions regarding the domestication of the horse, the spread of the wheel, and Yamnaya steppe herders' language; subjects of his 2007 book. They also discuss the exponential growth in our understanding of the paleodemography of Bronze Age ...
Sep 24, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 150
Today, Razib talks to Erik Hoel , host of the Substack The Intrinsic Perspective and author of The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science . An academic neuroscientist by training, in The World Behind the World Hoel outlines the emergence of modern neuroscience, and where it went wrong in terms of the field’s researchers' focus. But first, Hoel discusses human understanding of the mind, and how it has changed over time. He gives his take on Julian Jayne’s The ...
Sep 15, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 149
On this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib talks to internet commentator formerly known as default friend who is perhaps better known today as the internet culture writer Katherine Dee . Dee is a regular contributor to Retvrn , The Washington Examiner , The American Mind , Tablet Magazine and UnHerd . She has also recently written a piece for Compact : Why You’re Never Leaving Twitter . But first, Razib and Dee discuss how they have known each other for nearly a decade, going ba...
Sep 13, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 148
Today Razib talks to Inez Stepman , a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum , a Lincoln Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a senior contributor to The Federalist . Stepman also hosts two podcasts, High Noon and Clown Car . She and Razib first discuss the current distress, both economic and cultural, in higher education as several decades of bloat, inflation-beating cost increases and political radicalism run up against their natural limits. Stepman’s recent policy report, T...
Sep 12, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 147
https://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content. On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Dr. Cory J. Clark , a behavioral scientist and executive director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project at the University of Pennsylvania. Clark got her Ph.D. in social psychology at UC Irvine, but her interests have broadened over her career as is clear in a diverse oeuvre . First, Razib and Clark talk about the...
Sep 12, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 146
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks with Alex Young of UCLA and James Lee of the University of Minnesota about quantitative genetics and its relationship to complex traits and the genomic revolution. Young, trained as a mathematician, and Lee, trained as a psychologist, have both converged upon research programs exploring the role of genetics in generating variation in human behavior and disease. First, the trio reviews quantitative genetics’ modern basis in R. A. Fisher’s 1918 ...
Sep 03, 2023•2 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 145
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Aporia Magazine’s Diana Fleischman , an evolutionary psychologist who earned her Ph.D. in David Buss’ lab at the University of Texas in Austin. Fleischman discusses the origins of her field, its methodological framework and presuppositions, and why evolutionary psychologists seem obsessed with sex. Razib also brings up the relationship of evolutionary psychology to primatology and the role that behavioral studies of common chimpanzees and b...
Aug 30, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 144
https://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content. On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Nicola Buskirk of Elessar Books (see her Substack ). A 2022 graduate of Stanford University, Buskirk has already had positions at Substack (she was behind the At Length series ), Thiel Foundation, Hoover Institution and now, Protocol Labs. At Elessar she is “putting long out-of-print books back into print so that th...
Aug 24, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 143
https://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Hannah Frankman about the past, present and future of education. Frankman is a Hazlitt Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education , the founder of Rebel Educator , and the host of an eponymous podcast ( Spotify , Apple and YouTube ). Education as a discipline has been a human concern since Plato outlined...
Aug 22, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 142
https://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content. Today Razib talks to Lyman Stone , a demographer and Ph.D. candidate at McGill University, about the fall, rise and fall of religion in America. In 2020, Stone published a report, Promise and Peril: The History of American Religiosity and Its Recent Decline , where he outlined the demographic and religious history of the US, and its possible future. They first cover the ...
Aug 20, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 141
https://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content. On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib hosts three guests, Sarah Haider of A Special Place in Hell (and her own Substack), Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institute (and Wisdom of the Crowds and his own Substack) and Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept (and his own Substack), for the second episode of the “Intellectual Brown Web” (here’s episode #1). Razib, Haider, Ham...
Aug 04, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 140
In the fall of 2022 Liz Truss was the UK's Prime Minister for 44 days. Her tenure was cut short by turmoil in the financial markets, as her attempts to roll out policies similar to the US’s 1980’s program of “ Reaganomics ” that combined lower taxes and higher deficits triggered panic and an intervention from the Bank of England . In retrospect, the problem was that the British elite periodically forgets that it’s the not US, it’s not the largest economy in the world and the pound sterling is no...
