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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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32 episodes
Avg 30 min
English

Episodes 32

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Monday · 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?
August 17 · 30 min
Can these corals take the heat?
Warming waters are an existential threat to coral reefs, and for people who want to restore them. But in the Republic of Palau, researchers are testing out an approach to help restored reefs survive hotter temperatures — before it's too late.
August 10 · 27 min
Why Hank Green takes pseudoscience seriously
Dismissing pseudoscience is too easy.
August 5 · 39 min
A trip to the twilight reefs
Down beneath the waves, where the light starts to fade, there's an ecosystem scientists don't fully understand.
August 3 · 27 min
The hidden world that birds see
Birds navigate using Earth’s magnetic field, but scientists still don’t know how they actually sense it.
July 29 · 44 min
The Godzilla El Niño
This global weather phenomenon could help make 2027 the hottest year on record.
July 27 · 30 min
An argument for the sun
It can be hard to know how to interact with the sun.
July 22 · 25 min
What the Odyssey is hiding
The Late Bronze Age, when the Trojan War supposedly took place, was way more modern than Homer made it seem.
July 20 · 31 min
Dinosaur mysteries with Riley Black
How do we know what we know about dinosaurs?
July 15 · 32 min
When doctors don't know what's wrong
A 2015 review found that most people in the US will experience a diagnostic error in their lifetime.
July 13 · 32 min
Are you a lyric person or a music person?
When people listen to songs, why do some people pay more attention to the music, and some people pay more attention to the lyrics?

Showing 1–20 of 32 episodes