Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com1 in 36 children in the US have Autism Spectrum Disorder, but did you know that 20-30% have a known genetic cause for their condition? Read more about how, for the first time, parents can use Orchid’s whole genome sequencing to screen their embryos for these genetic variations, and mitigate their baby’s risk of disease. Check them out at orchidhealth.com, and use code RAZIB when signing up to skip the waitlist.Today, Razib revisits The Horse, the Wheel, and Language with David Anthony, emeritus professor at Hartwick College and collaborator with David Reich’s ancient DNA research group at Harvard University. Anthony and Razib survey the last two years in terms of questions regarding the domestication of the horse, the spread of the wheel, and Yamnaya steppe herders' language; subjects of his 2007 book. They also discuss the exponential growth in our understanding of the paleodemography of Bronze Age Eurasian nomads since 2015’s publication of Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe, a study for which Anthony provided many of the samples.Razib asks Anthony how his understanding of the rise of Indo-Europeans has or has not changed, in the wake of new data and novel interpretations over the last two years. Anthony reiterates the broad outlines he has been proposing for decades: the Yamnaya nomads of the Bronze-Age Eurasian steppe were the proto-Indo-Europeans, full stop. He also addresses those who argue for the Corded Ware culture of East-Central Europe being considered a sister, as opposed to a daughter, culture of the Yamnaya. Anthony points out that analysts in Reich’s group have discovered individuals who are apparent relatives between the Yamnaya and Corded Ware, indicative of a close and tight bond. Like the Danish archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen, Anthony believes that the pastoralist people who invaded Northern Europe 5,000 years ago should be thought of as fundamentally Yamnaya. He also addresses those skeptical of Yamnaya origins, positing perhaps some discomfort with the idea that modern people descend from warlike nomadic groups.Finally, Razib presses Anthony about new theories regarding more detailed structure of early Indo-European migrations. Does he accept the contention that most Indo-European groups descend from the Corded Ware, while Armenians, Greeks, Tocharians and Illyrians descend from the Yamnaya directly? What more elements to the narrative are going to be added beyond the broad assertion that the Yamnaya were the proto-Indo-Europeans?Related podcasts: David Anthony: the origin of Indo-Europeans, Thomas Olander: the origin and spread of Indo-European languages, James P. Mallory: finding the Indo-Europeans and Kristian Kristiansen: the birth of Northern Europe.Selected publications:* The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe* Population genomics of bronze age Eurasia* Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe* The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes* Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com1 in 36 children in the US have an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, but did you know that 20-30% have a known genetic cause for their condition? Read more how, for the first time, parents can use Orchid’s whole genome sequencing to screen their embryos for these genetic variations, and mitigate their baby’s risk of disease. Check them out at orchidhealth.com, and use code RAZIB when signing up to skip the waitlist.Today, Razib talks to Erik Hoel, host of the Substack The Intrinsic Perspective and author of The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science. An academic neuroscientist by training, in The World Behind the World Hoel outlines the emergence of modern neuroscience, and where it went wrong in terms of the field’s researchers' focus. But first, Hoel discusses human understanding of the mind, and how it has changed over time. He gives his take on Julian Jayne’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and explains that it is unlikely that consciousness emerged after the Bronze Age as posited in the book. Instead, The World Behind the World argues that the differentiation between the inner world and the outer world, the intrinsic perspective of literature and psychology and the extrinsic perspective of physics and biology arose with the Classical Greeks 2,500 years ago. Hoel also observes that a modern perspective on one’s inner world and psychological complexity so evident in Greco-Roman texts rapidly fades again after the fall of Rome and the regression during the Dark Ages, when literacy declined and text became refocused exclusively on the functional external world, whether it be tax records or agronomy manuals.The World Behind the World is a book-length argument fleshing out Hoel’s contention that understanding consciousness is, and must be, at the heart of neuroscience. Though studies of the biology and chemistry of axons and glial cells make sense from a reductionistic perspective, Hoel makes a convincing case that contemporary neuroscience models fail to understand how the brain works. The World Behind the World suggests modern neuroscience is pre-paradigmatic, like biology before evolution or physics before Newtonian mechanics: merely a collection of fascinating observations and detailed mechanisms. Hoel maintains that a true neuroscience theory with consciousness as its center and organizing principle is necessary to understand how the intrinsic world emerged and functions.