Unexplainable

Many physicists dream of coming up with a unified theory of the universe. Rae Robertson-Anderson dreams of understanding ranch dressing, shampoo, and scrambled eggs.

Guests: Rae Robertson-Anderson, a physics professor at the University of San Diego. (Find her TikToks at physics_mamma.)

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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If matter is a result of vibration, what causes the vibration? Our friends at The Gray Area ask, “Is the universe behaving like an instrument?”

Guest: Stephon Alexander, theoretical physicist at Brown University

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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You’ll need your best friend, a computer in your shoe, and a working knowledge of physics.

Guest: Doyne Farmer, Director of Complexity Economics at Oxford

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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The answer isn’t as clear as you might think. And because of drastic cuts to climate science funding, this question might be getting even harder to solve.

Guest: Umair Irfan, Vox climate science correspondent 

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Florida just became the second state to ban fluoride from its water system, which has made some public health experts pretty angry. Just how risky is fluoride really, and why is it so hard for us to get on the same page?

Guest: Emily Oster, professor of economics at Brown University and CEO of ParentData

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Static electricity plays an invisible role in the natural world, and it may even help insects pollinate plants. To understand this hidden force, scientists have jumped through some pretty weird experimental hoops — and “walked” butterflies through literal hoops.

Guests: Sam England, postdoctoral researcher at Berlin's National History Museum; Benji Jones, Vox's environmental correspondent

To read more about this experiment, Benji recommends this great article from Quanta Magazine, where he first encountered Sam's work.

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Aphantasia is the inability to see with your mind’s eye. And its discovery has made scientists ask a surprising question: What is the mind’s eye even for? (First published in 2022.)

Guests: Alice Coles, artist; Adam Zeman, cognitive neurologist at the University of Exeter Medical School; Joel Pearson, professor of neuroscience at the University of New South Wales; Emily Holmes, professor of psychology at Uppsala University

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠

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Scavengers Reign, the Emmy-winning Netflix show, has done something most sci-fi shows or movies struggle to do. Build a world that feels truly alien.

Guests: ⁠⁠Joe Bennett⁠⁠, co-creator of Scavengers Reign, and ⁠⁠Sean Buckelew⁠⁠, writer on Scavengers Reign

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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The magma chambers at the heart of volcanoes are very deep and very hot. So naturally, some researchers want to build an observatory in one.

Guests: Mike Poland, scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory; Yan Lavallée, chair of magmatic petrology and volcanology at LMU München and scientific and technical board member of the Krafla Magma Testbed; John Eichelberger, volcanologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and founding scientist of KMT

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠

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Rumors of Neanderthal brutishness have been greatly exaggerated.

Guest: Paige Madison, science writer

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠

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What happens when you get a life-changing device implanted into your body... and then the company that maintains it goes bankrupt?

Guests: Jennifer French, Executive Director and Founder of ⁠Neurotech Network⁠, a nonprofit focused on education and advocacy for neurotechnology, and ⁠Liam Drew⁠, freelance science journalist who reported on abandoned neurotech for ⁠Nature⁠

For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠

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Tens of thousands of lives could be saved each year if hospitals had more blood. So scientists are racing to understand how this living fluid does what it does in order to one day grow it from scratch.

Guest: Nicola Twilley, New Yorker contributor and host of Gastropod. 

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We know life on Earth wouldn't be possible without the moon. Now scientists are finding the moon might even be influencing our biology on a molecular level.

Guest: Rebecca Boyle, science journalist and author of Our Moon: How Earth's celestial companion transformed the planet, guided evolution, and made us who we are

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Listeners told us that eating baby carrots or telling lies can bring on the hiccups. Burping or kissing can make them stop. Um, what? (First published in 2023.)

Guests: Tyler Cymet, chair of medicine at The Chicago School, and Ali Seifi, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio

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We have an exciting announcement! Vox Members now get access to ad-free podcasts. If you sign up, you’ll get unlimited access to reporting on vox.com, exclusive newsletters, and all of our podcasts — including Unexplainable — ad-free. Plus, you’ll be playing a crucial role helping our show get made. Check it out at vox.com/members.

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Deep inside the mud at the bottom of the ocean, scientists have found life that is so unusual they’ve had to create new branches on the tree of life to put it on. These life forms are not extraterrestrials: They’re “aliens” from Earth.

Guest: Karen Lloyd, microbiologist and author of Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth

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Scientists have been searching for aliens for decades. But if we ever do get a signal someday, how will we communicate back? And will anyone out there be able to understand us?

