This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib and Spencer talk about the coronavirus pandemic, a status update on their discussion from February. Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019: a model-based analysis Johns Hopkins COVID-19 website Epidemic Calculator Visualization of the COVID-19 pandemic spread Spencer’s piece for MIT Tech Review and podcast for Texas Monthly

The Insight Show Notes — Season 3, Episode 3: 3,000 years in the Levant This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib talks to Marc Haber of the University of Birmingham about the genetics and history of the Levant. First, we talked about the paper Genome-Wide Diversity in the Levant Reveals Recent Structuring by Culture. Though the various communities…

The Insight Show Notes — Season 3, Episode 2 This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib and Spencer make ten predictions about what genetics might discover and do in the 2020s (though they do express some disagreement on the details!). DNA sequencing will be free, interpretation automated and cheap, and everyone in the…

The Insight Show Notes — Season 3, Episode 1: the decade in review in human evolution and genetics This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib and Spencer kick-off season 3 with a mega-episode reflecting on ten years in human genetics and evolution!

This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib talks to Dr. Torsten Gunther about the genetics of ancient Scandinavians. There are a host of papers one could read to get a sense of this topic: Origins and genetic legacy of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in…

One of the most curious aspects of our species, in particular, modern humanity, is our tendency to wander, to push the limits of habitation beyond reason for rhyme. Humans have been using tools for millions of years, and Neanderthals likely engaged in symbolic cognition and were capable of speech. But…

Ancient DNA has transformed our understanding of the biological past. The sequencing of mammoths, moa, and Neanderthal have opened up a window upon evolution which we had previously only perceived through material remains. …

This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts) Razib talks to Dr. Frido Welker, a pioneer in the field of ancient protein phylogenetic analysis of human remains. …

In the 1960s the average American man weighed 166 pounds. Today, the average American man weighs 195 pounds. In the 1960s the average American woman weighed 140 pounds. Today, the average American woman weighs 166 pounds. According to the CDC, nearly 40% of Americans age 20 or above are obese…