On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to returning guest Megan McArdle. She is the author of The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success and a Washington Post columnist and op-ed board member. McArdle grew up in New York City and attended Riverdale Country School. She obtained an undergraduate degree in English from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of Chicago. McArdle’s previous positions were at The Economist, The Atlantic and Newsweek. She has a new podcast for the Washington Post, Reasonably Optimistic, and also contributes to Central Air and The Dispatch.

Razib and McArdle talk about the follies of populism, left and right, and the damage being done to America in the name of anti-elitism. Razib asks McArdle if there is any way out of a national debt crisis and fiscal insolvency (answer: probably not). Then they discuss the role high cost of living and confiscatory tax rates on the flight of capital and high-income individuals from blue states, and McArdle explains the historical-structural reasons that liberal cities cannot cut back on their top-heavy labor force. Razib and McArdle discuss immigration, trade and globalization, and the short-sightedness of MAGA-populism. Finally, they address AI, McArdle’s usage of it, and the promise it has in revolutionizing work and transforming our society.

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Razib and Masterjohn first discuss the impact of social media on the communication of science, and his wrangling with the public health establishment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Masterjohn explains how digging into the primary literature showed that the authorities were claiming far greater certainty than they should have, and recounts attempts to censor and rebuke him when he pointed this out. He also addresses some misrepresentations that Anthony Fauci engaged in during his tenure. Next, Razib asks Masterjohn about the insights he has gained from nutritional science in terms of how he lives his own life, and his overall philosophy of public health. Masterjohn pushes against the tendency to over-medicalize and rely on pharmaceuticals before looking to common-sense nutrition and exercise. They then discuss the importance of the mitochondrion in molecular genetics, and how that is relevant both in terms of physiology and evolution. Masterjohn then talks about his company, Mitome, and the added value of greater and greater metabolic and genetic information in the present age.

On this episode, Razib talks about race, and how to think about this touchy subject.

• Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease

• The Apportionment of Human Diversity

• Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy

• A Family Tree in Every Gene

• How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

• Race: The Power of an Illusion

• A Genealogical Interpretation of Principal Components Analysis

• Inference of Population Structure Using Multilocus Genotype Data

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On this episode Razib talks about where we are when it comes to “Out-of-Africa,” Neanderthal origins and the broader state of understanding the dynamics of Homo evolution.

Cited:

• Hypothesis: A modern human range expansion ~300,000 years ago explains Neandertal origins

• Did Levallois tools make Neanderthals human?

• Interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern…

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Razib first talks to White about the cultural, political and social winds moving through academia since 2010. How did academic science become so politically polarized, and what significance does it have for future funding streams? White brings his insights from the viewpoint of someone whose perch is in a medical school, and so somewhat at the margins of the cultural revolution sweeping through academia and even STEM. He notes it seems that the activist high tide peaked around 2020, though the hostility between the Right and institutional academia continues unabated, affecting NIH funding.

Then White discusses where we are in terms of understanding gene regulation, and its importance in biological function. Razib and White review how almost 99% of the human genome does not code for proteins, so often it is called "junk DNA," but the reality is that there are other functions in that region, first and foremost, regulating and modifying protein expressing regions. Razib asks White where we are in human genomics more than 25 years after the draft, has it lived up to expectations? And where we are going in the future?

Today Razib talks to Chris Bradley, a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and Co-Founder of Matter Bio, a company dedicated to preserving genome integrity and addressing the root causes of aging. With a multidisciplinary background spanning neuroscience, cell biology, and computer science, Bradley aims to translate early-stage biotech concepts into practical therapies that can extend human lifespan Matter Bio is focused on diagnosing, quantifying, and repairing the structural variations and mutations that accumulate in human DNA. Bradley has BS is neuroscience and cell biology from Rutgers and a MS in computer science from New York University.

The discussion first aims to focus on fundamental science concepts. What is genome integrity, and why does it matter? Bradley reviews the current state of the science to understand how errors creep into our genomic code over our lifetimes, and how it can lead to cancers and other pathologies. He points out that there is a wide variation in lifespan and cancer-risk across animal species, showing that in some ways nature may have “solved” the problem. In addition, Razib reiterates how complex and amazing any genome is, with billions of base pairs, and how incredible it is that our body’s repair mechanisms function as well as they do.

Bradley then discusses the practical goals of Matter Bio as they begin their first clinical trials. Rather than just focusing on basic science, Bradley’s long-term focus is to make a difference in human lives. He discusses how the drastic gain in human life expectancy over the last 150 years already shows that we can increase longevity. Ultimately, Matter Bio aims to push the frontier so that we are less and less surprised by centenarians. Bradley also addresses the reality that a lot of the innovation in biotech right now, including what Matter Bio wants to achieve, is limited by the regulatory state, rather than what can be done in terms of the science or funding environment.

