Shows
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNoah Smith: Japanese and American politicsToday Razib talks to Noah Smith, an American economist-turned-blogger known for his commentary on economics and public policy. His blog, Noahpinion, is one of the most popular on Substack. He earned a PhD in economics at University of Michigan and served as an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University before leaving academia to become a full-time writer. He wrote a column for Bloomberg until 2021, when he turned his focus entirely to independent writing and his Substack newsletter. Smith is based out of San Francisco but spends part of the year in Japan. An enthusiast for Japanese culture, he is also...
2025-11-181h 41
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNoah Smith: Japanese and American politicsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comToday Razib talks to Noah Smith, an American economist-turned-blogger known for his commentary on economics and public policy. His blog, Noahpinion, is one of the most popular on Substack. He earned a PhD in economics at University of Michigan and served as an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University before leaving academia to become a full-time writer. He wrote a column for Bloomberg until 2021, when he turned his focus entirely to independent writing and his Substack newsletter. Smith is based ou...
2025-10-2530 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChad Orzel: the state of physics and academia in 2025Chad Orzel is a physicist and science writer who has been blogging for nearly twenty-five years. He's the author of four books, Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects, How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist and A Brief History of Timekeeping. The last is a mix of cultural and engineering history, archeology and physics, and reflects Orzel's wide interests as reflected in his Substack, Counting Atoms. In this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib surveys the state of physics communication and science, as well as ou...
2025-09-301h 24
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChad Orzel: the state of physics and academia in 2025This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comChad Orzel is a physicist and science writer who has been blogging for nearly twenty-five years. He’s the author of four books, Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects, How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist and A Brief History of Timekeeping. The last is a mix of cultural and engineering history, archeology and physics, and reflects Orzel’s wide interests as reflected in his Subs...
2025-09-0414 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningJohn Hawks: varieties of humankind all mixed-upToday on Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist who has been a researcher and commentator in human evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology for over two decades. With a widely read weblog (now on Substack), a book on Homo naledi, and highly cited scientific papers, Hawks is an essential voice in understanding the origins of our species. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1994 with degrees in French, English, and Anthropology, and received both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, where he studied under Milford Wolpoff. He is currently working on a textb...
2025-08-2353 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningAlex Nowrasteh: an immigration libertarian in Trump's AmericaThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comThree years ago, Razib recorded two podcasts with two immigration experts on different sides of the issue, Alex Nowrestah and Jason Richwhine. While Nowrasteh, who works for the libertarian Cato Institute as Vice President for Economic and Social Policy Studies, supports higher levels of legal immigration, Richwine, a Resident Scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), favors lower levels of inflows into the US. The initial pair of podcasts was recorded in the midst of the massive increase in immigration...
2025-08-1514 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningJohn Hawks: varieties of humankind all mixed-upThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comToday on Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist who has been a researcher and commentator in human evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology for over two decades. With a widely read weblog (now on Substack), a book on Homo naledi, and highly cited scientific papers, Hawks is an essential voice in understanding the origins of our species. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1994 with degrees in French, English, and Anthropology, and received both his M.A. and Ph.D...
2025-08-0909 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNoah Carl and Bo Winegard: probing the intellectual darker web 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, Cambridge, before becoming a contributor to The Daily Skeptic and UnHerd, and a managing editor at Aporia. First, Razib ask...
2025-05-301h 54
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningManvir Singh: the shamanic roots of all religionThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comToday Razib talks to Manvir Singh about shamanism, religion and anthropology. Singh is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. An artist and essayist, he is also now a regular contributor to The New Yorker. His academic interests lie in explaining why most human societies, from preliterate foragers to urbanites, develop cultural phenomena like “witchcraft, origin myths, property rights, sharing norms, lullabies, dance music, and gods.” He just came out with his first book, Shamanism: The Timeless Reli...
2025-05-2310 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNoah Carl and Bo Winegard: probing the intellectual darker webThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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, Cambridge, be...
2025-05-1614 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningMatt Welch: from blog pioneer to podcasting mainstayThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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, Welch co-hosts The Fifth Column podcast wi...
2025-04-1030 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningAndrew Song: cooling the planet with technologyThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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 curren...
