Razib Khans Podcasts

For the complete version of this podcast check out razib.substack.com On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses the origins of the people of Madagascar in a companion podcast to his two-part series on the genetics and history of the island. An ecologically unique island off Africa’s southeast coast, for tens of millions of years Mada…

In April of 2021, this Substack published a piece, The ultimate price of costless gestures, that anticipated a spate of articles in the second half of the year in the mainstream media reporting on the rise of murders in 2020. Compare the figure from the Substack piece with one in The New York Times published in November of 2021: The similarity is s…

My podcast with the brilliant Marc Andreessen is out! We discuss: * how AI will revolutionize software * whether NFTs are useless, & whether he should be funding flying cars instead * a16z's biggest vulnerabilities * the future of fusion, education, Twitter, venture, managerialism, & big tech Dwarkesh Patel has a great interview with Marc Andreesse…

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib explores the history of China through the lens of genetics and ancient DNA. This podcast is a companion to the recent two pieces, Genetic history with Chinese characteristics and Venerable Ancestors: untangling the Chinese people's hybrid Pleistocene origins. Today 92% of the citizens of the People’s R…

On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Jonathan Anomaly, author of Creating Future People: The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement. Anomaly is currently the director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at La Universidad de las Americas, Ecuador. He has been a lecturer at Duke and the University of Pennsylvania and h…

Garett Jones is an economist at George Mason University and the author of The Cultural Transplant, Hive Mind, and 10% Less Democracy. This episode was fun and interesting throughout! He explains: * Why national IQ matters * How migrants bring their values to their new countries * Why we should have less democracy * How the Chinese are an unstoppabl…

Malcolm Collins is a neuroscientist-turned-entrepreneur-turned-VC-turned-education innovator. Along with his wife Simone, he is one of Amazon's top 100 best-selling non-fiction writers. Learn more about their work below. The Pragmatist Foundation: https://pragmatist.guide The Collins Institute for the Gifted: https://collinsinstitute.org Malcolm an…

In this episode, Prathamesh Godbole and Amit Paranjpe discuss the Maratha empire - spanning from its humble origins as a Jagir of Adilshahi to the largest power in the subcontinent before the British conquest. We discuss the great maratha rulers Shivaji Raje, Sambhaji Raje and the Peshwas.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses the origins of the people of Madagascar in a companion podcast to his two-part series on the genetics and history of the island. An ecologically unique island off Africa’s southeast coast, for tens of millions of years Madagascar forged its own evolutionary path, distinct from Africa to the w…

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Bryan Caplan about Caplan’s new book, Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice. Despite what the narrow purview the title might suggest, Don't Be a Feminist is a wide-ranging book that contains essays on IQ, immigration and identity politics, among other things (in addition, yes, to wom…

Auron Macintyre is a columnist and host at The Blaze. He also writes on Substack. Auron rose to prominence as a “dissident right” thinker, making popular YouTube videos on topics from what’s come to be called elite theory. Timestamps: 1:17 Auron introduces himself 3:20 Racial imposter syndrome 6:03 Whites looking for valid status 8:27 "Nonsense as …

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib reviews the year in paleoanthropology and previews the year to come with John Hawks. First, they tackle the latest discoveries regarding Homo naledi, in particular, the finding that they likely used fires deep in the caves where they buried their dead. Hawks reflects on the implications of Homo naledi,…

On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Jonathan Anomaly, author of Creating Future People: The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement. Anomaly is currently the director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at La Universidad de las Americas, Ecuador. He has been a lecturer at Duke and the University of Pennsylvania and h…

One of my best episodes ever. Lars Doucet is the author of Land is a Big Deal, a book about Georgism which has been praised by Vitalik Buterin, Scott Alexander, and Noah Smith. Sam Altman is the lead investor in his new startup, ValueBase. Talking with Lars completely changed how I think about who creates value in the world and who leeches off it. …

Maneesh talks to Jay and Omar on the socio-culutral milieu of the Mughals and their decline.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Bryan Caplan about Caplan’s new book, Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice. Despite what the narrow purview the title might suggest, Don't Be a Feminist is a wide-ranging book that contains essays on IQ, immigration and identity politics, among other things (in addition, yes, to wom…

What is a democracy? Is American democracy in danger? And should we care about the possibilities for democracy in the Middle East? On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at Brookings, an assistant professor at Fuller Seminary, a contributor to The Atlantic, co-host of the Wisdom of Crowds podcast and we…

Holden Karnofsky is the co-CEO of Open Philanthropy and co-founder of GiveWell. He is also the author of one of the most interesting blogs on the internet, Cold Takes. We discuss: * Are we living in the most important century? * Does he regret OpenPhil’s 30 million dollar grant to OpenAI in 2016? * How does he think about AI, progress, digital peop…

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib reviews the year in paleoanthropology and previews the year to come with John Hawks. First, they tackle the latest discoveries regarding Homo naledi, in particular, the finding that they likely used fires deep in the caves where they buried their dead. Hawks reflects on the implications of Homo naledi,…

