On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Aaron Renn. Renn is a writer, consultant, and urban analyst known for his work on the challenges facing American cities and religious institutions in the 21st century. He is a contributor to The American Reformer and the author of Life in the Negative World, 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, The Urbanophile. Prior to his career in public policy and journalism, he spent 15 years in management and technology consulting, including a tenure as a partner at Accenture.

Before getting into the meat of the discussion, Renn and Razib discuss management consulting and the value that a firm like Accenture provides a corporation. Razib wonders whether consultants are simply brought in to rubber-stamp what management has already concluded, but is aiming to pin the blame on an external actor (e.g., layoffs). Renn argues that this is not the case, and in fact, though he acknowledges that management consultants provide an outsider view unencumbered by internal politics that allows them to be taken more seriously. They also discuss the impact of AI on some services that management consultants provide, and the future of white-collar work.

Then Renn goes on an extended riff on the rise and fall, and possible new rise, of the Midwestern social and economic landscape. A native of southern Indiana, Renn has spent time in Chicago and New York before settling down in the affluent suburb of Carmel, Indiana. Razib and Renn discuss the decline of the Northeast and the industrial Heartland, and what makes the Midwest unique, with its origins as part of the original early American republican frontier. Renn discusses candidly the upsides and downsides of living in "flyover country," from its peace and tranquility, to the reality that Midwestern metropolitan areas do not have the same intellectual and cultural dynamism as coastal cities.

Finally, Razib asks Renn, a Protestant Christian who identifies as evangelical, about the cultural and theological shifts occurring on what was once called the Religious Right. Renn argues that this movement's peak was really in the mid-1990's, and the whole thirty-year period since has seen retreat and retrenchment. He believes that Christians have lost control of the cultural narrative and have to accept a position as outsiders. Renn also addresses the decline of premillennial dispensationalism, most famously illustrated in the Left Behind series of the 1990s and early 2000s, and the rise of Christian nationalism, and in particular, the role of Reformed pastor Doug Wilson in this shift.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Daniel Tabin, a 5th-year Ph.D. student in David Reich's lab 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 a recent paper he co-authored that looks at problematic results in the paleogenetic literature due to contamination and DNA damage. Tabin reviews all the processes and analyses that paleogeneticists go through to validate that the ancient DNA data they have is truly ancient, rather than recent contamination, from wet-lab precautions to downstream analysis. Then they dig into the empirical results over the last 15 years from the field of ancient DNA, from what we know (or don't) of the out-of-Africa bottleneck, early modern humans in Asia and how we think about persistent mysteries like "Population Y" in the New World (Population Y is more closely related to Papuans and Andamanese than Northeast Asians).

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Peter Nimitz about the rise of the Slavs. His Substack, titled Nemets, 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. Beyond antiquity, the newsletter also touches on modern geopolitical developments and regional studies, ranging from the war in Ukraine to the cultural history of the Americas.

Razib and Nimitz explore the thousands of years of Slavic history and prehistory, from their fragmentary mentions in antiquity, to their explosion in the Middle Ages. Nimitz discusses the many archaeological cultures in northeastern Europe that might be candidates for the proto-Slavs as they emerged from the Corded Ware Culture during the Bronze Age, as well as the historical, cultural and genetic effects of the Slavic migrations that impacted Christian Europe after 600 AD. He also addresses the role of Slavs as one of Europe's preeminent ethnolinguistic configurations in early modern Europe.

On this episode Razib talks to Jesse Arm, 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 lobbying firm.

Razib and Arm discuss the perceptions and attitudes of Gen Z Republicans, focusing on a group of 18-29-year-olds in Nashville, TN. Arm notes that while Gen Z feels economic anxiety, they are also entrepreneurial and comfortable with the world of social media. Gen Z Republicans are religious, like previous generations, but less likely to be married or have long-term partners at the same age as earlier cohorts. They express a desire for politics to be entertaining, similar to reality TV. The conversation also touches on the influence of social media on their views, the power of influencers like Nick Fuentes, and the potential for future political figures to emerge from the creator class. Arm also addresses the impact of intergenerational wealth transfer on political attitudes.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Davide Piffer, whose Substack examines genetic differences between populations. Piffer has been publishing on human genetic variation for a decade, and recently started a Substack, Piffer Pilfer, 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 on pigmentation. Piffer talks about how he discovered that modern European pigmentation, and in particular, light complexion, is the product of both admixture from different populations with different characteristics and natural selection over the millennia. Piffer talks about how he discovered that selection for lighter pigmentation continued into the Iron Age.

Today Razib talks to Aneil Mallavarapu, 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 currently serving as a Managing Partner at Humain Ventures. He remains active in the scientific community through local initiatives like the Austin Science Network.

Most of the conversation centers around Mallavarapu's arguments outlined in his Substack The Case Against Conscious AI - Why AI consciousness is inconsistent with physics. The core of his argument rests on the "Simultaneity Problem" and the "Hard Problem of Physics," which involve non-locality and the memorylessness of artificial intelligence phenomena. Though Mallavarapu believes that artificial intelligence holds great promise, and perhaps even "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) is feasible, he argues that this is a distinct issue from consciousness, which is a property of human minds. Razib also brings up the inverse case: could it be that many organisms that are not particular intelligence, also have consciousness? What does that imply for ethics of practices like eating meat?

On this episode Razib, talks to Richard Hanania, a returning guest to the podcast. 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 Boston Globe and UnHerd, and has his own newsletter. Hanania is also the author of The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics.

Razib and Hanania talk about his new book Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, 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, particularly against Indian immigrants, and the rise of anti-Semitism, both as a feature of low-IQ populism. They also touch on foreign policy, noting the failures of authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, and the potential for democratic systems to prevail.

Hanania brings up cultural differences, particularly in Asia, and the impact of personality traits on success. They talk about the Big Five personality traits, and note that disagreeableness and low neuroticism are linked to professional success, especially in men. Razib also brings up the 2017 James Damore Google memo controversy, highlighting the cultural and political implications down to the present. Hanania reflects on his experiences with cancel culture and the evolving acceptance of diverse viewpoints. They also discuss the role of Substack in promoting free speech and the challenges faced by platforms in maintaining this principle.

On this episode, Razib talks to returning guest, Francis Young, 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 over 20 books. On his last visit to the podcast, he discussed his book Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic, 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, Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe's Last Pagan Peoples.

Razib and Young first discuss what it means to be "pagan" in a European context, first during Classical Antiquity, but more recently in Northern Europe down to the early modern period. Young discusses how it is difficult to understand and define paganism without reference to Christianity, which was a major force in shaping the nature of pagan religion in Northern Europe. Razib asks about the specific nature of northeast Baltic paganism, and in particular, the late survivals of pre-Christian religion among Lithuanians and Estonians, and the differences between the two groups. Young explains his understanding of different religious practices and the various forms of non-Christian practice that persisted among different groups, including mixed "creole" identities. Razib also inquires about the Mari El, a Finnic group in the Urals that might be the only continuously officially pagan people in Europe, as well as evidence Young reports that Estonian peasants were never truly fully Christianized.