2025-04-0420 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningDaniel McCarthy: American conservatism after Trump (and before)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 outcome of the 2024 presidential election, and the realignment of coalitions on both right and left, and what these realignments might presage for...
2025-02-271h 03Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningTade Souaiaia: the edge of statistical genetics, race and sports 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 normal distribution. Though traits like height or risk for type II diabetes can be thought of as represented by an ide...
2025-02-201h 10
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningDaniel McCarthy: American conservatism after Trump (and before)This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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 outcome of...
2025-01-3020 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningTade Souaiaia: the edge of statistical genetics, race and sportsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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 normal distribution. Thou...
2025-01-2319 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningShadi Hamid: pessimism on Palestine but hope in AmericaThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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...
2025-01-1630 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNikolai Yakovenko: the Singularity is not here 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 DeepNewz, an AI-driven news startup that leverages OpenAI's latest model. Full disclosure: Razib actively uses and recommends the service and is an advisor to the co...
2025-01-141h 07
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningJohn Hawks: 2024 in Neanderthals, Denisovans and HobbitsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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 Origins wi...
2024-12-1930 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNikolai Yakovenko: the Singularity is not hereOn 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 DeepNewz, an AI-driven news startup that leverages OpenAI’s latest model. Full disclosure: Razib actively uses and recommends the service and is an ad...
2024-11-221h 06
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningYascha Mounk: American democracy in 2024This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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...
2024-11-2130 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningCrémieux Recueil: US election 2024 analysisOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Cremieux, a Twitter anon who is regularly retweeted by the likes of Paul Graham, Noah Smith and Elon Musk. A data scientist and statistician, Cremieux specializes in visualizations and analyses that cut to the heart of social and cultural dynamics, from economics to behavior genetics. Cremieux and Razib first discuss the polls and demographic results of the 2024 election, in which Donald Trump seems to have made broad-based gains across all demographics. They also discuss the mirage of the "emerging Democratic majority," and the possibility that Latinos and Asians shifted so muc...
2024-11-0759 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningCrémieux Recueil: US election 2024 analysisOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Cremieux, a Twitter anon who is regularly retweeted by the likes of Paul Graham, Noah Smith and Elon Musk. A data scientist and statistician, Cremieux specializes in visualizations and analyses that cut to the heart of social and cultural dynamics, from economics to behavior genetics. Cremieux and Razib first discuss the polls and demographic results of the 2024 election, in which Donald Trump seems to have made broad-based gains across all demographics. They also discuss the mirage of the “emerging Democratic majority,” and the possibility that Latinos and Asians shifted so much...
2024-11-0758 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningHalie May: the democratization of genomicsOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Halie May, the host of the Substack The Sequence, and a genetic counselor at Natera. May has a B.S. in chemical biology from Stevens Institute of Technology and a M.S. in human genetics from Sarah Lawrence. Before working at Natera she was a researcher and instructor at Columbia University and designed testing panels at genetics start-up, Tomorrow's Health. Razib and May discuss how much the field has changed even in her short career, in large part because genetic counseling is a 50-year-old profession that has been tran...
2024-10-3050 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChristina Buttons: navigating the gender warsOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Christina Buttons, who writes at Buttons Lives. A native Californian and erstwhile artist, Buttons switched to journalism two years ago, writing about gender medicine. A contributor to Quillette, The Post-Millennial and The Daily Wire, Buttons is now a freelance journalist living in Nashville, Tennessee. The first part of the conversation breaks down what "gender medicine" entails in its gory details. In April Razib had a conversation with Colin Wright about the relationship between sex and gender, and the broader philosophical issues entailed by the ideas of gender ideology. But in the...
2024-10-151h 14Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningSarah Haider: activist to podcaster and public intellectualOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to returning guest, Sarah Haider. Haider is the co-host of the podcast A Special Place in Hell and the Substack Hold That Thought. A native of Houston, graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, Haider is the founder and former executive director of Ex Muslims of North America. Today Razib asks her about her move out of the nonprofit world, and into being a full-time public intellectual, speaking and writing on topics of interest to her beyond that of Muslim-born who become secular. And then, more specifically, Razib probes Haider about her...
