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PODCAST

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning

Razib Khan engages a diverse array of thinkers on all topics under the sun. Genetics, history, and politics. See: http://razib.substack.com/

science life sciences

All Episodes

01:16:29

Alexander Young: everything you want to know about...

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/11/04

Subscribe no Give a gift subscription Share This week on the Unsupervised Learning Podcast, Razib gets into the genetics weeds again with Alex Young of the Social Sciences Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC). They discuss the heritability of complex traits and how the SSGAC develops predictive models using genetics to tackle questions that have traditionally been the purview of social sciences (and why that’s controversial, but shouldn’t be). Alex explains how large datasets where many

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01:14:10

Joshua Lipson: on Jewish genetic genealogy

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/10/28

Subscribe now Give a gift subscription Share This week on the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib is joined by genetic genealogist Josh Lipson for a deep dive into the history and genetics of the Ashkenazi Jewish population in Europe. They review the historical demographics of the Jews of both Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as the possible founding source populations from the Levant (Palestine) and Mesopotamia (Babylon). They discuss the cultural and genetic differences

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37:46

Trent Colbert: standing athwart the mob

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/10/26

Subscribe now Give a gift subscription Share Recently Yale Law School (YLS) student Trent Colbert wrote Why I Didn’t Apologize For That Yale Law School Email: We must end the culture of performative repentance for Persuasion. I was broadly familiar with the culture-war saga that Colbert was caught up in, having read a piece a few weeks ago in The Washington Post describing how a seemingly innocent and jocular email triggered accusations of racism at YLS (as well as Aaron

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44:45

Kat Rosenfield: how did culture become middle-school?

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/10/22

Subscribe now Give a gift subscription Share This week on the Unsupervised Learning Podcast I’m joined by author and journalist Kat Rosenfield. She has a new novel out, No One Will Miss Her, is a co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast, and a contributor at various places, like UnHerd and Newsweek. We first talk about Andrew Cuomo (the former governor of New York), Al Franken, #metoo, and how the dynamics of fame, power and identity play into the media narrative around sexual harassment, as well

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56:36

Steven Pinker: let's talk about Rationality

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/10/14

In this week’s Unsupervised Learning Podcast, Razib is joined by author and psycholinguist Steven Pinker to discuss his new book Rationality: what is it, why it seems scarce, and why it matters. Pinker makes the case the humans are fundamentally rational beings, and that it’s this capacity that has allowed Homo sapiens to spread across the planet and occupy virtually every niche available to us. Our intuitive ability to understand how physical objects, other creatures and other humans think and

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01:15:49

Freddie deBoer: the "hereditarian Left"

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/10/07

This week Razib talks to Fredrick DeBoer, author of The Cult of Smart, about the heritability of intelligence and its broader implications for society and education. The two discuss the difficulties of having fact-based conversations around the topic of heritability without being shouted down or accused of being proponents of eugenics. They also talk about how The Cult of Smart compares to Paige Harden’s book The Genetic Lottery. Freddie breaks down the evidence that heritability, rather than just

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57:59

Emily Deans: keeping sane in the years of COVID-19

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/09/30

This week Razib is joined by evolutionary psychiatrist Dr. Emily Deans to discuss the coronavirus pandemic. The conversation begins with the importance of winning and retaining hearts and minds when managing a pandemic, where nations have succeeded and failed in their public health messaging – and how numerous institutional failings – like sloppy contact tracing and poor communication - have eroded a portion of the public’s trust in the pandemic response. They also discuss the psychology of

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51:41

Mahan Ghafari: evolutionary genetics and viruses

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/09/24

On this week’s Unsupervised Learning Podcast, Razib sits down with Mahan Ghafari, a doctoral candidate at Oxford’s department of zoology to discuss his ongoing research in the area of viral evolution. They discuss the difference between RNA viruses and DNA viruses and how viral evolution differs from that of more complex life forms – accentuated by a virus’s short reproduction cycle and high mutation rate - particularly in RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2 which can mutate orders of magnitude faster

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56:45

Antonio García Martínez: the chaos cancelled

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/09/16

This week Razib sits down with author and tech entrepreneur Antonio Garcia Martinez to talk about some of the myriad ways in which technology and belief structures underpin and reinforce each other. Antonio discusses how his ongoing conversion to Judaism has broadened his lens and allowed him to gain perspective on how secular manifestations of Protestant Christianity have permeated our culture in strange and unexpected ways, including the “great awokening” of the 21st century and the dangers of

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51:54

Maximilian Larena: the most Denisovan ones

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/09/10

In this weeks episode Razib sits down with Maximillian Larena of Upsala Universities evolutionary biology department to discuss the peopling of the Philippines via five proposed population pulses and introgression events beginning with the earliest Australasian expansion of the Philippine Negritos and subsequent migratory waves by the Manobo, Sama, and Cordilleran related populations. Max discusses how dispersal models are complicated by the geographic history of the Philippines, which is located

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58:43

Myra MacDonald: the shadow wars in the Indian...

