Bird people and deep space shrapnel

Summary

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Unexplainable – "Bird people and deep space shrapnel"

Date: June 22, 2026
Hosts: Noam Hassenfeld and Meredith Hoddinott
Podcast Theme: Exploring scientific mysteries, unsolved questions, and the wonders at the edge of scientific knowledge.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Noam and Meredith dive into two mind-bending science articles: one pondering the mysterious trigger behind lightning, the other questioning why birds, despite their intelligence, never developed complex human-like culture. Along the way, they discuss cosmic rays, gamma bursts, evolutionary metaphors, and the humbling feeling of exploring the unknown.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Lightning Mystery (00:29–09:34)

Featured Article:
"What causes lightning? The answer keeps getting more interesting" by Charlie Wood, Quanta Magazine

Highlights:

• Meredith introduces the article as an example of science writing that makes the seemingly everyday truly extraordinary.

  "This is just like an example of some of my favorite science writing. The kind of writing that takes something every day, takes something ordinary and just makes it extraordinary." (Meredith, 02:38)

• What is lightning?
  Meredith breaks it down:

  "It is electricity. It's a form of static electricity... the static electricity comes from ice and water droplets and hail inside the, like, giant thundercloud itself..." (Meredith, 03:40)

• The unexplained trigger:
  The amount of energy in the clouds shouldn't be enough to set off lightning.

  "There's this threshold that we need to get over, and there's just not enough energy in clouds to get over that threshold." (Meredith, 04:29)

• Unexpected gamma rays:
  Scientists deployed tools intended for observing deep space and discovered intense bursts of gamma rays in thunderclouds—sometimes without visible lightning.

  "They started to see bursts of freaking gamma rays inside thunderclouds." (Meredith, 04:59)

• Theories:
  • One theory: Superfast electrons crash into atoms, causing feedback loops of gamma radiation that may spark lightning.
  • Another: Cosmic rays ("deep space shrapnel")—high energy particles from black holes and supernovae—slam down from space, tipping thunderclouds over the edge.

    "Cosmic rays. This, like, deep space shrapnel... travels billions of light years across the universe and slams into the Earth's atmosphere." (Meredith quoting Charlie Wood, 07:10)

• Human reaction and awe:

  "Deep space shrapnel is one of the coolest things I've ever heard." (Noam, 07:29) "Cooler than Zeus." (Meredith, 08:31)

• It’s still a mystery:
  Scientists have plausible models, but the full explanation remains elusive.

  "The actual mechanism is still a mystery. It could be one of these theories. It could be all of these theories. It could be different for different clouds, could be something else entirely." (Meredith, 08:40)

• Encouragement to read more:
  Meredith highlights thrilling details like scientists strapping gamma ray detectors onto planes and launching rockets to create lightning.

  "You can learn more about, like, the history of lightning science. You can learn more about Scientists strapping gamma ray to detectors onto planes and flying them into the scariest storms on Earth." (Meredith, 09:02)

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2. Bird Intelligence & Evolutionary Divergence (13:06–25:33)

Featured Article:
"Empire of Flight" by Anton Martino Truswell, Aeon Magazine

Highlights:

• Noam introduces the article—why, given their intelligence and social complexity, didn’t birds evolve complex culture?

  “Why haven’t birds developed complex culture like we have?” (Noam, 13:40)

• Birds have the prerequisites:
  Birds possess large brains, vocal communication, long lifespans, and complex parent-offspring bonds.

  "They've got complex brains, they've got strong relationships between parents and children. They communicate with their voices... unlike other non-mammals that are smart, like octopuses, you know, birds have long lives." (Noam, 14:16)

• Vulnerability and evolution:
  Culture, for humans, arose as a group adaptation to vulnerability. Birds, with flight as their trump card, skipped this evolutionary “crucible.”