2024-10-111h 05
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningHalie May: the democratization of genomicsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comIf you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Halie May, the host of the Substack The Sequence, and a genetic counselor at Nate...
2024-08-2215 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChristina Buttons: navigating the gender warsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comIf you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Christina Buttons, who writes at Buttons Lives. A native Californian and erstwhile artist, Buttons...
2024-08-0825 min
Brown PunditsBangladesh's New Order and the end of the Shiek Hasina regimeBangladesh's New Order and the end of the Shiek Hasina regimeOmar Ali, Jyoti Rahman, Shafiqur Rahman, Karol Karpinski and Razib Khan discuss the end of the Sheikh Hasina regime.
2024-08-081h 28
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningSarah Haider: activist to podcaster and public intellectualThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comIf you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to returning guest, Sarah Haider. Haider is the co-host of the podcast A Special Place i...
2024-08-0125 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNikolai Yakovenko: the stillborn promise of the LLM ageOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Nikolai Yakovenko, a returning guest to the podcast, about his new AI startup, DeepNewz, and the state of the LLM-driven AI landscape circa the summer of 2024, where we are in relation to earlier expectations and where we might be in the next decade. Yakovenko is an AI researcher who has worked at Google, Twitter and Nvidia, and is now a serial entrepreneur. He is also a competitive poker player. He currently lives in Miami, Florida, though he travels frequently to America's numerous "ideaopolises," from San Francisco, Austin, Boston to New...
2024-06-261h 16Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChad Niederhuth: genetics in plants, from Mendel to GMOsOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Chad Niederhuth, an erstwhile academic plant geneticist now working in industry. Niederhuth and Razib discuss the reality that in 2024 it is often human genetics that gets the glory, even though experiments on plants go back to the field's very origins with Gregor Mendel and his peas. Niederhuth's original training is in molecular genetics, and they discuss the relevance of differences in basic biological machinery between plants and animals, for example the reality that the former have chloroplasts while the latter have mitochondria. They also extensively discuss the flexibility and variation acr...
2024-06-231h 01Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningJonathan Keeperman: becoming LomezOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Jonathan Keeperman, an former lecturer in writing at UC Irvine and proprietor of Passage Press. Keeperman also posts on the internet under what was until recently an anonymous pseudonym, Lomez. Unlike many anonymous accounts on X, "Lomez" developed a decade-long identity, to the point where Keeperman wrote articles under that name for publications like First Things, The Federalist and The American Mind. Razib and Keeperman talk about what it is like to go from someone with distinct and separate identities, a well-developed online life as well as a fairly con...
2024-06-161h 24
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChad Niederhuth: genetics in plants, from Mendel to GMOsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comIf you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Chad Niederhuth, an erstwhile academic plant geneticist now working in industry. Niederhuth and Razib d...
2024-06-0525 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningJonathan Keeperman: becoming LomezThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comIf you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Jonathan Keeperman, an former lecturer in writing at UC Irvine and proprietor of Passage...
2024-05-3015 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningColin Wright: In the trenches of the gender warsOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Colin Wright, a returning guest, host of the Reality's Last Stand Substack and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Before digging deep into the biology of sex and the cultural politics of gender ideology, Razib and Wright touch on what's been happening to Jonathan Pruitt, Wright's erstwhile advisor. He was accused of academic fraud in 2019, and dozens of papers where Pruitt was the primary contributor of data had to be retracted. Notably, papers where his mentees collected the data did not suffer from the same problems. Evidence quickly mounted that...
2024-05-071h 26
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningColin Wright: in the trenches of the gender warsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Colin Wright, a returning guest, host of the Reality’s Last Stand Substack and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Before digging deep into the biology of sex and the cu...
2024-04-0418 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChris Stringer: human evolution in 2024On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib welcomes back paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer. Affiliated with the Natural History Museum in London, Stringer is the author of African Exodus. The Origins of Modern Humanity, Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth and Homo Britannicus - The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain. A proponent since the 1970's of the recent African origin of modern humans, he has also for decades been at the center of debates around our species' relationship to Neanderthals. In the 1980's, with the rise to prominence of the molecular model of "mtDNA Eve...
