Stay ConnectedUnexplainable takes listeners right up to the edge of what we know…and then keeps on going. The Unexplainable team — Noam Hassenfeld, Julia Longoria, Byrd Pinkerton, and Meradith Hoddinott — tackles scientific mysteries, unanswered questions, and everything we learn diving into the unknown. New episodes Mondays and Wednesdays.
From Vox and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Copyright: © 2021 Vox Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
When things fall into bogs, they sometimes wind up being beautifully preserved. This includes bodies, sometimes dating back thousands of years. We’re still trying to understand who was buried in the bogs and why.
Guest: Anna North, journalist and author of Bog Queen
To watch this episode on video, find us on Netflix!
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email.
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Once upon a time (around 300 million years ago), Earth was home to massive dragonfly-like insects and two meter long millipede-like creatures. Why did they die off?
Guests: Ned Snelling, professor of experimental physiology at the University of Pretoria; Jon Harrison, professor of environmental physiology at Arizona State University
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email.
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Five-sixths of all the matter in the universe is this invisible stuff called dark matter, and scientists barely understand what it is. So what happens if we can't answer arguably the biggest mystery in the universe? One physicist decided to quit because he started asking questions that went way beyond what he initially thought science was for.
Guest: Joseph Howlett, reporter at Scientific American
To watch this episode on video, find us on Netflix!
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
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It's a question that seems impossible to grapple with, but scientists won't take no for an answer. In this collaboration with Scientific American, we take on the big bang and a whole bunch of seemingly impossible questions.
Guests: Rachel Feltman, host of the Science Quickly podcast; Sarah Scoles, senior contributor at Scientific American
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
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An astrophysicist uses the motion of the stars to argue that a single story has been told for 100,000 years. A cognitive anthropologist has questions.
Guests: Ray Norris, astrophysicist; Manvir Singh, cognitive anthropologist at the University of California, Davis
To watch this episode on video, find us on Netflix!
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email.
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When scientists write their own rules for life, how do they know what could go wrong before it’s too late?
This is the final episode of our new three-part series, Life from Scratch.
Guests: Kate Adamala, associate professor at the University of Minnesota; David Relman, professor at Stanford University; John Glass, leader of the JCVI Synthetic Biology Group.
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email.
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Synthetic biologist Kate Adamala has been making major headlines as her lab creates cells that feed, divide, and grow — all from nonliving parts. It may sound like sci-fi, but Kate believes that these “not quite alive” cells are key to a renewable future.
This is the second episode of our new three-part series, Life from Scratch.
To watch this episode on video, find us on Netflix!
Guests: Kate Adamala, associate professor at the University of Minnesota
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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Scientists stripped a cell down to its most essential genes in order to find out what makes life...alive. What they found was more bizarre than they could have imagined.
This is the first episode of our new three-part series, Life from Scratch.
Guests: Kate Adamala, associate professor at the University of Minnesota; John Glass, leader of the JCVI Synthetic Biology Group.
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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A few hundred milliseconds are often all you need to recognize a song, but a lot of recent hits have moved away from intros. Our friends at Switched on Pop (along with the National's Aaron Dessner) break down how song intros can shape our perception and what we lose when they disappear.
To watch this episode on video, find us on Netflix!
Guests: Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan, hosts of Switched on Pop; Aaron Dessner, producer, songwriter, and member of the National; Grace Spelman, music writer
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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And if babies forget their earliest experiences, do they still matter?
This episode is a collaboration with Vox's Explain It to Me podcast
Guests: Kristin Ohlson, writer; Tristan Yates, cognitive psychologist at Columbia University; Dana Suskind, professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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