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Today, Razib talks to Chris Masterjohn, a nutritional scientist and leading expert in mitochondrial biology who believes hidden energy bottlenecks underlie much of modern disease. After years of work as a professor and researcher, he founded Mitome, the first mitochondrial analysis designed for everyday health, and serves as its Scientific Director. His mission is to make mitochondrial testing accessible so people can identify and correct the specific energy limitations holding them back. After earning his PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Connecticut in 2012, he completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and subsequently served as an Assistant Professor of Health and Nutrition Sciences at Brooklyn College. He has a Substack.

Razib and Masterjohn first discuss the impact of social media on the communication of science, and his wrangling with the public health establishment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Masterjohn explains how digging into the primary literature showed that the authorities were claiming far greater certainty than they should have, and recounts attempts to censor and rebuke him when he pointed this out. He also addresses some misrepresentations that Anthony Fauci engaged in during his tenure. Next, Razib asks Masterjohn about the insights he has gained from nutritional science in terms of how he lives his own life, and his overall philosophy of public health. Masterjohn pushes against the tendency to over-medicalize and rely on pharmaceuticals before looking to common-sense nutrition and exercise. They then discuss the importance of the mitochondrion in molecular genetics, and how that is relevant both in terms of physiology and evolution. Masterjohn then talks about his company, Mitome, and the added value of greater and greater metabolic and genetic information in the present age.

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Before getting into the meat of the discussion, Renn and Razib discuss management consulting and the value that a firm like Accenture provides a corporation. Razib wonders whether consultants are simply brought in to rubber-stamp what management has already concluded, but is aiming to pin the blame on an external actor (e.g., layoffs). Renn argues that this is not the case, and in fact, though he acknowledges that management consultants provide an outsider view unencumbered by internal politics that allows them to be taken more seriously. They also discuss the impact of AI on some services that management consultants provide, and the future of white-collar work.

Then Renn goes on an extended riff on the rise and fall, and possible new rise, of the Midwestern social and economic landscape. A native of southern Indiana, Renn has spent time in Chicago and New York before settling down in the affluent suburb of Carmel, Indiana. Razib and Renn discuss the decline of the Northeast and the industrial Heartland, and what makes the Midwest unique, with its origins as part of the original early American republican frontier. Renn discusses candidly the upsides and downsides of living in "flyover country," from its peace and tranquility, to the reality that Midwestern metropolitan areas do not have the same intellectual and cultural dynamism as coastal cities.

Finally, Razib asks Renn, a Protestant Christian who identifies as evangelical, about the cultural and theological shifts occurring on what was once called the Religious Right. Renn argues that this movement's peak was really in the mid-1990's, and the whole thirty-year period since has seen retreat and retrenchment. He believes that Christians have lost control of the cultural narrative and have to accept a position as outsiders. Renn also addresses the decline of premillennial dispensationalism, most famously illustrated in the Left Behind series of the 1990s and early 2000s, and the rise of Christian nationalism, and in particular, the role of Reformed pastor Doug Wilson in this shift.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Mike White, a Genetics professor at the Washington University in St. Louis. White has a position at the School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he leads a research team focused on understanding the biophysical architecture of regulatory DNA. He earned a B.A. in music before pivoting to the sciences, receiving his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Rochester in 2006 and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Wash U under Dr. Barak Cohen. White’s work combines functional genomics, synthetic biology, computational biology, and deep learning to decipher how cells interpret regulatory sequences. His lab aims to predict how non-coding genetic variations impact complex human traits and disease risk, while exploring how to apply transcriptional circuits for broader applications in health and agriculture.

Razib first talks to White about the cultural, political and social winds moving through academia since 2010. How did academic science become so politically polarized, and what significance does it have for future funding streams? White brings his insights from the viewpoint of someone whose perch is in a medical school, and so somewhat at the margins of the cultural revolution sweeping through academia and even STEM. He notes it seems that the activist high tide peaked around 2020, though the hostility between the Right and institutional academia continues unabated, affecting NIH funding.

Then White discusses where we are in terms of understanding gene regulation, and its importance in biological function. Razib and White review how almost 99% of the human genome does not code for proteins, so often it is called “junk DNA,” but the reality is that there are other functions in that region, first and foremost, regulating and modifying protein expressing regions. Razib asks White where we are in human genomics more than 25 years after the draft, has it lived up to expectations? And where we are going in the future?