2024-03-151h 13
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChris Stringer: human evolution in 2024This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib welcomes back paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer. Affiliated with the Natural History Museum in London, Stringer is the author of African Exodus. The Origins of Modern Humanity, Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be...
2024-03-0130 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningJames Miller: the end of world as we know it On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks about AI, the singularity and the post-human future, with James D. Miller, a Smith College economist, host of the podcast Future Strategist and the author of Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World. Miller and Razib first met at 2008's "Singularity Summit" in San Jose, and though Singularity Rising was published in 2012, some of the ideas were already presented in earlier talks, including at that conference. More than 15 years since Miller began formulating his ideas, Razib asks him how the theses and predictions in his...
2024-02-231h 15
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningJames Miller: the end of world as we know itThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks about AI, the singularity and the post-human future, with James D. Miller, a Smith College economist, host of the podcast Future Strategist and the author of Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving...
2024-02-0128 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningSeth Stephens-Davidowitz - Who Makes the NBA?: Data-Driven Answers to Basketball's Biggest Questions Today, Razib talks to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of Who Makes the NBA?: Data-Driven Answers to Basketball's Biggest Questions and Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. Stephens-Davidowitz, formerly of Google and The New York Times, is a freelance data scientist and author. He has a degree in philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in economics from Harvard. In this episode, he discusses his process of writing Who Makes the NBA?, which he crafted in a month using ChatGPT's code interpreter feature, and the biggest insights from his book. Ra...
2024-01-311h 29Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningAlexander: the psychology of dating Do 20% of the men on dating apps get 80% of the dates? Is the Zoomer generation the sexless generation? What are the best predictors of relationship success? These are some of the questions Razib asks Alex of DatePsychology on this episode of Unsupervised Learning. A psychologist who studied cognitive and behavioral neuroscience in graduate school, Alex explores topics around dating on his YouTube channel and disseminates the latest research via his tweets (you can also subscribe to his newsletter). In a world where the "discourse" is filled with anecdotes and ideology, Alex's modus operandi is to ask "what does the scientific...
2024-01-3052 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningWilfred Reilly: a social scientist in the culture warsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.In this episode, Razib talks to Wilfred Reilly, political scientist, author and fearless cultural commentator. 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...
2024-01-2520 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningIntroducing GenRAIT: when technology drives scienceIntroducing GenRAIT: when technology drives scienceToday, Razib cross-posts an episode of his other podcast. When not working on this Substack, Razib devotes his time to GenRAIT, a startup accelerating scientific discovery by providing infrastructure and tools to researchers. GenRAIT fosters science and discovery by making biological data accessible, usable, and minable. Razib and his cofounders, Dr. Santanu Das and Taylor Capito, will talk about what they've built at the JPM Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, January 8th-11th, and showcase their products at the Plant and Animal Genomes Conference in San Diego, January 12th-17th. After an overview of GenRAIT's business...
2024-01-0952 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningIntroducing GenRAIT: when technology drives scienceFor 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.Today, Razib cross-posts an episode of his other podcast. When not working on this Substack, Razib devotes his time to GenRAIT, a startup accelerating scientific discovery by providing infrastructure and tools to researchers. GenRAIT fosters science and discovery by making biological data accessible, usable, and minable. Razib and his cofounders, Dr. Santanu Das and Taylor...
2024-01-0952 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningDavid Lightbringer: mythopoetic interpretationsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to David Lightbringer, a YouTube content creator who focuses on the world of The Game of Thrones and the mythologies of ancient peoples. Though Lightbringer writes essays, and distributes his thoughts...
2023-12-2825 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningPhilippe Lemoine: French food and American immigrants On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Philippe Lemoine, a fellow at CSPI, a philosopher of science trained at Cornell. Lemoine often wades into controversial topics, like whether Chinese COVID data is trustworthy, but recently, he posted on Twitter that "Americans *genuinely* believe they have better food than France. They really believe it." Not only did this trigger a response by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, but the controversy broke out of social media into the international media. For the first portion of the conversation, Razib and Lemoine reflect on the circus surrounding his tweet, and what he...