Guests: Doug Vakoch, president of METI, and Sheri Wells-Jensen, linguist at Bowling Green State University

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What can we actually do as our world gets populated with more and more robots? How can we take control? Can we take control?

This is the final episode of our four-part series about the stories shaping the future of AI.

Good Robot was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team.

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A simple parable about a drowning child sparks a moral revolution. Is building AI the way to do the most good in the world?

This is the third episode of our new four-part series about the stories shaping the future of AI.

Good Robot was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team. Episodes will be released on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

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When a robot does bad things, who is responsible? A group of technologists sounds the alarm about the ways AI is already harming us today. Are their concerns being taken seriously?

This is the second episode of our new four-part series about the stories shaping the future of AI.

Good Robot was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team. Episodes will be released on Wednesdays and Saturdays over the next two weeks.

For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts

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Before AI became a mainstream obsession, one thinker sounded the alarm about its catastrophic potential. So why are so many billionaires and tech leaders worried about… paper clips?

This is the first episode of our new four-part series about the stories shaping the future of AI.

Good Robot was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team. Episodes will be released on Wednesdays and Saturdays over the next two weeks.

For show transcripts, go to vox.com/unxtranscripts

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This week on Unexplainable or Not, the newest member of our team, Julia Longoria, tries to figure out which of three scientific mysteries about the sea, the land, and the sky has actually been solved.

Guest: Admir Masic, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT.

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Dylan got malaria on purpose. And he thinks you should, too.

Guest: Dylan Matthews, senior correspondent at Vox’s Future Perfect

This episode was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team.

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A neuroscientist argues that the focus on dreams has held back the scientific understanding of sleep. So he took dreams out of the picture and uncovered a new potential connection between the mind and body.

Guest: Mark Blumberg, behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Iowa

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Funding cuts and research censorship have shaken the foundations of America’s health and science agencies, leaving researchers shocked, confused, and afraid. What does this mean for the future of science?

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For thousands of years, there have been four basic tastes recognized across cultures. But thanks to Kumiko Ninomiya (a.k.a. the Umami Mama), scientists finally accepted a fifth. Could there be even more? (First published in 2022.)

Guests: Kumiko Ninomiya, biochemist and former director of the Umami Information Center; Gary Beauchamp, former director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center; Sarah Tracy, historian of science; Camilla Arndal Andersen, neuroscientist; Paul Breslin, professor at Rutgers University

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Some of the largest lakes in the world have been buried under miles of ice for millions of years. Is there life hiding down there? And if so, could life be found in even more extreme places … beyond our planet?

Guest: John Priscu, microbiologist at Montana State University

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Genetic libraries are treasure troves of information about life from around the world. They’re helping researchers develop everything from vaccines to crops to cosmetics. But who actually benefits from the discoveries scientists make using all this DNA and RNA?

Guests: Benji Jones, environmental correspondent at Vox’s Future Perfect; Deborah Fuller, professor of microbiology at the University of Washington

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Some scientists think an explosion of AI awareness and feeling might be just around the corner. Others think it’s impossible for an AI to ever become conscious. How will we know?

Guest: Oshan Jarow, staff writer at Vox’s Future Perfect

This episode was made in partnership with Vox's Future Perfect team.

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It’s that time of year again. If you’re changing things up, there’s a lot of diets out there that claim to help you live longer. Our friends at Today, Explained ask: How much of this is real and how much of it is nonsense?

Guests: Anahad O’Connor, health columnist at the Washington Post; Saul Justin Newman, researcher at the University College London Centre for Longitudinal Studies

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The wildest stories that never made it into our episodes. Until now.

Guests: Amy Boddy, anthropological scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Jayme Locke, transplant surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham; Jonathan Jiang, research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Dogs were the first domesticated animal in history, emerging from wolves some 20,000 years ago. But how did wolves become dogs? To find the answer, scientists have to play with a lot of puppies. (First published in 2023.)

Guest: Kathryn Lord, evolutionary biology researcher at UMass Chan Medical School

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We know Neanderthals and early modern humans coupled up. But when did they meet, exactly? And where? Some fossilized smoke and a baby tooth might hold clues.

Guest: Adam Cole of HowTown

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It’s not great to be a lab rat. And it turns out, lab rats might not be that great for science either. Could the future be little lab-grown brain clumps?

