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.