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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. She has also recently written a piece for Compact: Why You’re Never Leaving Twitter. But first, Razib and Dee discuss how they have known each other for nearly a decade, going back to 2015 on the site formerly known as Twitter, and more substantially as residents of Austin in the late teens. Since 2019 Dee's existence has been a peripatetic one; after leaving Texas and first moving to the Bay Area, she then lived in the Pacific Northwest, before finally settling in Chicago. Working in advertising, and then in big tech, Dee has finally settled on a career as a freelancer, with all the freedom and uncertainty that entails.Razib asks Dee whether there is today, in 2023, any culture that isn’t somehow connected to the internet. She agrees about the pervasive nature of digital and social media, and how thickly it is interleaved into the lives of younger Millennials and Zoomers. And yet as a counterpoint to this conception of a revolution that has transmuted “IRL” life online, Razib argues that ‌social media is just an amplification of “bulletin board system” (BBS) culture which existed as early as the 1980’s. Dee then reflects on her maturation as an observer of all things internet through Twitter and Discord, and the shadow-impact of more obscure platforms like Tumblr and 4chan on our broader culture, beneath the notice of the wider population of “normies,” while Razib reminds her how small Twitter’s user base is compared to platforms like Facebook or YouTube (the latter are measured in billions, while Twitter retains some 450 million active users).In her piece, Why You’re Never Leaving Twitter, Dee argues that the anemic showing of dozens of Twitter clones and pretenders in the last decade argues that the platform just isn’t going to be dethroned from its central role in the media, and thereby wider American culture. From right-wing to left-wing imitators, or Facebook’s Threads, every challenger has failed to eat into Twitter’s critical position as a nexus in the media ecosystem, a central node in transmitting information throughout diverse subcultures. But Razib plays devil's advocate, musing whether Elon Musk’s erratic tenure since assuming ownership of the platform, his change of its brand to X, his petty beefs with publishers like Substack and ex cathedra pronouncements of major feature changes, might actually spell the end of the platform. Though Dee seems skeptical that even Musk could destroy his new property, not seeing any replacement on the horizon, suggests to her that the age of a single central information switchboard for the internet may be ephemeral and one we look back on as a particular and unique moment in history, just as we do the age of three major television networks in the 20th century.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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 diverse oeuvre.First, Razib and Clark talk about the culture of self-censorship within science due to politicization and intra-scientific politics. They discuss whether fraud is more damaging to the career of a senior or junior scientist, and the crisis coming for behavioral economics in the wake of the Francesco Gino and Dan Ariely ethics scandals. While Razib offers the prescription of viewpoint diversity, Clark argues that a recommitment to objectivity and truth as the fundamental values of science is needed. They then move on to her major current project on “adversarial collaboration.” Whereas in “normal science” two rival research groups may hold to conflicting hypotheses for decades, with outsiders unable to adjudicate, Clark argues that researchers with differing views should come together to converge upon the truth.Her interest in the culture of science leads naturally to a broader concern about human cultural equilibria. In The Evolution of Relentless Badassery, Clark argues that a particular personality type is socially and evolutionarily favored. Razib and Clark discuss whether we live in a time of peace so that disagreeable violent characters are at a low ebb in their stature, and perhaps in the face of cultural chaos the “badass,” figures like Michael Corleone in The Godfather films may reemerge to establish order and ruthless justice.The discussion loops back to a consideration of the values that unite scientists, and the cultural and political winds moving through the profession that might threaten to blow it off course as an enterprise, might leave it more a social club than a venerable institution to generate information. Clark is candid that she is not sure she would recommend heterodox students even attempt to join the academy.