2023-12-141h 44
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningPhilippe Lemoine: French food and American immigrantsThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Philippe Lemoine, a fellow at CSPI, a philosopher of science trained at Cornell. Lemoine often wades into controversial topics, like whether Chinese COVID data is trustworthy, but recently, he posted on Twitter that “Americans *genuinely* believe they have better food than France. They really believe it.” Not only did this trigger a response by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, but the controversy broke out of social media into the international media.Fo...
2023-11-3027 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningMark Safranski: the 21st-century way of war and the exhaustion of the American EmpireThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses war and diplomacy from 9/11 to 10/7 with Mark Safranski. Safranski is a long-time military affairs and foreign policy commentator who ran the popular weblog Zenpundit beginning in 2003. They survey how the 21st century, from the 9/11 attacks down to the Hamas atrocity against Israelis on 10/7, has seen a transformation of war and diplomacy by other means. From an age of flip phones as a luxury item in the early 2000’s to ubiquitous smartphones in the 2020’s, S...
2023-11-2324 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNikolai Yakovenko: OpenAI in chaos, the future of artificial intelligence and effective accelerationismToday, Razib interviews Nikolai Yakovenko, already a three-time guest on his podcasts (A Twitter engineer on machine learning and his former company's prospects, GPT-3 and the rise of the thinking machines and AI and Biology). An artificial intelligence researcher based in Miami who has worked at Google and Nvidia, Yakovenko is the founder of DeepNews where he currently works. Razib and Yakovenko talk about the economic, technological and socio-political implications of the leadership turmoil at OpenAI, the $86 billion dollar company that has supercharged the field of artificial intelligence with their product, ChatGPT. Yakovenko digs deep into the nuts and...
2023-11-211h 23
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNikolai Yakovenko: OpenAI in chaos, the future of artificial intelligence and effective accelerationismToday, Razib interviews Nikolai Yakovenko, already a three-time guest on his podcasts (A Twitter engineer on machine learning and his former company's prospects, GPT-3 and the rise of the thinking machines and AI and Biology). An artificial intelligence researcher based in Miami who has worked at Google and Nvidia, Yakovenko is the founder of DeepNews where he currently works.Razib and Yakovenko talk about the economic, technological and socio-political implications of the leadership turmoil at OpenAI, the $86 billion dollar company that has supercharged the field of artificial intelligence with their product, ChatGPT. Yakovenko digs deep into the...
2023-11-211h 23
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningBrent Roberts: let's talk about personalityThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib discusses personality with Brent Roberts, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois. Roberts explains what personality actually is as a psychological construct, and how it differs from personality traits, like extraversion. Razib and Roberts also address the Big Five Personality system, and how it relates to the Myers-Briggs framework. Roberts elucidates what the Big Five’s extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and disagreeability actually mean, and how they correspond to Myers-Briggs dichotomies of...
2023-11-1614 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningCarl Zha: Chimerica to the Thucydides's TrapThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Carl Zha. Zha is a Sichuan-born China-commentator who had a long-term professional sojourn in southern California, before settling in Bali, Indonesia. He hosts the Silk and Steel podcast, which covers...
2023-11-1030 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningSteinn Sigurðsson: Black Holes, causality and exoplanets 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 scientific director of arXiv to directing an institute focused on exobiology. Razib first asks him about the history of arXiv, which goes back over 30 years. It was the preprint server that blazed th...
2023-11-0658 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningMichael Muthukrishna: A Theory of Everyone - The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re GoingThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Michael Muthukrishna about his new book, A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going. Muthukrishna is Associate Professor of...
2023-10-2632 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChristopher Rufo - America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. 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 Rufo is an indefatigable culture warrior, but in America's Cultural Revolution he outlines in a book-length narrative the ideas and people he believes have driven...
2023-10-151h 28
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningGregory Clark: what has genetics to do with social status?This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.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...
2023-10-0515 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningSundar Iyer & Sudha Jagannathan: the accused speaks the truth about caste and the "Cisco Case"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: India's 3000-year caste straitjacket. Unsupervised Learning tends to steer clear of topics "ripped...
2023-10-031h 23Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningThe Indian caste system: origin, impact and future 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 Origins of Our Discontents (an Oprah's Book Club selection). On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks at length abou...
2023-10-021h 19
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningJohn Logsdon: what has genomics done for evolution?This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.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...