I had fun chatting with Aarthi and Sriram. We discuss what it takes to be successful in technology, what Sriram would say if Elon tapped him to be the next CEO of Twitter, why more married couples don’t start businesses together, and how Aarthi hires and finds 10x engineers. Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan are the hosts of The Good Times Show…

As 2022 draws to a close, the chat AI based on GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) has been taking the internet by storm, with millions of users beginning to ask it questions. Is humanity on the way to birthing a true artificial general intelligence (AGI)? I asked GPT-3 that particular question, and this was the answer: It is difficult to …

Garett Jones is Associate Professor of Economics and BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University. His first book, published in 2015 by Stanford University Press, is entitled Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own, and was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. His second book,…

What is a democracy? Is American democracy in danger? And should we care about the possibilities for democracy in the Middle East? On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at Brookings, an assistant professor at Fuller Seminary, a contributor to The Atlantic, co-host of the Wisdom of Crowds podcast and we…

On this very special episode of Unsupervised Learning I talk to three guests, Josh Lipson, Aric Lomes and Leo Cooper, about their contribution to a new paper, Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century. Given that a month earlier, Genomes from a medieval mass burial show Ashkenazi-ass…

This was one of my favorite episodes ever. Bethany McLean was the first reporter to question Enron’s earnings, and she has written some of the best finance books out there. We discuss: * The astounding similarities between Enron & FTX, * How visionaries are just frauds who succeed (and which category describes Elon Musk), * What caused 2008, and wh…

Most Americans are vaguely aware of a few rulers of ancient Achaemenid Persia: Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes, whether from the Bible, from historically grounded films like 300, or in the rare case, from reading Herodotus’ The Histories. More recently, Iran has loomed large due to its geopolitical significance, and for Americans of a certain age, the Sha…

Nadia Asparouhova is currently researching what the new tech elite will look like at nadia.xyz. She is also the author of Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software. We talk about how: * American philanthropy has changed from Rockefeller to Effective Altruism * SBF represented the Davos elite rather than the Silicon Valle…

AI-generated image of Nikolai Yakovenko . The prompt was: nikolai yakovenko, machine learning engineer, crypto entrepreneur, beard, deep-set eyes, photographic, realistic, cinematic, miami background —q 2 —v 4 As 2022 draws to a close, the chat AI based on GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) has been taking the internet by storm, with mill…

Sex tips, porn revolutions, psychedelics, and enlightenment Aella writes at knowingless.com. Her posts and tweets provide a unique perspective about the data on sexual kinks and on being an escort & camgirl. In this episode, Aella talks about: * her escorting sex tips, * how tech will change pornography, * & whether trauma & enlightenment are real …

The Western facade of the Erfurt synagogue On this very special episode of Unsupervised Learning I talk to three guests, Josh Lipson, Aric Lomes and Leo Cooper, about their contribution to a new paper, Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century. Given that a month earlier, Genomes fro…

https://razib.substack.com This is where you will find all the podcasts from Razib Khan's Substack, https://razib.substack.com, and original video content. What does it mean to be Eurocentric? What does it mean to be a white supremacist? What does the term ”the West” mean, and how is it different from simply the geographical designation Europe? On …

Razib Khan is a master of decoding ancient DNA to tell fascinating stories about our history and heritage. Timestamps: 2:39: Three mindblowing facts from ancient DNA research 6:10 Will it be possible to know the average IQ of classical Athens? 8:35 How much signal do we lose if the population is representative? 10:15 Is there really more genetic di…

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses the new book, The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left, with author Garett Jones. Jones is a professor of economics at George Mason University, and The Culture Transplant is the third book in what he likes of think of as his “Singapore…

Perhaps the most interesting episode so far. Byrne Hobart writes at thediff.co, analyzing inflections in finance and tech. He explains: * What happened at FTX * How drugs have induced past financial bubbles * How to be long AI while hedging Taiwan invasion * Whether Musk’s Twitter takeover will succeed * Where to find the next Napoleon and LBJ * & …

How is it that babies across entirely different cultures seemingly elicit one single sort of “baby talk” from adults? To answer this question, Razib talks to Cody Moser, coauthor of a recent paper on the topic, and an evolutionary psychologist and cultural evolutionist at UC Merced. Moser first discusses what cultural evolution today means in the c…

Edward Glaeser is the chair of the Harvard department of economics, and the author of the best books and papers about cities (including Survival of the City and Triumph of the City). He explains why: * Cities are resilient to terrorism, remote work, & pandemics, * Silicon Valley may collapse but the Sunbelt will prosper, * Opioids show UBI is not a…

In this episode, Omar and Jay discuss the rise of the "Great" Mughals. We start from the rise of Babur and follow through the empire his descendants. We do not cover the challengers to the Mughal hegemony (Maharana Pratap, Chattrapati Shivaji and Lachit Borphukan) OR the fall of the Mughal empire or other softer aspects in this episode. All that wi…