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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Introducing Unexplainable

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.511.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Unexplainable is a new podcast from Vox about everything we don’t know. Each week, the team look at the most fascinating unanswered questions in science and the mind-bending ways scientists are trying to answer them. New episodes drop every Wednesday.  Learn more: vox.com/unexplainable  Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unexplainable/id1554578197 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0PhoePNItwrXBnmAEZgYmt?si=Y3-2TFfDT8qHkfxMjrJL2g Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey Vox, Conversations listeners, it's Sean Eileen. We've got something a little different for you today.

0:05.1

We're going to play an episode of a new show from our colleagues at Vox that we think you will really

0:09.1

dig. The show is called Unexplainable and it's all about the most fascinating mysteries in science.

0:15.2

Each week the team will dive into one question in science that remains unanswered and talk to

0:19.7

scientists and experts about how they try to find answers to these questions. Unexplainable is

0:24.9

hosted by Nome Hasenfeld and will feature reporting from producer Bird Pinkerton and Vox

0:29.7

Science reporter Brian Resnick. This episode is called Skeleton Lake and it tells the story of

0:36.0

a group of scientists examining the DNA of ancient bones found near Himalayan Lake and the seemingly

0:42.0

impossible conclusion they landed on. Next week's episode tells the story of why mysterious balls

0:47.7

of lightning, yes, balls of lightning, have been recorded throughout history. You will not want to

0:52.5

miss it. Talking about what we don't know can be uncomfortable but right now it's more important

0:57.6

than ever before. You can follow Unexplainable in your favorite podcast app to get new episodes every

1:03.1

Wednesday morning.

1:18.4

This is Unexplainable. I'm Nome Hasenfeld. For most of human history, which goes back hundreds of

1:24.1

thousands of years, our past has been close to a black box. Slowly we develop tools, fossils

1:31.1

and archaeological evidence tell us a little about the deep past, carbon dating can tell us about

1:35.7

the age of something. Altogether though, the story they tell is incomplete. Then just about a

1:41.6

decade ago we came up with a new tool. Scientists drilled into 40,000 year old bones and were finally

1:48.0

able to sequence the entire genome of an ancient person. This was an earthquake. All of a sudden,

1:54.3

there was a brand new way of analyzing our past, our extremely ancient past, and it gave us a huge

2:00.4

amount of new information. But it also just blew up a lot of what we thought we understood. Over

2:06.3

the last decade, it's forced scientists to rewrite a wide swath of history. And one of these

...

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