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.comOn 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 research programs exploring the role of genetics in generating variation in human behavior and disease. First, the trio reviews quantitative genetics’ modern basis in R. A. Fisher’s 1918 paper The Correlation between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance, and how the field emerged from the same intellectual root as population genetics in the first decades of the 20th century. They then discuss phenomena closely associated with quantitative characteristics: polygenicity, heritability and the central limit theorem. Razib also outlines the role of population genetic parameters like mutation, selection and drift in shaping the distribution of any given trait, particularly the characteristic’s variation and median values.After a deep dive into major concerns like the difference between heritability in the “broad sense” and “narrow sense,” what additive genetic variance is and why it’s so important to evolution and applied breeding and contemporary heritability estimates of traits like height and intelligence using twin studies and family-based genomic analyses, the conversation concludes with a discussion of Gregory Clark’s new PNAS paper, The inheritance of social status: England, 1600 to 2022. What are its implications? Why did it ignite a firestorm on social media? Lee in fact contributed a comment on the paper to PNAS, while Young has tackled its methods and conclusions on social media.In a conversation that stretches on for over two hours, Razib, Lee and Young touch upon many aspects of a discipline that combines the statistical insights of the 20th century with the genomic technologies of the 21st. Lee also expounds on a result from one of his papers that didn’t make it into the final publication due to reviewer skepticism: what he calls a “beer-chugging phenotype” reported from the study of twins.

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 Fair Admissions). Mukherjee is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute and a Ph.D. student in American politics at Boston College, where her dissertation will focus on affirmative action. Razib asks Mukherjee to discuss the origin of affirmative action as it is practiced in the US today, starting with the Bakke decision in 1978, and then moving on to Grutter vs. Bollinger in 2003. She then moves to the details of the current cases, in particular Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, where the plaintiffs assert that Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions, and engages in “racial balancing.”Razib and Mukherjee then explore the implications of the decision. Razib wonders about the implication for Harvard in particular, which is, to great extent, the finishing school of the American ruling class. Is Harvard’s mission sustainable if 40% of the student body is Asian American? Mukherjee points out that these demographic trends, the rise of Asian Americans proportionally and the decline of historically represented groups, have been occurring despite affirmative action, for example, the decline of Jewish Americans in the Ivy League over the last generation. Additionally, both Razib and Mukherjee agree universities are certain to engage in both evasion and massive resistance to the ruling. Mukherjee argues that the current moves against standardized testing anticipate the program of evasion that we can expect in the future, where holistic admissions can allow the administrators’ preferences to continue.Note: Today we also released another podcast on Muslims and their recent confrontations with the LGBTQIA+ movement with Sarah Haider of A Special Place in Hell (and her own Substack), Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institute (and Wisdom of the Crowds and his own Substack) and Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept (and his own Substack). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 Unsupervised Learning Razib talks with Burja again, focusing solely on current geopolitical events. Are things going according to the Russian plan? How long will the Russians stay, and how will this impact Europe? And what are the long-term consequences of the Western economic response to Russia’s incursion for the world’s geopolitical balance? Samo addresses head-on what he believes are the likely ramifications for the US, Europe, Russia and Asia.Welcome back to the multipolar world, dominated by Keynes’ old animal spirits (paying subscribers, I highly recommend the week’s premium podcast with Samo where he talks about his firm Bismarck Analysis, and how they see the world). If you are among the many struck by the irrationality of Putin’s behavior, Samo’s approach to breaking it down without cant or emotion should be required listening.Related: Putin’s Bet, A Contrarian View on Ukraine/Russia, Samo Burja and Drone Adoption Favors Quantity Over Quality In Warfare. