This Week in Science – The Kickass Science Podcast · Dr. Kirsten Sanford Science Media

What WILL We Never Know?

·1 hr 21 min·9 clips

What will we never know? The show opens on that question, then tears through exploding cucumbers, zoonoses, and sensitive crabs before settling into its usual live-panel rhythm: curious, jokey, and a little messy in the useful way. People are thinking while they talk. The archaeological segment is where it clicks. An image seems to show a container, but nobody has the scale, and that missing bit changes the whole read. It is huge. This is not a mantle-sized urn or Dutch oven. It is a full pottery coffin with dried, preserved remains inside. The room adjusts fast, and that adjustment becomes the point. Researchers may know what they mean, but listeners still need plain physical context. Without scale, a burial vessel sounds like a pot. With scale, it becomes something large enough to hold a body in fetal position. The exchange is funny because everyone is catching up at once, but the correction matters. It shows how an image can mislead a curious audience when size and ordinary comparison are left out. Then the evidence gets personal. Teeth, DNA, dentin, and most of the skeleton give researchers enough to talk about the individual and movement across the Fertile Crescent. A strange container becomes a person. The segment keeps improving because someone asks for context, someone hunts for the missing scale, and the uncertainty stays in the room. By the closing song, the scientific method is back as joke and guide, aimed at grand claims about robots, global warming, and broadcast opinions.

As heard by us

A lively science conversation where missing context becomes part of the archaeological reconstruction.

What Will We Never Know? handles uncertainty as a subject worth examining, not a gap to smooth away. The episode starts with a playful sweep through exploding cucumbers, zoonoses, and sensitive crabs, then settles into a sharper archaeological puzzle: dried preserved remains in…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want science talk that starts with a pottery coffin and follows what preserved remains can suggest about movement across the Fertile Crescent.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from This Week in Science – The Kickass Science Podcast