Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com 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 ....

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com 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...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks with Alex Young of UCLA and James Lee of the University of Minnesota about quantitative genetics and its relationship to complex traits and the genomic revolution. Young, trained as a mathematician, and Lee, trained as a psychologist, have both converged upon researc...

Today 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 Fai...

Life comes at you fast. Sometimes faster than others. Given the events that have upended assumptions about international relations, shaken the financial system and riveted the world since Razib pre-recorded this week’s paid-subscriber podcast with Samo Burja , founder of political risk consultancy Bismarck Analysis , we recorded a bonus mini-episode for all subscribers. On this extra episode of Un...

Rav 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 t...

The day after Christmas 2021, the great entomologist and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson died at the age of 92. Carl Zimmer in The New York Times wrote an obituary that highlighted his seminal early contributions to science, as well as his role as a public intellectual after the publication of 1975’s Sociobiology . Wilson also wrote an autobiography, Naturalist , telling the story of his life...

This is a “bonus episode” of the Unsupervised Learning Podcast . Due to the time-sensitivity of the discussion, I am posting this simultaneously to Substack and Libsyn , so both free and paid subscribers are receiving this email. Your regularly scheduled weekly subscribers-only podcast will still be released this Thursday. Recently Yale Law School (YLS) student Trent Colbert wrote Why I Didn’t Apo...

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...

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...

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...

I will be posting my usual weekly subscribers -only podcast with Cathy Young on the French Revolution soon. The French Revolution is a current passion of Cathy’s (well, the topic, not revolution!).  But since today is not the most “usual” Friday (I for one am just over 24 hours into regaining electricity), I’ve also thrown together a free series of conversations with friends who have a range of re...

For this episode of Unsupervised Learning, I talked to Richard Hanania of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology . Normally my goal is to record podcasts that aren’t particularly time-sensitive (e.g., my conversation last weekend with Alina Chan about the possibility of “lab leak” of SARS-Cov-2 will be fresh for months, as will my chat with Armand Leroi about race, eugenics, and Ari...

I'm counting down to the new year here by re-releasing favorite past episodes from the archives of my other podcast homes each day until 2021. Hope you'll discover a memorable voice or two you might have missed before. These episodes are free for all; next on the docket are new episodes for paying subscribers only, including conversations with  Armand Leroi  and  Alina Chan . My conversation with...

I'm counting down to the new year here by re-releasing favorite past episodes from the archives of my other podcast homes each day until 2021. Hope you'll discover a memorable voice or two you might have missed before. These episodes are free for all; next on the docket are new episodes for paying subscribers only, including conversations with  Armand Leroi  and  Alina Chan . What is a Hindu? In p...

I'm counting down to the new year here by re-releasing favorite past episodes from the archives of my other podcast homes each day until 2021. Hope you'll discover a memorable voice or two you might have missed before. These episodes are free for all; next on the docket are new episodes for paying subscribers only, including conversations with Armand Leroi and Alina Chan . Alexander Ioannidis is n...

In anticipation of releasing new podcasts in 2021, including with Armand Leroi and Alina Chan , I’ve been reposting some of my favorite conversations of the past few years in the last week of the current year.  I'm counting down to the new year here by re-releasing a favorite past episode from the archives of my other podcast homes each day until 2021.  Hope you'll discover a memorable voice or tw...

In anticipation of releasing new podcasts in 2021, including with Armand Leroi and Alina Chan , I am reposting some of my favorite conversations of the past few years in the last week of 2020.  I'm going to count down to the new year here by re-releasing a favorite past episode from the archives of my other podcast homes each day until 2021.  Hope you'll discover a memorable voice or two you might...

This past week I recorded two podcast episodes I'm particularly looking forward to sharing with you. First, I had a long chat with Armand Leroi . Any chance I get to talk to him I come away wondering why he isn't everywhere, all the time. Leroi’s Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body is one of the most elegantly written works of scientific narrative from the 2000’s. Even so, I was surpris...