Unexplainable’s “Listen to the Universe” and the Discoveries of Wanda Diáz-Merced
Latino USA
My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As you start the New Year, we wanted to bring you an episode from our friends at Vox’s podcast Unexplainable that we think you’ll like. It’s about a scientific mystery and with a Puerto Rican astronomer at the center of it all. Wanda Diáz-Merced lost her sight as a college student, she thought her dreams of becoming an astronomer were over — until she learned to listen to space instead.
Unexplainable takes listeners right up to the edge of what we know...and then keeps on going. For more go to vox.com/unexplainable
Latino USA is the longest-running news and culture radio program in the U.S., centering Latino stories and hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Dear Latino USA listener, before we start, you should know that if you want to listen to this episode, add free. |
| 0:14.9 | Just join Futuro Plus, and you can join for as little as $7 a month. |
| 0:20.5 | Joining also gets you behind the scenes access, and yes, some chiseme. |
| 0:26.2 | So click the link in the episode description, and after you do that, then click play. |
| 0:32.2 | Let's go like a while. |
| 0:46.9 | It's been a long time. |
| 0:48.6 | Wait, you were at Futuro, what, like a decade ago? |
| 0:51.7 | It's been, I want to say, like eight years. Wow. I just want to say you started |
| 0:57.6 | with us and then you went on to work at, you know, a tiny little company named Vox. You're the host of a |
| 1:05.2 | show now. So tell us a little bit about it and congratulations. Sure, yeah. It's called Unexplanable. |
| 1:11.7 | It's a science show from Vox. |
| 1:13.9 | It comes out twice a week. |
| 1:16.1 | It's about unanswered scientific questions. |
| 1:18.1 | Like, what is dark matter? |
| 1:19.9 | Or why do we yawn? |
| 1:21.9 | Or one of my favorites was, what did dinosaurs sound like? |
| 1:26.5 | Things that we don't have great answers to, |
| 1:29.2 | but things that we get to dive into with scientists doing active research and asking sometimes weird and wild questions. |
| 1:37.6 | And so you had an episode and you were like, wait a second, this sounds like a perfect one for my friends over at Futuro Media and Latino USA. |
| 1:46.8 | And you were like, let me just ring Maria up. |
| 1:49.4 | Oh, yeah. |
| 1:49.8 | I mean, I did this episode talking to this incredible astronomer, Wanda D.S. Merced. |
... |
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