Aug 04, 2023•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 139
Mukherjee is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute and a Ph.D. student in American politics at Boston College, where her dissertation will focus on affirmative action. Razib asks Mukherjee to discuss the origin of affirmative action as it is practiced in the US today, starting with the Bakke decision in 1978, and then moving on to Grutter vs. Bollinger in 2003. She then moves to the details of the current cases, in particular Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows...
Jun 29, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 138
In June 1991, The New York Times published a piece titled “Scientists Study Ancient DNA for Glimpses of Past Worlds.” Published a year after Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel Jurassic Park , on which the 1993 blockbuster would be based, the article opens “Will it one day become possible to breed a living dinosaur from genes preserved in fossils?” More than 30 years on, we obviously have not bred a living dinosaur, nor come even close. But the early 1990’s kicked off the first age of ancient DNA with...
Jun 23, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 137
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning , Razib talks to journalist Lee Fang . Formerly an investigative reporter at The Intercept and a contributing writer at The Nation , Fang began his journalism career at ThinkProgress . As an undergraduate, Fang was president of the University of Maryland College Democrats, and interned for Democratic representatives Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Steny Hoyer. He was also the first intern for the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America . Toda...
Jun 14, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 136
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib hosts Ross Douthat , author of Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics , Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class , Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream , The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery and The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success . A columnist at The New York Times , often on political and social topics, Douthat also reviews movi...
Jun 08, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 135
On this week’s Unsupervised Learning Razib welcomes back a favorite repeat guest, Samo Burja , to discuss matters future, present and past. Burja founded the consulting firm Bismarck Analysis and developed the “ great founder theory .” He contributes to Palladium Magazine , Asia Times , City Journal , and The National Interest . Burja’s first appearance on the podcast , recorded in the fall of 2020, spiraled into a long discussion on the Chinese past and future, and Razib follows up to find out ...
Jun 04, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 134
A few years ago now, Razib talked to Tim Lee about his new Substack Full Stack Economics , which featured deep dives into economic issues (as well as some on-the-ground-reporting, like when he drove Lyft to get a feel for its economics). But recently, Lee decided to put Full Stack Economics on pause to focus on a new Substack: Understanding AI . Artificial intelligence is hot right now, but Lee covered tech for a decade for Washington Post , Ars Technica , and Vox.com , and has a master’s degree...
May 29, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 132
Recently, scientists discovered that a two-year mega-drought beginning in 1198 BC hastened the Hittite Empire’s collapse. The finding sheds new light on the history of the decades around 1200 BC, adding specificity to the timing and cause for the period’s social and political chaos. Today on the Unsupervised Learning podcast Razib discusses the “Bronze Age Collapse,” the end of the first globalized world. This collapse marked the end of a multi-century period when the Near East’s empires and sta...
May 29, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 131
On this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib talks to Peter Nimitz, the author behind the Nemets Substack, which explores topics as diverse as the 2014 Donbass War and the likelihood of Eurasian migration into Chad thousands of years ago. Razib and Nimitz walk through his recent post, the Seven Ages of Western Eurasia: A brief outline of the 11,700 years from the Anatolian Farmers to the Present. In the piece, he explores the changes that Europe and West Asia have undergone since ...
May 29, 2023•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 130
Alex Feinberg is anything but your typical trainer. An economics graduate from Vanderbilt, Feinberg willed himself to become a professional baseball player through focus and hard work and then talked his way into a sales and business development job at Google. In the late 2010’s Feinberg moved into the crypto space, but found that one precondition to success was having a large Twitter following. So he pivoted and focused on growing his Twitter following, and noticed that his lifestyle tweets, an...
May 10, 2023•50 min
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Adam Mastroianni , who runs the Experimental History Substack. Mastroianni was the inaugural guest on the Intrinsic Perspective podcast , hosted by Erik Hoel , where they discussed his post, The rise and fall of peer review - Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing (see also his follow-up, The dance of the naked emperors ). Mastroianni opened a can of worms; the post has more than 800 likes an...
May 10, 2023•57 min•Season 1Ep. 128