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 topics, in particular politically controversial ones, combined with a dogged work ethic has earned him a wide platform, publishing in The New York Post, The Global and Mail and Quillette. He’s also already had guests on his podcast as prominent as Sam Harris. Not too shabby for someone who hasn’t even graduated university. But on this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Arora discusses a new passion, the intersection of psychedelics, therapy and mysticism. When he’s not writing about social and political topics, he is now exploring “science of mystical experience and psychedelics” on his new Substack, The Noble Truths with Rav Arora.Razib first lays his cards on the table and admits that he has no firsthand knowledge of psychedelics and no personal interest or understanding of mysticism. And yet, he acknowledges that discussion of drugs like psilocybin is pervasive across society. Rav disabuses Razib of the idea that psilocybin and other psychedelics are dangerous, a case where Generation-Z has to enlighten a member of Generation-X who was inculcated with the “Just Say No To Drugs” message of the 1980’s. For Rav, psychedelics are a means to an end, a tool like any other.But much of the discussion goes deeper into issues of metaphysics. What is spirituality, and what does Rav say to people who express no interest in mysticism or religion? Rav contends that the utility of psychedelics for spirituality doesn’t have anything to do with religion, making the point that the atheist Sam Harris has long been intrigued by the potential of psychedelics in bringing about heightened mental awareness. Though Razib remains skeptical, it’s clear that this decade will see more discussion of this topic, and Rav also notes the extensive research in psychotherapy showing that psychedelics are proving effective in treating mental illness.The substack is The Noble Truths with Rav Arora, where he posts essays on the science of mystical experience and psychedelics. Paid subscribers can also get Rav’s post-psychedelic trip audio recordings and FaceTime podcasts with ‘IDW’ figures. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 in science from his own perspective.In the days after his passing, I wanted to touch base with those who knew him, collaborated with him, and even had disputes with him. The evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson (no genetic relation) has talked in his books about how he was influenced by the elder Wilson early in his career, and also how they eventually became colleagues and allies in scientific debates. Recently he published The Six Legacies of Edward O. Wilson as a reflection on E. O. Wilson’s career and influence. These six were his contributions to evolutionary biology, biodiversity, human sociobiology, the unification of knowledge, his encouraging stance toward young scientists and other learners, and finally, the frontier of ecosystems studies (his very last project).I’ve talked to David before about his work on multi-level selection as well as his ambition toward utilizing evolutionary biological frameworks in the context of social science and policy, so I reached out to discuss the piece he wrote about E. O. Wilson’s life. Knowing that the elder Wilson had encouraged David's interest in group selection as a graduate student, I expected to focus on the late scientist’s great contributions. But in fact, we addressed the reality that the elder Wilson often had greater aspirations than concrete paths of execution. No one can deny E. O. Wilson’s original contributions to ecology and his mastery of entomology, but David Sloan Wilson points out that some of his recent books sketch out grand plans, but do not deliver any roadmap on how to achieve those ends. Rather than a hagiography, the conversation emphasizes that we shouldn’t make icons out of scientists, that science is a collective enterprise, and that too often it is depicted as the products of singular “Great Men.” Nevertheless, over the course of the discussion, David Sloan Wilson and I do discuss the late Wilson’s positive and important contributions to entomology and mentorship, as well as his last forays into scientific debates when he became involved in a controversy around the utility of W. D. Hamilton’s inclusive fitness framework in 2010, and their collaboration in the 2000’s on multi-level selection theory.One of the things about E. O. Wilson’s life that many have observed was his great range. In addition to his contributions to evolutionary biology, over the last few decades of his life, Wilson became a promoter of conservation and biodiversity (a term he helped popularize in the late 1980’s). But his activism was not without controversy. In the last third of the podcast, I talk to the science writer Charles C. Mann about his run-ins with Wilson in relation to environmentalism, where the scientist’s love of nature seems to have driven him beyond what conservation biology may have entailed. Mann also recounts Wilson’s dismissals of his pointed questions in relation to predictions made by his scientific theories about island biodiversity, reiterating that even the greatest of scientists are not necessarily dispassionate when it comes to their own scholarship. