Best Protos Learning Podcasts (2025)

1
Laura Spinney: rise of the proto-Indo-Europeans 1:01:18

15d ago1:01:18

1:01:18

Today Razib talks to Laura Spinney, Paris-based British author of the forthcoming Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. A science journalist, translator and author of both fiction and non-fiction, she has written for Nature, National Geographic, The Economist, New Scientist, and The Guardian. Spinney is the author of two novels, Doctor and T…

1
Ethan Strauss: sports and the end of the culture wars

15h ago

—

On this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib welcomes back Ethan Strauss, a writer who has covered sports and culture for the past decade, including in the book The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty. More recently his writing is to be found at his Substack, House of Strauss, which is notable for offerin…

1
Noah Carl and Bo Winegard: probing the intellectual darker web 1:54:24

1d ago1:54:24

1:54:24

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Bo Winegard and Noah Carl, the editors behind the online publication Aporia Magazine, founded in 2022. Winegard and Carl are both former academics. Winegard has a social psychology Ph.D. from Florida State University, and was an assistant professor at Marietta College. He was an editor at Qui…

1
Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith, "Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter" (MIT Press, 2025) 45:48

2d ago45:48

45:48

Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, how did people secure their private letters? The answer is letterlocking—the ingenious process of securing a letter using a combination of folds, tucks, slits, or adhesives such as sealing wax, so that it becomes its own envelope. This almost entirely forgotten practice, used by historical f…

1
Vote for the Best Of Everything 2025! 2:42

2d ago2:42

2:42

Vote for your favorite topics at LetsLearnEverything.com/bestof before Sunday June 8th!!!By Tom Lum

1
Laura Otis, "Banned Emotions: How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel" (Oxford UP, 2019) 35:21

4d ago35:21

35:21

Who benefits and who loses when emotions are described in particular ways? How do metaphors such as "hold on" and "let go" affect people's emotional experiences? Banned Emotions: How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel (Oxford UP, 2019), written by neuroscientist-turned-literary scholar Laura Otis, draws on the latest research in neuroscience and …

1
Tim Lee: 2025 and the driverless car revolution 55:46

7d ago55:46

55:46

Today Razib talks to Tim Lee, a previous guest on Unsupervised Learning. Lee hosts Understanding AI. Lee covered tech more generally for a decade for Washington Post, Ars Technica, and Vox.com. He has a master's degree in computer science from Princeton. Lee writes extensively about general AI issues, from Deep Research’s capabilities to the state …

1
Manvir Singh: the shamanic roots of all religion

9d ago

—

Today Razib talks to Manvir Singh about shamanism, religion and anthropology. Singh is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. An artist and essayist, he is also now a regular contributor to The New Yorker. His academic interests lie in explaining why most human societies, from preliterate foragers to urbanite…

1
85: David Bennett & Why Humans Like Harmony in Music 1:28:39

10d ago1:28:39

1:28:39

What is it about harmonies in music that just sounds so good? Can science (and our amazing musical guest David Bennet) help us get to the bottom of it? Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:06:24) Why do we like Harmony? (00:56:10) Our Music Theory Questions (01:24:04) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership! Join our Discord! We also learn about: Li…

1
Bonus monologue: Finland as Germania 23:58

11d ago23:58

23:58

This podcast accompanies my post Germans are from Finland, Finns are from Yakutia. The two preprints at the heart of this post are, Postglacial genomes from foragers across Northern Eurasia reveal prehistoric mobility associated with the spread of the Uralic and Yeniseian languages and Steppe Ancestry in Western Eurasia and the Spread of the German…

1
Timothy A. Lee, "The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible: The New Testament" (Gorgias Press, 2023) 30:41

14d ago30:41

30:41

This is the first Syriac reader for the New Testament. It guides the reader through the Syriac New Testament Peshitta, glossing the uncommon words and parsing difficult word forms. It is designed for two groups of people. First, for students learning Syriac after a years’ worth of study this series provides the material to grow in reading ability f…

1
Noah Carl and Bo Winegard: probing the intellectual darker web

15d ago

—

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Bo Winegard and Noah Carl, the editors behind the online publication Aporia Magazine, founded in 2022. Winegard and Carl are both former academics. Winegard has a social psychology Ph.D. from Florida State University, and was an assistant professor at Marietta College. He was an editor at Qui…

1
Bonus monologue: man the hybrid monster 19:35

20d ago19:35

19:35

Today, Razib talks about a new paper, A structured coalescent model reveals deep ancestral structure shared by all modern humans: Understanding the history of admixture events and population size changes leading to modern humans is central to human evolutionary genetics. Here we introduce a coalescence-based hidden Markov model, cobraa, that explic…

1
John Sailer: a time of troubles in higher education 1:22:25

22d ago1:22:25

1:22:25

On this episode of the podcast Razib talks to John Sailer. Sailer is currently the director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He covers issues of academic freedom, free speech, and ideological capture in higher education. Sailer has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Free Press and Tablet Magazine. Sai…

