Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

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...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Akshar Patel  of  The Emissary  about his recent sojourn in India. Patel began  The Emissary  because he felt there were many gaps in the media representation of India. Razib asks whether  The New York Times'  claim that Modi is a strongman is correct, and whether India is an illiberal democracy. Patel notes that despite a Westernized supe...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Jeremy Carl , Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, where he focuses on immigration, multiculturalism, and nationalism in America. Previously, Carl was a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute where he analyzed and wrote about energy policy. He has BA with distinction from Yale University and an MPA from the Kennedy School of G...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks about the April 2024 preprint  The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans . This blockbuster publication introduces nearly 300 new ancient DNA samples, uncovers the origins of the  Yamnaya , and delves into how they transformed the genetic and cultural landscape of Eurasia ~5,000 years ago. Razib addresses: The now-identified ancestors of the Ya...

On this unusual "from the vault" episode of Unsupervised Learning , Razib talks to John Massey, a retired Australian engineer who has been a long-time correspondent. Massey and Razib recorded this podcast in the spring of 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, Australia and China were enacting strict lockdowns to halt the spread of the virus, while the US and Europe were alrea...

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 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,...

  On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to George Washington University archaeologist  Eric Cline . The author of  1177 B.C. - The Year Civilization Collapsed , Cline has a new book out,  After 1177 B.C. - The Survival of Civilizations . While  1177 B.C.  closed with the end of the first global civilization, that of the Eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Bronze Age,  After 11...

On this episode of  Unsupervised Learning  Razib talks to  Kristian Kristiansen , an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg and affiliate professor at the Lundbech Center for Geogenetics, Copenhagen University. A past  guest on this podcast , Kristiansen has recently contributed to an astonishing lineup of landmark papers published in  Nature  just in the last few months,  Population genomi...

  Today on  Unsupervised Learning , Razib talks to long-time podcast favorite  Samo Burja . Burja is the founder of  Bismarck Analysis  and  Bismarck Brief , a Research Fellow at the  Long Now Foundation  and  The Foresight Institute . He is also now the chair of the editorial board of  Palladium Magazine . Already a four-time guest on  Unsupervised Learning  (he has previously shared his views on...

  On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Steve Hsu , physicist, entrepreneur and public intellectual. Hsu is an Iowan who earned his undergraduate degree from Caltech and his Ph. D. from Berkeley. Later he was a Harvard Junior Fellow, before moving on to professorships at Yale and the University of Oregon, and finally settling down at Michigan State University in 2012. Hsu is foun...

Today Razib talks to Murtaza Hussain  about the social, cultural and political context of recent fissures in the US around the conflict in Israel and Gaza. Hussain is a reporter at  The Intercept  and has his own  Substack . They begin their conversation talking about Hussain's response to the 10/7 Hamas attacks on Israel, and Israel's subsequent invasion of Gaza. Hussain discusses his bewildermen...

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 the Only Humans on Earth  and   Homo Britannicus - The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain . A proponent since the 1970's of t...