2023-09-2815 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningDavid Anthony: when we were Yamnaya 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 Eurasian nomads since 2015's publication of Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe, a study for which...
2023-09-241h 21
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningChristopher Rufo - America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comFor 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.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 Re...
2023-09-2122 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningThe Indian caste system: origin, impact and futureThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comIn 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 Wilk...
2023-09-1430 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningKatherine Dee: Is Twitter just our default?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 back to 2015 on the site formerly known as Twitter, and more substantially as residents of Austin in the...
2023-09-131h 08
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningCory Clark: adversarial collaborations in sciencehttps://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 culture of self-censorship within science due to politicization and intra-scientific politics...
2023-09-121h 04
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningDavid Anthony: when we were YamnayaThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com1 in 36 children in the US have Autism Spectrum Disorder, but did you know that 20-30% have a known genetic cause for their condition? Read more about how, for the first time, parents can use Orchid’s whole genome sequencing to screen their embryos for these genetic variations, and mitigate their baby’s risk of disease. Check them out at orchidhealth.com, and use code RAZIB when signing up to skip the waitlist.Today, Razib revisits The Horse, the Wheel, and...
2023-09-0619 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningDiana Fleischman: evolution, sex and eugenicsOn 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 bonobos play in understanding what Jared Diamond termed the "third chimpanzee," humans. They then circle back to the importance of the reality of heritable "hard-wired" behaviors in e...
2023-08-3054 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningKatherine Dee: Is Twitter just our default?This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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, goi...
2023-08-2409 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningNicola Buskirk: old books for a new generationhttps://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 they may be easily read and studied by a new generation of readers." Before asking about her n...
2023-08-241h 22
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningHannah Frankman: unlearning the lessons of the pasthttps://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 an idealized system of universal pedagogy in The Republic, later to be rejected by his pupil Aristo...
2023-08-221h 16
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningLyman Stone: God is dead, long live the Lord!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 historical context of American religion in the 18th century, reviewing the elite rise i...
2023-08-201h 06
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningCory Clark: adversarial collaborations in scienceThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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 culture of self-censorship within science due to politicization and intra-scientific politics. They discuss whether fraud is more...
2023-08-0915 minRazib Khan's Unsupervised LearningIBW Episode #2: Muslims vs. LGBTQIA+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, Hamid and Hussain discuss the recent clashes between Muslim Americans and the LBTQIA+ movement...
2023-08-041h 06
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningSamuel McIlhagga: the UK as a zombie nationIn 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 not the world's reserve currency. The US, unlike any other nation, can print money to...
2023-08-041h 32
Brown PunditsCastes of the American MindBPers Razib Khan and Mukunda Raghavan chat with Pushpita Prasad and Sudha Jagannathan of the Coalition of the Hindus of North America discuss the newfound relevance of caste in the USA, and how a toxic brew up self-interest, identity politics and social justice have caught Indian Americans in a vortex of anti-discrimination legislation.
2023-07-201h 03
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningRenu Mukherjee: affirmative action's endToday the Supreme Court ended affirmative action when it comes to university admissions as we know it. Anticipating this decision, Razib recorded a conversation with Renu Mukherjee a few months back. But today they also added a timely prologue reflecting on the decision, which shook out exactly as she expected (also see her report, Friends of the Court? Advocacy Groups as Amici in Students for Fair Admissions). 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...
2023-06-291h 17
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningRenu Mukherjee: Affirmative Action's EndMukherjee 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 of Harvard College, where the plaintiffs assert that Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions, and...
2023-06-291h 08
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningRoss Douthat: fantasy and the literary imaginationOn 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 movies for National Review. Today Razib talks to him about a topic that is a bit off the beat...
2023-06-081h 06
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningSamo Burja: China's future, Russia's present and archaeology's pastOn 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 where he thinks the Peoples' Republic is in 2023 and where it will go in the near future. Though Burja acknowledges that bullishness on Chinese po...
2023-06-041h 18
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningTimothy B. Lee: don't rage against the machineA 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 in computer science from Princeton, so Razib was curious about what he's learned. Recently tw...
2023-05-2948 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningPeter Nimitz: Seven Ages of Western EurasiaOn 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 the end of the last Ice Age, including the rise and fall of pre-literate civilizations before written...