  "Flight might have solved so many of the problems that birds were facing that culture never even was a possibility. They were almost gravitationally pulled down this different evolutionary path because culture is, like, very hard." (Noam, 18:40)

• Evolution as gravity:
  Truswell suggests evolution behaves like gravity, pulling species down different adaptive paths.

  "He's saying is that birds had the former. They had the raw materials, the brain size, the communication, and they didn't have the latter. They didn't have the same type of vulnerability that necessitated this type of adaptation." (Noam, 19:14) "...that is a metaphor that Anton uses throughout his piece, which I find particularly sticky. I really like thinking about evolution as gravity." (Noam, 16:17)

• Is there hidden bird culture?
  Meredith wonders if we simply fail to recognize non-human forms of culture.

  "Could it be the case that we're just missing where the bird culture is?" (Meredith, 20:16)

  • Noam notes examples of crow intelligence and social learning but says even these don’t reach full human-like culture as defined by the article’s author.
• Challenging anthropocentrism:
  Noam pushes back on the idea that human-like culture is the apex of evolution.

  "Is culture the end all, be all?... maybe this is crow culture, and do we need to say that one is lesser than the other?" (Noam, 21:20)

• Perspective shift:
  The evolutionary metaphor broadens the conversation from humans as the inevitable endpoint to a celebration of the diversity of evolutionary "solutions."

  "...there are other ways to be wildly advanced...evolution isn't about getting to culture or intelligence. It's about adapting to your environment in a particularly useful way to you." (Noam, 23:23) "It just makes me feel small in the best way...like looking out at the species and feeling small. Like looking at this enormous family tree of evolution and seeing all these other species that found their really good homes..." (Noam, 25:02)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On cosmic rays sparking lightning:
  "Deep space shrapnel is one of the coolest things I've ever heard."
  – Noam (07:29)

• On the metaphor of evolutionary gravity:
  "I really like thinking about evolution as gravity."
  – Noam (16:17)

• On bird intelligence and cultural "near-miss":
  "Some biologists talk about birds as a near miss when it comes to culture."
  – Noam (17:14)

• On the human urge to anthropomorphize:
  "Is culture the end all, be all? ... maybe this is crow culture, and do we need to say that one is lesser than the other?"
  – Noam (21:20)

• Perspective and humility:
  "It just makes me feel small in the best way... like looking at this enormous family tree of evolution and seeing all these other species that found their really good homes..."
  – Noam (25:02)

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:24] – Intro to the episode and the team’s archive of science stories.
• [02:28] – Meredith introduces the lightning mystery article.
• [03:40] – Explanation of what lightning is (static electricity in clouds).
• [04:59] – Gamma rays discovered in thunderclouds.
• [07:10] – Theory: cosmic rays as "deep space shrapnel" triggering lightning.
• [09:02] – Meredith’s call to read more about scientists chasing storms.
• [13:06] – Noam introduces the article about birds and culture.
• [14:16] – Comparing bird prerequisites for culture to humans'.
• [16:17] – Evolution likened to gravity.
• [18:40] – Flight as the evolutionary trump card for birds.
• [20:16] – Are we missing bird culture by looking with human-centered bias?
• [25:02] – Noam reflects on humility and awe in the face of evolutionary diversity.
• [25:55] – Discussion on the value of asking unexpected scientific questions.
• [26:30] – Invitation to listeners to send in their favorite articles and questions.

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Conclusion and Takeaways

• Lightning remains a scientific enigma: Though the basics are understood, the ultimate trigger likely lies in interplay between atmospheric conditions and cosmic phenomena—much cooler (and stranger) than myth.
• Bird intelligence opens evolutionary puzzles: Birds had the raw material for culture but followed another path, thanks to the evolutionary "shortcut" of flight.
• Broader perspective: The episode ends with reflections on humility, scientific wonder, and the necessity of shifting one’s lens beyond the anthropocentric.
• Listener engagement: The hosts encourage listeners to explore further and share their own favorite scientific mysteries.

