Unexplainable

Muhammad Zaman, a Boston University professor and author of *Biography of Resistance*, explores the escalating threat of drug-resistant infections. He traces antibiotics from penicillin’s breakthrough to the forces accelerating resistance, including inequality, conflict, counterfeit drugs, and global travel. The conversation also ventures into AI, soil-derived molecules, bacteriophages, protective microbiomes, and the societal changes needed to protect modern medicine.

Emily St. John Mandel, the Canadian novelist behind Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, explores the strange scientific ideas fueling her fiction. They discuss time travel, simulation theory, doppelgangers, parallel universes, and the alternate lives shaped by choice and circumstance. She also reveals why she rewrote Exit Party’s second half and why character matters more than scientific mechanics.

Allie Volpe, a Vox correspondent covering culture and social behavior, joins Caleb Warren, a humor researcher and marketing professor. They investigate why people laugh, from superiority, relief, and incongruity theories to the “benign violation” idea. Comedians Atsuko Okatsuka, Josh Johnson, Dulcé Sloan, and Chris Fleming weigh in on surprise, sincerity, absurdity, and the mysterious chemistry between performer and audience.

Konstantina Kilteni, a neuroscientist leading the Touch & Tickle Lab, investigates one of the body’s strangest mysteries. Why can’t we tickle ourselves? She explores theories about tickling’s evolution, cross-cultural differences, and the elusive link between laughter, pleasure, pain, and vulnerability. Her programmable robot, Hektor, brings scientific precision to the notoriously chaotic science of tickles.

Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, writer, and science communicator who studies consciousness and creativity. She explores how the brain generates, evaluates, and acts on new ideas, what improvisation reveals about interacting brain networks, and why riddles may measure creative thinking better than questionnaires. She also investigates flow, altered time perception, and creativity’s enduring mysteries.

Greg Holland, a San Diego State University biochemist, studies the chemistry and production of spider silk. He explores why silk can outperform steel and Kevlar, why spiders are so difficult to farm, and the race to engineer strong, versatile fibers. The conversation also probes silk’s potential in defense, medicine, textiles, and research into neurodegenerative disease.

Lizzie Peabody, a journalist and host of the Smithsonian’s Sidedoor, investigates the mysteries behind wild orchids. She visits orchid competitions and searches for the rare small whorled pogonia in a secret Virginia grove. Along the way: orchid poaching, mysterious fungus partnerships, living tree roots, and scientists racing to preserve species before they disappear.

Dylan Scott, a senior Vox correspondent covering health and medical science, explores whether Alzheimer’s research is finally turning a corner. They discuss promising prevention strategies, new drugs that modestly slow decline, and a controversial surgery claiming to clear brain plaques. The conversation also examines the science behind the disease, desperate treatment choices, caregiver anguish, and why optimism still needs caution.

Tomasz Hollanek, a Cambridge AI designer and technology ethicist, explores deadbots and the risks of commercializing digital afterlives. Psycholinguist and writer Julie Sedivy examines how language, memories, and unfinished conversations keep loved ones present. Audio journalist Lissa Soep considers privacy, consent, grief, and whether an AI replica can truly preserve an intimate relationship.

Zack Savitsky, a science journalist and author of Cold Rush, explores the extreme refrigeration powering quantum computing. Discover why absolute zero is unreachable, how superfluids and superconductivity emerge in the deep cold, and why rare helium-3 links quantum technology to nuclear weapons, lunar mining, and even Party City. A chilly journey into the future of computing.