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 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 Sibarium’s piece in The Washington Free Beacon). Colbert’s piece in Persuasion made me curious about him, and I reached out to talk about what he had seen, and the lessons that we as a society and individuals might take from it.First, Colbert gives us his own perspective of what transpired at YLS to make him a “trending topic” on social media. Perhaps to the surprise of Millennials, the 23-year-old Zoomer seemed not entirely familiar with the well-known podcast Chapo Trap House. As a member of Gen X, I have to admit it's a little unnerving to hear Millennials viewed as geriatric elders. But Colbert grew up in a world of super-charged cultural change and perhaps perceives the passage of time differently than those of us who came into adulthood before smartphones. He contended that some of the offense others perceived might be a matter of cohort differences and even just his casual Zoomer manner. Even a few years' difference today might mean an entirely alternative landscape of memes and sensibilities, so a subtle and wry reference among his age-mates could strike an individual only a few years older as offensive, opaque and “tone-deaf.”With that in mind, I was curious about his background, and where he got the strength to stand up to the YLS administrative bureaucracy. We explored his relationship to his Cherokee background, as well as growing up in a moderately conservative household where religion was important. Colbert takes the idea of right and wrong seriously, and he felt that his own conscience would not allow him to agree to an apology that was premised on lies. Importantly, he also had a supportive group of friends at YLS and a wider circle of backers in the community.Eventually, we moved to broader social forces, and how his individual choices and decisions might impact others. By doing the right thing, rather than the easy thing, Colbert hopes to show that it is possible to defeat the kind of bureaucratic machine that was unleashed upon him and trigger a preference cascade that changes the culture on campus. And doing the right thing has not been entirely easy, as Colbert admits to being uncomfortable with realizing how others at YLS viewed him purely through a racial lens, as well as the fact that many prominent organizations accused him of being a racist.Overall, perhaps the take-home lesson is that it doesn’t take an exceptional person to take on the system. Just someone who has a core set of principles and friends and family who support them when they might have to make decisions that lead to socially unpopular outcomes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 surprised by the topics and style of writing in The Verge. The narrative does a great job balancing the academic with the engaging.After reading his book I was curious to ask Wyman about how he wove social and economic history into a persona-driven narrative. We talk at length about the particular details of the significance of the 40-year-period he covers, and whether Martin Luther was a necessary man (as opposed to just being sufficient).Patrick and I also tackle meta-historical questions such as the importance of “great men” versus forces-of-history, and whether the Protestant Reformation was inevitable due to technological changes. It’s a wide-ranging conversation, so if you are interested in the nitty-gritty of historical processes I think you’ll enjoy it.Cross-promotion: The six-part series on Finland is done, check it out:* Part one: Duke Tales: shades of Finnish cultural weirdness in my own backyard* Part two: Weirdness as a national pastime: culture* Part three: Go West Young Siberian: genetics findings* Part four: From deepest Siberia to Europe’s edge: more genetics* Part five: Frontier Finns: cabins, rakes & Indians* Part six: Finnish brains, baiting and bottlenecks: education and medical genetics This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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).I’ve given some thought to the implications of these results, and how to interpret them. But I wanted to get the sense of another geneticist, my friend Vagheesh Narasimhan. I’ve talked to Vagheesh before in relation to his blockbuster paper, The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia. My goal for this podcast was to “nerd out” on human evolution from a genomics perspective, and see if he had the same impressions that I did of these papers.We discussed population structure in Denisovans, the importance of ancient DNA and proteins, whether the “Out of Africa” theory even makes sense, as well as new work on methylation patterns in the genome and predicting physical characteristics. I did bring up statistical power in “skull science,” and both of us expounded on why DNA, in particular, is so powerful as a method of inference in comparison to traditional morphology.It was an hour spent slashing back and forth across these two papers and circling around from a genetic perspective. Both of us agreed that we can’t conclude Dragon Man is closest to modern humans.Past paleoanthropology podcasts:* Chris Stringer: 1,000,000 years of human evolution* Chris Stringer on paleoanthropology in 2020* Chris Stringer and The Human Revolution* Multiregionalism is Dead...Long Live Multiregionalism!