Subscribe now Give a gift subscription Share Recently Yale Law School (YLS) student Trent Colbert wrote Why I Didn’t Apologize For That Yale Law School Email: We must end the culture of performative repentance for Persuasion . I was broadly familiar with the culture-war saga that Colbert was caught up in, having read a piece a few weeks ago in The Washington Post describing how a seemingly innocent and jocular email triggered accusations of racism at YLS (as well as Aaron Sibarium’s piece in The...
Oct 26, 2021•38 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast Subscribe now Give a gift subscription Share This week on the Unsupervised Learning Podcast I’m joined by author and journalist Kat Rosenfield . She has a new novel out, No One Will Miss Her , is a co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast, and a contributor at various places, like UnHerd and Newsweek . We first talk about Andrew Cuomo (the former governor of New York), Al Franken, #metoo, and how the dynamics of fame, power and identity play into the media narrative around sexual harassment, as wel...
Oct 22, 2021•45 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s Unsupervised Learning Podcast , Razib is joined by author and psycholinguist Steven Pinke r to discuss his new book Rationality: what is it, why it seems scarce, and why it matters . Pinker makes the case the humans are fundamentally rational beings, and that it’s this capacity that has allowed Homo sapiens to spread across the planet and occupy virtually every niche available to us. Our intuitive ability to understand how physical objects, other creatures and other humans think a...
Oct 14, 2021•57 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast This week Razib talks to Fredrick DeBoer , author of The Cult of Smart , about the heritability of intelligence and its broader implications for society and education. The two discuss the difficulties of having fact-based conversations around the topic of heritability without being shouted down or accused of being proponents of eugenics. They also talk about how The Cult of Smart compares to Paige Harden’s book The Genetic Lottery . Freddie breaks down the evidence that heritability, rather than...
Oct 07, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast This week Razib is joined by evolutionary psychiatrist Dr. Emily Deans to discuss the coronavirus pandemic. The conversation begins with the importance of winning and retaining hearts and minds when managing a pandemic, where nations have succeeded and failed in their public health messaging – and how numerous institutional failings – like sloppy contact tracing and poor communication - have eroded a portion of the public’s trust in the pandemic response. They also discuss the psychology of indi...
Sep 30, 2021•58 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Unsupervised Learning Podcast , Razib sits down with Mahan Ghafari , a doctoral candidate at Oxford’s department of zoology to discuss his ongoing research in the area of viral evolution. They discuss the difference between RNA viruses and DNA viruses and how viral evolution differs from that of more complex life forms – accentuated by a virus’s short reproduction cycle and high mutation rate - particularly in RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2 which can mutate orders of magnitude faster...
Sep 24, 2021•52 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast This week Razib sits down with author and tech entrepreneur Antonio Garcia Martinez to talk about some of the myriad ways in which technology and belief structures underpin and reinforce each other. Antonio discusses how his ongoing conversion to Judaism has broadened his lens and allowed him to gain perspective on how secular manifestations of Protestant Christianity have permeated our culture in strange and unexpected ways, including the “ great awokening ” of the 21st century and the dangers ...
Sep 16, 2021•57 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast In this weeks episode Razib sits down with Maximillian Larena of Upsala Universities evolutionary biology department to discuss the peopling of the Philippines via five proposed population pulses and introgression events beginning with the earliest Australasian expansion of the Philippine Negritos and subsequent migratory waves by the Manobo, Sama, and Cordilleran related populations. Max discusses how dispersal models are complicated by the geographic history of the Philippines, which is locate...
Sep 10, 2021•52 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast Myra MacDonald is the author of Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War and White as the Shroud: India, Pakistan and War on the Frontiers of Kashmir . The former Reuters Bureau Chief in India, MacDonald is an incisive observer of South Asian politics and commentator on the region’s history (follow her on Twitter !). On the podcast we discussed Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan, why India cares about that relationship so much, and the looming role of China in the region. I a...
Sep 02, 2021•59 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast Ruben Arslan is a psychologist who works at the Center for Adaptive Rationality . I’ve long tracked his work because of his interest in leveraging evolutionary and genetic frameworks in the context of psychology. Additionally, Arslan has long been an advocate for, and practitioner of, open science . In this episode we discuss some of his work: - Intelligence can be detected but is not found attractive in videos and live interactions , where he tests and rejects one of Geoffrey Miller ’s hypothes...