---

Further Reading

• “What causes lightning? The answer keeps getting more interesting”
  Charlie Wood, Quanta Magazine: quantamagazine.org
• “Empire of Flight”
  Anton Martino Truswell, Aeon Magazine: aeon.co

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This summary captures the lively, curious tone of the show, distilling the questions posed, concepts discussed, and the sense of awe that Unexplainable brings to scientific mysteries.

Transcript

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[Noam]

It feels good to have support. It feels good to geico.

[Meredith]

And that's us, Noam and Meredith, jazz hands, jazzing it up. All right. So do you remember the great archive scramble of 2025? The when we had to save all our show ideas?

[Noam]

Yeah, yeah. All of our, like, oldest messages we'd sent each other on the team were gonna disappear. Yeah. Show ideas, books. We'd found our favorite science articles.

[Meredith]

Exactly.

[Noam]

Then you scrolled through that whole thing, Right? Like years and years of messages and you put them into this ridiculously huge Google Doc.

[Meredith]

Wasn't the most graceful solution, but we saved it. I was actually just scrolling through this the other day, and there's so much good stuff in there. Way more than we could ever make into episodes. So it got me thinking that we should just shout out some of this great work. Oh, yeah, yeah. Some of our favorite science writers, our favorite articles and point listeners to where they can find them.

[Noam]

That sounds awesome.

[Geico Sound Effects/Voice]

Let's do it.

[Additional Host/Guest]

Yeah.

[Meredith]

So today for you know, I picked an article by Charlie Wood in Quanta magazine.

[Noam]

Ooh, love Quanta.

[Meredith]

And this is just like an example of some of my favorite science writing. The kind of writing that takes something every day, takes something ordinary and just makes it extraordinary.

[Noam]

Yeah.

[Meredith]

So his article is called what causes Lightning? The answer keeps getting more interesting.

[Noam]

I don't know if lightning is ordinary.

[Meredith]

It's true. It's a pretty. It's of the, like, everyday Phenomena. It is pretty extraordinary.

[Noam]

Yes, it is. Already. Let's be fair to lightning. It's pretty cool.

[Meredith]

I love watching thunderstorms.

[Noam]

Yeah.

[Meredith]

So believe me, already a lightning fan.

[Noam]

Okay.

[Meredith]

But this article blew my mind. And it's because we know what lightning is, but we don't know what triggers it.

[Noam]

Classic unexplainable.

[Meredith]

Classic unexplainable frame there.

[Noam]

Yeah. What actually is lightning? I feel like you're saying we know what lightning is.

[Meredith]

Science knows what lightning is.

[Noam]

I don't know if I would be able to tell you what lightning is other than electricity.

[Meredith]

It is electricity. It's a form of static electricity. So the same as rubbing on a balloon and then shocking yourself, but just at a wildly bigger scale. And in this case, the static electricity comes from ice and water droplets and hail inside the, like, giant thundercloud itself that, through all the turbulence and updrafts, is rubbing against each other and building up this giant electric charge.

[Noam]

And that's lightning.

[Meredith]

And that's lightning. But there's a problem. There's just not enough energy in the cloud. Like, there needs to be enough electric force to literally break apart the molecules of the air and release, as Charlie puts it, an avalanche of electrons that crash across the sky.

[Geico Sound Effects/Voice]

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[Meredith]

There's this threshold that we need to get over, and there's just not enough energy in clouds to get over that threshold.

[Noam]

Wait, is it not Zeus?

[Meredith]

It is perhaps not Zeus.

[Additional Host/Guest]

Okay.

[Meredith]

But it might be cooler.

[Noam]

Okay.

[Meredith]

Apparently, there's a whole generation of scientists who are using tools designed to look at things like solar flares and deep space explosions, and they're pointing them at thunderstorms.

[Noam]

Incredible.

[Meredith]

And they started to see bursts of freaking gamma rays inside thunderclouds.

