Unexplainable
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.
1
How does creativity work?
You know that feeling when time and space melt away and new ideas seem to flow through you?
22 min
2
Spider Web 2.0
Spider silk can be stronger than steel by weight and tougher than Kevlar.
19 min
3
The wild orchid mystery
More than just beautiful flowers, wild orchids have been confounding scientists for years.
23 min
4
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.
25 min
5
Talking with the dead
“If only I could talk with them again.”
36 min
6
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.
26 min
7
How does music move us? (feat. Sylvan Esso's Am...
Music can give us goosebumps. It can make us cry. It can make us move. How?
30 min
8
What color is a tennis ball?
Is it yellow? Is it green?
25 min
9
The bodies buried in the bog
When things fall into bogs, they sometimes wind up being beautifully preserved. T
23 min
10
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?
24 min
11
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.
32 min
12
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.
23 min
13
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.
24 min
14
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?
33 min
15
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.
31 min
16
Life from scratch
Scientists stripped a cell down to its most essential genes in order to find out what makes life...alive.
27 min
17
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.
41 min
18
Why can’t I remember being a baby?
And if babies forget their earliest experiences, do they still matter?
24 min
19
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.
28 min
20
Why Hank Green takes pseudoscience seriously
Dismissing pseudoscience is too easy.
24 min
21
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.
37 min
22
The hidden world that birds see
Birds navigate using Earth’s magnetic field, but scientists still don’t know how they actually sense it.
25 min
23
The Godzilla El Niño
This global weather phenomenon could help make 2027 the hottest year on record.
40 min
24
An argument for the sun
It can be hard to know how to interact with the sun.
28 min
25
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.
22 min