Aug 29, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast Jared Rubin is a professor of economics at Chapman University . He works at the intersection of religion and economics. This is not an entirely obscure field, as evident in 2010’s Marketplace of the Gods: How Economics Explains Religion . Nevertheless, Rubin talks about how he was somewhat of an odd duck in the field of economic history due to his interest in religion. His advisor indicated that it would be difficult to find a job. Luckily, that prediction did not come true. Most of the discussi...
Aug 19, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast Jason Munshi-South is a biologist who studies a creature many of us have an ambivalent relationship to, the rat. His lab is at Fordham University, in the New York City area. Jason is an “urban ecologist,” so he studies the wildlife in and around cities. This is what drew him to the rat. Or, to be more frank, there was public demand for him to study rats, and he gave the people what they wanted. We talk about: The black rat vs. brown rat The origins of the brown rat How do rats and mice interact ...
Aug 13, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast Economics is obviously important. Recently in the US, we’ve been talking about the threat of inflation, and spending financed through debt. What does this all mean? Not only are the answers important on a macro level, but they’re also relevant to all of us. To attack these questions I decided to talk to Karl Smith , a columnist at Bloomberg . We tackle four big topics: Are we on the path toward severe inflation? (in the US) Is the US headed toward a public debt crisis in the 2020’s? What is the ...
Aug 06, 2021•1 hr•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast First, I want to mention that readers of Unsupervised Learning may hear the doorbell from Duke (from “ Duke Tales ”) mid-recording. While he usually visits me evenings, Duke made a special afternoon stop, perhaps thanks to the appearance of a Tesla in the driveway. With that out of the way, I’m very excited to present this conversation with Linda Avey , the co-founder of 23andMe , and current CEO of Precisely . Most of you probably know about 23andMe , which helped create the idea of “direct-to-...
Jul 29, 2021•44 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast In this conversation, I discuss “cultural evolution” with Alex Mesoudi . The very term can be confusing and perplexing to some. After all, it seems intuitive that culture evolves and changes. But here Mesoudi and I discuss the science of cultural evolution , which is today a robust and interdisciplinary field (also see my conversation with Richard McElreath). Why do cultures vary? How fast and why do they change? What is the relation between genes and cultures? All these are topics that cultural...
Jul 23, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast Today on this bonus episode of Unsupervised Learning I’m excited to talk to Patrick Wyman about his new book, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World . Full disclosure, I enjoyed The Verge , and a review will be posted from me on National Review Online within the next week. Wyman is the host of Tides of History , a podcast about history and assorted topics which I recommend to everyone (I’ve been a guest ). If you’ve listened to him speak at length, you won’t be...
Jul 20, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last week we saw the debut of two new possible human “species”, one in Israel and another in China (read my post on the topic or listen to the podcast with Vagheesh Narasimhan ). The team out of Israel did not explicitly name their find a new species, referring to it as the “Nesha Ramla hominin.” But it is clear reading between the lines that they believe they did discover a new species-level hominin. In contrast, the Chinese team did explicitly propose a new species, Homo longi . Whether you ac...
Jul 15, 2021•59 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast Last week two new hominin fossils were published in the scientific literature , and extensively reported on in the media . “Dragon Man”, discovered in Harbin, China , and dating to 140,000 years ago is claimed to be a new species that is the closest to the modern human lineage. Meanwhile, the hominin discovered at Nesha Ramla in Israel dates to 120,000-140,000 years ago, and it seems most similar to Neanderthals (though its tools are no different from modern humans to the south and west in Afric...
Jul 14, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Richard Hanania is the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI). He also runs a Substack and a podcast that are “must-read/listen.” Richard is perceived as something of a contrarian, so I wanted to ask him about Israel and its role in American politics because he has opinions on that topic somewhat outside of the mainstream. But since I scheduled this podcast he’s “blown up” due to a piece he wrote, Woke Institutions is Just Civil Rights Law . Eliciting responses...
Jul 11, 2021•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast By popular demand, Samo Burja is my first repeat guest on this podcast. You’ve been asking for him, so when he wrote a great piece in Palladium Magazine , Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought , I had to ask him back on. Much of the piece is specifically about Göbekli Tepe , an ancient site in Turkey that predates the Neolithic, dating to 11,600 years ago. Burja focuses on how our preconceptions shape how we understand the world and interpret data. For example, at first, archaeologists thoug...