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/09/02

Myra MacDonald is the author of Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War and White as the Shroud: India, Pakistan and War on the Frontiers of Kashmir. The former Reuters Bureau Chief in India, MacDonald is an incisive observer of South Asian politics and commentator on the region’s history (follow her on Twitter!). On the podcast we discussed Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan, why India cares about that relationship so much, and the looming role of China in the region. I also

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01:09:22

Ruben Arslan: sex, intelligence & fitness

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/08/29

Ruben Arslan is a psychologist who works at the Center for Adaptive Rationality. I’ve long tracked his work because of his interest in leveraging evolutionary and genetic frameworks in the context of psychology. Additionally, Arslan has long been an advocate for, and practitioner of, open science. In this episode we discuss some of his work: - Intelligence can be detected but is not found attractive in videos and live interactions, where he tests and rejects one of Geoffrey Miller’s hypotheses - The

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01:02:42

Jared Rubin: Christianity and Capitalism

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/08/19

Jared Rubin is a professor of economics at Chapman University. He works at the intersection of religion and economics. This is not an entirely obscure field, as evident in 2010’s Marketplace of the Gods: How Economics Explains Religion. Nevertheless, Rubin talks about how he was somewhat of an odd duck in the field of economic history due to his interest in religion. His advisor indicated that it would be difficult to find a job. Luckily, that prediction did not come true. Most of the discussion is

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01:03:34

Jason Munshi-South: rats and evolution

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/08/13

Jason Munshi-South is a biologist who studies a creature many of us have an ambivalent relationship to, the rat. His lab is at Fordham University, in the New York City area. Jason is an “urban ecologist,” so he studies the wildlife in and around cities. This is what drew him to the rat. Or, to be more frank, there was public demand for him to study rats, and he gave the people what they wanted. We talk about: The black rat vs. brown rat The origins of the brown rat How do rats and mice

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01:00:09

Karl Smith: inflation, the debt crisis, China and the...

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/08/06

Economics is obviously important. Recently in the US, we’ve been talking about the threat of inflation, and spending financed through debt. What does this all mean? Not only are the answers important on a macro level, but they’re also relevant to all of us. To attack these questions I decided to talk to Karl Smith, a columnist at Bloomberg. We tackle four big topics: Are we on the path toward severe inflation? (in the US) Is the US headed toward a public debt crisis in the 2020’s? What is the

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44:04

Linda Avey: genomics from 23 to 100

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/07/29

First, I want to mention that readers of Unsupervised Learning may hear the doorbell from Duke (from “Duke Tales”) mid-recording. While he usually visits me evenings, Duke made a special afternoon stop, perhaps thanks to the appearance of a Tesla in the driveway. With that out of the way, I’m very excited to present this conversation with Linda Avey, the co-founder of 23andMe, and current CEO of Precisely. Most of you probably know about 23andMe, which helped create the idea of “direct-to-consumer”

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01:18:38

Alex Mesoudi: the origins of cultural evolution

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/07/23

In this conversation, I discuss “cultural evolution” with Alex Mesoudi. The very term can be confusing and perplexing to some. After all, it seems intuitive that culture evolves and changes. But here Mesoudi and I discuss the science of cultural evolution, which is today a robust and interdisciplinary field (also see my conversation with Richard McElreath). Why do cultures vary? How fast and why do they change? What is the relation between genes and cultures? All these are topics that cultural

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01:15:27

Patrick Wyman: Luther, Columbus and Gutenberg

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/07/20

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 recommend to everyone (I’ve been a guest). If you’ve listened to him speak at length, you won’t be very

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58:42

John S. Wilkins: species, the history of an idea

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/07/15

Last week we saw the debut of two new possible human “species”, one in Israel and another in China (read my post on the topic or listen to the podcast with Vagheesh Narasimhan). The team out of Israel did not explicitly name their find a new species, referring to it as the “Nesha Ramla hominin.” But it is clear reading between the lines that they believe they did discover a new species-level hominin. In contrast, the Chinese team did explicitly propose a new species, Homo longi. Whether you accept

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01:02:30

Dragon Man ascending: two geneticists discuss the...

Razib Khan"s Unsupervised Learning ·

2021/07/14

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 to Neanderthals (though its tools are no different from modern humans to the south and west in Africa)

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294 results

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