2023-05-291h 36
Brown PunditsPakistan Crisis: The Arrest of Imran KhanManeesh speaks to Dr Omar Ali in the aftermath of Imran Khan's arrest.
2023-05-1136 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningAdam Mastroianni: a history of experiments in social psychologyOn 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 and more than 330 comments. Razib asks Mastroianni about the fiercely positive and negative reactions to his contention that modern peer revi...
2023-05-1057 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningDavid McKay: AI and the end of the world as we know itThis week on Unsupervised Learning, Razib and his guest, David McKay, of the Standing on the Shoulders of Giants podcast (Razib was an early guest), discuss the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the prospects for artificial general intelligence (AGI). This discussion arose after Razib heard McKay's explainer, Zen and the Art of ChatGPT, a 30-minute layman's intro to the topic, where he breaks down the technical elements that come together to allow for AI. In this episode, McKay, a Cambridge University-trained computer scientist who has worked at Hotmail and Google, digs deeper into the nature of Large Language Models ...
2023-04-201h 06
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningHuman pigmentation: the genetics and evolution of human shadesThis monologue is incomplete, for the complete monologue, checkout: Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning Podcast Substack Why does human skin color vary so much? And what is the relationship between hair color, eye color and overall pigmentation? What genes control pigmentation in humans and other animals? Razib addresses all these questions in this episode of Unsupervised Learning, as he discusses the genetic basis and evolutionary origins of variation on this trait that has held such importance in our natural, social and cultural history. He notes that today we understand the genetic basis of pigmentation in terms of what v...
2023-03-0937 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningVirginia Postrel: from synthetic meat to synthetic fabricOn this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib talks to Virginia Postrel, the author of The Fabric of Civilization, The Power of Glamour, The Substance of Style and The Future and its Enemies. Formerly a columnist at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg View, and the former editor of Reason, she is now a fellow at Chapman University's Smith Institute. First, Razib and Postrel discuss her recently reported piece for The Wall Street Journal, Synthetic Meat Will Change the Ethics of Eating. In the wake of the stagnation in the plant-based meat market the eyes of many futurist...
2023-02-231h 07
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningCharles Fain Lehman: homicide, death in the chartshttps://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content. In April of 2021, this Substack published a piece, The ultimate price of costless gestures, that anticipated a spate of articles in the second half of the year in the mainstream media reporting on the rise of murders in 2020. Compare the figure from the Substack piece with one in The New York Times published in November of 2021: The similarity is simply a function of the fact that the graphs draw upon the same underl...
2023-02-181h 01
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningBryan Caplan: Open minds and Open bordersOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Bryan Caplan about Caplan's new book, Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice. Despite what the narrow purview the title might suggest, Don't Be a Feminist is a wide-ranging book that contains essays on IQ, immigration and identity politics, among other things (in addition, yes, to women's rights). Caplan is the editor and chief writer for Bet On It, the blog hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas, and a professor of economics at George Mason. His previous books were The Myth of the Rational V...
2023-01-201h 27
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningEurocentrism, the West, and white supremacyhttps://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack, https://razib.substack.com, and original video content. What does it mean to be Eurocentric? What does it mean to be a white supremacist? What does the term "the West" mean, and how is it different from simply the geographical designation Europe? On this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib discusses the cultural and genetic origins of Europeans, how they have been viewed over the last few thousand years and how they have viewed themselves. Starting around 3000 BC...
2022-12-0846 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningGarett Jones: The Culture Transplant - How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They LeftOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses the new book, The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left, with author Garett Jones. Jones is a professor of economics at George Mason University, and The Culture Transplant is the third book in what he likes of think of as his "Singapore trilogy," beginning with Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own, and then moving to 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less. Jones explains how cul...
2022-12-021h 00
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningRazib Khan: Anatolia over 10,000 yearsOn this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib discusses the history and genetics of Anatolia, from the first farmers to the Ottoman conquest of the peninsula. He focuses on the underappreciated reality that prehistoric Anatolia was the font of the first wave of farmers that built the majestic Neolithic societies of Europe, from arid Iberia north to the shores of the Baltic. These people left the vast stoneworks that dot Europe's Atlantic coasts to this day, beginning with the megaliths of Brittany and culminating in the enigmatic site of Stonehenge. Razib also points out the role of...