[Noam]

What?

[Meredith]

Yeah.

[Noam]

So, like, what is that even?

[Meredith]

Right? I mean. Well, like, gamma rays are on the electromagnetic spectrum. Like, they're a type of light. So if you go past the visible spectrum, more and more energy, higher frequency, past ultraviolet light, more intense, more intense, past X rays, and you start getting into, like, the most energetic type of light, these gamma rays. And gamma rays are so intense, scientists usually see them when something really big happens. Like a supernova explodes.

[Noam]

Yeah.

[Meredith]

And they're happening in thunderstorms. Even when there's not a visible lightning bolt, thunderstorm clouds glow and flicker with gamma rays.

[Noam]

And you're saying glowing and flickering, but this is not stuff we see. Right. Because it's way past the visible spectrum.

[Meredith]

It's way, way more energetic than the visual spectrum. So it's associated with lightning. But even when there's not lightning that we can, like, see from the ground. Thunderstorms are roiling with this, like, high powered light energy.

[Noam]

Okay.

[Meredith]

One astrophysicist in the article, Joseph Dwyer at the University of New Hampshire, thinks that really, really fast electrons, electrons going close to the speed of light could be crashing into atoms in the air, releasing the violent gamma ray burst of light. And then that crashes into more electrons, causing this feedback loop that doesn't just trigger a single subatomic avalanche, but a whole bunch of overlapping avalanches. So that piling of avalanches gets you over that threshold and, like, sparks the lightning bolt. But there's another theory that lightning is triggered by a kind of deep space shrapnel that comes from, like, supermassive black holes and dying stars. And that Charlie writes. I love this line, cosmic rays. This, like, deep space shrapnel, he writes, travels billions of light years across the universe and slams into the Earth's atmosphere. And that could be the thing that's tipping lightning over the edge and causing the bolts.

[Noam]

Hold on.

[Meredith]

I know, right?

[Noam]

Deep space shrapnel is one of the coolest things I've ever heard.

[Meredith]

I mean, my band name, Right, Great

[Noam]

band name, Deep Space shrapnel here is cosmic rays.

[Meredith]

Cosmic rays. Yeah. Which are, you know, bombarding us all the time.

[Additional Host/Guest]

Yeah.

[Noam]

So that's like radiation coming from these ancient distant supernova explosions. Right?

[Meredith]

Supernova explosions, supermassive black holes, dying stars. It's sort of like the debris of a really, you know, bombastic universe that is flying all over the place and can come from billions of light years away.

[Noam]

And what this is saying is that there's not enough energy in the cloud system itself, but these rays that are coming in from outside are tipping it over the edge. Like the cosmos is throwing a match onto a pile of wood or something like that.

[Meredith]

Yeah, it could be. And this is also still a theory. Like, it could be.

[Noam]

I like that theory.

[Meredith]

I know, right? See what I'm saying? Cooler than Zeus.

[Noam]

I mean, it does feel a little like Zeus throwing in. I know it's very mythical, the thunderbolts, but whatever.

[Meredith]

Okay, yeah. So, like, the actual mechanism is still a mystery. It could be one of these theories. It could be all of these theories. It could be different for different clouds, could be something else entirely. But I know I will never look at thunderstorms the same way again after reading this article.

[Noam]

Wow.

[Meredith]

So you should definitely go check out this article, Quantum magazine, Charlie Wood, and you can learn more about, like, the history of lightning science. You can learn more about Scientists strapping gamma ray to detectors onto planes and flying them into the scariest storms on Earth.

[Noam]

Okay.

[Meredith]

There's also these, like, wicked cool videos of scientists actually sparking lightning in the sky with rockets.

[Noam]

We are the Zeus.

[Meredith]

We are the Zeus. So you should definitely go check it out.

[Noam]

Can we put like a link in the show notes or something?

[Meredith]

Yeah, yeah, we'll definitely throw that in.

