Unexplainable is a new podcast from Vox about everything we don’t know. Each week, the team looks at the most fascinating unanswered questions in science and the mind-bending ways scientists are trying to answer them. New episodes drop every Wednesday. 
This episode: Scientists still don't know how the sense of smell works. But they're looking at how powerful it is — dogs can actually sniff out cancer and many other diseases — and they're trying to figure out how to reverse-engineer it. In fact, one MIT scientist may have built a robot nose ... without completely understanding how his invention works.

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Unexplainable

Future Perfect explores provocative ideas with the potential to radically improve the world. We tackle big questions about the most effective ways to save lives, fight global warming, and end world poverty to create a more perfect future.In season 3, we explore how the meat we eat affects us all. In eight episodes, Vox's Dylan Matthews and Sigal Samuel examine how the way we eat is shaping animal lives, human lives, and the future of our planet. Produced by Vox and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Most of our efforts to fight climate change, from electric cars to wind turbines, are about pumping fewer greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But what if we could pull out the gases that are already there? Akshat Rathi, a reporter at Bloomberg with a doctorate in chemistry, knows more about this technology, called “direct air capture,” than just about anyone. He follows companies like Carbon Engineering and Climeworks that are trying to figure out how to take regular air and pull carbon dioxide out of it.
If their plans work, they could mean a world with net negative emissions: less carbon in the sky than there is right now, and a cooler planet. But his reporting has also highlighted how elusive carbon capture can be, and how tricky it can be to make the tech work at an affordable price. Rathi and Vox’s Dylan Matthews discuss how direct air capture works, how it’s different from capturing carbon at a fossil fuel plant, and the struggles of one direct air capture company in particular.
 
 
Read more of Akshat’s work here:







Inside America's Race to Scale Direct-Air Capture Technology - Bloomberg

Crushed Rock Could Capture Billions of Tons of Carbon Dioxide - Bloomberg

Britain Is Getting Ready to Scale Up Negative-Emissions Technology - Bloomberg

Planting Trees Isn’t a Simple Climate Change Solution It Seems - Bloomberg

The story behind the world’s first large direct air capture plant — Quartz (qz.com)

The ultimate guide to negative-emissions technologies — Quartz (qz.com)

 
Host:
Dylan Matthews (@DylanMatt), senior correspondent, Vox 
Producer: 
Sofi LaLonde (@sofilalonde)
 
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Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

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Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
 
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Sucking the carbon out of the sky

Climate scientist Kimberly Nicholas co-led a study that showed the single most effective thing an individual can do to decrease their carbon footprint is have fewer kids. Despite that finding, she still says that people who really want to have kids should go ahead with their plans. She explains how she squares that circle to Vox’s Sigal Samuel, and the two discuss how to think about the decision to have kids or not and how to make meaning in a warming world.  
 
Read more of Sigal’s climate reporting:

Having fewer kids will not save the planet

Where to donate to improve climate policy


It’s not just Big Oil. It’s Big Meat too. 

 
More information about Dr. Kimberly Nicholas

Find her new book here 

Read more of her writing on her website


The podcast she recommended called So Over Population


 
Host:
Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox 
Producer: 
Sofi LaLonde (@sofilalonde)
 
More to explore:
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.
We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to futureperfect@vox.com. 
Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
 
Follow Us:
Vox.com

Support Future Perfect by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts
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Should I still have kids if I’m worried about climate change?

In an ideal world, cutting carbon emissions would be enough to stop global warming. But after dithering for decades, the world needs a back-up plan. Kelly Wanser is the leader of a group called SilverLining that works to promote research into what it calls “solar climate intervention.” Also called “solar geoengineering,” this approach involves putting particles into clouds that reflect back the sun, directly cooling the earth. It’s a novel and potentially hazardous policy — but one that Wanser and other experts argue could hold a lot of promise as the world braces for catastrophic climate impacts. Wanser and Vox’s Dylan Matthews discuss how solar climate intervention works, how it could be implemented, and where it fits in with the goal of cutting emissions.
 
References: 
Kelly Wanser is the executive director of SilverLining. You can find more information at Silverlining.ngo, including its 2019 report on climate intervention research. You can also hear more from Wanser in her 2019 TED Talk.
 
Host:
Dylan Matthews (@DylanMatt), senior correspondent, Vox 

Producer: 
Sofi LaLonde (@sofilalonde)
Special thanks to Efim Shaprio (@efimthedream)
 
More to explore:
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to futureperfect@vox.com. 

Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
 
Follow Us:
Vox.com

Support Future Perfect by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts
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Engineering our way out of the climate crisis

How can we convince people to change their relationship with meat?
Melanie Joy has been grappling with this question for a long time. To answer it, she takes us back to other points in history when new technology helped make social change palatable. She digs into how the invention of the washing machine and other household appliances, for example, helped make feminism easier to imagine.
Then, she looks to the future, at our latest meat technologies — plant-based meat and lab grown meat — and asks: Could they make it easier for us to move away from meat altogether? 

Further listening and reading: 


Joy’s books, Powerarchy: Understanding the Psychology of Oppression for Social Transformation and Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. 

Vox’s Ezra Klein interviewed Joy for an episode of The Ezra Klein Show in 2018. Hear that interview and read her book recommendations here.


We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to futureperfect@vox.com. 

Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
This podcast is made possible thanks to support from Animal Charity Evaluators. They research and promote the most effective ways to help animals.

Featuring:
Melanie Joy (@DrMelanieJoy)

Host:
Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox 


More to explore:

Follow all of Future Perfect’s reporting on the Future of Meat.
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

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Unexplainable

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