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Unexplainable

Unexplainable
Author: Vox
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© 2021 Vox Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Description
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.
240 Episodes
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This week on Unexplainable or Not, Sally Helm, the newest member of our team, tries to figure out what's killing mussels, why rivers suddenly change course, and what the longest river in the world is.
Guests: Douglas Edmonds, professor at Indiana University; Neel Dhanesha, science reporter
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
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Now why would you click on something like this? What's wrong with you?! Why are you — and so many other people — into scary stuff? Two scientists are trying to find out. (Originally aired in 2024)
Guests: Mathias Clasen and Marc Andersen, co-directors of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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Killing two people is worse than killing one. What about 440 billion crustaceans? Adapted from Dylan Matthews's essay on Vox.com.
This story is part of a series supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from EarthShare.
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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Think about the thing you’ve practiced more than anything else in the world. Maybe it’s painting. Or writing. Or playing baseball.
Now, imagine you wake up one day, and you just can’t do it. You’re not sick. You’re not injured. But suddenly, that one thing is impossible. (Originally published in 2024)
Guests: Rick Ankiel, former Major League Baseball star; Sally Akehurst, sports psychologist and a dean at University of Roehampton, London; Steven Frucht, neurologist at NYU Langone
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscriptsFor more, go to vox.com/unexplainableAnd please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/membersThank you!
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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.
Guest: Evan Ziporyn, composer, clarinetist, and producer of "In C"
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscriptsFor more, go to vox.com/unexplainableAnd please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/membersThank you!
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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 Horn, senior producer at Science Vs
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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Zombies might seem like the stuff of horror movies, but there are lots of examples of parasites taking over bugs’ bodies and bending them to their will.
Guest: Mindy Weisberger, author of Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscriptsFor more, go to vox.com/unexplainableAnd please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/membersThank you!
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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 Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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The centuries-old international battle over the real sound of a musical note.
Guest: Fanny Gribenski, historical musicologist and author of Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859–1955
Reported for Unexplainable by Emily Siner
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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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 life. (Updated from 2022)
Guests: Katie Stack Morgan, project scientist for the Perseverance rover; Lindsay Hays, astrobiologist at NASA; Morgan Cable, research scientist for Perseverance; and Camden Miller, rover driver for Perseverance
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscriptsFor more, go to vox.com/unexplainableAnd please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/membersThank you!
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Recent research — and one surprising season of The Biggest Loser — has scientists wondering whether some of the most basic things they know about metabolism are wrong.
Guest: Julia Belluz, author of Food Intelligence
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscriptsFor more, go to vox.com/unexplainableAnd please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/membersThank you!
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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, clitoral wingspans, vagina lollipops, wandering wombs, and why we still know so little about the anatomy of half the people on Earth.
Guests: Hillary Frank, host, The Longest Shortest Time; Rachel E. Gross, science writer
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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How the bedtime stories we grew up with inspire the stories we tell now.
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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We spoke to two researchers who disagree about the answer to this question. But they do agree about why it's so hard to answer to begin with.
Guests: Dylan Scott, senior correspondent at Vox; Kenneth Mukamal, physician and academic researcher at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Timothy Naimi, director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscriptsFor more, go to vox.com/unexplainableAnd please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/membersThank you!
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The US military carved a tiny city into the Greenland ice sheet. What they found, and lost, and found again, and what it tells us about climate change.
Guests: Paul Bierman, geoscientist at the University of Vermont and author of When The Ice Is Gone; Richard Alley, geoscientist at the Pennsylvania State University
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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What do scientists think animals might be like millions of years from now? (First published in 2021)
Guests: Benji Jones, senior correspondent at Vox; David Willard, ornithologist at Chicago's Field Museum; Liz Alter, marine biologist at San José State University; Jingmai O'Connor, paleontologist at the Field Museum; Sharlene Santana, biologist at the University of Washington; Julia Sigwart, malacologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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Dark energy is the strange stuff that makes up the vast majority of the universe and will ultimately lead to the end of everything. Unless it doesn't exist at all.
Guests: Adam Riess, astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, and Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, director of the Physics Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and member of The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com
We read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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Much of our modern world is made of plastic, but as more signs point to its dangers to human health, what can we even do about it?
Guest: Annie Lowrey, Atlantic writer and author of I fought plastic. Plastic won.
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscriptsFor more, go to vox.com/unexplainableAnd please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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Towering walls of water sometimes appear in the ocean without warning or apparent cause. What drives their terrifying power? (First published in 2023)
Guest: Ton van der Bremer, associate professor of environmental fluid mechanics.
For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts
For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.
Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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Good news can be hard to find, especially when our brains — and the media — are biased against it.
Guest: Bryan Walsh, senior editorial director of Vox, and author of the Good News newsletter
This episode was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team.For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscriptsFor more, go to vox.com/unexplainableAnd please email us! unexplainable@vox.comWe read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: vox.com/members
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