Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning,  Razib  again   talks  to George Washington University archaeologist  Eric Cline . The author of  1177 B.C. - The Year Civilization Collapsed  and  After 1177 B.C. - The Survival of Civilizations , Cline has a new book out,  Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed . While  1177 B.C.  closed with...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks again with  Washington Post  columnist  and repeat guest Shadi Hamid (listen to  previous   episodes ). A native Pennsylvanian of Egyptian ethnic background and Islamic faith, Hamid completed his Ph. D. in politics at Oxford University. He is co-host of the  Wisdom of Crowds   podcast  and  website  with  Damir Marusic , and now the author of...

On this episode, Razib talks to  Vishal Ganesan  and  Anang Mittal , two Indian-American Hindus who have been thinking about the role of their faith in the present, and past, of the American social landscape. Ganesan is a California-based attorney and writer who focuses on the history, identity, and representation of the Hindu diaspora in the United States. He is best known for his project  "Hindo...

On this very special episode, Razib talks to paleoanthroplogists John Hawks and Chris Stringer.  Hawks  is 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...

Today Razib talks to  Sean Trende . He is a prominent American political analyst who currently serves as the Senior Elections Analyst for  RealClearPolitics , a position he has held since 2010. He is also a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a lecturer at The Ohio State University, where he earned his Ph. D. in political science in 2023. Before transitioning to full-time politic...

This week on the  Unsupervised Learning Podcast , Razib talks to r eturning guest   Alex Young  of UCLA and  Herasight . Trained originally as a mathematician, Young studied statistics and computational biology at the University of Cambridge before doing a doctorate in genomic medicine and statistics at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, under Peter Donnelly. He al...

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...

Today Razib talks to Ed West, a British journalist and author. He has served as deputy editor of  UnHerd  and  The Catholic Herald , and has written columns for  The Spectator  and  The Daily Telegraph . He runs the Substack newsletter  Wrong Side of History , where he explores culture, politics, and the longue durée of Western history. West is the author of books including  Small Men on the Wrong...

Today 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 B...

Today, Razib talks to  Coltan Scrivner , a behavioral scientist, horror entertainment producer, and author, whose work centers on the psychological and evolutionary roots of our fascination with darkness, horror, and true crime. He is affiliated with the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. Scrivner also serves as the executive director of the  Nightmare in the Ozarks  Film Festiv...

Today Razib talks to Nate Soares the President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). He joined MIRI in 2014 and has since authored many of its core technical agendas, including foundational documents like  Agent Foundations for Aligning Superintelligence with Human Interests . Prior to his work in AI research, Soares worked as a software engineer at Google. He holds a B.S. in comp...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning,  Razib talks to  Alexander Cortes . Cortes is a trainer, fitness influencer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder, along with his wife, of  Ferta , a company that aims to "optimize your reproductive health and conceive naturally." Born and raised in California, Cortes began his career in the fitness industry as a personal trainer in 2010. Over the next f...

Today on  Unsupervised Learning , Razib talks to  Kat Rosenfield . She is an American novelist, journalist, and culture critic known for both her fiction and commentary on contemporary political debates. She began her career in publishing and as a reporter for MTV News before branching out into broader cultural criticism, contributing to outlets such as  The New York Times ,  Wired ,  Vulture ,  R...

Today Razib talks to  Eric Kaufmann , a Canadian professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, where he directs the  Centre for Heterodox Social Science . He earned his BA from the University of Western Ontario and his MA and PhD from the London School of Economics. Prior to his current role, he held positions at the University of Southampton and Birkbeck, University of London, which he l...

Today Razib talks to  Ryan P. Williams . He is  president  of  The Claremont Institute , a position he has held since 2017. He is also a contributor to  The Claremont Review  of Books  and started  The American Mind .   Williams earned a B.A. in political science and Economics from Hillsdale College and an M.A. in politics from Claremont Graduate University.   He has taught American politics and p...

Chad 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 engi...

Recently, the new embryo-selection start-up  Herasight  has been  in the news , finally coming out of stealth. Part of the buzz is because of the public involvement of well-known geneticists and academics like  Alex Young  and  Joe Pickrell  in Herasight's algorithm development. Additionally,  Noor Siddiqi , the CEO of  Orchid , a competitor to Herasight (and onetime advertiser on this podcast), w...

On last week's episode of  Unsupervised Learning , Razib  spoke  with Alex Nowrestah, a vice president at the Cato Institute and a strong advocate for expanding legal immigration. This week, he turned to the other side of the debate with Jason Richwhine, a resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies and a vocal supporter of sharply reducing immigration. Richwine earned undergraduate deg...

  Three 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 l...

Today 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 fro...

  Today Razib talks to  Noah Millman . Millman is an American screenwriter and filmmaker, as well as a political columnist and cultural critic based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the film and theater critic for  Modern Age ; previously he was a columnist for  The Week  (2015–2022) and a senior editor at  The American Conservative  (2012–2017). Millman writes the newsletter  Gideon's Substack , and...

  On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to human geneticist  Cesar Fortes-Lima  about his paper from earlier this year,  Population history and admixture of the Fulani people from the Sahel . Fortes-Lima has a Ph. D. in Biological Anthropology, and his primary research areas include African genetic diversity, the African diaspora, the transatlantic slave trade, demographic inferen...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Jack Despain Zhou , executive director of the  Center for Educational Progress  (CEP). Despain Zhou is a graduate of Western Governors University, and is completing his J.D. at Temple University. A former cryptographic analyst for the US Air Force, Despain Zhou is better known as a former producer for Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog at  Bloc...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning , in the  wake of Elon Musk's xAI Grok chatbot  turning anti-Semitic following a recent update, Razib catches up with  Nikolai Yakovenko  about the state of AI in the summer of 2025. Nearly three years after their first conversations on the topic, the catch up, covering ChatGPT's release and the anticipation of massive macroeconomic transformations driven...

Today on  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to David van Ofwegen, a philosophy teacher based in Thailand. Razib and Ofwegen first met by chance while he was traveling in the US in 2003. A Dutch national, educated at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and then the University of Hawaii, specializing in the philosophical underpinnings of Social Darwinism, Ofwegen has been based in Thailand...