Ethan Strauss: sports and the end of the culture wars
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Release Date: 07/15/2025
Shadi Hamid: American power and the post-woke age
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks again with Washington Post and repeat guest Shadi Hamid (listen to ). A native Pennsylvanian of Egyptian ethnic background and Islamic faith, Hamid completed his Ph.D. in politics at Oxford University. He is co-host of the and with , and now the author of his own and a recent book, . Hamid is also the author of . , and . Before moving the discussion to , Razib asks Hamid about his current positioning on the American political...
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Vishal Ganesan and Anang Mittal: American Hinduism out of Indian Hinduism
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode, Razib talks to and , two Indian-American Hindus who have been thinking about the role of their faith in the present, and past, of the American social landscape. Ganesan is a California-based attorney and writer who focuses on the history, identity, and representation of the Hindu diaspora in the United States. He is best known for his project and his writing on the “Frontier Dharma” platform, which attempts to conceptualize what an American, as opposed to Indian, “Hinduism” might look like. Anang Mittal is a DC-based political communications...
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John Hawks and Chris Stringer: Neanderthals, Denisovans and humans, oh my!
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this very special episode, Razib talks to paleoanthroplogists John Hawks and Chris Stringer. is a paleoanthropologist who has been a researcher and commentator in human evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology for over two decades. With a widely read (now on Substack), a book on , and highly cited , Hawks is an essential voice in understanding the origins of our species. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1994 with degrees in French, English, and Anthropology, and received both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, where he...
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Sean Trende: 2025 elections and political demographics, past and future
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Today Razib talks to . He is a prominent American political analyst who currently serves as the Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics, a position he has held since 2010. He is also a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a lecturer at The Ohio State University, where he earned his Ph.D. in political science in 2023. Before transitioning to full-time political analysis, Trende practiced law for eight years at firms including Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Hunton & Williams LLP, holding a J.D. and M.A. from Duke University and a B.A. from Yale University....
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Alex Young: IQ, disease and statistical genomics
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
This week on the Unsupervised Learning Podcast, Razib talks to r of UCLA and . Trained originally as a mathematician, Young studied statistics and computational biology at the University of Cambridge before doing a doctorate in genomic medicine and statistics at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, under Peter Donnelly. He also worked at deCODE Genetics in Reykjavik and at Oxford with Augustine Kong, developing methods in quantitative and population genetics. Razib and Young talk extensively about what we know about and genomics in...
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Zineb Riboua: Zohran Mamdani and Third-Worldism ascendent
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Today on Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to , a research fellow and program manager of Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. She specializes in Chinese and Russian involvement in the Middle East, the Sahel, and North Africa, great power competition in the region, and Israeli-Arab relations. Riboua’s pieces and commentary have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, the Jerusalem Post and Tablet among other outlets. She holds a master’s of public policy from the McCourt...
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Ed West: visitor from a dying empire
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Today Razib talks to Ed West, a British journalist and author. He has served as deputy editor of UnHerd and The Catholic Herald, and has written columns for The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph. He runs the Substack newsletter , where he explores culture, politics, and the longue durée of Western history. West is the author of books including Small Men on the Wrong Side of History and The Diversity Illusion, as well as popular-history titles such as 1066 and Before All That. A previous , West and Razib revisit the topic of British...
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Noah Smith: Japanese and American politics
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Today Razib talks to , an American economist-turned-blogger known for his commentary on economics and public policy. His blog, , is one of the most popular on Substack. He earned a PhD in economics at University of Michigan and served as an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University before leaving academia to become a full-time writer. He wrote a column for Bloomberg until 2021, when he turned his focus entirely to independent writing and his Substack newsletter. Smith is based out of San Francisco but spends part of the year in Japan. An enthusiast for...
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Coltan Scrivner: the evolution and psychology of horror
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Today, Razib talks to , a behavioral scientist, horror entertainment producer, and author, whose work centers on the psychological and evolutionary roots of our fascination with darkness, horror, and true crime. He is affiliated with the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. Scrivner also serves as the executive director of the Nightmare in the Ozarks Film Festival and founded the Eureka Springs Zombie Crawl. He has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, TIME Magazine, National Geographic, Scientific...
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Nate Soares: we are doomed (probably)
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Today Razib talks to Nate Soares the President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). He joined MIRI in 2014 and has since authored many of its core technical agendas, including foundational documents like Agent Foundations for Aligning Superintelligence with Human Interests. Prior to his work in AI research, Soares worked as a software engineer at Google. He holds a B.S. in computer science and economics from George Washington University. On this episode they discuss his new book, , co-authored with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Soares and Yudkowsky make the stark case that the...
info_outlineOn this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib welcomes back Ethan Strauss, a writer who has covered sports and culture for the past decade, including in the book The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty. More recently his writing is to be found at his Substack, House of Strauss, which is notable for offering a candid take on the cross-pollination between broader culture and athletics, notably in the piece Nike's End of Men: Why Nike no longer wants us to Be Like Mike.
Strauss and Razib first discuss professional sports and the different representation of various nationalities. Strauss recounts the generational attempt by the NBA to get Chinese representation to gin up a lucrative rivalry, and how it sputtered due to the reality that 1.4 billion Han Chinese seem to have less basketball talent than small nations like Croatia. Razib also asks about how and why baseball is popular in parts of Latin America and East Asia, and why there are so many more Dominicans in MLB than Mexicans. Strauss says differences between populations are so obvious in sports there’s no need for complex social explanations.
Then they explore the role of DEI in professional sports, and especially the NBA, and how it might be impacting decisions in the league. They recall the years around 2020, when a drive for minority representation, and in particular of blacks, was prevalent across the corporate world, and how thatimpacted professional sports. Strauss then offers his theory for why the Dallas Mavericks inexplicably traded away a potentially generational talent, Luka Dončić, and Mark Cuban’s role in the choice. Finally, he highlights the racism that Jeremy Lin, one of the few Asian American stars in the 2010’s, faced from fellow players.