Guests: Rachel Nuwer, science journalist; Lisa Genzel, professor of neuroscience at Radboud University

This episode has been updated. An earlier version didn’t differentiate between two stages of drug development.

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This week on Unexplainable or Not, we’ve got three scientific mysteries all about left and right. Jonquilyn Hill, host of Vox’s new podcast Explain It to Me, is going to guess which of them has been solved and which ones are still unexplainable.

Guest: S. Furkan Ozturk, researcher at Harvard University

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For decades, scientists thought that placebos only worked if patients didn’t know they were taking them. Not anymore: You can give patients placebos, tell them they’re on sugar pills, and they still might feel better. No one is sure how this works, but it raises a question: Should doctors embrace placebos in mainstream medicine? (First published in 2021.)

Guests: Ted Kaptchuk, professor at Harvard Medical School; Darwin Guevarra, professor of psychology at Miami University; Luana Colloca, professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing

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It makes sense that we run away from scary things. That’s a good way to stay alive. But why do some people also love scary things? Why do people gravitate toward horror?

Guests: Mathias Clasen and Marc Andersen, co-directors of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University

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Drugs like ecstasy and mushrooms have shown promise as mental health treatments, but they’re also exposing some major cracks in how scientists study the brain.

Guests: Jonathan Lambert, science journalist; Boris Heifets, professor at Stanford University of Medicine; Amy Mcguire, professor at Baylor College of Medicine

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How we feel emotionally may be influenced by unseen troves of microbial life that live inside us. Is it possible to harness this gut power? (First published in 2022)

Guests: Michael Gershon, professor of pathology at Columbia University; and Katerina Johnson, microbiome researcher at Oxford University

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As the world gets warmer and storms get worse, insurance companies are jacking up rates — or refusing to cover homeowners altogether. Is the future uninsurable?

Guests: Umair Irfan, correspondent at Vox; Karen Clark, co-founder and CEO of Karen Clark & Company; Joe Skuba, VP at The Gray Insurance Company; and Carolyn Kousky, Associate VP at Environmental Defense Fund

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Doctors have started transplanting animal organs into people, hoping this experimental procedure could one day solve an organ shortage crisis that kills 17 Americans every day. Is this really the solution?

Guests: Muhammad Mohiuddin, professor of surgery at University of Maryland School of Medicine; L. Syd Johnson, professor of clinical bioethics at SUNY Upstate Medical University

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Scientists have lots of ways to try to answer that question, and lots of different predictions. So how do they figure out one set of numbers we can all work with?

Guests: Umair Irfan, correspondent at Vox; Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist at The Breakthrough Institute; Neil Swart, research scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis

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Probably not. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz decided to try anyway, putting his body — and specifically his butt — on the line to answer a seemingly straightforward question: Is it possible to build up a tolerance to poison oak by eating it?

Guest: Jeff Horwitz, reporter at the Wall Street Journal; and Mahmoud ElSohly, professor of pharmaceutics at the University of Mississippi

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Scientists just discovered oxygen being produced without sunlight — without photosynthesis — at the bottom of the ocean. This “dark oxygen” could fundamentally change the story we tell of life on Earth and in the rest of the universe.

Guest: Alycia Smith, ecologist at Heriot-Watt University

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For decades, search and rescue teams followed an accepted playbook. Now, scientists are helping them reimagine how to find lost people.

Guests: Robert Koester, author of Lost Person Behavior, and Paul Doherty, search and rescue researcher

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With antibiotic resistance on the rise, some scientists are turning to viruses as a medical tool. But we barely know anything about the bacteria-eating viruses all around us. (First published in 2021)

Guest: Nicola Twilley, host of Gastropod

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Our bodies are teeming with viruses. But some of them, called phages, might play a really important role in keeping us healthy.

Guest: Tom Ireland, author of The Good Virus

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The FDA is about to announce whether it’s going to approve MDMA as a treatment for PTSD. Our friends at Today, Explained explore what this kind of therapy looks like, and why it’s so controversial.

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They probably didn’t roar like lions. Their real voices were likely much, much weirder. We asked scientists to help us re-create these strange, extinct sounds. (First published in 2022)

Guests: Michael Habib, professor at UCLA, Julia Clarke, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Jonny Crew, sound designer at Wounded Buffalo

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It’s possible that the entire observable universe is inside a black hole. All we need to do to find out is … build a gigantic particle collider around the moon.

Guest: James Beacham, particle physicist at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

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