Eric Cline: Love, War and Diplomacy, international relations in the Bronze Age
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Release Date: 01/09/2026
Chris Masterjohn: COVID-19 to mitochondrial health, communicating and applying "the science"
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Today, Razib talks to , 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 , 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...
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Mike White: academia and genomics in the 21st century
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to , 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...
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Aaron Renn: Heartland urbanism and leaving Left Behind behind
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to . Renn is a , consultant, and known for his work on the challenges facing American cities and religious institutions in the 21st century. He is a contributor to and the author of , a book exploring the cultural shifts regarding Christianity in America. Renn previously served as a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for five years and as a contributing editor for City Journal, having established his voice on urban policy through his widely cited blog, . Prior to his career in...
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Daniel Tabin: ancient DNA, the good, bad and ugly
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to , a 5th-year Ph.D. student in in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. His research focuses on using ancient and modern DNA to answer questions about human history. Tabin completed a degree in Computer Science and Math and Master’s in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He Ph.D. project involves the population genetic history of Central and East Asia. First, Razib and Tabin discuss he co-authored that looks at problematic results in the paleogenetic literature due to contamination...
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Peter Nimitz: the story of the Slavs
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to about . His Substack, titled , explores world history through the lenses of archaeology, paleogenetics, and historical processes. His writing focuses on "deep history," such as the Bronze Age Collapse and the migration of Indo-European peoples, while connecting these ancient shifts to broader patterns of civilizational rise and fall. Nimitz often integrates technical data from genetics and climate science to challenge traditional narratives about nomadic tribes and early state formations across Eurasia....
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Jesse Arm: Gen Z Republicans and their views
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode Razib talks to , VP of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute. His writing and commentary have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, New York Post, Fox News, City Journal and Jerusalem Post. Arm graduated with honors from the University of Michigan, where he majored in international political economy, and studied language and international affairs at Tel Aviv University. He has also worked for Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Dan Benishek, and the analytics arm of American Continental Group, a major...
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Davide Piffer: how Europeans became white
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to , whose Substack examines genetic differences between populations. Piffer on human genetic variation for a decade, and recently started a Substack, , exploring similar issues in detail over a series of posts. Razib asks Piffer about the difficulties in analyzing polygenic scores from quantitative traits in ancient DNA samples. How does he do in technical terms, from genome quality to imputation to ancient populations from modern ones? Then, they discuss some of Piffer’s findings, in particular, his work...
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Aneil Mallavarapu: why machine intelligence will never be conscious
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Today Razib talks to , a scientist and technology leader based in Austin, Texas, whose career bridges the fields of biochemistry, systems biology, and software engineering. He earned his doctorate in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California, and has held academic positions at Harvard Medical School, where he contributed to the Department of Systems Biology and developed the "Little b" programming language. Mallavarapu has transitioned from academic research into the tech and venture capital sectors, co-founding ventures such as Precise.ly and DeepDialog, and...
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Richard Hanania: his break with the Right and the rise of kakistocracy
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode Razib, talks to , a . Hanania holds a Ph.D. from UCLA, a J.D. from the University of Chicago, and an undergraduate degree from CU Boulder in linguistics. He is a regular contributor to the and , and has . Hanania is also the author of . Razib and Hanania talk about his new book , and his developing views on populism and immigration. They highlight the rise of populism on the Right, the rejection of cognitive elitism, and the impact of social media on political discourse. Hanania criticizes the far-right’s nativism,...
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Francis Young: Baltic paganism in modern times
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
On this episode, Razib talks to ,, a historian who teaches at Oxford. Young specialises in the history of religion and belief from ancient times to the present day, and provides expert indexes for academic books and translates medieval and early modern Latin. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University and is the author, editor or co-author of . On his last visit to the , he discussed his book , an account of the practices and persistence of Baltic paganism down to the 16th-century, the age of the Renaissance and Reformation. Today he discusses his new book, . Razib and...
info_outlineOn this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib again talks to George Washington University archaeologist Eric Cline. The author of 1177 B.C. - The Year Civilization Collapsed and After 1177 B.C. - The Survival of Civilizations, Cline has a new book out, Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed. While 1177 B.C. closed with the end of the first global civilization, that of the Eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Bronze Age, and After 1177 B.C. tells the story of those who picked up the pieces, Love, War, and Diplomacy puts the spotlight on the Late Bronze Age at its peak.
Razib and Cline discuss the two major threads in Love, War, and Diplomacy: the decipherment of cuneiform and the emergence of the field of Assyriology, and the diplomatic world of Bronze Age Great Powers. Cline addresses the reality that 19th-century archaeology was not an idealized enterprise, and scholars had to compete with treasure hunters, and negotiate difficult nationalist sensitivities. He also explains how they deciphered cuneiform decades after hieroglyphs, providing an alternative view of the earliest antiquity. The discussion then focuses on the intricate and tense relationship between Egypt, Assyria, the Hittites, and the Mitanni. Cline also highlights the reality that the Amarna Letters also shed light on the bickering between the petty states of the Levant and their relationship to their hegemon, Egypt.