Chad Orzel: the state of physics and academia in 2025
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Release Date: 09/30/2025
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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....
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outlineChad Orzel is a physicist and science writer who has been blogging for nearly twenty-five years. He’s the author of four books, Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects, How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist and A Brief History of Timekeeping. The last is a mix of cultural and engineering history, archeology and physics, and reflects Orzel’s wide interests as reflected in his Substack, Counting Atoms.
In this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib surveys the state of physics communication and science, as well as our broader culture’s relationship with academia. Orzel and Razib first discuss the massive success of physicist-turned-YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder. Emerging from academic physics and associated with Lee Smolin and the Perimeter Institute, Hossenfelder has shifted from skepticism of mainstream theories like string theory to arguing that academic science as a whole must be restructured. Orzel also notes that contrarian or heterodox views in popular areas such as astrophysics and particle physics receive much more attention than applied fields like solid-state physics. Razib and Orzel reflect on how science communication has changed over the past two decades, moving from the text-driven blog era before 2010 to the rise of podcasts and video. They also discuss the many technological applications of physics in the 21st century, particularly in battery technology, an area that is transforming daily life but rarely serves as fodder for glossy popular-press treatments.
In the second half of the podcast, Orzel considers how science, and academia more broadly, have navigated the adversarial stance of the Trump administration. Razib asks whether institutional science, shaped in the post–World War II era, may be due for a major transformation, or whether it is even approaching the end of its line. Finally, Orzel addresses whether academics can regain broad public trust in the wake of the extreme politicization of the 2010s.
