Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

  On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  returning guest  Wilfred Reilly about his new book,  Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me: Debunking the False Narratives Defining America's School Curricula . Reilly holds a Ph. D. in political science from Southern Illinois and a J.D. from the University of Illinois. Raised in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, he worked...

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning  Razib welcomes  Leighton Akira Woodhouse  back to the podcast. Woodhouse is a freelance journalist and a documentary filmmaker, currently based in Oakland, California. He grew up in Berkeley, and was a doctoral student in Sociology at UC Berkeley. After leaving academia he contributed to outlets like  The Intercept  and  The Nation , before starting his ow...

  On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Lyman Stone , a soon to be PhD in sociology from McGill University specializing in population dynamics. Stone runs the  Pro-natalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies , and has had appointments at AEI, and has written for  The Atlantic  and  The New York Times . Well known for his social media presence, Stone is a  published...

  On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to the pseudonymous commentator "Peachy Keenan." A native of Los Angeles with an Ivy League education, Keenan worked in entertainment before detouring into punditry, writing for the Claremont Institute's  The American Mind , appearing on  Fox News  and penning  Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War . Razib and Keen...

  On this episode Razib talks to  Jesse Singal , a journalist who has covered the social science beat for the last decade. Singal has an undergraduate degree in philosophy from University of Michigan and a master's in public affairs from Princeton. Currently a freelance journalist who writes his own Substack,  Singal-Minded , and contributes to  Blocked and Reported  with Katie Herzog, Singal is f...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to economist  Sam Hammond .  Canadian-born Hammond serves as the Senior Economist at the Foundation for American Innovation. His work primarily focuses on innovation and science policy, with particular attention to the societal and institutional impacts of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence. Before his role at FAI, Hammond...

    The full episode is available on: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/14000-years-of-natural-selection On this episode of Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks about what we have learned from a blockbuster new preprint,  Pervasive findings of directional selection realize the promise of ancient DNA to elucidate human adaptation . Synchronously released was the  Ancient Genome Selection browser , which al...

On this week's episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib discusses the genetic and archaeological history of Europe from the arrival of modern humans (permanently) 45,000 years ago, to the end of the Bronze Age in the decades after 1200 BC. He covers these time periods: Pre-Aurignacian (before 43 kya)  Aurignacian (43-26 kya)  Gravettian (33-21 kya)  Solutrean (22-17 kya)  Magdalenian (17-12 kya) ...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Misha Saul , the host of the  Kvetch Substack . Saul is a first-generation Jewish Australian, born in Georgia (former Soviet republic), who grew up in Adelaide and now lives in Sydney. He graduated from the University of Adelaide with degrees in commerce and law. His day job is in finance, but the  Kvetch  highlights his interests in  hist...

On 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 demogra...

On this episode of "Unsupervised Learning," Razib talks to  Rachel Haywire , who writes at  Cultural Futurist . Haywire is the author of  Acidexia  and began her career in futurism as an event planner for the  Singularity Institute . She got her start as part of the "right-brain" faction around the Bay Area transhumanist and futurist scene circa 2010. Currently, she is working on starting an art g...

On 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-u...

On this episode of  Unsuperivsed Learning  Razib talks to native Californian,  Inez Stepman . Stepman has an undergraduate degree in philosophy from UC San Diego, and obtained her J.D. from University of Virginia. She is a Senior Policy Analyst at the  Independent Women's Forum , a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute and a contributor to  The Federalist . Stepman is also a co-host of the  Hi...

On 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 conv...

On 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 nonp...

Today Razib talks to  Aria Babu , a British think-thank professional who is part of the growing number of young men and women who are taking an interest in population decline and  promoting pro-natalism . Babu has a degree in chemistry from University College London, and has long worked in areas related to the study of economic growth and entrepreneurship. Prior to her interest in pro-natalism Bab...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Louise Perry . A British journalist known for her commentary on feminism and gender issues, Perry is the author of the book  The Case Against the Sexual Revolution . She also contributes to  The New Statesman ,  UnHerd , and  The Daily Mail , and has a  Substack  at  Maiden Mother Matriarch . Perry is a graduate of University of London's S...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to archeologist and historian Bryan Ward-Perkins about his 2005 book  The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization . Ward-Perkins was born and grew up in Rome, a son of architectural historian and archaeologist, John Bryan Ward-Perkins. Educated at Oxford University, Ward-Perkins eventually became a fellow of Trinity College at the same unive...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib welcomes back a  returning guest , J. P. Mallory, to discuss his reaction to the recent preprint  The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans . Mallory is the author of  In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth ,   The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World   and   The Tarim Mummies: Ancient...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to professor Sean Anthony about his book  Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam . Anthony is a historian in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at The Ohio State University. He earned his Ph. D. with honors in 2009 at the University of Chicago in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and ha...

On 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...

On 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 genetic...

On 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...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks about religion with  Ryan Burge , professor of political science at  Eastern Illinois University , and author of  The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going  and  20 Myths About Religion and Politics in America . Burge also has a Substack,  Graphs about Religion , where he posts the latest data on trends in America...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib discusses the idea of "lost civilizations," the possibility that there were complex societies during the Pleistocene Ice Age. This topic recently rose to salience after a dialogue between writer  Graham Hancock  and archaeologist  Flint Dibble  on Joe Rogan's podcast. Hancock is a longtime guest on Rogan's show and he  promotes a theory  that an adv...