Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

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

  1. -6 DIAS

    10,000 years of selection (in Western Eurasia)

    The full episode is available here: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/10000-years-of-selection-in-western Despite the preprint being out for two years, Akbari et al.'s Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across West Eurasia publication in Nature this week has resulted in a massive media response. Though Razib has discussed this work before, he thought it would be useful to review it, and put it in context in a new monologue.

    41 min

  2. 28/04

    Matthew Schmitz: Christianity as identity, New Atheism and the Texas of Lord Hanuman

    Today Razib talks to Matthew Schmitz, a journalist who previously served as an editor at the religious journal First Things. He is the cofounder of the online magazine Compact, alongside Edwin Aponte and Sohrab Ahmari. He currently serves as editor of Compact, religion editor of Washington Post Opinions, and co-host of the podcast Against the Grain. Compact His essays on politics and culture have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Claremont Review of Books. A native of O'Neill, Nebraska, Schmitz is a graduate of Princeton University. First, they discuss Schmitz's piece in the Washington Post, The unreligious religiosity of Christian identity politics. Here Schmitz articulates the view that the nationalist-inflected Christianity exemplified by many MAGA and MAGA-adjacent figures is quite different from the sincere but earnest evangelicalism of the older religious right. Rather, it is more performative, more civilizational, and tied into white identity politics. Additionally, it turns away from the philo-Semitism that has been typical of the American religious landscape. Schmitz and Razib also address the rise and fall of the New Atheism over the last 20 years, from the decline of public Christian faith as the center of the body politic, the rationalist critique and the marginalization of both by woke social-justice political theology. They also discuss the difficulties and travails of religious pluralism in the US today, including the tensions caused by the arrival of large numbers of Hindus in places like Texas, where they erect statues to their gods, including the semi-monkey divinity Hanuman.

    1 h 25 min

  3. 25/04

    Megan McArdle: the follies of populism, impending fiscal crisis, and the whirlwind of AI

    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.

    1 h 57 min

  4. 23/04

    Monologue: Race - genetics, history and sociology

    You can find the complete monologue here: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/monologue-race-genetics-history-and This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack and original video content. On this episode, Razib talks about race, and how to think about this touchy subject.

    34 min

  5. 19/04

    Monologue: Out-of-Africa is not dead but hybridization lives

    You can find the complete monologue here: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/monlogue-out-of-africa-is-not-dead 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.

    25 min

  6. 10/04

    Chris Bradley: better science for longevity

    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.

    1 h 6 min

  7. 30/03

    Chris Masterjohn: COVID-19 to mitochondrial health, communicating and applying "the science"

    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.

    1 h 37 min

  8. 23/03

    Mike White: academia and genomics in the 21st century

    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?

    1 h 8 min
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Razib Khan engages a diverse array of thinkers on all topics under the sun. Genetics, history, and politics. See: http://razib.substack.com/

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