[Noam]

Okay.

[Meredith]

Awesome. So now it's your turn, Noam. I want you to find an article and bring back something cool, something you recommend.

[Noam]

There is an article that I've been thinking a lot about that I have been wanting to talk about on the show for a while, actually. Nice. It is a piece about birds and a different evolutionary track they could have gone down but didn't. That might have made them a lot more like us

[Meredith]

bird people.

[Noam]

Bird people.

[Meredith]

After the break,

[Additional Host/Guest]

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[Noam]

All right, Mara Noam. I have found this article that I really, really, really loved and never got a chance to talk about. So this is a great chance.

[Meredith]

This is the time. Shoot your shot, man.

[Noam]

Yeah, so it's from Aeon Eon magazine, spelled A E O N. And it's from this zoologist named Anton Martino Truswell. He's also an author. He wrote this book all about bird cognition called the Parrot in the Mirror.

[Meredith]

So, like how birds think, how birds

[Noam]

think and how they got to be the way that they are. And his article starts with this kind of big basic question, which is why haven't birds developed complex culture like we have?

[Meredith]

Okay.

[Noam]

Which is like on the surface it's kind of a weird question, right? Like, why would they have developed complex culture? I don't look at birds and immediately assume like they should be playing chess.

[Meredith]

There's no like Real Housewives of Cockatoos. I mean, that would be dramatic.

[Noam]

It would, it would definitely. It would involve a lot of singing, I guess. But Anton says that birds have a lot of the basic advantages that we have. So they've got complex brains, they've got strong relationships between parents and children. They communicate with their voices, which is really useful. And unlike other non mammals that are smart, like octopuses, you know, birds have long lives. So this is really huge because like octopuses, they have these really short lifespans. Their parents die when they give birth. So octopuses are basically born orphans. But birds live a pretty long time. Like long enough to have overlapping generations, like to have grandparents.

[Meredith]

And these are all things that are underpinning how cultures emerge.

[Noam]

Yeah, I think this is stuff that in a vacuum, we think might lead to culture. They have all the things. They have the brains, the communication, the family structures, the lifespans, but they don't have what we have. They don't have art and philosophy and the Sopranos.

[Meredith]

They don't tweet.

[Noam]

They don't. Well, they do tweet. But he answers this by looking at why certain traits develop to begin with. So if you think about evolution, right, it's not something that looks ahead and goes, this species needs this type of fix to get better. Over time, certain traits that help animals survive and have babies tend to spread. And when species are under a lot of pressure from their environment, if there are predators or if it's cold or if there's not a lot of food.

[Meredith]

Right.

[Noam]

Evolution ends up feeling like some type of gravitational pull.

[Meredith]

Okay.

[Noam]

And that is a metaphor that Anton uses throughout his piece, which I find particularly sticky. I really like thinking about evolution as gravity. And he sees culture as this huge advantage that humans developed. It's what allowed us to pass down our knowledge from generation to generation to develop language and writing and technology and take over the planet for good or bad.

[Meredith]

Right.

[Noam]

And we developed it at a certain point because we were vulnerable. Right. We had to work together as a species to fight off predators and disease and the cold and all kinds of things. Being vulnerable wasn't the only thing that allowed us to develop culture. But Anton basically argues that it was a big factor. And he says birds never got there. Right. He says some biologists talk about birds as a near miss when it comes to culture.

[Meredith]

Interesting.

[Noam]

He says Peter Godfrey Smith, who's this famous scientist and philosopher who works on octopus intelligence, he's often wondered why birds never got to culture. And when Antone last talked to him, Peter asked him, you know, you've studied bird cognition. Why have birds never got there?

[Meredith]

Yeah.

[Noam]

And Antone basically writes that he thinks it's because birds had an even bigger advantage, which was flight.

[Meredith]

Interesting. So that meant that they didn't have the vulnerability that pushed them to find other solutions.