Jul 09, 2021•59 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast I’ve known Ramez Naam since 2003 when he wrote More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement . Back then he was leading a team at Microsoft, and moonlighting as a writer. Over the last twenty years, he’s changed careers, and become a full-time writer and speaker. He’s the author of three science fiction books, Crux , Apex , and Nexus . Ramez has also written The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet . It’s because of the last book that he’s become an expert ...
Jul 02, 2021•53 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast Three years ago the Golden State Killer was arrested through genetic genealogy enabled by the new direct-to-consumer platforms. Over the past several years many more cases have been solved through new DNA techniques and database searches. But more recently, Montana and Maryland banned the practice . Six years after the original CSI went off the air, genomics and forensics have started to fuse into something new and far more powerful. David Mittelman is a scientist who is bringing “next-generatio...
Jun 25, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast Three years ago the Golden State Killer was arrested through genetic genealogy enabled by the new direct-to-consumer platforms. Over the past several years many more cases have been solved through new DNA techniques and database searches. But more recently, Montana and Maryland banned the practice . Six years after the original CSI went off the air, genomics and forensics have started to fuse into something new and far more powerful. David Mittelman is a scientist who is bringing “next-generatio...
Jun 18, 2021•58 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast James P. Mallory received in Ph.D. in Indo-European studies from UCLA in 1975 under the supervision of Marija Gimbutas. He is the author of In Search of Indo-Europeans , The Origins of the Irish , and The Tarim Mummies , and an emeritus professor at Queen’s University Belfast. Mallory devoted much of his career to understanding the origins of the Indo-Europeans. Over the first 30 minutes of he gives a magisterial overview of the question, the field, and where we are now. Mallory begins in the 18...
Jun 11, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Marie Favereau is an associate professor at Paris Nanterre University . Her academic work has been on the Mamlukes of Egypt and the Mongol Golden Horde. Most recently, she is the author of The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World . I recently reviewed it for UnHerd , What the Mongols did for us: The Golden Horde wasn't barbarous, it created the modern world . Dr. Favereau and I discuss the origin of the Golden Horde, the Mongols of the northwest who ruled much of Eastern Europe for centu...
Jun 04, 2021•58 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Kristian Kristiansen has been at the forefront of the synthesis between archaeology and ancient DNA. That new joint field has allowed for a deeper understanding of the transition to Indo-European languages in Northern Europe 5,000 years ago. In 2015 he was a co-author on Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia , which established that there was a massive migration of the steppe people into Europe that resulted in the emergence of the Corded Ware culture, the likely predecessor of most subs...
May 27, 2021•1 hr•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast David Anthony is an emeritus professor of Hartwick College and now a collaborator with David Reich at Harvard. Over the past four decades, Anthony has been involved in exploring the origin and rise of Indo-Europeans from the perspective of archaeology, most especially in his magisterial 2007 book The Horse, The Wheel, and Language . In the 2010’s he began collaborating with geneticists. He provided many of the Yamnaya samples for 2015’s Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-Eur...
May 21, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast 45% of humans speak an Indo-European language. English is Indo-European. Hindi is Indo-European. The language of the ancient Hittites was Indo-European. This is one reason the origin and expansion of this language family is so interesting to so many. Thomas Olander is an associate professor of Indo-European studies in Denmark. He has a deep interest in the question of when and where the Proto-Indo-European speakers flourished. In the podcast we talk about different hypotheses in terms of the “ho...
May 14, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast In the winter of 2021, I noticed a minor controversy regarding ‘academic cancellation’ around Gregory Clark, an economic historian at UC Davis. Representative pieces are Glasgow University in row over decision to invite guest speaker Gregory Clark , and Why is the woke mob so scared? The Free Speech Union put together a petition, Letter to Adam Smith Business School About No-Platforming of Professor Gregory Clark Signed by Over 70 Academics , signed by numerous public intellectuals after his tal...
May 07, 2021•57 min•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast What are the relationship between Christianity, ancient paganism, and Western culture? Does mass secularization in the West presage a new pagan era? Where is “New Atheism” 15 years after its peak? These are just some of the questions Ben Bassett and I mull over. Bassett is an archaeologist but has a deep interest in ancient history. Three years ago he wrote: Progress and Polytheism: Could an Ethical West Exist Without Christianity? We also referenced Unbelievable? Is the God of the Bible a capri...
Apr 29, 2021•57 min•Ep 23•Transcript available on Metacast 