2022-11-1831 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningOliver Traldi: welcome to the intellectual dark webOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses approaching politics through philosophy, political philosophy, and what it's like being an excessively online academic in 2022 with Oliver Traldi. Currently working on a book on understanding politics through a philosophical lens, Traldi explains the relevance of epistemology to the project, while Razib queries the role that deductive, abductive and inductive reasoning might play in political views. Both also consider that political orientation is just a form of tribalism, as made clear when individuals chart a wholesale shift in a cluster of "beliefs" on topics as diverse as abortion and trade within just a f...
2022-10-131h 08
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningRazib Khan: the "southern arc" and Indo-European originsThree blockbuster papers on ancient DNA just landed in Science Magazine: The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe, A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia, and, Ancient DNA from Mesopotamia suggests distinct Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic migrations into Anatolia (ungated copies available at the Reich lab website). Why three papers in one issue of Science? The authors claim there was too much data to pack into one publication, which feels right to me. So what do these publications mean for human history and human evoluti...
2022-09-1730 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningRazib Khan: surveys of the great ancient human DNA DiasporasThis week takes The Unsupervised Learning podcast in a somewhat different direction. In response to a common listener request, Razib takes on his first "one-man-show," digging into his stores of knowledge of the population genetics of ancient peoples and tribes, delving into the significance of abstrusely labeled clusters like "Ancient North Eurasian" (ANE) over 60 minutes. But as anyone following this substack will anticipate, first a caveat: in these heady days of endless ancient DNA discoveries and attendant revisions to long-standing convention: everything is provisional. Razib notes that his assertions are not written in stone, as new work from researchers li...
2022-09-0730 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningStuart Ritchie: bad science, good science and behavior geneticsIn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Stuart Ritchie joins Razib., Ritchie is the author of Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth and Intelligence: All that Matters. Ritchie is also a lecturer at King's College London and the author of the new Substack Science Fictions. Razib and Ritchie first discuss why he has a Substack considering all the different projects he's already juggling, and what value he sees coming out of it (beyond the remunerative one). They also rewind the clock and discuss Ritchie's involvement in the replication crisis a decade ago, where he judg...
2022-06-051h 09
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningMolson Hart: "Chimerica" and the supply chainIn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Molson Hart, founder and CEO of Viahart, an educational toy company. He is also co-founder of Edison, an intellectual property-focused litigation financing firm. Hart has gained some visibility as a prominent seller on Amazon, with strong opinions on the company both positive and negative. First, Razib asks Hart about Amazon's role in the American economy, and how it compares and contrasts with Walmart. Unlike many who have negative experiences with the company, Hart's attitude seems to be that consumers and producers both need to accept the reality of Amazon's behemoth position in the...
2022-04-2853 min
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningAlex Nowrasteh: the last migration expert standingIn this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Alex Nowrasteh, the director of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute. Alex is also the author of Wretched Refuse?: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions. His beat at Cato is immigration, and he has been keeping a close watch on the transition between the Biden and Trump administrations. The first issue Razib and Nowrasteh address is the reality that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a massive crash in immigration to the US due to Donald J. Trump's executive orders. Curiously, Trump justified the border closures, not on pu...
2022-04-211h 02
Razib Khan's Unsupervised LearningRav Arora: psychedelics and spiritualityRav Arora came to public prominence in 2020 with a column for The New York Post provocatively titled “The Fallacy of White Privilege.” He suffered personal and professional blowback, but today the 20-year-old Canadian undergraduate has a semi-regular column in The New York Post, and is interviewed by the likes of Glenn Loury. Arora’s fearlessness in expressing his opinions on a wide range of topics, in particular politically controversial ones, combined with a dogged work ethic has earned him a wide platform, publishing in The New York Post, The Global and Mail and Quillette. He’s also already had guests o...
2022-01-2558 min
Brown PunditsEpisode 2- Indian history through geneticsIn this episode, Razib Khan explains the revolution in genomics and how it helps us reconstruct facets of Indian prehistory.
2022-01-0545 min