Introducing Unexplainable

Okay, you're at the Grand Canyon.

It looks enormous.

You're at the rim.

It looks like this like oil painting, like it's so huge.

It feels like you can see everything.

But then as you start to descend into it and get towards the bottom, it only starts to look bigger.

You start to see smaller paths spreading out in new directions.

Little details that you saw at the top are actually huge, like craggy rock faces that descend hundreds and hundreds of feet.

You realize how much more there is and you just feel so small.

I'm Noam Hasenfeld and this is unexplainable.

It's a new science show from Vox about everything we don't know.

It's not about the Grand Canyon, but it is about that feeling when you think you understand something and you realize there's just so much more and you understand so little of it.

Scientists feel like this too.

I thought I knew what I was doing.

What is this stuff?

I genuinely want to know.

I was terribly stupid.

I was very confident.

So much of science is still grappling with the unknown.

There are entire worlds that you could have sworn we'd already mapped out by now.

Like exactly how the nose works.

It contains, piece by piece, all the mysteries.

Or what is going on deep inside the earth?

Well, they didn't know that was the whole problem.

Or why a ball of lightning might just appear in your kitchen.

It crackles upwards, it crackles crackles downwards, it's the size of a basketball, it is blazing blue-white like a diamond on a revenge kick.

Seriously, what is going on with ball lightning?

Darn if I know.

Getting comfortable with saying I don't know doesn't just open up these fascinating new worlds.

It's good science.

And the best scientists take this to heart.

I am very careful and hopefully humble in knowing that I don't know everything about this disease.

It can be frustrating to welcome this kind of uncertainty, but when we admit what we don't know, we can figure out where to start.

This show, Unexplainable, it's not about answers.

It's about the questions.

We don't have a perfect map, but we have lots of promising trails, some super interesting guides, and tons of canyons spreading out in front of us.

Subscribe to Unexplainable wherever you listen to get new episodes every Wednesday starting March 10th from the Vox Media Podcast Network.