Unexplainable
Channel Details
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 un...
Recent Episodes
267 episodes
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 c...
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...
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 podcas...
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 testin...
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 di...
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. About a decade ago, some researchers l...
The hidden world that birds see
Birds navigate using Earth’s magnetic field, but scientists still don’t know how they actually sense it. Called the holy grail of sensory biology, mag...
The Godzilla El Niño
This global weather phenomenon could help make 2027 the hottest year on record. Our friends at The Gray Area explore what the upcoming El Niño season...
An argument for the sun
It can be hard to know how to interact with the sun. Some people have swung to opposite ends of the spectrum — either over-tanning or avoiding the sun...
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. But around 1177 BCE, a vast network of in...
Dinosaur mysteries with Riley Black
How do we know what we know about dinosaurs? Riley Black takes us back to the Mesozoic Era and explains how paleontologists piece together the lives o...
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. Some of those errors are less devastating than ot...
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? The answer goes way...
Big news!
Unexplainable is coming to Netflix! Starting Monday, July 13.
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscrip...
Are we all living in an enormous black hole?
It’s possible that the entire observable universe is inside a black hole. All we need to do in order to find out is … build a gigantic particle collid...
Risky business
As the world gets warmer and storms get worse, insurance companies are jacking up rates or refusing to cover homeowners altogether. Is the future unin...
A period piece
Periods and menstrual fluid have long been overlooked by scientists. Now, researchers are starting to suspect they might be sources of medical treasur...
Bird people and deep space shrapnel
Two mysteries we can't stop thinking about: Is lightning actually caused by cosmic rays? And why don't birds play chess?
Ar...
Should we really kill all the lanternflies?
When an invasive bug landed on the East Coast, people embraced the order to squish it to death. But what has all that squishing done to us?
Sean tries raw milk
Sean Rameswaram, co-host of Today, Explained, recently went on a dairy adventure. Noam talks to Sean about what he learned, and about why raw milk is...
A new species in New York
Around 90% of life on Earth is unknown. Can Benji find a new species in his backyard?
Guests: Benji Jones, Vox senior corre...
The lost Lyme vaccine
Vijay Sikand is a family doctor in the Connecticut town that gave Lyme disease its name. When a pharmaceutical company came to town to test a vaccine,...
The cells we share
Fetuses leave cells behind in their parents' bodies, where they braid themselves into tissues, and remain, for years. What are they doing in there? (O...
The man who bet against humanity — and lost
Paul Ehrlich was famous for predicting a population explosion that would destroy the planet, but he didn't count on human ingenuity.
Gues...
The aftermath
What would life look like after a global nuclear war? Would underground bunkers work? What would we do for food? What about radioactive snow?! In thi...
A better Black Death story
What happens when researchers reexamine some of the basic facts about the Black Death? They start rewriting history and rethinking blame.
...
Is everything inflammation?
To hear some people tell it — especially people on TikTok — inflammation is the root of all disease. It's... not that simple. But inflammation does ha...
Why did we go back to the moon?
For the first time in over 50 years, humans have gone to the moon and back. And this time, NASA says we're going to stay. NASA's planning for more mis...
The Codfather
How many fish are in the sea? It's a question that has had enormous consequences for the fishing community in New Bedford, Massachusetts. But one man...
The Amazing Extremophiles
In the dark depths of the Gowanus Canal, strange lifeforms lurk...
Guests: Brad Vogel, volunteer at the Gowanus Dredgers Ca...
Mysterious objects near the beginning of time
Astronomers are putting together a new picture of the early universe. It involves a lot of very weird black holes, and it could help us understand how...
When talent vanishes overnight
Think about the thing you’ve practiced more than anything else in the world. Maybe it’s painting. Or writing. Or playing baseball.
Now,...
Composing chaos
Terry Riley's "In C" is one of the most influential pieces of music of the last century...but you'll never hear it the same way twice.
Gu...
Does Tylenol cause autism?
Donald Trump and RFK Jr. seem convinced that it does. But our friends at Science Vs say the data is far more complicated.
Guest: Meryl Ho...
How to change your personality
Who are you, really? Our friends at The Gray Area ask whether it's really possible to change.
Guest: Olga Khazan, author of Me, But Bet...
What’s A
The centuries-old international battle over the real sound of a musical note.
Guest: Fanny Gribenski, historical musicologist and author...
Did we find signs of life on Mars?
NASA found a Martian rock that might have traces of ancient life. It's perhaps the most tantalizing revelation in the century-long search for Martian...
The metabolism myth
Recent research — and one surprising season of The Biggest Loser — has scientists wondering whether some of the most basic things they know about meta...
The Vagina Voyages
Join our friends at The Longest Shortest Time for a deep dive into the misunderstood world of vaginas. We’ll learn about orgasm-chasing royalty, clito...
A rabbi and the Lorax walk into a bar...
How the bedtime stories we grew up with inspire the stories we tell now.
For show transcripts, go to vox...