[Noam]

Yeah, they were still vulnerable, obviously. Like, you know, I guess unless you're the absolute top of the bird food chain, there's still another bigger bird trying to get you.

[Meredith]

Right.

[Noam]

But, yeah, flying opens up this whole dimension of space. You know, if a predator is. Is coming, you don't have to hide, you don't have to be strong. You don't have to outsmart them. You just fly up. It's not a perfect solution, but it is, like, as far as solutions go, it is A very, very good solution. And when you think about how animals lives are just basically all about finding food and running away from predators, if you have the ability to fly, it's like you are. You are golden.

[Meredith]

Check and mate.

[Geico Sound Effects/Voice]

Yeah.

[Noam]

So his idea that he puts forward in this article is that flight might have solved so many of the problems that birds were facing that culture never even was a possibility. Right. They were almost gravitationally pulled down this different evolutionary path because culture is, like, very hard.

[Meredith]

Yeah.

[Noam]

It is something that requires brain size, you know, ability to manipulate the environment, all that, and lots of environmental pressure.

[Meredith]

Right.

[Noam]

And what I think he's saying is that birds had the former. You know, they had the raw materials, the brain size, the communication, and they didn't have the latter. They didn't have the same type of vulnerability that necessitated this type of adaptation.

[Meredith]

It's like the raw materials, but they need to come together. They almost need to get, like, forged in a crucible of vulnerability.

[Noam]

Yeah. A crucible of vulnerability that feels like our lives, we're all living in a crucible of vulnerability. And we have culture. We're still in the crucible, but we're surviving. But we're surviving.

[Meredith]

One thing I'm kind of wondering is I've seen videos of crows on snowy days sledding down rooftops again and again. Like, obviously, I mean, it could be an anthropomorphic lens, but it looks like they're having fun. It looks like that could be, you know, a sport. Could it be the case that we're just missing where the bird culture is?

[Noam]

That is a very good point. Like, first of all, you're right. Crows are super smart. And there's this one experiment that I love where this scientist wore a particular kind of mask all the time. And when he did, he trapped and released crows. And then the crows that had been released, they alerted other crows. And then some crows that had never been trapped learned to be afraid of the guy in the mask. And then apparently, future generations of crows learned to be afraid of this mask. So there's definitely some type of intergenerational transmission. Anton says this is not full complex culture. Right. This is not economics. This is not the Sopranos. This is not baseball. But I was thinking about this when I was reading the piece. I think there is a certain anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism. Is that even a. I like it. I'll go with yes, I get it.

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[Noam]

There's a sense in which it has sort of an anthropocentric view of, like, why didn't they get to culture? But you want to ask sometimes, like, well, is culture the end all, be all? So your question is valid, which is like, well, maybe this is crow culture, and do we need to say that one is lesser than the other?

[Meredith]

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I feel like light is such an old trait, much older than what we consider, like, what. It sounds like you're defining culture.

[Noam]

Oh, yeah, Way. I mean, on the order of hundreds of millions of years rather than like hundreds of thousands of years.

[Meredith]

Yeah, it's just, like, hard to define. It's hard to think about what culture is outside of the context of humans. And then I feel like this is adding, like, a. An extra layer of complexity on top of that because it's positioning it with biological evolution. That's really interesting.

[Noam]

Yeah. Okay, so I think that what Anton is doing here is not necessarily providing an airtight historical explanation of exactly why this happened. I think this is more like a provocative idea. Right.

[Meredith]

Yeah.

[Noam]

We often tend to think about evolution as directional. I shouldn't say we, but maybe there is a common misconception that evolution is directional and it ends with us. You know, like the march. What is it? The march of progress. What's the thing called with the.

[Meredith]

Like, different apes to standing man.

