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Alina Chan is a post-doctoral fellow at the Broad Institute. Since the spring of 2020 Chan has been prominent in online (and “offline”) discussions as to the nature of the origins of SARS-Cov-2. Her argument is that there needs to be more openness to alternative possibilities of the origin of SARS-Cov-2. She is a co-author on two preprints related to SARS-Cov-2: SARS-CoV-2 is well adapted for humans. What does this mean for re-emergence? Single source of pangolin CoVs with a near identical Spike RBD to SARS-CoV-2

Armand Marie Leroi is the author of Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body and The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. An evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London, Leroi has tackled race and eugenics, as well as published on the cultural evolution of music and the neutral theory of evolution. In a wide-ranging conversation, we discuss his attempts to tackle the concepts of race and eugenics as a public intellectual, his exploration of cultural evolution, and finally, the impact of the rise of “woke culture” has had on free inquiry in the United Kingdom Leroi is one of those intellectuals who should be better known, with his wide-ranging and always cogent commentaries on genetics, culture, and policy.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning I talk at length with Samo Burja, a public intellectual who focuses on the insights that history can provide to the present and future. To be frank, Samo is one of the most historically literate people I’ve ever met. This probably explains how we could talk so easily for well over an hour on topics as diverse as Confucianism, “social technology”, and the European view of America and China (the last might surprise you!).

Dr. Jeremy Kamil is a virologist in the LSU system. He is one of the people I have encountered over the last year whose opinion I’ve learned to take to heart. Not because Jeremy holds forth from on high, but because he doesn’t. As you will hear in this conversation, he is candid about how little he truly knew at the beginning of 2020. A world transformed by COVID-19 has also seen a world of pundits and commentators rewriting history, testifying to their foresight. Masks are useless until they’re not.

Razib talks to political analyst David Shor.

Razib talks to archaeologists Eric Cline about his book 1177, and the end of the Bronze Age.

Razib discusses the life and times of Charles Murray. They explore Murray's upbringing, time in Thailand, and his perspective on the USA today.

On this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, I talk to Anders Bergstrom about the new paper in Science, Origins and genetic legacy of prehistoric dogs, on which he is the first author.