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First, Razib and Tabin discuss a recent paper he co-authored that looks at problematic results in the paleogenetic literature due to contamination and DNA damage. Tabin reviews all the processes and analyses that paleogeneticists go through to validate that the ancient DNA data they have is truly ancient, rather than recent contamination, from wet-lab precautions to downstream analysis. Then they dig into the empirical results over the last 15 years from the field of ancient DNA, from what we know (or don't) of the out-of-Africa bottleneck, early modern humans in Asia and how we think about persistent mysteries like "Population Y" in the New World (Population Y is more closely related to Papuans and Andamanese than Northeast Asians).

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Aaron Renn. Renn is a writer, consultant, and urban analyst known for his work on the challenges facing American cities and religious institutions in the 21st century. He is a contributor to The American Reformer and the author of Life in the Negative World, a book exploring the cultural shifts regarding Christianity in America. Renn previously served as a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for five years and as a contributing editor for City Journal, having established his voice on urban policy through his widely cited blog, The Urbanophile. Prior to his career in public policy and journalism, he spent 15 years in management and technology consulting, including a tenure as a partner at Accenture.

Before getting into the meat of the discussion, Renn and Razib discuss management consulting and the value that a firm like Accenture provides a corporation. Razib wonders whether consultants are simply brought in to rubber-stamp what management has already concluded, but is aiming to pin the blame on an external actor (e.g., layoffs). Renn argues that this is not the case, and in fact, though he acknowledges that management consultants provide an outsider view unencumbered by internal politics that allows them to be taken more seriously. They also discuss the impact of AI on some services that management consultants provide, and the future of white-collar work.

Then Renn goes on an extended riff on the rise and fall, and possible new rise, of the Midwestern social and economic landscape. A native of southern Indiana, Renn has spent time in Chicago and New York before settling down in the affluent suburb of Carmel, Indiana. Razib and Renn discuss the decline of the Northeast and the industrial Heartland, and what makes the Midwest unique, with its origins as part of the original early American republican frontier. Renn discusses candidly the upsides and downsides of living in “flyover country,” from its peace and tranquility, to the reality that Midwestern metropolitan areas do not have the same intellectual and cultural dynamism as coastal cities.

Finally, Razib asks Renn, a Protestant Christian who identifies as evangelical, about the cultural and theological shifts occurring on what was once called the Religious Right. Renn argues that this movement’s peak was really in the mid-1990’s, and the whole thirty-year period since has seen retreat and retrenchment. He believes that Christians have lost control of the cultural narrative and have to accept a position as outsiders. Renn also addresses the decline of premillennial dispensationalism, most famously illustrated in the Left Behind series of the 1990s and early 2000s, and the rise of Christian nationalism, and in particular, the role of Reformed pastor Doug Wilson in this shift.

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Daniel Tabin, a 5th-year Ph.D. student in David Reich’s lab in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. His research focuses on using ancient and modern DNA to answer questions about human history. Tabin completed a degree in Computer Science and Math and Master’s in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He Ph.D. project involves the population genetic history of Central and East Asia.

First, Razib and Tabin discuss a recent paper he co-authored that looks at problematic results in the paleogenetic literature due to contamination and DNA damage. Tabin reviews all the processes and analyses that paleogeneticists go through to validate that the ancient DNA data they have is truly ancient, rather than recent contamination, from wet-lab precautions to downstream analysis. Then they dig into the empirical results over the last 15 years from the field of ancient DNA, from what we know (or don’t) of the out-of-Africa bottleneck, early modern humans in Asia and how we think about persistent mysteries like “Population Y” in the New World (Population Y is more closely related to Papuans and Andamanese than Northeast Asians).

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Razib and Nimitz explore the thousands of years of Slavic history and prehistory, from their fragmentary mentions in antiquity, to their explosion in the Middle Ages. Nimitz discusses the many archaeological cultures in northeastern Europe that might be candidates for the proto-Slavs as they emerged from the Corded Ware Culture during the Bronze Age, as well as the historical, cultural and genetic effects of the Slavic migrations that impacted Christian Europe after 600 AD. He also addresses the role of Slavs as one of Europe's preeminent ethnolinguistic configurations in early modern Europe.

Razib and Arm discuss the perceptions and attitudes of Gen Z Republicans, focusing on a group of 18-29-year-olds in Nashville, TN. Arm notes that while Gen Z feels economic anxiety, they are also entrepreneurial and comfortable with the world of social media. Gen Z Republicans are religious, like previous generations, but less likely to be married or have long-term partners at the same age as earlier cohorts. They express a desire for politics to be entertaining, similar to reality TV. The conversation also touches on the influence of social media on their views, the power of influencers like Nick Fuentes, and the potential for future political figures to emerge from the creator class. Arm also addresses the impact of intergenerational wealth transfer on political attitudes.

