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.
Latest episodes
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25 min
How does creativity work?
You know that feeling when time and space melt away and new ideas seem to flow through you? Neuroscientist Heather Berlin explains what we know about how creative flow states might…
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22 min
Spider Web 2.0
Spider silk can be stronger than steel by weight and tougher than Kevlar. Can scientists make their own? Guest: Greg Holland, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemis…
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26 min
The wild orchid mystery
More than just beautiful flowers, wild orchids have been confounding scientists for years. Our friends at Sidedoor — a podcast from the Smithsonian — set out to find a rare specime…
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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 su…
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36 min
Talking with the dead
“If only I could talk with them again.” It’s a common refrain for anyone who is grieving someone they love. Now, we can access technology like deadbots, or AI replicas of a lost lo…
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29 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. The quest to build these super refrigerators…
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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? Guests: Amelia Meath, songwriter and singer in Sylvan Esso; Elizabeth Margulis, director of the Music Co…
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28 min
What color is a tennis ball?
Is it yellow? Is it green? Or what if, as one scientist argues, “there’s no such thing as a color?” Guest: Bevil Conway, visual artist and neuroscientist at the National Eye Instit…
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26 min
The bodies buried in the bog
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…
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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? Guests: Ned Sne…
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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. So what happens if we can't answer arguably t…
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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. In this collaboration with Scientific American, we take on the big bang and a who…
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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. A cognitive anthropologist has questions. Guests: Ray Norris, astrophys…
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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? This is the final episode of our new three-part series, Life from Scratch…
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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. It may sound like sci-fi, but Kate…
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30 min
Life from scratch
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 th…
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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. Our friends at Switched on Pop (along with the Nation…
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27 min
Why can’t I remember being a baby?
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 Y…
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31 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 rest…
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27 min
Why Hank Green takes pseudoscience seriously
Dismissing pseudoscience is too easy. Understanding why it spreads so quickly is harder. It can teach us why real science works and how to spot the difference between the two. To w…