* A conversation with John Hawks: a life in paleoanthropology* John Hawks on Neanderthals: part 1, part 2* Lee Berger and the Dawn of "Big Data" in Paleoanthropology This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 “blown up” due to a piece he wrote, Woke Institutions is Just Civil Rights Law. Eliciting responses from the Right and Left, this is the sort of work that has made Richard’s name. He goes where angels fear to tread. His profile has certainly gotten higher since I got to know him several years ago. He was recently on the Tucker Carlson show.On this podcast we talk about:* The incessant attention given over to the Israel-Palestine conflict in the USA* His thesis that in relation to “wokeness” culture is downstream of politics* The inevitability of Chinese dominance in the 21st century* The mass hysteria in reaction COVID-19* What it’s like running a “Think Tank” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 relevant areas of expertise (or just plain bad luck this week) who are united in having survived this week’s lingering polar front, a nearly Texas-wide power outage, and its many discontents. Millions were left without power for days in sub-zero temperatures, lost their water service, or both. This week’s guests made time to chat at a moment’s notice over the last 24 hours as the luckiest of us are just beginning to get back to normal life (though many here remain without water even after power was restored). This is very much a rough draft of history, not my usual evergreen type of content. I’m learning something new daily and I hope you’ll get something out of it, too.My guests:* Jon Stokes, a deputy editor at The Prepared. Jon talks about how and why even he was caught flat-footed, even though he has long been a prepper.* Gareth Highnam, a scientist in Austin who managed to lose not one but two roofs over his head in a single day, thanks to condo sprinkler systems bursting.* Marina Roberts, of Austin DSA and Homes not Handcuffs, talks about how the crisis has impacted the large population of homeless in the metro area.* Lisa Mahapatra, a tech worker who recently relocated to Austin from California talks about what it’s like being a new homeowner in a new city in the grips of a local disaster.* Finally, I caught up with two friends for a discussion of power grids, supply chains, and American decline: Josiah Neeley, an Austin-based energy analyst at R Street, and of the Urbane Cowboys podcast, and Byrne Hobart, a recent Brooklyn-to-Austin transplant who writes The Diff, a finance and economics Substack. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 Aristotle). They only reach free listeners a couple of weeks after going live for paid subscribers and my hope is that the content will remain evergreen long after both. But this is not an ordinary time, and like many, I’ve been wondering what to say in this moment that might add value.Richard is a smart and heterodox thinker whose ideas and opinions are informed by his background as a scholar of political science. He’s not “winging it.” Last fall The Washington Post published his op-ed, Americans hate each other. But we aren’t headed for civil war. My big question for him was if he had updated his assessment in light of recent events. We recorded this tonight, January 12th and I’m releasing it immediately to both paid and free subscribers to Unsupervised Learning because his insights and assessments are timely.In addition to talking about whether the US will erupt in civil war or suffer a coup in the next decade, we also discuss a new report he co-authored, The National Populist Illusion: Why Culture, Not Economics, Drives American Politics. The conclusion is that a populist economic realignment isn’t happening, and in much of the podcast we discuss Richard’s belief that Republicans and Democrats will “regress to the mean.” He believes Donald J. Trump is a sui generis figure, and with his exit, Republicans will probably want to revert to their old playbook.We also mull over the possibility that the “Great Awokening,” a phenomenon first identified by one of the fellows at Richard’s think-tank, Zach Goldberg,* still has steam left in it, and what that means for the Biden administration.Finally, while recording the podcast we uncover intriguing evidence that Jon Ossoff, Senator-Elect from Georgia, is “I.D.W.-adjacent.”* It has been brought to my attention that “Spotted Toad” had been using the term “Great Awokening” in the fall of 2017. