Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

The UK is now in political turmoil, as Keir Starmer has announced his  resignation . The next British election is still three years away, but it is hotly anticipated because Labour is going to faceoff against three parties of the Right: the Tories (also known as the Conservaties), Reform UK and Restore Britain. Reform, led by Nigel Farage and stocked with defections from the Tories, has a good cha...

Today on  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Zineb Riboua , a research fellow and program manager of Hudson Institute's Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. She specializes in Chinese and Russian involvement in the Middle East, the Sahel, and North Africa, great power competition in the region, and Israeli-Arab relations. Riboua's pieces and commentary have appeared in the  Wall S...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Brianna Wu . Wu is an American video game developer, programmer, and political activist best known as the co-founder and CEO of the independent game studio Giant Spacekat. Raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, she attended the University of Mississippi to study journalism and political science but withdrew in 2001 without earning a degree in...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib has a wide-ranging conversation, again, with Dan Hess, the man behind the  More Births  account on social media. An engineer with a large family in the DC area, Hess' essays on topics like  Israelis' high birth rate  have gained the attention of X. He has an account that has come from a few hundred followers to more than 45,000 in less than 4 years....

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to geneticist  Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou  about two papers,  Ancient DNA evidence for the history of the Albanians  and  Uniparental analysis of Deep Maniot Greeks reveals genetic continuity from the pre-Medieval era . He is an entomologist and evolutionary biologist specializing in insect morphology, biomechanics, bioacoustics, systematics...

It's been a minute since we've had  Nikolai Yakovenko  on the podcast. Yakovenko is a former professional  poker player ,and was a 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 driven to prominence companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind, and an ecosystem that has b...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Christopher Rufo . Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. A contributing editor at  City Journal , author of the  New York Times  bestseller  America's Cultural Revolution , and 2025 Bradley Prize recipient, he also serves as a New College of Florida board member and Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale Colleg...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning , Razib talks to physicist  Gregory Cochran . Cochran is best known for his work in human evolution, often at the intersection of biology, anthropology, and history. Trained in physics, he later turned to population genetics and became widely known through collaborations with researchers like  Henry Harpending , producing influential but controversial work...

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to  Russ Greene , who promoted the idea of " Total Boomer Luxury Communism ." Greene currently serves as the Executive Director of the Prime Mover Institute, a public interest organization and think tank he launched to advocate for American energy dominance. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow for the Economy at the Stand Together Trust. In this...

The full episode is available here: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/10000-years-of-selection-in-western Despite the preprint being out for two years, Akbari et al.'s  Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across West Eurasia  publication in  Nature  this week has resulted in a massive media response. Though Razib has discussed this work before, he thought it would be useful to review it,...

Today Razib talks to Matthew Schmitz, a journalist who previously served as an editor at the religious journal  First Things . He is the cofounder of the online magazine  Compact , alongside Edwin Aponte and Sohrab Ahmari. He currently serves as  editor  of  Compact ,  religion editor  of  Washington Post  Opinions, and co-host of the podcast  Against the Grain .  Compact  His essays on politics a...

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to returning guest Megan McArdle. She is the author of The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success and a Washington Post columnist and op-ed board member. McArdle grew up in New York City and attended Riverdale Country School. She obtained an undergraduate degree in English from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Univ...

You can find the complete monologue here: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/monologue-race-genetics-history-and This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content. On this episode, Razib talks about race, and how to think about this touchy subject.

You can find the complete monologue here: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/monlogue-out-of-africa-is-not-dead On this episode Razib talks about where we are when it comes to "Out-of-Africa," Neanderthal origins and the broader state of understanding the dynamics of  Homo  evolution.

Today Razib talks to  Chris Bradley , a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and Co-Founder of  Matter Bio , a company dedicated to preserving genome integrity and addressing the root causes of aging. With a multidisciplinary background spanning neuroscience, cell biology, and computer science, Bradley aims to translate early-stage biotech concepts into practical therapies that can extend human lifespa...

Today, Razib talks to  Chris Masterjohn , a nutritional scientist and leading expert in mitochondrial biology who believes hidden energy bottlenecks underlie much of modern disease. After years of work as a professor and researcher, he founded  Mitome , the first mitochondrial analysis designed for everyday health, and serves as its Scientific Director. His mission is to make mitochondrial testing...

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to  Mike White , a Genetics professor at the Washington University in St. Louis. White has a position at the School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he leads a research team focused on understanding the biophysical architecture of regulatory DNA. He earned a B.A. in music before pivoting to the sciences, receiving his Ph. D. in Biochemistry from...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Aaron Renn . Renn is a  writer , consultant, and  urban analyst  known for his work on the challenges facing American cities and religious institutions in the 21st century. He is a contributor to  The American Reformer  and the author of  Life in the Negative World , a book exploring the cultural shifts regarding Christianity in America. R...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Daniel Tabin , a 5th-year Ph. D. student in  David Reich's lab  in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. His research focuses on using ancient and modern DNA to answer questions about human history. Tabin completed a degree in Computer Science and Math and Master's in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He Ph. D...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Peter Nimitz  about  the rise of the Slavs . His Substack, titled  Nemets , explores world history through the lenses of archaeology, paleogenetics, and historical processes. His writing focuses on "deep history," such as the Bronze Age Collapse and the migration of Indo-European peoples, while connecting these ancient shifts to broader pa...

On this episode Razib talks to  Jesse Arm , VP of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute. His writing and commentary have appeared in the  New York Times ,  Wall Street Journal ,  The Atlantic ,  New York Post , Fox News,  City Journal  and  Jerusalem Post . Arm graduated with honors from the University of Michigan, where he majored in international political economy, and studied language and...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning ,   Razib talks to  Davide Piffer , whose Substack examines genetic differences between populations. Piffer  has been publishing  on human genetic variation for a decade, and recently started a Substack,  Piffer Pilfer , exploring similar issues in detail over a series of posts. Razib asks Piffer about the difficulties in analyzing polygenic scores from qu...

Today Razib talks to  Aneil Mallavarapu , a scientist and technology leader based in Austin, Texas, whose career bridges the fields of biochemistry, systems biology, and software engineering. He earned his doctorate in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California, and has held academic positions at Harvard Medical School, where he contributed to the Department of Systems Biology...

On this episode Razib, talks to  Richard Hanania , a  returning   guest   to the   podcast . Hanania holds a Ph. D. from UCLA, a J.D. from the University of Chicago, and an undergraduate degree from CU Boulder in linguistics. He is a regular contributor to the  Boston Globe  and  UnHerd , and has  his own newsletter . Hanania is also the author of  The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate...

On this episode, Razib talks to  returning guest ,  Francis Young , a historian who teaches at Oxford. Young specialises in the history of religion and belief from ancient times to the present day, and provides expert indexes for academic books and translates medieval and early modern Latin. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University and is the author, editor or co-author of  over 20 books . On his...