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Unexplainable

Vox

Unexplainable 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.

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42 episodes
Avg 29 min
English

Episodes 42

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Yesterday · 19 min
What are you laughing at?
Scientists are trying to figure out what makes something funny. We compare notes with comedians ⁠⁠Atsuko Okatsuka⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Josh Johnson⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Dulcé Sloan⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠Chris Fleming
Monday · 23 min
Why are we ticklish?
Socrates, Aristotle, Galileo, and Darwin couldn't figure it out. But one scientist has built a tickle robot (named Hektor) to try and settle the mystery of ticklishness once and for all.
October 26 · 24 min
How does creativity work?
You know that feeling when time and space melt away and new ideas seem to flow through you?
October 23 · 21 min
Spider Web 2.0
Spider silk can be stronger than steel by weight and tougher than Kevlar.
October 21 · 25 min
The wild orchid mystery
More than just beautiful flowers, wild orchids have been confounding scientists for years.
October 19 · 28 min
An Alzheimer's breakthrough?
The past few months have been full of Alzheimer's optimism: new ideas that could prevent the disease from taking hold, medications that seem to slow it down, and an experimental surgery that might even be able to reverse its progression.
October 14 · 36 min
Talking with the dead
“If only I could talk with them again.”
October 12 · 28 min
What’s cooler than being cool?
The future of quantum computing depends on getting way colder than ice cold — down to some of the coldest temperatures in the universe.
October 7 · 32 min
How does music move us? (feat. Sylvan Esso's Amelia Meath)
Music can give us goosebumps. It can make us cry. It can make us move. How?
October 5 · 27 min
What color is a tennis ball?
Is it yellow? Is it green?
September 28 · 26 min
The bodies buried in the bog
When things fall into bogs, they sometimes wind up being beautifully preserved. T
September 23 · 27 min
What happened to the giant bugs?
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?
September 21 · 35 min
Dark matter and the end of answers
Five-sixths of all the matter in the universe is this invisible stuff called dark matter, and scientists barely understand what it is.
September 16 · 26 min
What happened before the big bang?
It's a question that seems impossible to grapple with, but scientists won't take no for an answer.
September 14 · 27 min
What's the oldest story ever told?
An astrophysicist uses the motion of the stars to argue that a single story has been told for 100,000 years.
September 2 · 36 min
Stopping the science that could stop the world
When scientists write their own rules for life, how do they know what could go wrong before it’s too late?
August 31 · 34 min
A breakthrough in synthetic life
Synthetic biologist Kate Adamala has been making major headlines as her lab creates cells that feed, divide, and grow — all from nonliving parts.
August 26 · 29 min
Life from scratch
Scientists stripped a cell down to its most essential genes in order to find out what makes life...alive.
August 24 · 44 min
The idea of a song
A few hundred milliseconds are often all you need to recognize a song, but a lot of recent hits have moved away from intros.
August 19 · 26 min
Why can’t I remember being a baby?
And if babies forget their earliest experiences, do they still matter?

Showing 1–20 of 42 episodes