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 Armand releases today for paid subscribers. With the steady downpour of new fossil finds and ever more freshly sequenced ancient DNA, ours is an era of plenty in the field of human evolution. In June of 2020, I had a chance to record a long discussion for The Insight podcast with Chris Stringer, one of the doyens of human paleoanthropology. We talked about all the discoveries we've been lucky to witness over the past few years on these topics of such incredible interest to the general public.Stringer has been active in the field for decades, first as an early advocate of the African origin of modern humans, and now as an all-around synthesizer and public intellectual. His gift for communicating the pith of abstruse results is on fine display in this conversation. I enjoyed it very much and I hope you will too.This is day 6 of 6. Here is day 1: Shadi Hamid, day 2: Vagheesh Narasimhan, day 3: Thomas Chatterton Williams, day 4: Alexander Ioannidis, day 5: Suhag Sukhla.And in case you missed them in the busy runup to the holidays, here is my series of five quick pieces from last week:The Age of Genetic Engineering BeginsThe Original Chinese ManApplying IQ to IQYour Roots are ShowingIn Gods We Trusted One reason I shared this sampler of my writing was to leave those considering a subscription plenty of time to grab one at Substack’s lowest rates before I adjust the pricing upward in the new year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 pre-modern times that might encompass all the people of the Indian subcontinent, irrespective of ethnicity or religion. But over the past few centuries, the term has narrowed to include just those who adhere to the subcontinent’s indigenous religious traditions And, over the last decades of the 20th century and into the early 21st, these people have migrated in large numbers to the United States. About 1% of Americans are now of Indian origin, and the majority of those are Hindu.Suhag Shukla is an attorney and executive director of the Hindu American Foundation. In an hour-long wide-ranging conversation we recorded in the summer of 2019 for Brown Pundits we explore what it means to be Hindu in American in the year 2019. As it happens, the most prominent person of the Hindu faith today in the United States is not of Indian subcontinental origin: Tulsi Gabbard. Additionally, the hold of Hinduism on many Indian Americans whose family traditions are of that faith seems to be tenuous at best.Shukla’s organization is fundamentally American, recapitulating the pattern of ancient faiths adapting to the American landscape like Judaism and Roman Catholicism.This is day 5 of 6. Here is day 1: Shadi Hamid, day 2: Vagheesh Narasimhan, day 3: Thomas Chatterton Williams, 4: Alexander Ioannidis.Also, if you were too busy over the holidays, my series of five quick pieces from this holiday season:The Age of Genetic Engineering BeginsThe Original Chinese ManApplying IQ to IQYour Roots are ShowingIn Gods We Trusted One reason I shared this sampler of my writing was to leave those considering a subscription plenty of time to grab one at Substack’s lowest rates before I adjust the pricing upward in the new year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 not the most famous Ioannidis at Stanford. But perhaps he should be!In the summer of 2020, he led a study that seems to confirm gene flow of Native American ancestry into Polynesia long before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. On some level, we always knew and suspected this. How could people who crossed the whole Pacific not have arrived on the American mainland? Also, the existence of the American sweet potato in Polynesia indicates some contact.But we had always assumed it was cultural. Using the “best-of-breed” genetic methods Alex found that there were clear signs of ancient Native American ancestry in the people of the Marquesas. Over 45 minutes in May of 2020, we discuss technical details, the archaeological and anthropological relevance to contacts between Pacific and American peoples, and future directions for his research.This is day 4 of 6. Here is day 1: Shadi Hamid, day 2: Vagheesh Narasimhan, day 3: Thomas Chatterton Williams.And if you missed them in the busy runup to the holidays, here is my series of five quick pieces from this past weekThe Age of Genetic Engineering BeginsThe Original Chinese ManApplying IQ to IQYour Roots are ShowingIn Gods We TrustedOne reason I shared this sampler of my writing was to leave those considering a subscription plenty of time to grab one at Substack’s lowest rates before I adjust the pricing upward in the new year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 two you might have missed before. If they weren’t famous to you before, I hope they are now.Some guests need no introduction. In 2020, Thomas Chatterton Williams is one of those individuals. But back in March of 2019, when we talked for 1 hour and 15 minutes he was neither quite as internet-notorious nor as widely fêted. The author of two books, Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man's Escape from the Crowd and Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race, Thomas has also become renowned and reviled for his