Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

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 Begins

The Original Chinese Man

Applying IQ to IQ

Your Roots are Showing

In 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 Begins

The Original Chinese Man

Applying IQ to IQ

Your Roots are Showing

In 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 week

The Age of Genetic Engineering Begins

The Original Chinese Man

Applying IQ to IQ

Your Roots are Showing

In 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

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 Begins

The Original Chinese Man

Applying IQ to IQ

Your Roots are Showing

In 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

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 Begins

The Original Chinese Man

Applying IQ to IQ

Your Roots are Showing

In 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

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 week

The Age of Genetic Engineering Begins

The Original Chinese Man

Applying IQ to IQ

Your Roots are Showing

In 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