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).

Episode ID: 1000752116228

GUID: b5db683d-08f9-45bc-b1b1-e9212039f01e

Release Date: 28/02/2026, 21:05:00

Description

Razib Khan engages a diverse array of thinkers on all topics under the sun. Genetics, history, and politics. See: http://razib.substack.com/

Feed URL

https://unsupervisedlearning.libsyn.com/rss

Apple Podcasts: Customer Reviews

2026-02-20

Hard but rewarding

If someone created a word cloud of these podcasts top three terms would be:

1. Yeah

2. Whatever

3. (Indecipherable Crosstalk)

2024-06-08

Good stuff

I’ve been listening to Razib for a few months, despite not being related to genomics or history at all and not living in the US. Initially, I was pulled in by interesting and entertaining conversation. Since then I’ve come to appreciate the breadth and depth of the podcast: discussions about ai, politics, child education, economic modeling; always interesting guests. I also get a lot of book recommendations from this

2024-02-10

What is a podcast?

Razib is a fascinating thinker that specialises on paleogenetics and popgenomics although the sheer breadth of his interests and knowledge is beyond any review. It spills over onto cultural wars, religion and politics in general. If you have a curious mind but also seek and crave in depth analysis of cultural, political and genetic issues, you are in the right place.

2023-08-28

Breadth and Depth

Razib has his finger on the pulse of a broad array of disciplines. He interviews a diverse group of writers, scholars, and scientists from many different fields. His style is accessible to a lay audience, while going beyond much of what’s presented in the popular press. Highly recommended for anyone interested in history, genomics, and social science.

2023-02-24

Good content bad production

I've followed Khan's writing and tweets and I am a fan. However, this podcast is variably unlistenable due to horrendous audio mixing.

2022-08-23

Highly Recommended

Razib’s conversations can be very interesting with guests from many different backgrounds, fields, professions and points of view

2021-03-20

Came for the ancient DNA, stayed for the breadth of quality guests and discussion

If you like Sam Harris’s Waking Up podcast then give Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning a shot - the quality of the guests and broad, long-form discussion is of a similar quality.

Razib’s background is in genetics but his guests span a wide range of fields such as history and politics - with geneticists also being a significant minority - and conversations consistently go deep into some fascinating topics.