role in organizing “the letter”, which made a calm plea for open debate and discussion on the Left.Since reaching that level of visibility in the summer of 2020 Thomas has been caught up in a series of “internet-controversies.” But as much as I appreciate his cool under social-media pressure, there has always been a lot more to him than internet drama, and over the course of our discussion, we get into his background as a mixed-race black American, his ex-pat life in France and the birth of his “white presenting” children.Also, if you were too busy over the holidays, my series of five quick pieces from this holiday season:The Age of Genetic Engineering BeginsThe Original Chinese ManApplying IQ to IQYour Roots are ShowingIn Gods We TrustedOne reason I shared this sampler of my writing was to leave those considering a subscription plenty of time to grab one at Substack’s lowest rates before I adjust the pricing upward in the new year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 have missed before.Vagheesh Narasimhan is an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin. I am honored to count Vagheesh as a friend. But even before we got to know each other I was shouting about his research because his work has been some of the most impactful in the area of human evolutionary genomics over the past few years. His 2019 paper, The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia is the first and last word on the ancient population-genetic history of a region that is home to 25% of the world’s population. Recording in September of 2019 Vagheesh and I spent about an hour and a half discussing the implications of the results in his seminal 2019 paper, and future directions in his research. If you want to understand the genetic history of South Asia, this podcast will get you off to an excellent start.Also, if you were too busy over the holidays, my series of five quick pieces from this holiday season:The Age of Genetic Engineering BeginsThe Original Chinese ManApplying IQ to IQYour Roots are ShowingIn Gods We TrustedOne reason I shared this sampler of my writing was to leave those considering a subscription plenty of time to grab one at Substack’s lowest rates before I adjust the pricing upward in the new year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

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 surprised to pick up his next book in the 2010’s and discover a beautifully illustrated, historically rich tome, The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. Armand has mad range. In the course of 1 hour and 20-minutes, we discuss C. elgans, personal genomics, eugenics, race, the future directions of Leroi’s scholarly work, and the intellectual and cultural climate of the 2020’s.My other conversation was with the understandably very in-demand Alina Chan. I've been asking Alina to carve out a little time for a chat for weeks because she’s been at the center of the discussion of an important scientific topic over the last six months, the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Alina downplays her bravery, but her relentless commitment to uncovering the verifiable truth, whether it be good, bad, inconvenient, or ugly, really sets her apart in 2020. She's well worth a follow and I look forward to seeing how her career unfolds. Her spirit gives me hope.As this year winds down, I'm counting my blessings, including the chance to have logged hundreds of podcasts over the past few years with fascinating people in a huge range of fields. Many of these conversations are just as relevant and compelling as they were when they first went live. With that in mind, 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 have missed before.Today, I bring you a conversation I had with Shadi Hamid in March of 2019 for the Brown Pundits podcast. The world is so unimaginably different a year and a half later so I was gratified to find it’s still a fresh listen. In the 1 hour and 45-minute conversation, Shadi talks about his background (Egyptian, Muslim, American), his professional interests (the Middle East), and his status as a mildly non-woke American-of-color.Despite our political difference (Shadi’s left to my right) and opposition on religious views (Shadi’s Islam to my atheism), we have always gotten along and been able to have a conversation because of our commitment to the pluralism of views. Shadi is an adherent to a very old-fashioned cultural liberalism predicated on the marketplace of ideas. You may disagree with him on something, and I do on many topics, but he is always open to engagement. He takes on all comers.And if you missed them in the busy runup to the holidays, here is my series of five quick pieces from this past weekThe Age of Genetic Engineering BeginsThe Original Chinese ManApplying IQ to IQYour Roots are ShowingIn Gods We TrustedOne reason I shared this sampler of my writing was to leave those considering a subscription plenty of time to grab one at Substack’s lowest rates before I adjust the pricing upward in the new year. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe