Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

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.

On 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.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks again with Washington Post columnist and repeat guest Shadi Hamid (listen to previous episodes). 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 Wisdom of Crowds podcast and website with Damir Marusic, and now the author of his own Substack and a recent book, The Case For American Power. Hamid is also the author of The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea. , Temptations of Power: Islamists & Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East and Rethinking Political Islam. Before moving the discussion to The Case For American Power, Razib asks Hamid about his current positioning on the American political landscape with the emergence of the hard-right during the second Trump administration. Hamid admits that during the "woke era" he wasn't sure about his place on the Left as a progressive due to his misgivings with racial identarianism, but with the rise of white nationalism on the Right and the executive decisions of the Trump administration Hamid finds himself more comfortable saying he is a progressive. Racism and the passions unleashed by the Israel-Palestine conflict since 10/7 have made Hamid reevaluate the virtues of some level of wokeness. Pivoting to foreign policy, Razib and Hamid discuss his new book, and its positioning within a political landscape that ranges from neconservatism, liberal internationalism and isolationism of all sorts. Despite Hamid's misgivings of some aspects of American culture and the nation's past political sins, he asserts (unlike the far Left) that overall America is a force for good, and that it should exercise its power to spread its vision of morality across the world. The Case For American Power is an attempt to articulate a liberal and progressive internationalist vision for 2025, decades after the failed Iraqi intervention. Hamid also addresses the sea-change on the progressive side of American politics when it comes to Israel, admitting he feels much freer to express skepticism or critiques of Israeli policy than he had in previous eras.

On this episode, Razib talks to Vishal Ganesan and Anang Mittal, 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 "Hindoo History" 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 professional who recently worked for Senator Mitch McConnell. Mittal grew up in India before moving to the US at a young age about 25 years ago. Ganesan, in contrast, was born to an earlier generation of Indian immigrants to the US. He grew up north of Austin, TX. Though their perspectives differ, they both believe that Hinduism and Indian-American identity cannot simply be ported over with no changes into the American cultural landscape. The conversation is centered on two essays, Ganesan's The Meaning and Limits of "Hinduphobia" Discourse in the Diaspora and Mittal's What Hindu Americans Must Build. While Ganesan explores and articulates what it means to be Indian-American and Hindu today in America, and what might mean in the future, Mittal's argument is framed by a deep understanding of American history and how Hindus fit into the bigger arc of history. Razib, Ganesan and Mittal discuss the past, present, and potential future of Hindus and Indians, two separate categories, in America over the course of two hours. Their discussion was triggered by the online controversy over the fact that Vice President J. D. Vance's wife is a Hindu, and he has encouraged her to convert to his Roman Catholic religion (in which their children are being raised). But the discussion extends far beyond matters of contemporary politics, probing what it means to be American, and what it could mean to be a Hindu.

On this very special episode, Razib talks to paleoanthroplogists John Hawks and Chris Stringer. Hawks is a paleoanthropologist who has been a researcher and commentator in human evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology for over two decades. With a widely read weblog (now on Substack), a book on Homo naledi, and highly cited scientific papers, 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 studied under Milford Wolpoff. He is currently working on a textbook on the origins of modern humans in their evolutionary context. Hawks has already been a guest on Unsupervised Learning three times. Chris Stringer is affiliated with the Natural History Museum in London. Stringer is the author of African Exodus. The Origins of Modern Humanity, Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth and Homo Britannicus - The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain. A proponent since the 1970's of the recent African origin of modern humans, he has also for decades been at the center of debates around our species' relationship to Neanderthals. In the 1980's, with the rise to prominence of the molecular model of "mtDNA Eve," Stringer came to the fore as a paleoanthropological voice lending support to the genetic insights that pointed to our African origins. Trained as an anatomist, Stringer asserted that the fossil evidence was in alignment with the mtDNA phylogenies, a contention that has been broadly confirmed over the last five decades. Razib, Hawks and Stringer discuss the latest work that has come out of Yuxian, China, and how it updates our understanding of human morphological diversity, and integrate it with the newest findings about Denisovans from whole genome sequencing. They talk about how we exist at a junction, with more and more data, but theories that are becoming more and more rickety in terms of explaining the patterns we see. Hawks talks about the skewing effect of selection on phylogenetic trees, while Stringer addresses the complexity of the fossil record in East Asia.