[Noam]

Yeah, the apes walking up to be humans. But I don't know. I take this as sort of a shift in perspective, that there are other ways to be wildly advanced. You know, just think about sharks. Right. I know you did this episode about when trees first showed up hundreds of millions of years ago. And I remember from that episode that they were like, oh, yeah. When trees showed up, there were sharks, and they were kind of the same as they are now. Like, sharks just found this evolutionary niche, and it's been great for them. And evolution isn't about getting to culture or intelligence. It's about adapting to your environment in a particularly useful way to you.

[Meredith]

Yeah. It's always interesting to think about, like, we're all on the same evolutionary journey. It's just that, you know, sharks figured out what they needed to do hundreds of millions of years ago.

[Noam]

I mean, we became humans within the last couple hundred thousand years.

[Meredith]

It's nothing.

[Noam]

We have been so wildly vulnerable for our evolutionary history.

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Yeah.

[Noam]

And who knows what's gonna happen to us now? But when I think about what Anton is putting forward here, it just makes me feel small in the best way. You know, it sort of makes me feel like that similar feeling of looking up at the stars and feeling really small. In this huge expanding universe. But instead, it's like looking out at the species and feeling small. Like looking at this enormous family tree of evolution and seeing all these other species that found their really good homes, you know, that. That got sucked into these gravitational pulls that Antone talks about, where there's no need to keep evolving because that's where they are. They're fine there for a long time. And, you know, honestly, I'm comparing this to the feeling of looking up at the stars. But one of the things that I really loved about this article and, you know, the thing that really stood out to me that I didn't get to talk about much, was this metaphor of gravity, of evolution as gravity and thinking about the evolution of our species on Earth in a similar way to the evolution of the universe and how gravity is shaping everything in the universe and evolutionary gravity is shaping it on Earth. I don't know. It is a metaphor that sits with me in a really nice way, that makes me feel small and humble and in awe of the world in a really nice way. So that's the thing that I'm excited for listeners to get from the article when they go and check it out, this sort of long meditation on evolution and gravity.

[Meredith]

I mean, some questions are the big questions, like, are we alone in the universe? How did it all begin? You know, the things that folks have been pondering for, you know, human history. But what I really like about these two articles is that they're questions that I would have never thought to ask.

[Noam]

Yeah, I definitely never would have thought birds were as advanced as they are. And I also never would have thought to ask, like, what triggers lightning? I mean, I guess I always wanted know what it is, but I never thought about what triggers it. And asking that question, which I never would have thought to ask, allows me to now understand that there might be what? Cosmic shrapnel coming in and starting it.

[Meredith]

Yeah. Well, I hope our listeners find these articles as interesting as we do.

[Noam]

Oh, and listeners, please send us articles.

[Meredith]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Noam]

Send us your favorite stuff, your favorite shows, your favorite movies, your favorite unanswered questions you found out there. If you want to check out either of the articles we talked about on the show, the first one is called what causes lightning? The answer keeps getting more interesting. You can find [e-mail] and it's by Charlie Wood. The other article is called Empire of Flight. It's from Eon magazine. It's by Anton Martino Truswell, and you can find it at Aeon co. This episode was produced by Meredith Hodnot. We had editing from Melissa soa, mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, music from Noam Hassenfeld who is me and and fact checking from Melissa Hirsch, Joanna Solotaroff, Valerie Shenkman and Sally Helm are the fact that there are five teams in the big four men's sports leagues that are clothing related, but only one is not leg related. Let me know if you can guess which one and Bird Pinkerton could barely keep up with Flapton as he scurried down the passageway and after turning what felt like 100 corners in total the during darkness, they suddenly stopped. Flapton turned toward her and said, welcome to the Resistance. Thanks as always to Brian Resnick for co creating the show with Bird and me. And if you have thoughts about the show, we'd love to hear from you. Please email us@ unexplainableox.com or if you'd like to support the show, you can join Vox. Become a Member. Just go to vox.com members and if you signed up because of us, let us know. We'd love to hear from you. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and we'll see you right back here next time.

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