1
Tim Lee: 2025 and the driverless car revolution

22d ago

—

Today Razib talks to Tim Lee, a previous guest on Unsupervised Learning. Lee hosts Understanding AI. Lee covered tech more generally for a decade for Washington Post, Ars Technica, and Vox.com. He has a master's degree in computer science from Princeton. Lee writes extensively about general AI issues, from Deep Research’s capabilities to the state …

1
84: Tree Talk & Trading Card Art 1:40:13

24d ago1:40:13

1:40:13

Can trees talk to each other? And how does that personifying metaphor square with the actual science behind it? And what can we learn from the stories of art on trading cards throughout history? Images we Talk About: Trade Cards 3 Modern Trading Cards Yuka Morii's Cards Terror Hyalopterus Lemure Preposterous Proportions Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro…

1
Bonus monologue: Finland as Germania

25d ago

—

This podcast accompanies my post Germans are from Finland, Finns are from Yakutia. The two preprints at the heart of this post are, Postglacial genomes from foragers across Northern Eurasia reveal prehistoric mobility associated with the spread of the Uralic and Yeniseian languages and Steppe Ancestry in Western Eurasia and the Spread of the German…

1
Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025) 45:26

29d ago45:26

45:26

While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, invented over three thousand years ago, are today used by well over a billion people to write Chinese and Japanese. In medieval East Asia, the written Classical Chinese language knit the region together in …

1
Jacob Shell: academia must diversify or die 1:43:54

30d ago1:43:54

1:43:54

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Jacob Shell. Shell is a professor of geography at Temple University and author of Transportation and Revolt: Pigeons, Mules, Canals, and the Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants. Educated at Columbia and Syracuse universities, Shell is active on social media, where h…

1
Laura Spinney: rise of the proto-Indo-Europeans

1M ago

—

Today Razib talks to Laura Spinney, Paris-based British author of the forthcoming Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. A science journalist, translator and author of both fiction and non-fiction, she has written for Nature, National Geographic, The Economist, New Scientist, and The Guardian. Spinney is the author of two novels, Doctor and T…

1
Matt Welch: from blog pioneer to podcasting mainstay 1:28:10

1M ago1:28:10

1:28:10

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Matt Welch. He co-founded the Prague-based newspaper Prognosis in the early 1990’s and later worked as an opinion section editor for the Los Angeles Times. From 2008-2016, Welch served as editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, where he currently holds the position of editor-at-large. He co-author…

1
Bonus monologue: ancient North Africans and the Green Sahara 18:12

1M ago18:12

18:12

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib comments on a new paper in Nature, Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara reveals ancestral North African lineage. Here is the abstract: Although it is one of the most arid regions today, the Sahara Desert was a green savannah during the African Humid Period (AHP) between 14,500 and 5,000 years before prese…

51
The Case for ASL Instruction for Hearing Heritage Signers 33:27

1M ago33:27

33:27

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with Associate Professor Su Kyong Isakson (Community College of Baltimore County, USA) about her 2018 paper, The Case for Heritage ASL Instruction for Hearing Heritage Signers. The conversation focuses on heritage signers, differentiated instruction, and sign language interpr…

51
Laura Spinney, "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 55:44

1M ago55:44

55:44

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a…

1
Bonus monologue: man the hybrid monster

1M ago

—

Today, Razib talks about a new paper, A structured coalescent model reveals deep ancestral structure shared by all modern humans: Understanding the history of admixture events and population size changes leading to modern humans is central to human evolutionary genetics. Here we introduce a coalescence-based hidden Markov model, cobraa, that explic…

51
Lorna Gibb, "Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages" (Princeton UP, 2025) 39:47

1M ago39:47

39:47

An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life. Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages (Princeton University Press, 2025) tells the stories of the w…

1
John Sailer: a time of troubles in higher education

1M ago

—

On this episode of the podcast Razib talks to John Sailer. Sailer is currently the director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He covers issues of academic freedom, free speech, and ideological capture in higher education. Sailer has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Free Press and Tablet Magazine. Sai…

1
83: The Most Boring Element & Solving Shakespeare's Accent 1:32:48

1M ago1:32:48

1:32:48

What is the most boring element, and just how boring could it possibly be? Turns out: VERY! And how can we decipher what Shakespeare sounded like, and who among us can lay claim to his accent? Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:52) The Most Boring Element (00:48:53) Solving Shakespeare's Accent (01:26:37) Outro Support us with a Max Fun Membership…

1
Andrew Song: cooling the planet with technology 55:04

1M ago55:04

55:04

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Andrew Song, co-founder of Make Sunsets. An NYU graduate with a degree in economics, Song was a member of the Y Combinator class of winter 2016. Before becoming a founder, Song worked at firms involved in data analytics and artificial intelligence. A repeat attendee at the Founders Fund “Here…

1
Christian Ilbury, "Researching Language and Digital Communication" (Routledge, 2025) 44:32

1M ago44:32

44:32

Brynn Quick speaks with Dr Christian Ilbury about his new book, Researching Language and Digital Communication: A Student Guide, published by Routledge. The book is an introduction to research on language and digital communication, providing an overview of relevant sociolinguistic concepts, analytical frameworks, and methodological approaches commo…

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