Between 2017 and 2020 Razib co-hosted the podcast The Insight. A year ago it went offline, but now the archives are back! On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib re-posts two important episodes from The Insight. First, a conversation with evolutionary anthropologist Joe Henrich about his 2020 book The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Second, starting at 51 minutes and 45 seconds, Razib interviews Cosimo Posth about a paper on which he was co-author, The genetic history of Ice Age Europe.

With Henrich Razib initially discusses the emergent field of cultural evolution, and his earlier book The Secret of Our Success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smart. Then, they discuss the confluence of history, anthropology and economics that led him to propose, along with his colleagues, the thesis that psychological peculiarities of medieval Europeans explains their dynamic success down into the modern period, leading to the emergence of “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies.”

Changing tacks, Razib’s conversation with Posth surveys the field as it was in the late 2010s, and in particular focuses on what we had learned about the genetics of Upper Paleolithic Europeans. This refers particularly to the period between 45,000 and 11,700 years before the present, the end of the last Ice Age, when various big game hunting societies dominated the continent after the extinction of Neanderthals.

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Razib asks Piffer about the difficulties in analyzing polygenic scores from quantitative traits in ancient DNA samples. How does he do in technical terms, from genome quality to imputation to ancient populations from modern ones? Then, they discuss some of Piffer's findings, in particular, his work on pigmentation. Piffer talks about how he discovered that modern European pigmentation, and in particular, light complexion, is the product of both admixture from different populations with different characteristics and natural selection over the millennia. Piffer talks about how he discovered that selection for lighter pigmentation continued into the Iron Age.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Peter Nimitz about the rise of the Slavs. His Substack, titled Nemets, explores world history through the lenses of archaeology, paleogenetics, and historical processes. His writing focuses on "deep history," such as the Bronze Age Collapse and the migration of Indo-European peoples, while connecting these ancient shifts to broader patterns of civilizational rise and fall. Nimitz often integrates technical data from genetics and climate science to challenge traditional narratives about nomadic tribes and early state formations across Eurasia. Beyond antiquity, the newsletter also touches on modern geopolitical developments and regional studies, ranging from the war in Ukraine to the cultural history of the Americas.

Razib and Nimitz explore the thousands of years of Slavic history and prehistory, from their fragmentary mentions in antiquity, to their explosion in the Middle Ages. Nimitz discusses the many archaeological cultures in northeastern Europe that might be candidates for the proto-Slavs as they emerged from the Corded Ware Culture during the Bronze Age, as well as the historical, cultural and genetic effects of the Slavic migrations that impacted Christian Europe after 600 AD. He also addresses the role of Slavs as one of Europe’s preeminent ethnolinguistic configurations in early modern Europe.

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Peter Nimitz about the rise of the Slavs. His Substack, titled Nemets, explores world history through the lenses of archaeology, paleogenetics, and historical processes. His writing focuses on "deep history," such as the Bronze Age Collapse and the migration of Indo-European peoples, while connecting these ancient shifts to broader patterns of civilizational rise and fall. Nimitz often integrates technical data from genetics and climate science to challenge traditional narratives about nomadic tribes and early state formations across Eurasia. Beyond antiquity, the newsletter also touches on modern geopolitical developments and regional studies, ranging from the war in Ukraine to the cultural history of the Americas.

Razib and Nimitz explore the thousands of years of Slavic history and prehistory, from their fragmentary mentions in antiquity, to their explosion in the Middle Ages. Nimitz discusses the many archaeological cultures in northeastern Europe that might be candidates for the proto-Slavs as they emerged from the Corded Ware Culture during the Bronze Age, as well as the historical, cultural and genetic effects of the Slavic migrations that impacted Christian Europe after 600 AD. He also addresses the role of Slavs as one of Europe’s preeminent ethnolinguistic configurations in early modern Europe.

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Josiah and Razib discuss the 1.5 year journey of the Khanversation, and why they called it quits (for now).

Most of the conversation centers around Mallavarapu's arguments outlined in his Substack The Case Against Conscious AI - Why AI consciousness is inconsistent with physics. The core of his argument rests on the "Simultaneity Problem" and the "Hard Problem of Physics," which involve non-locality and the memorylessness of artificial intelligence phenomena. Though Mallavarapu believes that artificial intelligence holds great promise, and perhaps even "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) is feasible, he argues that this is a distinct issue from consciousness, which is a property of human minds. Razib also brings up the inverse case: could it be that many organisms that are not particular intelligence, also have consciousness? What does that imply for ethics of practices like eating meat?